Rock Chick Revenge

  Shirleen was the first to break out of the Group Stare. She walked up to me and pulled me into tight hug.

  “Child,” she said low, a tremor running through her voice, a tremor that communicated itself to my body.

  “I’m fine,” I told her, putting my arms around her and giving her a reassuring squeeze.

  She just held on tight.

  After a few beats she leaned back and looked at my face close up. As I watched, sweet, soft, gentle Shirleen morphed into hard, angry, pissed-off Shirleen.

  “No one messes with my girl,” she said quietly, eyes still scanning my face. She stepped back, let me go and looked towards the male contingent of our audience. Then she repeated, “No one messes with my girl.” This time she said it louder, angrier, it sounded like an order and the tension in the room, already high, climbed higher. Nobody seemed prepared to do a thing about it, in fact they all seemed to be feeding off it.

  Not good.

  Before I could intervene, Shirleen looked at Darius. “You got me, son?” she asked.

  “I got you, Aunt Shirleen,” Darius said and my surprised gaze swung between Shirleen and Darius. I didn’t know they were related.

  Then Shirleen, not quite done, looked at Lee. “Do you got me?” she repeated.

  “Shirleen, it’ll be taken care of,” Lee replied calmly but his voice held a lethal edge.

  “It better be,” she said, her voice low again this time with scary meaning. “It better fuckin’ be.”

  Eek!

  Time to move on.

  I looked at Indy, hoping to change the subject. “Who’s taking care of Fortnum’s?”

  “Fortnum’s is closed for a staff meeting,” Duke answered my question in his gravelly voice, his tone doing nothing to dissipate the scary atmosphere and therefore he foiled my attempt to change the subject.

  “But, you can’t –” I started.

  “We can, we have, we’re not fuckin’ goin’ back until this shit is sorted,” Tex threw down.

  I felt weird. Moved but scared and kept my eyes on Indy. “You can’t do that,” I said.

  Indy just shook her head. “Jane, one of my staff, Kitty Sue, who’s Lee’s Mom and Jet’s Mom, Nancy, are at the store explaining things to the customers. They’ll open in the afternoon when the crowds are smaller and they can handle them. Until then, well, Ava, you know that no one messes with a Rock Chick, not ever, but especially not –”

  “Indy,” Lee said low, interrupting her. I could tell she had been working herself up to rant mode. At Lee’s voice, she pulled in her bottom lip, bit it and kept quiet but I knew it cost her.

  “I’m fine,” I said again, not just to Indy but to the entire assemblage.

  Everyone just kept staring.

  Yikes.

  “What I want to know,” Shirleen started when no one seemed to be prepared to move, “is why you all standin’ around like you don’t got shit to do? You got shit to do. Serious shit. It’s time to fuckin’ get crackin’.”

  The staring stopped, folks started to move and I let my body relax.

  “Give me five,” Luke said to Lee then took my hand and walked me to the door to the inner sanctum. He opened the door and guided me through and down the hall, directly to the kitchenette he’d taken me to (or, more accurately, carried me) that first time I was at the offices.

  We went inside and he closed the door, turned to me and his hand came to my jaw.

  “You okay?” he asked, I nodded and he went on. “I had no fuckin’ idea we would walk into that, babe, if I knew –”

  I realized he was pissed at the same time I realized that he would have protected me from what just happened if he could have. And lastly, because of that, I realized Luke wasn’t just a Good Guy, he might be The Best Guy Ever.

  For this reason, I moved into him and put my arms around his waist. “It’s cool Luke, they just care. It feels nice.”

  That was a partial lie. It felt scary and slightly humiliating that all those people knew that Noah had his hand down my pants. Instead I was trying to focus on them rallying around me which did, indeed, feel nice. More to the point, I wanted Luke to focus on it because he didn’t look happy and an unhappy Luke could be a frightening thing.

  Luke’s thumb stroked my jaw and I watched as his anger ebbed away. “All right beautiful, if you’re cool, I’m cool.”

  I smiled at him.

  Crisis averted.

  Then he continued. “Before I meet with the boys, we gotta talk about somethin’.”

  Uh-oh.

  Crisis maybe not averted.

  “Luke, I’m not sure I can handle talking about something.”

  He bent down to kiss my nose and said softly, “I know, Ava Babe, I wouldn’t bring this up, not now, but it’s important.”

  Crapity, crap, crap, crap.

  “Okay,” I said but I didn’t mean it.

  “Yesterday –” he started.

  Nope.

  I wasn’t going to talk about that. I’d already talked about it as much as I was going to talk about it. “I don’t want to talk about yesterday,” I interrupted.

  His other arm moved around me and his hand at my jaw slid into my hair to cup the back of my head. He brought me close so my body was pressed against his.

  “We gotta talk about it.”

  “We’ll talk about it later.” As in much later, a thousand years from now preferably.

  “Babe, I kept what happened with Jules and me –”

  I went stiff. “Jules and you and Roxie and you,” I corrected him.

  His face went hard before he muttered, “Those fuckin’ women.”

  “Someone had to tell me,” I shot back.

  “I wanted to tell you,” he replied.

  “Yeah? When?” I was beginning to get heated.

  “When the time was right. Only so much someone can take, you’d had enough.”

  “You said you were through talking.”

  “Yeah, for then, not for eternity.”

  “You didn’t say that.”

  “I didn’t say we were never talkin’ again either.”

  This was true.

  Shit!

  His face got softer and I knew that he knew he had me.

  Shit again!

  “Luke –”

  “I don’t want to fight about this,” he said.

  I glared because I was perfectly happy fighting about it.

  He ignored my glare. “The point is how you responded.”

  “I didn’t respond.”

  “Yeah, that’s the point. You shut down, shut me out and then you made plans to take off.”

  “What?” I asked.

  Surely he couldn’t know I was headed to St. Croix. No one knew, not even Sissy (until her card came in mail, of course).

  He let me go, walked to a locker, opened it and pulled out some papers which, I noticed at a glance, were my tickets to St. Croix.

  Ho-ly crap!

  He knew I was headed to St. Croix.

  “Where did you...?”

  “I went to your house. Found these on the dining room table, new luggage and a bunch of shopping in your bedroom,” he replied before I could finish my question, threw the tickets back in the locker and shut the door.

  Hell and damnation.

  I was beginning to realize it was not such a good thing my boyfriend was a private investigator. Although I had left that stuff out for anyone to see, still.

  I was so exasperated at Luke knowing everything, I rolled my eyes to the ceiling and then said something stupid. There was no excuse for it. I should have protected the information with everything I had, taken it to my grave, kept it buried and never let it out, even under torture.

  In my defense, I wasn’t myself. Too much had happened to me with Dom, with Ren, with Noah even with fucking Riley and, most especially, with Luke.

  That was why I didn’t stop myself before saying, “I can’t believe while I was downstairs with Noah and he was demonstrating why he’s
the ultimate jerk, you were searching my house.”

  The air in the room instantly went thick with tension, my eyes flew from the ceiling to lock on Luke’s and I realized my mortal mistake when I saw his face had gone stony. Scary stony. Fury-unleashed stony.

  Gonzo stony.

  “What did you just say?” he asked through his teeth.

  “Nothing,” I replied quickly.

  “You didn’t say nothin’, you said somethin’.”

  “No, I meant –”

  He advanced. I retreated.

  My back hit the door and he came up close. “He was in your house while I was in your house?”

  Like I did the night before, hoping it would work again, I put my hands to his neck to try to get through to him, calm him.

  “Luke, please, listen to me –”

  “He touched you then, didn’t he?”

  My eyes grew wide that he guessed this (how could he guess this?) and, unfortunately, my eyes told the truth for me.

  It was then Luke went gonzo. No neck touch, soft voice and pleading were going to help, no way.

  He turned from me and, with a vicious blow and a ferocious growl, he punched the wall, his hand going clean through, drywall dust poofing out. I stared in horror as he pulled his hand out of the wall and then punched it again, leaving another hole.

  He wasn’t quite through. After Wall Punch Two, he turned, walked to a locker and punched that. His fist against the steel made a huge noise and my horrified stare turned part terrified, part amazed when the steel buckled and the sides of the door bowed out. He hit it again then again and I charged him.

  “Luke!” I shouted, throwing my arms around him to stop him from hurting himself. If he kept doing that he was going to crush his hand. “Stop it! Please, stop!”

  His arm sliced around my waist lifting me clean off my feet, up through the air. He took three long strides and I landed on my ass on the counter of the kitchenette. He closed in, coming between my legs, his hands, one of them bloody, moving to either side of my face. He held on and stared at me, his face hard and angry and my heart was beating like a jackhammer.

  It was then the door opened. I looked over his shoulder and Lee, Vance and Mace were there making the room seem even smaller.

  “What the fuck is goin’ on?” Lee asked.

  Luke turned halfway to them, his eyes to the floor, he didn’t look at them. I noticed a muscle in his jaw was jumping and I took this as a good sign that he was trying to regain control. He took a hand away from my face, sliced it in a sweep, palm down and low, indicating nonverbally (and likely incorrectly) that he had himself in check.

  “Tell me this shit didn’t just get worse,” Lee said.

  “This shit just got worse,” Luke answered, his voice an angry growl. “Give us a minute.”

  I closed my eyes and when I opened them again, Lee, Vance and Mace had backed out and Lee was closing the door.

  “Luke, listen to me,” I begged.

  He twisted back to face me and I caught my breath because his gonzo actions hadn’t even touched his level of fury. He was still pushing the very top edge of the red zone.

  “Talk to me,” he clipped and it wasn’t a request.

  “Maybe –”

  “Ava, do not keep any more of this shit from me. Tell me what the fuck happened, right, fucking, now.”

  My body went stiff. “Luke, you seem to keep forgetting, it happened to me. It didn’t happen to you, it happened to me and I should –”

  He framed my face with his hands again and got close. “It happened to you, babe, but at the same time, it happened to us.”

  I pushed at his shoulders and yelled, “How dare you!”

  He didn’t move, instead he kept talking, “Last night, I put my hand between your legs and you froze. If you weren’t you, if you didn’t have the strength to sort your fuckin’ head out and work through it that could have had a whole different ending. It says somethin’ about you that you could work through it. Hell, it demonstrates one of the reasons I want to be the one, the only one, who puts my hand between your legs. You were most other women we wouldn’t have had last night. Most women would shut down and last night could have taken weeks, months, maybe never have happened at all. I was prepared to work through it with you. Lucky for me, you aren’t most other women. That still doesn’t take away the fact that it could have been a long road for both of us.” He got even closer. “Sex is sex, babe, with anyone else. With you, it isn’t. It’s a fuckuva lot more. You know it. I know it and he could have taken that away from us. After all these years we found it and he could have taken it away. Not just from you but from me too. Do you understand?”

  Tears filled my eyes and before I could deep breathe they spilled down my cheeks.

  I understood. I really understood. Furthermore, I understood I wouldn’t be dancing at my wedding because Luke declared he wasn’t going to dance with me and I would be bearing him three sons (or daughters, whatever). And I wanted that, with everything that was me, but more Luke wanted it just as much as me.

  Noah had put all that in jeopardy.

  It was then, my tilty-world righted and for the first time in a long time, maybe the first time in my life, I felt my feet planted firmly on the ground.

  I didn’t answer but I didn’t have to.

  Luke watched me cry for a few beats and then said softly, “He’s gonna pay for those too.”

  “What?” I asked in a shaky voice, trying hard to pull myself together.

  “Your tears.”

  At his words, I put my hands to his face and it was me who rested my forehead against his at the same time a sob tore from my throat.

  So much for pulling myself together.

  We stayed where we were, both holding on to each other while the tears slid down my cheeks. Finally, I sucked in breath and managed, with a tremendous effort of will, to pull myself together.

  When I did, Luke’s thumbs swiped at my cheeks and he whispered, “Tell me.”

  I closed my eyes slowly and just as slowly, I opened them.

  Then, I told him. “He was taping me to the post, I already had tape over my mouth. He heard you come in and told me he had a gun. He told me if I made a sound, he’d blow my head off and then yours. I heard you call for me, I made a move to try and get away and he warned me again. We listened to you move around upstairs, he said he wanted to make it interesting and he touched me. You left, he’d got excited and he finished himself off. Then he finished taping me, told me to get you to make Vance back off and then he left.”

  It was his turn to close his eyes.

  “I could have stopped it,” he murmured.

  I shook my head and my hands tightened. “He would have killed us both.”

  His eyes opened. “He’s a con man, not a killer.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “I know it.”

  “You can’t know it.”

  “I know it.”

  “Luke –”

  “I know it because I’m not a con man but I am a killer.”

  My breath froze in my lungs but I still managed to breathe. “What?”

  “That’s part of who I was, it isn’t who I am now but it isn’t something you forget how to do.”

  Panic filled me and oxygen came back into my lungs with a burning whoosh.

  “Stop talking,” I begged on a whisper.

  “I’ve said it before, babe, but maybe you didn’t clue in.”

  “Stop talking.”

  “You gotta know who you’ve let in your bed.”

  “Stop.”

  “You wanna end it now, you say the word and I’ll walk away. I’m still goin’ after him, I’m still gonna make him pay. But I’ll be out of your life.”

  “Stop talking!” Now my hands were gripping his head, lungs burning so hot I was finding it hard to breathe.

  “Say the word now, you don’t, I’m never letting you go.”

  “Please, Luke, stop talking.”


  “You gotta make the decision now, Ava.”

  “Shut up,” I whispered.

  “You can’t deny this and you can’t deal with this later, it has to be now. I’m not gettin’ used to sharin’ my life with you and havin’ you take off on me. You don’t say the word now and you can’t deal with it later and you think to leave, I’m warnin’ you, I’ll come after you.”

  “Shut up!” This time, I shouted it.

  “You make the decision, either I walk out and leave you in here or we walk out together. We walk out together, that’s it. Things get tough, we fight, it doesn’t matter, we deal. You don’t buy tickets to St. Croix, you don’t give me the silent treatment, we deal. We walk out of here together and you use this, or anything else you can conjure up, to shut me out, I’m tellin’ you babe, it’s not gonna be good. In our scenario, we aren’t switchin’ roles so I’m forced to live your Mom’s life while you take off and live your Dad’s.”

  Oh… my… God.

  He did not just say that.

  “You didn’t just say that,” I whispered, letting go of his head, pulling mine from his hands and leaning back.

  “I said it. You know the worst in me and I know it’s bad but I’m not hidin’ anything. I’m givin’ you the chance to decide. You tell me to walk, I won’t like it, but I’ll do it.”

  Okay, that was it. I’d had enough.

  “You are such a jerk!” I snapped and gave him a shove that was so hard, he rocked back at the shoulder. I was too angry to realize I’d finally scored a physical push. Instead, I kept ranting. “You know, Lucas Stark, the reason I got contacts and lost weight was because you hugged me at your Dad’s funeral and later I overheard Marilyn and Sofia making fun of me, and you, because we looked stupid together. You, hot, handsome Luke hugging me, Fatty, Fatty Four-Eyes. They said the sight of us made them throw up a little. They said you had to be gay to hug me. I vowed, vowed,” I shouted the last word at the top of my lungs, caught in a dramatic tizzy I could not control and didn’t even try, “that you wouldn’t lay eyes on me again until I could be held by you and if anyone saw us no one would throw up a little or think we didn’t look right together.”