The answering machine kicked in as I grabbed my keys and bag.
“Hey, Ava? It’s Ally, long time no see or hear, chickie. You’ve been, like, Ms. Invisible and loads of shit has gone down,” pause, then, “I heard you were at my brother’s offices this afternoon and had a situation with Luke. Sister, what was that all about? I didn’t even know you knew Luke. Call me, pronto. I want the dirt, Indy wants the dirt, we all want the dirt. We’ll do drinks. Hornet, tomorrow night, seven o’clock. See you there.”
Disconnect.
Shit.
Indy Savage and Ally Nightingale were Rock Chicks like Sissy and me. Those two were hilarious, crazier by far than Sissy and me or at least Sissy recently, for sure. We’d met at a concert years ago and went to dozens of them together. Sissy and I usually never missed one of Indy’s kickass parties, she had a lot of them and she always had bowls of cashews and everyone knew bowls of cashews meant kickass party. Sissy and I also used to hang out at the used bookstore on Broadway that Indy owned called Fortnum’s. I hadn’t been in ages, at least eight months, maybe longer, since before Indy hooked up with Lee Nightingale. Indy had had a crush on Lee since practically birth, Indy and Lee’s parents were best friends and she and Lee and Ally and Lee’s brother, Hank had grown up together. It was super-fucking-fly that they were finally together, it made you think the world wasn’t shit.
It wasn’t that I didn’t want to go to Fortnum’s or see Indy and Ally (Ally worked there on occasion). It was just that Noah had cleaned out my bank accounts. I’d felt the need to score a couple more accounts for my at-home graphic design business to make up for the money he stole so, unusually, I was busy.
See, with Aunt Ella’s money and a barely-there mortgage, I didn’t have to work that hard. I’d bought the house dirt cheap, mainly because it was a nightmare when I bought it, but I’d fixed it up, mostly myself, not the electricity or the plumbing, just refinished the floors, re-skimmed the walls, did the tile work, painted, shit like that. I had a couple of business clients that kept me relatively busy, out of trouble and in plentiful amounts of my sliver. However, when your rat-bastard ex-boyfriend steals over five thousand dollars from you, it pushes you to put your nose to the grindstone.
I decided to call Ally tomorrow, after I searched Dom’s house and figured out what I’d tell her about Luke.
I went to my Range Rover, backed it out, hit the button for the garage door to close and headed to Sissy and Dom’s. They had a very nice, popped-top bungalow in Washington Park. Sissy loved it and I liked it too. I hoped she got it in the divorce settlement.
I did a drive by, checking for lights and to see if Dom’s BMW was parked in their back drive off the alley. It wasn’t, so I parked around the corner, hoofed it up to the house, went around the side to the back and found Sissy’s fake rock by their outdoor Jacuzzi which held the key. I opened it with the combination she gave me, put the rock back where I found it, went to the door and let myself in.
I didn’t bother with gloves, my prints were likely all over the house anyway.
I also didn’t turn on the lights. I knew the house like the back of my hand. I’d partied in it, had Christmas dinner in it, had crashed there on many occasions (normally drunk) and even helped Sissy clean it a number of times.
I didn’t know what I was looking for, shirts with lipstick on the collar? Love letters?
I had the bad feeling that I was going to have to follow Dom with a camera and take pictures of him while he was doing the nasty with some bimbo. I didn’t relish that idea so I hoped Dom was a love-letter-keeping type of guy.
I went to the kitchen drawer where I knew Sissy kept her small Maglite and I decided to start in the bedroom.
I’d seen enough movies and television to do a decent search. I started at his nightstand and found an industrial-sized box of condoms he had to have bought at some warehouse retail store (I didn’t even know they made boxes of condoms that big). I made note of this, knowing that Sissy was on the pill therefore Dom didn’t need condoms. Sissy and I had both gone on the pill together, me for friendship’s sake at the time since I’d been a virgin. I lost my virginity at twenty-three to a sweet, goofy, geeky guy named George (it wasn’t awful, but it also wasn’t great, by the way) but I’d been on the pill for two years before that for no reason at all.
I shrugged off thoughts of my contraception history, checked the bottom and insides of the drawer, the back and bottom of the nightstand but nothing going.
I was moving to the closet, intent on my task when, suddenly, a steel-band-like arm wrapped around my waist, a hand went over my mouth and I was lifted clean off my feet.
Freaked out, legs pumping and screaming under the hand, I was carried out of the bedroom and into the living room like a weighed as much as a rag doll.
I planted a well-aimed, savage elbow to the side of who I suspected was Dom, someone who I not only didn’t want to catch me snooping. I also didn’t want to be alone with him, at all, ever.
I heard a grunt when my elbow connected and I was dropped. Heart pumping, mind flying from thought to thought, I caught only one and that one thought was go.
I started to run but was caught by the back of my shirt. It went way tight against my chest and I was yanked back, again off my feet. My shoulders slammed against something hard right before I was whirled around and the arm went around me tight, pulling me against a solid torso just as the hand went back over my mouth.
“Quiet,” Luke Stark clipped.
Ho-ly crap.
I went still and stared, though I couldn’t see much of anything. I’d dropped the Maglite somewhere in the bedroom.
What in the hell was he doing there?
“You gonna stay quiet?” Luke asked.
I nodded. His hand went away.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” I whispered, not knowing what to think, or feel, just shocked out of my mind.
Was he following me? And, if so, why?
“Could ask you the same thing,” he said to me, cutting into my thoughts.
“I’m visiting a friend,” I lied quickly.
His body tensed and I felt something fill the room, something crackling and dangerous. I couldn’t see it in the dark but I could feel it. I could feel it because his arm got tight and it hauled me even deeper into his body so we were pressed close, chest to crotch.
Fuckity, fuck, fuck, fuck.
“Stop lying to me Ava,” I could tell by his tone that he was not happy, so not happy that I had to admit I was a little scared of him.
“I’m not lying,” I lied.
“You’re tellin’ me that Dom Vincetti is a friend of yours?”
“No, Sissy Vincetti is.”
He knew Sissy, he’d met her way back in the day. This was likely why his arm relaxed enough for me to pull away and put a foot of space between us which was a far more comfortable position, believe you me.
“Sissy isn’t here,” Luke said to me.
“Well, I know that now,” I said, like I’d expected her to be there, in other words, I lied, again.
“You often go to your friend’s houses when they’re not home and search them in the dark?”
Eek!
Before I could think up another lie – because it wasn’t any of his business what I was doing there, I mean, it would have been his business, if he hadn’t carried me through his offices like a caveman that afternoon, but it wasn’t his business anymore – he reached forward and grabbed my hand, tugging me back into the bedroom.
“Luke, stop. What are you doing?”
He bent down, nabbed the still-lit Maglite from the floor and snapped it off. “We’re gettin’ out of here,” he said, pulling me out of the bedroom and back into the living room.
I planted my feet when he started to yank me across the room. He stopped and looked back at me.
“No. You’re getting out of here,” I flashed at him. “I’m, um… looking for the earring I left here the other night.”
Tha
t sounded like a good lie.
Luke obviously didn’t think it was a good lie. He gave my hand a sharp tug, I fell forward and, without a word, he started walking, dragging me behind him.
I yanked my hand out of his, stopped again and cried, “Luke!”
That’s when the room exploded.
One second, we were standing there, me glaring at him in the dark, him holding his body tense like he was just stopping himself from shaking some sense into me. The next minute there was so much noise and flying debris, every thought flew out of my head.
Luke moved quickly. He threw himself at me in a body tackle and we went down to the floor. He landed on top of me, body slamming into mine and immediately pulled himself up, wrapping his arms around my head and leaning his shoulder into the floor, my face pressed into his throat, his head tucked in, temple against the top of my forehead.
Glass, dust, plaster and bits of Sissy’s adored pottery collection flew everywhere as machine gunfire blasted through the huge living room window.
I lay under Luke, pretty certain I was going to die and wishing I’d made a will. Now, my sisters and mother were going to get all Aunt Ella’s money. I should have left it to Sissy and a cat shelter.
The noise finally stopped and, even though it felt like it had gone on forever, it was probably less than a minute. Luke didn’t move, just kept me tucked tight underneath him and it hit me that our position meant he was using himself as a shield to keep me safe.
Whoa.
Whoa, whoa, whoa.
Stop right there.
That was too much, it was all too much, time for me to bury all this somewhere deep and have a nervous breakdown later, when Sissy and I were on a beach enjoying Dom’s money.
“Luke,” I whispered and his head came up.
I was quiet because I could tell he was listening and not to me. Then his head tilted down and I could feel his eyes on me.
I lifted my hand up between our faces, index finger and thumb held an inch apart and I said, “Maybe I’m in a little bit of trouble.”
It was then he made a noise and it sounded an awful lot like a growl.
Chapter Three
That’s Who I’m Keeping Safe
“Luke?”
“Quiet.”
He knifed off me, yanked me to my feet and wasted no time pulling me through the room, through the kitchen and out the backdoor.
I didn’t resist.
I didn’t want to be anywhere near a room that exploded with gunfire. I was more than happy to be moving away from it, swiftly, hand in hand with a tough guy, mercenary, bounty hunter, private eye type person who clearly knew what the hell he was doing.
Luke jogged through the backyard then broke into a sprint down the alley, his hand in mine, dragging me behind him (and let me tell you, it wasn’t easy sprinting in flip-flops and I was going to have to rethink my footwear on my next nail-Dom-to-the-wall assignment). I saw lights go on in houses and heard police sirens but Luke just kept going.
It took me a moment, considering the fact that I was freaking out and perhaps fleeing for my life (on flip-flops no less), to realize that he was moving in the wrong direction.
I pulled at his hand. “My car’s the other way,” I whispered loudly to his back.
He kept going, dragging me with him.
“Luke!” I hissed, tugging hard.
He didn’t stop, just kept dragging me.
We shot out of the alley and stopped next to a shiny black Porsche and he bleeped the locks. He opened the passenger side door. I had to admit, even in my current state, I was a bit impressed that he drove a Porsche.
“Get in,” he ordered, snapping me out of my thoughts about his Porsche.
“What?” I asked, confused, freaked, winded from the flip-flop getaway and wanting maybe to take a second and do a cartwheel of joy that I was still alive and not full of holes.
“Get in the fucking car,” Luke clipped.
I guessed Luke wasn’t into cartwheels of joy.
“My car is… ” I started to tell him but I stopped talking when his hand went to the top of my head and he pressed me into the car. He did this so forcefully my body had no choice but to comply. My legs just buckled and my ass, of its own accord, aimed for the seat. He slammed the door the minute my feet cleared the frame.
He was in the driver’s side before I finished blinking away my surprise.
I turned on him. “I want you to take me to my car,” I told him. My purse was in my car and I needed my purse. My cell was in my purse and, just like anyone, I felt naked without my cell phone.
He started the Porsche (incidentally, it purred like a kitten).
Maybe not thinking clearly, I turned to the door, my hand on the handle, deciding I would run to my own car.
What happened next shocked the breath right out of me.
Luke grabbed my wrist, pulled me away from the door, leaned forward and yanked a set of handcuffs out of the glove compartment, not letting me go the whole time. He snapped a bracelet on my left wrist and the other on his right. As I was staring at our wrists bound together, he put the Porsche in gear, my arm moving with his, and we rocketed from the curb.
It took a few seconds but then I stammered, “You just… you just… handcuffed me to you!”
“That’s right,” he told me as he – or more to the point we – kept shifting.
“You just handcuffed me to you,” I repeated inanely.
He didn’t answer.
“Why did you handcuff me to you?” I asked.
He remained silent.
“Luke!”
“Quiet, Ava.”
It was then I lost it. I had an excuse. I had just had a near-death experience.
“You’re nuts! You’re crazy! You’re following me. You handcuffed me. We just got shot at. I can’t believe this shit. Take me to my goddamned car!”
He pulled over, the Porsche moved sleekly under his command but this was still sudden enough for me to snap my mouth shut. When he had the car idling, he turned to me, his left hand shot out, wrapping around my neck and pulling me toward him.
Our faces an inch apart, he said, “Quiet, Ava.”
“I will not be quiet,” I screamed in his face. “I’m freaked right the hell out. We were just shot at! I think we just ran away from a crime scene. And, I repeat, you just handcuffed me to you!”
“You got the choice to be quiet or I’ll shut you up.”
“Yeah? How are you gonna do that? Gag me?” I yelled.
“I had somethin’ else in mind.”
“Fuck quiet!” I shouted, ignoring his words, totally in Freak Out La-la Land. “I need tequila. I need my car. I need to call Sissy,” I was rambling and I knew it but I had been in a room that exploded.
“Quiet,” he repeated, his voice holding a low warning.
I also ignored the warning. “Seriously, take me to my goddamned car.”
“Why am I always repeating myself with you?” he asked, sounding slightly impatient.
“Maybe because I don’t snap to when you tell me to do something like all the other women in your life likely do,” I retorted, sounding bitchy as all hell.
It was at that, he jerked me forward with his hand at my neck, his head slanted and I kid you not, he kissed me.
For your information, those lips were hard when they kissed you.
Ho-ly crap!
I was stunned still as his mouth moved over mine. Then he let me go as quickly as he kissed me, turned back to the wheel and we moved into traffic.
I decided my best course of action at that moment was to stay silent. It was a good thing to do. It gave me the time to bury Luke’s hard, angry kiss right down deep next to him shielding me from gunfire with his body and us getting shot at.
I’d wanted Luke to kiss me like, for ages but not like that. I didn’t even know you could kiss someone like that.
My silence and our drive also gave me time mentally to rehearse my conversation with Sissy about this
incident: Um, Sissy, you know that pottery collection, “Day of the Dead” by Stephen Kilborn, you’ve been painstakingly collecting for years…?
We were in lower downtown when Luke’s right hand moved, taking my left one with it, pulling me out of my unhappy thoughts, to flip down his sun visor. The car slowed and he hit a button affixed to his visor then he flipped it back up, his (and my) hand moving to the stick as he downshifted.
“Where are we going?” I broke the silence.
He turned into an underground parking area and headed to an open spot of which, I noted, there were many.
“You’re staying at my place while I find out what the fuck is goin’ on.”
He parked, pulled up the brake and turned off the car while I processed this information, coming to the conclusion I did not want to be at Luke’s place while he found out what was going on. I didn’t want to be at Luke’s place at all.
Before I could protest (not that it would matter), he got out his side, which meant considering I was attached to him I had to scramble over the seat and follow him.
“Luke, I need to get my car, my purse is in my car,” I said while he closed the door behind me and bleeped the locks. I used a calmer, more rational voice, hoping to impress him with my cool attitude and get him to do what I wanted.
“One of the boys will bring it here,” he said, hitting the button to an elevator.
“What boys?”
“Lee’s boys.”
Oh. Well then. That was my car taken care of.
I carried on to the next important subject. “I should go home. I’m supposed to call Sissy.”
Rock Chick Revenge Page 4
