Rock Chick Reborn (Page 6)

“That’s my Christmas cover,” I explained. “I have one for Thanksgiving, Easter, the Fourth of July and one for when I’m wearing blacks and silvers, instead of browns and golds.”

“You change the cover of your planner with your outfit?” Vance asked.

“And the season,” I answered.

“That go on the business account too?” Lee asked.

I swung to him. “Hell no.”

Though the Thanksgiving, Easter, Fourth of July and etcetera stickers went on it because they had ones that said To Do.

“Ohmigod! Dope! You got planner stickers!” Brody, the Nightingale Investigations computer guru (meaning nerd, alternately meaning hacker, but mostly it was nerd) shrieked (see? nerd). He dashed around the desk to stand by me, his hand snaking out to grab the entire sheet that had stickers that said, Jammin’ on my planner. He looked at me with bright shining in his eyes that was undimmed through his Buddy Holly glasses. “Can I have a sheet of these?”

Since those were on the NI dime too, I stated magnanimously, “Knock yourself out.”

“Whoa!” Brody yelled, looking back down to my desk. “Where’d you get these ones that say ‘don’t be a dick’ and ‘fuck this’? I gotta get some of those.”

I decided not to meet any eyes as I replied, “Take one. I bought five.”

“Yee ha!” he cried, snatching it up.

“Who’s Moses Richardson?”

My heart clean stopped in my chest, but my eyes moved to Hector.

They did this slowly, but they moved.

He was holding Moses’s business card.

Stupid me, I’d upended most of my purse on my desk in my quest to get organized.

And since I was carrying around Moses’s card like a personal talisman, it had fallen out.

Then again, none of the men had ever shown the least interest in what was on my desk.

And then again to that, it was rare anything was on my desk but a bottle of nail varnish and/or acetone.

Hector’s attention was on the card.

“Director of Juvenile Probation.” He looked at me. “You got a problem with the boys?”

“No,” I pushed out.

“There’s a number on the back,” Brody informed Hector helpfully.

Hector flipped the card.

Luke turned his head to look at it. Vance leaned in to look across Luke at it. Mace was also looking at it even if, from his position, he couldn’t see it. Though he had badass vision, so maybe he could see it, what did I know? I was a little badass but not like them.

Lee was watching me.

“Can you all move along?” I asked as a demand. “I’ve got a plan to organize your mission for tonight with peach sorbet being tactical and lime sorbet being surveillance.”

Luke looked to me. “You seein’ a juvie officer, Shirleen?”

Most of the time, considering some of the stuff they did was vaguely illegal and not-so-vaguely unsafe, I thought it was great they were all highly intelligent and uncannily perceptive.

This was not one of those times.

“We met. He asked me out. I said no. He gave me his card should I rethink. The end,” I told him.

Luke looked to Lee.

Mace looked to Vance.

Hector looked back down at the card.

Brody looked at me. “Why’d you say no?”

“Have I ever struck you as a woman who shares her personal life?” I asked.

“I was over at your house watching Tarzan two weeks ago and you pulled out your family albums,” Brody reminded me. “All twelve of them.”

Damn.

“I was drunk,” I lied.

“You were not.” He called me on it.

“Alexander Skarsgård 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.