Kristen Ashley - Rock Chick

He smiled.

Damn the man.

“I’ll pick you up at Fortnum’s as soon as I can. Promise me in the meantime you won’t get into trouble.”

I nodded my head.

He stared at me a second, then sighed.

“You’re lying.”

“No I’m not,” I replied.

“Just don’t do anything too stupid.”

As if!

He brushed his lips against mine. He let me go, headed straight to the bathroom, took a shower, dressed and left.

I called and asked Ally to come pick me up.

We had a long, busy day ahead of us if we were going to find Rosie.

I decided to drag Jane into the search, in fact, I decided to drag everyone into the search.

We spent the morning waiting on coffee customers, the one person who actually wanted to buy a book and making phone calls to everyone we knew putting an APB out on both Rosie and Duke.

Regardless of her first shock at seeing the state of my face (I had a mini-shiner, not a full-blown black eye but a killer bruise on my cheekbone and yellow discoloring under the eye), Jane was excited. Jane thought this was fun. Jane had not been shot at or stunned-gunned (yet). She read romances but she also read mysteries and detective novels. She was in the Kinky Friedman zone.

Jane headed off to Evergreen after the morning rush to put a note under Duke’s door, telling him to call me the minute he got home (with a little PS to Dolores, inviting her to Girl’s Night Out next Wednesday).

I had decided that the morning’s weakness with Lee was temporary insanity and the aftereffects of sake. I was back to my decision that Lee and I weren’t a good idea. Most especially if he could (and would) leave me hot and bothered for whatever scary shit he did for a living. I knew my control was slipping but I had a new plan. All I had to do was not end up in his car, his company, his condo and especially his bed. That was the extent of my new plan.

The minute Jane left, I called Rosie’s parents in North Dakota. He had them as next of kin on his employment records. In order not to freak them out, I pretended I was an old friend from high school, calling to catch up.

“Isn’t that a funny coincidence?” Rosie’s Mom said. “Two nice gentlemen came around yesterday saying the same thing!”

I glanced at Ally with my “uh-oh” face and she returned an eyebrow raise.

Either it was Lee or it was Terry Wilcox. One spelled disaster for me and the other spelled disaster for Rosie.

I gave my name and number, disconnected and told Ally.

“Probably Lee, he has ways,” she decided.

Great.

“Tell me again why we’re doing this?” she asked.

“Lee and I have a bet, the kind of bet I don’t wanna lose.” It wasn’t a total lie. If Lee found Rosie, I would lose a lot, peace of mind, my grip on reality, things like that.

“So you bet Lee you’d find Rosie before he did and return a bag of diamonds to a bad guy?” Ally stared at me like I’d just had half my brain sucked out by brain-eaters.

“Yep.”

“Girl,” she drawled, “you’re so gonna lose.”

Lucky for me, Ally was into the underdog.

The door to Fortnum’s burst open and Andrea Cocetti stormed in.

Andrea was at school with Ally and me and she was in our pack. Rumor had it that Andrea made out with Richie Sambora backstage after a Bon Jovi concert but this had never been publicly confirmed or denied (privately, though, she admitted to both Ally and I that it didn’t happen and thus, in secret, I reigned supreme with my Joe Perry encounter).

We’d stayed friends over the years but didn’t see each other often. Andrea got married about twelve minutes after we graduated and now had four kids. Four kids, especially hellions like Andrea’s, were a good reason not to see each other that often.

Now, Andrea was Andrea Moran. She was pushing a stroller, dragging a child alongside her, while an older one followed, carrying a purse the size of an overnight bag and a diaper bag stuffed full to bursting, all this done with such practiced ease, it was as if they were all merely accessories, including the children.

“You hooked up with Lee Nightingale!” she shrieked, causing the four customers who were calmly sitting around reading and enjoying their coffees in quiet surroundings to jump and stare. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Over the years, Andrea, too, had been drafted in some of my Lee Maneuvers. Andrea, too, was on Kitty Sue Nightingale’s Christmas Card List and therefore in her address book and therefore, no doubt, received a call. Perhaps, considering a day had passed, during the second wave.

“It only happened yesterday,” Ally said.

Andrea ignored Ally. “Have you and Lee done it yet?” Her voice was still, really, really loud and the four customers stopped staring at Andrea and swiveled their heads to look at me.

I sighed then said, “We’re taking it slow.”

“Slow!” Her eyes moved from me, to Ally, and back to me, they looked like they were going to pop out of her head. “I… you…” She made a strangled sound and I was starting to get concerned. “That isn’t possible. Slow isn’t possible. Lee Nightingale doesn’t move slow. One second he’s looking at you, the next second he’s walking away and he has the little satin bow from your panties as a souvenir.”

God, I hoped it wasn’t that fast that would be disappointing.

What was I thinking? It wasn’t going to happen at all.

“That isn’t true,” Ally replied. “He’d take the little satin bow from your bra. Not all panties have them but most bras do. Sometimes they’re rosettes, he’d take those as well.”

I stared at her.

“You’re joking,” I breathed, really not wanting to be a little satin rosette bouncing around with hundreds of other little rosettes and bows in Lee’s sock drawer.

Ally shrugged. “That’s the rumor.”

“Have you seen them? How many of them are there?” Andrea asked.

“I haven’t seen them, it’s just the rumor, I’m just keeping rumors straight. Maybe when Indy stops taking it slow, we’ll find out.”

I calmed Andrea down with an iced, hazelnut, decaf latte and promised her I’d call her the minute I did it with Lee. At this rate, post-coital, I’d be on the phone for a week.

Once Andrea was settled, I noticed a guy who’d arrived practically the minute the door opened. He’d already bought three espressos, which he sucked down in one swallow and he’d been reading a sports magazine now for three and a half hours. He had dark blond hair a week or two past needing a cut, a killer bod, compact with muscles and not an ounce of fat. He was wearing a white t-shirt, jeans and running shoes.

If he wasn’t my height, I didn’t have an ugly bruise on my face and I didn’t already have enough man problems, I would have been flirting with him ages ago. I didn’t do men my height or shorter, they had to be taller than me if I was wearing heels. That was a rule.

I watched him for a few minutes, thinking that had to be a helluva magazine to require more than three hours of study.

Lee told me he had a lot of men. Maybe men enough to go to North Dakota and sit in surveillance at Rosie’s. Maybe men enough to hang out at Fortnum’s and keep an eye on me.

Fucking Lee.

I sauntered over to the guy and stood in front of him until he looked up.

“Hey,” I said.

“Hey,” he replied and smiled. Definitely cute and definitely not one of Terry Wilcox’s steroid-ridden bad guys. The look of this dude said he would never hit a woman, or at least I hoped so.

“You need another espresso?” I asked, giving my head a flirty tilt.

“Nah, thanks, I’m juiced up enough.” He went back to reading.

Hmm. What did I do now? Never really had someone gone back to reading after I gave them the flirty tilt. Even if they weren’t entirely interested, they gave more reaction to the flirty tilt. Maybe it was the mini-shiner.

“Good magazine?” I asked and he looked up again.

“Yeah, the best.”

I nodded and wished I’d worn a tank top or camisole that day so I could have leaned over and given him some of my power cleavage. My cleavage would have negated the effects of the shiner.

Instead, I was in jeans, a brown, hand-tooled belt with a big, silver buckle that had a design made out of what looked like miniature rope, brown cowboy boots and a chocolate brown, fitted tee that said “I do all my own stunts” across my boobs in yellow and red lettering.

“I’m not into sports,” I told him and then sat on the arm of his chair, peering over the magazine to look at it. His entire body tensed and he turned his head to stare at me and I gave him a mega-watt smile. “Though I like going to games and stuff, do you go to games?”

I pressed the side of my breast against his arm, still pretending to try and get a look at his magazine.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

I gave him an innocent look.

“Who me?” Then I winked.

His face went pale and his cell phone rang. He stood up to get it out of his jeans and he stood so fast, he nearly knocked me off the arm of the chair.

I righted myself as he said, “Talk to me.”

Then his eyes cut to me and he handed me the phone. I stared at it, astonished, then took it and put it to my ear.

“Leave Matt alone, he’s just doin’ his job,” Lee said.

I was a little shocked at the call, I just wanted to fluster Matt a bit.

How did he…?

Fucking, fucking Lee.

“What’s his job?” I asked, my blood pressure ratcheting up a notch.