“Jesus. It’s like a freaking Sasquatch convention in here,” Joe said, grinning, amused by his own joke as his gaze moved between Dex and Hugh.
Hugh finished wiping his hands and tossed the rag aside. “And when you’re around, it’s like being in fucking fourth grade.”
“Don’t lie, you love me, you big lug,” Joe said and slugged Hugh in the arm.
Dex shook his head and tossed his spanner back in the toolbox. It’d been like this since he started. They gave each other shit constantly, Adam included. Dex wasn’t sure how to deal with it. He’d never had his brothers around growing up, and Zane and he had never had a relationship like that. Of course, now, for obvious reasons, things were more than a little strained in his branch of the Colton family.
Hugh, Joe, and Lucy had something Dex didn’t really get. Their father had been an even bigger prick than Dex’s, from what he’d been told. His old man had been a cheater and a gambler. His cousins’ father had been a flat-out criminal, getting Hugh and Joe caught up in his shit as well.
Despite all that, they were tight.
“You’re an idiot,” Hugh said to Joe.
“You’re just pissy ’cause you’re not the biggest weirdo in the family anymore.” Joe looked at Dex, tilted his head to the side, and winked.
“Does he ever shut up?” Dex asked Hugh.
Hugh shook his head. “If I had a dollar for every time Adam and I have discussed supergluing his big mouth shut, I’d be fuckin’ rich.”
Dex planted his hands on his hips. “You ever need anyone to hold him down, my big weird ass is at your disposal.”
Joe burst out laughing. “Holy shit, did you just crack a joke?”
Dex just stared at him.
“I’ll grow on you eventually,” Joe said and headed for the door.
“Like fungus?” Dex muttered.
“Har har. Catch you tomorrow. I’m going home, where I’m appreciated.”
“I’ll close up,” Dex said to Hugh and started tidying up his workbench. Keeping busy was good. That way he wouldn’t think about Hattie.
Bullshit. You haven’t stopped thinking about her.
She’d snuck off in the middle of the damned night, left him high and dry again, and he didn’t know that the hell to make of it. Was she done with him? He was fucked if he knew. What he did know was he sure as fuck wasn’t done with her. Not that he could do anything about that, though, if the feeling wasn’t mutual.
He didn’t have her number, so he couldn’t call or text, and it didn’t feel right showing up at her place uninvited. He didn’t want to force her to see him, if that wasn’t what she wanted.
He frowned down at his toolbox.
“I’m gonna head out,” Hugh said, pulling him from his thoughts.
Dex lifted his chin.
“Shay and me, we’re going out,” he said, giving an unusual amount of information. Hugh was a lot like Dex: a man of few words. It was one of the things Dex liked most about the man.
He wasn’t sure what to say, so he went with, “Yeah? Have a good night.”
“Hattie’s looking after the kids on her own, all four of them,” Hugh added.
Dex stilled, heart banging into action at the mention of Hattie’s name.
“She offered. Darcey and Joe have a school thing to go to for Noah, and Lucy’s due to have the baby any minute. It’ll be a lot for Hattie on her own.”
Dex turned to his cousin. “Why are you telling me this?”
Hugh shrugged. “Just thought you might want to know. She’ll be at our place all alone…with four kids, and two of them take after their uncle Joe.”
Not sure what to say, Dex frowned.
“Saw her leave your apartment the other morning,” Hugh added.
Christ. “That’s my business.”
Hugh’s hands went to his hips. “Brother, I don’t know what your family’s like back home, but here we look out for each other. If one of us is turning ourselves in knots over something, and it’s obvious as hell that you are…and also being kind of a dumbass, we intervene.”
What the hell did you say to that? Okay, yeah, perhaps he’d been standoffish with everyone here, and he guessed that was shitty after everything they’d done for him. But Dex didn’t know how to be…this. How to do this. “A dumbass?” he repeated.
“I was there Christmas Day. You want Hattie?” Hugh asked, and waited, the minutes stretching out.
Was he supposed to answer that? He did not share his feelings. But Hugh didn’t budge, just stood there waiting. For fuck’s sake. He dipped his chin. It was all Hugh was going to get.
Hugh did the same. “Then, don’t be a dumbass.” Then he walked out of the garage.
The sound of squealing children could be heard as Dex made his way up the front steps of Hugh and Shay’s house.
He knocked and stood back.
What the hell are you doing here?
If Hattie had wanted him there, she would have asked. She hadn’t. In fact, she’d been avoiding him since they fucked two days ago. This was a mistake. Coming here like this was not cool of him. It was pushy and intrusive.
He was about to turn away when the door opened and a frazzled-looking Hattie stood there, looking up at him, eyes kind of wild.
Shit. And beautiful. So fucking beautiful. “Hey?”
“Hey,” she said back, jiggling baby Gracie, who was wrapped in a towel, in her arms.
One of the kids shrieked at the top of their lungs.
“Hugh said…and I thought…”
Hattie grabbed the front of his shirt and all but yanked him through the door. “Milly’s watching Connor. And Gracie has”—she winced—“God, she pooed everywhere…just everywhere when I stripped her for her bath, and Brody is running around naked somewhere. Find him and dress him. His pj’s are—were—on the couch. He hid them. I’ll make sure Milly is okay with her brother and get Gracie dressed.”
Dex immediately followed her orders, hunting down Brody, who was hiding under the kitchen table, or trying to, since he was giggling out of control at his own antics.
Dex moved the table and lifted the squirming naked toddler. “Where are your pj’s, buddy?”
He laughed harder and pointed to the fridge.
Okay, probably not a good idea to put those on him. Dex carried him up the stairs, found his bedroom and another set of pj’s. He’d never dressed a kid before, but despite the squirming and giggling, which ended up making Dex laugh as well ’cause the kid was cute, he got the job done. And Hugh was right, this one most definitely had his uncle Joe’s sense of humor.
Dex carried him down the hall to where he could hear Hattie talking to Gracie in the bathroom, and apparently, the scene of the poo incident—
Okay, yeah, Hattie was right, it was everywhere. Like Hattie had stood in the middle of the room, aimed Gracie’s little butt at the floor and turned in circles.
He glanced up at Hattie and winced. She had some on her cheek.
Gracie was now cleaned up and dressed, and Hattie held out the baby to Dex. He quickly moved Brody to his shoulders and took the clean and smiling bundle Hattie handed to him.
She started cleaning up.
“Um, babe,” he said.
She was busy gathering up towels.
“Hattie?”
“Hmm?” she said glancing at him.
“Sweetness, you got a little…” He pointed to her cheek. “You’ve got some, ah…on your face.”
Hattie stilled. “No. No I haven’t,” she said, voice deceptively calm.
“Yeah, baby, you do. On your cheek.”
“No. Dex, please tell me you’re joking.”
Dex winced.
Hattie took a slow measured breath and looked in the mirror. “Oh God,” she whispered when she got a look at herself. She turned back to him. “Dex, I have baby poo on my face.”
The look on hers, the note to her voice, it was too much. And the laugh that bubbled up inside him took him off guard. There was no holding it back. Soon he was laughing so hard he was giving his abs a workout. Brody thought Dex laughing was hilarious and joined in. Gracie didn’t seem to care and grinned up at him.
Milly appeared at the door, Connor’s hand in hers. “What’s going on?”
“Poo!” Brody said.
Milly’s gaze moved over Hattie, finding it instantly, and her hand flew to her mouth, trying to stifle her giggles. Connor started chanting “poo” with his younger brother.
Hattie grumbled, then grinned at them all and started laughing as well, and when she did, Dex’s heart did a weird somersault.
When they had all pulled themselves together, Hattie cleaned herself up, and Dex helped her put all the kids to bed. Milly was allowed her light on for twenty minutes to read, but the other three were out pretty much as soon as their little heads hit their pillows. They’d had a busy night.
Dex was in the living room when Hattie finally came back down after checking on Milly.
“She’s asleep,” she said and plonked down on the couch.
“Drink?”
She nodded.
Dex grabbed a couple of beers from the fridge—Hugh definitely owed them one after that—and handed one to Hattie. “You did good,” he said and took a seat beside her.
“I sucked,” she said and sipped her drink. “I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t shown up.” She turned more fully toward him. “Were you looking for Hugh?”
Dex shook his head. “You left again, Hattie.”
Her gaze dropped to his mouth. “I needed to get to work.”
He frowned.
“You were asleep. You looked peaceful and I didn’t want to wake you.”
“You snuck off and vanished for two days.” Why was he making such a big deal out of this? It wasn’t like they’d said anything more would happen beyond that night. But he realized he wanted more than that one night. Who was he kidding? He’d known he wanted more than one night with this woman the moment he laid eyes on her.
“I didn’t vanish,” she said, not meeting his eyes. “I was here or I was home.”
Shay’s office was out the back of the house. She’d told him Hugh had built it for her once her business grew.
“You wanted me to come after you, Hattie?” he asked, because fucked if he knew. It wasn’t like he was an expert when it came to relationships. He’d been with Chloe for a couple of years, but a lot of that time he’d been deployed.
He wasn’t a big talker either, and when he was home, a lot of the time he’d felt lost and confused with her. She’d wanted things from him, but she wouldn’t just say what they were. She wanted him to figure it out. Thought he should just know. He was a black and white kind of guy. If someone wanted something from him, he needed them to say it.
“Yes, I suppose I did,” she said.
Hattie looked up at Dex and willed him to kiss her. She hadn’t realized it until he asked, but, yes, she had wanted him to come after her because she knew she shouldn’t go after him. How could she when she’d decided she needed to focus on work, on her new career, on proving her controlling parents wrong?
And after the upsetting call from her mother that morning, she was more determined than ever to make it on her own.
Fidgeting with the label on her beer, she forced herself to share, because Dex was a great guy and she didn’t want him to think she was playing games with him. “In my family, you don’t ask for what you want. You do what’s expected.” She glanced up at him, then back down. “Honestly, I’ve never gone after a guy. I’ve dated the men who asked me, men my parents chose for me, who they deemed acceptable. I’m used to playing their games, watching, waiting. The first thing I ever had the courage to go after was this, my life here, my job with Shay. So I’m sorry, if my behavior is…confusing. Doing things on my terms is all kind of new to me, but I’m working on it.”
Dex took her chin and tilted her head back, his gaze locking with hers. “Your family sounds as fucked as mine,” he said.
“Really?”
“My father was a gambler, left me and my mom when he owed too many people too much money. He fathered three other sons to three other women and fucked off and left them all as well. My mom worked long hours. I was alone a lot. That’s why I don’t talk much, I guess. After Mom died, I got to know one of my brothers. Let him get close and he fucked me over, so yeah, I get it. Family can be tough.”
That was the longest sentence Dex had ever said to her.
“I’m sorry. That sucks,” she said, but she didn’t try and console him. He didn’t want her pity, like she didn’t want his.
His rough-skinned fingers curled tighter around his beer bottle, and he dipped his chin.
“So you’re a Marine?” she said, changing the subject away from his family since she could see it wasn’t something he liked to discuss. But she also wanted to know everything she could about this man, despite knowing she should keep her distance.
“Yeah.”
“How long were you on active duty?”
“Ten years.”
“What made you decide to stop?”
He shrugged his big shoulders. “Got injured bad enough I had to walk away.” His jaw tightened.
“Do you miss it?”
“Sometimes.”
While he was answering her questions, she was going to keep asking them. She was hungry for any tidbit about the big, silent man sitting beside her. “Why did you come here? Lucy said you guys barely knew each other before you accepted the job with Hugh.”
“Family shit,” he said, that jaw getting tight again.
She was being nosy, pushing, but she couldn’t stop herself, a trait her parents had tried very hard to squash. “Is that why you listed Hugh as your contact with the Navy, not your brother?”
Dex looked taken aback for a moment, then obviously figured Lucy had filled her in. “I listed Hugh because I didn’t have anyone else at the time.”
That made no sense. Hattie frowned, and he didn’t miss her confusion.
“My brother moved in with me and my girlfriend, and while I was deployed, she decided she liked him more. They put my shit in storage and changed the locks. So the next time I was shipped off, I listed Hugh instead.”
He said it calmly, but there was no missing the pain in his eyes. Hattie’s chest ached for him. That kind of betrayal was not something you could easily get past. She rested her hand over Dex’s, most definitely surprised and totally ignoring how much she hated the idea of him with another woman, because thoughts like that were completely insane. “You still love her.”
Dex jolted a little. “No. And I don’t hate her either. But whatever we had, it wasn’t that—love—not if it was so easy to toss aside. She never really knew me, and I sure as hell never really knew her.”
Relief washed through her, and she chose to ignore that as well.
She nodded, because she kind of understood. She knew all about betrayal. She had parents who turned on her as soon as she did something they didn’t like. “You let them both in and they betrayed you. That’s what hurt most.”
“Yeah. I mean, we sat down after I was injured, after my last deployment, tried to build some bridges, but it’s hard, you know?”
“I get that. You wouldn’t believe the underhand tactics my parents pulled to bend me to their will. I understand betrayal.”
His gaze grew even more intense. “I’m sorry, Hattie.”
She swallowed, her throat suddenly dry. She quickly changed the subject back to Dex. “So you were injured overseas? Is that how you got your scars?”
His throat worked before he spoke. “Yeah…there was a bomb. We lost a couple of guys.” Pain moved through his eyes, and she wished she’d never brought it up. Seeing him in pain, God, it actually hurt her as well.
Suddenly, she didn’t want to talk anymore. She didn’t want to think about any of that, about her family, about what could have happened to Dex or how lucky he was to be there, sitting beside her.
No. Right then, all she wanted was Dex’s lips on hers.
“Being out on your own can’t be easy after what you went through with your folks. I’m here if you need anything. You just gotta ask,” he said, his heated gaze moving over her, and there was no missing the hunger in his eyes.
God, what was this thing between them? She hadn’t felt quite right since she walked out of his apartment. She’d missed him. How was that possible? She barely knew Dex, but for some reason, she felt the opposite.
Like, for instance, he’d just told her to ask for what she wanted. He meant that. Dex didn’t jabber on about nothing. He only said what needed to be said. He frowned often. He sometimes found people confusing, their emotions hard to figure out. He preferred the people in his life to say what was on their mind, not play games, not drop hints, just flat-out say what they wanted.
So she did. “I want you to kiss me,” she said, because that was what she desperately wanted.
He grunted, the sound very male and somehow extremely sexy, and slid his hand up the side of her neck to cup her cheek. Tension vibrated through her as she waited, then finally he leaned in and pressed his mouth against hers.
And like the other times they’d kissed, Hattie lost herself in it. She was alive, on fire, her nerve endings sparking through her body. When Dex touched her, when he kissed her, the world stopped spinning.
She’d heard of this, read about it, this kind of chemistry, but she never knew it truly existed, not until Dex kissed her the first time.
Sliding her arms around his neck, she tried to get closer. Dex read her perfectly and lifted her up and onto his lap so she was straddling him, the same way she had when they’d had sex.
A shiver moved through her and she pressed closer, moaning when his thick, blunt fingers slid into her hair and lightly fisted. “How can it be so good?” she said against his lips.
“Fucked if I know, but I can’t get enough of you, Hattie.”
His low, rough words stoked the fire low in her belly. She wanted him, right there, right then—
The sound of the door being unlocked somehow penetrated Hattie’s lust-filled brain and she quickly pulled away. She felt Dex’s fingers flex against her hips like he wanted her to stay right where she was.
She’d just climbed off his lap when Adam and Lucy walked in. Adam had a small smirk curling his lips. Lucy, on the other hand, was full-out grinning, so wide Hattie thought it had to hurt.
“Well, what do we have here?” she said, hand to her rounded belly as she walked to the closest chair and sat down. “We thought we’d pop in, see how you were doing with the kids, but I see you already had help.”
The smirk vanished from Adam’s lips. “No, we’ve just been to see your doctor and were told you need to rest.”
She waved a hand. “I’m fine.”
Adam, looking like a man defeated, sat on one of the footrests in front of her. “Foot, brat,” he said.
She did what he asked, and he slid off her shoe and started massaging her puffy-looking foot. His wife’s eyes rolled back in her head.
When she finally got over the initial bliss of her foot rub, she aimed her green eyes at Dex. “It was nice of you to come and help my girl.”
Dex grunted, not taking the bait.
Lucy’s gaze slid to Hattie and she grinned, eyes sparkling with that we-will-talk-about-this-later look of hers. “Any trouble?”
“No, no trouble. Dex came looking for Hugh, saw I needed help, and pitched in. He hasn’t been here long.” She was overexplaining, wasn’t she? Going by the stupid grin back on Lucy’s face, she so was.
“I like this,” Lucy said, looking smug as hell. “This is good. Couldn’t have worked out more perfect if I’d tried.”
“You did try,” Adam muttered.
“Excuse me?” Hattie said, giving her friend a hard look.
“You two.” She motioned between Hattie and Dex. “My big broody cousin and my best friend. I knew you guys had a little something Christmas Day…”
“It’s not like that,” Hattie said, not entirely sure why. What she and Dex did was no one’s business, but it was more than that. She didn’t want Lucy to get the wrong idea, to think she and Dex were more than they were when Hattie couldn’t have that. Not yet. She had too much to do.
She had to prove that she’d made the right decision, moving here, starting again, not only to her parents.
But to herself as well.