with that. We’ll keep watch. That goes south for some reason, we’ll have her back.”
Rush nodded.
They’d start with that.
“Talked with Shy,” Tack noted. “He said she’s a spitfire.”
Rush quit rubbing his hands on the rag and tossed it on the fender. “She’s a spitfire all right.”
“I read Hawk’s file too, Rush,” his father said quietly. “It’ll take a certain kind of man to take on a woman like that.”
He looked into his dad’s eyes. “Wanna explain that?”
Tack did because he didn’t hesitate.
“Went balls to the wall for a dead friend. Drew a line in the sand with her family to take her brother’s back. This is a woman who goes all in, son. Those situations are extreme, and for her, I hope she never has to face somethin’ like them again. But a woman like that, it could be anything. A kid she meets who isn’t bein’ treated right. A dog on the street foraging for food.”
Tack slid closer to his son and kept talking.
“A woman who can love that deep, who’s got that kinda steel in her spine, the man who gets it, it’ll feel good to earn that love, keep it and have it. But he’ll have to understand what makes her and that he’ll have a lifetime of puttin’ out fires, dealin’ with emotional fallout, and proppin’ her up when the loads she takes on get too heavy.”
“You warnin’ me off a woman I haven’t even taken out yet?”
“You gonna take her out?”
“Makin’ her dinner at my place tonight.”
Tack nodded. “Just wanna make sure you know what you’re gettin’ into.”
“She’s funny.”
“Good to know she’s got that as well as bein’ easy to look at.”
“And she’s more.”
Tack stared in his eyes. “I know, Rush. She’s a lot more.”
“Right. So what I wanna know, Dad, is would you want me to have anything less?”
“Absolutely not.”
At the clarity of his father’s response, Rush’s back straightened.
Tack kept talking.
“You got years on you, son, and you got experience. But you’re still young. And it wouldn’t take a father who loves and knows his son to see this one is different. Straight up, if I could plan out your life, both you and your sister, I would want you to have more time and more experience before you settled in. That way did not happen for your sister. She knew what she wanted, landed it, and she’s all kinds of happy. So I’m good. But I see where this is goin’, Rush, and I just want you to be prepared.”
“We haven’t even had a date yet, Dad.”
His father’s head snapped to the side. “Am I readin’ this wrong?”
He never read anything wrong.
“No,” Rush told him.
Tack righted his neck. “Not tellin’ you what to do. Just wanna make sure your eyes are open.”
“I want a handful.”
Tack said nothing.
“It’s just the way, and it’s a good way, and you know what I mean, Dad. I want a handful,” Rush went on. “I wanna wake up and not know what the day is gonna bring, mostly because she’s gonna make it an adventure. I want kids, and I want the woman I choose to make them with to be about them. To have all the love in the world for them. To make it so they know that and never doubt it. And you know why I want that.”
“Yeah,” Tack whispered, and Rush knew he knew all about making babies with a woman who did not give that to her children.
“And I want her to have more. I want her to have kids and me and a life. Drinks with her girls or making movies, or I don’t know and I don’t give a fuck, just as long as she’s the kind of woman who needs it and goes after it and gets it. I wanna get pissed and I wanna be challenged and I wanna be surprised and I want my balls busted and I want my mind blown and I wanna laugh a lot. I want it all, Dad. I want what you got, but I want it my way and I want it to be all mine.”
“Not thinkin’ Rebel Stapleton’s not gonna be an adventure,” Tack murmured.
“Exactly,” Rush replied.
Tack got intense.
And even though Rush was used to it, he braced.
“Your stepmother got kidnapped, twice. Once gettin’ stabbed nearly to death, lookin’ after her friend and hookin’ her star to me.”
“I haven’t forgotten that, Dad. And I’d erase that for you and Tyra if I could, but I can’t. That said, bottom line with