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“Lucky for you I went ahead and ran the background check,” he said.
My belly clenched. “Anything bad come up?”
What branch of military is he in, and what does he do? I wanted to yell.
“Other than a few petty thefts that Jack and Janie had to dig pretty goddamn deep for, no.” He paused. “Interesting news about his military background, though.”
My brows rose. “As in…”
“As in whatever he’s into, I can’t find anything on it.” He paused. “As in whatever he’s into, he needs to not have a background at all. He’s a ghost.”
I felt something inside my chest stall and start back up again. Probably my heart.
“I’m thinking Delta,” I said to him softly. “But he told Conleigh that he was in the Marines. I’m thinking that was him deflecting from his actual branch, though. The fewer people know about him, the better.”
“That, or a black ops organization that I don’t know about.” He paused. “Delta would make sense, though. You’re right on the deflecting. The less information people have on you, the better. Especially when knowing certain factors about a person makes it easier to find them. I can make a few calls.”
For some reason, that made my stomach clench with horror.
I shook my head. “No. I don’t want to put him in danger.”
He gave me a hurt look. “What do you take me as, a novice?”
I snorted. “No. I take you as someone that’s trying to protect your daughter, and you not really caring whether you fuck anything up for him.”
He shrugged. “Maybe. But I’m not a bull in a china shop. I know how to make my way around the red tape without putting any signs out that I was there, and what I was searching for. Janie could probably do some digging, too…”
I shook my head before he’d even finished the thought. “He’ll tell me when it’s time.”
Sighing, he stood up straight and reached for the dirty, grease-stained coffee cup that was sitting on the toolbox behind him. “Maybe. Maybe not. But, I will say this. I trust the guy.”
I snickered. “I trust the guy, too.”
He winked and took a sip of his drink. “You like him.”
I gnawed at my lip for a few seconds. “It’s scary, but I think that I do.”
“Scary because you think you could like him a whole lot more than you did all your other boy toys?” he teased.
Way more. So, so, so much more.
I shrugged. “Way more than I’m willing to admit. He’s going slow, but it also feels like I’m moving at warp speed. I’ve only known him for a very short time, but he’s insinuated himself right in the middle of my world, and I can’t stop thinking about him.”
That was the thing about my dad. I could talk to him about anything, and not worry about him freaking out.
If this had been my mom, it’d have been totally different. My dad was like a soft, gentle breeze that came off a lake on a windy day. My mother? She was like exponentially strengthened winds that rolled off the ocean during the middle of a hurricane.
If my mother knew how much I was into Hoax, then she’d be planning my wedding as well as naming her grandchildren. Hell, she’d already been leaning that way when I brought him to our family dinner.
My dad’s eyes went behind me, and I grinned at seeing Jack, the resident computer guy and one of my dad’s best friends, standing there on the phone, his forehead wrinkled as he listened to something that was being said.
“What’s that about?” I asked curiously.
“He’s been on the phone all day with the cable provider. Apparently, they’re charging him for porn that he’s not using and is asking for his money back,” Sam muttered.
I snickered. “Which kid ordered it, do you think?”
“It could have been any of them,” Jack muttered, coming up to us so silently that I jumped when he appeared at my side. “I’m not paying for that shit, though.”
“Did you cancel like you were threatening?” Dad asked.
“No,” he paused. “I got free HBO for six months, though. Apparently, they don’t like it when you threaten to cancel it. And I got us all thirty dollars knocked off our bills. They don’t like it when twelve high-paying accounts get knocked off at once.”
No, I doubted they would.
“So what were y’all whispering about over here?” Jack asked, pulling a beer out of his back pocket and popping the top.
I stared at it. “You do know that it’s only eight in the morning, right?”
He shrugged. “I’ve been up since four, so technically this is lunch time for me. I also noticed that you side-stepped the question.”
All these men in my life were crazy perceptive. What the hell?
Dad snorted. “She’s talking to me about the boy she’s seeing.”
“I’m not sure a thirty-two-year-old man is considered a boy,” I felt it prudent to point out.
