“About us?” I asked hesitantly.
His fingers slid down so his thumb could stroke the side of my neck and he noted gently, “Greta, sweetheart, you were attacked last night.”
Oh.
Right.
“I . . . uh . . .”
What did I say?
I was attacked.
I went to him.
And he leaped down the stairs to get to me and then sprang into action, catching the guy (well, he didn’t but he went out to do that), getting me to the hospital (he didn’t do that either, but he arranged it), him and his kids looking after me, bringing me donuts.
“Greta,” he prompted, again gentle.
“You leaped down the stairs to get to me,” I whispered.
His brows drew together. “What?”
“I . . . I was . . . not okay when it happened,” I shared.
“All right,” he said slowly when I spoke no more.
“But then I came here and . . .” I pressed my lips together then unpressed them. “You made it all okay.”
“Fuck,” he growled.
“What?” I asked.
He stared at my bandage and I felt him holding himself very still, even his thumb had quit moving.
It was then I knew what.
“I think you can kiss me,” I told him quietly.
“Not the way I wanna kiss you.”
My nipples in the bra under his daughter’s top started tingling.
“Maybe we should go get donuts,” I suggested.
“Yeah,” he grunted like donuts weren’t as awesome as they totally were.
“Um, like now,” I pressed.
It took him a second before he muttered, “Right,” bent in, touched his mouth to mine again then let me go and got off the bed, taking my hand to pull me up with him.
He held it as he walked me to the door, but I tugged his when we got there so he stopped, turned and looked down at me.
“Thank you for making it all okay,” I said on a really hard hand squeeze, hoping the squeeze would tell him just how much I meant those words.
“That was my line,” he replied, squeezing my hand hard right back.
I felt my chest constrict, collapsing in on itself to the point my next breath was a wheeze.
Then I felt my eyes stinging.
“Don’t make me cry, it might hurt,” I snapped.
He grinned. “There’s no crying when there are two dozen donuts in the house.”
Holy crap.
“Two dozen?”
“Right, maybe one dozen. Shaw’s had plenty of opportunity to dig in.”
“Three kids, one dozen donuts, maybe ten minutes, Hixon, that’s a little crazy.”
He reached out a hand and opened his bedroom door, declaring, “That’s Junk Sunday.”
With that, he led me out and we barely made the mouth of the hall when Mamie announced, “Dad got you custard-filled, chocolate-buttercream-filled, jelly, and he bought a bunch of glazed and raised chocolate-covered just in case you didn’t do fancy.”
“Sounds perfect,” I told her.
And it did.
But suddenly, everything was.
A cramped apartment. A broken nose. Three kids who barely knew me, one not knowing what to make of me. A future that was complicated.
With my hand in Hixon’s, it was all suddenly just that.
Perfect.
The Drake Family
“Gonna get her in bed,” Hix murmured, and his kids watched as their dad didn’t scoot out from under Greta, who was totally out, stretched on their couch, her head resting on his thigh.
Instead, he pulled her gently up into his arms before he got off the couch holding her to his chest.
She might have been out but she turned her face into the side of his neck and slid her arm around the other side to hold on.
“Be back in a minute,” he kept murmuring.
His kids watched him round the coffee table and head down the hall.
When they heard their dad’s bedroom door latch, Shaw, lounged in his beanbag from his room, whispered, “She’s freakin’ awesome.”
And she was.
Even Corinne thought she fit right into Junk Sundays.
Mom would have a hemorrhage and get all mad or pout all day if they tried a Junk Sunday when Dad was with her. She did that when she wasn’t even there.
But Greta got in the swing of it and didn’t once complain when Mamie did an arabesque or a chassé along the area in front of the television (something she did a lot).
In fact, she watched her every time with a smile on her pretty face and she’d say things like, “Wow, Mamie, you’re really good at that.”
And it wasn’t fake.
Not at all.
She totally meant it.
“She’s real nice and she’s super-pretty,” Mamie whispered, coming up from lazing on the floor in front of the TV to sit cross-legged and look between her siblings. “Always thought that when we’d go see Miss Lou. She looks perfect with Daddy.”
“Mom looks perfect with Dad,” Corinne snapped quietly from her spot draped over the armchair.
“Mom isn’t with Dad anymore, Cor,” Shaw pointed out quiet and careful, like he always talked when he talked to Corinne about this stuff, which Corinne thought, especially these days, was way too much.
“And if she wanted to stay perfect, she shouldn’t have made Daddy leave,” Mamie stated resentfully, but still quietly.
This resentment was new from Mamie.
Then again, a lot of new things were coming from Mamie recently.
“There are things you don’t know,” Corinne told her little sister.
“Yeah, and there’s things you don’t know,” Mamie shot back. “Like how I heard him talking to Mom and askin’ her would she please just tell him where she was at so he could get there with her and sort everything out.”
“You heard that?” Shaw asked.
“Yeah,” Mamie answered. “And he was, like, bein’ real serious about it. Mom barely said anything, and I could tell even though I couldn’t see him it hurt him, like, a lot.”
That made Corinne feel funny but she admonished, “You shouldn’t have listened to that.”
“Why?” Mamie asked.
“Because it’s none of your business,” she answered.
Mamie’s eyes got big and mad. “My mom and dad aren’t my business?”
“That isn’t. And anyway, that’s not all there is to it. There’s stuff you don’t know. There’s stuff Dad doesn’t know.”
“Well, you think, maybe the person who should know is Dad?” Mamie asked sarcastically.
“Hey, we should talk about this later,” Shaw told them. “He’s gonna be back any second.”
“Yeah, like when?” Corinne asked her brother. “We barely see you anymore.”
Shaw’s face got soft when he reminded her, “I still pick you up for school, Cor, and take you home after we get done with our practices. I see you every day.”
She looked to the TV. “Whatever.”
“I like Greta,” Mamie declared stubbornly. “He hasn’t been . . . he hasn’t been, well, Dad. Not since Mom made him leave. And today, with her around, he was Dad.”
“I know what you mean,” Shaw murmured.
Corinne did too.
There was a lot of talk about girls who weren’t good if they didn’t have a guy around.
But apparently there were guys who were better when they had a girl around.
And their dad was one of them.