Rock Chick Revenge (Rock Chick #5)(40)

Needless to say, my workout nearly kicked my ass. I was so pumped up and Riley was so pissed off, I pushed myself hard and he ran me ragged. I tried to talk to Riley a couple of times but he wasn’t in a talkative mood. He was in a kick Ava’s ass mood therefore I quit trying to talk to him when I couldn’t talk at all because I was breathing too hard.

After we were done, I called Luke, saying only, “We’re done,” then I hung up on him.

Ha!

We showered and changed into normal clothes and I took my sweet time in the locker room in order to make Luke wait. I did my hair, my makeup and put on a pair of jeans, a cornflower-blue blouse with a silver-thread design on the front, a square neckline and cap sleeves and finished my ensemble with silvery-blue flip-flops (because seriously, Luke was in the picture, I hated him and thought he was a jerk, but I had been crushing on him since I was eight, I wasn’t going to look like garbage when he was hanging around).

I breezed through the reception area but Luke wasn’t in the reception area, he was waiting outside in the Range Rover which made my efforts at “breezing” moot.

We got in the Range Rover and Sissy suggested happily, “I know, let’s get some coffee!”

I turned in my seat and glared at her. She grinned at me. Luke took us to Fortnum’s.

We got there and everyone was there. Indy, Ally, Daisy, Shirleen, Jules, Jet, Roxie, Vance, some guy who looked a lot like Hank (who I found out was Lee, Indy’s fiancé and Luke’s boss) and even Matt.

Shirleen took one look at me and announced, “Nope. They haven’t done it yet. You’re out,” she said to Matt and then smiled at me. “I’m still in. I got my money down that you get the business on Monday.”

I felt the heat hit my face just as my stomach dropped.

Sissy, to my total disbelief, burst out laughing and asked, “Which days are free? I want in.”

Oh… my… God.

“That’s it!” I yelled at her. “You aren’t my best friend anymore. I’m filing for best friend divorce.”

Sissy just kept laughing.

“You must be Sissy. Come here, child, sit by Shirleen. I think we got Wednesday open but that’s nearly a whole week after this all started. It ain’t good odds,” Shirleen informed her.

Everyone was staring at us and I whirled on Luke who was standing behind me. “This is all your fault.”

“Babe,” he said, his eyes warm, his tone gentle and affectionate.

Fuckity, f**k, f**k, f**k.

I like it when he calls us “babe”. It’s sweet, Good Ava said.

It isn’t sweet, it’s HOT, Bad Ava contradicted.

I dropped my head and looked at my toes. They were painted hot pink. I inspected them because if I was thinking about my toenail color I wouldn’t think about how my life had gone out of my control.

This wasn’t a smart thing to do, letting my guard down when Luke was close. His boots came into my vision very close to my toes and his hand wrapped around the back of my neck. His fingers started to knead my muscles and I lifted my eyes to his.

“You’re tight,” he said low, eyes no longer just warm but ultra warm.

“Are you surprised?” I snapped. “My life is total shit. I’m completely stressed out.”

His fingers kept kneading but he also put a different kind of pressure there so that I leaned closer to him. I had to tilt my head back further and, so I didn’t topple over, my hands went to his stomach (which, by the way, was hard as a rock).

He tipped his face to mine and murmured, “After we talk tonight, I’ll give you a rubdown.”

Ho-ly crap.

A rubdown from Lucas Stark. I had barely processed the kiss-and-carry through the living room, I couldn’t even begin to contemplate a rubdown. I felt my ni**les tingle.

“I need cookies,” I told him to move talk away from rubdowns. “Cookies are the only thing that works on stress.”

That and tequila but I wasn’t going to get snockered anywhere near Luke. I lost all inhibitions when I got snockered and that would not be good.

The warmth in his eyes was tinged with amusement. “I’ll also get you cookies.”

“Nutter Butters and Chips Ahoy, not the soft ones, the hard ones,” I ordered, blathering on for some ungodly reason. “And those Pepperidge Farms Milano thingies. And Oreos with double stuff but not dipped in chocolate, because that’s too much of a good thing. And if I have Oreos, I have to have milk. I can’t eat Oreos without milk.”

He was laughing now, softly. I liked the sound and I liked that I could make him laugh. I’d always liked it when I made him laugh.

Boy, was I screwed.

“Anything else?” he asked.

“I think that’ll do it.”

His eyes moved from me to across the room then back to me. “Vance and I got shit to do. Stay here. If you go home or anywhere, go with Lee, Matt, Duke or Tex.”

I knew Duke. He’d worked at Fortnum’s for years and was like Indy’s second father. He was an old Harley guy, long gray braid, gray beard, always wearing a black leather vest and a red bandana wrapped around his forehead. I didn’t know any Tex.

“Tex?”

“Coffee guy,” Luke told me. “You might have one of his coffees, it may soothe the cookie craving.”