She came out of it with a flowered tin of what he hoped was coffee.
“You do know, even not strong arming, this convo is going to go the same as the other one,” she told him, not catching his eye now, the words coming out like she didn’t want to say them, but she had to.
“Still gonna try,” he said softly.
“Right,” she whispered.
He gave her a minute before he went on.
“And you know why I’m here taking another shot at that, Rebel.”
She looked at him then.
She started to open her mouth, but he beat her to it.
“And don’t deny it.”
She shut her mouth.
“You felt it,” he declared.
She turned back to the tin and wrested off the top.
While she was scooping coffee into the French press, he repeated, “Rebel, admit it, you felt it.”
“Felt what?” she asked the coffee.
“The need to jump my bones.”
Her head jerked his way.
“You think a lot of yourself, stud,” she snapped.
But there was pink in her cheeks.
Totally wanted to jump his bones.
“You shot outta your car and got right in my face, pissed as shit I’d put myself in danger, hijacking you on Speer. Not pissed we hijacked you and not putting you in danger, me,” he pointed out.
“Fuck,” she muttered, going back to the coffee.
Yeah, she’d given it all away with the first words she’d spoken to him.
“And what woman gets hijacked and lectures the man who hijacked her about precisely how to hijack, seein’ as she was not goin’ Thelma and Louise on his ass because it might hurt him and his brothers?”
She carefully put the top of the tin back on and said nothing.
“You knew you weren’t in danger from the start,” he continued. “You were worried about me. No woman worries about a man she just met, he hijacked her or not, if she doesn’t want to fuck him.”
“It was a stupid, strong man, biker stunt, Rush, when as you can see,” she said as she moved back to the fridge, “Essence would have led you right to my door and offered condoms.”
“I couldn’t know that.”
She opened the fridge door but looked around it to him. “So you forced me to go to Jason’s Lodge? I mean, it was at least thirty miles away. How could you be sure I had enough gas?”
He controlled his smile at her “Jason’s Lodge” mention just like he had to do when he’d heard it before and shared, “We watched you fill your tank on the way home.”
She made an annoyed noise in her throat and disappeared behind the fridge door.
She reappeared and moved back to her spot at the counter, saying, “And so you were totally okay with the possibility of scaring the shit out of me?”
“Honey, I know you come from a family of bikers and you went undercover as the executive producer, exclusive director and cinematographer of a new line of porn that might be classy porn, but it’s still porn. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I figured you were made of tougher stuff.”
She made a “huh” noise that was really fucking cute.
To stay on target, he had to ignore the really fucking cute.
“We connected in that cabin, babe,” he reminded her.
She scooped tea in a narrow, cylindrical silver thing that had holes in it.
What she didn’t do was speak.
“Rebel, you know we connected at the cabin,” he said low.
“Okay, so maybe I felt a spark.”
A spark.
Twice he thought she’d rush him.
Or maybe it was three times.
That made him smile.
He doused it before he declared, “We’re exploring that spark.”
She turned her head his way again. “Not if you think you can tell me what to do.”
“Right, sweetheart, exploring that spark means talking, getting to know each other, and fucking. You think I’m gonna take a woman to bed and then let her get out of it to go to work on a porn set?”
She turned fully his way, “Do you think I’m going to go to bed with a guy who thinks he can let me do anything?”
He added to his statement. “A porn set owned by a stone-cold criminal who will rape, torture and eventually kill her if he finds out what she’s up to?”
“Rush—”
“Rebel, put Molly where you are.”
She clapped her mouth shut.
“You’ve been investigated, I think you get that,” he told her.
She opened her mouth at that.
“Yeah, I talked with Hank and neither him nor Eddie or Jimmy gave you all of that, so we’ll also need to be talking about where you got it.”
“A man called Hawk gave it to me. I’ll explain him to you later. But first, I know who Molly is to you. I know what she means to you. I know she means more because your brother is head over heels in love with her and is going to spend the rest of his life with her. So she’s family. And I know if Molly lost someone she loved and went all in to find the killer in the way you are, you’d pull her shit out without taking a second to think about it.”
The kettle began to whistle so Rebel moved to it to turn it off.
Advantageously, it brought her closer to him.
So Rush reached out, caught her wrist, and pulled her even closer.
She didn’t fight it until she decided she was close enough, dug in, and he stopped pulling.
But he didn’t let her wrist go.
He held it and stroked the inside with his thumb as he said, “I know a lot about you, but you don’t know dick about me, and that isn’t fair. So let’s level that playing field, yeah?”
“Yeah,” she tried to snap but it came out breathy.
She liked his touch.
Good to know.
He fought back the smile that caused too.
“I told you about my mom,” he reminded her. “How she was a bitch to my dad. Well, he’s remarried.”
“Okay,” she said when he said nothing more.
“Her name is Tyra. She’s beautiful. She treats him like gold. Busts his chops but he loves it, and honest to Christ, never seen a woman love a man like she loves my dad.”
“That’s cool,” she said softly, relaxing into his words, his touch.
Rush liked that too.
“Yeah,” he agreed. “Loved it that she gave him that after the shit he had to eat with my mom. Fell in love with her, she gave him that and just because she’s a lovable woman. She was good to my sis, treated her right after years of havin’ a mom who did her wrong. She made our family whole. Gave me two baby brothers. And Dad loves kids. She made him happy, just her, but she gave him even more happy, givin’ him Rider and Cutter.”
“Good,” she murmured, staring into his eyes.
“And some shit her friend was messed up in caught her up in it. She was kidnapped, tied to a chair and stabbed repeatedly. Almost bled out. It was a miracle she survived.”
Her body strung tight, her hand twisted in his grip, but he kept hold.
“I had to endure that,” he told her. “I had to watch Tabby wait hours for news of a woman who, after taking emotional abuse from our mom her whole life, treated her with love and kindness and even toughness and strength when Tab was doin’ stupid shit, but that was filled with love and kindness too. But worst of all that, I had to watch my father wait for word, it not lookin’ good, seein’ a man who never admitted defeat stand in defeat thinkin’ he’d lost the only woman in over forty years that he ever really loved.”
“Shit, Rush,” she whispered.
“It sucked,” he told her.
“She’s okay?” she asked.
“Totally okay,” he answered, but he didn’t let up on her. “Don’t put Diesel through that. Not Diesel or Maddox or Molly, those last two who love you like blood.”
She pulled at her wrist.
He let it go.
She moved to the kettle and took it to her place at the counter.
“Baby, I barely know you, but I know I like you,” he shared. “So don’t put me through that.”
She poured water into the French press, steam rising up into her face.
“Rebel, are you hearing me?” he called.
She poured water onto the steel thing in her tea cup.
“Rebel?”
She put the kettle back on the stove then took up the handle of the steel thing and made circles in the cup.
He was about to call her again, or go to her and get her attention another way, when she spoke.
“It’s too late. I’m in too deep.”
Thank Christ.
She’d been thinking about it.
“Just walk away.”
She turned her head to face him. “You don’t just walk away from Benito Valenzuela.”
Damn, but she had that right.
“Then we’ll strategize your out.”
“I’m close.”
“Close as in, this thing will break at eight o’clock tomorrow morning?” he asked.
“No,” she said shortly.
“Then not close enough.”
“I need him to admit it, on tape, and Harrietta is gonna get that for me.”
Now he was getting somewhere because this was shit he had to know, how deep she was in, so he could dig her out.
He crossed his arms on his chest and demanded, “Explain.”
She turned her body to face him and leaned a hip to the counter. “She was seeing two guys. Diane was. One was Arthur Lannigan. This Chew guy. One was another dickhead who came up in the system with prints and DNA all over her pad. His name is Wayne Benson.”
Rush felt a shiver trace down his spine.
He knew a Wayne Benson.
But he knew him by the name of Digger.
He had to be older than Rush’s dad.