Oh man.
“Uh …”
“Which is how Pantera is into you.”
Yikes!
And tentatively …
Yay!
“So trust me, he will not give a shit you show at his door at two thirty in the morning,” Brett finished with quite a bit of emphasis.
“All right, all right,” I mumbled.
“You can do this,” he encouraged.
“What if I can’t? What if I blew things big time this morning?”
“This is how it’s gonna go,” he began. “He’s gonna open the door. He’s then gonna see you. And shit will be sorted. Boom.”
Seriously?
“Do you really think it’ll be that easy?”
“Have you looked in a mirror?”
“I know I’m not hard to look at, Brett, but that isn’t the only important thing.”
“You’re cute. You’re sweet. You’re nice. You’re talented. Outside a few important glitches that fuck you up, which, Hattie, everyone’s got in one way or another, you got it together. Great pad. Sweet jammies. Studio full of money waiting to be made. And last, it wasn’t me kissing him on the deck the way you two were kissing. You were doing that, and you can’t tell me you don’t know way more than me what that was about. So, not to be crude, you on his doorstep takes him a huge step closer to being in your pants. So absolutely. It’s going to be that easy.”
All he said was very nice.
But at the last part, my heart stopped beating.
“Ohmigod, I’m so not ready for sex with Axl. We have to turn back,” I breathed.
Brett looked to the ceiling of the town car.
“What?” I asked.
He again turned to me. “He’s not gonna jump you on his front doorstep. Stop making excuses.”
I clamped my mouth shut.
“You can do this,” he repeated.
I drew in a very, very big breath.
“Hattie, you want to do this.”
I so did.
It also scared me to death.
I nodded.
“Good girl,” he muttered.
Ugh.
“Are you this heavy-handed with your sisters?” I demanded.
He got a look on his face I didn’t like before he wiped it and said, “Why do you think they live in Alaska?”
That wasn’t the truth.
I thought I read his look, which was why I said, “You miss them.”
“My sisters and me are tight. My brother …”
Unsaid: not so much.
“Where is he?” I asked.
“Here. In Denver.”
“Oh,” I muttered. Then in a normal voice, “I don’t have siblings.”
“You do now. We ain’t blood, but you made up with four of them today, and the other one is sitting right beside you.”
Uh-oh.
I might cry again.
To avoid that, I snapped, “It’s getting to be freakish how sweet you are.”
“I’d put that notion out of your head by offering you a Go to Work with Brett Day, but I like you think that. So we’ll let it lie.”
I smiled at him, the smile faltered, and I admitted, “I’m scared.”
“I know you are,” he said gently. “Why do you think we’re going to Pantera right now? I can’t let my girl crawl back into her head and not get what she wants.”
No, we couldn’t have that.
“I’d like to meet your sisters,” I said.
“They come visit, I’ll set that up.”
“Brett?”
“Right here.”
“Thanks for not letting me blow it again.”
It was him who was now smiling.
“Anytime.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Worth It
HATTIE
Okay.
I didn’t know what happened to me on the long, long walk from Brett’s town car to Axl’s front door (it actually wasn’t that long, it was pretty short, it just felt that way).
But whatever it was, it happened.
And it did about the time I got over my surprise Axl lived in a cool, gray-painted-with-white-trim bungalow in Baker Historic District.
I thought condo (like Mag) or loft (like Boone).
Nope.
House.
Nice house, smallish, no yard, all of the limited space around it landscaped, great ’hood.
But I got over that mostly because I had to get over it.
This was happening at nearly 3:00 in the morning.
And first, I couldn’t mess it up.
But second, it hit me to wonder how I’d messed it up.
Axl had been correct in what he’d said to me at my studio, but he hadn’t been nice about it.
And the creepy call came right after that.
So, of course I wouldn’t call him.
He’d just been mean to me!
And I was a grown-ass woman, and I might just be coming into my own with that, like, that very day.
But I was entitled to do whatever I wanted or call whoever I wanted when I found myself with a possible-which-turned-into-a-probable crisis.
Or anytime at all.
And Axl might know that if he let me speak.
He was always interrupting me.
So, when I hit his doorbell, all of that was on my mind.
Yes, I got the kind of man he was and what he was to me (even if he actually wasn’t) would make it seem like he should be my first call.
But if this was going to work, he’d have to listen to me so he’d understand why he wasn’t.
So this was on my mind when he opened the door.