Rock Chick Reborn ~ Kristen Ashley

by Kristen Ashley

  He’d left dust.

  After he was whacked, I’d gone on to make stupid decisions that affected not only me.

  I had a history—an ugly one—that no man would want to take on.

  And I couldn’t imagine anything on this earth worse (for me) than maybe getting the attention of a beautiful man who chuckled like humor bubbled up from his soul and having to watch his face as he learned who I was and what I’d done.

  Before hitting the doors, Roam stopped, turned and stared at me and years of life on the streets before I got him under my roof meant I’d have to be more badass than Lee Nightingale himself to hide anything from that boy.

  But it wasn’t about being badass.

  It was that I didn’t hide shit from my boys. They’d led lives given no reason to trust, and it had been hell teaching them they could trust me and taking that further in showing them how to find others with whom they could do the same.

  I didn’t blow him a kiss, send him a smile or give him a nod.

  You didn’t do that with Roam.

  He wasn’t about displays of affection.

  You earned his by being real and being solid.

  So I just held his gaze and looked impatient.

  He turned and followed his brother out the door.

  I swung my cart around and braced at the thought of facing Rose Hottie in the fruit and veg section.

  He probably had a sister at home that rivaled Naomi or Halle or Taraji or Angela or Tyra.

  He was nowhere to be seen.

  “Lord have mercy on me,” I whispered to myself as I perused apples, oranges, bananas, kiwis, spinach, cucumbers, broccoli and carrots, throwing it all in my cart even knowing I’d eat that shit myself as the boys dipped their Oreos in full-fat milk and decimated party-size bags of ranch-flavored Doritos.

  Which was what I was reaching for (times three) several aisles later when I heard, “Hello.”

  I turned my head and looked into dark-brown eyes separated by an interestingly creased bridge of a nose in a handsome face.

  Then I did something so anti-Shirleen Jackson, it was like I’d immediately formed a split personality.

  I bolted.

  Shit, Roam was right.

  No man called attention to himself by greeting some woman reaching for Doritos.

  Unless he wanted to pounce.

  Goddamn!

  I was halfway through the next aisle when I realized I hadn’t nabbed the cheddar cheese Ruffles for Roam, or the Pringles smorgasbord for both of them. So I motored down the aisle, swung wide to the next one, motored down that one, caught Rose Hottie studying the water selection (which, with those shoulders, he probably drank while lifting weights) in the aisle that stood between me and the boys’ Pringles.

  I boogied as fast as my Louboutin Konstantina pompom flats would take me (which was fast, and that was good since I had to go fast, but it was bad since I wished being in that man’s presence I’d been wearing a pair of heels, specifically my new Alexander Wang black Rina beaded slingbacks, though I wasn’t sure they went with my LV, still they were hot).

  I circled back into the snack aisle and got the Pringles, Ruffles and Chex Mix on the trot, making sure to nab the cheesy crackers both boys loved (times four).

  Rose Hottie was out of the water and soda aisle, thankfully, as I had stocking up to do there. But as I hit the cleaning supplies section, he was perusing fabric softener.

  I also needed fabric softener.

  His head came around.

  So I did a U-ey with my cart and hightailed my ass out of there, liberally (as usual) stocking up on paper towels (sorry environment, but I had two teenage boys, they didn’t understand global warming or the concept of reusable rags, no matter how much I drilled that shit in their heads) and Charmin.

  I circled back when the coast was clear for fabric softener.

  It happened in the three-aisle freezer section.

  I had to get tater tots and crinkle cuts. Not to mention a hefty supply of DiGiornos. Roam might starve to death if he couldn’t bake a frozen pizza when I was out, and I was a Rock Chick so I was out a lot. I also had two teenage boys who obsessively maintained social lives and their badass training so they weren’t home all that much, but when they got home, they were hungry. The entire freezer in the garage was taken up with DiGiornos and we were running low.

  But Rose Hottie was now on a mission. His fine black ass (and yes, I’d caught a glimpse and yes, it almost sent me into vapors) had speeded up and every time he saw me, him and his cart made a beeline to me.

  I lost him when I was doing my usual Hail Mary with the frozen peas (I’d eat all those too), and as I trucked out of the frozen food section and loaded up with milk and creamer, as well as hit the cheese aisle, he was gone.

  Bad.

  Good.

  Bad.

  No, good.

  But it felt bad.

  Since it felt bad, it was not the boys, but me who scored an entire birthday cake (but in the end the boys would eat most of it) and I thought of my girl, Daisy, and her lover man, Marcus. I also thought of Indy and how deeply she was adored by Lee. And Jet, who was practically worshipped by Eddie. And then there was Roxie, who was beloved to Hank. Jules and Vance. Ava and Luke. Stella and Mace. Sadie and Hector. Ally and Ren. Tod and Stevie. Ralphie and Buddy. Tex and Nancy.

  I was staring at the bagels and fresh rolls in the bakery section, close to tears . . .

  Me.

  Shirleen Jackson.

  Widow of the lowdown, good-for-nothin’ Leon Jackson.

  Ex-drug dealer.

  I was tough.

  I’d lived through hell.

  And there I was, near tears in the bakery section of King Soopers.

  Because I wanted a badass.

  I wanted to be adored, beloved, worshipped by a good man who saw nothing but good in me.

  I’d wanted that for as long as I could remember.

  And it wasn’t going to happen.

  Not for me.

  Never for me.

  Because life was unfair.

  But the worst of it was . . .

  I’d made it that way.

  CRASH!

  I jumped back as my cart slammed into the bagel display, toilet paper packs and Bounty wobbling, full-fat milk glugging, chips rustling, boxes of DiGiornos nearly toppling, cart ending up jammed against the shelves under the bagels, caged there by another cart that was nearly as full as mine.

  I turned my head to see Rose Hottie, hands still on the cart that had plowed into my own.

  “Now that I have your attention.”

  Oo . . .

  Wee.

  His voice was honey.

  Warm, sweet, deep, delicious honey.

  Hell’s fire.

  “Uh . . .” I forced out.

  “I’m Moses,” he declared.

  Oh Lord.

  Good name.

  Great name.

  Goddamn.

  “Um . . .” I mumbled.

  “Moses Richardson.”

  I got kinda lost in watching his lips moving.

  They moved again.

  “Now’s the time you tell me your name,” he ordered.

  My eyes lifted to his.

  Bad idea.

  He had fabulous eyes. Open, amused and curious.

  “I’m grocery shopping,” I shared.

  His eyes turned more amused.

  “Is that your name?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “I hadn’t really missed that,” he told me, tipping his head to my cart.

  I decided not to say anything more.

  He didn’t take the hint and unjack my cart from the bakery display.

  He gave my cart a thorough examination before looking again at me and inquiring, “Those your boys?”

  “Uh . . . what?”

  “At the entrance. Those boys you were with. Ten frozen pizzas in your cart. They yours?”

  “Yep.”

  Expressive
eyebrows went up.

  “Both of them?” he pushed.

  “Yep,” I pushed out.

  “You got a brother?” he asked.

  “As in the sibling kind?” I asked back.

  “No,” he answered.

  “No,” I answered.

  “Hard to make that white one with a brother,” he decreed.

  “Uh . . . yeah,” I agreed.

  “Adopted?” he kept at me.

  “Foster,” I shared.

  That’s when it happened.

  We were in the bakery section and it felt like the ovens had all been dialed up, doors open, warming the place with bakery-oven goodness.

  “You’re a foster momma?” he queried softly.

  “Just . . . just them.”

  “How long they been with you?”

  “Three years.”

  “So they’re yours,” he pressed.

  My chin lifted half an inch. “They’re mine.”

  More warmth, not from the ovens, coming direct from him.

  Moses Richardson.

  Damn.

  “What’s your name?” he asked.

  It was time to pull my shit together.

  I tried to unwedge my cart, muttering, “I gotta go.”

  He shoved my cart in farther, damaging the bagged, cardboard trays of Hawaiian rolls on the shelves under the bagels.

  I looked back to him.

  “They’ll like me,” he announced.

  I stared.

  Was this brother seriously jumping that far ahead?

  “Because I like you,” he explained.

  “You don’t know me,” I pointed out.

  “Yeah I do.”

  That felt nice.

  I still shook my head.

  For his sake.

  And mine.

  “You don’t and you won’t.”

  “I do and I will.”

  It was time to snap back to Shirleen.

  “Listen, my man, you need to move your cart. I got shit to do. My boys’ll be back soon and Roam’s got a girl comin’ over tonight, and we gotta get him set up before Sniff and I hit Jerusalem.”

  He looked impressed. “Combo platter?”

  You were either vegetarian or not from Denver if you didn’t get the combo (or meat) platter at Jerusalem.

  “Absolutely.”

  More warmth and then, “Roam?”

  “The black one.”

  “I mean the name,” he clarified.

  “Street name. Same with Sniff.”

  Another brow lift. “You let them go by their street names?”

  “There were battles to wage when they hit my crib, that wasn’t one of them.”

  “I can imagine,” he murmured.

  I took him in. Dark-wash jeans. Pressed button-down. Discreet, but attractive, curb-chained gold bracelet peeking from his cuff. Good boots.

  He had no fucking clue.

  “No, you can’t,” I snapped.

  His eyes stared right into mine.

  “Work at Gilliam. Corrections officer. I can.”

  Gilliam.

  Gilliam Youth Services Center.

  Denver juvie.

  Well . . . shit.

  “Three years, those boys. You took them in at what, sixteen? Seventeen? There are about negative two hundred good foster mommas in Denver who’d take in boys that age, that size, with street names and a hundred years they never should have lived on their faces. But then there was you,” he decreed.

  I started to feel goose bumps forming all over my skin.

  “They were fifteen,” I said quietly.

  “Same shit, different age,” he replied.

  He was so right about that.

  “Listen, Moses—”

  “I want to take you to dinner.”

  I snapped my mouth shut.

  “You’re the most beautiful sister I’ve seen in ten years, and I thought that before I knew what you were to those boys,” he went on.

  Oh Lord.

  That felt nice.

  “I—”

  “Don’t say no,” he whispered.

  I swallowed.

  “I got two teenage daughters, which might not be good with those two boys, but we’ll tackle that when we face it,” he kept at me. “And I got an ex-wife who didn’t make it easy in the beginning, but we got a flow now and we been ridin’ that for seven years, divorced for eleven, so we got it down and she’s not a problem. You’re not wearing a ring, you got an ex?”

  “My man’s dead.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said gently.

  “I’m not,” I returned.

  At that, he studied me.

  And as it seemed was his way, he threw it right out there.

  “Didn’t do you right?” he asked.

  “We’re not talking about this,” I told him.

  He gave one nod of that perfectly-formed skull. “Right. Good call. We’ll talk about it over dinner.”

  I had to escape this.

  Now.

  For him.

  And me.

  “Listen, Moses—”

  “Please God, woman, don’t say no.”

  I shut my mouth again.

  I opened it to warn, “Trust me, you do not want to take this on.”

  He shook his head at that. “I do.”

  “You really don’t.”

  “I absolutely do.”

  It was then, I looked right into his eyes.

  “You absolutely do not.”

  He was not deterred.

  Damn it.

  “How about you let me decide that.”

  “How about you move your cart so I can keep on keepin’ on.”

  His head tipped to the side. “You not into me?”

  Was he seriously living in that body, having that face, that voice, those crinkles on his nose and that manner and asking that shit?

  I decided a question that stupid wasn’t worthy of an answer.

  Amusement lit his eyes again. “You’re into me.”

  “I got a job herding badasses, and I got two badasses hoovering through Oreos and Doritos at my house. I don’t need another badass on my hands.”

  He bent into his forearms on the bar of his cart, making his shoulders ripple under his shirt that tightened on them, which made something ripple in one specific part of me, him doing this like we were going to crack open a bottle of wine and stay awhile in the bakery section as he asked, “What’s your job that you herd badasses?”

  I started jimmying my cart to try to disengage it, muttering, “We’re not doin’ this.”

  “Stop,” he demanded.

  I looked at him again.

  “Move,” I demanded.

  He did.

  He moved from the handle of his cart toward me, one arm behind his back.

  I froze.

  He pulled out his wallet.

  “Got a pen?” he asked.

  “Uh . . .” I mumbled because he was close and he smelled good.

  Like . . .

  Real good.

  He stopped even closer. So close, I had to tip my head to look into those brown eyes.

  “Baby, I asked, you got a pen in that classy bag of yours?” he murmured.

  After Leon got whacked, I decided in my life I was not ever doing anything I didn’t want to do.

  And one could not say that I didn’t want to look down to my bag, open it, pull out a pen and hand it to Moses Richardson.

  What one could say, that one being me, was that I had no control over my actions.

  Him that close, looking that good, smelling that amazing, if he asked me if I had a honey-baked ham in my bag, I would have rushed to the deli, grabbed one, sprinted back, shoved it in my LV (no matter that broke all the laws of my universe) so I could pull it out and hand it to him.

  In other words, I gave him my pen.

  He wrote on a white card on the back of his wallet then he returned his wallet to his jeans, offering the pen and card to me.

  �
��My card. My cell number on the back. And your call. You think on it, you want dinner, you call me. Then you buy a nice dress. Because no way, when you call me, I’m not doin’ it up right.”

  Slowly, my hand lifted and took the card and pen.

  He didn’t let it go.

  At first.

  “What’s your name?” he whispered.

  “Shirleen,” I whispered back, staring in those eyes.

  Those eyes warmed and that warmth warmed me.

  Straight to my bones.

  Where I’d been cold a really, really long time.

  “It was nice to meet you, Shirleen,” he said softly.

  He let go of the card only to stroll the three feet in order drop his hand to the roses that I now saw had a receipt stapled to the paper so I could walk right out with them. He came back and rested them on my LV in the child seat.

  After he pulled that class move, I watched him go back to the handle of his cart.

  He pulled his cart from mine, and looking over his shoulder to shoot me a white smile, he walked away.

  So Far Away

  “JESUS, WHAT’S ALL this shit?”

  I saw a strong, long-fingered, veined hand reach toward my pack of sorbet wet erase markers and did the only thing I could do.

  I reached out, slapped it sharply and shot from my chair to my feet behind my desk in the reception area of Nightingale Investigations to face off against Luke Stark.

  I also snapped, “Don’t touch anything! I’m getting organized!”

  Luke stood across the desk from me wearing a black T-shirt, blue jeans and a shocked expression on his badass face.

  He’d recently given up on his legendary Fu Manchu mustache and had grown in a full, black beard.

  I missed the Fu Manchu. There was exactly one man on the planet who could pull it off—Luke—but he could pull it off.

  Saying that, the man was fine, so the beard far from sucked.

  “You’re getting what?” he asked.

  “Organized,” I clipped.

  “What?” he repeated.

  “Organized,” I bit out impatiently.

  I mean, sheesh.

  I was the office manager at the private investigations firm where he worked.

  Granted, I didn’t file. And I generally didn’t organize. I mostly helped Lee dodge anything that might chain him to his desk, like putting off appointments, or taking them in his stead, or paying bills, or sending invoices or cutting paychecks. But, except for the last (which was mostly automated), I did it all when the spirit moved me (for instance when my nails didn’t need a new coat or when the latest Us Weekly hadn’t been released).