Page 72 of Nixon’s Promise

“Lease?” I inquired.

“Yeah. I can’t run a business out of my living room,” he answered conversationally.

Five years! I guess that meant he was staying.

“Oh.”

“Babe? Something wrong?”

“No. I guess, I hadn’t thought about it beyond this… you know… um…” I didn’t know what to call the current job he was working on, and I wasn’t sure if I could even mention it in front of Mandy and Zack.

“Contract.” Nix helpfully supplied, then went on to rock my world. “When this job is done, we’ll reevaluate. If the operation goes in a way we’re all comfortable with, we’ll proceed and take more work. If it goes tits up, we have other options. One of those is other contracts from other agencies. Another is, we focus solely on investigations. Chasin is a licensed bounty hunter—there’s always money in fugitive recovery. Holden’s been working as an inquiry agent, and there’s no shortage of PI work. I’m settin’ down roots. This works out, the guys are, too. But you need to know, that even if it doesn’t and the business fails, I’m not going anywhere.”

Well, that answered one of my questions. He was settling and he was planning on staying awhile. My belly did a flip and my heart was skipping beats. Nixon Swagger was staying.

“With all that said, we needed an office space. I called a realtor after you left this afternoon. I didn’t think he’d find something so quickly. But when he offered to lower the rent, I couldn’t pass it up,” Nixon finished telling me.

“You have to see it, McKenna. It’s badass,” my brother told me. “It’s downtown right across from Fountain Park, upstairs above that distillery place. Parking sucks, because you know it’s on the street, but at least the town turned off the parking meters or it’d cost a buttload to park there all day. It’s totally old school. Beat-up hardwood floors, the one wall facing the street is brick. The bathroom is like so small and the pipes are exposed. And the ceiling has those big tin squares with the patterns on them. Totally cool in an out-of-date, beat-up kinda way. Which will be cool for the guys because it’s not girly at all. It doesn’t look like a woman even belongs in the space.”

I was kind of jealous Zack had been with Nixon when they’d gone to town to run errands and obviously meet with the realtor.

“Sounds cool,” I told him.

“The guy only had two keys for the street level door and the office door. He’s cutting six more of each, should have those tomorrow,” Nix went on.

I quickly did the math in my head, eight keys. There was only five of them.

“You planning on losing your keys, or what? Three spares is a lot,” I joked.

I shoved my plate forward, not able to eat another bite. I was stuffed, two slices in Procs was like four regular-sized pieces from anywhere else. When we’d come in and the guys had ordered four larges, I thought they were nuts, but damn if they hadn’t descended like a bunch of vultures and demolished all four.

“You’ll need one, and I thought we’d leave a spare at your house in case Amanda or Zack needed it. The extra we’ll keep at my house.”

I’ll need one? A spare for my siblings? Warmth hit my chest and my eyes started to sting. He was giving me access to his office. He was giving Zack and Mandy access, too. This was big. Huge. His trust in us was overwhelming.

I didn’t know what to say. Jameson, Chasin, Holden, Weston, and Zack were too busy stuffing the last of their dinner in their mouths to be paying attention to me. But Mandy’s eyes were glued to mine. She knew. She understood the gravity of what Nixon was giving us.

“Babe?” Nixon called.

“Huh?”

“Everything okay?”

“Of course. I was just…um…thinking. I can’t believe you guys ate that pizza. I thought you’d have leftovers for like a week. I mean, four larges from Procs is like, you know, seven larges from anywhere else. That’s a lot of food.” I was droning on like an idiot but I couldn’t help it. My mind was stuck on him giving me a key.

“Right.” He smiled knowingly.

He threw his arm around my shoulder and settled back. Thankfully he said no more.

“Damn, that was good. I’m gonna go order one more to take home,” Jameson announced. His chair scraped the tile floor as he got up. “Anyone need anything else?”

“Another pitcher of beer,” Chasin told him, draining the last remnants of suds from his glass.

Over the next hour or so conversation flowed around me but I wasn’t paying much attention, not even on Mandy laughing. I’d never felt more content in my life. My belly was full, my family was smiling and laughing, men that I had just met but who’d all proven to be good guys joking, and the man who I’d never dreamed existed held me close. Every once in a while, he’d lean in and kiss my temple, making my toes curl.

Who knew Nixon Swagger would be open to PDA? It was thrilling. No, it was more than thrilling, it was out of this world.

We were picking up our trash and dishes from the table, because that’s what you did when you ate at Procs, even if it was in the back dining area and not up-front in the self-serve booths—you still cleaned your own table. It wasn’t a posted rule, nor was it even asked or mentioned by the staff, but the locals knew. When you were done eating, you brought your dishes up front and set them in the plastic tubs at the side of the long counter where you ordered. So that’s what we were doing, cleaning up our mess when suddenly Mandy got close to my side. She didn’t say anything, just stood close.