He, and then I, entered a big room with a beamed cathedral ceiling, a massive fireplace and loads of studded leather furniture. There were banners dangling from the stone walls with multiple rows of olde worlde lions and fleur-de-lis depicted on them. I lost my anger at Mace because I regained my awe.
I stared. It was the kind of room where you stared. You couldn’t do anything else.
“Holy shit! Stella! What are you doing here?” That was Indy.
I looked at her and saw the room already held a number of people. Luke and Mace, of course. Also Indy, her neighbors Tod and Stevie (a gay couple I knew from meeting them at Indy’s many parties which I attended back in the days pre-Mace), Ava, Daisy (a new-ish addition to the club, I’d met her too, she looked just like Dolly Parton, but a younger version and yes, she even had the enormous hooters) and Ally. They were all standing and they all turned to me.
“What’s on your leg?” Ally asked, her eyes on my leg.
Effing hell, how could I forget about my hip?
“Is that… blood?” Tod’s eyes were huge and his hand went to his chest.
“She’s been shot!” Daisy screeched.
My eyes flew to Mace. He was standing several feet in front of me, his back to me and, at Daisy’s words, his head whipped around.
“It’s nothing,” I told them, backing away.
Mace had turned and he was bearing down, gaining ground and I kept edging backward. I ran into something and turned to see a man wearing glasses, tall, dark hair, some gray and his hands settled on my shoulders, ending my retreat. I looked into his blue eyes, they were kind but I also got the impression that he wasn’t going to let me go anywhere.
“I’m okay,” I told this man I didn’t know.
Different hands came to the top of my hip. My gaze swung down and I saw strong, long-fingered hands I knew really well. I looked up from the hands and Mace was in my space.
“Mace, let me go. I’m fine,” I said as he bent slightly to the side, tilting my hip gently toward his gaze and he looked at the wound. I looked too. There was a lot more blood than I expected. It was everywhere.
When I looked back up, everyone had gathered around.
“I’m totally fine,” I repeated.
Mace straightened and his eyes came to mine.
“Hunky dory?” he asked, his voice low and sounding a bit cheesed off.
“Hunky dory.” I nodded.
Then without warning, I was lifted up, found myself cradled in Mace’s arms and he started striding back into the big room.
“What the –?” I began to yell.
“Privacy,” Mace clipped at Daisy, interrupting me.
“Through here. I’ll get a first aid kit,” Daisy replied, racing along beside us.
“First aid! Girlie, she needs a doctor.” Tod was racing alongside us too.
“She doesn’t need a doctor, she needs a hospital.” Stevie was on Tod’s heels.
“I don’t fucking believe this shit. Someone shot Stella,” Ally snapped, trailing along as well.
Juno woofed, trotting with the pack, obviously agreeing with Ally.
“We need to boil water. We need clean towels,” Ava announced, following too.
“She ain’t birthin’ no baby! She’s got a gunshot wound!” Indy shouted.
“I know that!” Ava shouted back. “But we need a sterile environment.”
Lord save me from well-intentioned Rock Chicks.
Daisy took us to another, smaller room which had also been decorated with a heavy medieval hand and Mace stopped and turned.
I saw Luke cut off our followers and declare, “Private,” right before he shut the door in their faces leaving Daisy, Mace, Luke and me in the room.
“This is no big deal,” I announced.
Mace set me on my feet but his hands went back, firm, to my hips just below my waist, making it clear I was not to move away.
“Should we cut off the jeans?” Mace asked.
“No! These are my lucky Levi’s!” I yelled, trying to jerk my hips from his hands (this didn’t work).
Okay, so, maybe the jeans weren’t so lucky since I’d been shot in them still, I didn’t want them cut up.
“Would be optimal but we’ll peel ‘em off, see how it goes.” Luke ignored my outburst.
“I’ll get the first aid. I know a doctor who’ll come here,” Daisy said.
“Get it and call him,” Mace ordered.
“You betcha,” Daisy replied and her eyes found mine. “We’ll get you taken care of, sugar bunch, not to worry.” Then she was off.
Mace’s hands were at my fly.
“Hey! What’re you doing?” I snapped and slapped at his hands. He caught my wrists and gave them a small jerk so I stopped struggling.
“Stella, we have to get the jeans off and see the wound,” Mace explained calmly.
Nope. That was not gonna happen.
“No you don’t. Let me call Floyd. He and Emily will –”
“You aren’t calling Floyd,” Mace stated.
“I am,” I retorted and shook my hair angrily for good measure.
“You aren’t,” Mace repeated.
“I am!” I shouted.
I started struggling, got my wrists free and then started slapping his hands again.
This went on for half a second before he caught my wrists again and pulled them around my back. The front of my body hit the front of his and I stilled at the shock of it.
“Cuff her,” Mace said to Luke.
I unstilled.
“What?” I screamed, back to struggling in earnest.
There was a clink and my hands were cuffed behind my back. Then Luke gripped my waist holding me still and Mace worked on my jeans.
Please tell me this is not happening, my brain begged.
Mace unbuttoned the button and I heard and felt the zip going down.
This was happening.
“I’m not wearing any underwear,” I lied.
“I’ll close my eyes,” Mace lied back.
“I won’t,” Luke put in.
Shitsofuckit!
I decided to stop talking and stop struggling. I also decided this was good, no this was great. No. This was absolutely fantastic. The longer this went on, the more I hated Mace and since I’d spent a year loving him and not having him, hating was a much, much better emotion to hold onto.
Mace went into a crouch and, carefully and slowly, he peeled down my jeans. Down, down, just over the wound at the very bottom of the hip, right before my leg started. I sucked in breath between my teeth when he exposed it, he stopped and his hands closed around it, one on my hip, one on my thigh.
I could swear I was blushing. Since his hands and his mouth had been there and everywhere and he’d seen me in much less than just my pants rolled down, exposing a pair of plain, white, shorts-style panties with a little pink bow, well, I shouldn’t be blushing.
But I was.
“Flesh wound,” he muttered.
“Told you,” I hissed, powering through the blush.
Mace came up from the crouch but still close, right in my space.
“We’ll clean it and Daisy’s doctor can stitch it,” he told me.
“Then can I call Floyd?” I asked.
“I told you, not until we debrief.”
“I didn’t agree to that.”
“I wasn’t giving you an option.”
My eyes bugged out, beyond pissed off, rocketing straight to angry as hell.
Before I could blow, Luke asked from behind me, “Do you want me to uncuff her?”
“No,” Mace said.
“Yes,” I said at the same time.
Not surprisingly, Luke didn’t uncuff me.
“Sit down. I’ll take off your boots so we can get the jeans off,” Mace demanded.
“Stop bossing me around and I’ll take off my own boots, thank you very much,” I shot back.
“That’ll be hard to do with your hands cuffed behind you,” Mace returned.
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“Uncuff me then,” I retorted.
“Stella,” Mace said warningly.
“Mace,” I returned the gesture.
Mace sighed and looked over my head and I knew he was looking at Luke. I also knew from the expression on his face that he was also looking for patience.
I heard Luke chuckle.
It hit me then that I was standing in a strange house; I had a gunshot wound, my hands cuffed behind my back and my jeans pulled down around my thighs.
Worse than that, Linnie’d had the back of her head blown off and Buzz was out there somewhere without my hand to hold onto.
I looked down at my boots then I felt the tears come to my eyes.
“This is humiliating,” I whispered, blinking back the tears.
Immediately after I uttered the words, I felt Luke’s presence retreat just as Mace got deeper in my space. His hands came to either side of my neck and I sucked in breath at the feel of their warm strength.
God, I missed it when he touched me.
“Kitten,” he murmured and my eyes flew to his.
His eyes had grown soft. I hadn’t seen that look in a long time.
I missed that too.
“Don’t call me that,” I whispered.
His eyes flashed yet again with something I couldn’t decipher and, still in a voice that was deep, low and sweet, he said, “Stella.”
“Take your hands off me.” I kept at it, ignoring the flash, ignoring the soft look, at a place in my life where I could deal knowing there was no Mace in it and not about to slide back. “Uncuff me and go away. Send in the girls, they’ll help me get my jeans and boots off and clean me up.”
“I’m not leaving you,” Mace told me.
“Go,” I replied.
“No.”
I closed my eyes tight and sucked in a breath. Then straightened my back and opened them again.
In a strong, steady, no-nonsense voice, I stated, “Please. Go.”
Mace stared at me a beat. It became two. Then it slid to three. Then his eyes flicked over my head.
“Uncuff her.”
Luke uncuffed me, the door opened and Daisy shot in.
“I called the doctor. He lives around the corner and he’s on his way. I got the first aid kit and some cotton balls and some alcohol and some hydrogen peroxide and some clean towels and a whole load of other stuff. I didn’t know what you’d need,” she announced, bustling into the room, her arms loaded so high you could barely see her head. She peeked around the pile and smiled at me. “And I got you some of my track bottoms so you’ll have something to wear.” She tossed the whole lot on the couch.
Mace and Luke went to the door.
“She wants you,” Luke told the congregation outside and they surged in, all the Rock Chicks with new arrivals Jules, Jet and Roxie, gay guys and my dog, forcing Mace and Luke to push through the crowd.
Mace kept walking and I watched his departing back.
Luke turned at the door, his eyes hit mine and his chin lifted. I felt the chin lift was an indication of respect. Respect that I didn’t freak out when I got shot or at all. Respect that I let them get on with what they had to do and maybe a bit of respect that I held my own, even though I didn’t win, with Mace. This made me feel funny, a funny I’d never felt in my life except when I was onstage.
Then Luke stepped out and closed the door behind him.
“Oh girlie, look at that. That’s nothing. Just a flesh wound,” Tod declared, head cocked, finger to his cheek, eyes staring at my hip.
“He left,” I whispered, my gaze still on the door.
“What’s that, sugar?” Daisy was pushing me toward some towels that were now spread on the couch.
“Nothing,” I replied and let myself be pushed.
* * * * *
“You okay?” Indy asked.
She and Ally were making up the pull out bed in the room where I’d endured the humiliation of Mace pulling down my jeans. I was putting pillowcases on pillows.
Under strict Lee edict, the Rock Chicks and Hot Bunch were staying the night at The Castle. Apparently they were at war with some guy named Sid and The Castle was out of the way, had a security system that included camera surveillance outside and was “covered” by an army of men employed by Marcus, Daisy’s husband (Daisy and Marcus lived in The Castle, for your information). It had the added benefit of not having its windows shot out in a recent drive-by.
Daisy was in seventh heaven. She was treating this like a co-ed slumber party, not that her big mansion had become a scary-as-shit impromptu safe house. She issued orders to the dark-suited members of her husband’s army to go out and buy toothbrushes, contact lens supplies and food so she could serve a “Big Ole Stick to Your Ribs Southern Breakfast” (her words). She handed out nightgowns and toiletries and she assigned bedrooms. She had a goodly number of rooms but Ally was forced to take a couch and, in deference to my injury, I got a pull out bed. I didn’t know where Mace was sleeping or if he was even staying there and didn’t care (well, I cared, but I tried not to).
“Yeah, I’m fine,” I lied to Indy.
“You are so not fine,” Ally muttered.
“I’m fine, it hardly hurts at all,” I told Ally.
I was talking about my hip. The doctor came and cleaned it, shot me up with something to numb it and then stitched it. After he was done, he dressed it, gave me some pain killers and took off again, maybe to do another clandestine stitch up somewhere in the early morning dark of Denver. The whole thing took less than an hour.
“I’m not talking about your leg,” Indy said.
I threw the pillow at the head of the pull out and grabbed the other one.
“What are you talking about?” I asked.
“She’s talking about Mace,” Ally told me.
“What about Mace?” I played dumb.
“Chickie, you aren’t fooling anyone,” Ally replied.
“I’m not trying to fool anyone.” This was another lie.
“Yeah you are, most especially yourself,” Indy said softly.
Effing hell.
“It was over a long time ago,” I explained.
“It was over then when the Hot Bunch’s women got targeted by a criminal overlord, you wouldn’t have been called out, exposed and shot at,” Ally pointed out logically.
This was true. This was also something to mull over, later, privately, perhaps over some risotto and a nice, chilled glass of pinot grigio.
“Can we talk about this later?” I asked, all of a sudden exhausted. I threw the other pillow at the head of the bed.
Ally opened her mouth. Indy shot her a look. Ally closed her mouth. They smoothed the covers and made to move out.
“Just as long as we do talk about it later,” Ally said on her way out, not about to be silenced for long by Indy.
“Goodnight,” I called, giving no assurances.
“Later,” Indy replied and she closed the door.
I carefully took off Daisy’s cream, velour, Juicy Couture track bottoms but left on the snug, white t-shirt she’d given me.
“It’s new, haven’t worn it yet so I haven’t broken in the chest area,” Daisy informed me, circling her extraordinary bosoms with a pointed, frosty white-polished, ultra long finger-nailed finger to make her point. Ava had seized my Heidi shirt which had a bit of blood on it and disappeared, muttering something about stain removal.
I took the pain killers using a glass of water Daisy brought me, got in bed and stared at the ceiling.
My first thoughts were of Linnie and Buzz. Then, for peace of mind, because thoughts of Linnie were too difficult to bear and because I no longer had my phone so I could call Buzz and see how he was doing because Mace had confiscated it; my thoughts went to the final chapter of the weird and wild evening.
After getting stitched up and changing clothes, the Rock Chicks were called into a Tribe Meeting by Lee.
We all sat in Daisy’s big room. The gathering had grown bigger. Jet’s fiancé
, Eddie Chavez was there. Roxie’s boyfriend, Hank Nightingale as well. There was a handsome man who I found out was Marcus Sloan, Daisy’s husband. Bobby, Matt and Ike, all Nightingale Men, had also arrived. Bobby was a barrel-chested, sandy-blond behemoth; Matt was a fit, also-blond, cute guy; Ike was light-skinned black man, shaved bald with a cool-as-shit tattoo you could see slithering up his neck and down his arm around the sleeve and collar of his t-shirt. The man who stopped my retreat earlier was Nick, Jules’s uncle.
There was also a guy I didn’t know, he looked a lot like Eddie but definitely as yet untamed by domesticity and, by the looks of him, untamable. His eyes came to me when I walked in, I thought because I was the only one injured in the night’s proceedings. His eyes didn’t leave me, though. They felt hot on me. So hot, they made me feel hot but in a nice way, a way I hadn’t felt under the gaze of a man in a very long time. Eventually, it made me feel so hot, I had to look away.
Lee “briefed” us about the situation. Some guy named Sid was under investigation by the police (for your information, when he said, “police”, it didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out he meant Hank and Eddie). The police had partnered with the Nightingale Team to hasten the act of bringing Sid down. Mace was overseeing the Take Sid Down Project for the team. Other entities were recruited and my guess those “other entities” were Marcus Sloan and his be-suited, big-gun-toting army.
They were close to something; Sid didn’t like it so Sid declared war by going after the girls. Lee knew this not only because it was obvious but also because he’d had a phone call five minutes after the precisely timed shootings and drive-bys. The caller informed him that he should take this as a warning. Either they backed off or Sid’s boys were going to pick off the Rock Chicks one by one.
Me getting shot was not planned, I was only supposed to get shot at. Again, I would take this opportunity to remind you I was the Queen of Super Shitty Bad Luck.
This information of certain death to the Rock Chicks was met with the vague murmur here and there. For myself, I was totally flipped out as threats of one by one killings of myself and my friends, hell, of anyone, was wont to do. Everyone else acted like this was a small bother, like getting a splinter, irritating but not much more.
Effing hell.
Lee told The Tribe that Daisy and Marcus would be our hosts for the evening and we’d get our orders the next day.
Rock Chick Reckoning Page 3