“What was that?” he asked.

“A kiss good-bye,” I told him.

He took two steps forward and I took two steps back, slamming into a wall. His hands went to my ass and pulled me against him and he kissed me breathless.

“That was a kiss good-bye,” he said.

I took in a shaky breath.

It sure was.

* * *

Ally and Tex were behind the coffee counter at Fortnum’s when I got there. There were six people waiting in line and three people who’d already ordered and were waiting for their coffee. Every chair and couch had someone’s ass in it, all of them drinking coffee.

Motley Crue was blaring “Girls Girls Girls” from the CD player.

I looked at my watch, it was ten to eight. We’d only been open for twenty minutes.

Apparently people would pay to have a guy who looked like a serial killer serve them coffee.

“Holy shit,” I said.

“Get your butt behind this counter, woman! Does it look like there’s nothin’ to do and you have time to stand around gawkin’?” Tex boomed.

I walked around the counter, saw Annie, the blonde, helmet-head lady who yelled at me during the Rosie riot. She was staring at her cup with a reverence normally only befitting the unveiling of front row tickets. She looked up at me.

“Where do you find these guys?” she breathed.

“Luck,” I said and got to work

We were so busy, for hours I thought of nothing but coffee, milk, syrup and all the money that was being shoved into my cash register. We’d never been this busy, even with Rosie. We had good crowds, but this was crazy.

By ten thirty, the crowd had died down. Duke came in and manned the book counter which was also seeing business. We had a goodly number of folks sitting, reading and enjoying their coffee.

“Are we still ticked at each other?” Ally finally had the chance to ask me.

“Well, since you being pissed at me went hand in hand with me being pissed at Lee… and since Lee and I are no longer on a break… then no, we aren’t ticked at each other.”

Ally grinned. “Good.”

That’s the way it was with best friends. You got mad, you got over it.

I turned to Tex. “But you’re a traitor and I’m not talking to you ever again,” I told him.

“You get number seven last night?” he asked.

I stared at him, not knowing what in the hell he was talking about.

Then it dawned on me.

Orgasm number seven.

Yikes.

Maybe I did share too much information with Tex last night.

Since I got number seven last night and number eight that morning, I didn’t answer.

It must have shown on my face because Tex let out a booming laugh then said, “You have no reason to be mad and I don’t wanna hear about it.”

“What’s he talking about?” Ally asked.

I turned to her. “Orgasms.” Her eyes got round. “Never mind. Do you know when you can take a pregnancy test?”

Now her eyes were about to pop out of her head. “No way.”

“I don’t know. I fucked up, I forgot to take my pills for a couple of days.”

“No way!” Ally shouted and a couple customers looked up.

“I didn’t do it on purpose,” I said.

“This is great,” she said. “I’m calling Mom.”

“No! Don’t call Kitty Sue! Don’t call anyone. This is not great. I don’t want a baby. Well, maybe I want a baby… maybe I want Lee’s baby… but not now. He hasn’t even seen all my underwear!”

“You aren’t getting any younger,” Ally said.

Dear Lord.

“Just answer my question,” I said.

“What question?”

“Pregnancy test.”

“I think you have to miss a period. I’ll run down to Walgreen’s and look at one.”

Then off she went, luckily Walgreen’s was only a few blocks away.

“Tex, can you make me a skinny vanilla latte, please?” I asked.

“So you’re talkin’ to me again?” he asked.

“Just make me one!”

“Who’re you? The Man?”

“No, I’m The Woman who wants a vanilla latte!”

“Fine. Jeez. I’ll make you a latte. I’ll make it decaf so you’ll calm down.”

“If you make it decaf, you’re fired,” I said.

“Caffeine may not be good for the baby,” Tex replied.

That’s when I screamed, full-on-Nightmare-on-Elm-Street-scream-your-lungs-out.

The customers jumped and stared.

The bells over the door went. I stopped screaming and saw Eddie coming into the store.

He didn’t look happy.

In fact, he looked scary unhappy.

His mirrored shades were off and his dark eyes were intense.

My frustration at my crazy, fucked up life went out the window and I walked up to him.

“You okay?” he asked.

I felt my stomach pitch. He wasn’t talking about me screaming.

By the look of him, I was assuming something happened to someone I loved. Seeing as I was a cop’s daughter, this moment was always in the back of my mind. For me, especially coming from Eddie, it could be anyone, Lee, Dad, Malcolm, Hank or dozens of other guys who were friends of mine or Dad’s.

I opened my mouth to answer and I heard then saw the Ducati. It stopped in front of the store, Lee pushed down the stand and swung his leg off. He came inside.

His mouth was tight, his eyes were blank, his expression was grim.

He looked at me, then at Eddie, then back to me.

“You okay?” he asked.

“What the fuck is going on!” I shouted.

“She needs caffeine.” Tex said, handing me my latte.

Lee came closer to me, both he and Eddie were less than a foot away, crowding me in. Tex was still beside me and Duke had wandered over, feeling the vibe, and was standing close behind me.

Bad news was coming.

“Cherry Blackwell’s car exploded this morning,” Lee said.

I stared at him.

What the fuck?

“Jeez-us. She the loopy-loo you scrapped with last night?” Tex asked me.

I ignored Tex and said, “Please tell me she wasn’t in it.”

“She wasn’t in it,” Lee said.

I let out a breath and then took a sip of latte. Even in that tense situation, I noticed that the latte was divine.

“What happened?” I asked.

Eddie answered, “We don’t know. Car’s still too hot to get near it. They’re guessin’ she was four, five feet away when it went. She got hit with flying debris and she was burned by the fireball. She’s at Swedish Medical Center.”

“Is she okay?” I asked.

“No update yet,” Eddie said.

Jeez, I didn’t like Cherry. In fact, I hated her, but I also didn’t like the idea of her getting hit with flying debris from a car explosion. The only person I’d want that to happen to was Osama bin Laden but I would prefer for him to be in the car.

I looked at Lee, he was still looking grim. I realized that they may have parted badly but she had still been his girlfriend. Twice. I slipped my hand in his.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said, looking at me funny.

“She doesn’t understand,” Eddie said.

“Understand what?” I asked.

Then it hit me. Last night, I was rolling around in fried rice with Cherry, today she’d almost been blown up.

I looked at Eddie. “I have an alibi. Actually, I have two! And I don’t know anything about explosives.”

This wasn’t exactly true. Ally and I had famously set off a couple dozen bottle rockets in Nina Evans’s front yard after Nina had started a nasty rumor that Ally had herpes.

Still, bottle rockets and car bombs didn’t exactly compare.

“Yeah, she spent most of the night with me and the cats, eatin’ chips and drinkin’ moonshine. She wasn’t out of my sight until you came and got her,” Tex threw in, looking at Lee.

Eddie stared at Tex, some of the intensity going out of his eyes at the thought of me, Tex and the cats eating chips and drinking hooch.

“Darius told me that one of his guys was at a strip club last night and heard Coxy’s boy Gary talkin’ about your cat fight with Cherry,” Lee said.

This wasn’t interesting news. I figured I’d been a prime topic of conversation on police band for at least a week. I probably had my own code by now, Indy-666 or something.

Anyone could listen to police band.

“And?” I asked.

“And Coxy’s already gone out of his way to eliminate what he might consider your problems.”

I dropped Lee’s hand and took a step back. “You think Wilcox tried to kill Cherry… for me?”

Eddie answered again. “Too early to know. Cherry didn’t have a lot of friends but crisping her seems harsh retribution for bein’ a bitch.”

“This isn’t happening,” I said.

I was reeling. I didn’t know what to do, what to think.

“You guys want coffee?” Tex asked Lee and Eddie.

“Sure, triple shot cappuccino,” Eddie said.

“Yeah, Americano, black,” Lee said.

Tex ambled off to the espresso counter while I continued my silent meltdown searching the depths of my fried brain for Denial Zone.

Then Duke asked, his Sam Elliott voice low and serious, “Could we not talk about fuckin’ coffee and maybe talk about how you two badass motherfuckers are gonna protect Indy from this crazy fuck?”

I turned to look at him and noticed immediately that he was pissed.

Duke looked at Lee. “Isn’t it about fuckin’ time you quit fuckin’ around and took care of this fuckin’ guy?”

Uh-oh.

Duke wasn’t afraid to use the F-word but he only dosed his vocabulary liberally with it when he was close to losing it.

Lee looked at him. “I’m workin’ on it.”