Sissy shook her head and Shirleen linked her arm through Sissy’s.

“We’ll watch it together, like, right now. Part of my job description includes lookin’ after the prison… I mean, our guests. Lee won’t mind I watch a little leather jockey shorts action.”

Hector had disappeared behind a door. Shirleen pulled ahead of me, dragging Sissy with her, clearly keen on getting to her movie. Sissy looked over her shoulder, her face kind of scared, I smiled at her and waved as she and Shirleen disappeared in the door where Hector had gone.

At that moment another door opened and Luke was there. He looked at me, gave me a grin and I stopped.

“Hey,” I said when he made it to me.

“I see she made the right decision,” he replied.

“Yeah.”

His grin went into a full-fledged smile and not only because he was happy my bestest best friend was not going to disappear.

“So, this means you owe me again,” he noted.

Uh-oh.

“Actually I owe Hector more than I owe you. She was going to go back to Dom but he talked her out of it,” I tried.

He shook his head, clearly not agreeing with me.

Foiled!

I knew it was a long shot but he never gave me anything.

“Tonight, I call this marker or your punishment marker. Your choice.”

“Luke,” I said softly, not about to let him call any markers and definitely not letting him call the punishment one. I was never going to touch myself while Luke watched. I’d already gone way passed my sexual adventure boundary. Okay sure, one could argue that I liked leaping over that boundary. In fact this morning, about a nanosecond after Luke flipped me into the second position and slid inside me I decided that I was never going to have sex in any other position but that one ever again (until he did the third one, of course).

Still.

“Babe.” Clearly Luke was not about to be denied and, I could swear by the amused look on his face he knew my thoughts.

I crossed my arms on my chest. He gave me a half-grin.

“Lucas Stark, don’t you think that you –”

He interrupted me. “Don’t you have a gig to get to?”

I looked at my watch. It was well past six o’clock. We were meeting at My Brother’s Bar at seven for dinner and drinks before we went to the gig and I had at least an hour’s worth of Rock Chick on the Town prep work to do to my face, hair and wardrobe.

“I need to get home, like, now!” I said, bouncing in my Crocs.

Luke’s body shifted, his arm curved around my shoulders and he walked me down the hall, murmuring, “Let’s get you home.”

“Bye Sissy!” I shouted.

“Enjoy Stella,” she shouted back.

“Bye Shirleen!” I shouted.

“Don’t get shot at!” Shirleen shouted back.

“Bye Hot Bunch Boys!” I shouted.

No answer.

“Hot Bunch Boys?” Luke asked, pushing through the door into reception, his arm moved from around my shoulders to curl around my neck.

Oops.

In the immortal words of Britney Spears (or whoever wrote that song for her), I did it again.

Prudently, I decided after that to keep my mouth shut.

Luke let it go, we got in his Porsche and he took me “home”.

Which, by the way, was the loft.

Chapter Eighteen

Fight

We were listening to Stella and The Blue Moon Gypsies playing “Jessica” by The Allman Brothers Band. Indy, Ally, Jules, Daisy, Roxie, Jet and I were up front, right at the stage, shaking our booties like the crazy Rock Chicks we were.

Luke had taken me back to the loft and the minute the elevator doors opened I flew into my getting ready to rock preparation. Mace came over while I was in the bathroom laying on my Rock Makeup.

Before he left to do Secret Luke Things in the Night (his planned activities, I will note, he didn’t share with me but then again I didn’t ask, probably because I didn’t want to know), Luke walked into the bathroom, grabbed my hips, twirled me around, pressed me back against the sink and laid a hot and heavy one on me.

When he lifted his head, I asked (or more like mouthed, but with a bit of sound coming out), “What was that for?”

He framed my face with his hands (which for Luke was a weird thing to do, a sweet weird thing but weird nonetheless) and stared at me, a strange look on his face that made my stomach feel funny but in a good way, a scary good way. What he didn’t do was answer. He simply kissed my nose and left me with Mace.

I decided it was best for my peace of mind not to think about what was on Luke’s mind when he touched and kissed me like that. It was even better for my peace of mind not to think about what I felt when Luke touched and kissed me like that.

Instead, I focused on rock ‘n’ roll – my constant, my touchstone, the only thing other than Sissy that could get me through anything.

I pulled on my supremely faded jeans and a thick tan belt, the leather tooled with flowers and vines that had been painted. I topped this with a fitted, chambray cowgirl shirt, complete with pearl snap buttons at the breast pockets, down the front and four up the cuffs. I wore this over a white tank top and finished the outfit off with tons of silver and my fawn-suede cowboy boots.

It was cowboy chic, not rock ‘n’ roll chic but I was in Denver and Denverites swung both ways.

Mace wasn’t Mr. Talkative. In fact he was actually kind of broody but, like all of the Hot Bunch, this character trait worked for him (in a big way). I did find out that his name wasn’t actually Mace, his name was Kai Mason, he was from Hawaii and he wasn’t talkative. I found out the last bit because the first two bits took me a gazillion questions to get out of him so eventually I gave up.

The girls (and Mace) did dinner then we all went to the gig at Herman’s Hideaway on Broadway.

Santo had disappeared which I decided to take as a good sign that the bad guys were no longer after me. However I wondered what this meant regarding my tenure at Luke’s loft since, if the bad guys weren’t after me anymore, I wouldn’t need to stay with Luke anymore.

Another thought to put on the list to consider later.

We sent word to Stella that we were there but other than that we didn’t bother her pre-gig. As always she’d have a drink with us during a break.

Stella and the Gypsies came out only fifteen minutes late (they were usually half an hour late or more). They looked pissed off but ready to rock. This wasn’t unusual either, the band fought all the time. They were constantly in danger of breaking up but somehow, likely using all of the piss and vinegar she had (which was a lot), Stella kept them together. She was like the mother of a dysfunctional family and I knew (because she told me) that it took all her energy. If she wasn’t practicing guitar or the band wasn’t rehearsing, she was caught up in some band member’s mess. She did this because the Gypsies played so well together they were worth the struggle. She also did this because she cared about them, from what I knew probably more than they deserved.