“You can be Brock. You can be Jake. You could call yourself Errol fucking Flynn and I wouldn’t care because, bottom line, you’d be the man for me. I know from knowing a bad one, the worst, I know a good man when I see him and it’s important to me to let him be just who he is, not what he thinks I want him to be.”

“Tess—”

“No, I—”

“Tess—” he growled.

“No, I’m not done—”

“Tess,” he clipped, one arm leaving me so his hand could cover my mouth and his face got in mine. “Shut it.”

I glared at him.

He held my glare and stared at me.

Then his eyes started dancing and he asked, “Errol fucking Flynn?”

“This is not fucking funny,” I said against his hand so it came out garbled.

He burst out laughing, his hand leaving my mouth to become an arm wrapped tightly around me again and he shoved his laughing face in my neck.

“I’m not finding anything funny, Brock,” I told the wall behind him as my hands slid up and put pressure on his shoulders (to no avail).

He lifted his head still chuckling and gave me a squeeze.

Then he asked, “Can you shut up for two minutes so I can talk?”

“Yes, but I’ll give you that answer with the warning that you better not say anything that pisses me off or I’m cancelling Christmas.”

His body started rocking and his eyes were still dancing but he wisely didn’t verbalize his still-obvious hilarity.

“Right,” he muttered but it came out sounding choked.

“You have two minutes,” I prompted him.

He grinned at me, repeated a muttered, “Right.” Then said, “All right, baby, no games, no bullshit, no lies. You called the scene and I’ve been playin’ by your rules. I told you, shit got hot for me with what I did at the DEA and I was facin’ a desk. I didn’t lie. What I didn’t tell you is that I had an option. They were thinkin’ of transferring me to LA.”

My body grew tight at these words and his arms grew tight with it.