Hawk: (3 page)

Deirdre pretended to care
about what Tate had done in Europe last month, while Tate pretended to care that things at the bank were going very well despite ‘this economy.’ Tildy pretended to check her mental calendar to see if she was free next week for a date, while Skylar pretended she wasn’t irritated at the idea. Vera Simmons winked at Tildy from across the living room, pretending that Tate and Tildy were mere seconds from eloping into the night when everyone would be distracted by fireworks.

Tildy wondered how long it would take for her fake life to become her real life. And then she wondered if she’d even notice.

At just after midnight, Tildy made her way up the stairs to her bedroom where she closed the door behind her. She shed her dress, ignored her bruise, and pulled a cotton t-shirt over her head. Once under the covers, she reached into the pillowcase for the familiar feel of the little gold medallion.

“Isa,” she whispered quietly into the darkness. “I’m lost.”

Hawk let the feisty blonde cowgirl order another drink for herself and he put a ten on the bar for Maria. She was cute, wearing short jean shorts and a white t-shirt that revealed the fact that she was wearing a black bra. Hawk was certain this was intentional. The cowboy boots were cute
, too. He might let her keep them on.
She’s losing the hat though
, he thought.

“You ‘bout ready?” he asked her, lowering his head and his voice. The look on her face said she didn’t have to ask ‘For what?’

She nodded, downed her margarita, and grabbed her purse. “Let me just hit the ladies’,” she declared.

“Okay, honey,” he replied.

She left the bar, but her perfume remained. It wasn’t a bad scent, as far as perfume went, he mused. No sooner had the bar stool been vacated, than it was filled again, this time by a dark-haired woman in leather.

“Hey, Hawk,” she drawled.

Hawk smiled at her. “Hey, honey. How are things?”

“Better since I saw you here,” she purred.

Hawk suppressed the urge to wince. Amazingly for a guy who fooled around as often as he did, it was rarely a problem for him. He chalked this up to his being completely honest with the fairer sex. He was always clear that he was only looking for a good time.

Rapid City wasn’t huge by any stretch of the imagination, though Maria’s had a small but steady supply of new faces. Even so, he did resort to bedding the same woman more than on
ce on occasion. He tried hard not to make it a habit.

Hawk
was certain that he’d been with his one more than once. She had a tiny beauty mark above her eyebrow that he thought was familiar.

“Well, I was just leaving,” he declared, standing up. “But it was good seeing you, honey. Take care now.”

Undeterred the woman moved in front of him. “Oh, come on,” she said. “One drink. One dance,” she urged, though she wasn’t really interested in either.

“Can’t,” Hawk declared. “Got plans, honey.”

“Tanya,” she corrected.

Hawk sighed. He hated this when it happened. Contrary to persistent rumors, he did feel shitty when h
e hurt a woman’s feelings. In his experience, it was best to just rip off the Band-Aid, before things went too far.

Sex was just sex. T
here were some women who thought they could use it to manipulate him, but they didn’t really care about him.

“Tanya,” he repeated. “Do you know
my
name?”

Tanya blinked in confusion. “Hawk,” she replied.

“True,” he told her. That was his Sioux name, given to him by his grandmother. “My Christian name,” he prompted.

Tanya stood frozen.

“We had some good nights, Tanya. But that’s all.”

He spotted the blonde coming down the bathroom hallway. He stepped around Tanya and crossed the room.

“My place or yours?” the blonde asked.

“Yours,” he replied automatically. “I’ll follow you on my bike.”

The blonde’s face fell for an instant, but Hawk was resolute. Letting them share the saddle as well as the bed could only end badly.

“Okay,” she agreed.

He followed her to a split-level ranch house on the east side of town much like his own. Once inside Hawk didn’t waste any time. He pulled her in close and took her mouth firmly but gently. He tossed her hat aside and, as soon as he felt her relax in his arms, walked her backwards toward her couch.

He turned her around and unbuttoned her shorts. He pushed them down with both hands as he nuzzled her neck.

She moaned. “The bedroom...” she managed to get out.

“We’ll get there eventually, honey,” he murmured, cupping a breast in one large hand and her pussy in the other.

“Oh, God,” she groaned.

Hawk smiled.

After midnight he untangled himself from Blondie’s sheets. They had made it to the bedroom, as promised, but they’d only had sex there once before the little cowgirl collapsed from exhaustion. He dressed silently in the dark and slipped out of her house, locking her front door behind him. He kept his own house dark when he finally entered, knowing exactly where everything was. He undressed again, showered again, and fell into his own bed alone- again.

Tildy had tried to wake up early but not early enough, apparently. When she headed downstairs, her father had already left, probably to work on his golf game. Her mother was not downstairs either, though that suited Tildy just fine. She grabbed a bagel and headed out the door. She got to class before her students and laid out the stack of exams on the corner of her desk. As the others filtered in, she gave Mariposa a reassuring nod. Last night’s study session would surely improve her grade.

Tildy set out her Teacher’s Edition of the textbook they were using and started on the lesson plan for next Tuesday. The hour ticked by quickly and though Tildy remained confident, Mari was the last one to turn in her test.

Tildy squeezed her hand and smiled. “You did great,” she said, without even glancing at the paper.

Mari frowned and shook her head. “Maybe,” she said cautiously.

Tildy shook her own head, but with an entirely different meaning behind it. “You did,” she declared. “I can feel it.”

Mari crossed herself. “I hope you’re right.”

Tildy gathered up the stack of exams and crammed them into her backpack. There were only twelve people in the class and she’d have them all graded by tomorrow and handed back on Tuesday. No one was failing. Tildy never let anyone fail. Only Mari and two others were taking the citizenship test in December, though. The others just wanted to improve their English. Tildy didn’t care why people took her class, it just made her feel good that they did. She slung her pack over her shoulder and walked Mari outside. The Mercedes started, as per its new usual, with a rough idle. She pulled out of the lot and headed down Main Street, toward home.

It was cool in the car, but outside the temperature was steadily climbing toward triple digits. Tildy swung into a gas station off the main drag to get a soda since she knew there wouldn’t be any available at home. She headed inside, practically sprint
ing between the air-conditioned car and the gas station.

She grabbed a sod
a from one of the large coolers and got in line at the cash register. As she rifled through her purse, she heard heavy boots on the tile floor coming up behind her. Ignoring the sound, she paid for her soda and turned to head back to the car. She stopped short, nearly crashing into someone, or a tree. Someone or a tree; Tildy couldn’t decide. Her gaze drifted up from a pair of black, steel-toed boots to a pair of jeans sporting a black leather belt studded with silver rivets and then to a fitted black t-shirt. All of this covered a man larger than any man she’d ever actually seen in person. His biceps alone were huge.

He was Sioux
; that much was obvious. Tildy didn’t teach any members of the Sioux nation in her classes, but plenty of the kids and teenagers used the Community Center to shoot hoops.

His jet-
black hair was pulled back from his face. Or should she say
gorgeous
face! Tildy was pretty sure her mouth had dropped open, but
his
mouth was composed in a slightly mischievous grin.

“Careful there, honey,” he said in a deep voice.

Tildy could only nod and clutch her soda to her stomach. The chilled can felt good against her blouse, since it was definitely getting hot inside the store. When she finally took a breath, she managed to skirt out of his way. “Sorry!” she said, a little shrilly she thought.

“No harm done,” he assured her.

She tore her gaze away from him and headed outside, where it was
definitely
scorching. She unlocked the Mercedes, tossed her purse onto the passenger seat, and closed the door. She took a deep breath and put the key in the ignition.

I
nstead of starting, the car made more of a high-pitched whine. Tildy put the ignition back to the start position and tried again. Still nothing. Scowling, she took hold of her purse and opened the driver’s side door. It was way too hot to stay in the car and call her Dad.

As she stepped out, the man from the line came out of the st
ore and headed her way studying her as he approached.

“Forget something?” he asked, smiling.

Tildy looked up from her purse where she was searching for her cell phone. “Huh? Oh. No. My car won’t start.”

“Hmm,” he replied, eyeing the Mercedes. “Want me to give it a try?”

Tildy didn’t know what to say and was about to tell him it was fine and she’d just call her Dad when he said, “I work at a garage. Not on foreign cars, but...”

He let the offe
r hang in the sweltering air between them.

Tildy considered it
. If her Dad was playing golf, it would be at least an hour before he could get here. That was even if he agreed to cut his game short to rescue her. Not wanting to wait that long, she nodded and held out the keys to the giant of a man.

“Yes. Please,” she told him. “I...I don’t know what to do.”

His eyes twinkled as he reached toward her. Tildy was pretty sure this man knew what to do at all times.

Hawk had noticed the cute little thing in line in front of him. Jeans were okay, but not tight enough in his opinion, and her blouse seemed a little warm for the weather. What had really caught his eye was her hair. She had dark chestnut hair that cascaded across her shoulders and halfway down her back. It was incredibly tempting to run his fingers through it. She was a skittish little thing, and while she was cute as hell, Hawk wasn’t really interested in breaking in a new filly. He wasn’t, though, about to leave her stranded at a gas station on a day like this.

As he took her keys from her, she gasped and took a quick step back from him. Hawk frowned. He was a little intimidating
; that couldn’t be denied. But it was the middle of the day in a public place, and there certainly wasn’t any reason for her to act as though he was going to hurt her.

He was about to say something to alleviate her anxiety, when her hands flew to her blouse and she started unbuttoning it. Well
now. Hawk couldn’t suppress the urge to grin. Maybe the little filly was so grateful for his help she was about to throw herself at him to show him just how much. He was about to tell her that she could at least hold off until they were alone when she opened her shirt a tiny bit, revealing the lacy trim of a white bra and two creamy swells that were more tempting than her hair.

She reached in and pulled out something small. A bit of gold flashed in the morning sunlight. She stared at a small, round medallion in the palm of her hand. She looked at it for so long that Hawk said, “Honey?” attempting to bring her back to Earth. It barely worked though. She tore her gaze away from the necklace and looked up at him as though she’d never seen him before.

“It broke,” she finally declared.

Hawk looked from her dazed face to the necklace and back again. It was only the chain that was b
roken, as far as he could see, and that was easily fixed. Maybe it had sentimental value.

“You’re having a rough day, honey,” he said, trying to lighten the mood. He shook the car keys in his hand. “Let me check out your car.”

She watched him open the driver’s side door and settle onto the seat with his feet still on the blacktop of the lot. She was so damn small that no man could squeeze in behind the wheel. He cranked the ignition and listened to it try but fail, to catch. He hauled himself back out of the car.

“Don’t know much about foreign cars,” he told her again. “But if I had to guess, I’d say you have a bad sensor. My boss would know better than I would.”

She merely stared at him.

“You can call a tow truck if you’d rather have your regular m
echanic look at it.”

“I.
..I don’t know who our regular mechanic is,” she admitted.

“Want me
to have it towed to my garage?”

She fingered the medallion in her hand. “Yes,” she said more firmly.

Hawk nodded and took out his phone. He called the towing service the garage used and disconnected. “He’ll be here in about 10 minutes. Now, you can call someone and have them come pick you up. I’ll wait with you until the car’s loaded and your ride gets here. Or, though you don’t know me, you can ride with me and-”

“Yes!”

Hawk was taken aback by her sudden enthusiasm.

“Yes. I’ll go with you!”

A slow grin spread on his face. He wasn’t sure what had turned her from a frightened filly into a high-spirited mare all of a sudden, but he liked it, even if she was a little strange.

“I’m Hawk,” he told her, reaching out to shake her hand.

She put her small hand in his and shook it. “I’m Tildy,” she replied, then froze.

Hawk’s face wavered between a grin and frown. Lord, but this girl was all over the place.

“Honey?” he prompted.

“I’m Tildy,” she said again, regripping his hand. “Tildy.” She was quiet a moment. “I’ve never told anyone that before.”

“You’ve never told anyone your name?”

She shook her head slowly. “No.”

Hawk considered this. He’d never told anyone his name either. He suddenly felt better. Maybe she wasn’t crazy.

“Who’s ‘us’?” Hawk asked.

Tildy blinked at him.

“You said ‘I don’t know who
our
mechanic is’,” he prompted. Maybe she had a boyfriend.

“My paren
ts,” she said. “It’s their car. I live at home.” As if she thought better of it, she quickly added, “I just graduated in May.”

Hawk nodded. She was young, that was for sure. Hawk was 33.
“What’d you study?” he asked, to kill time.

She looked up at him again. She had the softest brown eyes that a man could get lost in. Hawk was trying very hard not to picture her looking up at him from her knees, or down at him while she was straddling him.

“Finance,” she replied, “but I didn’t like it. I really wanted to teach,” Then she looked startled again and actually glanced around. A nervous giggle burst from her. “Teaching,” she said more firmly, as though she herself couldn’t believe it. “I would have really rather gotten a degree in teaching.”

Hawk couldn’t figure out what this girl’s deal was, but she was either not playing with a full deck
, or she was just really socially awkward with men. He had, on occasion, been the cause of more than one woman’s loss for words, but they didn’t usually act quite this odd.

“I’ve never told anyone that before
, either!” she announced.

Hawk studied her intently. “Got any other secrets?”

She ran her thumb across the gold medallion and shook her head. “No. You know them all now.”