Rule (22 page)

“What’s up Alex, long time no see. 
How’s the leg piece?  Did it heal up alright?”

He laughed a big hearty laugh. 
Alex was a lawyer or something, he was in his early forties and pretty
successful.  I knew he drove a sweet Jag and had an awesome loft somewhere down
in LoDo but he was cool as hell for a buttoned up kind of guy.  I had done a
couple big pieces on his leg and on his back and under his pressed shirt and
silk tie I knew he had two full sleeves, one Nash had done for him and one
Rowdy had done.  He paid big bucks and was an awesome tipper.  Considering this
was the last place on earth I would have planned on running into a client I was
stunned into momentary silence.  I felt Shaw drop her hand onto my thigh and I
covered it with my own.

“It healed perfect.  I was actually
thinking about swinging by in a few weeks and getting you to draw up something
for my chest.  So what are you doing out here?”

“I’m actually from Brookside but
I’m here particularly because my girl is stubborn and trying to prove a
point.”  I inclined my head at Shaw and she narrowed her eyes at me.  Alex
looked around me at Shaw and snorted out a laugh.

“You’re dating Eleanor Landon’s
daughter?  I bet that went over like coal on Christmas.”  I guess she hadn’t
changed her name when she left Shaw’s dad or maybe it was just a better name
for her political propaganda.

“Oh yeah she’s not a fan.”

“Well don’t worry about it she
isn’t a fan of much from what I hear.  Well it was good to see a familiar face
at one of these shindigs.  I hope she keeps you around, these people can use
the culture shock.  This stuff is normally so boring.”

We bumped fists and I turned back
to Shaw to ask her how much longer we had to stay but now everyone in the
entire room was staring at me like I had grown an extra face.

“What?”

She laughed and pressed her head
against my shoulder.  “Do you have any idea who that was?”

I poked a piece of orange in my
mouth and pressed her hand harder into my thigh.  “Alex.  I tattoo him,
actually we all do he’s a shop regular.”

She was laughing so hard there were
tears running down her face.  “That’s Alex Carsten.”

“I just said I know.”

“Rule, Alex is the State Attorney
General.  He’s the most influential legal person in all of Colorado.  My mother
helped get him elected.”

I ate another slice of orange and
noticed Shaw’s mom was looking at me totally different now.  “Weird.  He’s
tatted up like crazy, under that suit and tie is some serious artwork.”

“That’s just too funny.”

“Hey how much longer do we have to
stick around here?”

“Let’s finish eating and then I
need to pack my stuff up in my room.  You can come up and help me.”

“You think the queen of the castle
is going to let me in the ivory tower?”

She leaned in closer to me and
moved her hand up even higher on my thigh, it made me almost choke on the
orange I was chewing on.

“She might not want you in there,”
her green eyes twinkled up at me with merriment, “but I sure do.”

This stupid brunch couldn’t end
fast enough.  I popped another piece of orange in my mouth and tried counting
backward from a hundred to get my libido in check.  I thought brunch with my
folks was rough, I was starting to see why Shaw was so interested in pulling my
fractured family back together, even as messed up as we Archer’s were, these
rich people had us beat in crazy and nasty by spades.

Shaw

I was doing my best to get away
from my mother’s house but even though the plan had been to escape as soon as
we were done eating Alex had shown back up at the table and hijacked Rule.  He
claimed one of his coworkers was interested in some custom artwork for his man
cave and he thought Rule might be the perfect person to produce it for him, so
there I was again the odd man out at one of my mother’s awful events while my
tattooed, pierced boyfriend was making the rounds like some kind of celebrity. 
It was kind of funny and I was secretly thrilled it had to be getting under my
mother’s skin, but I wanted to go.  I wanted to get him alone and make up for
lost time.  It felt like things had shifted dramatically between us and I
needed time to put it in perspective, need time to figure out what it meant to
him exactly because to me he had defined the relationship by showing up here to
apologize and I needed to know he felt the same.

My mother was working the room and
Jack was tied up with the kids, Gabe was hanging out with the other future
business leaders of America shooting killer looks at Rule, and my guy was in
the middle of elegantly dressed men describing something with his hands that
had them all nodding eagerly and chattering away at him.  I saw my opportunity
to escape for a minute so I slid through the kitchen and made my way up to my
room.  I shoved all my stuff into the bag I brought and tossed my broken phone
on top.  I think I would hold Rule to buying me a new one since he was the
reason I had tossed it against the wall in the first place.  I was looking
around the bed for anything I might have forgotten when warm hands slid around
my waist.

I knew Rule’s touch and this wasn’t
it so I jerked upright and shoved hard against Gabe’s chest.

“What do you think you’re doing?” 
He grabbed my arm, hard, and tried to pull me towards him.  “Get out of my room
Gabe.”

“Well I figured it all out Shaw.” 
He kept pulling on my arm hard enough that I knew there was going to be a
bruise.  I was trying to push him away from me but he was exerting a lot more
force and he was stronger than me.  “You dumped me so you could have sex with
Archer, well by now you should have screwed him out of your system.  You never
gave me a shot to show you what I can do.  I think you need a fair comparison
before you totally shut me out.”

I felt my eyes spring wide as I
renewed my efforts to get free.  “You’ve got to be kidding me!  I didn’t sleep
with you because I’m not attracted to you.  I didn’t want to have sex with you
then and I don’t want to have sex with you now.  You need to go or Rule is
going to murder you.”

He pulled my wrist tight behind my
back so hard I yelped.  He lowered his face until it was right in mine and
grabbed my jaw with his other hand.  I was starting to actually panic, my room
was upstairs and on the other side of the big house, sure someone would hear me
scream if I yelled but I wasn’t sure how the fall out of that kind of scene
would be.  I struggled to be released and he just laughed.

“I’m not scared of the street thug
nor am I impressed by his artistic genius or whatever Carsten was going on
about.  He’s trash and not going to get in the way of what I want, and Shaw you
belong to me you should know that now.”  He gave me a hard shove back so that I
fell onto the bed I immediately scrambled across the other side so that the
entire mass was between us.  “You better get on board with this, Shaw before it
gets ugly.”

I was breathing hard and had a hand
to my throat.  It was shaking and so was I.  He threw my keys on the bed. 
“I’ll get my own ride back to Denver, wouldn’t want you to spend any more time
alone with tattoo boy than necessary would I?”

He strolled out of the room like he
hadn’t just assaulted or threatened me.  I shook myself out of the shock and
gathered my stuff and bolted down the stairs.  I found Rule wandering around
the kitchen looking lost and clearly searching for me.  I handed him my bags
and hustled him out of the house without bothering to say goodbye to anyone
even my mom and it wasn’t until we were on the highway headed home that I broke
down.  Out of the blue broken sobs wracked my whole body and I couldn’t stop
crying.  I was shaking so hard and making such a hysterical mess that Rule
freaked out and pulled over to the side of the road.  He kept asking me if it
was my head but I couldn’t answer so I just crawled into his lap and cried and
cried.

It took a solid twenty minutes for
the deluge to stop and by then Rule was frantic and threatening to take me to
the nearest emergency room.

“No.  It’s fine just give me a
minute.”  He was rubbing my back and his blue eyes were crystal like frost.  I
pressed my forehead against his and pushed up the sleeves of my coat.  Angry
red welts and ugly purple bruises were encircling my entire wrist.  “Gabe
ambushed me in my room when I was grabbing my stuff.  He shoved me around and threatened
me, he said I needed to get on board with this, whatever that means before it
gets ugly.  He really hurt me Rule and he scared me.  I don’t know what’s wrong
with him but it’s getting really bad.”

He went still as a statue
underneath me and he lifted one of his hands to grab my injured wrist.  He
turned his head to press a soft kiss against my pulse and breathed out in a
tone that sent chills up my spine, “I’m going to kill him.”

“I know.”  I let him sooth me for a
minute before climbing off him and settling back in the passenger seat.  “I have
to go back to Brookside and get my car tomorrow.”

“Don’t worry about it, I’ll take
Rome and we’ll go get it.”

“Don’t you have to work?”

“Not until one but I think I want
to call Mark and ask him about getting you a restraining order.”

“I can’t believe this is
happening.”

“I can’t believe you let us leave
without confronting him.  You should have raked his ass over the fire in front
of his parents and all those people he was trying so hard to impress.”

“I was freaking out, I just wanted
to escape.  I just wanted you.”  My voice trailed off in a whisper and he
reached over to haul me up next to his side.  Having bench seats in a big truck
was nice.

“You have me Shaw, any way you need
me, any way you want me, you have me.”

I pressed my face into the curve of
his neck and exhaled.  I think that was the nicest thing anyone had ever said
to me.  “How about you being the bell of the ball today?  I bet that made my
mother furious.  She looked like she was going to have a coronary.”

“I have a lot of clients that are
out there in the business world, more and more of the general population is
sporting some serious ink.  She shouldn’t be so judgmental.”

“No she shouldn’t.  I don’t want
you to get into trouble over Gabe.  I just want him to leave me alone.”

He gave me a one armed hug.  “Don’t
worry about me, Casper.  I promise not to do anything overtly stupid.  I just
want him to leave you alone as well and I will make sure that happens.  In the
meantime I don’t think you should leave work alone so have Lou walk you out and
if we can figure something out with our crazy schedules I want you to stay with
me or I’ll be with you.”

“You don’t have to do that, I don’t
want you to rearrange your whole life around because some guy is being an
asshole to me.”

“Yes I do and not because I have to
but because I want to.  He isn’t getting his hands on you again Shaw.  Not ever
again.”

It was a nice thought so I didn’t
want to argue instead I let him snuggle me into his side and absently ran my
hand up and down his leg while he drove.  I didn’t ask if he was taking me home
or to his place and  I honestly didn’t care until I remembered Rome was
crashing on his couch.

“Hey are we going downtown or to my
place?”

“I figured mine since I need to get
Rome to help me with your Beamer in the morning.  Is that okay?”

“Uh is it going to be weird walking
in together with him there?  I’ve had about enough drama for one day.”

I felt him shake his head.  “Naw we
talked about it today.  He knows we got something going on and its cool.  He
did say that he would break both of my legs if I kept acting like a jackass
though, so there is that.”

“Hmm…why did you do it?”  I knew he
would know what I was asking about without explaining.

“Because it’s what I do.”  He swore
under his breath.  “Girls have always been easy and they usually smell good and
taste good so for just a second things are simple and nice and all the crap
doing battle inside my head goes quiet.  I knew I didn’t want someone that
wasn’t you but I was pissed off and confused so I just did what I always do and
thought maybe it would make me feel better.  It didn’t, it made me feel like
absolute shit and made me see pretty clearly there is no substitute for you.  I
made a mistake but it could have been so much worse and I hope you can
sincerely forgive me.”

It made my heart hurt but I
understood it because I understood him.  “I don’t like it, but I get it.  It
just can’t be your excuse for stepping out on me every time we fight.  I don’t
have it in me to just look the other way every time you use another girl to
work out your hurt feelings.”

“I told you no more.  I’ll figure
this out Shaw I swear.”

“I hope so because we’re going to
disagree Rule, we argued before we started sleeping together so you know we’re
going to probably argue more now.”

His hand stroked up and down my
arm.  “That’s cool because I bet make up sex with you is going to be out of
this world.”

I didn’t deny it so I just stayed
quiet and let him sooth me while he drove, he even picked Straylight Run to
listen to instead of his normal blaring punk rock or heavy metal so by the time
we parked in front of the Victorian I was back in control.  He took my bag from
me and led me into the apartment.  Rome and Nash were on the couch yelling at
the TV, I assumed the Broncos were losing and they both looked up at me with
twin faces full of relief.

“Thank God.  Now maybe he’ll stop
acting like a cranky toddler that skipped nap time.”  Rule smacked Nash on the
back of the head as Rome got up and wrapped me in a bear hug.

“Glad you gave him another chance
little girl.”

When I was back on my feet I
grinned sheepishly at both of them and turned back to Rule.  “I need to call
Ayden and my phone is trashed, can I use yours?”  I expected him to spend a
minute erasing texts or clearing his search history but he just handed it
over.  I tried to hide how happy that made me so I bit my lip and motioned down
the hall.  “I’ll just go in your room so I can hear her over the game.”