(Dream Man 03) Law Man (30 page)

At that, I started fidgeting in my seat, biting my lip, looking anywhere but him and trying not to hyperventilate at the same time wondering if he’d seen
The A-Team
. Mitch paid the bill and led me to the sidewalk.

He stopped us there and I tipped my head up to look at him.

“Can you walk more than a block on those heels?” he asked.

“Why?” I answered with a question.

“Can you walk more than a block on those heels?” he repeated.

“Yes,” I answered because I was getting to know Detective Mitch Lawson, fast, and I might be able to walk more than a block on my heels but my feet would start to hurt if I had to stand there and beat him at stubborn which might take an eternity.

His arm slid along my shoulders and he turned me into the boutique section of Cherry Creek. I slid my arm along his waist, liking the feel of it there with his hip and thigh sometimes brushing against mine as we walked. Two blocks up and one block in, he stopped us in front of a shop.

“That’s Penny’s,” he said, tipping his head to Design Fusion, the shop I already knew was his sister’s. A shop I’d been in once and left because the stuff in it was awesome but the price tags were more than a little scary.

I stared at the shop, all its cool furniture and even cooler accessories then I looked up at Mitch.

“That’s a great shop,” I whispered.

“You know she furnished my apartment,” Mitch stated, I nodded and he went on. “You’re pathologically shy and Penny’s a pathological decorator. She’s redecorated each of her kids’ rooms about five times. She has three and the oldest one is seven. And that’s just her kids’ rooms. She’s redecorated other rooms in her house so many times, I’ve lost count. Her husband, Evan, has declared citizen’s divorce twice. I was there both times. It wasn’t pretty.”

“Yikes,” I muttered, looking into the windows at the expensive but gorgeous wares on display and thinking if her kids’ rooms had that stuff in them, five times over, the unknown Evan must be a bazillionaire or he should be nominated for sainthood.

“He’s an excavator,” Mitch continued, giving me the information Evan was far from a bazillionaire and therefore sainthood was forthcoming. “They have a sofa in their house that cost nearly ten thousand dollars.” I gasped and my eyes shot to his. “She’s a nut. She’s a pain in the ass. She’s got champagne tastes and Evan’s never gonna be able to afford anything other than a beer budget. So he talked her into opening this shop so she could get champagne wholesale.”

“Smart move,” I noted.

“Yeah, now she can talk other people into spending
their
money. But it’s still her drug, sweetheart, and he’s made it so she can get her fix every day.”

I studied him because I was realizing this wasn’t just his latest conversational gambit to take my mind off freaking out but that he was trying to tell me something.

Mitch kept talking. “Penny’s the type of woman you don’t ignore because Penny’s the type of woman who doesn’t like to be ignored and won’t allow it. But, during the NCAA basketball playoffs, Evan disappears. You do not disturb Evan during
any
basketball game but to the outside world he ceases to exist during the playoffs.”

I waited for it. Mitch gave it to me.

“She gets this about him and ties herself in knots making sure nothing stops Evan getting his drug of choice. Not kids. Not phone calls. Not the need to get up and get another beer. Nothing.”

“So they enable each other,” I remarked, Mitch smiled and turned me so we were front to front and both his arms were around me.

“No,” he said softly. “They love each other. They know what the other likes, they know what the other needs to feed whatever is hungry in their soul and they give it to them. At least Penny does but Evan does too with only a minimal amount of bitching.”

I put my hands on his chest and asked, “What’s your drug of choice?”

“I’ve no idea,” he answered. “It’s not up to me to figure it out. But whoever I decide to share my life with needs to be a woman who ties herself in knots to give it to me.”

Oh boy. There it was.

“Mitch –”

“But only because I know I’m a man who’ll figure hers out and give it to her in return.”

And he was. I knew this to be true right down deep to the very heart of me.

“This is very heavy for a first date,” I decided to point out considering Mitch had switched from doing anything to make me
not
freak out, to saying a bunch of stuff that could do nothing
but
freak me out.

“I’ve shared more breakfasts with you than any woman I’ve dated in the last year and a half,” Mitch returned. “I know what you look like in the morning. I know what you act like when you come home tired after work. I know that you pick the least expensive thing on the menu either to be nice or to be annoying in order to put me off. But I think it’s to be nice because you
are
nice and also both times you thought you’d be spending time with just me, you dressed in a way that would not, in any way, put me off. I know you cuddle when you’re sleeping. I know you take only milk in your coffee and you make coffee strong. I know you’re really good with kids. And I know that you use music and scents to regulate your mood. So I’m thinking this is not a first date. This is more like us hittin’ the six month mark. And the six month mark is when you stop talkin’ about shit that really doesn’t matter and start talkin’ about shit that means everything.”

Okay. I’d hit it. I was freaking out. And I decided Mitch needed to know that.

Therefore, I told him, “You’re freaking me out.”

Then he freaked me out more by saying, “Good. My first strategy is working.”

I blinked. Then I stared. Then I asked, “Pardon?”

His head dipped closer to me. “I don’t know what’s gonna work with you, sweetheart, so I’m tryin’ this first and we’ll see. I need to switch things up…” he trailed off and I kept staring.

It was then I decided to share, “I like calm and to have peace of mind.”

“Kiss that good-bye,” Mitch advised.

Not a good answer.

“Um…” I mumbled, trying to pull away and failing. In fact, Mitch’s arms brought me closer and his face dipped even nearer.

“Now, before I take you home, I need you to explain something.”

“And I need another glass of wine,” I retorted with the God’s honest truth.

“I’ll get you one at home. Now you need to explain something.”

“No, I really think I need a glass of wine, like, ten minutes ago.”

Mitch was not to be denied. “Why did you leave me in bed with Billie?”

This threw me. It also, for some reason, scared me. And it scared me because that was a couple of days ago, he’d made it relatively clear he wasn’t happy I’d done it then but him asking about it again made it clear he
really
wasn’t happy I’d done it.

My voice was quiet and even small when I reminded him, “I already apologized for that.”

“I know you did and I told you it was okay. Now I want to know why you did it.”

Confusion edged into my fear and my head tipped to the side. “Why?”

“Why do I want to know?”

“Yeah.”

“I just do.”

I bit my lip and realized that suddenly everything that was me needed to be certain that I answered his question in the way he needed it to be answered. And that made me even more scared.

Then I decided to tell him, “I didn’t think it was the wrong thing to do.”

“Why?”

“Why?”

“Yes, why?”

“I… because I didn’t think it was wrong.”

“She’s six, I’m a grown man. I’ve known her less than a month. You don’t leave a grown man alone in bed wrapped around a six year old.”

Oh God. I’d not only done something wrong, the way he explained it made it sound like I’d
really
done something wrong. In fact, I’d done something revolting.

“You got her Tylenol,” I blurted my defense on a whisper.

Mitch’s brows drew together. “What?”

“You got her Tylenol,” I repeated.

One of his hands slid up the skin of my back to sift into my hair as he murmured, “Mara –”

“We were,” I hurried on, “making out. On the couch. We’d been talking. Before that, you asked me if she was down, like, I don’t know, you were her Dad or something. Then she came out and threw up. And it was… I was scared. I didn’t know what to do and parents…” I shook my head, feeling stupid, feeling exposed and looked away then looked back to him because I couldn’t give up. I had to explain because it was important. “Parents when they’re starting out, they don’t know what to do. And you found out what to do and did it. You went to the drugstore, like any Dad would do. Not like Bill would do. If Billie was puking, Billy would probably take care of her. Bill would… Bill might not even be there but he probably wouldn’t even wake up. But you went to the drugstore. Then you stayed with us. And she was shivering so hard and she didn’t want you to go. She wanted you there. And it was just… we were just… I forgot who we were and I thought, I thought…” I shook my head again, closed my eyes tight, pressed my lips together, opened my eyes and whispered, “I thought she’d never had a good Dad and I’ve never even had a Dad but I thought… if you had a Dad and you got sick, the best place to be was pressed close to your Dad and he’d make you feel better.” I pulled in a breath, dropped my eyes from the intensity of his and looked at his throat. “I didn’t leave her in bed with Mitch. I left her in bed with the man who took care of her when she was sick. I didn’t think it was wrong. I never considered it was wrong. I actually thought,” I pulled in another breath and my voice dropped lower when I admitted, “I actually thought it was beautiful.”

His hand cupped the back of my head and he pressed my face into his throat. Tears filled my eyes and my fingers clenched into his shirt.

God, I wasn’t only a Two Point Five, I was an idiot. Why did he even want that deal he made me agree to at dinner? Why? It didn’t make sense.

“I’m sorry I made you uncomfortable. I didn’t even think,” I told his throat.

“Quiet,” he replied softly.

“I’m sorry,” I repeated.

Lips to my hair, Mitch said gently, “Mara, honey, I needed to know why you did that because it occurred to me after you told your story that there’s a reason you’re pathologically shy around men you’re attracted to. And that reason might not be healthy. And I gotta know what I got on my hands with you.” I tried to tilt my head back but he kept it in his throat and kept speaking. “But what you just told me is not unhealthy. What you just told me tells me that I’ve already broken through that cocoon.”

“You really haven’t,” I blurted in all honesty.

“Baby, you just told me you think of me as Billie’s new Dad to your new Mom. Soon, those kids are gonna be yours officially and any guy lucky enough to get you is gonna have to be a guy lucky enough that you think he’ll make a decent Dad to those kids. And obviously, you think that of me. So if that isn’t a big, freaking tear in the shit you got wound tight around you, nothin’ is.”

My head jerked back, taking his hand with it and I looked at him.

“I don’t think of you as Billie’s new Dad.”

“Baby, you do. You just said it.”

Shit! I did!

“It may have sounded that way but I don’t think of you as Billie’s new Dad.” Though, thinking on it, that was a kind of lie because, truthfully, I kind of did.

“At the time, you didn’t blink before you asked, ‘are you doin’ the drugstore run or am I?’ It was a given to you I’d be there through whatever we had on our hands with Billie. You didn’t ask me if I minded goin’ to the store. You assumed one or the other of us would make the run to get Billie what she needed.”

“I wasn’t thinking clearly then because I was scared and she was sick. But I don’t think of you as her new Dad. That’s crazy!”

Another kind of but definitely desperate lie.

“Okay, then when you were layin’ it out for me about how
we
make decisions as a
team
about those kids, something which you not only laid out but you also reminded me about, you did not lay it out and say what you say goes because you’re their guardian. You said we’re a team and we discuss decisions and make them together. And that was even before Billie got sick.”

Shit. I did that too.

I didn’t respond. I just glared at him.

“Right now, take a second, go back and think about what you just said to me, fuck,
all
that you’ve said to me when it comes to Bud and Billie,” he ordered firmly.

I glared at him. Then I took a second to go back and think about what I just said to him and
all
I’d said to him but I didn’t need to because, essentially, I did say that. All of it.

“I didn’t actually mean it that way.” This time I semi-lied.