The In-Between
Hixon
HIX FELT IT the minute he walked into the department the next morning.
He saw the cause when he looked beyond Donna, Bets and one of his other deputies, Larry, all of them at their desks in the bullpen, and he aimed his attention to his office where Hope was pacing.
Goddammit.
He swung through the swinging half door, and it was Larry who moved from his desk, close to the aisle to say, “Mornin’, Hix. And sorry, man. We asked her to wait out here. She refused. And she pitched a fit when Donna said she was gonna give you a call, so Donna thought it best to put her back there and maybe she’d cool off before you got here.”
He knew from having seen that pacing before, that hadn’t happened.
“Not your problem,” he growled, tipping his chin down to Larry, lifting it to Donna and noting that Bets was avoiding him but doing it looking under her lashes toward his office.
Once he’d greeted his deputies, Hix just kept staring into his office as he prowled there, seeing Hope had noticed he’d arrived and was standing smack in the window with her hands on her hips like it was her damned office and she was waiting for a naughty boy to show up and receive his chastisement.
He didn’t need three guesses to know that word had reached her about Greta.
What he didn’t quite get was why that drove her here.
Surely the woman could share what was on her mind on a freaking phone, not dragging his staff in as witnesses to whatever she’d worked herself up to dole out.
He moved down the side hall that led to the door to his office as well as the one at the back that led to the alley.
He turned right through the one to his office.
He hadn’t even closed the door when she launched in.
“You’re fucking unbelievable! How could you humiliate me this way!” she shouted.
He closed the door and ground out, “Calm down.”
“Calm down?” she screamed, advanced quickly and lifted a hand to shove his shoulder.
It rocked back and he felt his face turn to stone.
And he was way too pissed to fully experience it, but still, he distractedly felt something else turning to stone, and where that was happening was in his chest.
“You do not put your hands on me,” he warned low. “With what we are now, not ever. But not in anger. Never in anger, Hope.”
She rolled up on her toes and spat, “Fuck you. You fucked a fucking hairdresser.”
“I can see you’re pissed, I don’t get it, but I can see it. So can three of my deputies and Reva. I get you don’t care what that means to me as their sheriff. But they can also see you acting like a crazy woman.”
After a quick eye flare, Hix was not surprised Hope, who cared what people thought of her and went to pains to keep up a variety of appearances, backed off two steps.
Hix moved into his office, and after the shove, he felt it prudent not to go to the blinds at the window and lower them.
Instead, he walked behind his desk, putting distance and furniture between them.
“You don’t get why I’m pissed?” Hope asked when he’d stopped.
He lifted his eyes to her to see she’d also moved to stand four feet in front of his desk between the two chairs there.
“No. I don’t.”
“Are fucking insane?” she demanded to know.
It sucked but she was even beautiful like this.
Angry as hell.
It flushed her cheeks. Made her green eyes bright. Made her chest heave, bringing attention to her full tits.
She’d also often plant her hands on her hips or hitch out a foot, taking your attention to those areas, reminding you she had a great ass, fantastic, long legs, just how perfectly your hips fit into hers and just how good it felt to have those legs wrapped tight around your ass.
And she would sometimes toss her long, wavy hair that, at forty-one, she now had to dye back to its natural flawless pink champagne (her words for the hue), but even aided to that color, it was no less magnificent.
These were several of the reasons why Hix had always found it difficult to argue with her. Seeing her that way, it would make him impatient to get to the part of the fight that would end it.
That being having angry sex, something at which they both excelled.
Then again, normal sex with his ex-wife hadn’t sucked either.
“Nope. Not insane,” he answered her question.
“You fucked a hairdresser at my salon,” she informed him.
“Hope, I can’t imagine you didn’t know it would happen eventually. And in a town like this, it could be your salon, the grocery store, a teacher at one of the schools, whoever, you’d hear about it and likely know the woman. You know everybody. Everybody knows you. It’s unfortunate but it was going to happen.”
“It was going to happen?” she snapped. “I cannot believe you fucked a stylist at my salon, but what I really can’t believe is that you fucked anybody!”
Since she unfathomably wasn’t noting the obvious, he pointed it out.
“Me doing anything is not your concern.”
“It’s not . . . it’s not . . . it isn’t . . .” she stammered irately and finished on a high pitched, “It isn’t my concern?”
“It’s not your concern,” he affirmed.
She shook her head in brief, concise shakes. “I can’t . . . I cannot believe you’d say that or even think it. Especially about something like this.”
Right.
Hix had to admit, he was confused.
How could she not?
“We’re divorced,” he pointed out.
She leaned forward and on a near shout declared, “For three weeks!”
“That doesn’t negate the fact we’re divorced. But seeing as I’m reminding you of things, I’ll also remind you that we may have been divorced for three weeks, but you kicked me out a year ago.”
“And so this is my punishment?”
He felt his brows draw together. “Your punishment?”
“My punishment. You making a point.”
Hix stared at her.
Then he gave her the honest truth.
“Not one thing that happened between me and Greta had shit to do with you.”
Again she leaned forward and this time hissed, “Do not say her name in my presence.”
Okay.
Right.
What the hell was going on here?
“You do get the concept of divorce,” he noted curiously.
“Don’t be an asshole,’ she shot back.
“I’m not. I’m genuinely wondering at this point if you do.”
“What I get is the fact that I’ve been asking you to have a conversation for the last now more than three weeks and you refuse to speak to me,” she returned, leaning forward each time she put emphasis on her words.
It had not been the prevailing reason why Hix was overwhelmed with happiness when he’d married Hope nineteen years ago. That reason being from that point forward he’d only ever have one woman in his life he’d have to try to figure out.
But he couldn’t deny it had been a relief.
The prevailing reasons were that she had a great sense of humor. She was more into watching sports than even he was, the same with action movies. They’d both wanted the same things out of life, including the number of children they’d had in the exact order and gender they’d miraculously been given them. She could often be generous with her love, affection and time. She was spectacular in bed. And she was gorgeous.
Now, he realized, after all their years together, he didn’t get her.
He didn’t get Bets.
What he did get was that their bullshit pissed him off.
“Okay, seems I gotta expend the effort to make something else straight this week,” he began.
“Oh, so sorry, Hix. Is your wife and the mother of your three children taxing you with her demands?” she cut in sarcastically.
His voice dropped to a whisper. “That’s not right. You got it in you to get that or not, the simple matter of fact is that that is not right.”
His tone went normal, but steely, when he kept on.
“You’re not my wife anymore, Hope. That’s something you wanted, not me. Like you have a way of doing, you got what you wanted. And getting that, you don’t get to call me over and over again to demand my time. You don’t get to storm into my place of business and pitch a fit. And you do not get to act like I wounded you when I’m living my life, a life you disconnected, legally and emotionally, from yours.”
“Hix—”
Like Bets, even though his mother had taught him differently, especially when speaking with a woman, he talked over her.
“Now I see when we made arrangements for custody and decisions on who was going to get the house and all that other shit, we should have made it clear how this was going to go from now on. Since you’re here, we’ll take that opportunity.”
She stepped forward, her expression beginning to soften as she noted his mood and the fact it wasn’t shifting, so her game began to change. “Honey—”
He leaned into his fist in his desk and growled, “Do not ever fucking call me that again, Hope.”
He watched the color drain out of her face as her eyes widened.
He ignored that and declared, “Now this is the way it’s gonna be. You got a father and two brothers who live in this county who can help you out if you got a problem with your car, the house. Unless it affects my children, I don’t want to hear from you. You find someone you wanna date, I don’t care. Date him. I don’t wanna hear from you. I find someone I wanna see, that’s my business. I’ll do it. And I won’t be giving you a courtesy call to share that intel.”
He drew in a breath but continued speaking before she could get a word in.
“But if you need to change arrangements with the kids for any reason, you text me. It’ll be rare I won’t be able to take my kids so that won’t be a problem and we won’t need discussion. We have an issue to discuss about the children, we talk on the phone unless it’s serious. Other than that, Hope, you didn’t want to be in my life, you are no longer in my life. You wanted us done, we’re done. And listen to that, Hope, because I’m not gonna repeat myself, and having a lot of time to think on it, doing that like I’ve been doing now for years. When I say we’re done, we. Are. Done.”
Her eyebrows were up, her eyes blinking rapidly, before she whispered, “You can’t . . . you can’t mean that.”
He felt his head dipping to the side in mystification.
“I loved you,” he told her.
She moved another step forward, lifting her hand, her face again warming. “Hix.”
“I loved the family we made. I loved the life we created.”
She stopped in front of his desk and put her hand on it, her mouth beginning to curve up.
“And you tore that apart,” he went on.
Her lips parted as her face went slack in shock.
“You broke us,” he reminded her. “You broke me. Then you ended us. You wanna be friends now, that’s not gonna happen. You think you can do that and still depend on me to be there whenever you need me, that’s not gonna happen either.”
“I—” she whispered but he didn’t stop speaking.
“I wanted to grow old with you, Hope. I wanted to drive around the country in an RV or buy some bungalow in Arizona to spend the winter months, or whatever we decided we were going to do. But I wanted to do it with you. Hold your hand when our son stood at the front of a church waiting for his bride. Turn right into your arms when our daughters safely brought grandchildren into the world. Sign the cards you gave me for our grandkids’ birthdays, graduations, whatever we could celebrate, until the day I died. I told you all this before when I tried to find a way to fix whatever you thought was broke. But you didn’t listen. You didn’t even share with me what you thought was broke so I could try to fix it. You just took all that from me. And it hurt like fuck. So I am not gonna be your friend or the man you call when the toilet gets backed up. This time, you pushed for what you wanted, it’s you that lives with the consequences. You don’t push even more to make it the way you now want it to be.”
“We really need to talk, Hix,” she whispered urgently, almost pleading.
His voice shared exactly how much he meant it when he stated, “You know my answer to that, and I will not answer that request again.”
They stood staring into each other’s eyes until he watched it happen.
Bets could get mean.
Hope could get ugly.
And right then, she got ugly.
“You want it that way, Hix, you got it,” she bit out.
He pushed off his fist in the desk and crossed his arms on his chest, deciding not to remind her, again, that wasn’t the way he wanted it and point out that was the way she’d made it.
He’d said his piece.
They were done.
And he was done.
“Now I know another election won’t be coming around for a few more years, but don’t think, you treat me like shit this way, it’ll be that easy to win when the other two times you won was because of my dad, my mom, my brothers and me.” She jerked a thumb at herself. “We’re McCook and I’m not thinking it’d be hard to remind folks you’re not.”
Was she serious about that bullshit?
For Christ’s sake, the first time he ran unopposed.
He opened his mouth to speak but she wasn’t done.
“And I hear your slut does good hair, though thank God her hands have never been in mine. But thinkin’, her movin’ in on you the way she did, she might find herself losin’ clients. And fast.”
He felt all the muscles in his body get tight and started, “Hope, don’t you—”
“Nope,” she shook her head, moving away but not losing eye contact with him. “You stood there telling me the way it was, Hix, now you get to know the way it is. And part of that way is that you don’t get to tell me what to do anymore.”
Like he’d ever told the woman what to do.
He rounded the desk and followed her, warning, “You don’t wanna play it this way.”
She put her hand on the door handle, turned to him and spat, “Wanna bet?”
He made it to her just as she’d half-pulled open the door.
He slapped a hand on it above her head and shoved it closed.
She jerked her head back to look up at him with narrowed eyes.
He tipped his chin down to look at her, right up in her space and not moving.
“Shaw is going into the military, but we got soccer camps, dance classes, college tuitions, then weddings to pay for, Hope,” he informed her. “Not certain the Schroeder name holds the sway you think it does, but regardless, I just wanna see if I have this clear. Your play to hurt me because you’re not getting your way is to threaten my livelihood and take away my ability to see to my children?”
“You’re a good cop, Hix. You’ll find another job in another county or some city, where you always really wanted to be anyway.”
He could not believe he was hearing this.
“So your play is to try to take me away from my kids?”
She gave a casual shrug but her eyes were flashing with fury.
He was hearing this.
He just couldn’t believe it.
“And you don’t even know Greta, but you know Lou, and you’re gonna try to throw them under the bus to have your tantrum?”
“Greta should know better than to jump on a man before the ink is dry on his divorce papers.”
“Greta didn’t pick me up, Hope. That was me.”
“I don’t need the details,” she hissed, coming up on her toes to do it. She rolled back and continued, “But like you said, she got what she wanted, she lives with the consequences. She’s probably been panting after you since she got into town, lying in wait.”
“I’ve never seen the woman before Saturday.”
“Maybe not, Hix, but for sure she’s seen you. All the women have seen you. And she’s a woman, she saw her shot, so don’t be stupid. You didn’t pick her up. You didn’t do anything but be Hixon Drake, which is all you ever needed to be.”
He had no idea what that remark meant.
And he didn’t give a crap.
“Leave Greta alone,” he warned.
Her face twisted, and suddenly, she wasn’t beautiful at all.
“Kiss my ass.”
She turned to the door and yanked on it so Hix removed his hand and stepped away.
He turned and watched through the window as she stormed out of his department.
“Goddamn shit,” he muttered when she slammed through the front door.
He took his gaze from the window not meeting any of his deputies’ eyes and stalked to his desk. He turned on his computer but didn’t enter the password.
He didn’t even sit down.
He stalked back around the desk and only stopped when he saw Donna in the door.
“Got somewhere I gotta go, Donna,” he told her.
Instead of nodding and getting out of the way, she walked in and closed the door quietly behind her.
Christ.
Was he having to repeat himself with a woman again?
“Donna,” he clipped.
“Think you should let Hope have some time to get her head together.”
“I’m not worried about Hope.”
Without hesitation, she continued, “Then I think you should know Lou opens at eight, but on Tuesdays Greta doesn’t start seeing clients until ten. She does late hours so ladies who work can get to see her. Being a lady who works, and seeing as she’s my stylist, I know her schedule.”
Hix ground his teeth.
“I see you’re not in a good mood,” she said carefully. “But I know you’re a man who doesn’t like to be blindsided, so I’m gonna say it even though I think you probably already know. Everyone in town is talking about it.”
“Shit,” he hissed between his teeth.
She took a hesitant step forward, her eyes sliding to the window before they came back to him.
“And, uh, we didn’t say anything about it because we were all pulling for you. We thought, up until, well . . . you know, um . . .” She didn’t finish that but she did go on, “It’s just that, we had hope. We didn’t say anything because we thought it would all work out. But now, well, I think you should know that the town’s been talking about it since ’round about the time you stood in your own driveway and threw your suitcases in the back of the Bronc.”
Hix drew breath into his nose, tipping his head back to look at the ceiling and lifting his hands to rest them on his hips.
“But I figure you probably knew that too,” she said quietly.
He again looked at her.
“For what it’s worth,” she went on, “I’ll say, at the beginning this time, Greta’s really great.”
“Nothing is happening with me and Greta,” he ground out.
She looked him right in the eye, hesitated a beat, then whispered, “That’s a shame.”
“My divorce was final three weeks ago,” he pointed out.
She nodded. “Unh-hunh.”
“She doesn’t need the shit I got in my head right now,” he shared. “But it’s way too soon for me, my kids, and because of that, it wouldn’t be fair on any woman.”
“Right,” she said softly.
“We just had a thing.”
She again nodded. “It happens.”
Hix dropped his head and looked at his boots, muttering, “Hope is gonna grind her to ash.”
“Jep and Marie Schroeder are salt of the earth,” Donna declared, and Hix lifted his head to look at her again. “Cook and Reed too. Everyone likes ’em. Hope’s family has that from the town and they also got a lot of respect.”
Her gaze leveled on his in that way of hers that got attention even from the drunkest drunk or the most punkish kid.
And she kept talking.
“But none of them held Krissy Schultz’s hand until the fire department got there with the Jaws of Life to get her out of that car, Hix. And none of them was seen having a word with Lyle Koch at the side of the church when his wife turned up at work with a black eye for about the fifteenth time. And none of them treated old Mrs. Olson like she was perfectly sane to think her house was haunted and went to it every night. Driving all the way out to that old farm, thirty miles, before he went home to his family, just so he could do walkthroughs to give her peace of mind that some poltergeist was not gonna spirit her to another realm. All this until her kids got her sorted in a nursing home. None of them did any of that. But you did. And everybody knows it.”
“You heard,” he murmured.
Her face changed in a way he’d never seen it.
But only for an instant.
Then she shook her head and said, “I grew up in this town. Grew up here just like Hope did. I know her, Hix. And she’s a great gal. That’s getting lost in all this, but she just plain is. I know that because I grew up with her. But even if I didn’t, I’d know it knowing you and knowing you’re not a man who would put up with a woman who wasn’t. We all know she’s a great gal.”
She pulled in a breath, kept her eyes trained on him and kept going.
“Except when she doesn’t get her way. She’s always been like that, from way back. And right now she’s not getting her way and everyone who knows her knows how that goes. The point I’m trying to make is, don’t let her get into your head and give you even more to worry about. It’s not just your deputies that are rooting for you, boss. And it’s not just us who wanna see you happy again.”
He acknowledged that with a short nod of his head.
“This will pass, for all of us,” he told her.
“It always does.”
“Thanks for comin’ in here, Donna.”
She gave him a small grin and said, “Always around, you need me, Hix.”
She was.
He had his boys in that town, but now that he was thinking on it, the person he was closest to was Donna. She hung out with him at the Outpost before Hope asked him to leave, but she did it a lot more frequently after. She was his most veteran deputy, so in the rare instance anything went down, she was his number one. He counted on her to keep the others focused when he wasn’t around, and she never let him down.
She was a good deputy. A good woman. Her husband knew it. Her kids. The town.
And so did Hix.
“Thanks,” he murmured, turning back to his desk.
“Right, boss, that’s outta the way, you should know, Peters’s cows got loose again. They’re blocking County Road 16, and traffic, such as it is, is backing up. Which, through the report, is all of three cars. He’s not answering his phone. Should I send Larry and Bets out there to deal with it?”
Peters was probably still passed out from drinking alone in front of his television like Hix suspected he had every night since the mean sonuvabitch’s wife came to her senses and left him two years before.
His fields had been fallow those two years and Hix had no idea how his cows hadn’t wasted away.
But his fences had, seeing as the man wasn’t a good farmer even before his wife took off.
“Send ’em with the message that this is the third time, and McCook County Sheriff’s Department gives more than three strikes, but less than five. So he best get onto sorting out that damned fence or county fines will have to be deducted from his whiskey budget. And if the drivers are still idiotic enough to be waiting for cows to pass when our deputies get there, tell them to thank whoever called it in and divert the drivers. This county is on a grid system, it shouldn’t be difficult for them to find an alternate route.”
Her lips ticked on her, “Gotcha.”
And with that, she took off.
Hix turned to his computer, thinking, if Greta wasn’t going to be showing up at work in less than two hours, he’d have gone to deal with Peters himself.
A banner day for the sheriff. That meaning there was something to do.
However she needed a heads up. And it should come from him.
But the last time they’d dealt with Peters, they’d had to wedge open his door and throw a glass of water in his face to wake his ass up. He might not have time to deal with Peters and get to Greta in time to warn her before she faced her day at the salon.
What should not be was him showing at her front door unexpectedly, invading her space after he’d exited it the way he had.
It wasn’t better he’d be showing at her work, but he figured it was better than invading her home, even to stand on her porch.
So work it was.
And until then and after that chore was done, he just had to hope he was right.
That this would pass.
And do it without any more of Hope’s casualties piling up.
At five to ten, Hix pushed through the door at Lou’s House of Beauty, and seeing as he’d been there before to drop off or pick up Corinne and Mamie when they had their appointments (albeit infrequently since Hope normally went with them), he didn’t have to take in the décor.
It was, like pretty much everything in Glossop, suspended in time. The women there could be wearing those dresses with shoulder pads and having their hair rolled in the way they did during World War II, or they could be how they were right then. The woman in Lou’s chair getting a hot-pink lock of fake hair what looked like Velcroed to her roots.
“Uh . . . well . . .” He looked to Lou when she started stammering and saw her wide eyes cut to the back of the salon even if her face remained pointed to him. “Um, hey, Hix.”
“Lou,” he greeted, skimmed a glance through the woman in her chair who he didn’t know and looked back to Lou. “She in the back?”
He knew he didn’t have to say who “she” was.
If any crime ever happened in that county, he’d have Lou on his confidential informant list.
That’s the way it was everywhere.
From rumor to speculation to hard facts, if they were to be had, the first place they were had was at the local beauty parlor.
“Yeah,” Lou answered.
“Thanks,” Hix muttered, and without invitation, moved that way.
He did it wondering if Greta had been in that salon any of the times he’d been there for Corinne and Mamie and he just hadn’t noticed her.
Then he pushed through the door to the back, saw her standing at some shelves filled with bottles, boxes and tubes, and she turned to him, the visual of her right there, a few feet away, live and in person smacked him in the face, and he knew there was no chance in hell he hadn’t noticed her.
He loved his wife. When they were together, his mind had not once taken him to another place, not even to wonder how it would be with another woman.
But he was still a guy.
And Greta was tall and she was built. She had a few pounds on Hope, but they’d settled in all the right places.
On Saturday night, she’d been wearing a tight black dress that hit her knees. It had one shoulder bare, material swooping over the other, and it was covered in sequins with dangling spangly bits that moved when she did.
Now she was wearing a pair of faded jeans that had a wide cut at the hem and a cream, slouchy, collarless shirt that almost looked like a man’s, except for the silky material it was made from and the fact the long tails were cinched loosely at her waist in a knot. The shirt’s arms were rolled up near to her elbows and its buttons undone at the chest to the point cleavage was a given.
And Greta had fucking great cleavage.
There was a mess of thin gold necklaces coming down her chest to flirt with the opening in her shirt, long thin hoops that tangled in her hair and brushed her shoulders, and peeking under the hems of her jeans he could see a pair of spike-heeled, tan suede sandals that, across the foot, had a load of thin straps.
Her toes were painted a wine color.
As were her nails.
It was far from good she not only looked great in a tight black dress, she looked seriously great in just a pair of jeans and a shirt.
But it was her hair, face and eyes that had him standing silent, staring at her.
Eyes a light blue that was almost gray. They were big, wide set, making her seem open, approachable, friendly. And she had a lot of hair that had a lot of big curls, feathering and waving away from her face, a mix of honey and sunshine in the tendrils.
And he remembered she’d had a great smile, big teeth that were so white, if the healthy whites of her big eyes and mass of her big hair didn’t accompany them, they might seem unreal.
But when she smiled and really gave it to you, her pretty, rosy lips spread wide, exposing two rows of the most perfect teeth he’d ever seen, that smile could blind you.
Though, she wasn’t smiling then.
She looked frozen in time.
“Greta—” he started just as the door clicked shut behind him.
At the sound of his voice, she jerked out of it and took two wide steps, right into his space.
Tipping her head back, she whispered heatedly, “What are you doing here?”
“Something’s happened and I need to share.”
Her head tipped angrily and her mass of hair went with it.
It lasted less than a second.
And it was a spectacular show.
“Yeah, like your ex calling Lou and telling her to erase all her and your daughters’ appointments from her books forevermore and to be ready because her posse are going to be calling in and doing the same?” she asked tersely.
He looked to her shoulder and whispered, “Shit.”
“Lou’s not friends with your wife, she’s friends with me,” she went on. “She’ll hold strong. But I reckon, your ex follows through with what she isn’t hiding is her plan, only so much Lou can take. What with the fact that Bill sometimes forgets that marriage is a partnership and his part of the partnership includes letting his family share in his paychecks instead of them going right to the Outpost to pay his tab every month.”
Fantastic.
“I’ll have a word with Bill,” he told her.
Or another one.
“Don’t have a word with Bill, Sheriff, have a word with your wife.”
“She isn’t my wife, Greta.”
“Not sure she’s been fully notified of the status change.”
“She has, and if she hadn’t, we had words this morning.”
Her brows drew together as she slid an inch back. “Words that might drive her to make a few calls to her posse so all of them could check off their to-do list canceling those pesky hair appointments?”
“Words like that, yeah,” he ground out.
She stepped a step away and looked to the floor at her side, murmuring, “Damn.”
“Greta.”
She looked to him and he had to take pains to ignore the fact that one look from those eyes in that face made his entire focus center on the itch in his hands urging him to touch her.
And the feel of his crotch.
“Have your clients been canceling?” he asked.
“Not yet but it’ll happen and that won’t be too good. But now it’s happening . . . to Lou. And she needs asses in her chair, Sheriff, not cancellations seeing as she has two daughters to feed, and oh . . . I don’t know, she might want some ramen noodles for herself and maybe to be able to throw some scraps at Bill every now and again.”
“This will blow over,” he said.
And he hoped like hell he was right.
She studied him saying a dubious, “Right.”
“It will and you and Lou will be good,” he assured. “It was a one-time thing, people will see that and then someone else will do something that’ll take their attention and they’ll forget all about it.”
He powered through her wince when he said it was a “one-time thing” and she powered through the rest of it, declaring, “You clearly don’t know women very well. When the sisterhood gets activated, they’ll train their daughters to pile bitch hatred on their mark to insure it won’t die when they kick the bucket.”
His gaze moved to her hair before it went back to her eyes. “Don’t know, but my guess is, you’re talented. Closest hair salon is twenty miles away and someone might make that trek once or twice to make a point, but then it’ll get old. But regardless, Hope has an elevated idea of her pull in this town. You do your job well, I’m sure your clients will be loyal to you.”
“Well, I’m glad you’re sure.”
He moved into the space she’d put between them.
It was a mistake.
Added to all the rest that was her, her perfume hit him.
He did his best to ignore that too and murmured, “It’s gonna be okay, Greta.”
She held her ground even if she did it holding her body stiffly and returned, “It’s not gonna do the cause of communicating ‘it was just a one-time thing,’ you showing here, Sheriff.”
It hit him then she was calling him “Sheriff,” not Hixon or Hix.
He didn’t comment on that or think about the fact he didn’t like it all that much.
He said, “I wanted to give you a heads up.”
“Well, thanks. You’ve done that. You have another heads up to give me, come in disguise or better yet, try smoke signals.”
Shit, she was going to make him laugh.
He couldn’t laugh. He had to get this done so he wouldn’t experience something else that drew him to her.
“While I’ve got you—” he started.
At that, she moved back two steps into the cramped space, nearly running into the shelves, rolled her eyes to the ceiling and declared to it, “Oh boy, here we go.”
He felt tightness hit his neck. “Here we go with what?”
She looked to him. “I jumped the gun, sorry, bud.” She circled a hand at him. “Carry on.”
“Here we go with what?” he repeated.
“You want the multiple choice?” she asked.
He rocked back on his heels and crossed his arms on his chest.
As he did, she watched him do it, her gaze dipping to his chest, and something came over her face that looked a lot like she’d looked the first time he’d touched her hand resting on the table between them at the Dew Drop.
She wiped that clean when she refocused on him.
For his part, he took pains to ignore that too.
“A, you can try to make yourself feel better for treating me like a piece of ass by apologizing again.”
Damn, that was what he’d been about to do.
“B,” she went on, “you can treat me like the piece of ass you think I am by angling for a little nookie in Lou’s back room, or perhaps showing me to the alley.”
Okay.
Right.
He’d been a dick, but even so, he was there, she knew why so she had to know that shit was not on.
“Greta—” he began on a growl.
“Then there’s C,” she rolled over his word with some of her own. “You starting the conversation that you think might win you a piece of ass whenever you get the itch by ascertaining if I’m open to be your booty call.”
He closed his mouth and felt his lips thin.
“Or D, a combination of the above,” she concluded.
“A,” he bit off.
“Right,” she mumbled.
“I’d also like to offer you an explanation,” he continued tightly.
“Well, I’d say I’m all ears, but hopefully I have a client coming in T minus right about now.”
Damn, she was infuriating and hilarious at the same time.
She hadn’t been hilarious at the Dew Drop.
She just sang like a dream, looked like a wet dream, and listened while he talked like she gave a shit what he had to say.
Christ.
And dammit, he hadn’t asked her a thing about herself.
Christ.
“I got divorced very recently,” he informed her.
“Considering I’m learning the hard way that you’re a public personality, Sheriff, I know that. But just to say, I’ve been in Glossop awhile now so I knew it already, which makes me the idiot.”
“You aren’t an idiot.”
“I am,” she whispered.
All of a sudden, Hix grew still.
And he did because just as suddenly, she’d changed. The whole of her changed. Hell, the air in the room changed.
“You’re not an idiot,” he whispered back.
She said nothing.
“It was good, all of it, not just what happened in your bedroom.”
He watched her swallow but she didn’t reply.
“I’ve been married for nineteen years. I signed my divorce papers three weeks and three days ago,” he finally shared.
“You’re counting the days,” she said softly.
“Yeah,” he replied the same way. “And now I think you get me.”
She nodded, lifting her hands to cup her elbows in a defensive posture that, strangely, Hix felt a trace of pain just at witnessing it.
“If it had happened in a few months . . .” He trailed off.
“I get it.”
“It didn’t.”
“No.”
“So, the time isn’t right, for me, I got kids, for them, so also for you.”
She nodded again.
“And now I’ve screwed it up,” he said. “Acted like a dick. Made you feel—”
“It’s okay.”
“It isn’t.”
“It’s okay, Hixon.”
She called him Hixon.
The tension went out of his neck.
“I didn’t mean to make you feel what I made you feel and I’m sorry for that. So sorry, Greta. I had a lot messing with my head. Too much. So much I shouldn’t have taken it there between us. You got no reason to believe me but I’ll say it any way. I’m not that guy.”
“I believe you.”
He studied her. “Yeah?”
She nodded.
And it was then she started unraveling him.
She did this letting her face get soft.
“You’ve been married nineteen years. Unless you stepped out on her, it’s impossible for you to be that guy.”
“I never stepped out on her.”
“I believe that too,” she whispered.
And she did. He saw it in her eyes, in the softened line of her body.
Jesus, she was a woman who could communicate with every inch that was her.
No figuring out Greta.
She gave it all with everything she had.
He had to ignore that too.
“Right, good,” he muttered but held her gaze. “But it isn’t okay. I was the ass in all that. You didn’t deserve that. I should have explained it then. You were . . . you are . . . great.”
“Thanks,” she said quietly.
He drew in breath and said gently, “I’m glad we got that sorted, Greta. With the way I treated you, I don’t deserve it but it means a lot you took the time to listen so I could give it to you.”
“Well, uh . . . thanks for taking the time to give it to me.”
He wanted to smile in order to see if she’d give him that back.
But he didn’t deserve that either.
“Now you’ve got a client,” he prompted.
She lifted her chin. “Mm-hmm.”
“So I’ll let you go.”
She unhooked her hands from her elbows to throw an arm toward the door at the back. “That leads out into the alley.”
“I’m walking through the salon.”
She stared at him.
“We didn’t do anything wrong,” he stated. “We’re adults. We connected. We enjoyed each other. I’m not attached anymore. You aren’t either.” He lifted his brows. “I assume.”
She shook her head, her hair brushing all over her shoulders, something Hix had to avoid watching.
“I’m not.”
She wasn’t.
A woman who could sing with that honesty, listen with it, talk with it and make love with it, of course she wasn’t.
He forged past that too and carried on talking.
“So we have nothing to be ashamed about. Nothing to hide. Hope can get ugly. That’s her prerogative. We don’t have to give people reason to believe she has that right because she doesn’t. She’s a forty-one-year-old woman throwing a tantrum. The folks in this town are close-knit and loyal. They’re also sensible. They’ll see things as they are and move on. If Hope doesn’t, it’s not my problem anymore, and it sure as hell isn’t yours.”
“Okay, Hixon.”
He looked into her big eyes.
And he wanted to ask her to lunch at the Harlequin.
He wanted to see if she was free some evening next week to take her to a movie.
He couldn’t do that.
Because his ex-wife was who she was, and things were how they were, Hope was giving him reasons to fall out of love with her.
But that was where he was at now.
Falling out of love.
He knew Greta intimately. He knew she was funny and honest. And he knew there was a vulnerability to her the cause of which it wasn’t his right to have.
That was all he knew.
Except for the fact that he knew without doubt she didn’t need to be like his apartment.
The in-between while he was sorting out his life.
She deserved more.
He just wasn’t in a place he could give it to her, and with the wounds Hope had inflicted, at that time in his life, he wasn’t sure he could give it to anyone again, at least not for a long time.
In that time Greta could find her more and she didn’t need a man with his head a mess standing in her way.
“I gotta get to my client,” she said.
He stepped out of the way and jerked his head to the door. “Go.”
She moved to it and put her hand on the handle but turned to him.
Then she ripped his heart clean out of his chest, her big, beautiful, blue eyes staring right into his as she said, “She’s a complete fool.”
With that, she opened and walked through the door.
Hix pulled air into his nostrils.
And smelled hints of her perfume.
Shit.
He gave it a beat.
Three.
And after that he followed her, dipping his chin to the women in the salon, a number that had grown more than double to when he’d walked in, murmuring, “Ladies.”
But he caught Greta’s eyes, tipped his head to the side, his lips up, and then without looking back, he walked out the front door.
And he did it not having that first clue that, with a tip of his head and a small curl to his lips, he shifted the axis of Glossop, Nebraska in a way anyone who knew either of them, which was most, started to believe dreams could come true.