Uncle Tex kept staring.
“Fuckin’ A,” he whispered and, to my total and complete mortification, I made one of those loud, crying hiccoughs.
He let go of my head and engulfed me in a hug. I put my arms around him, closed my eyes and pressed my cheek to his chest.
It would seem Uncle Tex wasn’t going to close the door on me and I felt like I’d been blessed. I let out a deep breath and al owed myself a private smile through my tears.
He held me for a long time and I held him right back.
“I’d look forward to your letters every month. I would never have made it through prison if it wasn’t for you, Roxie darlin’. Never,” he said softly to me but his voice was stil loud.
I just nodded my head against his chest, tears flowing freely now. I was incapable of control ing it and no longer wanted to. What he said meant the world to me and that he had the courage to say it meant even more.
“Been waitin’ a long time, Roxie, to give you a hug. A long, f**kin’ time.”
My arms spasmed around him and I held on tight.
“Me too,” I whispered, his arms pul ed me deeper into him and he squeezed the breath out of my lungs.
I opened my eyes and looked straight into Whisky’s (I couldn’t think of him as Hank, not yet, right then he had to be just Whisky to me). He was stil watching me, leaned back in the couch, the sole of one of his booted feet resting on the edge of a table. But now his expression was different, the laziness was long gone and his eyes were total y alert.
“Uncle Tex,” I started, stil looking at Whisky, in fact, entirely unable to tear my eyes from his, “I… can’t…
breathe.”
That’s when Whisky smiled.
If I thought I couldn’t breathe before, I was wrong.
Whisky’s smile was so damn good, it made me forget how to breathe entirely.
“Sorry, Darlin’.” Tex let me go, grabbed onto my arms and shook me so hard, my head bobbed back and forth.
“Yee ha!” he boomed and looked around the room and then he slung an arm around my shoulders. “This is my niece, Roxie!” he announced to al and sundry (like they didn’t already know).
He jerked me around and my head snapped back.
“Nance, meet my niece.”
I let my brain juices calm down and then smiled dazedly at the pretty woman who walked in with Uncle Tex.
“Hi Roxie, I’m Nancy, Jet’s mother.” She shook my hand and then sat down on the arm of a chair in a way that made me think that if she hadn’t, she would have fal en over. I glanced worriedly at her and her dangling arm, which appeared to be useless. I was about to move toward her to ask if she was al right, when Tex jerked me around toward the espresso counter and my head snapped back again, then again as he yanked me forward.
“Indy, woman, Al y, Loopy Loo, get your asses over here and meet my niece,” he ordered and they came forward.
I was right about al of them. Al y was Whisky’s sister.
Loopy Loo was obviously (for some reason) Tex’s nickname for Jet.
Then I was introduced to Lee; I learned the latest news, that Lee was now Indy’s fiancé and I noticed he had dark brown eyes, Vance; the Native American, Mace; who I guessed had some native Hawaiian or Polynesian in him, was almost as tal as Tex and had fantastic jade green eyes, Matt; a good-looking blond guy that was my height and Eddie; I’d already figured that out but didn’t tel Tex and, luckily, the announcement of blood relation to Tex made Eddie’s coolness toward me melt a bit.
And final y, Whisky, or as Tex introduced him, Hank Nightingale.
Hank Nightingale.
Jesus.
Be stil my heart.