Rock Chick 01 (11 page)

Lee’s hand stilled.

“
Fuck!
” he clipped from behind
clenched teeth.

“What?”

He flipped me on my back as if I weighed no
more than a sack of feathers and gave me a quick kiss.

“Don’t fucking move,” he warned and angled
out of bed.

He grabbed a pair of jeans before he walked
to the door and I watched him go, frozen solid and fascinated by my
first, unadulterated view of his perfect, naked body including the
particularly generous gift with which God had chosen fit to endow
him.

At the sight and the realization that I was
sleeping next to a naked Liam Nightingale, I’m not embarrassed to
admit, I think I had a mini-orgasm.

I heard voices, tried to get my body back
under my control (and failed) but then in mere moments, Lee came
back into the room.

He walked straight to the bed and hauled me
out. I slammed against him and he kissed me, hard and deep, but
unfortunately not long.

“I have to go,” he told me.

I wanted to scream, “
No!
” I was
beginning to get
seriously
hot and bothered, he’d just
admitted he loved my ass and always had, and I wanted to explore
his God-given talents.

Instead, I just kept holding on to his
shoulders because that was all I was capable of doing after his
kiss.

He smiled.

Damn the man.

“I’ll pick you up at Fortnum’s as soon as I
can. Promise me in the meantime you won’t get into trouble.”

I nodded my head.

He stared at me a second, then sighed.

“You’re lying.”

“No I’m not,” I replied.

“Just don’t do anything too stupid.”

As if!

He brushed his lips against mine. He let me
go, headed straight to the bathroom, took a shower, dressed and
left.

I called and asked Ally to come pick me
up.

We had a long, busy day ahead of us if we
were going to find Rosie.

Kinky Friedman Zone

I decided to drag Jane into the search, in
fact, I decided to drag
everyone
into the search.

We spent the morning waiting on coffee
customers, the one person who actually wanted to buy a book and
making phone calls to everyone we knew putting an APB out on both
Rosie and Duke.

Regardless of her first shock at seeing the
state of my face (I had a mini-shiner, not a full-blown black eye
but a killer bruise on my cheekbone and yellow discoloring under
the eye), Jane was excited. Jane thought this was fun. Jane had not
been shot at or stunned-gunned (yet). She read romances but she
also read mysteries and detective novels. She was in the Kinky
Friedman zone.

Jane headed off to Evergreen after the
morning rush to put a note under Duke’s door, telling him to call
me the minute he got home (with a little PS to Dolores, inviting
her to Girl’s Night Out next Wednesday).

I had decided that the morning’s weakness
with Lee was temporary insanity and the aftereffects of sake. I was
back to my decision that Lee and I weren’t a good idea. Most
especially if he could (and would) leave me hot and bothered for
whatever scary shit he did for a living. I knew my control was
slipping but I had a new plan. All I had to do was not end up in
his car, his company, his condo and especially his bed. That was
the extent of my new plan.

The minute Jane left, I called Rosie’s
parents in North Dakota. He had them as next of kin on his
employment records. In order not to freak them out, I pretended I
was an old friend from high school, calling to catch up.

“Isn’t that a funny coincidence?” Rosie’s Mom
said. “Two nice gentlemen came around yesterday saying the same
thing!”

I glanced at Ally with my “uh-oh” face and
she returned an eyebrow raise.

Either it was Lee or it was Terry Wilcox. One
spelled disaster for me and the other spelled disaster for
Rosie.

I gave my name and number, disconnected and
told Ally.

“Probably Lee, he has ways,” she decided.

Great.

“Tell me again why we’re doing this?” she
asked.

“Lee and I have a bet, the kind of bet I
don’t wanna lose.” It wasn’t a total lie. If Lee found Rosie, I
would lose a lot, peace of mind, my grip on reality, things like
that.

“So you bet Lee you’d find Rosie before he
did and return a bag of diamonds to a bad guy?” Ally stared at me
like I’d just had half my brain sucked out by brain-eaters.

“Yep.”

“Girl,” she drawled, “you’re so gonna
lose.”

Lucky for me, Ally was into the underdog.

The door to Fortnum’s burst open and Andrea
Cocetti stormed in.

Andrea was at school with Ally and me and she
was in our pack. Rumor had it that Andrea made out with Richie
Sambora backstage after a Bon Jovi concert but this had never been
publicly confirmed or denied (privately, though, she admitted to
both Ally and I that it didn’t happen and thus, in secret, I
reigned supreme with my Joe Perry encounter).

We’d stayed friends over the years but didn’t
see each other often. Andrea got married about twelve minutes after
we graduated and now had four kids. Four kids, especially hellions
like Andrea’s, were a good reason not to see each other that
often.

Now, Andrea was Andrea Moran. She was pushing
a stroller, dragging a child alongside her, while an older one
followed, carrying a purse the size of an overnight bag and a
diaper bag stuffed full to bursting, all this done with such
practiced ease, it was as if they were all merely accessories,
including the children.

“You hooked up with Lee Nightingale!” she
shrieked, causing the four customers who were calmly sitting around
reading and enjoying their coffees in quiet surroundings to jump
and stare. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Over the years, Andrea, too, had been drafted
in some of my Lee Maneuvers. Andrea, too, was on Kitty Sue
Nightingale’s Christmas Card List and therefore in her address book
and therefore, no doubt, received a call. Perhaps, considering a
day had passed, during the second wave.

“It only happened yesterday,” Ally said.

Andrea ignored Ally. “Have you and Lee
done it
yet?” Her voice was still, really, really loud and
the four customers stopped staring at Andrea and swiveled their
heads to look at me.

I sighed then said, “We’re taking it
slow.”

“
Slow!
” Her eyes moved from me, to
Ally, and back to me, they looked like they were going to pop out
of her head. “I… you…” She made a strangled sound and I was
starting to get concerned. “That isn’t possible. Slow isn’t
possible. Lee Nightingale doesn’t move slow. One second he’s
looking at you, the next second he’s walking away and he has the
little satin bow from your panties as a souvenir.”

God, I hoped it wasn’t
that
fast that
would be disappointing.

What was I thinking? It wasn’t going to
happen at all.

“That isn’t true,” Ally replied. “He’d take
the little satin bow from your bra. Not all panties have them but
most bras do. Sometimes they’re rosettes, he’d take those as
well.”

I stared at her.

“You’re joking,” I breathed, really not
wanting to be a little satin rosette bouncing around with hundreds
of other little rosettes and bows in Lee’s sock drawer.

Ally shrugged. “That’s the rumor.”

“Have you seen them? How many of them are
there?” Andrea asked.

“I haven’t seen them, it’s just the rumor,
I’m just keeping rumors straight. Maybe when Indy stops
taking
it slow
, we’ll find out.”

I calmed Andrea down with an iced, hazelnut,
decaf latte and promised her I’d call her the minute I
did
it
with Lee. At this rate, post-coital, I’d be on the phone for
a week.

Once Andrea was settled, I noticed a guy
who’d arrived practically the minute the door opened. He’d already
bought three espressos, which he sucked down in one swallow and
he’d been reading a sports magazine now for three and a half hours.
He had dark blond hair a week or two past needing a cut, a killer
bod, compact with muscles and not an ounce of fat. He was wearing a
white t-shirt, jeans and running shoes.

If he wasn’t my height, I didn’t have an ugly
bruise on my face and I didn’t already have enough man problems, I
would have been flirting with him ages ago. I didn’t do men my
height or shorter, they had to be taller than me if I was wearing
heels. That was a rule.

I watched him for a few minutes, thinking
that had to be a helluva magazine to require more than three hours
of study.

Lee told me he had a lot of men. Maybe men
enough to go to North Dakota and sit in surveillance at Rosie’s.
Maybe men enough to hang out at Fortnum’s and keep an eye on
me.

Fucking Lee.

I sauntered over to the guy and stood in
front of him until he looked up.

“Hey,” I said.

“Hey,” he replied and smiled. Definitely cute
and definitely not one of Terry Wilcox’s steroid-ridden bad guys.
The look of this dude said he would never hit a woman, or at least
I hoped so.

“You need another espresso?” I asked, giving
my head a flirty tilt.

“Nah, thanks, I’m juiced up enough.” He went
back to reading.

Hmm. What did I do now? Never really had
someone gone back to reading after I gave them the flirty tilt.
Even if they weren’t entirely interested, they gave more reaction
to the flirty tilt. Maybe it was the mini-shiner.

“Good magazine?” I asked and he looked up
again.

“Yeah, the best.”

I nodded and wished I’d worn a tank top or
camisole that day so I could have leaned over and given him some of
my power cleavage. My cleavage would have negated the effects of
the shiner.

Instead, I was in jeans, a brown, hand-tooled
belt with a big, silver buckle that had a design made out of what
looked like miniature rope, brown cowboy boots and a chocolate
brown, fitted tee that said “I do all my own stunts” across my
boobs in yellow and red lettering.

“I’m not into sports,” I told him and then
sat on the arm of his chair, peering over the magazine to look at
it. His entire body tensed and he turned his head to stare at me
and I gave him a mega-watt smile. “Though I like going to games and
stuff, do you go to games?”

I pressed the side of my breast against his
arm, still pretending to try and get a look at his magazine.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

I gave him an innocent look.

“Who me?” Then I winked.

His face went pale and his cell phone rang.
He stood up to get it out of his jeans and he stood so fast, he
nearly knocked me off the arm of the chair.

I righted myself as he said, “Talk to
me.”

Then his eyes cut to me and he handed me the
phone. I stared at it, astonished, then took it and put it to my
ear.

“Leave Matt alone, he’s just doin’ his job,”
Lee said.

I was a little shocked at the call, I just
wanted to fluster Matt a bit.

How did he…?

Fucking,
fucking
Lee.

“What’s his job?” I asked, my blood pressure
ratcheting up a notch.

“Making sure you don’t get kidnapped or shot
at.”

“Or do anything stupid?”

“That too.”

“How did you know I was screwing with
him?”

“Trade secret.”

“Tell me or I’m moving to Venezuela, losing
myself in the jungle and shacking up with a local.”

Silence, then a sigh.

“Fortnum’s is wired and there are cameras. We
did it last night.”

“What? Why?”

“Remember the conversation we had in the
kitchen yesterday?”

I remembered every encounter I’d had with Lee
since I was five. I most vividly remembered those that occurred in
the last twenty-four hours, and not just because they were the most
recent.

“Yeah.”

“You’re on Terry Wilcox’s radar. That’s not
good. I’m trying to keep you safe.”

“By bugging my store?”

“That and anything else I can think of.”

I stood staring at Matt who was beginning to
look amused.

“Do
you
remember the part of the
conversation this morning where you said you’d be at Fortnum’s
whenever you were done?” Silence but I didn’t wait for a response.
“Well, don’t bother.”

* * * * *

Ally and I walked up to Rosie’s house.

Matt followed us there and was now sitting in
his SUV watching us, but we were ignoring him.

Jane had returned, no sign of Duke or
Dolores, but she’d taken the opportunity to, what she called,
“canvass the neighborhood” (as Duke lived in log cabin surrounded
by four acres of evergreen trees, I wondered what neighborhood she
was talking about). Nevertheless, she scored some points by
learning that the dirt lane to Duke’s cabin had been a hive of
activity in the last day or so, including a sighting yesterday
morning that could have been Rosie. No sign of Duke’s return before
or after Rosie.

This meant that Rosie was looking for Duke
too, or had been yesterday morning. Whether he found him or not was
anyone’s guess.

We stood on Rosie’s porch and knocked. Rosie
lived alone, in a bungalow that needed serious renovation. I used
to wonder how he could afford the bungalow, I didn’t exactly pay
him a fortune. It was on the out, out, outskirts of Platte Park but
close enough to the park and to Pearl Street to be a prime piece of
real estate.

Now I knew how he could afford it.

No answer on the knock so we looked in the
windows. I’d been to Rosie’s dozens of times and it didn’t look any
different than normal.

“Be a shame to lose those primo pot plants.
Do you think someone’s taking care of those plants?” I asked.

Ally gave a shrug and then turned brightly to
me. “I bet I know who’d know!”