Page 88 of Wife Number One

I glanced up and groaned.

Hawk glared at me through the glass window. With one hand, he pointed angrily at the sign, my name proudly displayed beneath it. His other held the fingers of a small girl. “Sinners!” he yelled again. “Really?”

“Hey, what do you know. You can read,” I called back.

It was probably stupid to antagonize him, but I couldn’t stand obnoxious people, and Hawk was the most obnoxious of them all. As proven by the way he was standing on the sidewalk, in the middle of Providence, shouting like he was a teenager having an argument with his parents.

Hawk stormed to the door, the kid trotting along behind him.

I didn’t stop him from entering. I wasn’t stupid enough to think he wasn’t armed, but what was he going to do with his daughter right there beside him? Shoot me? I didn’t think so. Even Hawk wasn’t that stupid. Though I swear he acted it sometimes.

I eyed the little blond girl and then dragged my gaze back up to her father. “Didn’t know you had a kid.”

“I don’t,” he spat back just as quick.

I raised an eyebrow. “Not sure if you’re aware, but there’s a small child attached to your hand.”

“She’s not mine.”

I glanced at the girl. “You’re real lucky then. I wouldn’t want a dad like him either.”

Hawk stepped in front of her, blocking her from my sight. “Don’t fuc…fudging talk to her.”

I sniggered. “Fudging?”

“She’s not used to people swearing.”

“Definitely not your kid then.”

“Like I said.”

I wasn’t used to seeing him in anything other than jeans and his club jacket. In sweat pants and a hoodie, his hair shorter and neater than mine, he could almost pass as a dad just out and about with his daughter.

It was a good look on him.

Awareness prickled over me, and I realized neither of us had said anything in an uncomfortably long minute.

I broke the silence before he got weird and mouthy, like he had last time. “Did you actually want something, Hawk? Or are you just going to keep staring at me the same way you did the other day?” The memory of his gaze wandering over my naked body and centering on my dick was fresh in my mind.

He snorted. “Don’t flatter yourself. I wasn’t staring at you.”

Liar.

I raised an eyebrow. “No? You weren’t checking out my…” I remembered he had a kid there and coughed around a grin. “Salami?”

“Salami? Don’t flatter yourself. You mean your pig in a blanket.” Hawk sniggered.

I stepped in, close enough I was in his space, just because I knew it made him uncomfortable. I was petty enough to enjoy pushing at his barely cloaked homophobia. “No problem for you to swallow it down then, huh?”

He stilled, me too close to him to see his expression, but I heard the hitch in his voice.

For the tiniest of seconds, I wondered if it was because he was thinking about what getting down on his knees for me would be like.

In the same second, surprise heat barreled through me at the thought.

But he shoved me away and leaned over the table that I had Luca’s plans rolled out on.

I cringed, knowing what he’d spotted.

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