Mom never was.
Chapter 20
1:13 PM…
Rain poured on the island.
The water sluiced down Duval Street, the main strip of raucous bars, tourist shops, and greasy spoons. The gutters and flood grates couldn’t keep up with the deluge, meaning parts of the sidewalks were submerged under a foot of water.
Whereas Wolf’s mood matched the weather, the tourists hopping from placed to place—uncaring that they were getting soaked to the bone—all seemed as gay as a sunny day.
And why shouldn’t they?he thought sourly.I bettheydidn’t tell someone they loved them only to be laughed at.
Okay, to be fair Chrissy hadn’tlaughed.In fact, there for a second, he’d thought she might cry. And seeing all that emotion in her eyes? Well…it’d given him hope.
Hope that her talk of never wanting to fall in love was simply that.Talk.Hope that, despite herself, the minute he said the words aloud she realized she’d fallen in love with him too. Hope that they could put That Night behind them, forget about past grievances and misunderstandings, and move forward toward a future they both wanted.
So much for hope, he thought bitterly.
Then…like always, his mind filled with the words of another.“Don’t lose hope. When the sun goes down, the stars come out.”
Okay, fine. So he was supposed to suck it up buttercup and persevere.
But how?
Taking a deep breath, he ran through his options, and realized it might have been better if Chrissyhadlaughed. At least if she’d thought it was a joke, he’d know what to do. Namely, prove to her he was serious.
But she didn’t think he was joking. She simply didn’tbelievehim.
How in the hell did a person go about changing someone’sbeliefs?
Also, let’s say hedidsomehow come up with a way to make her believe. Then what? He’d still have to convince her he was the “settling down type,” as she called it. And then, if by some miracle he managed to convince her he truly had fallen for her and assure her he was, in fact, the settling down type, there was still before him the gargantuan task of disabusing her stubborn ass of the notion that romantic love could grow without firstfallingin love.
For fuck’s sake!
His grandmother said he enjoyed a challenge. But this felt less like a challenge and more like he was being punished.
For what, he couldn’t imagine.
He certainly wasn’t a saint—no one in the spec ops community could ever claim that—but neither was he a liar or a cheat or a conman or a thief. He tried to live his life by the six pillars of character he’d learned in school. And he always helped old ladies cross the street!
“Don’t worry. It’ll blow over in an hour.”
He realized he’d been glaring through the taxi’s window at the cloud-filled sky. It made sense the driver assumed he was a tourist concerned about the weather.
Side note: Thankgoodnessthe cab driver who answered his call hadn’t been Chrissy’s friend, ol’ Billy Blue Eyes. That might’ve been enough to send Wolf straight over the edge.
“That’s good,” he said to be cordial, sitting up straighter when the taxi turned down Chrissy’s street. He could see her house two blocks away and was gratified to find Officer Ryan in the same place he’d left him.
That means all is well on the home front.
Home front.Home.
From the moment he met Chrissy, she’d made him feel homesick. But not for a place he’d ever known. Homesick forher.As if his soul had always known she was out there, somewhere, and once he saw her, he realized how much he’dmissedher.
He opened the brown paper sack the friendly mechanic at the airport had given him after he walked onto the tarmac looking for Romeo and the Otter. Romeo had gotten out of Key West ahead of the weather, but not before placing the Glock in the bag and giving it to the mechanic to pass on to Wolf.
“It’s that one on the corner,” he told the taxi driver now. “The one with the uniformed officer sittin’ on the porch.”
