Games of the Heart (22 page)

“Debbie, you got Mike,” I watched him say into the phone, he paused then my mouth dropped right open when he said, “Shut your mouth and listen to me. Dusty just got home, I’m not fully briefed on the shit that’s goin’ down and right now, you are on a call freeze. You do not call Dusty, Fin, Kirb and definitely not Rhonda. Not for two weeks. You do, you answer to me. You get me?” Pause then, “I’m a cop, cops know cops and the cops we know, know other cops. In your business, you know that. You also know you don’t piss off a cop.” Another pause while I stared at him with a still opened mouth and big eyes and then he kept going, “No, that’s not a threat. Do not dick with me, do
not
dick with Dusty and absolutely do
not
dick with Rhonda, Fin and Kirby. Your reign of terror is over, woman. It ended thirty seconds ago. I suggest you get used to that starting now.”

Then he took my phone from his ear and touched the screen with his thumb.

“I…I…” I stammered but got no further.

Mike’s neck was bent, eyes to my phone, his thumb was moving on the screen and he muttered distractedly, “Please tell me you got Fin on…” he trailed off, his thumb hit something and he put the phone to his ear. He waited five seconds while I watched then he stated, “Finley? Mike Haines. Listen and don’t talk. You, your brother or your mother are gonna get phone calls from your Aunt Debbie imminently. Confiscate all phones, turn them off and do not let them have them back until you get the all-clear from me or your Aunt Dusty. And even after tonight, do not answer a call if the call is coming from Debbie. Instruct your brother and mother to do the same. Your Aunt Dusty or I’ll explain later. Got me?” He paused, “Do it now.” He paused again and this went on longer. Then he asked, “Got them? Good. Enjoy the movie.”

Then he hit the screen with his thumb and looked at me.

I burst out laughing and all that was so freaking good I did this a long time.

When this died down to chuckles I saw Mike standing where he was, watching me. He wasn’t smiling. He was just watching me and doing it intently.

“That was awesome,” I told him, each word as heartfelt as I felt them which was to say a whole lot.

Mike didn’t respond to my comment.

Instead he rocked my world.

“My daughter’s birthday party is Saturday. I want you there. So as not to make a special day for her about her meeting her father’s new woman, I want you out to dinner with me and my kids tomorrow night. Neutral turf so they don’t feel invaded and you feel safe. And if you want to impress her, I’ll give you her wish list. You buy anything on that, she’ll love you for a teenage eternity which, translated, means at least an hour.”

I stared at him.

I didn’t know how long he’d been divorced but it had clearly been a while. I did know he’d had lovers since and not a few. He’d not introduced his kids to one of his other women and if what he told me was true, that included the Vi he was talking about.

But it didn’t include me.

After a clear nightmare with his wife, to protect himself he started dicking around and unfortunately when he did that he dicked around with me.

Obviously, he was done with that. Not kind of done as in not really committed to being done. One thing was crystal clear about Mike Haines. He loved his kids, looked after them and protected them. There was no way in hell he’d introduce them to a woman he wasn’t serious about with that serious being
serious.

“You need to be ready at six,” he carried on. “We’ll come by here and pick you up.”

I continued to stare at him but I didn’t speak.

So he prompted, “Dusty, did you hear me?”

I nodded.

“Are you gonna be ready at six?”

I nodded.

He held my eyes.

Then, his voice softer and less bossy, he asked, “Do you forgive me?”

I licked my lips.

Then I pressed them together.

Then I did what I’d always done. I made a decision on the fly based entirely on feeling and went with it.

Which meant I nodded.

I watched his tall, lean body relax and something about seeing it do that, a man like Mike exposing that to me meant the world to me. Because his being tense waiting for my forgiveness and finally getting it meant the world to him.

“Right, honey,” he said gently, “then come here and kiss me.”

God, I’d missed that. I’d had it a day and I’d missed it like I’d had it for decades and lost it for eternity.

So I walked the three feet to him, right into his arms and I tilted my head back. Going up on my toes to kiss him, I didn’t get the chance.

That’s because, his arms closing around me hard, his mouth slamming down on mine, Mike kissed me.

And he did it thoroughly.

My arms were tight around his neck and my entire body was alive when his lips slid along my cheek to my ear and he whispered, “You’ve made me a happy man, honey.”

I closed my eyes and shoved my face in his neck.

“You forget how to talk?” he teased and I grinned.

“No,” I whispered. “But this is a lot.”

“It is,” his arms gave me a squeeze, “you’ll get used to it.”

God, I hoped so. I really, really hoped so. Because I hadn’t lied. If he hurt me again, I wouldn’t survive it. All the men before (not that there was a million of them but still) that I lost didn’t hurt as much as losing him did.

He lifted his head and caught my eyes.

“I wanna take you to bed, celebrate this extensively. But to do that would mean Rhonda, who blushed when she mentioned just talkin’ to your brother in bed, will come home to us on the couch or in whatever room you’re sleepin’ in and I don’t wanna do that to her and my guess is, you don’t either.”

This wasn’t true. I wanted to “celebrate this extensively”. But I didn’t want to do that to Rhonda either.

“I don’t either,” I told him.

“I also am not gonna go,” he told me and I relaxed in his arms because I didn’t want him to go. He felt it and smiled a gentle smile so I knew he liked it. “So, you got a choice, camp out in front of the TV or talk.”

“Will the talk be deep and meaningful?” I asked.

“If you want it to be,” he replied.

“I think I’m topped up on that for tonight,” I informed him and he chuckled.

“Then it can be about nothing,” he offered.

“Okay,” I accepted.

“Except,” he started and I braced, “you gotta know one thing. Audrey will be at Reesee’s birthday party.”

“Oh God,” I blurted and he grinned.

“Not nice, you bein’ sweet, givin’ me another shot and me treatin’ you to trial by fire as payback.”

He could say that again. Dinner with his kids and then his daughter’s birthday party with his ex in attendance.

“At least tell me Vi won’t be there,” I demanded and his grin grew to a smile.

“No, Vi won’t be there.”

“Then I’m good. Your ex, I can handle. Some chick who you fell for, uh…no.”

“She’s married.”

“Uh…no.”

“With a baby.”

“Did I say no?”

He started chuckling.

Then he stopped abruptly, took one arm from around me and cupped my jaw in his hand.

I held my breath at the look in his eyes.

But he just repeated, “You made me a happy man, Dusty.”

“Good,” I replied softly.

“No, Angel, you don’t get it. I haven’t been happy, truly happy without anything fucking it up in eighteen years.”

I stared at him feeling my lips part.

“And tonight, givin’ me another shot, you made me happy. Truly happy without anything fucking it up.”

I felt my throat clog and my nose sting and the word was husky when I repeated, “Good.”

His voice was thick when he replied, “Yeah, it is.”

I took in a stuttering breath.

Then I asked, “Can we start talking about nothing before I start bawling?”

He grinned again and whispered, “Yeah.”

To that I whispered back another, “Good.”

Then he led me to the couch. He flicked off the TV and we started out talking about nothing then we talked about bitchface Debbie’s antics and then before he had to get back home to his kids, we ended up talking about nothing again (with not a small amount of making out mixed in).

As with everything I did with Mike, it came naturally.

Way Past Curfew

“
H
ave you lost your mind?”

“Jerra, honey, Mike’s gonna be here in a couple of minutes.”

Suffice it to say, I shouldn’t have taken my girl Jerra’s call while in the midst of preparing to meet Mike’s kids and go out to dinner. And I definitely shouldn’t have shared that I’d driven myself and my babies up to my childhood home and then approximately three and a half hours later reconciled with the guy I fell for who broke my heart, both happening in the expanse of two weeks.

She was
not
as happy as Rhonda was when I told her Mike and me hooked up that morning after the boys went off to school. Rhonda was kind of a prude but definitely a romantic and clearly Darrin had shared his dreams about Mike and me with his wife. So I left out all the juicy stuff and definitely the Mike being a dick stuff. And I told her the whole thing cautiously because she’d just lost her husband and I didn’t want to rub my new relationship in her face however crazy it might be (not that I told her the crazy parts).

I also didn’t share with her I knew she gave Mike the diaries or that Mike shared them with me. I probably would never go there. It shocked the shit out of me she had the gumption to take them to Mike in the first place. She was delicate always, now extremely. I was there to try to patch her up, not shatter her.

But she was ecstatic about what I did tell her, like, off the wall, whacked out ecstatic. I’d been around her three times since Darrin died and she hadn’t been even close to that animated any of those times. Or, actually, pretty much any time I saw her in the twenty years she’d been with my brother.

I thought this was good.

Jerra, who had had several drunken orgies with me since Mike broke up with me, was understandably the opposite. She’d been riding my high that we hooked up then she rode my uncertainty when he closed me down then she plummeted with me when I lost him. She’d then commiserated with me when Fin called to let me in on what was going down and I had no choice but to put my life on hold and haul my ass up to Indiana to sort out Rhonda’s shit, help Fin with the land and prepare to go head-to-head with my bitchface sister. All of this on a farm that was a hop, skip and a jump from Mike Haines’s back gate.

Now she thought I was crazy.

“Hunter! Get this! Dusty has been back up in Hoosierland for about
a day
and she’s hooked up again with that fuckin’
Mike guy!
” I heard her shout.

“Jerra, please, I have to get ready,” I told her, sitting on the bed, holding my phone between my ear and shoulder and yanking on my kickass fawn suede cowboy boot. They were boots that I bought six years ago to wear on my babies but I loved them so much they never saw a stirrup. They might not have ridden the range but they did see a lot of barroom dance floors.

“You’re fucking shittin’ me!” I heard Hunter shout back.

“I wish I was but no!” Jerra shouted to Hunter.

“Can you guys have your conversation when I’m
not
freaking out about meeting the two teenage kids of my on-again, off-again boyfriend? This being his title even though I’ve been with him in person for approximately thirty-two hours and who, incidentally, has not once introduced one of his women to his kids.”

Jerra’s attention came back to me and I knew this when she asked sharply, “You’re freaking out?”

“Uh…
yeah,
” I answered.

“You never freak out.”

“Honey, hello? I’ve been in love with this guy since I was twelve.
And he’s never introduced his kids to any of his women,
” I stressed. “And I think I told you how hot he is.”

“Yeah, in detail,” she agreed.

“Ergo, he’s had a lot of women.”

“Wow, that’s kinda big,” she muttered, I fell back on the bed in exasperation and she went on, “Right, just at least tell me he had a good excuse for being a huge jackass.”

“I can’t seeing as he didn’t have a good excuse, he had a bunch of them. I can’t even enumerate them. What I can say is that for a hot guy, he not only has awesome command of his hot parts, he also has awesome command of the English language. He used it and it worked on me. Mainly because he meant every word.”

“He’d have to,” she kept muttering.

Right, I had to give her something.

So I did.

“He told me every sign he was getting from me was that I was his dream.”

Jerra perked up. “Oo, that’s good. What else?”

My eyes went to the digital display of the alarm clock Rhonda had next to the bed in the guest room and my heart spiked as I shot to sitting on the bed. “Jerra! I can’t! He’s going to be here in five minutes and I have only one boot on.”