“That must be Dad,” Sissy said.
What?
I swiveled around in my chair. “What’s your Dad doing here?”
“I’m staying with him for a couple of days.”
What, what, what?
I got out of my chair and followed her down the stairs. She was carrying one of her smaller suitcases.
“I thought you were staying with me,” I said to her.
“I was, now I’m going to stay with my Dad.” She was at the door and unlocking it.
“Why?” I asked.
She opened the door so I didn’t get my answer. Though I knew my answer.
Shit!
“Hey Dad,” she said.
Mr. Whitchurch smiled at his daughter and gave her a big hug. I could see straight off he looked worried because of the strain around his mouth. This meant Sissy must have told him what was going on and I tripled-vowed revenge against Dom because he made Mr. Whitchurch worried.
I’d known Mr. Whitchurch since forever and liked him. It was a bummer when he and Sissy’s Mom got divorced and Mrs. Whitchurch moved to Wyoming. Fortunately (for me), Sissy stayed in Denver with her Dad. Mr. Whitchurch and I got along great, most recently because we both hated Dom.
“Beautiful Ava,” he said, kissing my cheek. He’d always called me “Beautiful Ava”, even when I was Fatty, Fatty Four-Eyes.
“Hey Mister Whitchurch.”
“Hear you been takin’ care of my daughter.”
“Nothing she wouldn’t do for me,” I told him.
He stared at me and sighed. “Dom’s a shithead,” he said.
“Dad!” Sissy snapped.
“Well, he is,” Mr. Whitchurch was not to be denied.
Sissy glared at him. He took her glare in stride. He’d been getting Sissy Glares for twenty-nine years and he knew she never meant them.
“Um, Mister Whitchurch,” I interrupted the Sissy Glare, “can Sissy and I have a second?”
He looked at me a beat, correctly assessed I had something weighty on my mind and nodded. Then he took her suitcase and walked to his car.
I closed the door and turned to Sissy. “Why didn’t you tell me you were going to stay with your Dad?”
“I wasn’t going to stay with him.”
“Well, you’re staying with him,” I pointed out.
“Yeah, now,” she returned.
“Why now?” I asked even though I knew the answer.
That’s when she gave me the answer I knew. “I know Noah was an asshole and Dom treats me like shit. I know Dave was weird and Rick was a jerk. I know your Dad broke your heart when he left. I know you don’t ever want to get hurt again. But I also know you’ve been in love with Luke Stark since you were eight years old and now he looks at you like you’re lunch and he missed breakfast and dinner.”
“Sissy –”
“No, Ava. I know about your vow and I know you like your vibrators and I know you think all men are shit but there are good ones out there and I think Luke is one of them. I’m not standing in the way of that and, I’m telling it to you straight, girlfriend, neither should you.”
Jeez.
Was no one on my side?
I’m not, Bad Ava said. I want to get MORE of a taste of Luke.
I’m not either, Good Ava agreed. I think Luke is lush.
Argh!
I focused on Sissy. “Seriously, I told you how he’s been behaving since I saw him again. He’s not a normal guy.”
Her hands came to either side of my face and she looked me in the eyes. “No, he’s not and that’s a good thing,” she pulled my face down to hers so our foreheads were touching. “Call me a hopeless romantic but I want to see my friend with the guy she’s been pining for forever,” her voice dropped to a whisper. “I want that more than anything on this earth.”
Oh crap.
Tears filled my eyes but before I could let them loose her hands moved away, she gave me a smile and a wink then she was gone.
I locked the door behind her and rested my forehead against it.
“My life is shit,” I told the door.
The door had no response.
I went back to work. Half an hour later, my phone rang.
“Yo.”
“Babe.”
Hell and damnation.
It was Luke, my knees wobbled and I wasn’t even standing.
“Did you get my cookies?” I asked.
I heard his soft laughter then, “Not yet.”
What was I doing?
I was trying to be cute and funny. I wasn’t supposed to be trying to be cute and funny with Luke. I was supposed to drive him away by behaving like a screaming shrew.
Bad, bad Ava.
“Why are you calling?” I asked, trying to pull up the Barlow Super Bitch but it sounded halfhearted.
“I’ll pick you up at seven. We’re goin’ to Lincoln’s for dinner, my place to talk afterward. Sissy got anybody who’ll stay with her or do I need to arrange company?”
“Sissy’s gone.”
Silence.
“Luke?”
“Come again?”
“Sissy’s gone. She’s staying with her Dad for a couple of days.”
“You’re alone in your house?”
“Well… yeah.”
“Fuck,” he clipped, sounding pissed.
“What?” I asked.
“Tell me your doors are locked.”
“Of course.”
“Somebody will be there soon. If it’s someone you haven’t met, I’ll call you to tell you who to expect.”
“Luke, I’m sure I’ll be fine.”
“Right. That’s what Lee thought when he left Indy at her house before they let off a car bomb that drew her out and she was kidnapped and nearly taken to Costa Rica.”
Oh yeah. I forgot about that.
Belated eek!
“Don’t open the door to anyone but one of Lee’s boys, got me?”
“Okay.”
“I’ll see you at seven.”
Disconnect.
Oh shit.
I didn’t even get a chance to argue with him to tell him I wasn’t going anywhere with him that night. My mortal danger was getting in the way of me protecting myself from the carnal danger that was Luke.
I mentally shrugged it off and went back to work. I was making some good headway on my deadline so at least that wouldn’t be stressing me out along with everything else.
Five minutes after I put down the phone from Luke, I heard a floorboard creak in my office. I swiveled in my chair expecting to see Luke (who, incidentally, I noticed pocketed the extra set of keys I gave him last night).
Instead, I saw Dom.
I shot out of the chair, opened my mouth to scream, Dom was on me in a flash and everything went black.
* * * * *
This was my early evening:
I woke up in the back of Dom’s BMW. I’d been in Dom’s BMW, like, a gazillion times but I’d never been lying in the back unable to move my limbs (okay, so a few drunken times I’d been lying in the back but I’d been able to move my limbs).
The inability to move my limbs freaked me right the hell out.
“Dom,” I whispered.
He didn’t reply, maybe he didn’t hear me, maybe he was concentrating on driving. I started to get tingling in my extremities which I took as a good sign while I felt the car moving, like it was going in long circles. I was getting my strength back and was just able to pull myself into a sitting position when Dom parked and got out of the car then got in the backseat with me.
“Hey, you’re awake,” he said, settling next to me and turning toward me. Then for some bizarre reason, he pulled my still not entirely under my control body across his lap and leaned into me.
I blinked. “What did you do to me?” I asked.
“Stun gun. Sorry, Ava, but we need to talk and I didn’t want to put up with your mouth.”
Stun gun?
Stun gun?
Dom stun-
gunned me?
I’d never even seen a stun gun. I saw a video of someone getting Tasered on YouTube (and I might add I was not at all happy that Dom had done that to me) but I’d never seen a stun gun.
What a jerk!
“You stun-gunned me?” I asked.
“We need to talk.”
I was getting back to fighting fit (read: could control my hands) and I shoved against him but his fingers wrapped around my wrists and he held on tight.
“We don’t need to talk,” I told him then said, “What are you doing here? Where have you been? The police said you were missing.”
His eyes narrowed. “You talked to the police about me?”
“No, the police talked to me about you. Your living room was shot up and for some reason a Mister Zano sent some henchmen to kidnap me and it has something to do with you. Is this Mister Zano related to you and Uncle Vito?”
A weird look crossed his face before he muttered, “Fuck.”
“Fuck is right!” I snapped. “What’s going on?”
“I got a problem at work, I’m fixing it,” he said, passing it off like it was nothing. “Listen, Ava, you and me –”
“There is no you and me,” I interrupted him.
His hands tightened on my wrists. “Listen!” he clipped. “I know you got a problem with the whole Sissy thing –”
The whole “Sissy thing”?
Oh… my… God.
I vowed quadruple-revenge against Dom, rat-bastard.
He went on. “I’m leaving her.”
“You can’t leave her, she already left you,” I reminded him.
“Then I’ll give her a divorce, no contest.”
Well this was good news.
“Wonderful. I can’t wait to tell her. She’ll be over the moon.”
Obviously, Dom didn’t care that his wife of five years would be thrilled at his granting a no-contest divorce.
I knew this mainly because he said, “Then you and I can hook up.”
I blinked again.
Was he insane? Why were men such total assholes?
“We’re not hooking up,” I snapped.
I watched as his face changed in a soft, sexy way and I felt a weird moment of sadness. Mainly because he was hot and that look on his face was even hotter. If he’d been a good guy, some woman (read: Sissy) would have been very lucky. Instead, he was a rat-bastard, tore through women’s lives and left devastation in his wake.
“You changed. Noah fucked you over and you changed,” he said, his voice just as soft and sexy as his face and I stared at him. “You got this… attitude,” his eyes dropped to my mouth. “Fuck, makes me hard just thinkin’ about it,” he muttered.
Ho-ly crap.
I pulled at my wrists. “Let me go!” I shouted.
His fingers tightened and it kinda hurt. “You and me will be good together. Explosive,” he told me.
“You’ve got a screw loose! You’re my best friend’s husband!”
“Not for long.”
“Fuck off!” I yelled.
Then he yanked me forward by my wrists and kissed me. Dom had a lot of practice at kissing. He was, I noted with some detachment, a good kisser.
I noted this right before I bit his tongue.
He reared back. “Stop doing that!”
“Stop kissing me!” I yelled and began struggling in earnest.
This didn’t go well for me. Yes, I had lost seventy-five pounds, but I was not a lightweight. I worked out, was fit and did strength training. But Dom was six foot tall and all lean, compacted muscle. He had me on my back and was on top of me in no time.
This was not good.
It was then I began to panic. “Get off me!”
“Ava, you want it, I want it and I’m gonna fuckin’ take it.”
“No!” I shouted and bucked.
Then the door was thrown open and, to my utter disbelief, Mr. Kumar leaned in, pounding on Dom’s back with both his hands clenched together to do it.
I stared, momentarily stunned.
Mr. Kumar was a Middle Eastern guy who owned a corner store about a block and a half away from my house. Pre-weight loss, I went in there regularly to get provisions. I also went there to have a good old gossip with Mr. and Mrs. Kumar. They were good people, they struggled against the odds to keep their little corner store open and they looked after the neighborhood. Post-weight loss, since the corner store was stocked mostly with junk food, pop and smokes, I went in there just for the gossip and to buy diet soda and gum.
How Mr. Kumar was in Dom’s car was beyond me but I wanted to jump for joy.
“Unhand her!” Mr. Kumar shouted.
“What the fuck?” Dom muttered, letting me go and turning to Mr. Kumar.
I got over feeling stunned and we all started wrestling in the backseat and, because there wasn’t a lot of room, fell out the open door and started wrestling on the concrete. Mr. Kumar was a little guy and I guessed on the wrong side of his fifties and, I must repeat, Dom was strong. Dom took both of us on and seemed to be winning.
Dom shoved off Mr. Kumar, who went rolling, then tackled me. I was trying to get up and get some leverage on the situation when he did it. I felt my blouse tear at the neckline as I went down hard on my palms and Dom landed on top of me. I twisted underneath him and lifted my hands up and finally, after all these years, got the opportunity to scratch his face.
His head shot back as, with satisfaction (it might not be nice, but it was honest) I saw blood form on his cheek and he shouted, “Fuckin’ bitch!”
Mr. Kumar jumped on top of him. We wrestled more and I got out from under Dom. As he was trying to subdue Mr. Kumar, I gained my feet. I saw my opportunity, aimed a kick, missed where I was aiming and kicked him savagely in the gut.
Dom grunted and curled into himself.
I immediately grabbed Mr. Kumar’s hand and pulled him up. “Let’s go!”
We ran willy-nilly because I had no idea where I was going and Mr. Kumar was freaked way the hell out.
“My car’s over here,” Mr. Kumar finally said and we ran toward his old, faded-yellow Cadillac Seville.
We stopped at his car and Mr. Kumar fumbled for his keys. “You drive,” he said, his hands shaking, his hair and clothing looking exactly like he’d been wrestling with a strong Italian-American at least twenty years his junior. Mr. Kumar handed me the keys and automatically I took them.
“I can’t drive, I’ve been stun-gunned. You drive,” I handed him back the keys.
“I can’t drive, I’m shaky. We’ll get in an accident. You drive,” he handed me back the keys.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Dom running toward us.
“Get in the car!” I shouted, going to the driver’s side.
We got in, locked our doors and belted up. Dom at my door trying to open it, I started the car (it took two goes but I did it) and we shot forward on a screech of tires.
We were in a parking garage, a weirdly vacant parking garage and I had no idea how to get out.
“Where’s the exit? I yelled, turning in a way that seemed to be taking us deeper into the garage.
“I don’t know. Let me think. I can’t think,” Mr. Kumar was still freaked out then he shouted, “There! It says exit! Go left.”
I went left.
“No, I mean right,” he said.
Shit!
I did a uey through some parking spots and went right. We went back up through the parking garage and passed Dom’s BMW that was going the other way. We went up two levels and I shot out into the street not even looking. A car swerved to avoid me, honking his horn and giving me the finger. I just put the pedal down and the big car roared.
“Where are we?” I asked, looking around, trying to get my bearings.
“I don’t know. I saw him carrying you to his car and I told Mrs. Kumar to call Tex and I followed. I didn’t pay attention to where we were going. I just paid attention to following you.”
“Tex?” I asked.
&n
bsp; “Tex, he lives down the block opposite the store from you. He takes care of the neighbors.”
I found it bizarre that I would hear the name “Tex” twice in one day when I had never known a Tex in my whole life.
I finally figured out where we were and this made some of my panic and adrenalin subside. I did some deep breathing and pointed us home. I turned onto my block and my stomach clenched.
My street was filled with cars, big, shiny ones (except for Luke’s Porsche and a Crossfire, they weren’t big, just shiny). What looked like Eddie’s red Ram was there, a black GMC truck, several black Ford Explorers and a black Toyota 4Runner.
I double parked the Caddy (because there were no spaces on the street) right outside my front door and saw over the roof of Luke’s Porsche the Bad Boy Brigade standing in my front yard all wearing scary faces and all those faces turned to the Caddy as it stopped. Luke, Lee, Vance, Hank, Eddie, Matt, Mace and, what I realized was not coincidental, Tex, the wild-eyed coffee guy from Fortnum’s.
“Uh-oh,” I said.
Chapter Nine
Feeling Fine, Feeling Loose
Mr. Kumar and I got out of the car as Luke detached from the Bad Boy Bunch and I met him on the sidewalk.
I tilted my head back to look at him and said softly, “Seems I got kidnapped again.”
His mouth got tight and his eyes did a body scan. I looked down at myself.
Blouse torn, scrapes on my belatedly stinging palms and what appeared to be smears of blood on the skin of my chest (this, I hoped, was Dom’s).
“You all right?” Luke asked and my eyes moved back to his.
“Yeah,” I said.
“Please tell me that isn’t your blood.”
It was then I did something ultra stupid.
The something ultra stupid I did was say, “It’s Dom’s.”
It seemed Luke sucked in every molecule of oxygen in the Denver Metro area when he did a swift intake of breath. With one look at his face it would not have surprised me if he had walked to his Porsche in Incredible Hulk style, picked it up and hurled it down the street.
Mr. Kumar stood beside us. “I saw him carry her out of the house,” he said and Luke and my eyes turned to Mr. Kumar as the Bad Boys gathered around us. “She was unconscious and I knew something was wrong. I followed in my car and when they stopped I wanted to wait for Tex and was about to call on my cell, but I didn’t know where we were.” Everyone watched him talk and he looked around, nervous at being the center of attention. “I was going to call the police but then he started kissing her and Ava didn’t like it and I knew…”