“Charge interest. Make it worth his while. This isn’t rocket science boys. Yeesh,” I returned.
“That sounds like kind of a good idea,” the second man said.
“Twenty-five percent,” the first man told Uncle Vito.
“Ten percent,” Ren returned.
“Twenty,” the first man haggled.
“Ten,” Ren repeated.
“Fifteen,” the first man tried again.
“Ten. You take it or you got war with the Zanos,” Ren told him.
The three men shifted, not liking this idea but still not wanting to give up. I sighed, heavy and huge. Men!
“For goodness sake!” I snapped.
“We just want Vincetti,” the third man said.
“Dom’s a Zano,” Ren replied.
“We don’t want family trouble, just cut him loose,” the second man threw in.
Ren shook his head. They all looked at each other.
“All right, ten. Fuck,” the first man relented.
“Tell The Man he’ll have it in the hour,” Uncle Vito cut in.
Finally!
“While we’re here, we should get a coffee. I hear it’s good here,” the second man told the first man.
The third man’s eyes were on Eddie. “You think I could have my gun back?”
Eddie’s answer was to shove it in the back of his jeans then he pulled his badge out of his back pocket and clipped it on his belt.
“Shit,” the third man mumbled.
“What’ll it be?” Tex boomed.
The newest bad guys moved toward the espresso counter and some of the tension went out of the room. Not all of it, seeing as Detective Marker sat back down obviously deciding not to leave and Hank, Eddie and Duke took different, slightly more aggressive/defensive positions within the coffee area.
The door opened, the bell rang again and I turned around to see Luke, Vance, Matt, Lee and Hector striding in.
Luke’s eyes scanned me then they scanned the room then they stopped on the cookies. After he got a good look at the cookies, his eyes cut back to me.
“Babe,” he said on a half-grin.
“If there’s any time that’s Cookie Time, this is Cookie Time,” I stated the obvious.
“Why are Sid’s boys here?” Lee asked, standing by Luke.
“Who’s Sid?” I asked in return.
Lee’s head inclined toward the new bad guys.
“Oh, they were after Dom,” I replied.
“I know that. Why are they in my fiancée’s bookstore ordering coffee?” Lee went on.
Ee-yikes.
He sounded pretty unhappy.
“The situation is cool,” Dom put in and Lee’s eyes moved to him and they were even less happy.
Luke’s arm slid around my shoulders and he pulled me into his side. Without delay, I relaxed and put a hand to his abs, hooking my other thumb in the middle back belt loop of his cargoes.
“Ava settled it,” Ren informed Lee then, done with this topic, his gaze came to me. “You’re okay?”
I nodded. “Thanks for the cookies.”
He smiled and said quietly, “Anytime.”
Luke got tense beside me at the very mention of Ren ever buying me cookies again in this lifetime. Ren’s eyes moved to Luke and I got tense.
They had a Badass Faceoff for several beats then Ren jerked his chin and Luke did the same. Ren’s eyes came back to me, he gave me another smile, this one softer, less cocky and very sweet.
“Take care of yourself, honey,” he said.
Then he, weirdly, gave Ally a swift, unhappy look. Then he was gone.
“That’s our cue,” Uncle Vito stood.
“But we haven’t sorted things out with Sissy,” Dom protested.
“We’ll do it tomorrow,” Uncle Vito walked around the coffee table and bent to give Sissy a kiss on the cheek.
“Hang on, my shit’s sorted now. I want to talk to Sissy,” Dom pushed.
“Piss off, Dom,” Sissy said, standing and walking Uncle Vito to the door.
“Sis, baby,” Dom cajoled, giving her one of his killer smiles.
Sissy shot him a look, clearly immune to Dominic Vincetti’s killer smile. This made me smile.
“Tomorrow, after Ava’s recovered from the drama,” Uncle Vito ordered.
“Uncle Vito,” Dom said.
“Tomorrow,” Vito snapped.
Dom turned to Sissy, the killer smile gone. His face, I was shocked to see, looked serious. “I fucked up. I admit it, all right? I fucked up. It won’t happen again.”
Sissy kept on giving him the Sissy Glare.
Dom turned to me. “I fucked up, with my wife and with you. It was a shit thing to do.”
“You got that right,” I told him.
He turned back to Sissy and promised, “I can make it good between us again.”
She continued with the Sissy Glare and against my will I began to feel sorry for him. He had a huge audience but he seemed not to care. Any man would be humiliated, except maybe a man who genuinely wanted his wife back.
Wow.
I couldn’t process this and didn’t try. Instead I looked at Sissy to ascertain if she needed bestest best friend assistance and I saw she wasn’t backing down.
“Just think about that,” Dom urged quietly and it sounded like he sincerely wanted her to think about it and he wasn’t lying through his men-are-jerks teeth.
And, somehow I suspected, he wasn’t.
Then he and Uncle Vito were gone.
I watched as Sissy deflated right in front of me all the bravado just leaked right out of her.
“You okay?” I asked.
She shook her head.
“I think we’ve moved on to Tequila Time,” I said.
She nodded her head.
“My place!” Shirleen yelled. “I got tequila. I got rum. I got vodka and I got mixers. I even got popcorn. Someone should bring some tortilla chips and guacamole because I haven’t had breakfast and I’m definitely peckish.”
“I’ll bring cashews,” Indy said.
“I’ll bring the chips and it’ll only take a minute for me to mix up the guac,” Jet put in.
“I’ll bring turkey, swiss and rye. We’ll make sandwiches,” Roxie offered.
“Fucking hell,” Hank muttered
More offers were called as Luke curled me into his body. I looked up at him and his face was soft.
“You goin’ to the party?” he asked.
“How’s Noah?” I queried instead of answering.
He hesitated, pulled his lip between his teeth then let it go and shook his head.
I did not take this as a good sign. I sucked in air then breathed, “Is he dead?”
Luke shook his head again. “Broken neck. Bone pierced the spinal column. He’ll be paralyzed from the neck down for life.”
I shut my eyes tight. I really hated Noah, he conned me, stole from me, beat me up and worse. Still, even after all that, being paralyzed was a high price to pay. This hit me hard and even though he was a jerk, I felt bad for him, bad enough for my throat to get tight.
“Look at me, babe.”
I opened my eyes, caught his and told him, “I don’t feel like partying.”
His other arm went around me and got tight. “I didn’t think so.”
“That sucks for Noah,” I whispered.
“It sucks for Noah,” Luke agreed.
“Why do I care?” I asked.
“Because you’re a good person,” he answered.
“Do you care?”
As usual, brutally honest, he replied, “Nope.”
I rested my forehead on his shoulder. His fingers slid up and curled around my neck.
“It’s over,” I murmured.
“Yeah,” he said.
My arms went around his waist and I pressed in close. His fingers started kneading the muscles at my neck.
“What do you want to do, beautiful?” he asked.
I thought about it, an idea came
to me and I tilted my head back to look at him.
“Do you have a bike?” I asked.
He watched my face. “Got three.”
Of course, he had three.
“Can we ride?” I requested.
Luke grinned. “Absolutely.”
Chapter Thirty
Bliss
The elevator doors opened and I flew through them.
“Late!” I shouted, running to the dining room table. “I’m late!” I repeated unnecessarily.
I threw the shopping bags I was carrying on the table and scanned the loft.
Luke was sitting in the recliner. He was tipped back, footrest up, hands behind his head, watching the Rockies on the flat screen (even though if you stopped to listen you could hear the damn game through the windows we were that close to Coors Stadium). The new blinds were mostly closed all around so as not to let the glare of the sun hit the TV.
Mace and Matt were sitting on the couch with their feet up on the coffee table and hands curled around bottles of beer. Big Bobby, now fully recovered and back at work, had one of the new dining room table chairs (black lacquer, gray suede upholstered seat and back, sweeping lines, kick fucking ass) turned backwards and he was straddling it. Hank was sitting on the kitchen counter and he was holding a beer by its neck. Eddie’s head was in the fridge.
All the men had turned, eyes on me, as I ran across the loft to the dresser.
“Olivia came by, we got to talking and got behind on the decorating. Then Olivia, as she always does, invited herself to the party. Then Tod and Stevie decided everyone needed new outfits so, even though we had no time at all, we took a trip to the mall.” I stopped at the dresser, babbling on, like they were actually listening to me (which they probably were not) and I looked over my shoulder at Luke. “I think I spent too much money.”
I heard a phone ringing and Hank moved to answer it as Luke’s eyes cut to the dining room table, he took in the bags then his eyes moved back to me.
“An outfit takes six bags?” he asked.
“I also bought shoes,” I told him as I heard another cell phone ring.
“An outfit and shoes take six bags?” Luke slightly amended his question.
I turned back to the dresser and started digging through it, half in a panic. “I might have bought some other stuff.”
“I’ll be there in fifteen,” I heard Hank say to his phone.
“I’ll pick it up on my way home,” I heard Eddie say to his.
I found what I was looking for and snatched them out of the drawer with too much hurried energy. I managed to keep hold of the bra but my lavender satin panties with black lace flew through the air, landing on the floor five feet behind the couch.
All the men’s eyes went to the panties. My eyes went to the panties.
I thought perhaps that was the perfect time for me to learn how to become invisible just as I heard Luke chuckle.
“Time to go,” Big Bobby jumped up from his chair, swung it around and carried it back to the table.
I saw Mace and Matt make a move to get up as I ran to the undies and snatched them off the floor, balling them up in my fist and hiding them and the bra with my arms.
“No, it’s okay, I’ll get ready in the bathroom,” I told them, pretty sure I was blushing considering my face was on fire. “Finish the game.”
“Gotta go anyway,” Eddie put in. “Jet needs me to pick up some ice and drop it by Fortnum’s.”
“Apparently Roxie’s new dress has a back zip that she can’t reach,” Hank sounded partly amused, partly like he wasn’t intent on getting home to zip up the dress, but rather the other way around. Little did he know that I knew her dress didn’t even have a zip so someone was about to get lucky.
On that thought, I smiled to myself, ran to the bags, grabbed the ones I needed then ran to the bathroom.
“See you all there,” I called over my shoulder and slammed the door to the bathroom.
I pulled off my clothes and jumped in the shower.
* * * * *
The six weeks since my troubles finished hadn’t exactly been uneventful.
First up, we had the family meeting. Uncle Vito surprisingly stayed quiet while Dom tried to talk Sissy into giving him another chance. Ren and I kept quiet too even though I really, really didn’t want to and I could see Ren felt the same way. In the end, we didn’t have to say anything. Sissy told Dom to go jump in a lake and walked out of the room. I looked at the Zanos then gave out hugs (yes, even one to Dom, mainly because he looked like his world just came to an end) and followed her.
It wasn’t over. Not by half.
For the next month, Dom pursued Sissy like a man possessed. It appeared that not only did the shot she took to the face wake up the protective, hot-blooded, Italian husband but Sissy’s bitchy attitude was turning him on. Big time.
He ended up kidnapping her.
Which meant I ended up calling in Luke and the boys (again).
Luke and Vance found them in a condo in Vail but he came back sans Sissy.
“Why did you leave her there?” I demanded when he arrived at my place in the dead of night, woke me up and told me he found Sissy but didn’t have her.
“Babe,” he said, sitting on the bed and taking off his boots.
I waited for him to say more. He didn’t.
“Luke!” I snapped.
He twisted, angled onto the bed, landed full on top of me and my breath went out in a whoosh.
“They worked it out,” he told me after I’d sucked oxygen back into my lungs.
I narrowed my eyes at him. “She thinks he’s scum.”
“They worked it out,” he repeated.
“I don’t believe that.”
“Trust me, they worked it out.”
“How do you know? Did Sissy say that? Sometimes Dom can be –”
“Babe, trust me. I wouldn’t leave her there if I didn’t think it was a good thing.”
That shut me up because Luke really wouldn’t do that.
“Oh, all right,” I finally grumbled.
“Now.” His eyes were ink. “Let’s talk about what you owe me for finding her.”
I didn’t quibble. I’d learned that quick payback for the many times I fell in debt with Luke was definitely the way to go.
Anyway, every single time I was pretty certain I got more out of it than Luke did.
Second up, just as he promised, we had stayed at my place until the blinds were put in at the loft then we moved to his. We still weren’t sure which way to go. I liked my back porch and funky office. Luke liked the loft’s security and central location. In the end, Luke told me to do what I had to do to make the loft mine, thus the dining room table (so Tex, Mr. Kumar, Uncle Vito and I could play euchre which we did, quite a bit) and a variety of girlie things for the kitchen (but not too girlie, I bought all the KitchenAid appliances in black, the rest in black or red). Luke had my furniture moved into storage and had an agency rent out my place. The plan was we’d keep both properties, if we decided to move to my place later, we’d still have it to move to.
It was a decent compromise.
Even though I didn’t share it with Luke, I didn’t really care where we lived, just as long as we ended the day, and started a new one, in the same bed.
Last, the New Mom and apparently the New Marilyn and Sofia were driving me up the flipping wall. They had let me into the Barlow Bombshell Club which meant daily phone calls, lots of unsolicited advice on everything under the sun and constant getting into my (and Luke’s) business. At first, I thought it was kind of cool. Then I found it kind of annoying.
When I complained about it to Luke while lying full out on the couch, Luke on his back, being Zen, me pressed into his side, not reading the book I had propped on his chest, Luke said, “Gotta choose, babe, they are who they are. Either you’re in the club or you’re out.”
I sighed. He was right yet again. In the club it was.
I got out of the shower, did the whole ce
lebration preparation on body (the peony-scented lotion, Luke’s favorite), hair (loose and wild, Luke’s favorite) and makeup (party time drama, no other choice, it was party time) and turned to my shopping bags.
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