Rock Chick Reborn (Rock Chick #9)(6)

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.