“Shirleen, it’ll be taken care of,” Lee replied calmly but his voice held a lethal edge.
“It better be,” she said, her voice low again this time with scary meaning. “It better f**kin’ be.”
Eek!
Time to move on.
I looked at Indy, hoping to change the subject. “Who’s taking care of Fortnum’s?”
“Fortnum’s is closed for a staff meeting,” Duke answered my question in his gravelly voice, his tone doing nothing to dissipate the scary atmosphere and therefore he foiled my attempt to change the subject.
“But, you can’t –” I started.
“We can, we have, we’re not f**kin’ goin’ back until this shit is sorted,” Tex threw down.
I felt weird. Moved but scared and kept my eyes on Indy. “You can’t do that,” I said.
Indy just shook her head. “Jane, one of my staff, Kitty Sue, who’s Lee’s Mom and Jet’s Mom, Nancy, are at the store explaining things to the customers. They’ll open in the afternoon when the crowds are smaller and they can handle them. Until then, well, Ava, you know that no one messes with a Rock Chick, not ever, but especially not –”
“Indy,” Lee said low, interrupting her. I could tell she had been working herself up to rant mode. At Lee’s voice, she pulled in her bottom lip, bit it and kept quiet but I knew it cost her.
“I’m fine,” I said again, not just to Indy but to the entire assemblage.
Everyone just kept staring.
Yikes.
“What I want to know,” Shirleen started when no one seemed to be prepared to move, “is why you all standin’ around like you don’t got shit to do? You got shit to do. Serious shit. It’s time to f**kin’ get crackin’.”
The staring stopped, folks started to move and I let my body relax.
“Give me five,” Luke said to Lee then took my hand and walked me to the door to the inner sanctum. He opened the door and guided me through and down the hall, directly to the kitchenette he’d taken me to (or, more accurately, carried me) that first time I was at the offices.
We went inside and he closed the door, turned to me and his hand came to my jaw.
“You okay?” he asked, I nodded and he went on. “I had no f**kin’ idea we would walk into that, babe, if I knew –”
I realized he was pissed at the same time I realized that he would have protected me from what just happened if he could have. And lastly, because of that, I realized Luke wasn’t just a Good Guy, he might be The Best Guy Ever.
For this reason, I moved into him and put my arms around his waist. “It’s cool Luke, they just care. It feels nice.”
That was a partial lie. It felt scary and slightly humiliating that all those people knew that Noah had his hand down my pants. Instead I was trying to focus on them rallying around me which did, indeed, feel nice. More to the point, I wanted Luke to focus on it because he didn’t look happy and an unhappy Luke could be a frightening thing.
Luke’s thumb stroked my jaw and I watched as his anger ebbed away. “All right beautiful, if you’re cool, I’m cool.”
I smiled at him.
Crisis averted.
Then he continued. “Before I meet with the boys, we gotta talk about somethin’.”
Uh-oh.
Crisis maybe not averted.
“Luke, I’m not sure I can handle talking about something.”
He bent down to kiss my nose and said softly, “I know, Ava Babe, I wouldn’t bring this up, not now, but it’s important.”