Rock Chick 08 Revolution (23 page)

“No, I mean, these guys are not
your garden variety assholes,” Hank returned.

“Wiring a bomb to a detonator to
take out a woman who’s an undetermined threat told me that already.”

Hank nodded, then informed me,
“Darius is on that. And you let him work that without your help. You deal with
all the other shit that’s going down.”

Bossy.

Gack.

It was all around me.

Before I could call him on it, we
saw movement and turned to watch a stony-faced Lee approach and yank open the
door. The bell over it rang and I knew attention came to us, but I didn’t take
my eyes off Lee.

“You okay?” I asked, and he tore
his gaze from where it was pointed in the store, and without turning to see if
I was accurate I knew he was looking at Indy, before he looked down at me.

“Fuck no.”

Well, that didn’t leave any room
for interpretation.

“So I’m not in the mood for you to
piss me off,” he went on then finished, “
More.
”

I lifted my hands, palms out.
“Dude, I’m just standing here.”

He scowled at me. Then he looked at
Hank.

Then he prowled into the store.

Hank and I watched him, and then I
called Hank’s attention back to me.

“You know you and Roxie are volume
three.”

“I know. Brody found the website
and sent the word out.”

“Is he looking into a hack of the
feeds?” I asked.

“As we speak,” Hank answered.

I studied him. He didn’t look
happy. I didn’t like my brothers unhappy so I leaned into him, bumping his arm
with my shoulder and staying close.

“You know,” I said softly. “It
might be a good idea to adopt Tod’s attitude. He thinks it’s hilarious.”

“Not sure I can get there, honey,”
Hank said softly back.

I nodded. I was with him.

“Oh my God!” Tod yelled and Hank
and I both looked his way. “Cherry and the Chinese restaurant!” He kept
yelling, his book open in front of him, his face lit up with humor, his lips
smiling and his eyes on Indy. “Your outfit that night, girlie…
lush.
Too bad it got covered in hot and
sour soup and fried rice.”

My eyes slid to Lee, who was not
smiling. Then to Indy, who was glaring at Tod.

But my mind went to Girls Night Out
two years ago when Indy got in a catfight with Lee’s ex, Cherry.

Her outfit
was
lush (Indy’s, not Cherry’s; I hated Cherry, she was a lying,
bitchy skank, though it was kinda harsh she nearly exploded in a car
bomb—karma, totally a bitch).

Indy’s outfit did get covered in soup.

That had been a good night.

The best.

Or, as it was with the Rock Chicks,
one of many bests.

And now it was laid out on pages
for all the world to read.

And I couldn’t stop that small part
of me thinking that wasn’t such a bad thing.

Because it wasn’t perfect, none of
it.

But it
was
a fairytale.

And people needed to believe in
fairytales. Even flawed ones.

Maybe especially flawed ones.

And they needed to believe always.

Chapter Thirteen

Lotus, Cowgirl, Scissor and Doggie

I put the plates on the dining room
table and adjusted the cutlery.

I’d called Ren ten minutes earlier
and lied to him that I was heading home with food. This was a lie since I
called when I was already at his place.

It’s important to point out it was
a little white lie. One I forgave myself for because I needed time to do all I
needed to do (not that I didn’t forgive myself for all of them). And all I
needed to do was get the champagne and the chocolate candles I bought from
Pasquini’s in the fridge, set the table and arrange the bouquet of flowers and
candles there and wash the champagne flutes I also bought.

I’d timed it so all would be ready,
but the food would not be cold and I hoped he could wrap things up at work and
get home in time to fit in with my plan.

It was a bummer that I didn’t have
a fabulous dress and heels he hadn’t already seen to change into. But after
leaving the Rock Chick Powwow, I only had enough time to deal with my plans for
dinner and not enough time to do some shopping.

The good news was, I’d taxed Roxie,
Tod and Stevie with the mission to kit me out with clothes and other items any
girl needed to exist and they were all over it. So I suspected I’d have way
more than two pairs of jeans tomorrow.

The bad news was, although my
insurance company was on top of working through the process of getting me a
check, when I’d called my landlord, he’d communicated to me he was not a big
fan of keeping me as a tenant.

He communicated this by saying,
“Ally, darlin’, you pay your rent on time. You got a lot of visitors, but
you’re quiet.” (This, by the by, was only partially true, and indicated to me
that none of my neighbors had complained when I played my rock ‘n’ roll.) “And
once that stuff hit the papers about your friends, gotta admit, I was expecting
this to happen. But, gotta say, I wasn’t expecting it to be
this bad.
”

I couldn’t argue that. There had
been a lot of kidnappings and stun gun usage was not unheard of, but only
Stella and me shared our pads getting blown sky high.

“For the safety of my other
tenants, maybe we can make arrangements for you to be let out of your lease,”
he went on. “Full security deposit back and you don’t have to pay this month’s
rent, seeing as there’s no apartment to rent.”

I translated this to mean:
It would be a good idea that you let me let
you out of your lease so I don’t have to be an asshole and evict you.

It must be said, I didn’t like it
when assholes were assholes normally (who did?). Forcing someone who was trying
not to be one
into
one was not my gig.
So I agreed to vacate the premises. Figuratively, of course, since currently
there were no premises to vacate and I had no possessions actually
to
vacate.

But this sucked. I couldn’t say I
was emotionally attached to my apartment, but I didn’t need to be looking for
one at this juncture. I had tons of other shit to do.

I also couldn’t argue with his
reasoning. If the unknown jerkoff from New Mexico was a little more gung ho,
something already bad could have gone way worse, and I didn’t need that on my conscience
or to force the issue and put it on someone else’s.

So maybe I’d look for a house to
rent. One with land. Like ten acres. On ten acres, Tex could set a shitload of booby traps.

Therefore I was planning a nice
dinner with Ren that was more than just Chinese takeout because I needed a nice
dinner with Ren, seeing as I’d been fired and made homeless on the same day. I
figured from our phone call earlier he needed a nice dinner too. I also wanted
to break the seal on his dining room table doing something special.

But it was mostly that I wanted to
do something special. We hadn’t had our first official date and he clearly
wasn’t in the mood for that tonight, but that didn’t mean we couldn’t
celebrate.

And I’d nearly screwed us up and I
needed to make it up to him.

He was sweet. He needed to know in
not giving up on me that he’d get that back.

And it wouldn’t hurt that, if I
buttered him up with my sweetness, he might take the news I was going to
officially become a private investigator without losing his Italian American
hotheaded mind (too much).

I heard someone at the front door
and quickly snatched up the lighter on the table so I could light the candles.
I pointed the flame to the wick and looked to the left.

Ren was walking in, eyes on me,
shrugging off his suit jacket.

Mm.

Yum.

I flicked off the lighter and
straightened when it dawned on me Ren wasn’t walking in, eyes on me, shrugging
off his jacket.

He was
prowling
in, eyes on me, shrugging off his jacket.

Jacket off, he tossed it to a chair
he passed without taking his eyes off me and kept prowling.

I dropped the lighter, turned to
him, and since his gait was not slowing in the slightest, I started backing up.

“Zano, what the—?”

I kept backing. He kept coming, and
I stopped talking when I tripped on the rug that was under his dining room
table.

He shot forward and caught me
around the waist before my stumble became a fall, but didn’t quit moving until
my back slammed into the wall and Ren slammed into me.

He drove his fingers into my hair,
fisted them and tilted my head one way while his arm tightened around my waist,
his head slanted and his mouth landed hard on mine.

Then he kissed me, wet, deep, long
and
rough.

My inner thighs quivered, my happy
place rejoiced and both my hands lifted so I could sift my fingers in his hair
and hold him to me.

It took some time but he finally
(alas) tore his mouth from mine and I stared, breathless, into his heated eyes.

 
“What was that for?” I asked in a quiet voice,
mostly because there was no way in hell I had it in me to speak louder seeing
as I could barely breathe.

“That was because I like, a fuckuva
lot, all the reasons you love me. But more, I like that you laid it out, no
hesitation, all real, and didn’t make me work for it.”

I made a mental note to do that
again, and often, as my insides warmed in a way that had nothing to do with the
heat created by his kiss.

 
“Just to keep that goodness coming, right now,
would you like me to give you my top ten of your anatomy?” I offered.

He smiled, but he did it while pressing
his body into mine (and, incidentally, that meant nearly all of his top tens
were pressed tight to me, including my number one). And since my back was to
the wall, that meant I felt him deep.

I liked the feel.

Then again, I always had.

“We’ll wait on doin’ that when
we’re naked,” he replied.

“Sounds like a plan,” I muttered.

His smile got bigger and my happy
place got happier. He tipped his head, touched his lips to my jaw and pulled us
from the wall, turning.

He got to facing the table and
stopped dead.

“Christ,” he whispered.

Apparently, he’d been all fired up
to show me his appreciation about what I’d said earlier and hadn’t noticed my
preparations for the evening.

“Baby, what—?” he started, dipping
his chin to look down at me.

I interrupted him to ask, “Was last
night the only night I get to show you special?”

He said not one word. He just
stared at me, his arm around my waist, his body unmoving.

“Zano?” I called.

“I love this. This is beautiful,”
he said in his sweet voice. “And hear me, honey, I get what you’re doing, but I
need you to know that you have nothing to make up for. You gave me you and
that’s all the special I need.”

God!

Seriously?

This guy was unreal.

I loved it at the same time it was
undoing me. The thing was, I didn’t mind the idea of coming undone and that
freaked me.

To communicate this to Ren, I
curled into him and shoved my face in his chest.

His hand came up and curled around
the back of my neck.

More sweet.

I couldn’t hack it.

“I need to pick a fight,” I told
his shirt.

His body jolted slightly and his
voice held a vein of humor when he asked, “What?”

I dropped my head back to look at
him.

“I’m Ally. I’m not the romance and
candlelight and flowers and champagne and sweetness and soft words that mean
everything kind of girl. We need to pick a fight. This is freaking me out. And
anyway, you’re an alpha badass hothead. You’re not supposed to notice flowers
and candlelight. And no alpha badass hothead has the capacity to say the right
thing at the right time and do it repeatedly. I know. I’ve been witnessing them
in action for a while now. Counting Dad and Indy’s dad, Tom, it’s safe to say
I’ve had a lifelong study.”

“Maybe your girls don’t share
everything,” he suggested.

He clearly hadn’t been around to
overhear the Rock Chicks gabbing.

I decided not to reply as that
information might freak
him
.

“I’ll do my best to ignore it from
here on out,” he offered.

“Appreciated,” I muttered.

He grinned, bent his head to brush his
lips to mine then he let me go and ordered, “I’ll get the champagne, you get
the food.”

Since this was an acceptable
arrangement, I complied.

He got the champagne. I went to the
table to light the candle I didn’t get to when he’d rushed me. Then I set out
the food. Ren set out a champagne bucket filled with ice and the opened bottle.
He handed me my glass as we both sat.

I stared at the champagne bucket.

“Babe,” he called and my eyes
drifted to him.

“You have a champagne bucket,” I
told him something he knew since it was him that filled it with ice and put it
on the table.

His head tipped to the side.
“Yeah.”

“I’m not sure what to do with
that,” I shared.

“And I’m not sure why you’d have to
do anything with it,” he returned.

“Um… I don’t think I know anyone
with a champagne bucket, except my parents, and they got theirs for a wedding
present thirty-nine years ago.”

“Which would stand to reason this
is the bucket Ma and Pop got at their wedding thirty-eight years ago.”

“Oh,” I mumbled. I tipped my head
to the side and proceeded cautiously, “Why do you have it?”

He took a sip of champagne, set his
glass aside and picked up his fork. He did all this not looking at me, which
was all kinds of strange with Ren. He was a straight talker and a big fan of
eye contact.