Colorado 03 Lady Luck (22 page)

“You think you can worry about dinner in a
minute and maybe look at me?” he asked back, she stopped dead and
her head tilted to look at him.

He looked in her blue-gray eyes and there it
was. Or, more to the point, there it wasn’t.

The light was out.

He sucked in breath.

Then he gave it to her. “I was an asshole
last night. I got a lotta shit on my mind but that wasn’t
cool.”

“Don’t worry about it,” she replied
instantly.

He felt his throat start to burn.

“You were right last night,” he told her.
“We need to talk.”

She shook her head. “No, it’s good. It’s all
good, Ty. I have a plan. I’ve got everything sorted out with Ella.
Margot fixed things for me at work. Ella’s already sent some of my
stuff, it’ll be here soon, maybe even tomorrow. I’m going to get a
job, don’t know what, something. I bought a paper today. I’ll have
a look. Ella is going to have moving quotes tomorrow. I’ll let you
know. It’s all happening. It’s all good. So you can get on with…”
she paused, “whatever you need to get on with.”

Then she started to move by him but he
caught her, wrapping his fingers around her bicep, she stopped and
her head tipped back again.

“We got more shit to talk about,” he said
quietly.

She shook her head again. “No we don’t.”

“You know we do.”

Suddenly she was nodding her head. “You’re
right, we do. I need to ask if it’s okay if I use one of your rooms
downstairs to store some stuff and if I can set up my bed in the
other one. Oh… and if I can switch out my computer with yours. I
bought mine three months ago. It’s a good one.”

That burn in his throat got hotter but he
forced through it, “Do whatever you gotta do. I don’t care. Now, we
–”

She twisted her arm out of his hand and
quickly moved around him, jogging down the stairs, muttering, “I
have to check the spaghetti.”

He took in a deep breath. Then he took in
another one.

Then he hissed, “
Fuck!
” and followed her.

She was dumping spaghetti into a colander in
sink. He got close to her back and started to say her name again
when suddenly the pot hit the countertop with a clatter, she
whirled and took two steps back, lifting a finger and pointing it
at him.

“
Don’t!
” she snapped. “Don’t you fucking come home and
think you can give me a different Ty. Do not think you can
fucking
play me like that. I don’t know
what the fuck you’re dealing with and I don’t care. I asked, you
wouldn’t tell me. I tried everything I knew to get you to let me in
there,” she jabbed her finger at his chest, “and you didn’t let me
in and now, Ty, I don’t fucking care. You can ride the wave of
whatever’s controlling you but don’t drag me along on that trip.”
She swung her arm out to the side. “Out there, I’ll be what you’re
paying me to be.” Then she pointed to the floor. “In here, it would
be good if we could be civil to each other and you don’t give me
any of that pussy bullshit of yours. And that’s all for in here,
Ty. Tonight, I sleep on the couch and I keep doing it until my bed
gets here and then I’ll move to it. You wanted to talk, there it
is. I’m laying it out. You don’t like that, you get your bling back
and I walk. Think about it and enjoy the spaghetti, I’m going for a
drive.”

Then she turned, snatched her keys off the
island and ran to and down the stairs.

Walker stared at the space where he last saw
her and he did it for a long time waiting for the burn to fade from
his throat.

This took awhile.

Then he turned off the burner under the
stove, the oven where the garlic bread was baking, walked upstairs
and took a shower.

* * * * *

When Lexie got home at ten to eleven, Walker
was flat out on the couch, eyes to the TV.

He didn’t move when he heard her hit the
room.

But he did speak.

“I’m takin’ the couch, you take the
bed.”

No sound, no movement.

Then, “Fine.”

Then he heard her go up the stairs.

He stared at the TV for a long time not
seeing it. Then he lifted up his hands and rubbed his face. Then he
turned the TV off and tried to find sleep.

This took awhile.

Got a Wife Who Knows My Every Move

Ty

Walker jogged up the outside steps after his
morning run. It had been over five years since he’d run in
Colorado. He wasn’t used to it and the altitude had kicked his
ass.

But it had also been over five years since
he’d run free, alone, wherever he wanted his feet to take him, the
road open for him to decide where he wanted to go, not caged, not
limited, not with eyes tracking his every move so he didn’t give a
fuck the altitude kicked his ass.

He opened the door and instantly saw Lexie
at the island, dressed, hair done, makeup on, coffee cup halfway to
her lips. Her boxes had come, her wardrobe selection increased and
she’d wasted no time unpacking her shit and taking advantage of it
and the results were right there. Thin, tank-like tee the color of
the inside of a honeydew melon with ragged, torn-looking straps,
one falling off her shoulder, what he was sure were dark brown
short-shorts even though he couldn’t see her legs but that was all
she wore, thick, dark brown leather belt with something stamped on
the leather and a heavy silver buckle and he knew by her height she
was wearing heels.

It was Sunday, his day off, two days after
she’d laid it out. He’d come home from work both Friday and
Saturday, Friday, right after work, last night, right after his
workout after work. She was civil. She offered him dinner. She made
him dinner. She did the dishes. Then she disappeared to the top
floor and he didn’t see her again.

Her light was out.

And her eyes were on him now and he saw she
hadn’t switched it on that morning.

And he didn’t like her light switched off.
He didn’t like her keeping that light from him. And the fuck of it
was, he was the asshole who’d switched it off in the first fucking
place.

“Morning,” she greeted then her head went
down and he saw she was scratching something on a notepad. She kept
talking, her voice dead as it had been for three days and he didn’t
fucking like that either. “I don’t know if you noticed but I got
the bottled water on that note you left me.”

He’d noticed.

He’d also noticed she’d done his
laundry.

He went to the fridge and got a bottle of
the water she bought for him after he left a note about it, twisted
the cap and sucked back a huge pull.

This he used as his affirmative response. He
didn’t speak often because he didn’t feel he needed to speak when
his actions could speak for him. At that moment, he also didn’t
speak because he didn’t want to do something stupid, something that
would set her off, something, anything that would make Lexie’s
light shine through. Which was what he wanted to do.

“All right, I’m going. I’ll see you later,”
she announced, moving to the sink to put her coffee cup there.

“Where you goin’?” he asked.

“There’s a garden center in Chantelle.
Shambles told me about it. I’m going to get some flowers,” she told
the island where she went to grab her purse which she did then she
ripped off the top paper on the pad. Then her eyes skimmed through
him and she finished, “Later.”

She started toward the stairs, shoving the
paper into her purse but stopped and turned around when he asked,
“Who’s Shambles?”

“The guy who owns La-La Land coffee,” she
told him, started to turn back to the stairs but stopped and turned
back at his voice.

“La-La Land coffee?”

“The coffee house in town,” she answered
then started to turn again but stopped when he again spoke.

And he spoke when he shouldn’t have. He
spoke because he was a dumb fuck. He spoke because he couldn’t hack
it; Lexie shut off, not just off but shut off from him.

“You’re not goin’ to a garden center.”

Her head tipped to the side. “I am, the deck
needs plants.”

“The deck doesn’t need plants.”

“Yes it does.”

“It doesn’t.”

“
Okay,” she took one step toward him and
the dead was gone from her voice, she was now speaking with
strained patience, “you’re a guy so you don’t get this but when a
man brings his new wife to his house, she does shit like plant
flowers to put her stamp on it, make it her home, make it
his
home. People are going to
expect me to do shit to put my stamp on your house and therefore,
the deck needs plants.”

To this, Walker replied, “It’s Sunday.”

Her brows snapped together. “You’re right.
It’s Sunday.”

There it was. Something. Not something big
but confusion mixed with impatience.

He took it and without hesitation, fuck him,
he went for more.

“So, a man gets outta prison, he gets
himself a new wife, he brings her home, takes care of business by
findin’ a job to provide for her, his first day off, his wife does
not go to the garden center to buy plants in an asinine effort to
put her stamp on a house. She stays home with her husband while he
fucks her brains out.”

He watched the color hit her cheeks and her
eyes flare and he liked it. It wasn’t that Lexie light but it was
something. Something more than confusion and impatience and he took
it too.

Then he watched her straighten her shoulders
before she returned, “You’re right, Ty. A man who just got out of
prison with a new wife, I can see this. I can also see him
returning home right after work and getting his workout not at a
gym but, as you put it, by fucking his wife’s brains out. But you
haven’t been doing that. Even this morning,” she threw a hand out
toward the door, “you didn’t engage in morning nookie with your
wife but went for a run. You’ve established the pattern so,
clearly, I’m not behaving outside the norm.”

“Maybe I didn’t fuck my wife this morning
because I tired her out last night,” he replied and watched her
hands shoot up in the air and drop as she lost patience.

There it was. He went for it. He got it.
More.

“Well, you didn’t tire her out last night.
You slept on the fucking couch!” she snapped.

“You drew that line, Lexie,” he shot
back.

That’s when she lost it and how she lost it,
she shredded the already frayed hold he had on his control. Frayed
because she’d been picking at it from the moment he saw her
standing beside the Charger outside in the hot as fuck southern
California sun and, after she’d shut down, he’d kept picking at
it.

“
No, Ty,
you
drew it when one second you had your tongue in my mouth,
your hands on me and me on my back in your bed and swear to
God,
swear
to God,
that was all you
had to do, I was this close,” she lifted a hand and held her thumb
and forefinger an inch apart, “to climax just with that and the
next second you took it all away from me.
All
of it and you fucking know exactly what I’m
talking about because the next second I was standing on my feet,
you were two feet away but you might as well still have been in
fucking California and then I watched you shut down.”

At her words, he felt his lungs seize but he
managed to force out, “What?”

“You heard me,” she bit off and whirled
saying, “Now I’m going. I’ll be back in a couple of hours.”

Oh no she fucking wouldn’t.

“Don’t walk away from me,” Walker
growled.

She didn’t respond but she did keep walking
away from him.

That was when Walker moved.

She was two steps down when he caught her
around the waist and hauled her right back up. The back of her body
slammed into his, he wrapped his other arm tight around her chest,
turned, set her on her feet and marched her forward, his mouth to
her ear.

“I said, don’t walk away from me.”

“Ty,” she whispered, now he had breathiness,
surprise, maybe even shock and he’d take those too. Fuck him, he’d
known her just over a week and he’d take anything from her.

Her hand came up and wrapped around his
forearm at her chest.

He let her go at the waist, pulled her purse
off her shoulder, dumped it to the floor and curled his arm back
around her stomach, moving her the whole time, stopping her by the
couch.

“Why’d you throw away your wedding bouquet?”
he rumbled in her ear, she didn’t respond, he gave her a careful
shake with both arms and clipped, “Why?”

“It’s just flowers,” she whispered.

“It wasn’t just flowers.”

“Ty –”

“Why?”

“Why are you doing this?” she asked
quietly.

He gave her another careful shake. “Answer
me, Lexie. Why’d you throw your bouquet away?”

“It was just flowers.”

“It wasn’t.”

“No, you’re right. It wasn’t,” she told him
softly. “Then, after you put me in my place, it was.”

He closed his eyes and shoved his face in
her neck.

He couldn’t do this. For two days he told
himself he could, this was better, this was safer, not for him, for
her. He’d let her in,
wanted
her to come in and she did. Then he saw the error of his
ways. Then, being a dick, he’d pushed her back over the line he’d
drawn to keep her safe from his shit, from him and he’d made it
clear she should stay there. She got his message, she couldn’t miss
it.

But Christ, he couldn’t do it.

He had to have her light back.

“Let me go,” she whispered.

“No.”

“Let me go.”

He moved his lips to her ear and whispered,
“I hurt you, baby.”