OLIVIER
“Boy, you gonna give me what’s messed up in your head or what?”
Olly, sitting in a recliner next to his dad, turned his attention from the football game they were watching to his father.
“Come again?” he asked, trying to fake like he didn’t know what his dad was talking about.
But he knew.
“Son, known you since you were born, had a hand in makin’ you, you don’t think I know when something’s up with my boy?” Teddy Hawkes asked.
Olly stared at him, trying to decide if it was worth the hassle of attempting to convince his father that nothing was wrong.
Having over three decades of experience knowing this was an impossible task, his hands moved before he told them to, right to his face, where they rubbed, then he swept them back over his hair to his neck, which he squeezed with them both.
His neck was tight as a bow and had been for a week.
Fuck.
He dropped his arms and looked back to his dad.
“You know how Mom used to say that if I didn’t get hold of my temper it’d get me in hot water?” Olly asked.
His dad whispered, “Shit,” lifted the remote, took the volume on the game down low, and turned in his recliner to face Olly. “What kinda hot water did you get yourself in, Olly?”
“There’s a woman.”
He said it like she was still there.
But she wasn’t.
Lost to him.
No, fuck him, she wasn’t.
He’d thrown her away.
“You’ve had your fair share of those and none of them had you starin’ at my plasma like you wanted to rip it off the wall and throw it out the window, so I’m guessin’ this one actually means something to you,” his dad observed.
“She did,” Olly replied quietly.
Teddy Hawkes’s brows shot up. “Did?”
“Does,” Olly corrected then shook his head. “She does, Dad. She’s classy and sweet and can be cute and she has a beautiful voice and an even more beautiful face.”
“And?” Teddy prompted.
“And we got into it and I spewed some ugly shit that crossed a serious line, none of it I can take back. Doing that, I broke us.”
“So what’s got you starin’ at my plasma like you mean it harm is that you’re tryin’ to figure out how to fix what that hot head of yours broke,” his father guessed.
Olly shook his head again, knowing he just ate a ton of hot wings and still having an empty feeling in his gut.
He also knew this feeling was because of the next words he said.
“No fixing it.”
“Boy, I know you and I know you got it in your head to do something, you can do it, especially if it means somethin’ to you. So don’t give me that malarkey.”
Olly turned more fully in his recliner toward his father. “What I’m saying is, even if I could fix it … and she’s Leigh, I lost it with her before, that time I had reason, and she got it and got over it fast, this time it really was not good. It started with me having a reason but I lost that and took it too far. But saying all that, I’m not sure even if I could fix it that I could actually fix us.”
“I think you know I’m not following.”
“We don’t fit,” Olly shared.
“And how’s that?” Teddy asked.
“She’s rich, Dad,” Olly stated. “Her family bought into Xerox when it was time to buy into Xerox and they had money before that kind of rich.”
“So?”
Olly stared at his father a beat before he pointed out, “I’m not.”
“So?” Teddy repeated.
Olly was losing his temper, not a good thing, as he’d been living with for the last week, so he clamped it down.
“So, Dad, I’m not rich in a way I’m never gonna give her more than she already has.”
“What’s your point?”
Olly blinked.
Teddy studied his son for a while before he kept talking.
“Olly, you should thank your lucky stars I didn’t feel that way about your mother or we’d both be screwed.”
“It’s not the same when it’s the man,” Olly told him something he knew.
“Damn, seems I hit the twenty-first century and left my boy behind,” Teddy remarked impatiently.
Olly kept a grip on his anger and started, “Dad—”
“Your momma didn’t work, my boys would have the second-best cleats when they played football, rather than top of the line.”
“It’s not—”
“She didn’t work, your sister would have some crappy, shiny, cheap fabric when your mother made her prom dress instead of the finest silk.”
“With Leigh, it isn’t—”
“She didn’t work, we woulda had an inside cabin on that family cruise we took when you were sixteen, rather than the nice one with the balcony.”
“I get what you’re saying, Dad, but—”
Teddy leaned over the arm of his chair toward his son. “No, I’m thinkin’ I gotta give you about a million more examples of what your mother offered this family before you get that your mom didn’t bring in much, but what she did bring in gave us all a better life.”
“You are not a millionaire,” Olly clipped.
“Nope, but I bet my boy who’s got a brain in his head and knows how to use it … most of the time,” Teddy started irritably, “knows well enough to pick himself a good one when it’s the one who means something to him. So I’ll also bet this girl you’re talkin’ about could be sitting on a mile-high pile of money and if her man came home with a bouquet of flowers he worked for the money to buy them just to let her know she was on his mind, that’d mean something to her and not a little something. A lot.”
Olly said nothing.
Teddy didn’t do the same.
“And I bet if he took her out for wings and a beer, she wouldn’t care, just as long as she was with him.”
That, uncomfortably and more than a little painfully, Olly suspected was the truth.
Teddy kept at his son.
“And I bet if you saved and worked overtime to buy her a diamond bracelet, even if she had twenty others, none of them would mean more to her than that one.”
Olly turned his head to look at the TV because he suspected his father wasn’t wrong about that either.
When he did, Teddy whispered, “Damn, I’m right.”
Olly looked back to him but didn’t confirm.
He didn’t need to.
His father knew.
“Boy, when it matters most, that’s the time to use that brain I know you know how to use,” his father advised.
Christ, his throat was burning in a way Olly knew even taking a tug of his beer wouldn’t help.
He knew it because he’d had that feeling a lot the last week.
“Just to say, we’re talkin’ about money,” Teddy went on. “Could spend five years explainin’ to you what your mother brought to our home, our family, and our marriage that had not one thing to do with money. And to push that point home, I mighta made the lion’s share of what we had in the bank, but I was no slouch in bringin’ what this family needed, what she needed, to the table too. And none of that had anything to do with how much money I made. This life, money means somethin’, absolutely. But it doesn’t mean everything and the bottom line truth of it is, when you rack up what’s important, it isn’t even close to the top.”
Olly knew that. He even suspected that with Leigh, the conversation they had about her not liking following in her father’s footsteps, he gave her something far more important than a mile-high pile of money.
He knew he had something to give.
He just did what he always did. Lost his temper and lost sight of everything but that.
“Okay, Dad. I heard you. You’ve pushed that point home,” Olly shared.
“You give her the good parts of you too?” his father asked, his tone more calm.
Olly looked to him. “Our fight happened when we started to talk about where what we had was going.”
“So you gave her the good in you, and boy, you got so much. So much of your mom in you. Your sense of humor. Your smart mouth that’s smart in a way it’s hilarious. The way you look at things and understand where people are a lot faster than anyone I know. The way you give a crap. So much, you have a job where you’re on call and puttin’ yourself on the line to help a city full of folks you don’t even know. But you two started talkin’ about where you were going and your girl’s got the scales all hanging to one side, no doubt knowin’ exactly where she wants to take it, and you give her the only bad part of you and the other side goes crashing down.”
“That’s about it,” Olly stated roughly.
“Then fix it,” Teddy returned quietly.
“I get what you’re saying about Mom, Dad, but you did not face what I’m gonna be facing if I can fix things with Leigh, and that’s a big ‘if,’ I messed that up so bad. So you can’t say it’s that easy.”
His father nodded. “You’re right. I can’t. I’m a man. A man who had a wife and made a family. The man who raised you to be the man you are. I hear you. And I get you. And I get that I’m lookin’ at it from an entirely different perspective than you. Because I had the love of my life and she died in my arms. So I can look back to the life we had and twist it with a variety of scenarios. I could make your mother a millionaire and me a quarry foreman. And with what she gave me in the life we had, I’d know down to the pit of my gut that I would not care, Olly. I’d find a way to be all right with it because the alternative wouldn’t bear thinking.”
Teddy leaned farther across the arm of his chair and locked eyes with his son.
“I get it, too, that you aren’t there with this girl. You can’t see that because you don’t have that experience. You can’t know where you’re sitting if it’s gonna be worth it. What you gotta decide, boy, is if the risk is worth it. And I know you, Olly. With the pain you got in your eyes at losing her, you’ve already made the decision. So stop messin’ around and sort it out.”
With all his father’s words, that burning in his throat had a different meaning.
Through it, he shared that with his dad by saying, “I got midnights tonight.”
Teddy grinned. “Then do it tomorrow.” He sat back in his chair and grabbed his beer, doing this continuing on a mutter, “And I want her at my table as soon as. Been a while since I had a beautiful woman with a beautiful voice at my table who wasn’t my daughter.” He glanced at Olly. “No offense to your brother’s girl. She ain’t hard to look at but the woman’s got a voice like nails on a chalkboard.”
That was, unfortunately for Luc, true.
For the first time in a week, Olly felt his lips curving.
He turned back to the TV and his smile died.
Fuck, he’d said some seriously stupid shit and she’d even told him he’d done damage.
I had hoped to discuss having more with you …
They didn’t know each other well enough …
No.
Olly didn’t know her well enough to know she needed space to ratchet down her temper when it flared. Not knowing that, he hadn’t given her that, hadn’t even tried to read it from her. Instead he tried to force it low himself and took her calling him Olivier wrong. Made an assumption about that where he jumped to conclusions, let the shit he was worried about that came between them rear up and he lost his mind.
I had hoped to discuss having more with you …
She wanted more with him.
And I bet if you saved and worked overtime to buy her a diamond bracelet, even if she had twenty others, none of them would mean more to her than that one.
Olly had no idea if this was true.
But that didn’t mean he didn’t sense, like his dad said, right down to the pit of his gut, that it was.
And more, if he never gave her a diamond bracelet, if all he had to give was a bouquet of flowers every once in a while that said she was on his mind and she meant something to him, she’d take that.
She’d take anything.
Leigh just wanted Olly.
Fuck, he’d fucked up.
His Leigh.
His Leigh-Leigh.
Fuck.
He had to fix it.
And he sat for the rest of the afternoon, watching football with his dad, knowing no matter what he had to do, he needed to find a fucking way.
And he was damn well going to.
AMÉLIE
Late that evening, Amélie moved out to her garage, wondering if her present course was the right one, giving one last lingering look to her poor Cleopatra, who was trying to follow.
But she had an excellent cat sitter who she paid not only to come and feed them and take care of their litter but also to stay, play, and keep them company.
They’d miss their mummy, but they’d be all right.
Now, her bags were already in her car and she was off to France for three weeks.
A break. Time away. Time to heal. Time to be with people who loved her mother and loved her.
And maybe she’d learn more French this time.
She had her phone in her hand, looking at four texts that had just come in.
The first was from Mira asking (for the hundredth time) if she was okay and telling her to connect when she was safe in France.
The second was from Felicia, inviting her to a movie the next night.
Amélie suspected Mirabelle hadn’t said anything but Felicia would have definitely noted that Amélie had not been to the club all week and it was not a secret that she and Olly had had a weekend together outside the club.
Her friend was worried.
The third was from Romy, saying she needed to get drunk and laid, go on the prowl vanilla-style and give an unsuspecting gentleman the time of his life, and she wanted Amélie to go with her.
This, too, was Romy’s way of saying she’d noted Amélie’s (and Olly’s) absence from the club, suspected the reasons behind it, and wanted to help Amélie move past it.
She had good friends.
Alas, this did not make her feel any better.
The last text she saw was from Aryas informing her that Tiffany was again with Belle that night and all was good.
She smiled to herself, knowing this was the third time Belle had played with Tiffany.
The young.
Quick recoveries.
On this thought, without sound or warning, she was struck on the side of the head by what she would realize much later was a fist.
But the blow was forceful, the pain immense, and it took her by such surprise, before she could even consider launching a defense, she fell to her hands and knees.
Then, in her very own garage, she took more, much more, including several vicious kicks to her mid-section that had her coughing up the metallic taste of blood.
And finally, a hand in her hair yanking it back to her feeble, whimpering cry.
“Delia says to mind your own business next time, you cunt,” a man spat in her ear and then he pushed her head from him. It cracked against the cement, stars shone in Amélie’s eyes, which she could fortunately focus on rather than feeling the spittle he landed on her temple.
Blinking slowly, pain coursing with intent through her body, she watched him walk out the side door it was clear needed a much better lock.
He slammed the door behind him.
Phone.
Phone.
What had happened to her phone?
Crawling in a way that was more like dragging, Amélie saw the phone under her car, gratefully collapsed to her belly, and reached under.
She grasped it.
And blinked again, slower still.
She was losing consciousness.
A boon. It would take away the pain pounding through her midsection and throbbing sharply in her face.
No.
She had to make the call first.
She pressed her finger to the phone and tried to lift her head, the effort mammoth. It felt woozy, stuffed full, way too heavy.
Wetness dribbled down her face.
Taking more effort she could ill afford to lose as she felt herself fading fast, Amélie forced her eyes wide and engaged the phone function, unfortunately not hitting the icon for the keypad but for contacts.
She kept blinking, trying to keep focus, her brain fighting back, shifting concentration to her pain, her finger senselessly scrolling like she could find the keypad in her contacts.
And there was Olly’s name.
He was a firefighter. Even if they were done, he would be able to activate emergency. And she was beginning to realize she’d taken too much time fumbling with her screen. She no longer had it in her to find the keypad and dial the three digits she needed.
Further, he was Olly. Her Olly. Even if that was now buried somewhere deep inside him.
He’d take care of her.
She touched his beautiful name and put the phone to her ear.
OLIVIER
Olly sat at head of the table in the kitchen at the firehouse, surrounded by the guys.
“We get a call, I’m gonna be dragging,” Emilio said.
“Scored last night?” Chad asked on a grin.
“No. Total tease.” Emilio grinned back. “But I put effort in trying.”
Olly, his mind on things not the inane conversation about pussy that seemed the priority discussion at the firehouse, looked down when his phone on the table in front of him went off. The second he did, he felt his gut tightening and his heart squeeze.
The display said LEIGH.
It was late. Really late.
But she was calling.
Maybe she’d had a few and got up the nerve, though that was unlikely.
More likely, she was just Leigh. A class act, strong enough to make the first move because it was important enough to do that.
It sucked she beat him by a few hours but he didn’t dwell on that.
She’d called.
Olly focused on that.
He snatched up the phone and pushed back his chair just as Chad asked, “Leigh. Who’s Leigh?”
Jesus, the guys were nosy. No woman had anything on a man who wanted to be up in your shit.
Olly didn’t answer Chad.
He took the call, moving from the room, muttering, “Gotta take this.”
He put it to his ear and didn’t say anything until he was out of the room.
Then he did.
It was, “Leigh-Leigh?”
“Olly.”
She sounded funny, tentative.
Probably worried he’d be a dick.
Fuck.
“Baby,” he said gently. “So fuckin’ glad you called. So fuckin’ glad. Love it. Though you beat me. Was gonna call you tomorrow morning. Minute I was off. But I’m at work. Midnights. Won’t be done until morning. I can’t talk now.”
“Olly—”
“Call you the minute I’m off,” he semi-repeated. “I’ll come over. We’ll talk.”
“Ol—”
“Fucks me to say this because I wanna talk, I just can’t. But I wanna talk, baby. Fucked up again and I wanna work that through with you. Right now, the guys close, they’ll get up in my shit and we can’t say the things we need to say and anyway, the things I need to say to you, gotta say to your face.”
She didn’t reply.
“I fucked up, Leigh-Leigh, but we’re gonna fix this. I’m gonna fix it. Promise that, baby.”
Leigh said nothing.
“Leigh?” he called.
Silence.
“Leigh,” he bit out.
Nothing.
“Fuck,” he hissed, disconnected, and called her back.
It rang and he got voicemail.
“Fuck,” he repeated, disconnecting again, calling again, getting voicemail a-fucking-gain, then disconnecting and staring at his phone.
Why’d she call and hang up?
If she didn’t answer, he couldn’t find out.
And he was working, he couldn’t leave. He was working, so he also couldn’t talk even if he did get through to her.
Shit, he had to wait it out, call her in the morning, and if she didn’t answer, go home, find the packaging the stuff she’d sent him came in that he hoped like fuck he didn’t throw out (and he wasn’t into cleaning so this was luckily a good probability), get her address and go to her place.
If she didn’t answer the door, he was going to break the goddamned thing down.
He looked to his watch.
Six hours he had to wait.
Fuck.
He turned back toward the kitchen to see Chad standing there.
Terrific.
“Who’s Leigh?”
Olly looked in his friend’s eyes and gave it to him.
“Woman I’m seein’.”
“You’re seeing someone?”
Olly nodded. “A while.” Suddenly he shook his head. “Fucked shit up, lost my temper, but we’re gonna work it out.”
“You lost your temper?”
Olly felt some tension slide out of his shoulders at hearing Chad’s tone, a tone he knew well since it was his giving-shit tone.
“As crazy as that sounds, considering I’m such a laid-back guy, yeah, I lost my temper,” Olly returned, moving his way.
This time, Chad shook his head.
Olly made to move by him but, Chad’s hand landing on his shoulder, he stopped, turned, and looked down at him.
“You puttin’ in the effort to work shit out, this Leigh must be something,” Chad noted, dropping his hand.
Olly even felt his shoulders straightening with pride as he replied, “She is, brother.”
“Am I gonna meet her?” Chad asked.
“Yes,” Olly answered.
“Is Annie gonna like her?” Chad went on.
“She’s good for me and Annie’s gonna sense that, so yeah, she’s gonna like her.”
“Please, bro, tell me she’s into football.”
All good with Chad after too long of it not being quite right because Olly never got a lock on his temper, he just let loose (except what still wasn’t good with Leigh, but it would be), Olly smiled. “Men tackling each other, she’s got different reasons, man, but she’s totally into it.”
Chad started chuckling, doing this muttering through it, “That’s why Annie likes it,” and moved into the kitchen.
Olly took one last look at his phone, thought, Just six hours, and he followed his friend.
* * *
In his truck on his way home from work, Olly decided not to call Leigh.
When they talked, he didn’t need to be driving.
He needed to be all about Leigh, talking her into letting him come over and straightening out what he’d fucked up between them.
But Olly had a bad feeling when he saw a black Cayenne parked in front of his house with a big black man outside leaning against it, watching Olly’s truck approach through wraparound shades.
Olly didn’t hit his garage door opener. He parked in the drive of his fake adobe house that was in a neighborhood of fake adobe houses, all of them looking the same even if they were all one of five different façades that could be picked when they were built fifteen years ago.
He figured Leigh lived in a vastly different neighborhood.
He also figured, she was at his house with him, lazing in the back by the pool, snuggled into him watching football and eating nachos, she’d wouldn’t give a shit how different it was.
He got out and moved to the bed of his truck to see Aryas Weathers was on his way there.
Leigh would not out his lie to Weathers.
No way.
But there was no reason for the man to be there, so that meant some way he’d found out.
That way wasn’t Leigh. Olly was no spy laying down cover. It could be anything.
This still was a surprise, getting a personal visit. He couldn’t imagine something like this would merit more than a phone call.
He just had to sort this, not so it was good for Olly, so Weathers wouldn’t get in Barclay’s face about something his friend never really wanted to do.
“Help you with something?” he asked then stopped abruptly when he noticed Weathers’s gait was aggressive.
Olly went on alert and straightened with all his muscles tightening when Weathers didn’t stop until he was smack in Olly’s space and his face.
He lifted a hand with a phone in it to their sides.
“You wanna tell me why Leigh called you and talked to you for three minutes right after she was attacked and she was still on the floor of her garage, beat to shit, five cracked ribs, when the police and ambulance arrived twenty minutes after you disconnected, called back, repeatedly, but it wasn’t you who called emergency? It was Leigh who regained consciousness and did it her-fuckin’-self.”
Olly heard his words but didn’t reply because he was suddenly not confronting Aryas Weathers in his space and face.
His mind had blanked to nothing but a violent sheen of red.
“You better answer me, man.”
Olly’s mouth moved. “Where is she?”
“That’s not answering—”
Olly’s vision cleared, he bumped chests and noses with the man as he roared, “Where is she?”
Weathers stared into his eyes before he noted, “Did she black out after she dialed you?”
Olly bumped chests with him again, taking the man back a foot, and watched Weathers’s eyes go alert and pissed.
“Ask this one last time, where the fuck is she?”
“She took a few to the face, spent the night in the hospital for observation to watch for concussion. She’s gonna be fine, is being released today and Mira’s taking her to her ranch.”
“Which hospital?”
“What happened during that call, Hawkes?”
Olly could see Leigh meant something to the guy so he expended some needed but quickly waning patience to say, “We had a thing. I thought she was callin’ to work it out. I was on the job and couldn’t talk. I had no fuckin’ clue and thought she hung up on me.”
“Fuck, brother,” Weathers whispered.
“Jesus, man, tell me where she fuckin’ is.”
“Going there now. You’re in a state, Hawkes, so you’re not behind a wheel. You’re coming with me.”
Olly was not going to waste time arguing.
He jogged to the Cayenne.
He didn’t know if Weathers was the type of man to jog to anything but he sensed Olly’s tension so Olly was grateful when he followed him in the same way.
They were in and on the road when Olly asked confirmation by saying, “So she’s good.”
“She doesn’t look all that great but when the swelling goes down, her ribs heal, she’ll be good as new.”
Olly felt his hands form fists on his knees and ground out, “Burglary? What?”
Weathers didn’t answer.
Olly looked his way. “How the fuck she get jumped in her goddamned garage?”
“Well, thinkin’ you’re seriously wound up and as big as a house in a vehicle I kinda like, so even though I know it’s piss-poor judgment to share this with you right now, you gotta hear it, deal with it, and be about her when you see her.”
“Give it to me,” Olly grunted.
“We had a situation with a Domme at the club. She was taken care of, though apparently the message wasn’t made as clear as I thought. She’s a cunt and from what Leigh shared, she somehow found out Leigh was concerned and voiced that to me. We’ll be findin’ out how that happened. But bottom line, she acted on that and sent someone to work Leigh over.”
Olly was again looking at him. “Delia.”
Weathers glanced his way. “She share her concern with you?”
“I shared mine with her and she told me she had the same thoughts.”
Weathers nodded.
“Police been called?” Olly asked.
“He got the drop on her. She knows he’s a guy, he’s white, he’s bigger than her and he beat the shit out of her. Other than that, she didn’t get anything. He did something stupid, spit in her face…”
Olly’s focus on the road disappeared as it shifted to stopping himself from punching through the windshield or roaring like an animal.
“Lock it down, brother,” Aryas said quietly, not surprisingly feeling Olly’s rage. “Deep breath. Then another one. Keep doin’ that.”
Olly took his advice.
On breath five when Olly’s vibe stopped choking the air in the cab, Weathers went on.
“Means he left DNA at the scene. Don’t know if he left prints or got seen. If they don’t have that to try and track him, and he’s not in the system with his DNA, which is unlikely, they’re not gonna find him. They don’t find him, they can’t trace him to Delia. But yeah, to answer your question, Leigh’s given a statement to the police.”
“Are you gonna leave it at that?” Olly pushed.
Weathers’s glance was longer before he looked at the road.
“No.”
“I’m on that,” Olly stated.
“Man, I get you and Leigh are tight but you let my man work. He knows what he’s doing.”
“I wasn’t asking.”
Weathers waited until he’d stopped at a stoplight before he looked to Olly and spoke.
“You gonna do something stupid if I don’t partner you up with Branch?”
Olly had no idea who Branch was.
And he wasn’t going to do anything stupid.
He was going to do what needed to be done.
He said none of this and didn’t need to.
Weathers read it.
“I’ll partner you up with Branch,” he murmured.
Olly faced forward.
The light changed and Weathers drove.
* * *
She was asleep when he arrived.
Olly didn’t go anywhere, not even to get coffee to stay awake after being up all night.
Didn’t matter. He didn’t need caffeine.
He wouldn’t fall asleep.
But her friend Mira, giving him close looks he decided to ignore, brought him some anyway.
Olly drank some of it but only to be nice.
Mostly, he sat in the chair beside her bed, exploring new boundaries of controlling his hot head.
She’d had a number done on her, a small cut under her eye that was taped together being the worst of it, if you didn’t count her ribs, which Olly was absolutely not allowing himself even to consider.
He actually didn’t let himself think of anything but what he’d say when she woke up or he knew he’d lose it.
Right then he didn’t need to lose it.
He needed to keep his shit so he could do what needed to be done.
He’d been there twenty minutes before the halls getting noisier with the day’s activities woke her.
The second he saw her eyes fluttering, Olly stood and leaned over the bed.
She saw him; her one eye not swollen shut widened then she shut it and turned her face away.
He gently pushed his hand under the healthy cheek she was pressing against the pillow but he didn’t force her to look at him.
He bent to her ear.
“Fucked up again. Fucked up, you called me when you needed me and I didn’t—”
“Please don’t,” she whispered. “Just go.”
His gut twisted.
“Leigh-Leigh.”
Even with her swollen eye he could see her squeezing it shut.
“Go.”
“Can’t, baby, you know that. I’m a jackass with a bad temper but you gotta know no way I can leave this room with you in that bed.”
She pressed her face into his hand but did it to get away when she whispered, “I don’t want you to see me like this.”
Olly relaxed.
“Leigh, you got jumped. It’s not your—”
She turned and opened her good eye. “I didn’t fight back. I couldn’t. He was suddenly there and on me and I didn’t even get a single—”
“Please, baby, I wanna hear this if you wanna give it to me, but for right now, you gotta stop talking.”
She closed her mouth and stared into his eyes.
Then she whispered, “I’ll stop talking.”
She was learning.
He bent closer. “Last night, I shoulda shut my trap and listened to you.”
“Well, all you were saying was quite lovely and I did fully intend to tell you why I called once you shut up but I’m afraid I blacked out in the middle of it.”
He felt a muscle jump up his jaw right to his temple.
And she watched it, stating hurriedly, “I’ll stop talking again.”
“Good call.”
She pressed chapped lips together.
Olly watched and felt another muscle jump.
He turned his thoughts and asked, “You goin’ to the ranch?”
She nodded.
“I’m gonna be doin’ something with some guy named Branch.”
She clearly knew who Branch was because her one eye got wide again and she opened her mouth. “Olly—”
Olly cut her off. “Your girl, can she stay with you?”
She nodded. “She’s taking time off.”
So was he.
He was also going to talk to Weathers about what they could do to cover her. Two women at that remote ranch, they needed more protection until shit was seen to.
That was for him and Weathers. Leigh didn’t need to worry about that.
“Get to you when I can,” he told her.
“I wouldn’t possibly be able to talk you out of doing something foolish with Aryas and his private investigator, would I?”
So this Branch dude was a PI.
That’d be useful.
“No,” he answered.
Her good eye rolled to the head of the bed.
“Leigh-Leigh,” he called.
Her eye rolled back to him.
Olly bent even closer.
“We’re gonna work it out, all of it, Leigh,” he promised. “I’m gonna apologize for bein’ a dick to you again and I’m gonna do it in a way I make you believe how fuckin’ sorry I am that I was. But I’m gonna state right now that all that shit I spewed was shit. I was feelin’ down deep a load of crap I should have talked out with you. It was huge, I couldn’t see my way past it, I really fuckin’ wanted to get past it because beyond that was you, and I took all of that out on you. My mom warned me if I didn’t check my temper, it’d land me in hot water. And I cannot say after her givin’ me that for years and me not takin’ good advice that I can turn that on a dime. What I can say is actin’ like that and nearly losin’ you is a lesson I’m not gonna forget. Not ever, Leigh. So we’ll work things out, we’ll figure out where we’re goin’, that bein’ somewhere together, and along the way, I’ll do my fuckin’ all to check it.”
When he was done talking, she asked, “How do you do that?”
He didn’t understand the question. “Do what?”
“Make it all okay just like that.”
Olly’s relief was so great he dropped his head and nearly didn’t stop it before he hit hers.
Instead, when he got close enough to touch his mouth to hers, he did it.
“You’ve a very foul temper, darling,” she whispered when he’d moved away half an inch.
“I’ll do my fuckin’ all to check it.”
She looked him in the eyes.
Then she nodded and said softly, “We’ll talk more later.”
That was when he nodded.
“Please be careful with Aryas and his PI.”
“It’ll all be good.”
She studied him dubiously, mumbling, “Mm-hmm.”
“You do what the doctors say you can and no more,” he ordered.
“I have no desire at the present juncture to tiptoe through any tulips, Olly, so don’t worry about me.”
He grinned at her, bent in, and touched his mouth to hers again.
This time, she touched hers back.
Thank fuck.
“I’ll call,” he promised as he pulled away.
“I’ll answer and not black out this time.”
“Right,” he grunted. “Time to joke about that will be around two, three decades from now.”
Something shifted in her eyes, he caught it and he got it.
What he said indicated they might have decades.
And it further indicated he wanted that.
He’d said it and he’d meant it so he just stared into her face that was still beautiful, even with half of it mottled and swollen.
“So noted,” she murmured.
“Be in touch.”
She nodded again.
“Mean the world to me, Leigh-Leigh,” he whispered.
Her face got soft, her good eye got wet and she lifted a hand to cup his jaw.
“I know how that feels,” she whispered back.
Christ, he wanted to kiss her.
But Olly couldn’t kiss her the way he wanted to.
So he kissed her nose, her forehead, her good eye and her bad one before he touched his lips to hers again.
“Later, Leigh.”
“Later, Olly.”
He ran his thumb along her jaw, straightened, gave her a grin, and then turned around and walked out of her hospital room.