Indy just shook her head. “Jane, one of my staff, Kitty Sue, who’s Lee’s Mom and Jet’s Mom, Nancy, are at the store explaining things to the customers. They’ll open in the afternoon when the crowds are smaller and they can handle them. Until then, well, Ava, you know that no one messes with a Rock Chick, not ever, but especially not –”
“Indy,” Lee said low, interrupting her. I could tell she had been working herself up to rant mode. At Lee’s voice, she pulled in her bottom lip, bit it and kept quiet but I knew it cost her.
“I’m fine,” I said again, not just to Indy but to the entire assemblage.
Everyone just kept staring.
Yikes.
“What I want to know,” Shirleen started when no one seemed to be prepared to move, “is why you all standin’ around like you don’t got shit to do? You got shit to do. Serious shit. It’s time to fuckin’ get crackin’.”
The staring stopped, folks started to move and I let my body relax.
“Give me five,” Luke said to Lee then took my hand and walked me to the door to the inner sanctum. He opened the door and guided me through and down the hall, directly to the kitchenette he’d taken me to (or, more accurately, carried me) that first time I was at the offices.
We went inside and he closed the door, turned to me and his hand came to my jaw.
“You okay?” he asked, I nodded and he went on. “I had no fuckin’ idea we would walk into that, babe, if I knew –”
I realized he was pissed at the same time I realized that he would have protected me from what just happened if he could have. And lastly, because of that, I realized Luke wasn’t just a Good Guy, he might be The Best Guy Ever.
For this reason, I moved into him and put my arms around his waist. “It’s cool Luke, they just care. It feels nice.”
That was a partial lie. It felt scary and slightly humiliating that all those people knew that Noah had his hand down my pants. Instead I was trying to focus on them rallying around me which did, indeed, feel nice. More to the point, I wanted Luke to focus on it because he didn’t look happy and an unhappy Luke could be a frightening thing.
Luke’s thumb stroked my jaw and I watched as his anger ebbed away. “All right beautiful, if you’re cool, I’m cool.”
I smiled at him.
Crisis averted.
Then he continued. “Before I meet with the boys, we gotta talk about somethin’.”
Uh-oh.
Crisis maybe not averted.
“Luke, I’m not sure I can handle talking about something.”
He bent down to kiss my nose and said softly, “I know, Ava Babe, I wouldn’t bring this up, not now, but it’s important.”
Crapity, crap, crap, crap.
“Okay,” I said but I didn’t mean it.
“Yesterday –” he started.
Nope.
I wasn’t going to talk about that. I’d already talked about it as much as I was going to talk about it. “I don’t want to talk about yesterday,” I interrupted.
His other arm moved around me and his hand at my jaw slid into my hair to cup the back of my head. He brought me close so my body was pressed against his.
“We gotta talk about it.”
“We’ll talk about it later.” As in much later, a thousand years from now preferably.
“Babe, I kept what happened with Jules and me –”
I went stiff. “Jules and you and Roxie and you,” I corrected him.
His face went hard before he muttered, “Those fuckin’ women.”
“Someone had to tell me,” I shot back.
“I wanted to tell you,” he replied.
“Yeah? When?” I was beginning to get heated.
“When the time was right. Only so much someone can take, you’d had enough.”
“You said you were through talking.”
“Yeah, for then, not for eternity.”
“You didn’t say that.”
“I didn’t say we were never talkin’ again either.”
This was true.
Shit!
His face got softer and I knew that he knew he had me.
Shit again!
“Luke –”
“I don’t want to fight about this,” he said.
I glared because I was perfectly happy fighting about it.
He ignored my glare. “The point is how you responded.”
“I didn’t respond.”
“Yeah, that’s the point. You shut down, shut me out and then you made plans to take off.”
“What?” I asked.
Surely he couldn’t know I was headed to St. Croix. No one knew, not even Sissy (until her card came in mail, of course).
He let me go, walked to a locker, opened it and pulled out some papers which, I noticed at a glance, were my tickets to St. Croix.
Ho-ly crap!
He knew I was headed to St. Croix.
“Where did you...?”
“I went to your house. Found these on the dining room table, new luggage and a bunch of shopping in your bedroom,” he replied before I could finish my question, threw the tickets back in the locker and shut the door.
Hell and damnation.
I was beginning to realize it was not such a good thing my boyfriend was a private investigator. Although I had left that stuff out for anyone to see, still.