to go to work on a porn set?”
She turned fully his way, “Do you think I’m going to go to bed with a guy who thinks he can let me do anything?”
He added to his statement. “A porn set owned by a stone-cold criminal who will rape, torture and eventually kill her if he finds out what she’s up to?”
“Rush—”
“Rebel, put Molly where you are.”
She clapped her mouth shut.
“You’ve been investigated, I think you get that,” he told her.
She opened her mouth at that.
“Yeah, I talked with Hank and neither him nor Eddie or Jimmy gave you all of that, so we’ll also need to be talking about where you got it.”
“A man called Hawk gave it to me. I’ll explain him to you later. But first, I know who Molly is to you. I know what she means to you. I know she means more because your brother is head over heels in love with her and is going to spend the rest of his life with her. So she’s family. And I know if Molly lost someone she loved and went all in to find the killer in the way you are, you’d pull her shit out without taking a second to think about it.”
The kettle began to whistle so Rebel moved to it to turn it off.
Advantageously, it brought her closer to him.
So Rush reached out, caught her wrist, and pulled her even closer.
She didn’t fight it until she decided she was close enough, dug in, and he stopped pulling.
But he didn’t let her wrist go.
He held it and stroked the inside with his thumb as he said, “I know a lot about you, but you don’t know dick about me, and that isn’t fair. So let’s level that playing field, yeah?”
“Yeah,” she tried to snap but it came out breathy.
She liked his touch.
Good to know.
He fought back the smile that caused too.
“I told you about my mom,” he reminded her. “How she was a bitch to my dad. Well, he’s remarried.”
“Okay,” she said when he said nothing more.
“Her name is Tyra. She’s beautiful. She treats him like gold. Busts his chops but he loves it, and honest to Christ, never seen a woman love a man like she loves my dad.”
“That’s cool,” she said softly, relaxing into his words, his touch.
Rush liked that too.
“Yeah,” he agreed. “Loved it that she gave him that after the shit he had to eat with my mom. Fell in love with her, she gave him that and just because she’s a lovable woman. She was good to my sis, treated her right after years of havin’ a mom who did her wrong. She made our family whole. Gave me two baby brothers. And Dad loves kids. She made him happy, just her, but she gave him even more happy, givin’ him Rider and Cutter.”
“Good,” she murmured, staring into his eyes.
“And some shit her friend was messed up in caught her up in it. She was kidnapped, tied to a chair and stabbed repeatedly. Almost bled out. It was a miracle she survived.”
Her body strung tight, her hand twisted in his grip, but he kept hold.
“I had to endure that,” he told her. “I had to watch Tabby wait hours for news of a woman who, after taking emotional abuse from our mom her whole life, treated her with love and kindness and even toughness and strength when Tab was doin’ stupid shit, but that was filled with love and kindness too. But worst of all that, I had to watch my father wait for word, it not lookin’ good, seein’ a man who never admitted defeat stand in defeat thinkin’ he’d lost the only woman in over forty years that he ever really loved.”
“Shit, Rush,” she whispered.
“It sucked,” he told her.
“She’s okay?” she asked.
“Totally okay,” he answered, but he didn’t let up on her. “Don’t put Diesel through that. Not Diesel or Maddox or Molly, those last two who love you like blood.”
She pulled at her wrist.
He let it go.
She moved to the kettle and took it to her place at the counter.
“Baby, I barely know you, but I know I like you,” he shared. “So don’t put me through that.”
She poured water into the French press, steam rising up into her face.
“Rebel, are you hearing me?” he called.
She poured water onto the steel thing in her tea cup.
“Rebel?”
She put the kettle back on the stove then took up the handle of the steel thing and made circles in the