Page 23 of Guarding Grace (Hawk Security #2)

Grace

Men. Why did they always clam up when you wanted to talk?

I stood in front of the stove, stirring while I replayed the few words Terry had said in my head—“ anything and everything to keep you safe .” He’d said that and then refused to talk about anything.

Terry walked up behind me. “We’ll get you your clothes when it’s safe.”

“And until then?” The mushrooms were cooking down. I felt like whacking the wooden spoon on the counter in frustration, but caught myself before I broke down like the helpless woman he thought I was.

“I’ve got a T-shirt for you to wear tonight.”

“Yeah, I’ll go into work wearing a man’s T-shirt. It’s a great look for a professional.”

He slowly turned me around, taking the spoon from my hand and setting it on the counter. “I said to wear tonight .”

It felt so hopeless. “Not with my luck. So far I’ve been attacked, beaten up, almost kidnapped more than once, my employees almost killed, forced away from my apartment, and now shot at, and I don’t even have any fucking clothes to wear tomorrow.” I sniffled. “And I don’t have my cats.”

With one gentle finger, he lifted my chin and held my eyes with his. “You need to trust me. We’re going to find your cousin and get this worked out. When you took down Tony’s niece with your darts, we gained leverage.”

I laughed, remembering how silly Maria had looked with my darts in her ass.

“When Tall Tony gets the message that you’re protected by Hawk Security, he’ll back down. He’s not suicidal.”

What I saw in Terry’s eyes was a promise, a promise that things would be all right, and I couldn’t resist the urge any longer. I stepped forward, wrapped my arms around him, and melted. I tried to hold back the tears that formed, tears of relief that this man was looking out for me—that he cared.

He tried to push me away, but I held on stronger. He relented and stroked my back. “I’m not going to promise anything about your cats, but one way or another, you will be able to go to work tomorrow, looking marvelous as always.”

For what seemed like an eternity, but was probably only a minute, I hung on to him. After this morning, why did he want to push me away?

“You’d better stir that pan so things don’t burn,” he said eventually. “There are more steps to this recipe.”

I stepped away, wiping under my eyes, and turned back to the stove. “Yes, chef.”

He started the pasta and set places for dinner at the bar behind the kitchen island, all the while calling out instructions to me. It struck me as thoughtful, since I couldn’t sit comfortably.

Then my phone rang. I held it up. “Serena.”

“Take the call. I’ll finish up here.” Once again, a simple statement that would have been out of character for him last week.

I walked into the next room. “Hi.”

“My God,” Serena’s voice was agitated. “Duke tells me you guys got chased and shot at.”

A shiver went through me. “The story of my life this week,” I said with as breezy a voice as I could manage. I moved farther away from the kitchen.

“How are you holding up? I can come over.”

“No. I’m fine,” I insisted, without feeling like it was a lie. “Terry and I are cooking dinner.”

Her voice took on a questioning tinge. “Together?”

I faced the window, lowering my voice. “Yes.”

“Hmm... Does that mean you’re taking my advice about making time to have a life? ”

“Sort of,” I said softly. “But something’s off, and he won’t talk about it.”

“What does that mean?” she asked. Serena’s doggedness had been a strength in group therapy. She always eventually pulled out truth and laid it on the table to be dissected.

“It means I wanted to, but we fought.”

“Flirt. You know how.”

“He’s not being…” I searched for the right word. “Receptive.”

“Then use your secret weapon.”

“I don’t know. What if it backfires?” She’d once told me that if flirting didn’t work, the secret weapon was to turn jealousy to your advantage and flirt with another guy.

“Then he wasn’t into you enough in the first place.”

I pondered that for a second.

“What did you fight about?” This wasn’t going to end until she was completely satisfied.

“I leaned out of the car and shot back at the bastards against his orders ,” I added particular disdain to that last word.

“Really? That’s great.”

“There was nothing great about it,” I disagreed. “It was pretty heated.”

“Duke was like that,” she explained. “He still is. It just means Terry cares about you…a lot. It’s a guy thing about being overprotective, but turbocharged with the SEALs.”

Heat bloomed in my chest as I absorbed the words. “He was pretty angry.”

“Trust me. That’s a good thing.” Her statement made no sense at all.

“Grace? Dinner’s almost ready,” Terry called from the kitchen.

“He’s calling. I gotta go,” I told Serena.

“Yeah, I heard. Be good now. Scratch that, be as naughty as you want.”

I laughed. “Bye.” I ended the call.

A few minutes later, I was standing next to Terry with a glass of wine and the most delicious-looking home-cooked meal I’d ever had.

He lifted his wine glass, and we repeated my earlier toast. “Friends.”

I hoped that was only the beginning.

I could do a reasonable job on spaghetti and meatballs, and I made a decent macaroni and cheese and a killer meatloaf, but after two bites of this meal, it was clear Terry’s cooking put me to shame. “Thank you. This is delicious,” I mumbled through my food.

“Don’t thank me. You did most of the work.”

“I was just the minion. You’re the chef,” I insisted. I forked another mushroom and piece of chicken. “When you said the boss—the guy you called Tall Tony—wouldn’t cross that line, what did you mean?”

Terry put down his fork. “Years ago, two idiots, the Barzon brothers, came after a Hawk woman, Lucas’s wife.”

That was news. “I didn’t know he was married.”

“He was, but she died.”

My hand went to my mouth as my stomach revolted. “My God, that’s terrible. I had no idea.”

“We don’t talk about it. That’s a rule.”

“Sorry.”

“Anyway, it was kept out of the news, but it was a big deal in all the wrong circles that Lucas’s wife had been targeted. We all knew the Barzon brothers were behind it.”

“What happened?”

“A week later, the brothers were found dead. It wasn’t pretty.”

“Lucas?” I asked, unsure whether I wanted to know the answer.

Terry shook his head. “Couldn’t have been. He was across the country at the time.”

I breathed a sigh of relief. “Do you think?—”

“It doesn’t matter. The message the bad guys took from it was clear—you don’t ever mess with a Hawk woman. And that protection now applies to you.”

I didn’t know whether to be elated, or scared, or both. “I’m not…” I added air quotes. “A Hawk woman.”

Terry twisted his fork in the pasta and lifted it. “Are you forgetting that Lucas said he considers you a part of the family? He also told Victor you were my woman.”

I couldn’t believe my ears. “I’m not yours or anybody’s.” After the words came out, I didn’t know why I’d said them, except as a gut reaction.

“True,” he said defensively. “But Russo doesn’t know that.”

Damn him . Had he sensed that in the middle of our kiss this morning, I would have done anything to claim the title of Terry Goodwin’s woman? But then the arguments had started again. Now he was pushing me away. It was all too confusing.

Terry smiled at me. “Lucas says you’re a Hawk woman, so you’re a Hawk woman.”

Before I could object again, he added, “You’re mine to protect, and you have been ever since Pete left. You’re under Hawk protection. That was Lucas’s meaning.”

There was that duty to my dead brother again. “I guess I should say thank you. I mean, without you I would have been…” The words trailed off, too horrible to speak. “You and Zane.”

His eyes narrowed at the mention of Zane. Then he cleared his throat, saving us both from an awkward moment. “I’d like to hear how your company uses the VR process.”

I really wanted to get back to the conversation about us, but accepted the off-ramp anyway and started with the vision of interactive design that had been my inspiration to start SpaceMasters.

And so, we relaxed into pleasant conversation for a change. Our delicious food cooled as we had to fit in bites between explanations and insightful questions.

After dinner, I helped with the cleanup before Terry led me to the sectional facing his monster big screen.

Was it a bachelor requirement to have a TV so large you couldn’t figure out how they’d gotten it in the door?

“You need to wind down and relax,” Terry told me.

Maybe this was it. “I can’t sit, remember?”

He sat at one end of the sectional, placing a throw pillow next to him. “I remember. You can lie down.” He patted the pillow—an invitation.

I kicked off my shoes and settled on my side, my head on the pillow instead of in his lap, as he worked the clicker.

“What would you like to watch?”

“You choose,” I squeaked.

“You’re the guest.”

I wasn’t foolish enough to suggest a rom-com. Was it odd that I’d never had an inkling of his movie preferences? A guy like Terry probably went for sci-fi or action movies. All I had to go on was what Pete had liked, so I suggested my brother’s favorite action movie. “Can we get True Lies ?”

“Sure. It would be fitting since Pete is Omega.”

“Yeah, Omega,” I said, implying I knew more than I did. Pete had mentioned Omega on the phone a few times when he didn’t know I was listening. I’d never asked him what it meant. “Personally, I think Schwarzenegger is hot in this one.”

“Jamie Lee Curtis is the hot one.”

“I can guess which part you like.” It had to be the striptease scene in the hotel.

He didn’t hide his smirk as he located the movie and started it. Before long, Arnold appeared, larger than life coming out of the icy water and then stripping off his diving suit to reveal an immaculate tux underneath. If that didn’t out-class James Bond, I didn’t know what did .

It was a refreshing change to be watching a movie with someone. I’d spent way too many nights alone in my apartment with only Bonnie and Clyde as company.