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“Because I mowed her lawn,” Chris replied.
Tex looked at Hawk and Doc and they all grinned.
Chris rolled his eyes. “With my lawn mower.”
“That’s what we’re calling it now?” Tex teased.
“Jesus. I mowed her lawn and then I took her to the store to get groceries and she made me lunch.” He finally managed to get the last cookie out of the box. “She’s gonna make me lunch next Sunday, too.”
“What happened to off limits?” Doc asked.
“It’s just lunch,” Chris insisted. “She doesn’t even like me before noon.”
“No one likes you before noon,” Hawk pointed out.
“And she’s not off limits to me,” Chris declared. “Even though it’s just lunch.”
“I don’t know,” Tex said. “Maybe I want the girl who can make Spicy Mexican Chocolate cookies.”
Chris crossed his arms in front of his chest. “She’s not your type. Plus, she reads romance novels.” Tex paused mid-chew. “By the dozen,” Chris added.
“I’ll take the cookies,” Tex announced. “You take the constant comparisons to Duke Poofy Pants.”
“Pirates,” Chris amended. “She likes Pirates. But I don’t have the hair. So it’s a good thing it’s just lunch.”
Hawk picked up a cold slice. “I have hair. I could be a pirate.”
“You can’t use a sword,” Tex pointed out. “And since when do pirates ride horses?”
“Forget it,” Chris snapped. “You wouldn’t want her,” he told Hawk. “She went to college to get her MRS.”
Hawk frowned. “What’s that?”
Tex and Doc laughed hysterically. “Man trap,” Doc said.
“Oh,” Hawk said. Then, “Ohhh. Mrs. I get it. Yikes. No woman’s cookies are that good. You marry her. I’ll snag some cookies on the side.”
“It’s just lunch!” Chris yelled, feeling a little like Slick in the checkout line.
************************
Hayley sat on her back deck with her dinner when she heard Chris’s sliding glass door open. “Hey,” came a voice. “Hey, Slick.”
“Leave her alone!” Chris called from the open door.
She turned to see Tex leaning against the railing of Chris’s deck. “Hey, you got any more of those Mexican chocolate cookies, honey?”
She smiled at Tex. “No, I gave the last of them to Chris.”
Tex’s face darkened. “Damn. All we got is day old pizza and we worked through lunch.”
He moved to go back inside and she called out, “Wait.” He turned back. “I have pie.”
Tex grinned. “Oh, sweet Jesus boys. The woman has pie!”
“Tell her to get her ass over here,” Hawk yelled.
Hayley carried a brown paper bag and a plastic sack up the steps of Chris’s back deck. Caleb saw her making her way to the door and opened it for her. “Thanks,” she said to him and he nodded at her. Hayley stared at the man sitting in front of her. Sure. She’d seen Hawk, and all the other guys, at Maria’s. And somehow, in that space, Hawk Red Cloud, while still standing out due to his size, had seemed to belong there. Where he did not belong was in someone’s living room. Sitting at someone’s dinner table, playing cards that were dwarfed in his large hands. Hawk Red Cloud didn’t take up a lot of space. Hawk Red Cloud was the space.
The corner of his mouth almost quirked up as he notice her looking at him. “What?”
Hayley looked at Chris. “I’d have gone with Bear.”
Everyone in the room laughed and the sound reverberated off the walls.
Tex grinned a lopsided grin, which might have seemed goofy if he didn’t have all that slightly wavy blond hair and just-becoming-noticeable stubble on his jaw. “We didn’t name him, darlin’,” he informed her. “No, no. Hawk was Hawk from the moment I met him in basic. He didn’t want his hair cut. He didn’t want to be in the Army. And he for damn sure didn’t want anyone calling him anything other than Hawk. And I may be a lot of things, darlin’, but I’m not dumb enough to piss off a man built like a linebacker. So Hawk was Hawk, even if, behind his back I did call him a bunch of other choice names.”
“You guys weren’t friends?”
“Oh, hell no. When I say Hawk didn’t want to be in the Army, I mean, Hawk…did not want to be in the Army. And he pretty much made it his mission in life to let everybody know from sun up to sun down. He was the biggest, whiniest, most foul tempered sonofabitch.”
Hayley looked from Tex to Hawk. “If you didn’t want to be in the Army, why’d you enlist?”
Hawk gave her a piercing look. Maybe that’s why he’s called Hawk, she thought to herself. Those eyes didn’t seem to miss much. “It was suggested to me by a judge.”
Hayley’s eyes went wide. “Oh,” she managed to squeak out. Under the weight of Hawk’s menacing look, she almost shriveled.
Tex burst out laughing and pounded the table so hard the chips rattled. “Oh. Oh, Christ. He’s messing with you, darlin’!”
