Rock Chick 05 Revenge (53 page)

Wow.

He would do just about anything for me?

Ho-ly
crap
.

After he said that, I couldn’t help myself, I nuzzled into him.

Then because he said that, I took a huge risk and told him, “I’ve decided you’re a good guy.”
 

He pulled my hair away from my neck and replied, “About fuckin’ time.”

* * * * *

I woke up and it was just dawn. The sunlight was still weak and I woke because I felt I was alone in bed.

I sat up and looked around the room to find Luke sitting in an armchair wearing his black cargos, shirtless (as usual), leaned forward with elbows on his knees, head in his hands.

I could tell this was an unhappy position of masculine reflection.

For a second I got scared. Then I got out of bed, found the Triumph tee and tugged it on. He watched me move toward him and when I got close he pulled me into his lap and sat back in the chair. I felt a moment of relief that his unhappy masculine reflection didn’t include something that would mean he would never pull me into his lap again so I let my body relax and settled into him.

“Do you want to share what’s on your mind?” I asked.

“Don’t you have to brush your teeth?” he responded.

I smiled at him before I wrapped an arm around his abs, stuffing my face in his neck.

“I’d rather know what’s on your mind,” I said softly.

One of his arms was curled around my back, hand resting on my hip. The fingers of his other hand slid back and forth, from knee to tee, on my thigh. My only thought was that I could wake up like this every morning of my life.

Then Luke spoke. “What’s on my mind is that I’m responsible for what happened to you.”

All morning dewy softness flew out the window, my head jerked up and I stared at him.

“
What
?” I asked, somewhat loudly.

“I’m responsible,” he repeated.

I narrowed my eyes, not because I was angry, but because I didn’t have my contacts in or glasses on and I was trying to focus so I could read his face (this didn’t work).

“How on earth are you responsible?” I asked.

“I went after him, he retaliated. That’s how I’m responsible.”

Oh for goodness sakes.

“Luke, that’s just crazy.”

“It isn’t, Ava. I should have seen it coming and prepared, especially when the info started to come in on him.”

Uh-oh.

This didn’t sound good.

“What info?”

Luke didn’t hesitate before sharing. “His name isn’t Noah Dexter, he’s got a record, he’s wanted in two states and he’s been connin’ women, like he conned you, for a long time.”

I supposed I shouldn’t have been surprised by that, but I was surprised by it.

“I still don’t see how that makes you responsible,” I said.

“You didn’t tell me about the jewelry.” Was Luke’s strange reply.

“What about it?”

“It was worth over sixty-five K.”

I sucked in breath at another demonstration of his freaky ability to know
everything
.

“How did you find that out?” I asked.

“Your aunt’s will. The jewelry was worth over sixty-five K when appraised for the will, seven years ago.”

“I’m not sure I’m following.”

“Dexter didn’t steal five grand, he stole over seventy grand. That’s a big difference. You were a larger mark than I first thought. This guy isn’t a small time con man. Far as we could tell, he was running two cons simultaneously. The one with you and some other woman, much older, disabled, in her early seventies. He got her jewelry, stole her car and wiped out her retirement account. Between the two of you, he pulled in over three hundred large.”

“Holy shit,” I breathed, incapable of wrapping my mind around this news. I was, however, able to septuple my vow of revenge against Noah.
 

A disabled lady in her seventies? What a
jerk!

“I underestimated him,” Luke went on, interrupting my mental tirade. “He gets caught, his picture hits the news, women come forward who didn’t report him and he’s fucked even more than he
was
fucked. He’s not gonna let that happen and he would be desperate enough to do about anything to make certain it doesn’t. Including fuckin’ with my woman, somethin’ not a lot of people in Denver would have the balls to do.”

Okay, so, it was safe to say this was not good news. I felt like an even bigger idiot now than I felt when Noah took off with my money.

Time to focus and
not
on me being an idiot.

“Luke, you aren’t responsible,” I said. “I’m responsible. I let him in my life in the first place.”

“Lotta women do.”

“That doesn’t make it any better.”

“Probably not but it’s the truth.”

There you go.

Time for a different tack.

“Okay then you want to know how I felt when you first said you were going to go after him?”

Luke just looked at me.

“I felt happy,” I shared. “My stomach got melty. I was glad someone wanted to take care of me.”

Silence.

I persevered even though doing so scared the shit out of me. We were in vulnerable territory here, way vulnerable.

“Last night, you were preparing to go gonzo. You didn’t because I needed you. Last night you also said you can’t say no to me. If I pushed it, that I didn’t want you to go after him,
really
pushed it, would you have?”

More silence.

Shit.

It was going to have to be all or nothing.

I put my hands to his neck and moved so I was facing him.

Do it, say it, the time is right,
Good Ava urged.

Don’t! The time will NEVER be right!
Bad Ava yelled.

For once I listened to Good Ava, took a breath and bared it all.

Quietly, I said, “Yesterday, when I was in my freak out about Jules, Daisy said to me that I was trying to find ways to protect my heart but I was doing it wrong. She told me the best way to protect my heart was to trust it to someone who will protect it for me.”

More silence but his body went completely still.

“That’s you. It’s always been you,” I whispered, my heart racing, I was scared as hell but I forged ahead. “Please don’t take responsibility for Noah being an asshole. I couldn’t bear it if you did that.”

I’d barely stopped talking when, without a word, Luke got up, taking me with him. He carried me to the bed and put me in it, coming down on top of me.

“You belong to me,” he stated, his voice soft, his tone firm, his hands starting to roam.

I was pretty fucking happy he seemed to be delighted (in a Luke way, of course) with the news that I’d trusted him with my heart.

Still I wasn’t ready to go there just yet.

“Take it back that you feel responsible,” I said instead.

“Tell me you belong to me,” he demanded.

“Take it back first,” I countered.

The roaming hands were getting serious so mine started to roam too just because I didn’t want to be left out.

He kissed me gently then against my mouth he said, “I’ll wait. You can say it when I’m inside you.”

“Seriously, you can be so annoying,” I told him.

“Babe,” he said as he smiled against my mouth.

For your information a lot later, when he was deep inside me, I gave him what he wanted.

I mean, this
was
Luke. I
was
his woman.

And I
did
belong to him.

For as long as I could remember.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Gonzo

Luke and I walked into the Nightingale Investigations offices and everyone was in the reception area waiting for us.

When I said everyone, I mean
everyone
.

Lee and Indy, Jet and Eddie, Hank and Roxie, Vance and Jules, Sissy, Ally, Daisy with a tall, dark-haired, handsome man I did not know standing at her side, Shirleen, May, Tod and Stevie, Mace, Matt, Hector, Darius, Tex, Duke, and some big black dude I’d never seen before in my life.

“Holy shit,” I whispered.

Luke’s mouth got tight.

Everyone stared at me and I knew why. I didn’t look good. I got a good look at myself in the hotel mirror that morning, my lip was torn and my eye was bruised and blackened (and that didn’t count what they couldn’t see and that was the headache to end all headaches). Not to mention, these people talked, no way to keep a secret in this group, news spread like wildfire.

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.