Worse than that, Linnie’d had the back of her head blown off and Buzz was out there somewhere without my hand to hold onto.
I looked down at my boots then I felt the tears come to my eyes.
“This is humiliating,” I whispered, blinking back the tears.
Immediately after I uttered the words, I felt Luke’s presence retreat just as Mace got deeper in my space. His hands came to either side of my neck and I sucked in breath at the feel of their warm strength.
God, I missed it when he touched me.
“Kitten,” he murmured and my eyes flew to his.
His eyes had grown soft. I hadn’t seen that look in a long time.
I missed that too.
“Don’t cal me that,” I whispered.
His eyes flashed yet again with something I couldn’t decipher and, stil in a voice that was deep, low and sweet, he said, “Stel a.”
“Take your hands off me.” I kept at it, ignoring the flash, ignoring the soft look, at a place in my life where I could deal knowing there was no Mace in it and not about to slide back. “Uncuff me and go away. Send in the girls, they’l help me get my jeans and boots off and clean me up.”
“I’m not leaving you,” Mace told me.
“Go,” I replied.
“No.”
I closed my eyes tight and sucked in a breath. Then straightened my back and opened them again.
In a strong, steady, no-nonsense voice, I stated, “Please.
Go.”
Mace stared at me a beat. It became two. Then it slid to three. Then his eyes flicked over my head.
“Uncuff her.”
Luke uncuffed me, the door opened and Daisy shot in.
“I cal ed the doctor. He lives around the corner and he’s on his way. I got the first aid kit and some cotton bal s and some alcohol and some hydrogen peroxide and some clean towels and a whole load of other stuff. I didn’t know what you’d need,” she announced, bustling into the room, her arms loaded so high you could barely see her head.
She peeked around the pile and smiled at me. “And I got you some of my track bottoms so you’l have something to wear.” She tossed the whole lot on the couch.
Mace and Luke went to the door.
“She wants you,” Luke told the congregation outside and they surged in, al the Rock Chicks with new arrivals Jules, Jet and Roxie, gay guys and my dog, forcing Mace and Luke to push through the crowd.
Mace kept walking and I watched his departing back.
Luke turned at the door, his eyes hit mine and his chin lifted. I felt the chin lift was an indication of respect. Respect that I didn’t freak out when I got shot or at al . Respect that I let them get on with what they had to do and maybe a bit of respect that I held my own, even though I didn’t win, with Mace. This made me feel funny, a funny I’d never felt in my life except when I was onstage.
Then Luke stepped out and closed the door behind him.
“Oh girlie, look at that. That’s nothing. Just a flesh wound,” Tod declared, head cocked, finger to his cheek, eyes staring at my hip.
“He left,” I whispered, my gaze stil on the door.
“What’s that, sugar?” Daisy was pushing me toward some towels that were now spread on the couch.
“Nothing,” I replied and let myself be pushed.
*
“You okay?” Indy asked. She and Al y were making up the pul out bed in the room where I’d endured the humiliation of Mace pul ing down my jeans. I was putting pil owcases on pil ows.
Under strict Lee edict, the Rock Chicks and Hot Bunch were staying the night at The Castle. Apparently they were at war with some guy named Sid and The Castle was out of the way, had a security system that included camera surveil ance outside and was “covered” by an army of men employed by Marcus, Daisy’s husband (Daisy and Marcus lived in The Castle, for your information). It had the added benefit of not having its windows shot out in a recent drive-by.
Daisy was in seventh heaven. She was treating this like a co-ed slumber party, not that her big mansion had become a scary-as-shit impromptu safe house. She issued orders to the dark-suited members of her husband’s army to go out and buy toothbrushes, contact lens supplies and food so she could serve a “Big Ole Stick to Your Ribs Southern Breakfast” (her words). She handed out nightgowns and toiletries and she assigned bedrooms.
She had a goodly number of rooms but Al y was forced to take a couch and, in deference to my injury, I got a pul out bed. I didn’t know where Mace was sleeping or if he was even staying there and didn’t care (wel , I cared, but I tried not to).
“Yeah, I’m fine,” I lied to Indy.
“You are so not fine,” Al y muttered.
“I’m fine, it hardly hurts at al ,” I told Al y.
I was talking about my hip. The doctor came and cleaned it, shot me up with something to numb it and then stitched it. After he was done, he dressed it, gave me some pain kil ers and took off again, maybe to do another clandestine stitch up somewhere in the early morning dark of Denver. The whole thing took less than an hour.
“I’m not talking about your leg,” Indy said.
I threw the pil ow at the head of the pul out and grabbed the other one.