Rock Chick Revenge Page 14

  Luke took me to the gym. Sissy decided to go with so we all trudged out to the garage. Luke took the keys to my car out of my hands and declared he was going to drive. Standing outside of the garage, we had a fight about who was going to drive.

  Luke won.

  Then Luke drove us to the gym. Luke got out when we got there and I told him he didn’t need to walk us into the gym. Standing by my Range Rover, we got in a fight about whether he was going to walk us into the gym or not.

  Luke won.

  Then when we got into the gym, Luke asked to talk to Riley privately “outside”. Standing in the reception area of the gym, Luke and I got in a fight about him talking to Riley privately “outside”.

  Luke won.

  I waited until they returned, both stony-faced with the addition of Riley looking way, way pissed off and I opened my mouth to give it to Luke for being a he-man, tough guy jerk when he grabbed my purse. I stared, still with my mouth open, as he dug through my purse, took out my phone and started to hit buttons.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “Programming my numbers into your phone. Call me when you’re done.”

  I snatched my purse out of his hand, which he allowed. Then I went for the phone, which he didn’t allow and stopped me by pinning me to his frame with one of his arms and holding my struggling body while he beeped buttons with the phone held behind my back.

  He let me go and handed me my phone.

  “I hate you,” I snapped.

  “No you don’t,” he replied calmly, grabbed the back of my neck, yanked me into his body and kissed me, hard, open-mouthed and hot until my knees buckled and I melted into him.

  Then he let me go, gave me a half-grin, touched my nose and left.

  Jerk.

  I whirled around and Sissy was standing there. “Oh my God, you totally need to fuck him or you’re going to spontaneously combust,” she said.

  Argh!

  Needless to say, my workout nearly kicked my ass. I was so pumped up and Riley was so pissed off, I pushed myself hard and he ran me ragged. I tried to talk to Riley a couple of times but he wasn’t in a talkative mood. He was in a kick Ava’s ass mood therefore I quit trying to talk to him when I couldn’t talk at all because I was breathing too hard.

  After we were done, I called Luke, saying only, “We’re done,” then I hung up on him.

  Ha!

  We showered and changed into normal clothes and I took my sweet time in the locker room in order to make Luke wait. I did my hair, my makeup and put on a pair of jeans, a cornflower-blue blouse with a silver-thread design on the front, a square neckline and cap sleeves and finished my ensemble with silvery-blue flip-flops (because seriously, Luke was in the picture, I hated him and thought he was a jerk, but I had been crushing on him since I was eight, I wasn’t going to look like garbage when he was hanging around).

  I breezed through the reception area but Luke wasn’t in the reception area, he was waiting outside in the Range Rover which made my efforts at “breezing” moot.

  We got in the Range Rover and Sissy suggested happily, “I know, let’s get some coffee!”

  I turned in my seat and glared at her. She grinned at me. Luke took us to Fortnum’s.

  We got there and everyone was there. Indy, Ally, Daisy, Shirleen, Jules, Jet, Roxie, Vance, some guy who looked a lot like Hank (who I found out was Lee, Indy’s fiancé and Luke’s boss) and even Matt.

  Shirleen took one look at me and announced, “Nope. They haven’t done it yet. You’re out,” she said to Matt and then smiled at me. “I’m still in. I got my money down that you get the business on Monday.”

  I felt the heat hit my face just as my stomach dropped.

  Sissy, to my total disbelief, burst out laughing and asked, “Which days are free? I want in.”

  Oh… my… God.

  “That’s it!” I yelled at her. “You aren’t my best friend anymore. I’m filing for best friend divorce.”

  Sissy just kept laughing.

  “You must be Sissy. Come here, child, sit by Shirleen. I think we got Wednesday open but that’s nearly a whole week after this all started. It ain’t good odds,” Shirleen informed her.

  Everyone was staring at us and I whirled on Luke who was standing behind me. “This is all your fault.”

  “Babe,” he said, his eyes warm, his tone gentle and affectionate.

  Fuckity, fuck, fuck, fuck.

  I like it when he calls us “babe”. It’s sweet, Good Ava said.

  It isn’t sweet, it’s HOT, Bad Ava contradicted.

  I dropped my head and looked at my toes. They were painted hot pink. I inspected them because if I was thinking about my toenail color I wouldn’t think about how my life had gone out of my control.

  This wasn’t a smart thing to do, letting my guard down when Luke was close. His boots came into my vision very close to my toes and his hand wrapped around the back of my neck. His fingers started to knead my muscles and I lifted my eyes to his.

  “You’re tight,” he said low, eyes no longer just warm but ultra warm.

  “Are you surprised?” I snapped. “My life is total shit. I’m completely stressed out.”

  His fingers kept kneading but he also put a different kind of pressure there so that I leaned closer to him. I had to tilt my head back further and, so I didn’t topple over, my hands went to his stomach (which, by the way, was hard as a rock).

  He tipped his face to mine and murmured, “After we talk tonight, I’ll give you a rubdown.”

  Ho-ly crap.

  A rubdown from Lucas Stark. I had barely processed the kiss-and-carry through the living room, I couldn’t even begin to contemplate a rubdown. I felt my nipples tingle.

  “I need cookies,” I told him to move talk away from rubdowns. “Cookies are the only thing that works on stress.”

  That and tequila but I wasn’t going to get snockered anywhere near Luke. I lost all inhibitions when I got snockered and that would not be good.

  The warmth in his eyes was tinged with amusement. “I’ll also get you cookies.”

  “Nutter Butters and Chips Ahoy, not the soft ones, the hard ones,” I ordered, blathering on for some ungodly reason. “And those Pepperidge Farms Milano thingies. And Oreos with double stuff but not dipped in chocolate, because that’s too much of a good thing. And if I have Oreos, I have to have milk. I can’t eat Oreos without milk.”

  He was laughing now, softly. I liked the sound and I liked that I could make him laugh. I’d always liked it when I made him laugh.

  Boy, was I screwed.

  “Anything else?” he asked.

  “I think that’ll do it.”

  His eyes moved from me to across the room then back to me. “Vance and I got shit to do. Stay here. If you go home or anywhere, go with Lee, Matt, Duke or Tex.”

  I knew Duke. He’d worked at Fortnum’s for years and was like Indy’s second father. He was an old Harley guy, long gray braid, gray beard, always wearing a black leather vest and a red bandana wrapped around his forehead. I didn’t know any Tex.

  “Tex?”

  “Coffee guy,” Luke told me. “You might have one of his coffees, it may soothe the cookie craving.”

  “Nothing soothes the cookie craving.”

  His face got even closer, “I know something that’ll soothe the cookie craving.”

  Eek!

  I walked right into that one.

  New topic!

  “What are you and Vance gonna do?” I asked.

  “Hunt down Vincetti and Dexter.”

  Ee-yikes!

  My already tight muscles turned to steel. “Luke –” I started but he touched his lips to mine to stop me from speaking.

  “Gotta go,” he said.

  My hands grabbed fistfuls of his t-shirt so he wouldn’t move. “Why are you hunting down Noah?”

  Without hesitation, he gave me an answer that made the world tilt under my feet.

  “He took a piece of you. I’m gon
na find him and get it back.”

  Oh my goodness gracious. I LOVE him, Good Ava trilled.

  I hope he kicks Noah’s ass. Noah was a rat-bastard, Bad Ava groused.

  “Luke,” I whispered, not knowing what I was feeling just knowing it felt really, really nice.

  He squeezed my neck one last time then his fingers wrapped around my wrists, pulled them away from his shirt and he said, “Later.”

  Then he was gone.

  I watched the door close behind him and Vance.

  “Oowee, now I’m thinking Monday’s odds aren’t good,” Shirleen, eyes on me, declared to the room.

  * * * * *

  This was my afternoon:

  Tex, the coffee guy, was a huge, blond man with a wild russet beard, even wilder eyes and a very loud voice. And Luke was right, Tex made me a skinny, vanilla latte and it was so good, it totally soothed the cookie craving.

  Lee and Matt escorted all the girls to Las Delicias and we had Mexican food. Lee, by the way, was absolutely gorgeous and very nice but even so he kind of scared me. He was intense the way Luke was intense. A tough guy, bad boy so deep to the core, you just knew that you did not mess with him.

  Luckily, all through lunch no one mentioned when I was going to “get the business”. After Las Delicias Matt followed Sissy and I home, did a walkthrough of the house before he let us in, stood and chatted for awhile and then he left.

  The minute he was gone and we’d locked the door, Sissy turned to me. “You want to talk about Luke?” she asked.

  No, I definitely didn’t want to talk about Luke. I didn’t want to talk about him, think about him or see him ever again (liar, liar, liar).

  “I need to get some work done,” I said.

  “Do you want to talk about the kidnapping?”

  I shook my head and gave her a small smile. “It wasn’t as bad as it sounds.”

  She stared at me a few beats to assess if I was lying, since I wasn’t (really) she nodded. “Get some work done, I need to call my Dad.”

  I went upstairs and worked for a couple of hours. Around five o’clock, Sissy walked in and started to sort through her suitcases. A few minutes later there was a knock on the door.

  “That must be Dad,” Sissy said.

  What?

  I swiveled around in my chair. “What’s your Dad doing here?”

  “I’m staying with him for a couple of days.”

  What, what, what?

  I got out of my chair and followed her down the stairs. She was carrying one of her smaller suitcases.

  “I thought you were staying with me,” I said to her.

  “I was, now I’m going to stay with my Dad.” She was at the door and unlocking it.

  “Why?” I asked.

  She opened the door so I didn’t get my answer. Though I knew my answer.

  Shit!

  “Hey Dad,” she said.

  Mr. Whitchurch smiled at his daughter and gave her a big hug. I could see straight off he looked worried because of the strain around his mouth. This meant Sissy must have told him what was going on and I tripled-vowed revenge against Dom because he made Mr. Whitchurch worried.

  I’d known Mr. Whitchurch since forever and liked him. It was a bummer when he and Sissy’s Mom got divorced and Mrs. Whitchurch moved to Wyoming. Fortunately (for me), Sissy stayed in Denver with her Dad. Mr. Whitchurch and I got along great, most recently because we both hated Dom.

  “Beautiful Ava,” he said, kissing my cheek. He’d always called me “Beautiful Ava”, even when I was Fatty, Fatty Four-Eyes.

  “Hey Mister Whitchurch.”

  “Hear you been takin’ care of my daughter.”

  “Nothing she wouldn’t do for me,” I told him.

  He stared at me and sighed. “Dom’s a shithead,” he said.

  “Dad!” Sissy snapped.

  “Well, he is,” Mr. Whitchurch was not to be denied.

  Sissy glared at him. He took her glare in stride. He’d been getting Sissy Glares for twenty-nine years and he knew she never meant them.

  “Um, Mister Whitchurch,” I interrupted the Sissy Glare, “can Sissy and I have a second?”

  He looked at me a beat, correctly assessed I had something weighty on my mind and nodded. Then he took her suitcase and walked to his car.

  I closed the door and turned to Sissy. “Why didn’t you tell me you were going to stay with your Dad?”

  “I wasn’t going to stay with him.”

  “Well, you’re staying with him,” I pointed out.

  “Yeah, now,” she returned.

  “Why now?” I asked even though I knew the answer.

  That’s when she gave me the answer I knew. “I know Noah was an asshole and Dom treats me like shit. I know Dave was weird and Rick was a jerk. I know your Dad broke your heart when he left. I know you don’t ever want to get hurt again. But I also know you’ve been in love with Luke Stark since you were eight years old and now he looks at you like you’re lunch and he missed breakfast and dinner.”

  “Sissy –”

  “No, Ava. I know about your vow and I know you like your vibrators and I know you think all men are shit but there are good ones out there and I think Luke is one of them. I’m not standing in the way of that and, I’m telling it to you straight, girlfriend, neither should you.”

  Jeez.

  Was no one on my side?

  I’m not, Bad Ava said. I want to get MORE of a taste of Luke.

  I’m not either, Good Ava agreed. I think Luke is lush.

  Argh!

  I focused on Sissy. “Seriously, I told you how he’s been behaving since I saw him again. He’s not a normal guy.”

  Her hands came to either side of my face and she looked me in the eyes. “No, he’s not and that’s a good thing,” she pulled my face down to hers so our foreheads were touching. “Call me a hopeless romantic but I want to see my friend with the guy she’s been pining for forever,” her voice dropped to a whisper. “I want that more than anything on this earth.”

  Oh crap.

  Tears filled my eyes but before I could let them loose her hands moved away, she gave me a smile and a wink then she was gone.

  I locked the door behind her and rested my forehead against it.

  “My life is shit,” I told the door.

  The door had no response.

  I went back to work. Half an hour later, my phone rang.

  “Yo.”

  “Babe.”

  Hell and damnation.

  It was Luke, my knees wobbled and I wasn’t even standing.

  “Did you get my cookies?” I asked.

  I heard his soft laughter then, “Not yet.”

  What was I doing?

  I was trying to be cute and funny. I wasn’t supposed to be trying to be cute and funny with Luke. I was supposed to drive him away by behaving like a screaming shrew.

  Bad, bad Ava.

  “Why are you calling?” I asked, trying to pull up the Barlow Super Bitch but it sounded halfhearted.

  “I’ll pick you up at seven. We’re goin’ to Lincoln’s for dinner, my place to talk afterward. Sissy got anybody who’ll stay with her or do I need to arrange company?”

  “Sissy’s gone.”

  Silence.

  “Luke?”

  “Come again?”

  “Sissy’s gone. She’s staying with her Dad for a couple of days.”

  “You’re alone in your house?”

  “Well… yeah.”

  “Fuck,” he clipped, sounding pissed.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Tell me your doors are locked.”

  “Of course.”

  “Somebody will be there soon. If it’s someone you haven’t met, I’ll call you to tell you who to expect.”

  “Luke, I’m sure I’ll be fine.”

  “Right. That’s what Lee thought when he left Indy at her house before they let off a car bomb that drew her out and she was kidnapped and nearly taken to Costa Rica.”


  Oh yeah. I forgot about that.

  Belated eek!