Rock Chick 01 (49 page)

“It’s a screwball plan.”

I’m
so
sure!

I sat up and stomped to the dresser, pulled
out a pair of cream panties with little orange squares on and
pulled them up. I grabbed a matching bra and struggled into it, the
whole time I was saying, “At least we can try. I can carry a stun
gun in my purse. You can have someone follow us… oof!”

All of a sudden, his arm came around my
middle, knocking the wind out of me as he pulled me forcibly
backwards. I landed on the bed and bounced a couple of times before
his body settled on mine.

“Do you love me?” he asked.

I stared at him, getting my breath back.

“Do you love me?” he asked again, this time
impatiently and the muscle was going in his cheek. Something else
was happening here, something that didn’t have to do with Wilcox or
the current fucked-upedness of my life.

Shit!

Shit, shit, shit.

“Lee –”

“Answer me, Indy.”

Shit!

When I hesitated too long, he said (or more
like exploded), “Christ!” and then he knifed away from me and went
to the dresser and opened and slammed the drawers until he found
his and pulled out a pair of those sexy, white brief shorts.

“Lee –”

“I feel like I’ve wanted you for a lifetime.
Now, I’ve got you, you want to put yourself even more in the line
of sight of a crazy man. He’s already so dangerous you can’t make a
move without protection and you want to bait him
and
use
yourself as bait.”

“Lee –”

He pulled on the briefs, pulled on a pair of
Levi’s and I sat up on the bed.

“Problem is, you’re so fucking determined to
take life by the throat, the only way I can be certain you won’t do
it on your own is to force you into a safe house, which’ll mean I
could lose you.” He pulled on a white tee and kept talking. “What
decision do I make? Keep you alive and piss you off so much you’ll
take off or let you risk your life, which, crossing Coxy is a
possibility.”

“Lee, if you’d quit ranting and listen to me
–”

He turned to me and the look on his face was
frightening.

“I’m not ranting.” he said coldly, “I’m very
serious.”

I was getting that.

He looked away and started to slam through
the drawers again and I stood up on the bed and shouted, “Liam
Nightingale, listen to me!”

He turned and looked at my middle, not
expecting me to be standing, then his eyes traveled up.

“You don’t want me to use myself as bait, I
won’t,” I yelled.

“How do I trust that?” he yelled back.

Now I knew how the little boy who cried wolf
felt.

“I promise,” I shouted.

“How do I trust
that
?” he shouted.

“You just do!” I was back to yelling.

“Do you love me?” He followed suit with the
yelling.

“Yes! Of course I love you, you big dope!
I’ve loved you since I was five!” I decided to shake it up and this
time I screamed.

He took one stride to the bed and leaned a
shoulder into my thighs in a body tackle. My upper body fell over
his back, lifting my feet from the bed. He pulled my legs around
his side and tossed me back on the bed. He grabbed my ankle, yanked
me across the bed and then,
whoosh
, away went the panties
I’d just put on. He came down on top of me, his mouth finding mine,
his hand between us, working the buttons at his fly.

When he stopped kissing me, his hand had
moved and was working between my legs.

“You’re wrong. It isn’t me turnin’ myself
inside out, it’s you. You drive me nuts,” he told me.

“Thanks.” It should have been snappy but it
was breathy because, I think I may have mentioned earlier, Lee was
good with his hands.

“Don’t go after Coxy,” he ordered then kissed
me again.

“Okay,” I said, after he finished kissing
me.

He reached and grabbed a condom, tearing it
open with his teeth because his other hand was busy.

“Lee…”

He was multi-tasking, so he muttered,
“Yeah?”

“I won’t leave you, even if you act like an
asshole.”

His head came up and he looked at me, and his
eyes, which, until that moment still held a bit of ticked off, went
melty-chocolate.

“Christ, Indy.”

I kissed him while I reached between us and
guided him inside me. He started moving immediately.

In his ear, really quietly, I whispered, “I’m
not going anywhere. I’m right where I’ve always wanted to be.”

His mouth moved to mine and he said, “It’s
about fucking time.”

Splat

Ally, Willie
and I were sitting outside Liks Ice Cream Parlour. It was
approximately three hundred degrees in the shade but we were still
sitting out on the patio because what else do you do when you’re at
Liks? Even in December, you at least considered the patio when you
went to Liks.

After Lee and
my love-in, Willie had come over because he’d pulled Indy Watch for
the day.

Lee went to
work, Willie and I went to Fortnum’s, and, in the afternoon, Ally
and I took Willie to the mall.

We were
treating him to a waffle cone because he’d managed to survive an
Indy and Ally Do Cherry Creek Shopping
Center
Experience complete with full-on
explorations of Levi’s, Lucky and Diesel and fly-bys through Guess
and Urban Outfitters.

After I’d asked
Willie how he felt about the tenth pair of Lucky jeans I tried on,
he told me he was going to hunt down and murder Terry Wilcox his
own damned self.

Hmm.

(I didn’t buy
the jeans.)

I was
feeling weird because I wasn’t feeling weird about admitting to Lee
that I loved him and I thought I
should
be feeling weird.

Question, what
did you do when you got exactly what you always wanted?

Answer, you
went shopping with your best friend, then got ice cream.

I was barely
keeping up with my melting double dip of dark chocolate with dark
chocolate chunks when I heard, “Cool! It’s the Rock Chicks.”

I looked up and
stared in total shock at The Kevster and Rosie who were heading our
way, both carrying their own double dip waffle cones (you didn’t do
a single dip at Liks, it was the law) and looking like they didn’t
have a care in the world.

At their
approach, Willie stood, handing his cone to Ally.

The Kevster
reared back at Willie’s defensive posture and put up a hand, index
and middle finger extended.

“Dude. We come
in peace.”

“It’s okay, we
know them,” I told Willie.

Willie relaxed,
slightly.

“I thought you
two were in jail,” I said to The Kevster and Rosie, coming to my
feet.

“Made bond,”
Rosie replied, an “O” of ice cream coating his lips (if I had to
guess, by the looks of it, rocky road).

“Who paid your
bond?” Ally asked, also on her feet.

“Our fairy
godmother?” The Kevster responded and it was a question.

I looked
at Ally, then back at The Kevster. “You
don’t
know who paid your bond?”

“Should we?”
The Kevster looked confused, or, more confused than usual.

I wasn’t
getting a good feeling about this.

“Is that even
possible?” Ally was talking to Willie.

“Did you read
the papers?” Willie didn’t respond to Ally, he was looking at the
two grunge muffins and their ice cream cones and he didn’t seem
happy.

“Papers?” This
was clearly more than The Kevster could process.

Before we
could continue this useless conversation, a black BMW with shaded
windows came to a screeching halt on 13
^th
Avenue. It didn’t park, it stopped in one of the
three through lanes.

“Oh shit,” Ally
said, eyes on the BMW.

“Get to the
car,” Willie ordered, all relaxation gone.

Before we could
make a move, Goon Gary and The Moron were headed our way.

“Get to the
car,” Willie repeated.

For some
reason, everyone stood stock-still.

“Dudes,” The
Kevster greeted Goon Gary and The Moron as they approached,
obviously not knowing who they were and also not feeling the tense
vibe electrifying the air.

Rosie had gone
pale and his ice cream cone was melting down his hand.

Goon Gary and
The Moron ignored us, their eyes on Willie.

Willie pushed
me behind him.

“You know who I
am?” Willie asked Gary and The Moron.

The Moron
nodded slowly, Gary didn’t respond.

“
Then
you’ll
walk
away,” Willie continued.

“Mr. Wilcox
wants to talk to you,” Gary said, he was still looking at Willie
but talking to Rosie. Not me. Rosie. Gary was on a mission, a
mission important enough to ignore a police officer’s order.

Not good.

“
Hey, I
know you! You came looking for…” The
Kevster’s
four working brain cells finally fired and
he recognized the boys. Then, he shouted, “Fuck!”

He threw
his ice cream cone at Goon Gary, it
splatted
in his face and The Kevster took off
running.

“What the –”
Gary started to say, stunned immobile, what looked like Liks famous
strawberry cheesecake ice cream dripping off his cheek and
chin.

Splat!

Rosie threw his
ice cream cone too, it hit Gary on the side of the head. Then he
took off after The Kevster.

Splat!

Ally threw one
of her cones at The Moron and it hit him in the chest. At this,
Willie grabbed me and started to pull me away.

Splat!

Ally threw
Willie’s cone, it hit Goon Gary in the shoulder.

Not to be
outdone (even though it was a sacrifice, dark chocolate with dark
chocolate chunks was the best), on the trot and being pulled by
Willie, I aimed my cone at The Moron and, as he’d turned and
started after us, it nailed him in the belly.

We all
jumped into Willie’s Nissan Pathfinder. Goon Gary and The Moron
gave up on us and headed to the BMW. Willie started up before we
had our belts on, took off and we rocketed from the curb. Ally
hadn’t yet seated herself and she was tumbling around the backseat
in a crinkle of bags that were our take from the Lucky and Levi’s
stores.

I saw Rosie and
The Kevster, on foot, flying down the sidewalk.

“Stop!” I
shouted to Willie. “Pick them up.”

“Fuck no,”
Willie responded.

“
Stop!” I
screeched, my voice shrill, looking back at the BMW on our tail.
“We
can’t
let Wilcox
have them!”

About a quarter
of a block passed the running grunge gods, Willie stood on the
brakes and we all flew forward, the BMW swerved to avoid us and
shot by.

Proof positive
that men would do anything to stop a woman from yelling.

Ally threw open
her door, leaned out and shouted, “Get in!”

Rosie and The
Kevster jumped into the SUV, there was more crinkling of shopping
bags, then Willie took off.

Everyone was
silent. All you could hear was Rosie and The Kevster’s heavy
breathing.

Willie broke
the silence.

“Lee owes me
big time for this.”

I didn’t know
if he was talking about the mall or the grunge invasion of his
Pathfinder.

Likely
both.

* * * * *

If I had known
I was going to go to Lee’s offices that day, I would have chosen my
outfit more carefully.

Dawn was again
wearing designer.

I was
wearing my
cutoff
jeans
shorts, an Air Force blue t-shirt with
“USAFA
” in white on the front (even though the
man I loved was
honorably
discharged from the Army, I was an equal opportunity
military supporter) and blue flip flops. After three orgasms and a
fight with Lee that ended up with me admitting I loved him, I was
spent. Creating an Indy Outfit was beyond my capabilities. I hadn’t
even bothered with a belt.

Willie,
Ally, Rosie, The Kevster and I invaded Dawn’s pristine reception
space and she looked at us in horror. Rosie still had the ice cream
“O” around his mouth and remnants of the drip on his hand, too
rocked by recent events to attend the basics. At the best of times,
Rosie and The Kevster
weren’t
overly bothered with personal hygiene and these were far
from the best of times.

“What now?”
Dawn asked.

At Dawn’s
greeting, I wondered, briefly, if Lee knew what the word “cordial”
meant.

“We need to
talk to Lee,” Willie said to Dawn.

She looked at
Willie and her face changed. Willie was hot and Dawn was in heat,
so she tucked away the attitude and gave him a brilliant smile.

“I’m sorry.
He’s in a meeting.”

“Tell him we’re
here,” Willie went on.

“I’m sorry, but
when he’s in a meeting, Lee says –”

“Tell him…
we’re… here,” Willie repeated in a tone that made Dawn’s eyes go
wide. She put her hands to the arms of her chair (manicured fingers
pointed straight out, the better to be on display), pushed herself
up, rounded the desk and disappeared behind the door to the Inner
Sanctuary.

“I’ve never
been here,” Ally whispered to me.

“Really?” I
whispered back, not knowing why we were whispering.

“This place is
the shit,” Ally said.

She was right,
it was. I felt a strange sense of pride, even though it had nothing
to do with me.

I smiled at
Ally. She smiled back.

“Are we, like,
in trouble?” The Kevster asked, breaking into our moment.

Ally trained
her eyes on Kevin. “You’re, like, morons.”