Colorado 03 Lady Luck (18 page)

“So,” I said to the windshield as I heard
Ty’s door open but he hadn’t yet angled out, “are we here to pick
up your keys?”

“Come again?”

I tore my eyes from the house to look at
him. “Are we here to pick up the keys to your condo?”

“This is my condo,” he replied and I blinked
as surprise flooded through me, surprise mingled liberally with
excitement as he went on. “Maggie’s left the keys so we can get
in.”

“This isn’t your condo,” I told him stupidly
and he stared at me a second.

Then he said, “It is.”

“No it isn’t.”

“Lexie, it is.”

“It can’t be. This isn’t even a condo,” I
informed him.

“It is,” he replied.

“No, it isn’t. It’s a house.”

“Woman, it’s a condo.”

“It is not,” I argued.

“It is in Colorado,” he replied.

At this news, the surprise shifted out, the
excitement took over and my happy gaze slid back to look up at the
condo.

Then I whispered, “Wow.”

To this he muttered, “Goof,” and exited the
car.

I followed him, still looking up at the
house and thinking this did it.

I knew.

The last couple of days I’d given a lot of
headspace trying to determine if the signs I was reading were
correct. That in a crazy, wild way life had finally led me
somewhere sweet. It had led me to a beautiful man who had his
issues but then again, everyone did. That didn’t mean he couldn’t
be generous, gentle, thoughtful and, yes, I discovered, also funny.
He was great at teasing, he found my buttons and enjoyed pushing
them but in a way that wasn’t nasty but intimate and increasingly
familiar. When I talked, he listened. He didn’t pretend to, he just
did. No matter what I was blabbing about, he found it interesting
and I knew that to be true. I didn’t know how I knew, I just knew.
He was patient. He was gentle. He was calling me “babe” and “baby”
more often but, even so, he still didn’t do it like other men,
throwaway. These words had meaning to him, I sensed I’d become
these to him or he wouldn’t have called me those names. I
was
his
babe,
his
baby and those were things I
wanted to be. He was also using his soft voice with me more often,
sometimes for reasons I didn’t know him enough yet to understand,
whatever mood he was in making him do it, sometimes he used it when
he was teasing me. It didn’t matter. I liked it. He still didn’t
give much away but I had a feeling all this stuff
was
giving something away. Giving
something to me. Something big, something important, something good
and clean and right. Something I liked having and wanted more
of.

And now there I was in a Colorado condo
development outside a small, quiet, settled town surrounded by
beauty and my place of residence was going to be a kickass crib,
three stories of house with spectacular views.

He’d gone to the trunk and swung his duffle
over his shoulder and nabbed my bag. I carried the bags with the
snacks in them, thinking I’d clean out the car later, after a tour
of his house. I negotiated the gravel under my feet with some
difficulty in my high-heeled wedges and found him around the side,
bent to a border of rocks that edged some attractive, clipped
shrubs. He flipped it over, did something to it with his thumb then
opened it.

Fake rock where Maggie hid the key.

He put the rock back, grabbed my bag he’d
set beside him and headed to the stairs.

I followed him.

We hit deck and I peered around the narrow
wooden walkway at the side of the house seeing I was right. The one
story elevation gave views over the tops of the trees to the town
and the vista beyond and the walkway led to a wider deck at the
front of the house.

Awesome.

I went to stand behind him at some
wood-framed glass double doors the opposite of which I could see
some wide, vertical blinds which were closed. Ty unlocked the door,
pushed it in and shoved aside the blinds, entering and I pushed in
close behind him.

The minute one foot hit floor over the
threshold I heard a cacophony of cries including, “Welcome home!”,
“Surprise!” and “Congratulations!”

Ty had gone solid in front of me and I
automatically stepped to his side. When I did, I didn’t take in the
interior of his house but instead all I could see were a bunch of
people, a bunch of balloons, a bunch of streamers and two huge
banners. One had stars printed on it around the words, “Welcome
home” and the other one had a profusion of two facing doves with
linking wedding bands at their beaks printed on it with the word,
“Congratulations!”

This was all I took in before a tall,
extremely well-built, freakishly attractive man wearing a
shit-eating grin approached Ty, took his hand and shook it while
moving in to give him a back-pounding man hug. At the same time a
gorgeous blonde woman with legs nearly as long as mine came right
up to me, pulled me into a tight hug and said in my ear, “So nice
to meet you, Lexie. I’m Laurie. Welcome home.”

Welcome home.

A shiver slid over my skin, a shiver the
likes I’d never felt but I knew instinctively it was not a bad
one.

And thus it began. I was divested of my bags
as Ty got hugs and handshakes, I got hugs and cheek kisses. I met
Tate, the freakishly good-looking man, Laurie was his wife (of
course), Maggie, a pretty, petite brunette, Wood, another
freakishly good-looking man with black hair and a goatee, Bubba, a
man nearly as huge as Ty (but not as solid) with light brown hair
and a good ole boy smile, Krystal, a petite, busty woman in a tight
tank top with flaming red hair and assessing eyes, Pop, an older
man with a beer gut and a gray beard, Stella, a full on biker babe
with dark hair highlighted with streaks of blonde, Deke, a blond
mountain of a man who was as solid as Ty and even scarier,
Jim-Billy, another older man wearing a beat up baseball cap and a
broken smile, broken because he was missing a tooth, Ned and Betty,
an upper middle-aged married couple who approached me together
declaring they were a unit and they liked it that way, Jonas, a
handsome boy being thus seeing as he was Tate’s son who was, I
guessed, twelve, maybe thirteen and, rounding out the pack, Maggie
and Wood’s two kids, a pretty little girl named Addison and a cute
little boy named Noah.

After the introductions I realized we were
in a kitchen, a big one and a modern one. Then I realized it seemed
like a big one because it was, but also because the entire floor of
the house was open plan the kitchen feeding into a huge living room
that had floor to ceiling windows at the end with a view to a
large, jutting front deck and the panorama beyond. There was a
massive island on which were big bowls of chips, smaller bowls of
dips, platters of fried chicken, bowls of coleslaw, mountains of
mashed potatoes, gravy boats of gravy, stacks of baby blue paper
plates decorated in white doves like on the banner, the wedding
rings on the plates silver, matching napkins, cups filled with blue
plastic cutlery, several small vases filled with flowers here and
there and in the middle was a delicious-looking homemade cake that
had a plastic, traditional wedding top bride and groom stuck in the
middle of it.

I was led to the island sandwiched between
Maggie and Laurie and I heard the door to the fridge open as there
was chatter and laughter all around. The hiss of beer caps snapping
off filled the air and I found one in my hand. My eyes went to Ty
who was opposite the island from me and I watched Wood shove a beer
into his hand while grinning.

Ty’s head started to turn in my direction
but Laurie filled my vision before his eyes could meet mine.

“Tate was tasked with finding out when you
were arriving home,” she told me. “Being a man and not
understanding the delicate intricacies of party planning, he failed
in this endeavor and we only had two hours.”

“Thank God we already bought all the
decorations,” Maggie noted, moving in at Laurie’s side. “No way
we’d have time to get to the mall and back again.” She grinned up
at me. “You can find practically anything in Carnal but, gotta
admit, the party supplies leave something to be desired.”

“This is, unfortunately, true. Carnal needs
less biker shops and more party stores,” Laurie agreed then looked
back at me. “Anyway, this means it’s fried chicken and the fixin’s
from the grocery store but they do it really good. Jonas loves it.
He can eat a family pack all by himself. And I gave Shambles an
emergency cake order and he got it ready just in time.”

Shambles? I didn’t think I’d met a
Shambles.

I wondered if that was someone there’s
nickname but I didn’t get to ask because Maggie again spoke.

“We were going to get the bakery in town to
make you a real wedding cake but that was if we had more than two
hours, which we obviously didn’t, but we tried anyway and they said
they couldn’t do it,” Maggie told me. “But they had a cake top so
it looks kinda stupid but, stupid or not, it says what it needs to
say.”

“Betty went to Holly and did the flowers,”
Laurie added.

“Stella took charge of the kids and did the
decorating,” Maggie went on.

Then suddenly I felt my left hand taken in a
tight grip and lifted. I looked down to see the flaming-haired
Krystal thumbing my wedding bands.

Then she jerked my hand up high in front of
me, stating, “Pure Ty. Look at these fuckin’ rings.” She shook my
hand at the two other women. “He hasn’t changed. No half-measures
for that boy. Jesus. You could buy a house with these rings.”

That wasn’t exactly true (though they
certainly would be a hefty down payment) but I didn’t get to inform
her of this, again because of Maggie.

“
Ohmigod!
” Maggie shrieked and I struggled against
taking a step back in reaction to the noise but couldn’t do it
because she snatched my hand out of Krystal’s and dragged it close
to her face. Then her head tipped back to look at me. “Those
are
gorgeous!
” Still
holding my hand, she twisted her torso and shouted across the
island, “Ty! These rings are
gorgeous!
”

Before I could look to Ty to see his
reaction to Maggie’s shout, Krystal spoke again.

“I bet you didn’t have to say a word. I bet
those rings were all Ty. Which makes you the only female on the
planet who didn’t have to give her man some instruction when it
came to an engagement ring,” Krystal noted correctly and I looked
down at her. “He may drink beer but that boy is pure
champagne.”

Then before I could comment on this, another
voice came.

“
Laurie,” it was Jonas calling from the
side of the island, “now that they’re here, can we eat? I was
starved an hour ago and I’ve been sniffin’ chicken for
forever.
Can we break the seal or
what?”

And before Laurie could answer, yet another
voice came.

“Mommy!” Addison shouted from the other side
and she was jumping up and pointing at a bunch of boxes
extravagantly wrapped in wedding paper resting on a side counter.
“Is it time for presents?” she asked.

“No, honey, not just yet. After we have
cake,” Maggie answered but I was staring at the presents.

Presents.

Presents, cake, fried chicken and
decorations.

I pulled my hand from Maggie’s and took a
step back as my eyesight grew fuzzy but through the haze I heard
the cheerful buzz all around. Smelled the chicken. Felt the vibe of
friendship that had a hint of relief but more happiness and even
love.

Good. Clean. Right.

Ronnie’s best friend was Shift. Shift did
not arrange for Ronnie to have a welcome home party when he got let
out of prison in Indiana and came home to Dallas. None of Ronnie’s
friends did, neither did his family. This was because he’d fucked
up and although we were happy he was home, his future was in the
toilet, he’d flushed it down his damned self and that wasn’t
anything to celebrate.

But also, outside of Shift, all of Ronnie’s
decent friends (who turned out to be not so decent) deserted him
after he got home and the crew he found wasn’t the cake, banners,
decorations, fried chicken and gift giving kind. They took. They
didn’t give.

“Lexie, you okay?” I heard Laurie ask and I
took another step back, my eyes moving in the direction of Ty but I
didn’t see him.

I didn’t see him because it hit me that
Ronnie had never had this but I didn’t either. I had good friends
but there was nothing to celebrate for me with Ronnie in my life.
He hated it, I knew, but he knew it as I did. He was a shadow
blocking out the sun of my world. He wasn’t about happy chatter and
good friends rushing around in a two hour window to do something
beautiful. If he’d lived and I’d given in one of the gazillion
times he tried to talk me into marrying him, our people would have
gone through the motions but the chatter wouldn’t be happy, the
buzz not filled with love but instead obligation and maybe even
doom.

But more than that, I never thought
I
would
have this.
Growing up the way I did, dreams like this died early. You learned
not to hope for too much when you experienced the bitter taste of
disappointed as early as I did.

These people doing this said it all about
Ty. It said I was reading those signs right. No one did this kind
of thing for an asshole or a loser. They did it for someone who was
worthy of it.

And my marriage to Ty might have started out
fake but this… this was real. These people cared about him, a lot,
and they were wasting no time bringing me into the fold.

And he’d given me this.

And I’d never had anything so beautiful.