Rock Chick 05 Revenge (3 page)

He wasn’t that far away but he started to come even closer.

Ho-ly
shit
.

I blinked and, self-preservation in mind, I shoved at him again, pulling my head back with a jerk and cracking it against the door.

The moment was broken.

“Step back!” I shouted.

Luke’s eyes narrowed. “What are you playin’ at?”

“I’m not playing at anything,” I yelled. “I was in the neighborhood, I thought I had time on my hands. Mom told me you worked here so what the fuck? Stop by and see an old friend. Then you all act like Neanderthal crazies. Jeez. Forget it. I have to go to the dentist. He’s gonna be pissed.”

I shoved again but Luke still didn’t move.

“You’re lying,” he said.

“I am not!”

His face came closer. The closer I thought it would have come a moment ago when, for one heart-stopping, insane moment, it seemed like he was going to kiss me. This time, it came in threateningly.

“You waltz in here, after five years, not lookin’ like you, not actin’ like you, jittery and bitchy, somethin’ I never would have expected from you. You lie through your teeth then stare at my mouth like you want to stick your tongue down my throat and when I’m ready to give you that opportunity, you go back to bitchy and lying.”

I was staring at him. I couldn’t help it. I’d never heard anyone be that brutally honest before in my life.

And he told me he was going to give me the opportunity to kiss him.

Um…
wow
.

“I’m not playin’ this game, Ava,” he warned, snapping me out of my thoughts. Gentle, affectionate Luke totally gone, we were back to dangerously pissed off Luke. “You got trouble, you tell me right now so I can help you. I find out another way, you’ll pay.”

My head jerked. “What?”
 

“You heard me.”

I had heard him and I couldn’t believe what I had heard. “Did you just threaten me?” I asked.

“It wasn’t a threat.”

Read: It was a promise.

Yikes.

I didn’t know what “paying” would entail and I sure as hell wasn’t going to find out.

“I’m not in trouble,” I told him. And I wasn’t, not really. Okay, maybe a little bit. But I was worried I was about to be in a lot in trouble.

“I find out you are…”

“You won’t find out I am. In fact, I can promise you won’t see me again,” I bit out, glaring at him.

“I’ll see you again,” he said in a way that I felt a thrill go up my back.

Seriously, it was high time to escape.

“Step back,” I demanded.

He stared at me.

“Step back!” I shouted.

He stepped back.

I whirled, threw open the door and stomped down the hall.

Then I was twirled around, a hand at my elbow and I jerked my arm out of Luke’s grasp.
 
He was, for some reason, now grinning, face relaxed, one corner of his lips tipped up.

“Wrong way,” he said and he looked about ready to laugh.

Great.

I was a total dork, making my grand exit and going the wrong way.

I threw him a look that should have made him spontaneously combust (of course, it did not) and stomped the other way, Luke beside me the whole time. His vibe had morphed from pissed off to amused and I didn’t like it one bit.

He opened the door to the reception area for me and I hightailed it across the room, focused on the outer door and escape and not looking at anyone.

“Later,” I said to the room at large because I didn’t want to appear rude.

For some reason, this was met with Shirleen saying, “I’ll put money down that she’s livin’ with him in four days.”

My confused gaze swung to Shirleen but she was looking at the movie star glamour girl who was looking at me.

“Three days,” Glamour girl said, smiling at me and I thought, in other circumstances, I would have liked to meet her.

“A week, she’s got spirit,” the other black lady said. She was smiling at me too, not like I was the butt of some joke, but in a kind way.

I shook my head, I needed to focus, leave these nutsos behind and go, go,
go
.

I opened the outer door.

Before it closed behind me, I heard Luke say strangely, “Tonight.”

Then everyone laughed.

Chapter Two

A Little Bit of Trouble

I was standing in my dinky little kitchen, taking my post-Luke episode attitude out on an innocent cucumber.

That didn’t go very well,
Good Ava said on a sigh, resting the side of her head in her hand and her elbow on her thigh.

I thought it went great!
Bad Ava yelled enthusiastically, jumping up and down.

I tried to ignore them both and pounded the big cleaver into the cucumber, chopping it in a cucumber-decimating frenzy, trying to get the confrontation with Luke and everyone in his office out of my head.

* * * * *

I lived in a row house in the Highlands area of Denver. I called it The Best Little Row House in Denver.

See? I’m a dork.

It had a living room with two big, arched windows at the front separated by double doors that rolled into the walls and led to dining room also with two big windows, these facing the back, a small kitchen off the dining room and a screened-in porch out the backdoor of the kitchen. All hardwood floors, except in the minuscule kitchen, which I’d tiled in slate with the counter tops tiled in shiny black. I put in white cupboards, all the hanging ones glass-fronted and displaying my huge collection of Fiestaware. There were two bedrooms and a massive bathroom with a claw-footed tub upstairs. I had a big, old basement its door leading off the kitchen which had two rooms and an old coal room. It was more of a pit than a basement, un-renovated and long-since unused, wallpaper peeling and exposed light bulbs. I only went down there to do my laundry because it creeped me out.

My row house was historically registered and had three fireplaces (dining room, living room and bedroom) and a sweet, little shady backyard with big trees kitty-corner at the ends.

It wasn’t in the best neighborhood, but who cared? It had character, grace, history, a low mortgage, a garage out back where my Range Rover could be safe and I dug it.

I’d lived in Denver my whole life and was never going to move away. Denver was home. It had everything you needed, the big city choice of culture, food, shopping and entertainment all with a small town feel.

My family felt differently.

* * * * *

After my Dad left us when I was fourteen (rat-bastard number one in my life) and all us girls graduated high school, Mom took off to Phoenix like a shot. She hated the cold and the snow and all the familiar reminders of my father. She also liked to be tan but felt claustrophobic in sunbeds.

I had two older sisters. My oldest one, Marilyn, moved to St. Louis after high school and got married to a car salesman then divorced him and almost immediately got married to a lawyer with whom she was currently involved in a bitter divorce at the same time dating a doctor, thus moving up in her chosen career as trophy wife. So far Marilyn had managed to work approximately four months of her life and spent the rest of it in spas and malls and on her back with sweaty slimeballs pumping away at her. I knew this because she talked about her active sex life a good deal, a kind of
gross
good deal, read: ick.

My other sister, Sofia, moved to San Diego and became a cheerleader for the San Diego Chargers. Sofia worked her way through the offensive line and then the defensive line of the Chargers (something, I might add, she also did as a cheerleader in high school). Now, retired from her career as an active cheerleader and football player groupie, she was running a cheerleading camp and engaged to a sports agent who was more of a slimeball than both of Marilyn’s husbands put together and that was quite a feat, considering Marilyn’s husbands were seriously the scum of the earth.

By the way, my Mom had named us all, with high hopes, after Hollywood bombshells. My sisters had both been bombshells from puberty, all thick, dark, shining hair, big boobs, tight asses, flat stomachs, long legs and sultry eyes. I had to work hard at bombshell status, and even then didn’t quite make it because I was a big dork.

It was safe to say my sisters and I weren’t close.

Sissy Whitchurch was another story.

* * * * *

Sissy and I had been best friends since second grade and we
were
close. She was the bestest, best friend in the world. Good at keeping secrets, happy to rip my silly and sometimes mean sisters to shreds with me, loyal to the core and always up for an adventure.

One problem with Sissy, she had shit taste in men.

Though, considering good men were non-existent, all women didn’t have much choice.

However, Sissy’s husband, Dominic, was beyond the pale in the shit-men stakes. Dom was a world-class asshole.

Dominic Vincetti was very good-looking (and knew it), made his money dubiously (and didn’t hide it) and treated Sissy like shit (and never apologized). He didn’t hit her, but he cheated on her (openly), walked all over her and talked down to her in a way that made my teeth go on edge.

Before Dom, Sissy was funny and sweet and there was no one in the world who was better to go to a rock concert with. She loved music like I did and she went wild at concerts, dancing, screaming, she always knew all the words to the songs and sang them loud.

After five years of marriage, Dom had forced all that good stuff out of Sissy, making her quiet, shy, uncertain and a homebody and Sissy didn’t even notice it was happening.

I noticed and it pissed me off.

Sissy loved him though and put up with it and it wasn’t my place to say anything. If she wanted him then I was there. My only other choice was to stop spending time with her and a life without Sissy, well, I couldn’t imagine it.

But when I changed, lost weight, dyed my hair, Dom noticed.

In fact, a lot of people noticed.

In fact, even though I’d dated when I was heavy, I started to get some serious male attention as the weight dropped off then more then more. Since Luke’s Dad’s funeral, I’d had my first three longish-term boyfriends. I must admit, in the dream world I had in the back of my head, they were all practice for Luke. Of course, I never told them that and I could have fallen in love with any one of them, if they hadn’t all turned out to be jerks.

There was Rick, who cheated on me (um, no).

Then there was Dave, who had a collection of pornography so big he could have opened his own store. And he called phone sex lines, like, a lot. Neither of these were bad things, as such. Except, phone bills over five hundred dollars month after month were a bit much. Not to mention, he wanted to have sex, like, twelve times a day, walked around naked at all times and tried to get me to go to swingers parties (um, no again).

Then there was Noah who took my Auntie Ella’s jewelry and pawned it. This, I didn’t find out until he also took my ATM card, found out my PIN number and cleaned out my checking and savings accounts before he disappeared. Luckily, I had the inheritance money my Aunt Ella gave me in a different account. She gave me her jewelry and a shitload of money, but only gave Marilyn and Sofia a token, which pissed them off big time but they’d always been mean to her and I hadn’t, so fuck them.

See? All men were scum.
 

I wasn’t a bitter, twisted spinster. I’d put myself out there and I had reasons to think that, what with my choices, Sissy’s choices and my sisters’ choices, not to mention my fucking Dad, who’d left and never came back, that all men were scum.

* * * * *

After Noah took off, Dom started to flirt with me right in front of Sissy. I couldn’t believe it and did my absolute best not to rip his face off with my fingernails. However, there were a lot of times I wanted to rip Dom’s face off with my fingernails, not just when he was flirting with me but when he’d ask Sissy if she
really
should be eating that second slice of pizza, giving her a shitty look when he didn’t quite like the outfit she put on causing her to go and change it, getting pissy when he was served leftovers and the like.

Sissy ignored the flirting. So did I, passing it off as a joke.

Dom took this as a challenge. Dom was the kind of guy girls responded to mainly because he was really handsome which sucked, I figured he could use a scar or two, put there by my fingernails of course.

When I didn’t respond, he flirted more, started touching and, just two weeks ago he backed me into the corner of their kitchen and kissed me, open-mouthed.

I bit his tongue.

“What the fuck!” he hissed, hand swiping at his mouth and glaring at me.

He was hot –
 
all macho, Italian bad boy, dark, wavy hair, dark eyes, slim hips, broad shoulders.