He glanced at her.
Still looking out the side window.
“You sure?” he pushed.
“Sure, I’m sure.”
No humor. No inflection. Not even any impatience.
Dull and flat.
The first time he’d met her, she’d run hot. Understandable. He and his brothers had hijacked her car with her in it and taken her to a dirty, one-room cabin in the mountains.
Still, she’d been funny, brave, open and disarming, the last in a good way.
The second time he’d been with her, she was again funny but also sweet and talkative and engaging.
Blindsided by that fucking great dress, it was only now he was realizing how remote she was being.
Rush was not super hip on moody women. He was less hip on having to drag whatever shit out of them that was making them moody. And he was completely not hip on women with multiple personalities, where you never knew what you were going to get to the point you ended up walking on eggshells, wondering when one you didn’t like was going to come out.
Maybe she was nervous about what the bag she’d packed meant.
She gave no indication she wasn’t up for it, and that was not only the fact she’d actually packed the bag.
But he wasn’t exactly taking this slow.
He wasn’t called Rush just because he’d never been known to waste time getting what he wanted.
His dad gave him that nickname seeing as, since he was a kid, if he wanted something, he went for it, didn’t waste time . . .
And took no prisoners.
But she didn’t know that.
Not yet.
And if it was worth taking time, and putting in the work, he’d learned to do that too.
He reached out and grabbed her hand, squeezing it with his.
“You know, nothin’ is gonna happen tonight you don’t want to happen,” he assured.
Her fingers lay limply in his hold. “I know.”
He gave her another squeeze.
And got nothing back.
He let her go and she didn’t hesitate to put her hand back in her lap.
Shit.
He decided to let her start any conversation she might want.
His silence was reciprocated all the way to his place.
Not good.
He took the alley, pulled into his parking spots at the back of his place next to his bike, cut the ignition and climbed out.
He grabbed her bag and met her at the hood of his truck.
She was looking up at his pad.
It wasn’t much. A narrow two-story Victorian wedged tight between two other narrow two-story Victorians just a couple blocks off Colfax in Capitol Hill.
It was a hip neighborhood like a lot of hip neighborhoods in Denver were.
Partially rundown. The odd showplace with a great yard and a paint job that had five colors, which probably meant some gay dudes lived there. Established trees and shrubs that made it shady and nice in the summer, gave it character in the winter.
He’d picked it because it was in walking distance to some great hole-in-the-wall restaurants, coffee shops, book and record stores. It had been a score at the bitter end of the recession they’d come out of, before real estate hit the stratosphere after Colorado legalized pot. And there was just enough that needed to be done on it, he could make it his own, but it wasn’t going to be a money pit.
It was also big enough to put his old lady in, when he found her, and start a family.
His goal was to eventually get a place in the mountains like Tack and Tyra had. A lot bigger. Surrounded by nothing but nature. Quiet. Private. Something his woman would love where they’d finish making and raising their kids.
But he’d keep this place because he’d be in town a lot, and she’d probably want somewhere she could crash when she went shopping or hung with her girls and shit.
In his time there, he’d refinished the floors, reskimmed and painted the walls, stripped and re-varnished the fireplace mantels, and put in a new master bath.
Except for the walls and floors, the kitchen—the room at the back he led Rebel into—hadn’t been touched.
She barely glanced around and didn’t hide she had no interest after she walked in.
He narrowed his eyes on her. “You sure you’re good?”
“Yeah,” she said distractedly, staring at the back door he’d closed like she wanted to use it.
“Rebel,” he called.
Her eyes drifted to him.
“You don’t seem yourself.”
“I’m fine, Rush. Maybe a little hungry.”
“I’m makin’ hamburgers.”
“Great,” she said like she didn’t give a shit they ate hamburgers or cow patties.
Right, he’d asked her if she was good more than once.
She wasn’t, but she wasn’t giving him dick.
He wasn’t going to ask again.
But he was no longer fired up about the night and if the woman didn’t snap out of it, he’d feed her and take her home.
“I didn’t get a chance to do much but shop,” he muttered, dropping her bag by the opening to the dining room. “Store bought potato salad and chips with the burgers. And I got beer. You drink beer?” he asked as he moved to the kitchen.
“Yeah,” she answered.
He’d opened the fridge and turned to her, seeing her standing there looking infinitely fuckable with that sweater drooping off her shoulder over that dress. But the expression on her face was vacant, like she was posing for a photo to hawk the outfit in a magazine.
“You actually want a beer?” he pushed.
Her gaze slid to him. “Sure.”
If she said “sure” again, he might take her to McDonald’s, that before he took her ass home.
He got her beer, opened it, handed it to her, got out the beef, tossed it on the counter, and shrugged off his cut, beginning to get pissed.
He liked her.
A lot.
Too much when he was realizing he didn’t know the woman except for a couple of meetings and what he read in a file.
And too much when he was realizing just how pissed he was getting because he read into the promise of her something that might not be there, and he was right then feeling how bad it would suck if he found it was not.
He went to his dining room, threw his cut around the back of a chair and came back into the kitchen to see her standing in front of the framed concert poster on the wall.
Rush went to the beef. “You like the Gypsies?”
“Pong’s a riot,” she murmured.
At least that was something.
He shot a glance to the poster. The local-band-made-huge, the Blue Moon Gypsies, was on it, all posing in rock poses, cool as shit, but the drummer, Pong, was on his knees at the front holding his drumsticks in a V under his jaw, sticking out his tongue and widening his eyes in a crazy Ozzy expression that almost beat Ozzy.
“Let’s get the talk I had with Dad out of the way,” he suggested.
She floated to stand opposite him at the jutting countertop that faced the double opening to the dining room. Her side had stools.
She didn’t take a stool.
She set her hands, one wrapped around what looked like an unsipped beer, to the counter and looked to the side, apparently vaguely fascinated by the row of unopened potato chip bags he had stacked up against the wall.
“If you’re hungry, sweetheart, make yourself at home. Open up and dive in,” he said quietly.
She lifted her beer to her lips and swung her eyeballs around in a way it was clear she was avoiding looking at him, standing right in front of her, tearing open a package of hamburger meat.
What the fuck?
Whatever.
He was not fucking asking again.
“Right, you in the middle of one of the movies?” he asked when she’d dropped the beer.
“Always,” she answered.
“Okay. Give notice. Tomorrow.”
That made her look at him. “What?”
“Dad reckons Valenzuela considers this a professional relationship,” he explained. “The legal kind. And we can hope that’s true. So, give notice. Say you’ll finish the film you’re doing now, but once that’s done, you’re out. You realized porn isn’t for you and you got an offer of a job you couldn’t turn down.”
She turned her head to stare at the potato chip bags again.
“You got a contract that says you can’t do that?” he asked.
“I have a contract that states what my credits will be on the films I make, and I don’t use my real name, so it doesn’t matter anyway. I didn’t want royalties for obvious reasons. Valenzuela was suspicious of that, but considering it’s porn, he let it go. I’m employed by Luxe Films, Limited, I’m salaried, not hourly, I get paid a shit-ton of money I don’t use, and that’s it.”
“Okay, then give notice tomorrow. In writing.”
She reached out and touched the potato chip bag with the tip of her middle finger like she was carefully stroking the cheek of a sleeping infant.
Okay.
What in the fuck?
With fingers gunked to shit, he stopped forming a hamburger patty.
“Rebel—”
Her focus cut to him, and when it did he knew instantly she was back.
And just as instantly, he wasn’t sure that was a good thing.
He’d find he was wrong.
But first he was right.
“Don’t be mad,” she said fast. “Rush, please don’t be mad. But I’m not pulling out.”
She could ask.
But she wasn’t going to get that.
He wasn’t mad.
He was pissed.
“We decided this,” he growled.