“Babe,” Hawk answered his phone.
It was early afternoon and without the freezer full of frozen Twix bars calling my name, firebombs, drive-bys and commandos installing security systems, I’d had two days of uninterrupted, flat out work. I was getting ahead of the game. I had another author send me her files but the deadline was far away, so work was steady, I was golden and my invoices that month were going to be awesome.
“My insurance guy called,” I replied into the phone, wandering to the window, staring at the not-very-attractive scrub, hardscrabble and somewhat attractive, small-river-maybe-large-creek flowing by. “I need to meet him at my house.”
“When?” Hawk asked.
“Three,” I answered.
“I’ll send one of my boys,” Hawk replied.
“Thanks, baby,” I whispered, he didn’t respond so I went on. “Can I ask about tonight?”
“What about it?”
“Well, is it a little black dress and heels night? A glittery top with jeans night? Or a t-shirt and motorcycle boots night?”
“You own motorcycle boots?”
“No, but there are about a gazillion Harley Davidson stores in and around Denver. Maybe your boy can take me on a pit stop.”
“A gazillion?” he asked, sounding like he was smiling.
“Maybe a bazillion, just down from a gazillion.”
I heard a manly, deep chuckle.
Then, “Babe, not big on a woman in motorcycle boots.”
“Okay, that’s out,” I muttered and got another chuckle.
“Somewhere between dress and heels and tee and boots. That work for you?” he finally answered.
“Yes,” I replied then cried, “Oh! Meredith called. She wants to do dinner but she can’t make dinner at their house because clean up just started so she wanted to know if we want to meet them at Rock Bottom Brewery.”
“Call Elvira, tell her to check the schedule and give you my parents’ number,” he said.
“Your parents’ number?” I asked.
“They liked your folks, they’ll want to come.”
I lost sight of the scrub, hardscrabble and small-river-maybe-large-creek as my eyes went blurry. This was because it was one thing for our parents to be thrown together in a out-of-control family drama that involved cleavers and weeping but it was totally another to casually arrange a meeting of the parents like it was just any other dinner.
“Gwen?” he called.
“What?” I answered.
“Thought I lost you.”
“I’m here.”
“All right, so call Elvira.”
“’Kay.”
I got that out but I was incapable of further speech. It just hit me that my mystery man knew my parents, I knew his, he wanted me to set up a meet the parents dinner even though we’d already met each other’s parents, not to mention they’d met each other, and we were practically living together.
Therefore it just hit me that I was freaking way the f**k out.