Why was he here?
“Are you okay?” David asked, hurrying up to me.
I nodded.
“What’s going on?” David wondered, taking a step forward as if to pull me into his arms.
I shrank away from him, flinching back out of his reach.
He didn’t get the privilege to touch me. Not anymore.
“Blake!” A deep, frantic voice said before a hard body snatched me up.
My eyes started to water, and I wrapped my arms firmly around Foster’s muscled chest.
His heart was beating frantically against my ribs, and the tears that I’d been keeping at bay by sheer force of will finally broke free.
I cried into his shirt. Hard.
I wasn’t a very attractive crier.
My eyes got puffy and red, my nose ran, and my face scrunched up into a mass of quivering goo.
Foster didn’t care what I looked like, though.
He still held me firmly to his chest, rocking me back and forth.
His fingers threaded into the knot I had at the top of my head, working the mass of my hair loose.
He threaded his fingers through it, and held my head in the palm of his hand.
“Are you okay?” He asked after a while.
I nodded. “I’m okay.”
“Your ex-husband looks like he wants to geld me,” he rumbled.
“My ex-husband is a douche canoe,” I told him honestly.
He snorted. “Possibly.”
“How’d you know I was here?” I asked, leaning my head back so I could see his face.
He raised his eyebrow as if to ask, ‘really?’
I smiled.
Clarifying, I said, “What I meant, was that I thought you were out of town today. That’s what your note said.”
He winked. “I know what you meant. I wasn’t far out of town, though. Just at some continuing education. They were more than willing to let me go when they realized that my girl had her house shot up like a tin can at target practice.”
My mouth gaped open.
“Your girl?” I gasped.
He raised that annoying eyebrow again.
“I decided,” he confirmed.
“You decided?” I asked, outrage starting to leak into my voice.
I, of course, wasn’t that upset about his high handedness.
I was surprised, though.
He hadn’t even given me the first inkling other than that kiss last night that he was even interested.
Then all of a sudden I was his girl?
“If I gave you the choice you’d have to think about it. And I didn’t want that mind of yours to start thinking, so I just made it myself,” he said bluntly.
I just shook my head, not knowing what to say.
I was excited, though.
Butterflies were roiling in my belly as I said, “We’ll see.”
He shook his head. “No, we won’t.”
“Yes, we will.”
“Won’t.”
“Will!”
He raised that stupid brow again, and pulled me close again before placing a soft kiss on my cheek. “Won’t.”
“Blake?” My father’s worried voice called from behind me.
I turned in Foster’s arms, arms that he dropped, allowing me to move away from him slightly to see my father’s worried face.
“Daddy,” I said, walking towards him.
He gathered me into his arms, dropping his chin onto the top of my head as he said, “You scared the shit out of me, girl.”
I squeezed him tightly, feeling the familiar feeling of his Kevlar vest digging into my cheek as I did. “I’m okay.”
His body shook as he started to cry and I felt horrible.
My daddy was a big man. A bad ass man.
But I was also his little girl. His only child. His pride and joy.
It probably tore him apart to hear that my house had been the location of a drive by shooting. With me inside.
“Who’s the man?” He asked.
I turned to see Foster across the room, talking quietly with my uncle, Gabe, and Max.
My uncle had been the first to arrive.
I’d gotten the same reception from him.
“That’s…” Foster? That didn’t sound like enough for him. Hero. The man I’m falling for. The sexiest man in Kilgore, Texas. Those sounded better, yet I knew my dad probably wouldn’t find the same humor I did in it. “That’s Foster.”
“That the man your mother and you got in a fight about?” He asked, rubbing his stubble across the top of my head.
I smiled. “He was what started it, yes.”
“Hmm,” he hummed. “He coming over for dinner tonight?”
I glanced up at Foster, seeing his eyes on me, and smiled. “Why don’t you ask him?”
I actually got a little giddy inside when he did just that, walking right up to Foster, and offering him his hand.
“You the one who had men at her house today?” Dad asked bluntly.
Foster nodded. “This is Max,” he gestured with his hand. Then said, “And this is Gabe. They’re with Free.”
My dad shook both man’s proffered hands, and said, “Come to dinner. It’s at one. Both of you, too. Bring the family.”
With that, he gave my uncle a look, and started to walk away.
Uncle Darren followed, shooting me an exasperated look.
Daddy was older than Uncle Darren by five years.
He was a certified bad ass, and everybody who was anybody knew my dad. Uncle Darren was, and always would be, Shank’s brother.
Daddy’s real name was Louis, but when he first started out, he was pulling double shifts. One as a trooper, and another as a prison guard at Huntsville State Penitentiary.
When he was on duty at Huntsville, an inmate made a shank out of a toothbrush, sharpening the end into a lethal point.
Then made an arrow out of it, wrapping wet newspaper and who knew what else into it, honing it into a lethal weapon.
Then, as my father passed by one night, the prisoner had used the elastic from his shorts, tied it to the bars, and then launched the arrow at my father.
It hit my father in the throat barely missing his carotid artery by a scant millimeters.
Daddy had gotten that taken care of at the infirmary, and then finished his job.
Only when he was done at work did he go to see his doctor, who told him he was a very lucky man, and that as long as he kept the wound clean, he could return to work.
Although painful, it was nothing but a minor wound that could’ve been deadly.