Page 107 of Duty and Desire
My thoughts turned to the choice he’d given me at our first meeting of being in the room with him while he showered. Considering current events, that was a choice I no longer had.
And that was a crying shame.
But indisputably prudent.
“New boyfriend,” I finished, my voice kinda husky.
His lips twitched before his attention turned because Smithie was bowling through the door.
The bossman didn’t even look at me. He went direct to Carla, concern evident on his face.
God, I loved that guy.
“You have a new boyfriend?” Mom asked in my ear.
I focused on the task at hand.
“She has awhat?” I heard boomed over the phone before I could answer.
Tex was awake.
Not a surprise.
Definitely a wildcard.
Tex had no kids. Tex’s history was a long story, and not much of it, until he met Indy Nightingale, was good. And one could say, considering after he met Indy he’d been shot, clubbed in the head, kidnapped and blew up a warehouse, that wasn’t good for him either.
But Tex would tell you all that had been a hoot.
And Tex was the finest man who ever breathed.
But he was a character.
Aboomingcharacter, in all ways that could be, including audibly.
And the years that he’d been involved with the Rock Chicks (this being from the beginning, when he rescued Indy after she was kidnapped, this being when he got himself shot for that effort), plus the years he’d been married to my mom, he’d adopted all of us.
Especially me and Jet.
He was not a man who would hold my hand at a fair and shout how he needed to get cotton candy for his best girl.
He was a man who would run into the burning building me, my sister or especially my mother was in, even if there was little chance he would find us alive.
He’d risk his life, and give it, to try.
Obviously, I adored him.
“You’ll meet him Sunday,” I told Mom. “Listen, can you help Carla out?”
“We’ll meet him Sunday,” I heard Mom say, not to me, to Tex. “His name is Mo,” she went on.
“Mo? Hawk Delgado’s Mo?” Tex boomed.
Shit.
Of course Tex knew Mo.
Great.
