The reason they were late.
“Lingerie parties, darlin’,” I heard Leo whisper in my ear, I smiled and turned to face him. “You promised,” he finished when he caught my eyes.
I squeezed his hand and whispered back, “You happy?”
“She is, so, yeah,” Leo answered.
That was a great freaking answer.
“Love you, babe,” I told him softly.
“Lingerie,” he replied.
“Gotcha,” I whispered on a smile.
“Gwen, can I have a moment?”
Leo and I both twisted our necks and tipped our heads back to see Troy standing there, his face set, looking unhappy.
Shit.
I nodded, squeezed Leo’s hand again and then stood. Troy moved in putting his hand to the small of my back and leading me out of the room. I searched for Hawk as I went so he’d know where I was going and who I was with but I couldn’t find him.
We made it to a hallway and I turned to Troy.
“Troy, I –”
“Just wait a second, Gwen, would you?” he asked tersely and I wondered what was on his mind and why he seemed in such a foul mood. Though it wasn’t hard to guess. Hawk was not shy with public displays of affection and this was coupled with him being an alpha male which meant PDA was liberally mixed with possessive branding moves such as curling his arm around the back of my chair while we were seated or running his hand over my ass when he saw a man’s eyes on that ass, shit like that.
Shit that I’d noticed, as the night wore on, Troy didn’t like much.
We turned a corner and both of us stopped dead on the carpet when we saw Hawk, his back to us, about eight feet down the hall. There was one female hand at his bent head, one arm tight around his back.
I sucked in a silent, searing breath and felt my head reel as Troy’s arm curled around my waist and held tight.
Maybe a nanosecond later Hawk moved, the woman’s arms disappeared and it hit me that he’d set her away and he’d done it roughly.
“What the f**k?” he clipped, his voice so harsh, it was acid and it was a wonder the wallpaper didn’t melt off the walls.
“I –” a woman replied.
“You told me you wanted to talk about my woman and your man,” Hawk went on.
“I –” she repeated.
Hawk cut her off again. “Jesus, f**k, what’s the matter with you?”
“I –” she tried yet again and failed yet again.
“Give me one good reason not to go back into that room and tell your man you put your hands and your f**kin’ mouth on me,” Hawk demanded.
“He won’t believe you,” she got out and my body froze solid as Troy’s did the same at my side.
That voice was Troy’s whiney, annoying, grasping girlfriend, Hanna.
“You’re right,” Hawk replied. “He won’t, which, I gotta tell you, woman, sucks because he’s a good man and he could do a lot f**kin’ better than you.”
Oh God.