Fix You (31 page)

And it didn’t matter that he was forty-two and about as smooth as a hacksaw blade: he could, in fact, pick up a girl if he wanted. A much younger girl, younger even than her. And his big hands would slide around and find her ass; he’d pick her up and push her back against the wall and his dark eyes would go obsidian when he touched her. And whoever that girl was, Jess would hunt her down and choke her with her own
cheapass hair extensions…

“Unless,” he said, expressionless still, “that would make you, oh…I
dunno. Jealous.”

She didn’t have the energy, or the patience, for indignation. “You know it would,” she said on a sigh. “I came to apologize, you big ass. Can you at least let me come in?”

He retreated into the house, leaving her to see herself in and close the door; she turned the deadbolt, figuring he wasn’t a guy who left doors unlocked. She took a moment, studying the painted wood grain of the door, deciding her plan of attack. When she turned, though, she saw him on his beat up sofa, staring blindly at the TV, its light carving harsh shadows beneath his eyes and around his mouth. He looked his age; but with his prominent nose and goatee and the unruly spikes of his hair, he looked good too. He looked strong and real and masculine and grounded. And a little bit forlorn. Jess let her eyes trace over him in his lamp-lit living room and she hated what she’d said to him before.

She stepped out of her Top Siders and walked barefoot across the carpet to him. “I thought you were going out.”

“I am,” he said, sulky as ever.

“How about,” she lowered to the couch beside him, feet tucked beneath her, knees pressing into his thigh, “if I convince you to stay here with me?”

She watched the side of his face, the shadowed lines that streaked back from the corner of his eye. It remained stony, but his voice proved he wasn’t indifferent the way he wanted to be. “That’s gonna take a lot of convincing, sweetheart.”

“That’s okay.” She raked her hand through his hair, nails teasing along his scalp, felt him lean just the slightest into the touch. “I’m not afraid to work hard.”

He turned toward her, expression still harsh, her hand still threaded through his thick hair. “What are you afraid of then? Dylan? Being seen with me? What?”

Jess pressed her lips together, stifling a groan. But she kept her voice even. “Chris, you can’t think I would ask you to be my sugar daddy or something. “

He opened his mouth, so she talked over him.

“I just ended a ten year marriage. For
ten years
I lived on his dime, completely dependent on him. Even if your offer came from the sweetest, most sincere place, I can’t accept it.”

“’Even if?’ You don’t believe me.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You think I just go around throwing money at women?”

“I didn’t think someone like you would ever be so invested,” she corrected. “To be honest, I don’t know what to make of it.”

Chris frowned and glanced away. “Yeah. Me neither.”

They were at an impasse of weirdness. Jess was coming to learn that, even if her family had always remarked on her bluntness, she wasn’t prepared to deal with a man who was equally blunt. She knew exactly how to react to the suggestion and evasive double talk most men spewed; Chris’s honesty was something she’d never anticipated. Growing up the daughter of a good ol’ boy hadn’t prepared her for loving one in this capacity. And that, she had to accept, was what she was doing. She might not
love
him, not yet, but Chris needed loving. He wanted it very badly, in fact.

Jess laid her head against his shoulder, fingers still buried in his hair, the strands thick and slippery between them.
“I didn’t thank you for taking down my yard creeper,” she said against the soft cotton of his shirt. “Not just anyone could have done that.”

He made a disgusted sound. “No kidding. I almost couldn’t do it. Had to have your damn
civi brother-in-law’s help.”

She tilted her head back, watched the underside of his jaw, the edges of his lashes twitch
ing as he blinked. “Well…” she reached for something consoling to say, “that guy was a skinny little thing; he had to be quick. And Tam’s sort of…
violent
. And you’re…”

“Old?”

“No.”

“I am,” he sighed. “I’m not twenty-five anymore. And my leg
ain’t worth a damn.”

“The injury they discharged you for,” she remembered. “Which leg?”

He brought it up and propped the ankle on his left knee; with his finger, he drew a line just below his right knee across his sweatpants. “I was rappelling down out of a chopper – I’d done it thousands of times before. But my carabiner wasn’t snapped, or it broke, or something. I went the last twelve feet in free-fall.”

Jess held her breath, envisioning the sudden snap, the rush of air, the cold terror of realizing he was falling.

“Compound fracture of the tibia; fractured fibula. I shredded every muscle and every tendon – the skin was all that held the leg on from below the knee.”

“God,” Jess breathed. She shivered, leg throbbing in sympathetic pain. She knew that, with that kind of injury, there had been surgeries – more than one – and extensive rehab, months and months of physical therapy.
She flattened her hand across his chest, the steady thumping of his heart. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry,” he said, just as casual as if he’d just told her the time. “It’s not like you made it happen.”

“No, but I’m sorry anyway. I’m sorry you had to retire.”

He snorted. “Everyone retires. That job breaks all of us somehow; I’m just lucky it wasn’t anything worse. Uncle Sam didn’t give me a dime of ‘retirement,’ not like what you’re thinking. I’ve always been handy; as soon as I was on my feet, I started working.”

“What do you mean?” she sat up. “You didn’t get some kind of…severance pay or something?”

The smile he gave her was almost patronizing, and amused. “Nope. Did you think I just renovated houses on the off chance I’d meet hot blondes?”

“That’s outrageous,” she said, scowling. “You serve your country – are a hero – and then, what? ‘Oops, sorry Mr. Haley. You’re shit outta luck.’
Outrageous
.” She was suddenly furious with whichever Washington fatheads hadn’t seen fit to reward her man – dear God, he
was
her man – when he’d injured himself in the line of duty.

His smile twitched, brown eyes dancing. “I was a corporal, actually.”

“What?”

“You said ‘Mr. Haley.’ I was Corporal Haley.”

“Oh. Sorry.” She scowled again. “Still. Someone needs an ass-beating over that.”

“Volunteering to hold the paddle?”

“Yes.”

He chuckled and it relaxed his face
, flashed white, straight teeth; it took ten years off of him.

“Thank you
for keeping us safe. Back then, and now. Last night,” she said, and watched the humor leave him, the laughter bleeding from his features.

His eyes strayed from her face. “Just doing my job.”

“Chris.”

He watched the TV. “
Hm?”

“Do you – ” she cringed at her phrasing, “feel like it’s your job to take care of me now?”

He swallowed, his throat working. “You know I do.”

She wasn’t proof against that. On some level, she knew that Dylan leaving – or, rather, her leaving him – had left a hole in her life; she wanted a bigger, sturdier, stronger man to fill that place and take up the role as her champion. She could only be tough for so long, and then, at night, in the quiet absence of the day’s stress, she wanted a shoulder to lay her head against. Chris wanting to take care of her was exactly what she should be running from, but she just couldn’t.

She trailed her fingers down the back of his neck and leaned in close, pressed a kiss to his bristly cheek. “Thank you for that, too,” she whispered, and his head turned; he kissed her mouth and his arm stole around her waist, crushing her in close against him.

He was better at this than Dylan: the impromptu assault on her senses. It didn’t feel fair to compare them, but since he came out the winner, she didn’t have quite such guilt.

He caught the back of her head with his other hand and lowered her back against the couch pillows, stretched out above her. With his tongue stroking deep within her mouth, her pulse thumping in her ears, the fabric of his shirt brushing against her sweater, her phone was ringing for the second time before she registered it. When it trilled for the third call in a row, Chris pulled back.

“Do you need to get that?”

“Probably,” she groaned, pushing herself up as he sat back on his heels.

Her purse was beside the couch and she reached down, fumbled her phone from inside and lifted it to her face. Her heart lurched when she saw Tyler’s name on the ID screen. “It’s Ty,” she explained, sitting up, swinging her legs over the couch, and answering. “Hi, sweetie. You okay?”

On the other end of the line, he took a short, sharp, panicked-sounding breath. “Mama,” he said, and she wanted to murder Dylan.

**

              Chris steered her Tahoe through the iron gates of a posh Buckhead apartment complex and followed her tight-lipped directions through the property until they pulled up in front of a brick-and-siding building that looked – if not for the balconies and well-concealed stairwells – like a Georgian mansion. The headlights sliced across a wedge of sidewalk, the hedgerow behind, and Jessica’s ex; he stood with a hand on his son’s shoulder, a scowl on his face. Tyler was pale and big-eyed.

             
Jess popped her door before he had it in park, and she waved her kid toward her; he came more than willingly, plastering to the fronts of her legs, little arms going around her waist. She bent low and said something against the top of his head; in the shadows beyond the headlights, they looked small and breakable – like they had the morning he’d awakened at the foot of their bed – two lost souls washed in darkness. It took every ounce of his self-control not to climb out of the car and throw Dylan Beaumont all the way up over his own balcony.

             
Jess peeled Tyler away from her and sent him to the car with a gentle push. He went, scrambling into the back seat and wrestling the heavy door shut with a practiced sort of clumsiness.

             
“Hey, kid,” Chris greeted.

             
“Hi.”

             
In front of the Tahoe, arms braced across her chest like armor, Jess stepped up onto the sidewalk, hair flaming platinum in the high beams. “
You
– ” she started, her voice a snarl. She said something quick and wicked that had Chris’s skin crawling – and he wasn’t even on the receiving end or clear of the words. Her venom was palpable. Dylan, though, absorbed it with wooden composure.

             
“…like a goddamn animal…fucking pervert…”

             
“Did you eat dinner yet?” Chris asked, trying to cover the tirade for the kid’s ears. He realized too late that, considering it was well past Tyler’s bedtime, of course he’d had dinner.

             
“Yeah.”

             
“What about dessert?” He twisted around in the seat. “You wanna stop for ice cream?”

             
Some of the pale, eerie stillness left his face. “Yeah…”

             
“We’ll find a Baskin-Robbins on the way home,” he promised.

             
“…kill you…”

             
“So what kinda ice cream do you like?”

             
“Vanilla with rainbow sprinkles – ”

             
The passenger door snatched open and Jess threw herself inside, slamming it. Even in the shadowed interior of the car, he could see the fury etched across her profile, could sense the heated hate that seeped from her pores and filled the seat around her. She was a mother lioness when it came to her cub, a trait of which he very much approved.

             
“You good?” he asked.

             
She slanted him a sideways look, green eyes glinting. “Let’s get out of here.”

             
Out on the sidewalk, Dylan was having a different idea. Chris glanced through the windshield and saw the guy charge toward the door – his door – his perfectly proportioned, pretty boy face clouded with anger. He rapped on the window and said, “Get out,” through the glass.

             
“Don’t,” Jess warned.

             
Chris ignored her; he reminded himself not to make too big a mess in front of the kid, and climbed out, nearly catching Dylan across the knees with the door.

             
“Where in the fuck,” Dylan seethed the moment the door was reclosed, “do you get off coming to my place? Driving
my
car? Picking up
my
kid?”

             
“You oughta be worried about where you get off,” Chris deadpanned, “’cause whatever you were doing to your mail-order skank up there woke up your kid. And had him so scared he called his mom. It’s your own damn fault I’m here.”