“Okay,” he said.
Her eyes went up and down his length. “I could totally see her as a biker babe.”
Rush said nothing.
She leaned toward him, this time conspiratorially even though, as far as he knew, no one was anywhere near. “Can you imagine the wind in all her gah-lor-ee-us red hair?”
He could imagine something in that hair, but even as much as he’d like her on the back of his bike, he wanted to start with his fingers.
“Yeah,” he answered.
She smiled again. “I bet you can.” She recommenced walking. “I love her. Adore her. Not only is she an awesome tenant, she’s my yin.”
“Your what?”
She halted again and turned back to him. “Yin to my yang. I’m fairy dust. She’s curls of steel. Still delicate, and beautiful, but slivered from strength. Not magic. I’m air and water. She’s earth and fire. I’m a petal. She’s the root. I’m a sunbeam. She’s a moonbeam. Opposites attract, my boy.” She wagged a bony finger complete with one side of a cymbal up at him. “Remember that.”
She started walking again, and fortunately not too much farther they hit a low, white picket fence that wouldn’t contain a three-year-old, was wound with some green-leafed vine and randomly every few slats, at the top, a rainbow-colored peace sign was painted on it.
Beyond that, more of the stone path that led to another house, this one much smaller, surrounded by greenery. It was painted turquoise and had boxes filled with trailing plants and flowers in each window.
“Here she is!” she cried.
She skipped through a low gate that was hanging drunkenly open and useless and not only because it was overwhelmed by vines, to the front door Rush would swear he saw in a Peter Jackson movie.
It was then he saw the cats roaming around.
A gray one slinking over a window box.
A black one snoozing in the lap of a large meditating gnome.
A black and white one sitting, tail twitching, in the shadow by the door.
“She’s not a cat lady, I am. I have twelve. They know I’m their minion. So they gravitate to Rebel because they scent her as their queen,” the woman declared before knocking on the door and shouting, “Rebel girl! Open up. And I hope you have condoms!”
Jesus Christ.
The door opened and Rebel stood there looking like she belonged there wearing a colorful silk scarf wrapped around the top of her head, the rest of her spectacular hair flowing out under it, a big misshapen tee in a dark pink that fell to her hips, made sexy because it was falling off one shoulder, and a tight, faded jean skirt, its ragged hem hitting her at her upper thighs.
Bare feet with toes painted one color.
Red.
Great legs.
Tanned.
Long.
No surprise.
All gorgeous.
“If you don’t have prophylactics, darling, I have plenty,” the woman announced.
Rebel tore her pretty blue eyes off Rush and looked to her landlady.
“Jesus, Essence, did you trip him out with all your hippie shit?”
“Of course I did, dear. Trial by fire,” the woman replied.
“Please tell me you didn’t share your Woodstock orgy story,” she begged.
“First thing I shared,” the woman, apparently called Essence, bragged.
Rebel pointed a finger, in what Rush suspected but couldn’t be certain after the winding route they took was toward the Pepto Bismol house, the sight of which had long since been lost to the jungle. “Go find Major Nelson.”
Essence threw her head back and roared with laughter.
While she did, Rebel smiled at her.
And the earth stood still.
He didn’t know her. He’d seen her twice, been in her actual presence once, and flipped through a number of pictures of her.
He had no idea the weight she carried on her face.
Not until then.
Not until it lightened and grew incredibly more beautiful with humor and the clear and unhidden affection she had for this crazy old lady.
Oh yeah.
If his first meet with this firebrand hadn’t clenched it (and it had), that did.
He was definitely fucking her, more than once.
If she was even a decent lay and she ever smiled at him like that, he was keeping Rebel Stapleton for a long time.
Essence stopped laughing and started to move toward where he’d stopped midway up Rebel’s walk.
“I’ll let you two young ’uns commune.” She halted at him, looked up, and he braced because hippie dippie was gone. She might be made of petals and fairy dust, but the woman had her brand of steel. “You hurt her, I know some Hell’s Angels and they’ll tear you apart,” she warned low, rearranged her face, threw a smile over her shoulder at Rebel and called, “Peace out,” before she skipped to the gate, through the opening, and was swallowed by the city wilderness.
“Could you find your way out of here?” Rebel asked, and he twisted back to her. “Or if I shut the door in your face, will you be lost in Essence’s fairy garden forever and become a biker gnome?”
He moved the rest of the way up the walk, saying, “I don’t wanna find out.”
She didn’t get out of the door, so he had to stop at it, feeling vines drifting in his hair.
Jesus.
“Is this surprise visit going to annoy me?” she asked.
“Probably,” he answered.
She started to shake her head. “Rush—”
“Baby, unless you got an oven in there you cook kids in, let me in so we can talk without me strong armin’ your shit to get you to do what I want you to do.”
That was when it happened.
She smiled at him and it didn’t have the affection she gave the crazy old lady.
But it had humor.
He felt it in his chest and his dick.
So it definitely worked.
Enough he put his hand in her belly and pushed in.
She let him, turning to the side so he could get all the way in.
Sadly, this meant his hand had to drop and was no longer connected to her warmth.
He’d deal.
For now.
She shut the door.
He looked around.
He did it remembering Hawk’s words.
Bohemian wasteland.
He wondered if Hawk, or whoever did his recon for him, had actually been inside or if this assessment had been made just from Essence’s pad and her run-amuck garden.
He was guessing from what he was seeing that was a yes, they’d been inside.
“Please tell me this place came furnished,” he begged.
“I’ve lived here six years. This is all mine,” she replied, on the move. “Want tea?”
Tea?
He followed her, trying not to slam his head into the low lintels.
The big house was probably built in the 1800s.
This place seemed like it was built in the 1500s.
“You do meditate, don’t you?”
“Yup,” she said, putting a butter-yellow kettle on the gas burner of a stove that had to have been crafted in 1932, and if he didn’t see her light it and hear the clicking of the flint to catch the gas, he might have thought it was wood burning.
He stood in the small kitchen with its cupboards painted in flamingo pink and sky blue with a few red drawers thrown in, had cobalt-blue tile on the walls, and a double window over the farm sink that was opened wide and filled with vases of all sizes containing cut wildflowers.
This was not a woman who directed porn films.
Doing that was probably slowly killing her.
Another reason to get her ass out.
“Essence told me you weren’t a hippie,” he said.
“I’m not,” she replied, pulling down mismatched coffee mugs. “I’m one with my Chi.”
He stared at her.
She stared back a beat before she busted out laughing, arms wrapped around her middle, doubled over, the whole bit.
Her head came up, even if her body didn’t, and she was still laughing.
He took in her face.
And oh yeah.
Fuck to the yeah.
He was keeping her for a long fucking time.
“Your face,” she spluttered.
He leaned his hip against a cabinet and crossed his arms, feeling his lips twitching.
She straightened, pulled her shit together, and admitted, “I’m not sure what Chi is. I still meditate. It’s relaxing and it clears the garbage out of your head.”
“Right.”
“You should try it,” she suggested.
“Not gonna happen.”
Her eyes twinkled and she shifted to another cupboard to grab some tea.
“Babe, I don’t drink tea,” he told her.
She held up a baggie of what looked like herb, the kind you smoked, except more colorful. “This is more caffeinated than Starbucks.”
“Rebel, baby,” he said low, “I do not drink tea.”
She took him in with a look on her face he liked, tipped her head to the side, causing her hair to glide over her bare shoulder and down her arm, something else he liked and felt in his dick, and she asked, “Coffee?”
“Sure.”
Her lips turned up and she turned back to the cupboard and came down with an aqua-colored ceramic French press.
He watched her move to a fridge that looked old fashioned, was the color of a tangerine, but he knew it wasn’t vintage to the house because it was shiny-new, very orange and had letters that spelled SMEG on it.