Nothing Special VI: His Hart's Command, page 13
part #6 of Nothing Special Series
Hart’s chest expanded. With newfound confidence he strolled over to Free and gathered him into his arms. Free’s breath hitched, then breathed warm gusts of air onto his neck. “I said. Do you wanna eat before we go to the office? I know a good diner with the best damn French toast just around the corner.”
Free moaned his yes, but he didn’t let go.
“So where’s the bighead, today? Isn’t that what you call him?” Hart’s usual waitress, Margery, asked, following her question with a loud guffaw. She was a robust woman, with shocking black hair that she kept cut in an asymmetrical bob. To finish off the style she always pinned a few tufts of hair back with a single imitation flower. Today’s was a pink gardenia.
“God’s at work already. I opted for nicer-looking company this morning.” Hart’s pulse pumped rapidly as he tested coming out to someone else. From the way Free flushed and smiled, it was obvious they’d had a lovely morning…perhaps followed up by an even lovelier night.
“He sure is cuter than the other one.” Margery said, without blinking an eye, and turned to face Free. “What’ll you have, honey?”
Hart unclenched his hands from beneath the table and brushed the dampness away with his paper napkin. Exhaling, he waited for Free to order his food.
“I’ll have the French toast platter as well, but instead of the hash browns, can I do the grits?” Free asked, handing her the tri-fold menu.
“That’s no problem. And, I’ll be back with refills in a sec.” She gathered the discarded sugar packets from their hot drinks and hurried off to input their orders.
Hart couldn’t help his grin.
“What?” Free asked. “What’s so funny?”
“What’s a British boy know about grits?” Hart gave him a teasing smile.
“My mom is black and Latina, remember. Oh, I know plenty about grits. I eat mine with lots of butter, salt and pepper.”
“That’s the Baltimore in you.” Hart winked.
Free’s laugh was beautiful. “I’ll take that. I love all the many parts of me. Not a lot of people can enjoy candied yams, buttermilk fried chicken, then eat tostones, right along with pork pies and Welsh cakes.”
Hart found he was enjoying himself. Laughing easily. “That is a pretty broad palette.”
“And you’re from Texas, right?” Free asked, taking a drink of his tea.
Hart nodded. “Yep. Lubbock. Nothing there but ranches, nosy people and the damn Buddy Holly Museum.”
Free laughed again.
Hart kept going. “Well, it was like that when I was ready to get the hell out of there. There’s communities where everyone knows your name and your business is never your own. But, I loved my family, and living on a ranch was great. I won’t lie about that.” Hart lifted one corner of his mouth. “My pop and stepmom had it running like a well-oiled rig. We have almost two thousand acres, and boy was it damn fun growing up there.”
Free’s dark eyes were focused on his mouth.
“I rode a horse every day when I was young. Bought my own when I was twenty. Sometimes, if life wasn’t agreeing with me, I’d go home and ride him. He was a black and white Appaloosa. I named him Ranger. I used to sit in the barn with him for hours.” Hart shook his head, lifting one corner of his mouth. “That damn barn.”
“What.” Free leaned in. “What’s making you grin like that, huh?”
Hart couldn’t believe he was gonna say this, but it was what they were doing, getting to know each other. “My pop had this massive red barn for the ranch horses and there was big loft up top where we stored the hay bales and supplies. Well, sometimes, I’d hear my best friend Billy up in the loft with his girlfriend and I’d have to keep watch for him. He’d get loud and…”
“You’d what…wish it was you and him, instead of her?”
Hart recoiled. “No! Bill was my brother. We grew up together. I wanted to make my own grunts with my own guy up in the loft.”
“Oh.” Free nodded as if he enjoyed the sound of that.
“I wanted to roll around in the hay.” Hart laughed with embarrassment when Free looked at him with an amused glint in his eyes, “Hey. Don’t give me that look. It’s a thing growing up on ranch to fool around in the barn, okay? But, a boy grows up.”
“Of course. So you didn’t have a terrible childhood, but you left home to explore bigger opportunities in brighter cities?”
Hart wished it had been that simple. “Not exactly. I came here the second I was accepted into the SWAT academy.” He paused and cleared his throat. “Teresa was pregnant at the time. I thought the pay would help with her prenatal care. She…she um…had difficulty carrying.”
Free reached across the table and took one of Hart’s hands and held it in his own. “Hey. You don’t have to go into this. I didn’t mean to—”
“No. Len. It’s okay. It was a long time ago.” And it was a part of who he was, as well.
“Still. It’s very personal. Hurtful, I’m sure.”
“Lennox. You told me something extremely confidential and personal last night. A time in your life that I’m sure was painful. And I appreciated that trust. Let me show you that I trust you, too,” Hart confessed. He’d realized that he wanted Free to know the truth. Wanted him to know why he’d had to suppress what he’d wanted and why he’d put up with Teresa’s abuse for so long. Besides, there was no hiding it now. His ex had blown in there last night like a tornado—no warning, and completely destructive—and had put their disturbing past on display in front of his company. He wanted to tell his side.
“Okay,” Free whispered.
He started in, “You ever heard of a shotgun wedding?”
“Bloody hell.” Free dropped his head but quickly lifted it, giving Hart his attention.
“Well, Reese’s dad was the bloody reverend at the wedding and he preferred a Colt Walker over a shotgun.” Hart’s laugh was void of humor. “Nonetheless, his point was made. He married us after I got Teresa pregnant my first year in college. I was still working on my father’s ranch in the summers, while getting my criminal justice degree at Texas Tech. Reese’s family and my family had huge ranches, breeding livestock and stock horses. Anyway, our mothers always pushed us together whenever I was home. It was so damn old fashioned, I know, but they wanted the families to be joined.”
Free opened his mouth then closed it again.
“What were you gonna say?”
“You had an older brother,” Free mumbled. “Why not him?”
Hart couldn’t believe how damn charming Free’s sour statement was to him. Telling this story wasn’t going to be as bad as he thought. “True. But Mike was already engaged to his high school sweetheart who he’d loved since grade school. So next in line was me.
“All I ever wanted to do was be a cop, though. A good cop, not just a beat officer who wanted benefits and a steady paycheck. I knew I wanted to make a difference. I knew I wanted go full career, not marry early. In high school I would intern in the sheriff’s office, and from that moment on I was hooked.
“Law enforcement was what I wanted to do. Sheriff Roberts was the best mentor. He was the law in an ultraconservative town, yet he didn’t let hate and prejudices go unpunished. I learned all I could from him.”
“He sounds awesome.”
“He was…is. He’s retired now, of course. Living the good life in Castle Hills with his daughter and grandkids. I get an email from the old goat every now and then.”
Margery came back to refill Free’s hot water for his tea and Hart’s coffee. “Breakfast will be just a couple more minutes, fellas.”
“Thanks, Marge.”
She nodded, still popping her gum and went on to the next booth.
“Anyway. I’m gonna make this long story short. My freshman summer, I came home and my mom had arranged a dinner between the two families. That wasn’t anything new. I’d usually grit my teeth through it, joke with my brothers a bit, then I’d be lost in ranch work all summer, easily avoiding Reese. She never liked to get a speck of dirt on her Mary Janes, so the barn was a good place for me to hide.” Hart scrubbed his hand over his beard, “But, that night she was acting strange. She kept sassing her dad and snapping at her mom, right there at the dinner table.”
Hart went quiet and let Margery set their plates in front of them. When she was gone, he was happy to have a distraction. He talked while he ate his eggs and toast.
“She was throwing a fit, and I guess trying to be rebellious, because she grabbed my hand and pulled me from the dinner table, all the way until we were outside and marching across the field toward her property.
“I remembered thinking, ‘if I just be quiet, she’ll have her tantrum and I’ll go back home’. Even back then, Reese was a spitfire. In high school, I went along with what she said most times since she only used me to get her daddy off her back. She’d go out with me, but when we’d get to an outing, the movies, a diner, or wherever, she’d leave me and go off with her friends.
“It wasn’t me she had her eyes set on. It was the ranch hand in a neighboring town she wanted, but her poppa wasn’t having that. Well, that night she took me to their barn and in her anger felt she was teaching her father a lesson by denying her what she wanted.”
Hart swallowed a large gulp of water at the look on Free’s face. It’d gone from understanding to disgusted. He knew the feeling. The details of his and Teresa’s marriage always made him sick to his stomach, too. “Just like in the movies. She got pregnant. I’d only had sex with one other female at school, and she’d told me I was nothing to write home about and that was the end of that. With Reese, I didn’t get a chance to do anything before she was on top of me.”
Hart paused again at Free’s horrified expression.
“Whoa now. She didn’t force me, Len. In college I was six-one and just as big as I am now. She didn’t make me do anything.” Hart shook his head, “I was a guy in my twenties. I got horny if the wind shifted east. I also wasn’t able to act on what I knew I really wanted, so I laid there.”
“Gosh. I’m…” What could Free say? Nothing.
“Like I was saying. She got pregnant. I didn’t want to marry Reese’s mean ass, but then the Colt came out. Len, I can only imagine what you’re thinking. But, the men in my family, we do the right thing. Her poppa didn’t have to threaten me. I would’ve taken care of my responsibilities, regardless.”
“But, she lost the baby after you got hitched,” Free said softly, brushing Hart’s knee with his under the table.
“Yes.” Hart glanced at Free. “My older brother told me I should’ve left her then, but…I couldn’t. Reese was devastated. I couldn’t add to her depression by divorcing her, for shit’s sake. Losing our baby girl so late in the pregnancy hurt me like hell, so I could only imagine what it did to her.
“Reese thought something was medically wrong, so I dropped out of college and moved us to Dallas so I could work in a bigger police department than in Slaton County. That way, Teresa would have access to better doctors in the larger city and I could move my way up in the ranks gradually, since I didn’t have a degree. I knew I’d have to put in hard work if I ever wanted a command. And that the only way would be through years of experience.
“I was working so much, that I…I didn’t realize how miserable Reese was. She missed her real beau, she missed home, and she hated the sight of me.” Hart pushed his plate away. Free had long ago stopped eating, his breakfast only half consumed.
“At thirty-two weeks she lost the baby girl. Stillborn. That was the first of four kids she tried to carry to term.”
“Oh my god. Oh Ivan. I didn’t know.” Free squeezed his hand.
“Only God and Fox know this. It’s been a while and I’ve lived with the fact that losing my kids is not my fault, no matter what Reese tried to beat into my head. I wanted desperately to give her a baby so she’d be happy. But…she kept…miscarrying. We only had sex to try to conceive. She hated my body on top of her. But she wanted children so badly, always did. When the SWAT academy accepted my application, we moved to Atlanta. Better health plan, better OB doctors for her. I thought again, she’d be happy. But, after she lost our son, the last miscarriage—she was thirty-six years old—she couldn’t take it anymore.
“Her depression and cruelty reached an all-time high. After that, I refused to try again. Besides the fact she was treating me like a stud she’d purchased, I had a feeling she’d never let me be a father anyway, if we were successful. It was for the best. She left me.” Hart looked down at the table. This part always made guilt flare up from deep within. “I was so damn relieved when she did. But, I swore to her daddy, before the grumpy bastard died, that I’d never walk out on his little girl, that I’d never abandon her…and I didn’t.”
Free
Free’s mother always told him that he was a great judge of character. And although he attracted negative people into his life, he also attracted some pretty great ones. Like Techy and now, like Ivan Hart. The moment he’d met him he’d known he was special. There was something in those sweet, blue eyes—longing, compassion, honesty…and want. Hart’s size and appearance were only the icing on the cake. There were so many wonderful layers to him—his protective nature being Free’s favorite.
He’d made sure not to well up with emotion and to keep his temper in check while Hart told his story. He'd trusted Free to behave maturely with the bomb he’d just dropped on him, the same as he’d done last night. Hart didn’t need him to gasp and gawk at him. He didn’t need a display of theatrics. Just someone to finally listen to his side and be there for him.
To hear Hart had been in an abusive relationship was gut-wrenching. He’d tried so hard to do right by his wife, only for her to beat him down and blame him for something beyond his control. Had anyone bothered to see how Hart was doing after losing four children while everyone was primarily concerned for his wife? Had anyone consoled him? Hearing Hart’s story made Free’s chest ache.
“I’m so, so sorry.” He leaned in and brought Hart’s hand to his lips, and kissed his knuckles. “You lost your babies too.”
Hart seemed genuinely thankful for what he’d said but he didn’t open his mouth and speak the words. Free didn’t need him to. Damn, just when he thought Hart couldn’t be any more amazing, he goes and tells him that. Now he was able to connect the remaining puzzle pieces.
Free vowed right then that he’d show Hart what it meant to be cared for, in whatever capacity he allowed him. If Hart wasn’t ready for anything serious, then Free would be his dearest friend until he was. Hart signaled for Margery to bring their check as if he was finished with this conversation. Free was fine with that.
“Sounds like you have a busy day,” Free said from the passenger seat of Hart’s nice truck. Most of the time, he rode his bike but he’d wanted them to commute together to breakfast and work.
“Yeah, it will be. I was glad I got to sleep in.” Hart glanced at him, looking sexy as fuck in his gold-rimmed aviator shades. Free wasn’t used to the suit jacket and crisp white dress shirt, but damn if he couldn’t get used to it pretty damn quick. Hart had chosen not to wear a tie, and he still had the top two buttons of his dress shirt undone. Almost enough for Free to see a few tufts of hair below his collarbone. Just enough to tease the hell out of him. Hart’s mouth moved but Free didn’t hear the words.
His eyes were drawn to Hart’s chest because he knew all that awaited his tongue under that fine attire. He swallowed roughly as his cock swelled the more he stared at Hart’s gorgeous profile. The burly man wasn’t a GQ model by any means, but Free knew of the generous heart that beat beneath that hot, furry ches—
“Lennox,” Hart growled.
Free snapped his head up, heat flooding his cheeks. He faced the road, pulling his messenger bag over his lap.
“Yeah. You better stop looking at me like that,” Hart warned, huskily.
Free’s cock took notice of the authority in Hart’s voice. Shiiiit.
Hart made a sharp turn into the precinct’s lot and pulled into a parking space toward the rear. He killed the engine and released his seat belt, then turned slowly, watching Free behind those mirrored lenses.
Free’s cock was so hard he thought it’d punch through the leather of his bag. Hart’s voice, his dominance, was all an aphrodisiac to him.
“Did you even hear my question?”
Free didn’t answer. Because he hadn’t. He breathed through his nose and out through his mouth attempting to quell his erection. Hart reached over and gripped his chin, then turned his head toward him. “Answer me.”
Mmmmm. “I heard most of it.” Free licked his lips. He wanted Hart to yank him across the large console and kiss him crazy. The way he was holding him and staring him down, panting, Hart had to be feeling the same yearning he was.
Hart released his hold and stroked his cheek with one thumb. “I asked if—”
Free’s cell chirped loudly with a message from Tech. He hurried to pull out his phone while he kept Hart’s hand to his cheek. He liked that contact. Frowning, he read Tech’s message, a light throb starting to pulse behind his right eye. Shit. Not now.
“Everything okay?” Hart asked, still smoothing over his jaw.
“Um. That was Tech. He said his property manager came by and told him I needed to move my camper within twenty-four hours or it’d be towed. You can’t live in an RV in a residential area,” Free massaged the center of his forehead. “Someone must’ve finally complained. I had a feeling they would eventually.”
“Where are you gonna put it? That’s not much time.”
“I know. Fuck. It means I’ll have to go to a RV park, but I hate that the nearest one is forty minutes from work. That’s a helluva commute on a scooter.” Free laughed, because what else could he do?
“I don’t mind if you park it at my house. I own it so no one can tell you to move it. My driveway is plenty big enough. Ya’ know, until you figure out…”
Free wasn’t even going to act like he needed to take a moment to consider the option. It was the best suggestion he’d ever heard. He was damn near giddy all of a sudden. His home parked in front of Hart’s. Like living together, but not. “That’d be real nice. If you’re absolutely sure it’s not a…oh shit.”
