***
“Honey, we’re here.”
Kenna opened her eyes and saw flowers, lots and lots of deep pink and purple buds.
“Where are we?” She asked the question of Dex not taking her eyes off the mounds of bougainvillea flowers surrounding the carport.
“We’re at my townhome. My grandmother has a green thumb. She said that this would look nice. I’m lucky that I can still park my bike under the carport.” Kenna peered in and saw that there was, indeed, a motorcycle parked there.
“This is amazing.”
“Let’s get you inside. I want you to have your medicine and a nap. You fell asleep two seconds after I started the jeep.”
“I’m fine now. I’m awake,” she protested. She might have won the argument if she hadn’t yawned. He just raised his eyebrows and slowly shook his head. Kenna was still struggling with her seatbelt when Dex came around the other side of the jeep and opened the door.
“Do you need help?”
“No, I don’t need help,” she said belligerently. Luckily the hook came unlatched, and she pushed it off. He held out his hand, but she shoved it aside and got out of the vehicle on her own.
“Slow down, Poppy.”
“Quit calling me that.” God, she did sound like a cranky five-year-old.
“If you quit popping off, I’d quit calling you Poppy.”
She glared at his grin. He pointed toward the carport, and she saw the side door. He let her in, and once again, her breath was taken away. Not by flowers this time, but by the indoor jungle.
“It seems that you have a green thumb too.”
“Not really. My cousin’s daughter, Andrea, takes care of my plants when I’m gone, and they multiply like rabbits, then she brings in more. I’m afraid one day I’ll come back from a mission, and I’ll have nowhere to sleep.”
She watched as he got a glass from the kitchen cupboard, and then reach into another cupboard and pull out a bottle of pills. “Let’s get you your meds, and then you can lie down in the guest room.”
“I don’t want to put you out,” she protested.
Weak!
Now that she was here, she totally wanted to check out his home. What did that make her? Weak! She watched as he filled the glass with water from the fridge, then handed her the glass and pills.
“Drink up.”
She did.
“Seriously, how are you feeling? And don’t feed me a line of shit.”
Kenna grimaced, and Dex grinned. “How’d you know I was going to lie?” she asked.
“Everybody always says they’re ‘fine.’ It’s the first response no matter what. You were opening your mouth before your brain was engaged. So now that you’re thinking about it, how are you feeling? You were a little unsteady in Reverend Langley’s office.”
“I’m not used to being tackled on a linoleum floor. Austin and I used to play pig pile, but it was always on a rug. So yeah, just a short nap, and I’ll be good.”
His brown eyes warmed at her answer. “I imagine that wrestling on the floor with Austin was a long time ago, judging by the size of him.”
“It seems like just yesterday, and forever ago.”
He nodded like he understood. “Come on, let’s get you your nap.”
He led her down a short hall to a nicely furnished guest room. “The bathroom is right here,” he said opening the door directly across from the room. “Now that I earned a free morning, I’ve got a couple of things that need my attention. I’ll be communing with my computer in my study when you wake up. It’s the room right off the living room.” He gave her hand a squeeze. “If you can’t find me, just holler.”
She watched as he shut the door behind him, and she sank down on the bed.
Dexter Anthony Evans. Thirty-two. Never been married. Lived in San Diego his entire life. Buddy had said he could probably get a copy of his medical file if she wanted. But she didn’t need that to know he was in phenomenal shape. If it weren’t for the fact that she had caught him looking at her twice like he wanted to eat her up with a spoon, she would slink away in mortification at the idea of them together. He was physical perfection.
Buddy had also confirmed that what he had stated on the dating profile were true. He volunteered at the Big Brothers Big Sisters of San Diego, the boy he had been mentoring was currently a sophomore at Cal State Fullerton, and Dex wasn’t rushing into starting a new relationship.
Dex had graduated from UNLV, with a double major in computer engineering and mathematics, but instead of going the Navy ROTC officer route, he graduated and the next day joined the Navy as an enlisted man. According to everything that Buddy ascertained, he wanted to end his career the same as his grandfather, a master chief petty officer.
Every damn thing that Buddy had found out about Mr. Evans screamed honor. Kenna wasn’t worried about her physical well-being while staying at his house for a nap, but she was worried about her mental well-being.
She was interested in the damned man. What in the hell was she thinking?! She shook her head in disgust and winced.
“Lie down and quit obsessing,” she admonished herself.
She toed off her Sketchers and slid under the duvet. It felt like heaven. Damn, she was more tired than she’d realized. Double damn, he even had comfy linens.
***
He’d missed a Skype call from Darryl. Dex tried to ring him back but was stuck leaving a message. After that, he settled into the project he’d been working on for the mentoring program. It was a real bitch of a project, and he was enjoying the hell out of it. First, the old system that they had used to keep track of their applicants in San Diego was developed twenty years ago. They’d just done facelifts to it, instead of revamping it.
One of his buddies from college had gotten a job at a start-up in San Francisco and had contributed state of the art hardware, and he’d tapped another friend to cough up some sweet software to go on top of it. Now it was up to Dex to migrate everything. There had been some unplanned hiccups that had pissed him off. Who would have thought that they would not have deleted access to their system to severed employees over the last four years? The second thing was when he found out that their backups had been going to discs that were out of storage space, and instead of being over-ridden, the backups just weren’t getting done. They’d been walking a tight-rope without a net for over eight months.
He was monitoring the systems while thinking about Kenna. Seeing her in person had been a revelation. Here she had been talking about how she couldn’t replicate her ‘look’ when all along she rang his bell wearing no make-up with her hazel eyes spitting fire and attitude. Okay, if he had to put a fine point on the matter, today with her hair down he was a happier man. But still, she was a knock-out. And she had no idea. She walked into the Starbucks with him and had no earthly idea that she was garnering a ton of male attention. How in the hell was that possible? If he had to guess it had something to do with that asshat of an ex-husband.
He was midway through a line of code when he heard the door to the guest room open. He looked at the computer clock and saw that it was a little after noon. Dex hoped that Kenna was hungry because he was starved.
“Can I take you to lunch?” Kenna asked as she walked into his office.
“I was about to ask you the same thing. But I’m ecstatic to have you ask me out on a date.” He grinned.
Dex watched as she blushed and scowled at the same time. The scowl won out. “You know I was just offering to pay for lunch to return your hospitality.”
“Are you sure? Maybe subconsciously you wanted to ask me out all along.”
Her eyes got wide. “My God, you’re full of yourself, aren’t you?”
He laughed. “You’re fun to tease.”
“Well stop it,” she grumbled. “Do you want lunch or not?”
“Yep. Do you like Mexican food?” He ushered her back towards the living room. “I have to insist on buying your lunch since you’re feeding me dinner.”
&n
bsp; “Dutch treat. That way we’re not indebted to one another.”
“How’s your head feeling?” he asked changing the subject.
“It was feeling fine until you started teasing me. Seriously, we’re not dating. We’re just having lunch.”
“Go get your shoes and purse, and we’ll argue our status over lunch. Or should we argue about it after dinner? Two meals in one day seems kind of significant.”
“You’re right it does. Hold on while I call my mother and tell her you can’t make it for dinner,” she shot over her shoulder as she headed back to the guest room.
Dex grinned. He was ninety-nine percent sure she was giving him shit, but the fact that he wasn’t totally sure made it all the more entertaining.
“If I agree to split the lunch bill, am I still invited to dinner?” he asked Kenna when she came back the hall.
“It depends on how well you behave at lunch. If you give me too hard of a time, then dinner is off.”
He opened the door for her, and they went out to the jeep. He watched as she admired the bougainvillea again. “I can take you to a chain restaurant, or this little dive that has great food. Your choice.”
“Definitely the dive,” Kenna answered. “Austin and I eat at this one taco truck at least twice a month. It has the best food.”
“I wasn’t sure since you said that you worked hard to live in a good neighborhood.” Dex backed out onto the street and headed toward Danny’s Taqueria.
“Four years ago, at our old house, Austin was playing with the kids in our neighborhood. They were a grade older than he was. I was good with it because he was going to be in middle school with them, but it turned out two of them were in a gang. One of the boys shot a convenience store clerk. We were renting a small house, I moved out the next week.”
“You didn’t have an idea of where you were going to move to?”
“I must have talked to everyone at the nursing home and school I was going to, pretty soon I figured out the right middle school and high school for Austin to attend. All I could afford was an apartment, but I moved us in.”
“You didn’t let any grass grow under your feet.”
“Absolutely not. Austin hated leaving his friends and living in an apartment, but he knew I was trying to do the right thing for us, so he sucked it up.”
Dex maneuvered over the potholes in the cramped parking lot. “I’ll say it again, Austin seems like a good kid.”
“I think he is, but I’m biased.”
She moved a little more slowly than usual out of the jeep, and he opened the door to the small restaurant. “We place our orders up front,” he explained.
“It smells great in here.” Her hazel eyes lit up. “Is there anything you recommend?”
“Some kind of seafood. Their fish tacos are fantastic. I’m getting the shrimp rancheros. I’m also ordering guacamole with some of their homemade flour tortillas. Chips are free, but I slather the guac on my tortillas.”
“You talked me into the fish tacos.”
“Good choice.” They placed their orders, and Kenna didn’t even complain when he pulled out his wallet and paid for the meal. When he took their number, and they sat down at a table, he couldn’t resist.
“Now that we’re on our first date tell me more about yourself.”
She placed her elbow on the table and planted her chin in her hand. “I would love to after you tell me why you decided to contact me on the dating site. What about my profile stood out to you?”
Fuck! How in the hell was he going to answer that one?
“Dex? It’s an easy enough question. I looked at your profile, it had only been up for one day before you contacted me. Why me?”
Holy hell, he didn’t want to start this off on some kind of lie, but he didn’t want to have her think that he didn’t think she was special.
He was relieved when their number was called for their drinks. By the time he sat down Kenna was pissed.
“What?”
She looked him up and down, her face was flushed. Her hands were now clenched on the table in front of her. “Consider your words carefully Dexter Evans, I don’t deal well with liars.”
“Does Austin get away with anything with you?”
“Not that I know of,” she bit out.
She unrolled her napkin and slammed the plastic utensils down on the table. “I thought it was weird that someone like you would reach out to someone like me right after joining the site. But you were so funny and nice I overlooked it. But now you can’t answer one damned question without hesitating. What gives?”
Dex reached over and grabbed her right hand, and pulled it to him. He waited until she unclenched it and he was able to sandwich it between both of his.
“Kenna, at this moment, I am right where I want to be. I want to go out with you. Everything I’ve said to you after you sent me your e-mail has been the absolute truth. Does that pass the smell test?”
“So, you didn’t send the initial e-mail?”
Dex’s laugh made people turn their heads to look at him. “God, nobody can accuse you of being slow. You caught that, did you?”
“I have a teenage son, I’m trained to read through bullshit. Who sent me the first e-mail?”
“Guys from another SEAL team were playing a joke and set up the account, they sent hundreds of e-mails to women on that site. Over two hundred women responded, and I spent three nights explaining that it was a fake account and that I really hadn’t pinged their profile.”
Dex was hopeful when Kenna didn’t try to pull her hand away.
“That was a hell of a prank. You actually responded back to those women? How did that go?” Her eyes were twinkling.
“Mostly okay.”
“I’m thinking there might be a story with the ones that didn’t go ‘okay.’”
Dex shrugged. “I learned a couple of new phrases, and considering the fact that I’m in the Navy, that’s saying something.”
Kenna giggled. Then she got serious. “Why didn’t you blow me off?”
“You made me laugh. I’d never considered a dating site, but if I’d known you were on one, I would have been there years ago.” He looked down at their clasped hands, then back into her eyes.
“Kenna, all I was doing was reading e-mails and responding. Then I read yours and thought this is someone I have to meet. Of course, I had to go look at your profile pic since you swore it was the bomb...”
“I did not.” She tried to pull her hand away, but he wouldn’t let her.
“I wanted to see what twenty dollars’ worth of product looked like. It was pretty damn spectacular.”
“So, it was the picture.” She smiled at him.
“It was the triple threat. A good mother, a killer smile, and someone who could make me laugh. I had to meet you. Then you took down your profile.”
She tugged at her hand again. Their number was called, so he let her go and went to the counter. When he came back with the food, she was looking thoughtful.
“Before you say whatever it is you’re going to say. Eat.” He pushed her plate of food in front of her. “It’s better when it’s hot.”
“But I’m not all―”
“You’re all that and a bag of chips.”
“A bag of chips.” She laughed. She had a great laugh. “Seriously Dex, you listen―”
“Nope, don’t want to hear it. I’m not going to like it, I can tell. I want to enjoy my lunch. You can ruin my digestion after the fact. I have Rolaids in my jeep.”
“Seriously, Dex.”
“Seriously, Kenna,” he mimicked her. “You’re going to say something stupid about not giving this a shot for some inane reason, and I won’t be hungry. Right now, I’m hungry, and I’m about to eat one of my favorite meals, don’t ruin it for me, I’m begging you.”
She unwrapped her straw and put it into her drink. “All right. It does smell good,” she admitted.
He smiled. Now to get her talking about something else, and they woul
d have their first date!
Chapter Six
“Rosalie, I’m driving. It’s rainy. I’m going to be late for work. I don’t have time for this.”
“You’ve been avoiding my calls for days. I’m not going to see you until tomorrow. Tell me how Saturday went. You told me you’re physically fine. But I want to know how it went with the dashing Navy man.”
“Traffic is horrible this morning. I’ll talk to you tomorrow when I’m at your house.”
“Don’t you dare hang up on me. He came over to your house for dinner. How did it go with Austin?”
“Austin wants to be a SEAL now. Okay? I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
“You better.”
Kenna pressed the button on her steering wheel that ended the call. She should have never answered in the first place, not with the rain coming down like it was. God knew that they needed the rain here in Southern California, but having to drive on the freeways during rush hour was not fun. Her cell phone rang again when she was parking her car.
What the hell?
She grabbed her phone to answer it and give Rosalie a piece of her mind.
“Rosalie, I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
“This isn’t Rosalie,” a man answered.
Kenna dropped the keys to her car as she was getting out. She said eighty million swear words as they hit the water-logged parking lot.
“Who is this?” Kenna asked as she picked up her keys and pulled out her umbrella.
“A friend of a friend.” The man’s voice was low and raspy.
What a strange answer. She looked down and realized she had answered a call that was unidentified. “Seriously, who is this? What’s this about?”
She didn’t hear his whole answer as she fumbled with her purse, keys, and umbrella.
“...for a long time,” were the words he said as she put the phone back up to her ear.
“Can you repeat that?”
“Are you ignoring me?” he asked in that same quiet, creepy tone.
“I just didn’t hear you.”
She was then met by silence.
She looked down, the call had ended.
Her Devoted HERO (Black Dawn Book 2) Page 7
