“Heck yeah!” Ray shouted.
“That’s hot.” Sunny sighed.
“You’re makin’ us all dinner?” Rhodes asked.
Marco looked to my oldest brother and nodded. “Gypsy works really hard. I wanted to give her a break.”
And just like that, he’d earned Rhodes’s respect with one simple sentence.
“Can I help?”
At Holly’s question, Marco looked down at her with a heart-stopping smile. “Of course. I was hoping you’d ask. I don’t think I can get this all done without your help.”
Sweet holy hell, this man is good.
“All right, guys,” I said, commandeering the kids’ attention. “Those of you with homework need to get started. Holly, go wash your hands before you start helping with dinner. I need to have a word with Marco.”
Everyone scattered, but I noticed Sunny pull her phone from her back pocket and put it up to her ear as she headed off to her room. “Blythe?” she asked into the cell. “You’re never gonna believe what’s happening in my house right now.” She closed the bedroom door behind her, and I let out a beleaguered sigh, knowing I was so screwed. Blythe was Nona’s daughter. As soon as Sunny finished spilling the beans, I knew she’d go running to tell her mom everything. That meant it was just a matter of time before my girls descended on me like a flock of well-meaning yet annoying vultures.
Grabbing Marco’s hand, I practically dragged him down the hall behind me. “I know what you’re doing,” I snapped the minute my bedroom door shut behind us.
“Yeah?” He didn’t even bother trying to hide his grin. “And what’s that?”
“You’re buttering up my family so they’ll take your side!” I whisper-yelled, throwing my arms wide in frustration.
He didn’t look the least bit contrite as he said, “Whatever it takes, baby. I’m not above fighting dirty.”
“So you aren’t even gonna deny it?” I squeaked in bewilderment.
“My plan’s working, so what’s the point in denying it?”
“Gah!” I shouted to the ceiling.
When I looked back at Marco, I was startled to see he’d moved without me even noticing. His eyes drilled into mine as he reached up to cup the back of my neck and whispered, “If you’d just stop fighting this, you’d see how good it could be between us, Gypsy.”
“I-I don’t date,” I stuttered, his touch and the spicy scent of his cologne throwing me off-kilter.
His fingers pressed deeper into my skin as he pulled in an inhale through his nose. He studied me closely, pausing for a couple beats before responding. “Fine. So we won’t put a label on this. For now.”
My mouth fell open at his audacity, and he used that as an opportunity to lean in and kiss me. A simple swipe of his tongue against mine was all it took for the fight to drain from me completely. “Now, if you don’t mind, I’ve got a little girl out there ready to sous chef for me, and I don’t want to keep her waiting.”
Then he brushed past me, casual as could be, and left me reeling in the privacy of my bedroom.
* * *
“So you joined the military when you were eighteen?” Rhodes asked, no small amount of admiration in his voice.
With Holly’s help, Marco had made a delicious dinner. We somehow managed to fit all of us around my kitchen table and dug in, Ray and Rhodes devouring their meals like they hadn’t eaten in weeks. One of the things about having two growing boys under one roof was that my grocery budget had tripled. Fortunately, Marco had planned on that and prepared more than enough.
I twirled the last of the noodles on my plate around my fork and popped it into my mouth. My brother had spent the whole dinner drilling him with questions about his job, showing an interest in Alpha Omega I’d never seen before, and I found I was just as interested in the answers as Rhodes was.
“Yeah,” Marco responded. “Enlisted in the Army as soon as I graduated high school and worked my way up the ranks before eventually joining the Rangers. Best decision I ever made.”
“Why is that?” I asked before I could stop myself.
Marco looked across the table to me. “It gave me the discipline I needed, taught me patience. I was a pain in the ass as a kid. A little out of control. The Army forced me to grow up and become a man.”
I wanted to prod for more, discover everything I could about this man, but it wasn’t my place. Getting to know each other was what couples did, and despite what he thought, we weren’t dating. Pushing my curiosity to the side, I gathered a sauce-covered Raleigh from his high chair and took him back into my room for a bath.
His eyes were drooping by the time I got him into his pajamas. Sitting in the rocking chair in the corner of the room, I sang “Baby Mine” in a soft whisper like I did every night until he was fully out. I was on the second verse when a shadow formed in the doorway. Looking up, I saw Odette resting against the doorjamb with a proud, gentle look on her face. I finished the song and placed a kiss on Lee’s head before standing up and carrying him over to his crib.
“I’ll never get tired of watchin’ you with them,” she said quietly. “It was like you were born to be a mother.”
“More like forced into it,” I corrected on a scoff.
Moving farther into the room, she shook her head and muttered, “No, child. How you are with them doesn’t come from anything other than pure instinct that’s been ingrained in you since day one. You were born with a purpose, and that purpose is them.”
It warmed my heart to hear that she thought I was doing a good job. Most days I felt like I was barely treading water. I worried constantly that I was failing them, so hearing that someone else had confidence in my ability to take care of my siblings helped lessen the anxiety I felt far too often.
“Thank you, hon. That means a lot. Especially coming from you.”
Her expression grew thoughtful as she looked down at a sleeping Raleigh. “It was nice today, seeing what it would look like for you to have a little help.”
“Detty—”
“You’re gonna have to lower that wall sometime, baby girl,” she admonished. “One day, this little guy right here is gonna grow up and start a life of his own, just like the rest of them. You don’t learn to let people in now, you’re just askin’ for a long, lonely life once these kids are gone. And that thought breaks my heart.”
I couldn’t respond to that, mainly because my throat had closed up and I was close to tears.
She started for the door but stopped at the threshold to look at me over her shoulder. “Oh, and just so you know, Marco wrangled the kids into cleaning up the kitchen and finishing their homework. So it looks like you have the whole night off. You know, if that matters to you.”
Chapter Nine
Gypsy
Climbing from my van, I started toward the door of The Tap Room where my friends were gathered. As I’d suspected, Blythe told Nona about Marco showing up to make me and my family dinner the other night. Nona had then told Eden, who told Tempie, who told Rory. Once the cat was out of the bag, my girls had called, demanding a command performance so they could grill me for information.
“Girl, you’ve got some explaining to do” were the first words out of Nona’s mouth the moment I entered the bar.
“It wasn’t what you think,” I said, holding my hands up in surrender as I moved to the bar where they were congregating. The Tap Room was originally opened by Rory’s family way back in the day. It was passed down generation to generation, so she grew up with this place in her blood and had been waiting tables since she could remember. She eventually graduated to working behind the bar, and now that her parents were slowing down, they’d starting to give her more control so they could eventually retire from the bar and spend more time working their cattle ranch.
As was the norm any time we came to The Tap Room, Rory was behind the bar. The place wasn’t nearly as crowded during the day as it was in the evenings, but since they served a damn good lunch, it was far from empty. It wasn’t exac
tly up to snuff of the Evergreen Diner, but it was nothing to sneeze at.
I hooked my purse over the back of the stool and took a seat, looking to Rory. “Any chance you at least let me order lunch before the inquisition?”
She gave me a saucy look. “I suppose I can allow that.”
I snorted out a laugh. “Much appreciated. Could I get a club sandwich and chips?”
“Drink?”
“Well….” I looked to Eden, Temperance, and Nona to find them watching me with far too much interest before turning back to Rory. “I’d say this conversation’s going to require a margarita, or at least a shot of tequila. But since I’m only on my lunch hour, I’ll stick with iced tea.”
She headed off to put in my order and came back with my tea, placing it on a paper coaster in front of me. “All right, babe. I’ve got you all set up. Now start talking.”
“It was nothing,” I started.
“Nothing?” Nona balked. “According to what Sunny told Blythe, not only did he make you all dinner, but he watched you the whole time like you were the dessert course.”
“He did not!”
“That was a word-for-word account of what Sunny said, doll.”
That excited me way, way more than it should have. That stupid niggling of hope I had no business feeling started prodding at my brain, a voice inside my head whispering, Maybe. Just maybe. I tried my best to squash it, but it was pointless.
“Look, he’s just looking out for me. I haven’t told you, but… Malachi Black bought Pink Palace.”
They sucked in a collective gasp at that news.
“Marco’s been coming in on the nights I work to keep an eye out, but it seems I’ve caught the jerk’s attention—”
“Of course you did. You’re absolutely gorgeous,” Eden stated firmly, like it was wasn’t a surprise at all that a man would notice me. It went without saying that I loved my girls like crazy, but Eden was by far the sweetest.
“Anyway, once Marco found that out, he’s insisted on watching over me in and out of the club. That’s all it was.”
“For god’s sake, Gypsy,” Tempie snapped, her face puckered into an incensed frown. “Why the hell is this the first time we’re hearing about any of this?”
I began anxiously chewing on my thumbnail before answering. “I didn’t want to worry you guys. You have your own lives to deal with. Besides, it’s not a big deal.”
“Not a big deal? Are you kidding?” Rory cried. “You know, you always do this.”
I felt my face blanch at the anger in her voice. “Do what?”
“Keep things from us.”
“That’s not true,” I argued, but deep in my gut, I knew she was right.
“Yes, it is,” Eden said, her tone much calmer and softer than the others. That was so Eden, calm and soft to her very core. “You let us in, but only so far. You never tell us the hard stuff. You don’t share. You keep the bad bottled up, determined to deal with it all by yourself. You’re there for all of us when we’re struggling, but you’ve yet to allow us the same opportunity.”
“I—it’s not like that,” I mumbled sheepishly. “I mean, it’s not intentional. I don’t mean to do it, it’s just habit. I’ve been handling everything on my own for so long, and I don’t know any other way. I’m sorry if I made any of you feel like I don’t trust you.”
Nona leaned over and placed her hand on top of mine. “We know you trust us, babe. It’s not that. But being part of this crew means having each other’s backs. We just want the chance to do that for you too is all.”
“Okay,” I whispered past the lump in my throat several seconds later. “I promise I’ll try and do better.”
Her smile lit up her whole face. “That’s all we’re asking. Now, tell us all about Marco.”
Pulling in a deep breath, I finally said, “I like him,” rather sullenly.
“Well, don’t act too happy about it or anything,” Tempie said on a giggle.
“Yeah, I’ll admit there’s a mutual attraction there, but I’m not looking to date anybody.”
Eden tipped her head to the side, an incredulous frown wrinkling her forehead. “Why not?”
“I’ve been down that road before, and I have no desire to go there again,” I told her, bitterness coating my words. They looked at me with mixtures of concern and curiosity, but none of them pushed. If there was ever a time to try and keep that promise I’d just made them, it was now. That was how I found myself opening up and telling them a story I hadn’t told anyone but Odette.
“I had this best friend from the time I was little. Her name was Trina. She was more like a sister to me. She was there for me whenever things got to be too much, you know. I confided in her about my parents, about everything. She even helped me with the kids. She was my family.”
“I get the feeling this story’s gonna make me cry,” Tempie said in a quiet voice.
“When we started high school, there was this boy, Nick. I had such a crush on him.” I laughed at the memory of my younger self. “I’m talking I used to draw ‘Mrs. Nick Singleton’ on my notebooks with hearts and everything. I thought the best day of my life was the day he finally noticed me. He asked me out, and I was so freaking excited. I ran right to Trina and told her all about it. We were together all through high school, even stayed together once I had to drop out to take care of the kids. I thought he was the one, that he was going to take me away from my shitty parents and my shitty life. We talked about that all the time. He’d talk about how he was going to get this great job and provide for us. He came from a pretty well-off family, and used to say that when he turned eighteen and could access his trust fund, he’d use it so we could take my brothers and sisters and move away from my parents, give them a better life.”
“So what happened?” Rory asked hesitantly.
“He’d been sleeping with Trina pretty much the whole time we were together.”
“No way!” Nona shouted. “Please tell me that’s a sick joke.”
“Wish it was,” I replied, my chest starting to grow tight with pain. “Turned out I wasn’t the kind of girl he thought he could take home to Mommy and Daddy. They wouldn’t approve of him marrying someone like me. But according to him, I was good in bed, so he didn’t want to toss me aside until he was done having fun.”
“Fucking asshole,” Tempie said with a sneer.
“You could say that,” I grumbled, taking a sip of my tea. The conversation was halted for a minute while my lunch was placed in front of me, but I wanted to finish this trip down memory lane before I dug in. “He and Trina moved away together for college, and I thought I’d seen the last of them. But a couple years later, Nick showed up at the restaurant where I was waiting tables. He fed me some sob story about how he’d made a huge mistake, that it had always been me he loved, but his parents were pressuring him to settle down with a girl from a better family. He said he’d broken up with her for good, and he wanted me back.” I let out a bitter laugh. “I was such a freaking idiot. I fell for his load of shit hook, line, and sinker.”
“You weren’t an idiot,” Eden insisted. “He was your first love.”
“Yeah? Well, Trina wasn’t so forgiving when she walked into the apartment they were renting in Hidalgo and caught us in bed together. The bastard had lied about fucking everything. They weren’t broken up. They were living together. She blamed me for the whole thing. Said some of the nastiest, vilest things. I left there in tears. Then I got an invitation for their wedding a couple weeks ago.”
“I’m so sorry,” Nona, said, leaning in to me. “I hate that that happened to you, and they’re both pieces of shit. Neither of them deserved you. But you can’t let one loser guy define every relationship for you, honey.”
“I’m not,” I said. “It’s not just about Nick. It’s about Nick and Trina together. Then it’s about Calvin, the asshole who was stealing money from me and my siblings.”
Tempie winced. “Shit.”
“And it’s about Randy
,” I continued. “I should have learned my lesson with the first two, but I just wanted someone for me, you know? I wanted someone to love me, so I gave it one last shot.”
“Gypsy,” Eden whispered, her big doe eyes welling with tears.
“The first time he hit me, I hit the son of a bitch back. Unfortunately, he was a lot stronger than me. He put me in the hospital with a broken wrist, three fractured ribs, a dislocated shoulder, and a concussion. That’s when I finally decided I’d had enough. No more men. I’d made too many mistakes, not only picking assholes but allowing them in my kids’ lives. I made a promise to myself and to them that I’d never make those same mistakes again. I know Marco isn’t like any of them, but it doesn’t matter. When you’ve been burned that many times, you learn to stay far away from the heat.”
Silence descended on our little group, and after ripping the scab off those old wounds, the idea of trying to eat anything made my stomach revolt.
A minute later, Eden spoke up. “What if… well, what are you going to do if Marco doesn’t give up so easily?” She bit down on her bottom lip for a second before continuing. “Linc told me he’s been asking about you. Like a lot. He doesn’t strike me as the kind of guy who just gives in. I think he sees what a wonderful person you are, and I have a feeling he’s pretty determined.”
I had the same feeling, and to be honest, it scared the shit out of me and thrilled me all at the same time.
Forcing myself to pick up a chip and chomp down on it, I looked at my friend and gave her the truth. “I don’t know, Eden. I really don’t.”
Chapter Ten
Gypsy
I could hear the sounds of laughter and loud voices coming from inside my house all the way from the driveway as I pushed the driver door open on the van and climbed out.
Wrong Side of the Tracks: a Hope Valley novel Page 8
