“Hixon,” I whispered back.
Suddenly, and honest to God I didn’t know how it happened or how it happened so fast, I didn’t have hands to my cart and head turned to Hixon Drake.
I had my back pinned to shelves and Hixon Drake in my space, his thumb curved around the bottom of my jaw, fingers splayed along my cheek, tilting my head back, his face in mine, his eyes sweltering, his voice an enraged (loud) rumble.
“What the fuck?” he near-to bellowed.
“I—”
“Who did this to you?” he demanded to know.
“It was just a—”
His hand slid from my jaw to clamp, firm but still surprisingly gentle, around the side of my neck. “Why didn’t you report this to me?”
My head twitched in confusion.
“Report . . . what?” I asked.
“I’m the sheriff, Greta,” he bit out. “A man takes his fist to you, you call the fuckin’ sheriff.”
“A man didn’t—”
“Who did it?”
“Hixon, it was just—”
He got nose to nose with me. “Who fuckin’ touched you?”
God!
It was infuriating how he never let me speak.
“Step back,” I demanded.
“Greta, tell me who did this to you,” he growled.
“Take your hand off me, Sheriff, and step back!” I yelled.
He stared into my eyes and didn’t move.
“Back!” I shouted.
He stepped back and took his hand from my neck but he did it putting his other one to my cart and holding it steady, angling his body, me imprisoned by the cart, his frame and the shelves.
“Talk to me,” he ordered.
I was at that moment very aware we had an audience.
I didn’t look from Hixon.
“It’s not your business.”
“A man harms a woman in my county, it’s my business,” he forced out between clenched teeth.
“It’s not what you think.”
Now he was letting me finish sentences, but he still didn’t listen to me because he didn’t refer to that with his next, he just continued on with what he had to say.
“And I’ll make this clear to you right here, I don’t give a shit you’ve blocked my calls, any man harms you, Greta, you, you tell me and I deal with it for you first as a man then as the sheriff.”
Um.
What?
No. No. No.
He wasn’t going to put his dibs in to look after me after he stood in my house and gutted me.
“Step away,” I ordered.
“Talk to me.”
“Step away!” I yelled.
He dipped his face in mine and roared, “Talk to me!”
“My brother did it! All right! He doesn’t like rain, freaked out, elbowed me in the face.”
He slid back an inch and stared at me in surprise.
“It’s fine. I’m fine. He’s fine. Now step back!” I screeched the last.
“Your brother?” he asked a whole lot more calmly.
I wasn’t so calm.
He didn’t get to pin me against shelves like some alpha-male run amuck and ask me questions he should have asked me when he was sleeping in my bed and eating breakfast at my kitchen island.
“My brother,” I bit out. “Now, Sheriff, you don’t get to do this. You made things clear in my living room and, I don’t know, say just now, jumping to conclusions I’d be stupid enough and also slutty enough to get myself another man about a week after you dumped me before we even had a date and then letting that man hit me without turning his ass in to the cops.”
“That’s not what I thought.”
“What’d you think?”
God!
Why had I asked?
I needed to get out of there.
“Your mother is connected to Kavanagh Becker and he’s not a nice guy but he is a guy who has a posse of equally not-nice guys.”
“I’ve never even heard that name in my life.”
“Okay, sweetheart, but it doesn’t make that fact any less true.”
Sweetheart.
Oh shit.
I was going to cry.
I hadn’t cried since it happened.
I couldn’t cry.
“Step back, Hixon,” I whispered.
“Greta.”
“Step back!” I shrieked.
He stepped back.
I snatched my purse out of the seat of the cart, turned and ignored the onlookers we had (especially the sheer number of them) as I ran out of the grocery store, leaving my groceries behind, leaving my cart behind, probably leaving a healthy dose of my dignity behind, thus focusing on the fact I had leftover pulled pork in the fridge.
I probably couldn’t eat it without throwing it up.
But in case I managed to pull myself together, at least I wouldn’t starve.
The ringing of the doorbell came first.
When I ignored that, the knocking came.
When I ignored that, with only intermittent spurts of respite, it just kept coming.
Finally (and by “finally” I meant this lasted probably five minutes, but that was a long five minutes) , I moved and stood on the opposite end to the door at the picture window at the front of my house and peeked through the windows.
From my angle, I couldn’t see who was at the door.
But I could see a Bronco in my drive.
Not at the curb this time.
Oh no.
He wasn’t trying to share with anyone who saw it that he was there for just a visit and not for an all-night booty call by parking casually at the curb. He also wasn’t intent on sharing with me that he was going to do what he had to do and get the hell out of there and he wanted to do it without the bothersome effort of reversing out of my drive.
Nope.
He’d parked in my driveway like his badass and supercool (it sucked, but it was true) Bronco belonged there.
He wanted to push this?
Fine.
I had a few things to say to make things clear too.
And maybe he might allow me to finish a few sentences for once so I could say them.
But after I did, we’d be done.
For good.
So I went to the door, unlocked it, pulled it open and glared into Hixon Drake’s devastatingly handsome face.
“What?” I snapped.
“Can I come in?” he asked gently.
Fuck him.
And fuck his gentle.
“Be my guest,” I declared, stepping back and moving away, far away, putting the couch between me and him.
He walked to the back of it, his eyes never leaving me, and stopped.
“Greta—”
“I let you in here because this time I have a few things to say and if you don’t want to listen, you can leave right now.”
He just held my gaze and said nothing.
He also didn’t move.
I took that as indication he was going to listen so I launched in.
“Not that you deserve an explanation, but it’ll make,” I jerked a thumb at myself, “me feel better to share with you my relationship with my mother is nonexistent. From the moment she nearly killed my brother in a drunk-driving accident, her being the drunk, she became nothing to me but a nuisance I had to throw money at way too often to stop her from interfering with my life. Something, I’ll also share because I’m feeling in the mood that has stopped very recently. She wasn’t liking that all that much, even though apparently she’s found another meal ticket, so she took that out on me and did it through you.”
Several moments after I quit talking, Hixon asked, “She almost killed your brother?”