“I do it nearly every weekend,” he reminded her.
“I can drive to Bragg, Hap.”
“Yeah, then we’d have two cars when we come back, and I’d be following your ass rather than it bein’ in the passenger seat of my truck.”
He had a point.
“I like drivin’,” he went on.
Good to know since he did so much of it and was offering to do more.
“And you can’t Uber to Bragg,” he finished.
“I can hire a driver,” she told him.
“A what?” he asked.
“A driver. Like a limo, though I won’t hire a limo, just a town car or something like that.”
“To drive you to my suburban bachelor pad that I’m gonna have to spend tomorrow and Tuesday nights cleaning so it won’t have you demanding I take you to a hotel?”
She smiled at him.
He studied her with curiosity, but there was something hidden in his gaze before he asked, “You can spend money on just about anything, can’t you?”
Cautiously, due to whatever he was hiding, she replied, “It’s just a driver. Sometimes, if I’m going to be gone for a while, I hire them to take me to the airport.” When he said nothing, she added, “It’s less expensive than parking my car there for weeks.”
“Right,” he muttered.
“It isn’t any trouble, bello,” she told him quietly.
“Probably should check the pancakes, Luci,” he suggested.
He was right. So she did.
Though she couldn’t help but think he was trying to take her attention away from him.
The bacon was ready to go to the plate she’d readied with paper towel on it. Therefore, she did that before she scooped the pancakes onto two other plates she’d gotten down. She added bacon and took them to the island to find Hap up, getting cutlery. He’d already got out the butter and syrup.
They settled in and Luci picked up her fork.
“Just let me come get you, yeah?”
His soft words made her turn her head Hap’s way.
“If that’s what you want, Hap, then of course,” she agreed.
He grabbed her at the back of her neck, pulled her in and touched his mouth to hers before letting go and reaching out to slide the butter her way.
She felt odd about their exchange.
She did not feel odd about Hap wishing her to use the butter first.
And she definitely did not feel odd about how he expressed his gratitude when he got his way.
When she had her pancakes ready, Hap ordered, “Eat fast, Luce. You cheated me outta an orgasm this morning. I’m feeling payback.”
Luci smiled at her pancakes.
She never ate fast. Food was there to savor.
That morning she set a personal record with how quickly she consumed her pancakes and bacon.
“I need you to explain something.”
It was late afternoon. They’d spent most of the day in bed.
There’d been lovemaking. There’d been napping. There’d been kissing and caressing. There’d been whispered conversations. And they’d gone down to make sandwiches and retrieve chips and dips, the detritus of this on the floor beside her bed.
But mostly, Hap seemed content to spoon her across the bottom of her bed, under the comforter, their heads on her pillows he’d bunched there, holding her to him and watching the sea.
Another lovely realization about Hap. He not only gave sweet kisses on the nose, he was content just to hold her and stare at the ocean.
She was relaxed. Feeling more tranquil than she had in years.
It seemed Hap was in the same state.
So she didn’t want to do what she was going to do next.
But she felt she must. It was the only thing weighing on her mind. Even Sam and what was sure to be his volatile, negative reaction towards Hap being with her didn’t intrude.
This did.
Hap’s arm resting along her waist curled in. “What?”
She turned to her belly and looked at him. It pleased her greatly after she did that he fell to his back so she could move into him, chest to chest, eye to eye, her hand curling around the side of his neck.
“Your aversion to me getting a driver,” she stated.
That hidden look came into his eyes.
Luci stroked the underside of his jaw with her thumb. “I just want to understand.”
He shifted his gaze to the ceiling and said nothing.
She was about to prompt him gently when his gaze came back to hers.
“You gotta know. It’s actually a shock you don’t know. Unless . . .”
He didn’t finish his thought, so Luci asked, “Unless what?”
“Do you know how I grew up?”
Oh no.
That thing wasn’t hidden in his eyes any longer.
It was locked there.
“Hap,” she whispered, but said no more.
“I don’t know what that means. Do you, or don’t you?”
There were several things wrong with this for the both of them.
The first was what he was asking without simply asking it.
Had Travis told her about him?
The answer was no. Travis told her (almost) everything. Things about his brothers those brothers would wish to stay hidden?
He would never do that.
The second was that there was something to know about how Hap grew up, something he’d lock away, hide.
Which meant it was something bad.
And last, he did not feel comfortable with mentioning Travis, which had its own special list of problems.
“No, I don’t know,” she answered.
She wasn’t resting on him long, considering at her words he pushed up farther to get his shoulders, not his head, on the pillows, taking her with him. This accomplished, he promptly shifted her to her back, partially rolling into her on his side.
In this position, he loomed over her.
But then he curled his arm around her waist and yanked her into his body.
And in this position, he was partially trapping her.
Dio.
It wasn’t bad.
It was very bad.
Luci wrapped her fingers around his throat and slid them down to rest her palm on his collarbone.
“It does not make me feel happy that you experienced the need to trap me before you share about your childhood,” she noted carefully.
“It wasn’t a good one,” he stated bluntly.
“I gathered that,” she murmured.
“I grew up on a farm in Iowa,” he shared.
“All right,” she replied when he said nothing further.
“It was my grandfather’s farm. Lived there with Gram and Gramps due to the fact my dad was in prison.”
She felt her eyes grow wide.
“And my mom was a loser.”
Oh no.
“Dad got out, got me, held up another liquor store about three months into his probation, got caught, went back in. I went back to my grandparents. I was six. This happened one more time, when I was eleven, though he managed to go for nearly five months before he knocked over a convenience store, and after that I stayed on the farm.”
Luci curled into him and once there, pressed tight, sliding her arm along his until she had it around him, holding him like he was holding her.
Only after she’d done that did she see the expression on his face.
Disbelief.
Undiluted.
“Caro?” she called.
“A lot of reactions I’d expect from the different reactions I’d get when I’d share those nuggets, Luce. Not any of them has been someone pushin’ close and holdin’ on.”
She was upset for him.