Rock Chick Redemption (Rock Chick #3)(15)

I wasn’t getting a good feeling about this.

Daisy grabbed my arm and power-walked me the few blocks to a fast-food burger joint on the corner of Broadway and Alameda.

While we were standing in line waiting for my order which consisted of an ultra-sized cheeseburger meal and four extra orders of ultra-sized fries, she said to me, “Al right, tel Daisy all about it.”

“About what?” I asked.

“About whatever’s making your eyes sad.”

Holy cow. Was I that obvious?

“Nothing’s making me sad,” I lied.

She looked at me for a while. The counter guy passed me my bag and then she said, “When you’re ready to talk, I’m here, comprende?”

I nodded.

She let it go. Left it at that and I liked her al the more.

Though not enough to share, but I did feel badly about it.

We walked back a lot slower, mainly because I was consuming my ultra-sized cheeseburger meal and Daisy was programming phone numbers into my cel phone (just in case).

When we got to Fortnum’s I handed out the fries, sucked down my diet cola (because even if I’d just hoovered through an ultra-sized meal, there was a girlie law that said you had to have it with a diet drink) and ordered another caramel latte.

The customer crush was mostly gone, Daisy and Indy were talking at the book counter, Duke had disappeared and Uncle Tex was alone behind the espresso machine.

“I’m takin’ it that your loser boyfriend is your loser f**kin’

ex-boyfriend since you were holdin’ hands with Hank last night.”

I sighed. “Can we talk about it later?”

“Got a lot of respect for Hank, he’s good people. Tel me you’re done with that weasely motherf*cker.”

“I’m done with Bil y, I’ve been done with him for a long time. He’s just not done with me. I’m having dinner with Hank but only because he’s persuasive—”

“I bet,” Uncle Tex broke in.

“It’s just dinner. Nothing more, not until I can finish up with Bil y.”

“Dinner may be just dinner in Chicago but it ain’t in Denver. These boys don’t f**k around, you know what I’m sayin’?” Tex asked.

I’d already learned that.

He went on anyway. “Indy was livin’ with Lee after ‘bout a day. Jet was with Eddie from my count, after less than a week. The way Hank’s lookin’ at you, I’m guessin’ less than forty eight hours.”

Good God.

He continued. “I’m your f**kin’ uncle and I like that boy enough to say I’d be doin’ cartwheels, you end up with him.” Boy was I in trouble.

“We’l talk about it later, okay?”

He stared at me awhile then he said, “Hang out in here for a few hours then we’l go someplace and talk. I don’t want you wanderin’ off and gettin’ abducted or car bombed.”

My eyes bugged out and he shrugged. “It’s been known to happen.”

Good grief.

I settled into the couch, chose Springsteen and made it through “Candy’s Room”, “Incident on 57th Street” and was enjoying “Thunder Road” even though my hangover had come back with a vengeance when I felt movement beside me on the couch and something pressed against my hip.

My eyes opened.

Hank was sitting next to me, his hip against mine.

Shit.

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

For some reason, this made him smile and my stomach clutched.

He plucked the MP3 player out of my hand and turned it to look at the display. His eyes went lazy at what he saw but he touched it with his thumb and the mega-blast of music powered down to seriously un-rock ‘n’ rol levels.

Then, he leaned down, his fingers found the cord to the earphones which was resting against my chest, he tugged it and my right earphone popped out of my ear just as his lips made it there.

“You’re shouting,” he whispered

Goddammit.

I was such a loser.

“Though, Springsteen is worth it,” he finished.

“Don’t you have a job?” I asked, when his head came up and his hand went away from my chest and settled opposite my body on the couch by my hip, making him lean into me al the more.

I was trying to ignore the fact that although it wasn’t even noon, I’d made a fool of myself at a used bookstore in Denver at least half a dozen times.

“Came by to get coffee,” Hank answered.

“Oh.”

“Want to have lunch?”

“I’m having lunch with Uncle Tex.”

He looked at the coffee counter. I moved my head on the couch seat and looked too. There were four people in line and two people waiting at the end of the counter for their coffee. Uncle Tex was working the espresso machine like a mad man, banging and crashing like each coffee needed to be created with as much violence as possible.

“He might be delayed,” Hank said, looking back at me.

“I just had an ultra-sized cheeseburger meal,” I told Hank,

“I’m not hungry.”

His eyes drifted down my body then up to my face again.

It’d been a long time since I’d done it but I was pretty sure I was blushing.