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

Damn.

“I was drunk,” I lied.

“You were not.” He called me on it.

“Alexander Skarsg?rd got me to feelin’ sentimental,” I snapped.

“That, from you, I can believe,” Vance muttered.

I swept a hand above my desk. “Does it look like I don’t have things to do? Once I color code your mission tonight, I have a year’s worth of holiday stickers to stick into my planner, and that shit includes Flag Day and cyber Monday and Palm Sunday, so it’s gonna be intense. In other words, I got shit to do.”

“Why’d you say no?” Lee asked.

Oh no.

This question did not bode well.

And the intent way he was examining my face boded even worse.

“This really isn’t your business,” I replied quietly.

Lee held my eyes.

But he’d broken the seal.

“You not into him?” Luke asked.

I turned my attention to Luke. “I already got a full life, don’t need anything making it fuller.”

“You’re into him,” Luke whispered.

Shit.

“There’s full, Shirleen, then there’s full,” Vance noted.

“Are we really standing around my desk talking about my love life?” I demanded.

“No,” Lee stated shortly. “We’re standin’ around it talking about the fact you don’t have one.”

“And how’s that your business?” I queried sharply.

Every single man, including nerdy Brody, leaned back from my desk in badass affront (the badass part not including Brody).

Okay, I had to give them that since I meddled in almost all of theirs (save Brody, who didn’t have one (yet) and Lee, considering I wasn’t around when he and Indy hooked up—okay, all of theirs).

“This isn’t the same,” I stated.

“Yeah, you’re right. This isn’t the same as you helpin’ Ava get dressed up to go out on a date with another guy when she was sleepin’ in my bed,” Luke rumbled.

Oh Lordy.

“That wasn’t a date,” I reminded him. “It was a thank-you dinner. And anyway, Ava was the first Rock Chick I was in charge of. I didn’t have a lot of experience.”

This was now years ago, the woman was wearing his ring, and he still did not look happy this event occurred.

Damn, I told that girl it was a bad idea. Did she listen to me? Noooooo. She went. On a thank-you dinner that seemed a lot like a date with a hot guy the man whose bed she was sleeping in didn’t like all that much, primarily because he’d asked the woman who was sleeping in his bed out to a thank-you dinner that was really a date.

And now she was still sleeping in Luke’s bed, doing it with a ring on it, and was she paying for that shit she pulled?

Noooooo.

She was getting the business.

Regular.

While I’d named my vibrator Eustace because he knew me better than any man on earth.

And I was getting Ava’s man all up in my business.

“And that guy she went out on a date with is who my sister is now livin’ with,” Lee put in.

Hmm.

I shut up.

“You went with Sadie when she reported her rape.”

After Hector spoke, I pulled my lips in and looked at him.

“You’re a member of this family, Shirleen,” he said quietly. “Once you’re in, there’s no way out. What I’m thinkin’ you might not get with this is,” he flapped Moses’s card in front of himself, “that’s a good thing.”

“He crashed his cart into mine at King Soopers,” I blurted.

Me!

Shirleen Jackson.

Blurting!

To badasses!!!

“Deliberately?” Mace growled.

Oh boy.

Short-fuse Mace.

He was getting it regular too, from his woman Stella, so his fuse should be less short.

But he, like all the Hot Bunch boys, was of the Roam variety.

You didn’t fuck with someone he loved.

“I’d been kinda, um . . . running away from him all through the frozen food section,” I explained.

Vance’s head dropped and turned to the side.

I still saw his shit-eating grin.

And his body shaking with silent laughter.

What I said didn’t make Mace much happier.

“So you clearly didn’t want his attention, he shoulda took the hint and backed the fuck off.”

All of the men dropped their heads and looked to the side at that.

“Yeah, and how’d that work for you when you so delicately pursued Stella after she told you repeatedly you guys were over?” I asked.

Mace’s jaw went hard.

“Unh-hunh,” I said on a head snap.

Lee came back to the conversation before I could carry on about how he’d not backed off from Indy when she’d tried to make him do so (and Vance had not done that with Jules, or Luke from Ava, and so on). “So you’re into him, and he’s chasing you through the frozen food section. Why’d you say no?”

“He’s attractive, but not my type.”

“What’s your type?” Vance asked curiously.

“Not him.”

Brody piped up. “Alexander Skarsg?rd. Gerard Butler. Dwayne Johnson. Idris Elba—”