I felt my temple throb and I chose to drop back to the pil ows instead of having another staring contest, I never won those anyway.

I closed my eyes and put my hand to my head.

He was right, of course and that total y pissed me off. I had no business putting myself out there; I didn’t know what I was doing. He tried to tel me with the pepper spray incident, but did I listen? No. So I ended up on the floor of a dirty, smoky room, shielding my sister from bul ets, my friends in the line of fire, Shirleen, who I barely even knew, lying unconscious out in the hal and final y with a gun to my head. A gun that went off in front of Mace, making him relive a nightmare.

Damn, shit, f**k, hel and back again.

“Al right,” I snapped, opening my eyes, “I’l be cool but you have to promise me you won’t tel Mace I told you al this.”

He dropped to his side and rol ed over me, pinning me to the bed.

“No f**kin’ way, Mace and I are gonna have a talk.”

“No! You have to promise.”

“You just chose door number one, which means you chose me, which means you stayin’ in my life and my bed. I know you aren’t gonna like it, Chiquita, because you look like you’re preparin’ to bolt any time anything looks or sounds serious about us, but that also means you are now official y my woman and as such, Mace and I are gonna have words.”

I didn’t have time to freak out about being Eddie’s woman. That was worse than his girlfriend. Far worse. A thousand times worse. The w-word was to the g-word what the f-word was to the c-word. I couldn’t even say the c-word in my head!

I had to let the w-word go and tackle one thing at a time.

“He said if I told you, we were going to disappear in Mexico! You can’t tel him. It’l break it, whatever it was, for him. He wasn’t there, he’d slid into another moment, I saw it, I felt it. It just happened that I was there when he did, it could have been anyone. But it was me and that connects us but not in a bad way. You can’t understand it, you weren’t there. But I told you what happened. I didn’t lie and I didn’t hide. Don’t make me sorry I didn’t.”

He did a jaw clench and stared at me.

“Eddie, promise me.”

“Jet, you aren’t just anyone to those boys. Lee’s got cameras and bugs in Fortnum’s. They’ve been watchin’ you for months and likin’ what they see, I know, I heard ‘em say it. When Lee told me he’d got word that Slick was on the move and he was asking for volunteers to run protection for your crew, every f**kin’ guy on his payrol volunteered. He got to hand pick a team of his best men, al of ‘em puttin’

themselves on the line for you for free.” Sweet Jesus.

He had to be joking.

“You’re joking,” I whispered.

He shook his head.

I found I was having trouble breathing. I would never process this, this was beyond processing.

“Why?” I asked.

“I’m thinkin’ it’s because they’d like to be where I am right now. Lucky for me, I got there first and made it clear I was interested. That is, I made it clear to everyone but you.” He stopped and watched me closely, “Jesus, Jet, you don’t have a clue, do you?”

I found I didn’t want to chat anymore, I was done chatting.

I needed to get up, get to work, go check on Shirleen, make sure my Mom and Lottie were okay and process the fact that I was now “official y” Eddie’s w-word. I did not want to be having this discussion.

To communicate al of this to Eddie, I said, “I need coffee.”

He kept looking at me for awhile then something changed in his eyes, the glitter went out and the warmth went back in, warmth and tenderness. I was beginning to miss the terror of having a gun held to my head.

“Chiquita, women spend a lot of time sittin’ around bitchin’ that there are no good men out there. I hate to tel you this, but there aren’t a lot of good women either. The difference is, when a man sees one, he knows it. Then, he goes after her and wears her down until she’s his. Then, if he’s any man at al , he won’t let her go.” Eek!

This just got worse and worse.

“I real y need coffee,” I said.

His eyelids lowered a bit and the dimple came out but his lips didn’t form a smile.

“I see you’re in ready-to-bolt mode so I’l let you off the hook. Just to finish this, I hope you can understand now why I’m gonna get things straight with Mace.” I sighed, knowing that this was another argument I wasn’t going to win and deciding to save my energy for one I could win.

Whenever that would be, likely when I was ninety-eight and wearing black flats.

Then I said, “If he grabs me and we disappear in Mexico, you’l only have yourself to blame.”

The smile came out, “I’l take that chance.” I used the best word a woman had in her argument arsenal, undoubtedly its own special kind of f-word for men.

“Fine,” I clipped, meaning anything but. “Can I have coffee now?”

Somehow, it seemed Eddie found my “fine” amusing. I could tel by the warmth and tenderness being joined by an affectionate gleam in his eye.

Wonderful.

So much for me putting on the brakes. It seemed instead I somehow shifted us up from relationship overdrive straight to relationship hyperdrive.

His lips touched mine, then he said, “Yeah, you can have coffee.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

One of My Girls

Late morning, Eddie and I walked into Fortnum’s, my arm was around Eddie’s waist, my other hand on his abs.

Eddie’s arm was curled around my neck, his hand hanging loose in front of me, which meant I was tucked super-close to his side.

This I’d decided to cal the Eddie’s Woman Hold and even though the w-word was seriously flipping me out, I had to admit, The Hold wasn’t so bad.

The minute we entered, my musings on The Hold ceased and I wanted to turn around and run.

I wasn’t a big fan of being the center of attention, I much preferred to fly below radar. That, obviously, was not going to happen the morning after I’d been grazed by a bul et.

I’d looked in the mirror that morning and I thought I looked like I normal y looked, I just had a white dressing taped to my temple. It wasn’t that bad, certainly not as bad as the looks on everyone’s faces made it out to be.

Duke and Tex were behind the espresso counter. Jane and Al y behind the book counter. Mom, Trixie, Ada, Blanca and Lottie formed one huddle in the seating area, Eddie’s sister Gloria, Tod, Stevie and Indy in another and the Wild Bunch plus Hank the last.