Tito Read online

  Not because he asked. Because I couldn’t help it.

  I couldn’t be in a relationship like that again. One night of sex wouldn’t hurt anything, though. In fact, sex with the handsome stranger could be the first step in my recovery from Jared’s infidelity.

  “Let me see what I can find out,” I said. “If you’d like to leave your number, I’ll call you if anything materializes. I’m Reggie, by the way.”

  Regardless of my findings in the frowny-faced hat search, I was sure I could text my way into a no-strings-attached arrangement for one night. Afterward, I’d likely forget about Jared and his affinity for strippers who were dressed like Disney princesses.

  One side of the hatless stranger’s mouth curled up. “Reggie?”

  “Regina. My mother named me,” I said. “I go by Reggie.”

  He looked me up and down, as if scanning my likeness for future reference. The temperature in the store shot up ten degrees. Then, ten more. When he stopped undressing me with his eyes, he smiled just a little. “What’s your number, Reggie? I’ll send you a text.”

  I felt myself flush. I gulped down the lump of apprehension that had risen in my throat and parted my parched lips. “619-447-1035.”

  While I stared at him mindlessly, I heard my phone ding from across the store.

  “There,” he said. “You’ve got my number.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Tito.”

  “Tito?”

  “Taddeo,” he said with a smile. “I go by Tito.”

  “I’ll uhhm. I’ll send you a text,” I stammered. “When I find something out.”

  “Why don’t you check your schedule for Saturday night,” he said, lifting one brow slightly. “Text me and let me know if you’d like to grab dinner.”

  I didn’t need to check my schedule. Fucking him was all that was on my to-do list.

  “Yes,” I blurted.

  He smirked. “You’re free Saturday night?”

  “In all honesty, I’m fresh out of a toxic relationship with my boyfriend. I need a night out with a new face to give my recovery a shove in the right direction.”

  “Define fresh,” he said. “How long has it been?”

  I glanced at my watch. “Six hours.” I said, giving him my best innocent look. “Give or take a few minutes. He’s clearing his things out of my house now.”

  “Are you over him?” he asked.

  “Over who?”

  “Your boyfriend.”

  I gave him a look no differently than if he spoken to me in Swahili. “What boyfriend?”

  He smirked. “I’ll see you Saturday.”

  2

  Tito

  I reserved Sundays for anything that allowed me to escape the motorcycle club’s grasp. I spent the day grocery shopping, doing yard work, walking along one of San Diego’s many beaches, and sitting on my elderly neighbor’s porch, drinking beer.

  “Hap” Rourke was a seventy-year-old widower, retired Marine war veteran, and an antagonist. What little time he didn’t spend in one of the three chairs that adorned his front porch was spent exercising.

  The air of confidence that accompanied him everywhere he went—when combined with his physical stature—made him a rather intimidating figure, despite his age. He kept his snow-white hair short and his stories long.

  Downsizing after his wife’s death, Hap moved next door into a small two-bedroom home. After unpacking his last box, he invited me over for a beer. As a result of his open-armed acceptance I spent a considerable amount of my time with him and his son, solving the world’s problems one issue at a time.

  His son Braxton was born following Hap’s last tour in Vietnam. Interestingly, he possessed a self-professed ability to see deep into the soul of any living creature. He lived in Los Angeles but made his way to San Diego to visit his father once a week, without fail.

  An intriguing man to say the least, Braxton dressed very nicely, drove an expensive SUV, and spoke very little if not spoken to. Unlike his father, he wore his salt and pepper hair long enough to style, and wore it in various fashions, depending on his mood. A slight growth of well-trimmed beard covered his jawline, giving him a rough I didn’t take time to shave this morning look. Combined with his confident gait, his looks caused warning buzzers to go off, cautioning those in his path that there was much more to him than the Armani suits he wore so well.

  Nestled in the chair positioned at the center of the porch, I glanced over my right shoulder, at Hap.

  We were playing a game of Fuck, Marry, Kill. The concept was simple and quite entertaining. Three celebrities were named by one of the players. The other players in the game were required to decide which of the three named celebrities they would fuck, which they would marry, and which they would kill.

  “Who made this game up?” Hap asked, laughing. “This is the craziest shit I’ve ever heard of. Fun to think of, but I’ll be damned if it isn’t almost immoral.”

  “Nothing immoral about fictitious fucking,” Braxton commented. “Like any of these women would fuck you anyway, Old Man.”

  “Might be old, but my dick still gets as hard as a diamond,” Hap insisted.

  Braxton rested the bottle of beer between his legs and gave a slow clap. “Guess I have something to look forward to when I’m seventy. Stroking my diamond-hard dick in the bathroom while I read the Tribune.”

  Hap flipped Braxton the bird with his free hand while finishing his beer. When he lowered the empty bottle, he belched. “Fuck you, Son.”

  Braxton brushed the wrinkles from his tailored sport coat and smirked.

  Hap shifted his attention to me. His weathered face wore a look of concern. After a short moment, it faded. “Suppose I’d fuck Jennifer Anniston, kill Nicole Kidman, and marry Julia Roberts.” He pressed the heels of his palms against the arms of the chair and rose from his seat, flexing his biceps in the process. “In that exact order.”

  Blindly, Braxton opened the lid to the beer cooler, reached inside, and lifted a bottle of beer toward Hap. “In that exact order? Why?”

  “Wouldn’t want to cheat on Julia,” Hap responded. “Nor would I want to be murdering people after we were married, so it’s got to be in that order. Fuck Anniston, kill Kidman, and then propose to Julia Roberts.”

  “Out of curiosity, why kill Nicole Kidman?” I asked, hoping to be entertained by his response.

  Hap took the bottle of beer from Braxton’s grasp and paused. “My thought process on this one was simple,” he replied. “That Kidman woman closely resembles a skinny man with a bad nose job, her face looks like someone squeezed it in a vise. I can’t stand to listen to her. Every time she opens her mouth, I want to shove a rag in it. Given half an opportunity, I’d kill her just for the fun of it—”

  “What if you saw her on the street? Today?” Braxton asked, interrupting Hap. “Would you go out of your way to kill her?”

  “I wouldn’t kill her if I saw her at the 7-Eleven in the broad daylight,” Hap responded as if it were sheer fact. “But if she was behind the bar at midnight, I’d whack her in the head with a brick just so I wouldn’t have to see her at any more awards banquets. I’d smack her right in the schnoz. Ironic as hell that she’s included in this, because that woman annoys me more than any other person on this planet.”

  “What about Anniston?” I asked. “Why not marry her?”

  “Her nipples are always hard.” Hap raised his clenched fists to his chest and extended his little fingers. “Ever seen a picture of her when they’re not poking out there like a rigid pinkie finger?”

  I laughed. “What’s that got to do with anything?”

  “Means her boobs are fake,” Hap said. “I’m not marrying anyone with silicone implants.” He flexed his aging bicep. “I’m all natural and I expect my spouse to be the same.”

  “Put the guns away, old man.” Braxton chuckled a sarcastic laugh. “Before someone calls the cops.”

  Hap gave his swollen upper arm an admiring glance
before lowering it to his side. “Kid at the Starbucks cut me in line last Wednesday, thinking I wouldn’t say anything. I grabbed a fistful of his shirt and yanked his ass away from the counter. I might be seventy, but I still got it. Made that spindly little prick apologize and go to the back of the line.”

  “Damn it, Old Man,” Braxton snarled. “I don’t want to be driving down here and bailing you out of jail for smacking some college kid.”

  “Wouldn’t call you to bail me out.” Hap gestured in my direction with the neck of his beer bottle. “I’d call the kid.”

  “Good to know,” Braxton said with a nod.

  “Your turn, Brax,” Hap said, taking his seat at my side. “Fuck, marry, kill. Let’s hear it.”

  Braxton studied a man who was arguing with a woman in the driveway of a home across the street. She backed her car out of the driveway, screeching the tires as she pulled away. The man stood with his fists clenched, fuming mad.

  As the man turned toward the home, Braxton responded. “Can’t stand Kidman, either,” he admitted, stroking the graying scruff on his jaw as he spoke. “I’d fuck her, though.” He shifted his eyes to Hap. “In the ass. I’d kill Julia Roberts, and, believe me, I’d be doing the world a favor. Her face looks like a horse. For clarification, I’d be fucking that Australian bitch in the ass until she drew her last, dying breath. So, technically, I’d be killing two of them, leaving only one to marry: Anniston.”

  Hap gave me a confused look. “Can he do that?”

  “Do what?” I asked.

  “Kill two of ‘em?” He crossed his arms. “Because if we can do that, I need to back up to the last one and make a few changes.”

  “I can kill two,” Braxton said before I had the chance to respond. “If one of them is an accident.”

  Hap shot Braxton a glare. “Doesn’t sound like an accident. Premeditated murder, if you ask me.”

  “Nope,” his son argued. “It’d be an accident. I know me well enough to know I’d fuck that ugly cunt until she quit breathing. It’d be accidental. I’d just be caught up in the moment.”

  “It’s not an accident if you go into it knowing you’re going to kill her,” Hap said, his voice raising two octaves. “It’s murder.”

  Braxton shook his head. “Accident.”

  “Fine.” Hap said in a huff. “I want to go back to the one we did a minute ago, and choke that google-eyed Paris Hilton by accident.”

  “Can’t choke someone by accident,” Braxton said. “Choking someone is murder. Ass-fucking someone to death isn’t.”

  “Then I won’t choke her,” Hap snarled. “But it’s bugging the shit out of me that I let her live. I keep conjuring up images of her, and it’s making my stomach turn. I’ve got to kill her. Kill Paris Hilton, kill Khloe Kardashian, and marry the little Mexican girl, Mila Kunis.”

  “She’s from Ukraine,” I said.

  “Kunis?” Hap seemed surprised. “She’s not a Mexican?”

  “About as far away from Mexico as she could be,” I replied.

  “You sure?”

  “Positive.”

  With a satisfied look on his face, Hap rubbed his open palms over his gray buzz-cut while alternating glances between Braxton and me. “If Kunis is Russian, I’m feeling pretty good about this. So, kill, kill, marry. No fucking, except for the fucking Kunis and I are going to do afterward.”

  Braxton shook his head. “Can’t kill two—”

  “You did,” Hap complained.

  “One was a fucking accident.”

  “Well, while Kardashian is changing her Range Rover’s tire on the freeway, I’ll swerve over there and run her dumb ass over with my truck,” Hap said. “Then, I’ll accidently push Hilton off the edge of my balcony while handing her a glass of wine. That’s my final answer.”

  “Three problems,” Braxton said. “First, you don’t have a balcony. Second, even if you did, you can’t accidently push someone off a balcony. If you push them, it’s on purpose. Third, Kardashian would never change her own tire. She’d have someone do it for her.”

  “This is all fictitious horseshit,” Hap said. “I’ll play by the rules, though. I’m running over that dumb Kardashian bitch with my truck. Period. Maybe she’s walking down the sidewalk with one of her equally stupid sisters and I swerve over and get a two-for-one. Squash Khloe and Kim as flat as a couple of pancakes. I’ll spread Spandex, high-end purses, jewelry, designer clothes, and their remains for half a mile along Sunset Boulevard. With Hilton, I guess I won’t push her off a balcony. You and I’d be leaving that fancy restaurant in Hollywood you took me to. The one that British lady owns, SUR. Hilton would be coming in as we were walking out. Her crooked eyes would catch my attention. In this little fable, I’m wearing those fancy curvy-toed boots you gave me for Christmas two years back. So, while we’re coming out of the restaurant, her google eyes are distracting me. I catch one of those oversized boots on something, but I don’t know what it is, because I’m staring at her fish eyes. I stumble into her and push her off the curb in front of a gang banger speeding away from the scene of a drive by. He hits her with the front end of his ‘64 Impala and plasters that cock-eyed bitch from LA to Encino.” He clapped his hands together and offered his open palms. “Complete accident.”

  “Drags her all the way to Encino, huh?” Braxton gave a nod. “I suppose that will work.”

  “It’s fun to think about ridding this earth of the uppity reality show twits,” Hap said with a smile. “The reality is this: they’re a bunch of annoying bitches. We need better role models than a google-eyed hotel chain heir or a group of rich dip-shit sisters with fake lips and fat asses.”

  “I’d like to climb inside your head for about three minutes, Old Man.” Braxton chuckled a dry laugh. “You’re a few slices shy of a full loaf.”

  “You’re one to talk,” Hap spat. “You said you don’t like those dumb whores, either.”

  “Oh, believe me, I’m in agreement on the Kardashians,” Braxton said. “In fact, I’d kill every one of those phony bitches, just to pass the time. Can’t stand the sight of ‘em. In fact, I escorted the Jenner girl to a function last year and I was tempted to push her in front of a speeding truck.”

  “The billionaire?” Hap asked.

  “No, her sister. The model.”

  From my discussions with Hap, I knew Braxton worked with Hollywood types, but I had no idea what he did, specifically.

  I cleared my throat. “Braxton, what is it that you do for work?”

  He glanced in my direction. “I solve problems.”

  “What problem did Kendall Jenner have that she needed your assistance?”

  “A problem with proximity,” he said dryly.

  Dissatisfied with his lackluster response I waited for further explanation.

  He held my gaze while taking a slow drink of his beer. When he lowered the bottle, he let out a sigh. “She needed to parade alongside a group of five thousand screaming fans without having anyone get close enough to touch her.”

  “You’re a bodyguard?”

  He brushed lint from one of the lapels of his sport coat. “Like I said, I solve problems.”

  I nodded in acknowledgement. “I see.”

  “Tell him about your problem, Kid,” Hap said, waving his hand toward Braxton. “Brax knows people. All kinds of people.”

  “I don’t have a problem,” I responded.

  “It sure sounded like you did when you were whining about it this morning,” Hap said with a laugh. “Hell, you were nearly frantic. Like a teenage girl who’d dropped her phone in the toilet.”

  I looked at Braxton and sighed. “My hat flew off on the freeway. Lost, and gone forever.”

  Braxton stared for a lingering moment. “Sorry, I was waiting for you to continue.” He gave me a look of disbelief. “Is that it?”

  “The hat was special.”

  Braxton gazed across the street while rubbing the whiskers on his jaw. He appeared to either not have heard me, or he was in d
eep thought.

  “Based on my experience in such matters,” he said, breaking the silence. “Here’s my professional opinion.” He gave me a serious look. “Get a new hat.”

  “Told you he was a problem solver,” Hap chimed as if Braxton had formulated a cure for cancer. “See? Problem solved.”

  I wished it was that simple. “The hat was more than special,” I explained. “Like a good luck charm. Maybe not so much a charm. It’s was more of a trademark. I’ve been wearing it for a decade.”

  Braxton struggled not to smile. “You’re trying to tell me recovering from this loss is going to be difficult?”

  It seemed strange hearing him say it. Nevertheless, the hat’s absence was causing real-life problems that I wasn’t prepared to deal with. Hopefully, replacing it would resolve most of them.

  “I’m hoping to find another one just like it,” I said. “I’ve got someone working on it.”

  Braxton retrieved another beer from the cooler. He twisted off the cap. “A hat expert?”

  “Of sorts,” I replied. “She’s a manager at a clothing store.”

  “He’s got a date with her Saturday night,” Hap interjected. “I might be more excited about it than he is.”

  “Interesting,” Braxton said, looking me over while he sipped his beer. “You’ve been spending your Sundays here for damned near as long as the Old Man’s been living here. Never seen a woman at your house. In fact, you’ve never mentioned going on a date.”

  “I rarely go on dates,” I said. “Just busy doing other things, I guess.”

  “Just busy, huh?” He chuckled. “Busy? You waste six or eight hours every Sunday, right here.”

  In some respects, I had two completely different lives. My life as a criminal with the motorcycle club, and my life at home. Short of someone from the club stopping by my home unannounced, I didn’t mix the two. Having that level of separation in my life was necessary. It allowed me to look at the activities in the MC as a job, not my way of life.

  “Spending time here lets me unwind from a week of bullshit with the motorcycle club. It’s relaxing. I don’t have to think. When I’m here, I just exist. I enjoy it.”