Rock Chick 06 Reckoning (45 page)

“You didn’t have to do that.”

“I know that too.”

Wel , there you go again. Nothing else to say on that either.

“I didn’t cal my Mom today,” I told him.

“Good,” he surprised me by replying. “I want to be there when you do it.”

My heart skipped a beat.

God, I loved him.

“Thank you,” I whispered.

Again, he didn’t respond.

“How was your day?” I asked, feeling weird.

We’d never done this, laying in bed, talking, sharing, even, one could say,
processing
.

It was kind of freaking me out (but in a good way).

“There’s been progress. George, the guy from the offices today, is an assistant DA. He’s giving us trouble with Sid’s case. Hank went over George’s head. Presented the evidence to his boss. The boss disagreed with George.

He told Hank and Eddie to bring Sid in. The warrant for his arrest went out tonight.”

“That’s good news, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, on the face of it. Sid’s gonna be hard to find. He’s also gonna retaliate, mobilize his army.”

“I thought his army was already mobilized.”

“Defensive tactics. He’l go offensive now.” That didn’t sound good. In fact, that sounded
way
not good.

“George is pissed,” Mace went on. “Hank made him look like a fool.”

“Is that gonna be bad?”

“We don’t know yet. George doesn’t like looking like a fool. He’d go after Hank but there’s nothing to get on Hank.

Instead, he’l likely go after Lee and Shirleen as retribution.”

“How?”

“Lee’l be okay. He doesn’t play by the rules but he covers his tracks. But Shirleen used to deal drugs.” I gasped at this news but Mace talked through it. “Now she’s fostering two runaways and Jules and another social worker at the Shelter pul ed some strings to place Roam and Sniff with her. Roam and Sniff might be moved out.

Jules might lose her job.”

“Fuck,” I whispered.

“It’l be okay,” Mace told me.

“It doesn’t sound okay.”

“Don’t worry about it, Kitten.” And he didn’t sound worried. Not at al . And I trusted him to be right so I let it go.

“Shirleen used to deal drugs?” I asked.

“Yeah, she was never busted and she’s been clean awhile.”

“I can’t believe that of Shirleen.” And I couldn’t.

“Even good people do bad things, Stel a. Shirleen’s good people. She just did bad things. Now, she doesn’t.

She’s a good foster carer, she loves those kids. Would lay down her life for them, proved it this morning. She’s also a good friend. That’s al you need to know. End of story.” It was my turn to fal silent because I trusted him to be right about that too. And, with what I experienced of Shirleen, I knew he
was
right.

Then I shared, “This is weird.”

“What?”

“You. Me. Talking.”

I heard the smile in his voice when he said, “I like it.” You could hear my smile in my voice when I said, “Me too.”

Then I decided it was time to start beating back those demons. I had to start right away because I didn’t like him living with them and I wasn’t going to let him do it one second longer than he had to.

“I like you coming home to me,” I told him softly.

The minute I stopped talking, the air in the room changed. It felt like it became heavy, close but warmer.

Mace didn’t respond but he did move, final y touching me, his fingers, whisper-soft, at my waist.

I went on, “I like making breakfast for you. I like you in my kitchen. I like that henley you wore today, it looks great on you.”

“Kitten,” he murmured and his fingers shifted down the smal of my back. He leaned his body into me and pul ed me closer.

me closer.

My hands hit his hard chest, one slid up and my fingers curled around his neck. “I like to hear Juno’s tags jingle when you give her a rubdown. I like hearing your clothes hitting the furniture.”

After I said that, his lips hit my neck then slid up to behind my ear.

I turned my head so my lips were at his ear and I wrapped my arms tight around his middle. “I’m sorry I fought you, Mace,” I whispered. “But now that your mine again, I’m never going to let you go.”

He turned his head and I could swear he was looking at me in the dark. I felt my face grow warm under his gaze, my soft body already warming from his hard one pressing into mine.

Then he kissed me.

Then we used our mouths, tongues, fingers and other parts of our body to process everything else that needed processing.

When we were done processing, when I’d finished purring and we were breathing steady again, when Mace had rol ed me and pressed my back into his front, when Juno had come back to bed and settled at our feet, I whispered, “Thank you.”

“What’re you thankin’ me for, Kitten?” Mace said into the back of my neck and he sounded amused.

“I’m the Queen of Super Shitty Bad Luck. Al my life, my luck has been bad. Not just bad, super shitty bad,” I shared.

“But not anymore. Now it’s good. It’s always good when you’re around. So I’m thanking you for being my good luck you’re around. So I’m thanking you for being my good luck charm.”

For a beat, I felt his body go solid as a rock.

Then his arm around my waist got super tight. So tight, it squeezed the breath out of me and, again to the back of my neck, he muttered, “Jesus.”

The way he said it, the way he held me close, made me hope that in my first battle, I’d kicked some demon ass.

I considered tel ing him I loved him but I didn’t want to push too hard, too fast.

My war against his demons was going to take awhile. I needed to be patient and strong and not fuck it up.

I could wait.

Stella

The next morning, I made Mace apple streusel coffee cake which, unfortunately, as I was under house arrest (in a way) this necessitated Mace making an early morning trip to the grocery store to buy ingredients but he didn’t seem to mind (as he never did, and anyway, my apple streusel coffee cake was one of his favorites).

While it was baking in the oven, I tried not to make a big deal out of putting Mace’s clothes in the closet and the stuff in his boxes around the house.

I wanted him to notice me doing it but I wanted to make it seem like it was perfectly natural. Like a daily chore, rinsing dishes or feeding Juno.

It was another battle in my War with the Demons, making him feel welcome, settled and at home at my place (okay, so maybe it was more like a minor skirmish but it was stil something).

At first, it didn’t seem he noticed anything since he was sitting on the couch, talking on his cel , leaned forward and writing notes on a tablet on the coffee table.

Considering, even for a normal couple, this would be a huge deal, me moving his stuff into my space, the fact that he treated it like it was perfectly natural, like a daily chore, began to piss me off. So instead of doing it like I didn’t want him to notice it, I started banging around while I did it, like he could bloody wel get up and help me.

I got down to the bottom of the last box; it was fil ed with about thirty CDs. When Mace flipped his phone closed, I picked up the box, lugged it to the coffee table and dumped it on his writing tablet.

His head came up immediately, he looked at me and said, “Babe.”

I put my hands to my hips and told him, “You need to mark your CDs.”

His eyes went to my hips as his brows snapped together.

Then he looked back at me and asked, “Why?”

“Because if you don’t mark your CDs, they’l get al mixed up with mine,” I reached in and pul ed one out. It was Journey’s, “Evolution” (which, by the way, featured one of my favorite Journey songs, “Lovin’, Touchin’, Squeezin’” and I wondered, briefly, if I could fit that song in the next night’s set list and decided quickly to do so).

For your information, I had that same CD.

Everyone knew what that meant.

“Who cares?” Mace asked, interrupting my mental set list restructuring, lifted up the box and set it aside so he could see the tablet.

Obviously, he didn’t know what doubled CDs meant.

“I care,” I told him. “I have this same CD. How wil we know which one’s yours and which one’s mine?” Mace sat back and put the sole of his foot against the edge of my coffee table.

“Who cares which one’s yours and which one’s mine?” My eyes bugged out right before I said, “
I
care.”

“Why?”

“Because I do. Because it’s a CD. Because CDs are sacred.”

“It’s the same CD,” he pointed out.

“Yes, but I bought mine at Twist and Shout during my Journey phase and Twist and Shout is gone now. I was with my old band when I bought it. At my demand, we played

‘Wheel in the Sky’ like, every night. I loved everything Journey. Even their power bal ads. I hate power bal ads.

But Journey’s power bal ads kick… fucking… ass.

‘Faithful y’, ‘Open Arms’. Those bal ads
rock
.”

“So, if we find we’re doubled up on CDs, we’l sel mine on eBay.”

I made a choking noise then spluttered, “What?” Mace was watching me closely perhaps wondering if I needed an intervention.

Then he repeated, saying the words slowly this time,

“We’ve got any of the same CDs, we’l sel mine on eBay.” I threw my hands up in the air. “You can’t just
sell
your CDs on
eBay
, especial y if we’ve doubled up. If we’re doubled up then they serve a dual purpose. First, they’re backup CDs in case something goes wrong with one and second, they’re material evidence that we should be together because we like the same music. Everyone knows that!”

He shook his head, the expression on his face looking like he didn’t know whether to smile or to scowl.

Then he suggested, “If you want to mark the CDs, mark your CDs.”

I gasped then said, “I’m not marking
my
CDs. I don’t want marks on my CDs. The covers either.” I put in the last as an important afterthought.

He took in a deep breath and I could tel this was an effort at patience before he tried, “Then mark mine.”

“You mark yours.”

“Kitten, I don’t have time to mark my CDs and I don’t have any fuckin’ desire to fight with you about this.” Uh-oh.

Were we fighting?

Fighting didn’t factor in with my War against Mace’s Demons. In fact, fighting would be highly detrimental to my overal Strategy.

“We’re not fighting. We’re discussing,” I told him.

“Discussions between a man and a woman don’t include the woman putting her hands on her hips. The minute that happens, it’s a fight. And you started this with your hands on your hips,” Mace told me.

“I did not,” I snapped but I was worried that I did.

“You did,” he returned.

I glared at him. “Wel , I was putting your shit away. You
could
help.”

“Brody was briefing me on what he’s finding on my father. He’s coasting on the fumes of seventeen six packs of Red Bul and no sleep for forty-two hours. He’s doin’

deep hacks, al of them highly il egal and some of what he’s finding pretty fuckin’ useful. Sorry I couldn’t interrupt the brief to help you hang clothes.”

Oh dear.

This wasn’t going very wel .

I decided it was time I gave in before I left the Demon Skirmish any more bloodied and beaten.

Therefore I muttered, “Okay, whatever. I’l mark your CDs.”

I threw the Journey CD in, put my hands to the box but Mace was there too. He pul ed the box out of my hands, twisted to the side and dropped it on the floor.

I started to straighten on the word “Hey!” when he lifted in a squat, gripped me at the waist and yanked me to him. I grabbed onto his shoulders and hiked up my heels so the fronts of my calves wouldn’t slam into the coffee table. He had me on my back on the couch, him on top of me, before I could say a word.

His face in my face, he said, “Kitten, you gotta know, that coffee cake didn’t smel so fuckin’ good and I didn’t enjoy watchin’ you wander the apartment, puttin’ away my shit while you’re wearin’ those cutoffs I like so goddamned much, you’d be a pain in the fuckin’ ass.” Okay, so his tel ing me he watched me walking around the apartment meant that maybe I was wrong about losing the skirmish. Maybe I won and didn’t even realize it.

I didn’t know what to say that wouldn’t give anything away, so I said, “I’m
so
sure.”

“Leave the CDs in the box,” he ordered. “Once this shit is done, I’ve decided you’re movin’ to my place.” My eyes grew round, I forgot about skirmishes and wars and demons and I breathed, “Am not.”

“Yep, you are. I like your space but it’s too fuckin’ girlie and there isn’t enough room. I got a yard for Juno. I got a dining room table so we don’t have to eat standing up in the kitchen. We’l move your bed, get rid of your other shit and you can mark the CDs al in one go.”

Get rid of “my other shit”?

I did not
think
so!

I crossed my arms on my chest. This took some effort since I had to shove them between our bodies but I did it.

“You seem to have everything figured out.” He grinned, completely ignoring the arm crossing move (which said “fight” far,
far
more than hands at your hips) and said, “Damn straight.”

“Your house is modern,” I told him.

“Yeah. And?”

“I don’t mean to sound funny but modern’s not my gig.” And it wasn’t.

His house was, like, three years old, situated in a modern development. No personality. Al the houses one of three styles, al of them one of three colors.