Rock Chick Renegade (Rock Chick #4)(24)

“You wanna know, I’ll show you,” he repeated.

“Wow. Thanks,” I was still forgetting.

“I like Nick,” he said conversationally.

I couldn’t help myself, I smiled. “I do too.”

“What do you call him?” he asked what I thought was a strange question.

“I call him Nick.” I replied.

“No, he isn’t your Dad, but he is, so what do you call him?”

I stared at him. “How do you know that?”

“He and I talked.”

I went still. “About what?”

“About him raisin’ you, about your family dyin’, your granddad dyin’, your aunt dyin’.”

I gasped. I did this partly because Nick had apparently shared a great deal of information about me but mainly because Nick never talked about Auntie Reba, not to anyone, but me.

“He told you about Auntie Reba?”

“Yeah.”

I didn’t know what to do with that because I felt it said something about Vance that Nick would trust him enough upon first meeting him to mention it. It freaked me way, the hell, out.

I shirked off my freak out and forged ahead. “What else did he tell you?” I asked, feeling uncomfortable with the knowledge that he knew way too much about me.

“He told me I was your first date in five years.”

“Oh my God,” I whispered, horrified. I was going to kill Nick.

“And he told me your birthday is Thursday.”

I decided to be quiet and hoped that our talk wasn’t going to be a long one. After two minutes I was over it and wanted to shut down, move on, fill my mind with something else, anything else, but Vance.

Vance watched me. I kept silent.

“Tell me about Park,” he demanded softly.

“No,” I said instantly and pushed away. The conversation was officially over.

His arms tightened, he came up, twisting me to my back and his body rolled into me so he was half on me, his thigh thrown over both of mine, pinning me to the bed.

He looked down at me. “You already know we investigated you,” he said.

“Yeah.”

“You’re a busy woman.”

I stared at him and kept silent.

“Even before this shit went down with Park your name is all over police records. You worked at a battered woman’s shelter, got involved in a couple of messy cases. You got mentions in a number of kids’ files, comin’ down to the station when they got into trouble, puttin’ in a word for them. Got ‘em out and into King’s.”

I stayed silent.

“Park was different,” Vance said in a way that I knew wasn’t a question.

I sucked in my lips and stayed quiet.

“So are Roam and Sniff, aren’t they?”

I couldn’t keep it up. “They’re my boys.”

He watched me, his eyes scanning my face and something came over him, not the sexy something, something else. Something that looked an awful lot like concern.

“Jules, you know, you gotta keep a distance. You don’t, it’ll destroy you.”

“I can keep a distance.”

“Yeah? Like spendin’ your nights puttin’ your ass on the line, makin’ drug dealers pay for what they did to Park?”

My eyes slid to the side. “Um…” I mumbled.

“And runnin’ around lookin’ after two teenage runaways like they were your own flesh and blood?”

I brought my eyes back to him and stayed silent.

“That shit with Roam today at Fortnum’s… Jesus, Jules, you aren’t his sister, you’re his social worker.”

“I know that.”

“Didn’t look like it to me.”

“Don’t tell me how to do my job,” I clipped.

“I’m tryin’ to talk some sense into you.”

“You don’t know these boys.”

“Yes I do. I grew up with kids like them.”

This shut me up because that night I learned he had. It was somewhere I didn’t allow my mind to go because I hated the thought of someone as magnificent as Vance Crowe living on the street but now he said it straight out, it forced my mind to go there.

I felt my discomfort edge away and I just stopped myself from touching him.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered.

He shook his head and his eyes got hard. “Jules, listen to me closely. I’m not another one of your causes. I survived. It was shit and I nearly didn’t but I came out the other side. What I went through, it made me who I am. You do your job, only your job, those boys’ll come out the other side too.”

Then I whispered, don’t ask me why, but I did, “I love them.”

He watched me a beat then his eyes changed again, not to the concerned look, or the sexy look, but the look he’d given me that day at Fortnum’s.

It touched me somewhere deep; somewhere I’d forgotten I had.

“They’re good kids, they make me laugh,” I went on, unable to stop myself. “They’re smart, sharp as tacks and not just street smart. All that and they’ve had no love, Vance, no love in their lives at all. Only abuse. They didn’t leave home because of teenage rebellion or family misunderstanding or minds not meeting. They left home because they had to, to survive or they’d go crazy or get hurt. The only people in their lives they can trust, ever could trust, are each other… and me. Now Park’s gone, it’s just the three of us. Park was their leader. He was the best of them, keeping them safe and straight even as he searched for release for himself. Without him, I don’t know if I can save them.”