“’Preciate it, baby.”

I snuggled closer. Tack’s arm around my waist tightened while I did so and only relaxed after I did.

Then I studied the planes of his chest in the dark, the darker marks of his tats until my eyelids drooped and I fell asleep.

Tack woke me in the dead of night, hand between my legs, lips to mine and I could feel I was already wet. I knew this because I was totally turned on.

The second my eyes opened, he whispered, “Goin’ with my gut, baby.”

I smiled against his mouth.

Tack kissed the smile from my lips.

Then he f**ked me.

Then he let me go back to sleep tucked to his side.

He f**ked me again in his shower the next morning. Apparently, the shower drowned out my moans. It didn’t matter anyway, the kids weren’t up.

Then we got ready, he put me on the back of his bike and took me to work.

More soap opera from the boys at work before it was quitting time and I could go home and gussy up.

This brought me to now. Sitting in Club in a little haltertop dress that was clingy, had a short skirt, serious cle**age and was the color of aquamarines. I wore it with spike-heeled, strappy, silver sandals. I also wore it with lots of chunky, kickass silver jewelry, three times as much makeup than I normally wore on my face and my hair out to there.

And I was sitting with Gwen, Mara, Tess Lucas (Mitch’s partner’s wife) and Elvira. Our posse also included Gwen’s friends Camille and Tracy and Mara’s friend LaTanya. And last there was a woman with loads of strawberry blonde curls who looked like a fairy princess. Her name was Sadie Chavez. I drunkenly didn’t remember how she factored into the group but I did know she was semi-famous in Denver though I didn’t remember how.

I watched the women laugh, fuzzily noticed that Elvira wasn’t laughing but scowling and that Gwen was the first person to quit laughing and she did it with her eyes on me.

“So, Tack has kids?” she asked when the laughter died down.

“Yeah, two. Rush is seventeen, nearly eighteen. Tabby just turned sixteen,” I answered.

“I didn’t know Tack had kids,” she muttered and I lifted my cosmo to take a sip in order to hide my drunken elation that Gwen didn’t know Tack had kids. And I felt this elation as any woman would, sitting and drinking with a woman her man had feelings for with those feelings once including the fact he thought she had staying power.

Being hooked up with Hawk, Gwen wasn’t competition, this was true. What she was was a stunning, tall, curvy blonde wearing a fabulous little black dress, even more fabulous shoes and having a great sense of humor. Until I knew her better, she was going to be the stunning, tall, curvy blonde with excellent fashion sense for whom my man had feelings. Me not only knowing Tack had kids but meeting them and spending time with them meant I had one up on her.

“Seventeen and sixteen,” LaTanya said, surprised, then looked at me. “How old is he?”

“Forty-one,” Gwen answered and I instantly took a shot to the heart.

First, because she knew how old Tack was and I didn’t. That took away my one up.

Second, because Tack was forty-one.

Forty-one.

Ohmigod!

“Forty-one!” I shrieked, calculating it, the time it would take to make sure all was good, the length of an appropriate engagement, the time we’d want to have just him and me and coming up with a very bad figure while all eyes turned to me.

“Yeah, forty-one,” Gwen stated then asked, “How old are you?”

“Thirty-five,” I replied and I was. Thirty-five. Tack was forty-one, had two grown kids and my calculations put him at at least forty-three, maybe forty-four depending on when his birthday was when, if all worked out, we could start a family.

Oh… my… God!

“Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God!” I cried, slamming my drink down and covering my face with my hands.

This was a disaster!

“Thinkin’ this is when the night turns bad.” I heard Elvira mutter but I wasn’t really listening. I was freaking out, despairing and shaking my head behind my hands.

“Tyra, are you all right?” I heard Sadie ask and I brought my hands down sharply, slammed them on the table and exclaimed, “No!”

“Why?” Camille asked, watching me closely.

“Because this screws with my dream. I didn’t think he was forty-one. He doesn’t look forty-one. He looks thirty-six, tops!” I was close to yelling and I noticed now Gwen was looking at me closely too and it wasn’t hard to read, even inebriated, she didn’t like what she saw. “How can he be forty-one and look thirty-six? He drinks beer. He shoots tequila. He eats more pork in one meal than most people have in a week. He rides motorcycles in the sun without a helmet. And he lives wild. That isn’t possible!”

“Uh, forty-one isn’t exactly old. And he’s hot,” Gwen remarked.

“I know he’s hot. I’m intimately acquainted with all the ways he’s hot,” I returned.

“No, no, no,” Elvira chanted, hand up, palm toward me, “don’t go back there, girl. We already had the pleasure discussion and I might look recovered but, the shit you shared, I’m not.”

“So, I don’t get it, what’s the problem?” Tracy asked the second Elvira quit talking and I rocked my ass in my tall stool, making it wobble but getting closer to the table, settling in and I started to count it down.

“It’s supposed to happen like this,” I lifted a hand and grabbed my other index finger, “I find my dream man. No one else would do. I promised myself that. Dream man or nothing. No settling. So I didn’t. I would have preferred to meet him ten years ago. I didn’t. I met him at a party at Ride two and a half weeks ago. I didn’t know this because he was fantastic in bed and gave me so many orgasms, I lost count –”

“What’d I say about pleasure discussion?” Elvira asked sharply, interrupting me, eyes narrowed. But I was on a mission, ignored her and kept right on talking.

“I knew it because he was funny. I knew it because he made me laugh. He made me feel beautiful. He made me forget about all the worries and shit in life and just have fun. Be alive. Then he was a jerk and I mean… bad. Then we fought, like, a lot. Then we had a drama that involved kidnapping and neither of us responded to that well but even though it sucked and hurt something awful, it was good in the end because I exposed my soft spot and Tack promised he’d handle me with more care. Now he’s hot, great in bed, gentle and unbelievably sweet, all this proving he’s the one. He’s my dream man.”