Motorcycle Man (Dream Man #4)(41)

She looked back at the rack and started slapping hangers but I knew she wasn’t looking at the clothes.

“Your uncle and I understood your need to check out, Tyra. Sometimes in people’s lives, they need to check out. But I gotta tell you, your uncle isn’t fired up about how you’re checking back in.” She slapped a hanger across the rack. “The tattoos, he could handle.” Hanger cracking. “The needing a haircut, he could handle.” Another hanging cracking. “The grown kids, he could handle.” Another hanger went. “The grown kids cursing freely without him saying a word, he could handle.” There was another hanger crash. “The hot and heavy make out session as a good-bye in front of your uncle and Tack’s kids, he could handle.” And yet another hanger. “Even his ex shouting the house down, he could handle.” No hanger as her eyes cut to me. “All of that together?” She shook her head. “Um… no.”

“Things are confusing right now, Aunt Bette,” I said quietly and Aunt Bette’s gaze grew sharp.

“I see this,” she replied, hesitated then finished, “Clearly.”

“I like him,” Lanie announced, pulling out a top and holding it down her front as I stared at her in shock. “I think he’s lush.”

“I thought you wanted me to give notice,” I said to her.

She stopped looking down at the top and looked at me. “I did, until he made me pancakes. Now I think he’s lush.”

That feeling I had that morning swept through me as Aunt Bette muttered, “Gotta say, those pancakes are definitely in the plus category.”

I started slapping hangers, declaring, “I can’t talk about this.”

“Why?” Aunt Bette asked.

I stopped slapping hangers and looked at her. “Because I don’t know what to think about it. He’s a complicated man. There’s too much going on, with him and just with me, and all of it is happening fast. One day, I knew where my life was heading. The minute I woke up, I knew what I would be facing. Two and a half months ago, I changed that and now I don’t know what I’m doing, where I’m heading. All I know is, wherever it is, I have to get there. And as for Tack, he can be…” I stopped then started again, “a lot of things. Some of them are good, really good. Some of them are bad, really bad.”

“What’s bad?” Aunt Bette asked.

I shrugged and started moving hangers. “He’s unlike any man I’ve ever met. He takes bossy to an extreme. I’ve never experienced anything like it,” I answered. “And he has multiple personalities. He can be extremely gentle, thoughtful, warm. Then he can get angry and it’s scary. Then he can, I don’t know, disappear. He’s there, we work together for the most part, but he’s not.”

“Has he ever handled you the way he handled his ex?” Aunt Bette asked quietly and I took in a soft breath.

Then I admitted, “If he wants your attention, he finds a way to get it.” Aunt Bette’s eyes flashed and I hurriedly went on, “But it isn’t exactly the same. She’s a crazy woman and she makes his life a living hell and their kids. You heard it but what you saw is constant for him and they’ve been divorced for four years. And he said he’d never hurt me and he never has, not that way. He promised that. He said he’d rather cut off his own arm than ever hurt me.”

“He said that to you?” Lanie asked.

“Yeah,” I answered.

“Wow,” she whispered then she looked at Aunt Bette. “He strikes me as a man of his word.”

Aunt Bette looked at Lanie then murmured, “Well, that’s two in the plus category, not exactly batting a thousand.”

Oh boy.

I heard chiming coming from Aunt Bette’s purse, she opened it, pulled out her phone and hit some buttons.

Then she hit some more while saying, “That’s Marsh. He’s done communing with the golfing brotherhood and he’s hungry. I need to feed my husband. He says he’s at a place called Club and he already has a martini. If we don’t get there soon, he’s ordering.” She hit one last button and I sighed a relieved sigh that this particular conversation was over (for now). She dropped the phone in her purse and looked up at me. “Is this Club place close?”

“Yes, just outside the mall,” I answered.

“But we have to drive there seeing as I’m wearing heels and they have really cool cocktail glasses so it’s likely a taxi night anyway since you have one cocktail in a really cool glass, you have to have seven,” Lanie explained.

This was totally true and this also obviously worked perfectly fine for Aunt Bette for she nodded once then said, “Let’s roll,” as a reply.

With no other choice, since when Uncle Marsh was hungry, everyone ate, even I knew that, we left our rack and headed to the parking garage.

We motored through it toward my car since Uncle Marsh had their rental. I headed to the driver’s side. Lanie to the passenger side back because Aunt Bette’s legs were shorter than mine. And Aunt Bette to the passenger front.

I’d bleeped the locks, doors were opening all around when suddenly and with no warning I saw nothing but black. My body went solid in shocked surprise and I heard a scuffle right before I opened my mouth to scream.

But not that first sound came out because I stopped seeing black when everything went black.