13|Full Of Surprises

"Well, well! Who do we have here?" said the elderly gentleman in a low, gravelly voice when Marybeth finally stood before him.

"Marybeth Tyson," she replied with a nervous smile.

"Lukas Hawthorne, Blake and Austin's father," the man introduced himself as he pulled her in his embrace and kissed both her cheeks.

Old Spice—or some other old man cologne—and a whiff of Cuban cigars and bourbon fumes enveloped Marybeth as soon as he swathed her in his arms. It was an oddly comforting scent on him, but she would have found it downright disgusting on any other man.

His eyes, too, as dark as the sky on an overcast day, when he held her away from him to take her in, had a softness—no—a sadness she'd seen in Austin's when he first walked into the waiting room at Home Affairs.

It was a look that made Marybeth want to trust him. To like him even.

But a man like him, who was clearly the head of what she was now certain was a crime family, couldn't exactly be trusted—

"They are the greatest loves of