Skin Deep (5 page)

Hotch winced, then fell back in to his subordinate role. “We were grief-stricken, sir.”

“Which translates to mean that your cock was off its leash.”

“Sir, I—”

“Dismissed!”

Hotch rose to his feet automatically. He saluted and left before he realized he’d never gotten an answer to his question about the boy. He ran a hand through his hair.

“Fuck me,” he muttered.

Erin’s last words to him took on a new twist. Improvise, she’d said. On the job, he prided himself on it. Like this? He was fucked.

* * * *

“Improvise?” he muttered two days later as he scraped shaving cream off his jaw. Improvise locating her number? Sure. Improvise parenthood? No.

Who was she kidding? You didn’t improvise having a kid. He rinsed his face, patted it dry and smoothed on the cooling aftershave gel. It was mindless activity he needed, and now that it was done, he dropped his hands on either side of the sink basin and stared at his reflection. He didn’t look like a dad. He fucking hadn’t wanted to be a dad. Ever.

He could show a person how to prep a combat bag and tricks on conserving energy while swimming. He could hook a man’s arm and hoist him out of the water from a high-speed boat. He could do a helluva lot of things, but he didn’t have the training to be some brat’s daddy. You had to have a dad to know how to be one.

Hotch grunted as he pushed away from the sink, pulled the terry cloth towel from his waist and stormed into his bedroom naked. He spared a glance to his dresser top where a sticky note with Erin’s phone number and temporary address mocked him. Finding it hadn’t been a problem. It was as simple as calling Mrs. O’Neal. He sure as fuck wouldn’t have asked Commander Hawking for it.

He pulled up his short-briefs and jeans. Rubbing his hair vigorously, he knocked the extra water off. He reached for his cell phone and put in her number. His thumb hovered over the
call
button. He hit the save feature instead. After dressing in a worn gray cotton tee shirt, he padded around the corner to the kitchen.

It was too early for whiskey, and he wasn’t much of a drinker anyway. Coffee would have to be the fortifier of choice today. Staying away from Erin would’ve been easier if she hadn’t told him about the kid. He still didn’t know what to do about him, but information gathering was a requirement of any military operation. He’d start there.

Half an hour later, he’d stood on Erin’s doorstep for five minutes, not as confident.

The door opened. Erin looked at him with impatience. “Were you going to knock eventually?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. Then I’ll wait.” She shut the door on him.

Despite his surprise, Hotch snorted a laugh. She looked as good as he remembered. Better, even. He’d never seen her in full daylight. The funeral and the evening bar fuck had been in the dark. The yellowed quality of Hell’s Dune lighting didn’t count.

Long, dark brown hair and distinctly green eyes, without a touch of yellow or brown in them, lean body muscled like a toned runner, were attributes his libido wanted to study a lot more closely. But he’d come here for the kid.

Hotch knocked. The door didn’t budge, so he knocked a little louder. Erin opened the door, stretching her arm up the side and cocking an eyebrow at him.

“Yes?” she said.

“How do you know he’s mine?” Hotch asked.

Erin’s eyes flashed and she slammed the door in his face.

“Erin! It’s a legitimate question!”

The door opened again, but this time an older woman with silvered blonde hair in a short bob, smiled up at him tightly. “Keep your bad manners on the stoop, and I’ll let you in. Insult Commander Hawking’s daughter again, and I’ll tie your balls in a knot and shove them up your ass,” she said sweetly. “Don’t think I can’t. I was married to the Navy too many years not to learn a few tricks.”

Hotch bit the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing. “Yes, ma’am.”

The woman nodded. Her eyes drifted over him shrewdly, then she sighed. “I know he’s yours because I know my daughter isn’t loose, even if you don’t. But aside from that, there’s no mistaking who he looks like.”

A surge of pleasure prickled the inside of his chest. “He looks like me?”

She opened the door wider. “They’re in the kitchen having lunch. See for yourself.”

Hotch stepped around her. “Thank you, Mrs. Hawking.”

“We’ll see if you still thank me afterward. She’s not happy with you.”

He didn’t bother to comment. He wasn’t pleased with himself either. He also couldn’t say he liked how Erin had broken the news to him. He didn’t know how to feel, if he was being honest with himself.

He headed in the direction Mrs. Hawking had indicated. Passing through a short butler pantry, he entered a large, bright kitchen. Erin’s gaze met his over the top of a padded highchair. They held a warning as she circled a spoon and made an airplane noise. Her lips parted as the spoon went in for a landing.

“Mm!” she said to the unseen child. “Is that yummy?”

The child gurgled happily. Hotch readied himself and walked further into the kitchen. He pulled a chair out on the other side of the table and sat down before he looked at the boy. Struck silent, he stared at the child. The child stared back as though equally shocked to see him.

His black hair stood up all around his head, with several longer pieces brushed off his face. It was evident that Erin had tried to tame the wild locks, because some looked damp as though she’d tried to flatten them with water. The boys wide blue-green eyes, rimmed with coal colored lashes, stared back at him unblinkingly. Rosy rounded cheeks worked as he smacked his mouth on the pureed carrot dribbling off his bottom lip.

Hotch grinned. The boy grinned back and something snagged hard around Hotch’s heart. It only pulled tighter when the child raspberried his lips and pointed at him.

“Dee dee dee dee dee dee!” he said, each non-word running together until the final one, which ended on a breathy vowel.

“Jesus,” Hotch whispered.

“Still wondering who his daddy is?” Erin asked dryly.

He swallowed hard around words that wouldn’t form. He shook his head instead. Emotion crowded him. What Hotch had thought were complicated feelings on her stoop, paled in comparison to what he felt when looking at this kid.

History, family, future, collided around his attraction for Erin and his guilt over Nebraska. This was supposed to be Nebraska’s child, not his. Nebraska’s life and future, not the future of a man who didn’t have family and didn’t know how to be a father.

“What’s his name?” he asked, his voice sounding as tight as his chest felt.

“Tobias Micah Hawking. We call him Toby.”

“Toby,” Hotch said trying out the name. “You named him after me?”

“You’re his dad. I wasn’t sure if there would be more than a name for him to attach to. Family’s important.”

Toby squealed so high he had to raise his little brows and squint an eye to reach the pitch he wanted. Hotch laughed. Toby giggled delightedly.

“Want to feed him?” Erin asked, holding the jar of food out to him across the table.

“I don’t know how.”

“Improvise.”

Hotch smiled wryly. “You’re fond of throwing SEAL terminology around, aren’t you?”

“I’ve had to live the mottos for a while now.”

Hotch got up and came to her. She handed him the jar, which he took, as he sat in her seat and she went to the kitchen sink. He looked at her back for a second. It didn’t appear as though she intended to give him any pointers.

“Okay, kid, it’s just you and me. Be gentle.”

Hotch scooped up some carrots on the end of the rubberized mini-spoon and brought it to Toby’s lips. Toby snapped his mouth on it and then held on. Hotch tugged. Toby smiled, showing four tiny teeth clamped onto the rubber. Carrot spilled out the sides of his mouth.

“He’s leaking,” Hotch said.

“He’s testing you. He might be a baby, but he’s nobody’s fool,” Erin replied.

“Smart kid.”

The water in the sink stopped running. Erin came back. “We were going to take a walk in the park after breakfast. Want to come?”

“Yeah.”

He actually did want to. Normally, little kids freaked him out. He could deal with men and guns. But babies were so—
needy
. He was glad Erin would be there as a buffer.

Erin removed the food tray and came back with a washcloth. She cleaned up Toby’s face and tiny reaching hands.

“He’s taken with you,” she said. “Can’t keep his eyes off you.”

“I know. It’s creepy, but kind of cool.”

Erin unbuckled Toby and lifted him. “I have to go change him.”

Hotch followed her. She shot a surprised glance over her shoulder but didn’t comment. When they got to a bedroom with a crib in it, she laid him out on the bed, and began undressing him.

“Let me,” Hotch said a little too loudly. “You shouldn’t see that.”

He knew it sounded ridiculous as soon as it came out of his mouth. Of course she’d seen naked Toby. She was his mother. She didn’t argue though. She stood back and let him pick up where she’d left off. She handed him the diaper, showed him how to put it on after teaching him how to clean Toby.

Dressing Toby was harder because he kept kicking his legs, but Hotch had to admit he liked the little happy sounds Toby made. He found himself making them back. That set Toby off into a fit of giggles.

He lifted Toby into his arms. Toby didn’t seem too sure about that at first, but after patting Hotch’s cheeks a few times, the tike placed an opened mouth soggy kiss on Hotch’s nose. Erin laughed, handing him a tissue.

“I’d say you’re in,” she remarked. “C’mon. His stroller’s downstairs by the back door. There’s a park down the street with a swing he really likes.”

“He can swing? Isn’t that bad for his neck or something?”

“Only the first couple of months he’s alive. His neck is plenty strong for a gentle swing.”

He held the door for them. Erin rolled the stroller out the back and waited for him to join them. They got to the park two blocks away before either of them spoke.

“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” he asked.

“You know how well it went in person. Do you really think a message sent through a bunch of secret military go-betweens would have made it any easier?”

“I should’ve known.”

“Hotch, I barely knew before I gathered up the courage only to find out you’d already been deployed. Maybe I should’ve told you immediately, but it was a surprise I hadn’t been prepared for.”

“Did you—” He interrupted himself trying to find a way to ask delicately the questions her father had put into his mind. “Your dad said some things the other night. About you and the guys on the team. Did you know Toby was mine before he was born?”

Her pride stung. She wanted to smack him for the suggestion that she was basically a naval whore. She supposed, based on what she heard her father say, that he had every reason to wonder. Maybe he even thought Troy was naïve, and she’d cheated on him. She didn’t know, but this was no way to continue a speaking relationship with Toby’s dad.

“My complete sexual history? Two Skins when I was eighteen. I thought it was funny to rebel against my dad like that. None of the other guys would come near me. The two I picked were losers who didn’t stay on the team.”

“Then Nebraska?”

“No. Then I went to college. I dated a few guys, but it never got serious enough to matter. I met Troy when I did some administrative work at Gooding Naval Base over a summer. I didn’t know he was Dad’s. Apparently, I have sonar for SEALs,” she joked. “It was another summer before we started dating. He told me who his CO was and I suggested we keep my last name out of any discussion in case things didn’t work out. Or in case they did.”

“That’s why he never told me,” he said as though agreeing with the decision.

“He respected you.”

“I respected him,” Hotch confessed.

“After he died, I wasn’t interested in meeting someone else. Losing him—” She broke off, unable to talk around the lump in her throat. “He was a great guy,” she finished lamely.

“No one like him,” he agreed.

The path turned and they walked silently beneath the trees.

“You were my last,” she said finally. “That night at the funeral, I didn’t set out to have sex.”

“Neither did I.”

“You were just there, and you were part of him, and I just needed him so badly.” Six months ago, saying that aloud would have made the tears fall. Now the words touched her with loss and a sense of fondness.

Hotch stopped the stroller and turned her into his arms. He pulled her close, and she didn’t resist the comfort he offered. Her hair stirred as he dropped a kiss on top of her head.

“I needed a piece of him too.”

She tilted her chin up to look at him. “Should I have been jealous of you?” she teased lightly.

“Naw,” he smiled slightly. “But I’d be lying if I didn’t say that I was jealous of
him
. He talked about you all the time. I thought he was laying it on a little thick, but he didn’t exaggerate. You’re as beautiful as he told me you were. I suspect you’re just as amazing a person, too.”