Wild Wind: A Chaos Novella (Chaos #6.6)(17)

She looked both freaked and amused when she inquired, “Which one is Dutch and which one is Georgie?”

“Dutch is my brother. Georgie is his girl.”

“I should have called that. And…your ex is her sister?”

“I had the sister first. Dutch is the copycat on that.”

She was nodding at the same time still looking amused.

“Though, he got the better one,” Jag continued.

“This definitely would make things uncomfortable, you gotta put up with the ex at family affairs.”

“Yeah, especially when she fleeced me, repeatedly, for money that was supposed to be helping her out paying rent because she said her landlord kept jacking her around, when really she was snorting my money up her nose and buying three thousand dollar purses. Her sole purpose for being with me was being on the grift. She supposedly fell for me sometime through that, but that’s not my problem. My problem is, I’m told she’s found the road to redemption and I gotta sit at a table with a woman who pissed away thousands of dollars that I earned.”

“Holy fuck, Jagger,” she whispered, horrified, but also, he sensed, angry.

“Yeah, so I’d actually wanna say yes to dinner with you and then take you over to Dutch and Georgie’s, because I want time with you, and it’d be cool they met you. Though, full disclosure, also because Carolyn would fucking hate that. But I wouldn’t do that to you because that would not be fun for you and we should have time for ourselves before we get to shit like that.”

“I hear you, but I’m game.”

Jagger stared at her.

“Seriously,” she went on, “if they’ve got enough food to feed me, I could totally play girlfriend to get in the face of some grifter who conned you out of your hard-earned cash.”

“I didn’t say my cash was hard-earned. I dig my job. It isn’t like every day’s a trip to Disneyland, but I love what I do.”

“You still earned that cash and gave it to her to be a decent guy, not for her to use you and blow money you could be using to buy more motorcycle boots with.”

He grinned down at her.

She grinned up at him.

And she asked, “So, we on?”

He stopped grinning and asked back, “Are you serious?”

She shrugged. “Why not?”

“Maybe I should take you out on a proper date before I take you to my brother’s house for dinner.”

“Why?”

He opened his mouth.

Closed it.

Opened it again.

But he said nothing.

Archie spoke. “In case you didn’t get it, I’m over my snit of you being a big baby about our tiff a few years ago.”

Uh…

Hang on a second.

“Me being a baby?” he asked.

“And we’ll need to work on your apparent addiction to the word ‘babe’—”

“Archie—”

“But I wanna know you too. I’ve been waiting a long time. So we’re doing this. And I’ll warn you, I’m not conventional.”

He was getting that.

“I’m not either,” he pointed out the obvious.

“So who cares if our first date is at your brother’s?”

“With his woman and my ex,” he reminded her.

“With his woman and your ex.”

It was then, Jagger got serious.

Very.

“Honey, that might be a lot and you gotta know you’re ready for it.”

“Jagger, I wouldn’t tell you I’m good to go if I wasn’t good to go. Something to know about me, I don’t bullshit. I don’t lie. I don’t play games. I don’t have time for any of that. I became a mom and a wife when I was fourteen. It sucked but I learned a lot. And that’s part of what I learned.”

There was a lot to unpack there, but now was not when they should get into it.

Now was for him to say, “We’ve waited a long time to be here, and I’d like our first date to be something special.”

The area around her mouth got soft, which brought his attention to it, and how gorgeous it was, and she used it to say, “So he can be sweet.”

He tore his focus from her mouth and said, “I’m a lot of things.”

Another light hit her eyes as she started, “If you don’t want me to go—”

He cut her off, fast. “I do.”

“I have a feeling, whatever happens, dinner at your brother’s might not be special, but it’ll be memorable.”

He couldn’t argue that.

“Come pick me up before. We can talk on the way. And we can talk on the way home. That’ll be our special,” she offered.

“Right, I’ll need your address,” he told her.

She pointed up.

He looked up.

Then he looked at her. “You live over your shop?”

She nodded. “I semi, kinda own the building.”

“What’s the ‘semi, kinda’ part of that?”

“My mom’s folks owned it. When they passed, they left it to us. So my brother owns half.”

He wasn’t loving the look on her face.

“I see this is a story,” he noted.