Six

SIX

N icole scrambled quickly out of the car, dying to meet Georgine. I watched my friend take her hand as Nicole reached her and they started talking.

Dawson and I got out of the car ahead of the girls, and when Luke got out and offered to help, my ex quickly turned him down, assuring him that we had help. Which we did. My people were there on the sidewalk, greeting Cami, who held court like a queen, directing everyone, explaining about her loot. She made certain that her assorted gift bags, gift boxes, and the cube of dried bedding for the rabbit did not get mixed up with anything of Prue’s.

“It’s so good to be home,” Dawson said, standing on the sidewalk a second, breathing in the cool air of the Quarter.

“Home my ass,” I grumbled under my breath as I walked by him toward the door of the club, back to schlepping the rabbit cage.

“What was that?” he teased me, catching up quickly, moving up beside me, so close that I could again, as I had earlier, smell whatever was on his skin, leather and musk, a trace of spice I couldn’t place, and sandalwood. I wanted to inhale deeply, so I put distance between us instead. He wasn’t having it, and since I was carrying a heavy cage, he was back beside me in seconds. “I didn’t hear what you said.”

I would not make a scene. I didn’t want to get into it again as we had on our walk, but I suddenly couldn’t help myself. I stopped walking and rounded on him, rabbit cage in front of me. “What’re you really doing here?”

Those bottomless blue-black eyes of his were all I could see. “You know ,” he rumbled, and his gaze swept over me from head to toe before returning to my face. When Luke had done it, I felt uncomfortable, maybe even a bit gross. But when Dawson did the same, I could feel the heat on my skin from his admiring gaze. “I want what’s mine, Chris.”

Again, that overwhelming urge to punch him came over me, but I settled for a growl because what a bunch of shit! I started for the bar.

“What is that?” Darcy gasped, sounding both curious and horrified.

“It’s a rabbit. Can’t you see it’s a rabbit?” I snapped at her.

“Of course I can see it’s a—what is wrong with you?” she nearly yelled. “You were in a better mood when you left.”

I was not in a better mood when I left. I had been in flight mode, annoyed and uncertain.

Heading toward the kitchen, I suddenly veered off, thinking that if for whatever reason, we had a health inspector visiting, having a rabbit where food was prepared was a bad idea. I diverted toward the hallway leading to the offices.

“Are you mad about Otto?” Cami asked, and only then did I realize she was walking right beside me, on my right, Dawson on my left.

“No,” I grumbled.

“You sound mad.”

“I’m mad about something else,” I told her.

“About me?”

I stopped walking and turned to her. “No. When have I ever been mad at you?”

She thought a moment. “The time that man in the store kept following you around.”

“That was?—”

“What man?” Dawson asked her.

“I don’t know,” she answered him. “A stranger was following Uncle Chris and asking him dumb questions about this cheese he had.”

“I see.”

“I mean, my mama knows about cheese, not Uncle Chris.”

“Absolutely.”

“So I told the man he was wasting his time talking to Uncle Chris but he stayed anyway.”

“I’m sure he did.”

I groaned and started for my office again. Sadly, they didn’t stay there and talk but followed right along with me.

“He wouldn’t go away, and I finally told him that Uncle Chris doesn’t eat a lot of cheese because?—”

“Never mind,” I told her.

“See? That’s how his voice sounded that day too,” she informed Dawson. “But I told the man he doesn’t eat cheese because it gives him the toots.”

“Oh, for the love of God,” I grumbled. “Remind me to yell at your mother.”

“What did Mama do?”

Dawson was chuckling. “Did the man run away after that?”

She nodded.

“And your uncle Chris was mad?”

“Not mad, but he made a face like—oh, see, just like he’s making now.”

“I love that story,” he told her.

Watching her soak up his attention was going to make me homicidal, so I hurried to my office. The door was closed, and I had to wait for Dawson to open it for me.

“Cami, go get your mother,” I ordered, and she bolted away.

“I like Cami. It sounds like she’s a fantastic cockblock.”

“She’s just possessive, like you. She wants everyone’s complete attention.”

“Not everyone’s. It sounds like we both just want yours.”

Setting the rabbit cage down on the catchall table to the left of the door, I shook my arms and tried to massage the knot in my shoulder.

Dawson put everything down and was there, quickly, taking hold of my shoulder with one hand and using the other to rub where it hurt.

“Knock it off,” I ordered but didn’t move.

“Just let me take care of you for a second, you stubborn shit.”

“Listen, you don’t get to—oh,” I moaned instinctively when he plastered his chest to my back and wrapped his arms around me.

“I’m sorry I’ve been gone,” he whispered into my nape, hands clutching at me. “But I’m here to stay, honey, I swear to God.”

“Chris, oh—well, that was fast,” Darcy said as she walked into the room.

“Nothing is fast,” I told her. “And I’m sorry I snapped at you, but the cage is fuckin’ heavy, and I carried it a long way.”

“From the car I saw you get out of?” she teased me as Dawson let me go, and I bent over to stretch my back.

“Yeah, but first from Cami’s classroom to the parking lot behind the school.”

Her eyes got wide as I straightened up. “Ohmygod, are you dying?”

“A little, but I’m still sorry.”

“It’s fine. Who is that woman out there chatting up Georgine and Xola?”

“Her name is Nicole Amsel. She’s a food blogger and?—”

“Oh, she’s The Picky Blackbird,” Darcy informed me. “She wrote a lot of lovely articles about Xo and me when we were in Vegas for the nationals.”

“Then go introduce yourself and send Georgine back here. I think Cami got lost.”

“Will do,” she said, glancing at Dawson on her way out.

“So, I have things to say,” Dawson apprised me as he transferred Cami’s gifts from the floor to my desk, making a neat pile.

“Didn’t you say them all already?” I pointed out, admiring the fluid movement of the man as he worked, thinking how good he looked all healthy and strong. I was a big fan of his broad shoulders and wide back. The tight jeans were very nice as well…

“Right?” Dawson asked, bringing me out of my reverie.

Shit.

He cackled. “You were checkin’ me out when you were supposed to be listening.”

“I was listening,” I groused.

“What’d I say, then?”

I had no earthly idea. “Fine, I was checking you out.”

“Whatever works.”

“The hell is that supposed to mean?”

“It means I thought, since you still love me, that your heart would return to me first, but I will take your body as well.”

“You’re a smug prick right now.”

“No, not at all,” he husked, reaching into the breast pocket of his black leather biker jacket and pulling out a very chunky gold ring with five large square-cut diamonds on top. “I’m actually scared to death.”

“The hell is that?”

He waggled his eyebrows.

“You cannot think for a minute?—”

“I just want you to see it’s here, and I’m carrying it around, ready to put it on your finger the second you say yes.”

“No,” I replied firmly, annoyed. “You can be here, play here, because honestly, that’s a benefit to us as well as to the guys in your band, but there is nothing you can say to change my mind about us.”

He nodded. “That’s fair.”

“Thank you.”

“So how about I kiss you instead?”

“Have you lost your mind?”

“Christopher Isiah Gardner, have you lost your mind?” Georgine yelled, echoing me as she charged into the room.

“You people need new material,” Dawson stated.

“A rabbit ?” Georgine asked loudly, slipping in front of me, obscuring my view of Dawson.

I gestured to Otto with both hands. “Ta-dah!”

“Absolutely not,” she informed me, then looked at the pile of gifts Dawson had moved. “And what in the world is all that?”

“I’m gonna say your kid made out like a bandit on the last day before winter break, and the rest of this is…well, it’s rabbit stuff.”

She refocused on me. “I do not like rodents.”

“Rabbits aren’t rodents.”

“How do you know?”

I squinted at her.

“Oh shit, that’s right. Her report with the rabbit ears.”

“Yeah,” I grumbled, picking up the cage and moving it from the table to the sunny spot in the corner by the chair and ottoman, relieved to know that I was done after that. The next person moving it anywhere would not be me. “Rabbits are part of the Lagomorpha order of mammals with other animals I don’t remember. And I only remember Lagomorpha because Cami said it like eight hundred times and it started sounding like a magic spell.”

“Yes, it did,” she agreed.

I pointed at the cage. “That thing is heavy, by the way, so wherever you decide to put the little fucker in your place, you better like it.”

“You bench way more than that at the gym, and isn’t that what you’re doing there? Building all the pretty muscles?” she asked, gesturing at me.

“I carried it from her classroom to the parking lot,” I informed her. “There are stairs, as you recall.”

“Oh yeah, okay. You win, that is far.”

“See?”

“Well, maybe we’ll just leave it in here over the break.”

“A rabbit in a place that serves food?”

“I could tell anyone who asks that we’re making rabbit stew and we like to keep the meat fresh.”

“Okay, that’s horrible,” Dawson chimed in.

“Well, then he’s going to have to carry it again out to my car and then into my house,” she snapped at him, then rounded on me.

“Midnight is going to love the bunny.”

“Oh God.” Midnight was her little black kitten that someone had left in the alley behind the club in a sealed box a month ago. The plaintive meows had not gone unnoticed by Conner, who was out there texting with Andy, his boyfriend of three weeks. Conner heard the kitten, a prelude to how loud the little fellow could get.

When Conner carefully got into the box with his butterfly knife, he found a very cute, very smelly—as he’d peed himself at some point—little black kitten. Carrying him inside, he took the creature reeking of ammonia to the kitchen to wash him because we had the cool power nozzle in the industrial sink. Conner figured that since they used Dawn soap on oil-covered ducks, the kitten could stand a bit of it in his fur for one bath. Of course, that was when the cat began wailing as if he was being drowned, and that was when Georgine first saw him.

From her face, how she cooed at the little demon when the two of us went out there, it was love at first sight between herself and the small, sassy, spicy, spitting ball of fur. He thought he was big and scary, and though he had tried to take Conner’s face off, he curled up in Georgine’s hands when he was passed to her wrapped in a dish towel.

“He’s an angel,” she’d murmured.

“He’s from the other place,” Conner had made known.

“What if Midnight tries to eat—what’s the rabbit’s name again?”

“Otto.”

“What if Midnight tries to eat Otto?”

“Since Otto is bigger than Midnight, I wouldn’t worry about it.”

She scowled.

“Oh, gimme a break. What was I supposed to say with your daughter looking at me with the eyes and the face? And her teacher thinking you’re the coolest because not only are you taking care of the class rabbit, but you sent your small child to school—where there are nuns, by the way—with a bottle of booze.”

She grunted.

“Is that even legal? Having a minor transport alcohol?”

“Probably not.”

“The rabbit is super cute,” Dawson asserted as he fed the small creature a piece of lettuce he’d gotten from one of the bags. “I mean, the red eyes are kinda creepy, but other than that…”

“Apparently, he’s psychotic,” I reminded him. “So I wouldn’t get too close or he’ll try and bite you, and you need your fingers to play your guitar.”

“True,” Dawson agreed, giving him another piece of lettuce.

“This is for all of winter break?” Georgine clarified.

“Oh, suck it up. It’s a small price to pay to make your favorite person happy.”

“Is it?”

“You need to go back out there and let Nicole talk to you about a piece in Food you just had to keep your eyes open.

“What are you trying to say, Chris?” Dawson asked me, sounding sad.

“You know what I’m saying. You’re in the space right now where you think we just broke up, but that’s because you just woke up from a coma.”

“I…”

“You stopped after the last time we saw each other in LA, but I kept going.”

“So what does that mean? Explain?”

“I’m telling you that I have almost two years of healing on you, buddy.”

And that time he heard me, because if I’d picked up a book and hit him in the face with it, he could not have looked any more stunned.

“Should I give you advice or just shut the hell up?”

“No, please, give me advice.”

“I think you should stick to your plan, do what you came here to do with your album. And I would love it if you played here every night while you’re in town.”

“Wait, I?—”

“And if you could just give me a heads-up before you leave, I would really appreciate it.”

“I’m not gonna leave!” he yelled. “And that was all great, you figuring out my life there, but, Christopher Gardner, no matter what you say, I will get you back, and do you know why?”

I couldn’t wait to hear this. “Why?”

“Because I’m the best thing for you.”

I didn’t argue. What was the point?

The door flew open then, and Cami was there, running over to the cage and sitting down beside it, looking in at Otto for a moment before I had all her attention.

“You don’t knock? You don’t say excuse me?”

“Will you watch me later so Mama can go with her new friends to a party?”

I scrutinized her because I wasn’t stupid. “Am I invited to this party as well and you just don’t want to go to your granma’s house?”

She bit her bottom lip.

Clearly, Dawson couldn’t help it; he smiled at her. Even in the midst of our mess, he could look at Camille Joseph and know that she was both adorable and devilishly clever.

“Go tell your mother I will watch you, but only if she doesn’t make us dinner.”

“Yeah, okay,” she said, standing up and looking at me like I was brilliant. “That way she can’t make us eat something gross.”

I nodded.

She bolted out of the room but was back quickly, rushing over to Dawson. As she silently scrutinized him, I watched his brows furrow.

“Yes?” he asked her.

“Why’re you in here with Uncle Chris?”

“I like him,” he said, crouching down in front of her. “He used to be my boyfriend, and I want him to be my boyfriend again.”

“Oh, for—don’t tell her that,” I groaned.

“Why not?”

“Because she’s gonna get all?—”

“I thought you said he was your best friend?”

“And my boyfriend,” he said with a sigh, sounding utterly forlorn.

He was killing me, because yes, I wanted to protect myself, and no, I didn’t want to ever grieve his absence again, but God, my first instinct was to trust and believe. Because clearly, he knew he screwed up, and he was as bereft as I had once been, but when you escaped the blender, why on earth would you ever want to take a chance and go back in?

“You could come have dinner too,” she informed him.

“He can’t do that. He’s singing here tonight.”

Her face lit up, and Dawson was back to smiling because she was. “You sing?”

“I play the guitar as well.”

“I want to play guitar.”

“I could teach you,” he offered.

“May I speak to you over here?” I said, and it came out sharper than intended.

He glanced at Cami. “Did that sound like he was asking me?” She shook her head, and he looked back at me. “Am I in trouble?”

“Would you please come here,” I demanded, standing next to the window.

It was a large office so it took him a moment plus, he crossed slowly, the swagger evident. When he was close enough, I grabbed his arm and yanked him over to me.

“Okay,” he said with a catch of breath. “The manhandling I remember.”

“Quit that,” I growled. “You cannot promise things to a little girl that you have no intention of following up on. She will get attached, and we can’t have that. She’s had more disappointments in her short life than?—”

“Try and really listen this time,” he rumbled, facing me, quickly slipping his hands around my hips, up under my shirt, his fingers taking hold of the belt loops of my jeans. “I am not going anywhere.”

“Dawson…”

“I am telling you right now, I want you back. I am down in my soul sorry I messed up, Chris. I’m sorry I left, but I’m different now, and I have a whole new set of priorities that include you at the top of the list.”

“It doesn’t matter if you’re?—”

“Yes, it does,” he murmured, stepping in even closer, his lips brushing the side of my neck, just that much contact causing goose bumps. “I’m going to stay and prove to you that I’m your home.”

I shook my head. “Sonny––”

His filthy chuckle cut me off. “Well, now. That right there is a very good sign,” he said, gloating. “Never Daw with you, love, only Sonny.”

Good God, what had I done? And how had the nickname just slipped out of my mouth?

“I don’t care how long you’ve been over me,” he whispered, his right hand sliding higher, smoothing over skin, stroking reverently, seductively. “I’m here now, I’m back, and I know your first instinct is to punish me, to stay away from me, try and push me away, but that’s a waste of both our time.”

I should have pulled free, shoved him off me, but I was just as susceptible to memory as he was. The truth of the matter was, since him, there had been no one in my bed because really, how could anyone else ever hope to measure up to a rock star? And more importantly, to the only man I’d ever loved.

“Aww,” Cami cooed behind us, and we both turned to look at her. “He loves you, Uncle Chris. He wants to have babies with you.”

I groaned loudly, and Dawson whispered how much he loved that before leaning away very slowly and letting me go. Cami just smiled.

“I will teach you to play guitar,” he promised my godchild—something her mother and I had signed, sealed, and notarized in case anything happened to Georgine. Her grandmother would have a heart attack and probably die as well if she knew the single man who owned a club would be raising her granddaughter.

Cami reached up and took his hand, and he squeezed back.

Of course she liked him. Everybody liked him.

“I need to talk to your mother about what you know about babies,” I muttered.

Dawson thought that was hysterical.