Rock Chick 08 Revolution (70 page)

“Cake and catfight if you keep saying that,” I returned.

“Whatever,” she muttered then, “Later.”

“Later, chickie,” I replied and we disconnected.

“So I take it we’re picking up the cake,” Ren asked, and I looked to
him.

“Yeah,” I answered.

Katie threw another tater tot. Ren looked to his girl and poked her
gently in her rounded belly.

“
You’re
supposed to eat them,
baby,” he told her.

She giggled.

She also threw another one.

That was when I giggled.

Ren just smiled.

Then he leaned in and kissed his daughter.

After that, he leaned further and kissed me.

It was Sunday breakfast in bed at the Zano house.

Yeah.

You guessed it.

Righteous
.

* * * * *

“Yo!”

That was Lee.

We were in the kitchen at Indy and his house: Lee, Indy, Tex, Nancy,
Jet (with her latest son, Cesar, or son number three, attached to her hip),
Eddie, Ada and me.

The Kevster and Leo, Stella’s bassist, were wandering through, heading
toward the back door.

Lee was scowling at Leo and Kevin.

“What?” The Kevster asked.

“Keep it in your pocket or give it to me,” Lee ordered.

“What?” The Kevster repeated, trying to look innocent.

And failing.

“You say ‘what’ one more time, I’ll pat you down, confiscate it and it’ll
be in the garbage disposal,” Lee warned.

Kevin gave up the ghost and cried, “But it’s a party!”

“You don’t smoke that shit at my house,” Lee informed him.

“We weren’t gonna,” The Kevster replied. “We were gonna smoke it in
your backyard.”

I could swear I heard Lee growl.

“Kevin, just abstain, all right?” Indy waded in.

The Kevster looked at Indy then looked at Leo. “You’re famous, right?”
he asked.

“Yup,” Leo answered, and he was.

The Blue Moon Gypsies had hit the big time. Totally. Red carpets. Their
frequent brawls splashed all over the tabloids. Pong even had a sex tape that
was still circulating the internet.

Totally rock ‘n’ roll.

“So, do you have, like, a limo or something?” Kevin asked.

“We ride around in Escalades,” Leo shared. “That doesn’t say rock ‘n’
roll. But they’re roomy.”

“Do you have one here?” Kevin asked.

“Yup,” Leo answered.

 
“Let’s go,” The Kevster said,
and they switched directions but got only a couple of steps in before Ada was
there.

“Are you two young men going to smoke a doobie?” she asked.

Leo just stared at her.

The Kevster tipped his head to the side and hedged, “Maybe.”

“I’ve never smoked marijuana,” she informed them excitedly, her meaning
clear to everybody. Including Kevin and Leo, who were unclear about most
everything.

“Jesus. Someone shoot me,” Lee muttered.

“Live large, mama,” Leo said to Ada, an invitation coupled with an arm
going out, leading the way.

Ada sent a happy grin to Nancy and shuffled out, followed by one famous
and one infamous pothead.

I shared a smile with Indy and Jet before I looked to Tex because he
was booming.

“I was wrong,” he stated. “Shit never gets boring. It just gets more
and more freaky.”

He was not wrong.

“And just now, that old woman gettin’ stoned with the stoner to end all
stoners and a rock star, just plain crazy,” he went on.

He was not wrong about that, either.

And Tex, being all kinds of crazy calling something crazy, said a lot.

But we were used to crazy.

And, none of us, not a single one (okay, maybe the Hot Bunch were
exempted), would have it any other way.

“You have chocolate crumbs in your beard, honey,” Nancy told him,
lifting a hand and brushing away crumbs and Tex (yes,
Tex
) let her. “And what’s that?” she asked. “Caramel?”

“Loopy Loo’s brownies,” he shared.

“Tex, you’re not supposed to eat anything until the special guests
arrive,” Indy snapped.

His brows shot up. “Woman, you think I’m gonna wait for a brownie?”

“Yes,” Indy answered.

“Well, you’re wrong,” Tex stated the obvious.

My mom walked in, Katie on her hip, her eyes going to Lee. “Sweetheart,
do you know where Luke or Ava are? Ralphie’s got Maisie and he says she needs
changing, but we can’t find either of them or their diaper bag.”

Lee looked to his boots.

That meant that likely somewhere in Indy and Lee’s five bedroom house,
Luke was giving Ava the business.

I gave wide eyes to Jet. She gave them back to me.

Indy advised, “Talk to Sadie or Jules. They may have spares.”

“Right,” Mom muttered and moved out.

Shirleen walked in right after Mom disappeared.

“Got the call,” she lifted up her phone, her eyes happy and dancing,
“they’re close.”

Then she disappeared.

Indy handed a bowl of cashews to me and asked, “Can you put that on the
table?”

“Sure thing,” I muttered as Indy started dashing around the kitchen.

I moved to the door and heard as I walked through it, “Liam
Nightingale! Get back here and grab those bowls of chips.”

Ha-ha.

Lee got it from Indy.

Yeah, so I was a thirty-eight year old pregnant woman with a husband
and a daughter.

I was still a Rock Chick.

And a little sister.

Some things never change.

That meant I was grinning as I entered the great room.

I put the cashews on the table covered in food and was immediately
attacked by my niece, Leah, three years old. Roxie and Hank’s first.

I bent, lifted her up, tossed her in the air and then pulled her close
to me.

“Hey, beautiful,” I whispered as her eyes, Hank’s eyes,
my
eyes, looked back at me.

“Heyannieally,” she replied, all in one word, and it sounded like a
song.

“You having fun?” I asked.

She nodded.

“You being nice to your brother and cousins?” I asked and her eyes
wandered.

This meant no.

Total Rock Chick in the making, even at three.

Roxie loved it. She thought it was a hoot.

Hank was screwed. And he knew it.

But he secretly loved it, too. I knew that.

Then again, he just adored his little girl.

May, a close friend we met during Jules’s Rock Chick Ride, sidled up to
me with Harry, Jules and Vance’s youngest at her hip.

“Are we allowed to eat yet?” she asked out of the side of her mouth.

“They’re almost here,” I answered out of the side of mine. “But if
you’re about to expire, a few cashews probably won’t be missed.”

She didn’t reply. She went for some cashews, took a handful, then
disappeared in the crowd.

I was going to go back to the kitchen to help Indy but Daisy, snuggling
a sleepy Tallulah, Stella and Mace’s first (and only, so far), caught me.

By the way, Stella and Mace did get married on a beach in Hawaii. As Tod
called it, she also wore a white crochet bikini, a sarong, a lei and a band of
flowers around her forehead (Mace wore jeans and a white shirt). She looked
awesome. Mace looked hot. The entire wedding was the bomb, even if, at the
reception, there was a helicopter circling.

Furthering the coolness of their nuptials, it was in
Us
magazine.

Ren and I, if you’re curious, had the Pope’s blessing (I hoped) because
I’d converted.

But I still got my red and black wedding. Tod did it up sah
-weet.
It was
awesome.

I also got a three week honeymoon that started in Vegas and ended in
the Bahamas.

Everything I ever wanted.

Especially the husband.

“You wanted to talk, sugar?” she asked, reaching for some cashews and
not bothering to do it stealthily.

“A little later, they’re almost here,” I told her.

She looked up at me. “Is everything good?”

I smiled at her. “Yeah, totally.”

She screwed up her face and studied me for two seconds before her eyes
went wide, her face got bright and she opened her mouth.

She figured it out.

I moved fast and covered her mouth with my hand. Not to be left out,
Leah leaned over and covered my hand on Daisy’s mouth. Tallulah, thinking it
was a game, did the same, but she did it slapping and giggling.

“Don’t say anything,” I whispered. “Indy doesn’t know.”

A drowned-out tinkly bell giggle escaped the three hands (two of them
tiny, but still) and Daisy, eyes now dancing, nodded.

I took away my hand, taking the girls’ with me.

“After the big thing, we’ll share Ren and my big thing, but quietly,” I
told her.

Daisy, through more tinkling giggles, nodded.

I tipped my head, studied her and guessed, “You can’t talk because if
you open your mouth, you’ll shriek. Right?”

She nodded again.

I shook my head, but did it grinning and bumping into her with my shoulder.

Tallulah put her hand over Daisy’s mouth again.

Daisy gave it a raspberry.

I spied a runaway toddler, followed by another one, both females. These
two were followed by a lumbering black man nearly bent double.

He caught up, scooped both up with arms at their bellies, and
straightened

Smithie with Suki in one arm, Lola, Sadie and Hector’s firstborn, in
the other.

The girls were giggling and squirming.

Smithie was scowling.

“Jesus. You bitches breed like rabbits,” he bitched then totally gave it
all away by bending in while lifting up Lola and shoving his face in her neck.

She squealed in glee as Smithie turned and strolled away.

“Smithie,” Jet murmured as she passed us, putting something on the food
table and finishing, “Total softie.”

That was the damned truth.

My eyes slid through the crowd and I saw Amalea now had Katie. This was
because Mom was chasing after Callum.

Jeez.

We did.

We bred like rabbits.

I kept looking through the throng and stopped when I saw Ren, Dom and
Sissy standing with Vito and Angela.

We’ll just say that after I was kidnapped and we nearly lost Darius, I
was right. Vito had had a wakeup call. His “excommunication” of Ren lasted
about eight hours. Then it was back to family.

I knew he wouldn’t be able to keep it up.

And I loved being right.

Especially this time.

This wasn’t to say that Ren went back to him. He’d made a commitment to
Marcus. He’d followed through with his resignation and we had our two weeks at
the beach where we did nothing but drink rum and fuck on the beach under the
stars (and elsewhere). When we came back, Ren went into partnership with
Marcus.

Dom went with him.

Vito decided to retire early, turning over the reins of the Zano
criminal empire to Santo and Lucky.

Word on the street, they were doing well which was both good news
(because I liked them) and bad news (because they were running a criminal
empire).

This meant Dawn lost her job (the first order of business for Santo and
Lucky was canning her; and luckily they let me watch, it was
awesome
). I’d done a check on her just
because I was nosy. I found out she was living in Alabama. Still single. Still
a receptionist.

But doing it far, far away.

Which worked for me.

It also meant Marcus and Ren took over the Zano Holdings offices.

So, when we could, my man and I carpooled.

“Their car’s coming up to the curb,” Stella’s throaty voice could be
heard calling from the front of the house.

Everyone moved that way.

Once in positions, we waited.

The door opened and Darius walked through, holding to his hip a gorgeous
little girl with cute little pompom pigtails sticking out at the top sides of
her head.

He was followed by Dorothea.

And Dorothea was followed by Malia.

Coming up the rear was Liam.

“Now!” Shirleen shouted and we all started doing what she’d been browbeating
us to practice for the last week.