For a woman like Greta, a man could turn creep real easy he had even an inkling of that in him.
“I don’t know,” she murmured, slowly shifting her gaze back to Hix. “If Gemini reads it, he takes care of it and doesn’t share.”
He felt his mouth get tight. “That’s not doing you any favors, Greta. You should know when you gotta keep your eyes open.”
“I do that all the time anyway, Gemini knows that,” she replied. “So I reckon he just doesn’t want me freaked.”
Hix couldn’t fault that at the same time he could.
But it was late. She was probably tired and he had kids sleeping under his roof. Now was not the time for that debate.
“You the Cherokee?” he asked.
She nodded.
He moved, pushing from the Bronco, dropping his arms and taking her elbow.
He walked her there and stood beside her as she opened the door and folded in.
She did that thing only some women do, not putting one foot then the other in the car, instead aiming her ass at the seat, pulling herself up and lifting both legs in like a lady.
Christ, everything about her called straight to his dick.
She looked up at him.
He issued orders.
“You can reverse out, but don’t start on your way until my headlights are behind you. Phone out of your bag, on the seat, in reach. Your car probably locks automatically. Don’t care. Lock it manually. You with me?”
She nodded but asked, “Do you think he’s that much of a creep?”
“I think I don’t wanna find out, but you’ll want that less.”
“Right,” she mumbled.
“Curious,” he continued. “Gemini have someone escort you to the car after every gig?”
She nodded.
He nodded back. “Good. Now after every gig, you lock your doors immediately and ride home with your phone like that. Then you walk to the door of your house with your phone in your hand.”
“You’re creeping me out, Hixon,” she shared.
“It’s after two in the morning, you’re a woman alone, and if you don’t get me, I’ll give you a copy of In Cold Blood.”
Her eyes got big but her lips muttered, “I’ve read it, message received, say no more.”
He grinned at her and waited until she opened her bag, got out her phone, put the bag on the seat beside her with the phone on top, all of this she did with her door open.
When she went for her seatbelt, he closed her door and moved purposefully slowly to his truck.
He swung in, watching her Cherokee move in the lot through windows and mirrors as he belted up, started up, circled in the now-open lot and got up on her tail where she was idling.
She drove and he followed.
When they made it to her house, she slid up the drive to the side and stopped in front of the big detached garage that sat at the back.
Unlike the Saturday before, when he’d parked at the curb, he drove up the driveway right behind her.
He got out with eyes to her, watching her come out unlike she gone in.
One heel attached to a shapely leg down then the other, and she was out.
He pulled in a breath as he moved to her.
She closed her door, beeped the locks and let him take her elbow as they moved to the side door he figured led to her kitchen.
She opened the screen door she’d already put the storm windows in even though they were in Indian summer. She unlocked the kitchen door, moving through, switching on the lights.
Hix followed her.
He had not paid any mind to her house the last time he was there. This mostly because he kissed her the minute she’d let him in the front door, and he kept doing it as they made their way up to her bedroom. He hadn’t had it in him to take anything in on the way out.
But right then, he saw the kitchen he was expecting in that house, but not a kitchen he would expect of her.
Totally redone but still looking old, the green of the cabinets and center island was a shade of soft mint. The countertops all butcher block. Drop porcelain farmer’s sink. Flagstone floors. Long, spiked, old-fashioned brass hinges on cupboards, brass cup grips on the drawers, simple brass handles on the cabinets.
She had plants decorating the space here and there. Modest but decorative wreaths arranged nicely on the walls. Bright pottery on shelves. Some wicker. Pots and utensils on display on hooks. And oddly, but it looked good, a little lamp with a tall, thin base on the edge of a counter.
The high windows over the sink would make it sunny, but to give privacy, sheer white shades were down, starting a ways from the top so nothing obstructed the sun there, even sheers.
It was a country kitchen in a home in a sleepy county in Nebraska, and she looked like she belonged nowhere near it in that red satin dress, those shoes, her bling, with her hair arranged like that at her nape.
“You redo this?” he asked after he’d looked around.
“Old owners. This, the porch and the bathrooms did it for me,” she answered.
He verbalized his thoughts. “You in that dress don’t seem to belong here.”
She studied her surroundings like she’d never seen them before.
Still in her perusal, she murmured, “Funny, the minute I walked into this place, I knew I didn’t belong anywhere else.”
That said something about her with all that was happening with Hix in that moment he couldn’t afford the headspace to decipher.
Without him telling his mouth to do it, Hix shared, “Last place I wanted to be from the minute I hit Glossop was here.”
Her attention came to him. “Where were you before?”
“Indy.”
Her pretty lips tipped up. “That’s not exactly cosmopolitan, Hixon.”
“More than here.”
“You got me on that,” she muttered and tilted her head. “Are you saying you miss the city?”
He twitched his shoulders. “Guess I like things complicated.”
“Yeah,” she whispered.
Shit.
She put a hand to her island, moving slow, tentative, like she didn’t know where it was or if her aim would hit it, and noted, “Gemini would have seen me home.”
“I know, he shared that with me.”
Just as slow, but not as tentative, she ran her teeth over her lower lip before she repeated with one addition, “Gemini would have seen me home, Hixon.”
That time, Hix didn’t reply.
“Taking care of your citizens, Sheriff?” she whispered.
He replied to that.
“No, Greta.”
He watched her chest move as her breathing escalated.
Then he watched as her lips parted to let more air in.
And finally, he watched her mouth move as she said quietly, “You need to go.”
“Yeah.”
He didn’t move.
She didn’t move.
She just stood there in that damned dress and those damned shoes with all that great freaking hair around her beautiful face and breathed.
“This isn’t smart,” she whispered.
She was totally right.
He said nothing.
“We’re gonna do it anyway, aren’t we?” she asked.
He looked into her eyes and knew it was not at all smart.
But they were going to do it anyway.
“Yeah,” he whispered.
She took in a big breath and her chest heaved with it, the fullness at the insides of her breasts exposed at the vee of her dress pushing against the material.