“You should know pretty much everyone is pissed at Vance for leaving you,” Indy said after I finished my bid for a drunken stupor.
“He didn’t leave me. I broke up with him,” I reminded her.
“They don’t look at it that way. They figure if he wanted you, he could have, you know, talked you out of it,” Indy went on.
I was thinking, deep down inside where I didn’t want to go, they were right. Any thinking about Vance made my heart hurt so I pushed it aside.
“It’s better this way,” I told them al .
They just stared at me and I knew they didn’t believe me.
Whatever.
Time to talk about something else.
I turned to Tod. “I like tangerine and chocolate for wedding colors,” I lied.
Tod’s eyes got wide and happy.
“Oh shit,” Al y muttered.
“Do not even go there,” Roxie warned, eyes narrowing on Tod.
The discussion soon got heated.
I was off the hook.
*
I went to training with Luke and nearly at the end of our hour’s session I dropped him to his back with me on top. “Yee ha!” I shouted in his face, sitting astride him, chest pressed to his.
“What do you do now?” Luke asked, hands at my hips, mini-half-grin on his lips.
“I don’t know,” I sat up, “maybe this?” Then I swung my arms out in front of me in a continuous loop and chanted, “Go Jules, go Jules, go Jules.”
The door opened, my head swung to it in an oh-my-God-not-Vance panic and I saw Mace walking in wearing a white tee with some surfer design on the front and black track pants with white stripes up the side. He looked at us on the floor, face blank like every day he walked into the down room and saw a woman astride Luke.
Maybe he did.
Then I was flipped onto my back and Luke was on top.
“Hey!” I snapped. “I was celebrating.”
“Probably
you
should
celebrate
after
you’ve
incapacitated your target,” he told me.
“I was thinking you might want to have a family one day,” I returned.
He laughed in my face. I frowned in his.
“Babe, you weren’t even close. Though, you wanna be, I’d give it a shot.”
“Stop flirting with me,” I snapped.
“Stop bein’ so cute,” he shot back.
The treadmil came on and both of us looked to it and saw Mace jogging. It was then I realized I was lying on the floor with Luke on top of me having a conversation.
Damn.
“Don’t mind me,” Mace said, face no longer blank. I didn’t know him very wel and he normal y looked like he was in a bad mood (Mace was Mr. Seriously Broody Hot Guy Badass) but now he looked like he was going to laugh.
“You have a big mouth,” I told him, turning my snit on him.
He jacked up the speed on the treadmil and the jog went to a run. He was completely unaffected by my snit.
“Too good not to share,” was al he said, knowing exactly what I was talking about.
“You’re on my list,” I said to Mace and then looked at Luke, “you too.”
“What list?” Luke asked.
“My Annoying Men I’m Going to Kil List.”
Luke rol ed to his side and came up on an elbow. He was flat out smiling now.
“Why me?” he asked.
“Just because,” I retorted and got to my feet.
I looked at Mace. “If you told Dawn, I’m going to torture you before I kil you.”
“Dawn doesn’t know,” Mace said, amused look gone.
“Dawn’s not gonna know,” Luke said, on his feet too.
Wel that was something.
Luke threw his arm around my shoulders. “Let’s get a beer,” he said and he walked me out of the room.
I didn’t argue mainly because I could use a beer.
*
We went to Lincoln’s Road House for beer and dinner (it would seem Luke had been right, I was hungry). Lincoln’s was a biker bar on a slip road facing I-25. It had great food, a broken-in feel, hot guys, women wearing chaps and slick bikes of every make, model and color lined up on the side road that flanked the bar.
They had a band so we watched it for awhile.
Then we got in a big fight about who was going to pay because I figured if he paid, it’d be a date and Luke figured he was a man with a significant overabundance of testosterone so he was going to pay no matter what (this wasn’t exactly his argument, more my take on the underlying message).
People started staring.
I shut up.
Luke paid.
Then we went on patrol.
*
This time at my door after patrol, keys held firmly and at the ready, I shouldered up to the door and let myself in. Before I could claim the doorway and keep him out, Luke shoved me in with a hand at the smal of my back, closed the door behind us and unarmed the alarm.
Then he walked through my living room.
“I’m tired, Luke,” I told his back.
He disappeared into the dark hal .
I sighed, turned on a lamp, shrugged off my blazer, threw it on the chaise and fol owed him into the kitchen.
The light was on and Boo was tel ing on me because I’d run out of kitty treats and hadn’t been to the grocery store.