The staring stopped, folks started to move and I let my body relax.

“Give me five,” Luke said to Lee then took my hand and walked me to the door to the inner sanctum. He opened the door and guided me through and down the hall, directly to the kitchenette he’d taken me to (or, more accurately, carried me) that first time I was at the offices.

We went inside and he closed the door, turned to me and his hand came to my jaw.

“You okay?” he asked, I nodded and he went on. “I had no f**kin’ idea we would walk into that, babe, if I knew –”

I realized he was pissed at the same time I realized that he would have protected me from what just happened if he could have. And lastly, because of that, I realized Luke wasn’t just a Good Guy, he might be The Best Guy Ever.

For this reason, I moved into him and put my arms around his waist. “It’s cool Luke, they just care. It feels nice.”

That was a partial lie. It felt scary and slightly humiliating that all those people knew that Noah had his hand down my pants. Instead I was trying to focus on them rallying around me which did, indeed, feel nice. More to the point, I wanted Luke to focus on it because he didn’t look happy and an unhappy Luke could be a frightening thing.

Luke’s thumb stroked my jaw and I watched as his anger ebbed away. “All right beautiful, if you’re cool, I’m cool.”

I smiled at him.

Crisis averted.

Then he continued. “Before I meet with the boys, we gotta talk about somethin’.”

Uh-oh.

Crisis maybe not averted.

“Luke, I’m not sure I can handle talking about something.”

He bent down to kiss my nose and said softly, “I know, Ava Babe, I wouldn’t bring this up, not now, but it’s important.”

Crapity, crap, crap, crap.

“Okay,” I said but I didn’t mean it.

“Yesterday –” he started.

Nope.

I wasn’t going to talk about that. I’d already talked about it as much as I was going to talk about it. “I don’t want to talk about yesterday,” I interrupted.

His other arm moved around me and his hand at my jaw slid into my hair to cup the back of my head. He brought me close so my body was pressed against his.

“We gotta talk about it.”

“We’ll talk about it later.” As in much later, a thousand years from now preferably.

“Babe, I kept what happened with Jules and me –”

I went stiff. “Jules and you and Roxie and you,” I corrected him.

His face went hard before he muttered, “Those f**kin’ women.”

“Someone had to tell me,” I shot back.

“I wanted to tell you,” he replied.

“Yeah? When?” I was beginning to get heated.

“When the time was right. Only so much someone can take, you’d had enough.”

“You said you were through talking.”

“Yeah, for then, not for eternity.”

“You didn’t say that.”

“I didn’t say we were never talkin’ again either.”

This was true.

Shit!

His face got softer and I knew that he knew he had me.

Shit again!

“Luke –”

“I don’t want to fight about this,” he said.

I glared because I was perfectly happy fighting about it.

He ignored my glare. “The point is how you responded.”

“I didn’t respond.”

“Yeah, that’s the point. You shut down, shut me out and then you made plans to take off.”

“What?” I asked.

Surely he couldn’t know I was headed to St. Croix. No one knew, not even Sissy (until her card came in mail, of course).

He let me go, walked to a locker, opened it and pulled out some papers which, I noticed at a glance, were my tickets to St. Croix.

Ho-ly crap!

He knew I was headed to St. Croix.

“Where did you...?”

“I went to your house. Found these on the dining room table, new luggage and a bunch of shopping in your bedroom,” he replied before I could finish my question, threw the tickets back in the locker and shut the door.

Hell and damnation.

I was beginning to realize it was not such a good thing my boyfriend was a private investigator. Although I had left that stuff out for anyone to see, still.

I was so exasperated at Luke knowing everything, I rolled my eyes to the ceiling and then said something stupid. There was no excuse for it. I should have protected the information with everything I had, taken it to my grave, kept it buried and never let it out, even under torture.

In my defense, I wasn’t myself. Too much had happened to me with Dom, with Ren, with Noah even with f**king Riley and, most especially, with Luke.

That was why I didn’t stop myself before saying, “I can’t believe while I was downstairs with Noah and he was demonstrating why he’s the ultimate jerk, you were searching my house.”

The air in the room instantly went thick with tension, my eyes flew from the ceiling to lock on Luke’s and I realized my mortal mistake when I saw his face had gone stony. Scary stony. Fury-unleashed stony.

Gonzo stony.

“What did you just say?” he asked through his teeth.

“Nothing,” I replied quickly.

“You didn’t say nothin’, you said somethin’.”

“No, I meant –”

He advanced. I retreated.

My back hit the door and he came up close. “He was in your house while I was in your house?”

Like I did the night before, hoping it would work again, I put my hands to his neck to try to get through to him, calm him.

“Luke, please, listen to me –”

“He touched you then, didn’t he?”

My eyes grew wide that he guessed this (how could he guess this?) and, unfortunately, my eyes told the truth for me.

It was then Luke went gonzo. No neck touch, soft voice and pleading were going to help, no way.

He turned from me and, with a vicious blow and a ferocious growl, he punched the wall, his hand going clean through, drywall dust poofing out. I stared in horror as he pulled his hand out of the wall and then punched it again, leaving another hole.

He wasn’t quite through. After Wall Punch Two, he turned, walked to a locker and punched that. His fist against the steel made a huge noise and my horrified stare turned part terrified, part amazed when the steel buckled and the sides of the door bowed out. He hit it again then again and I charged him.

“Luke!” I shouted, throwing my arms around him to stop him from hurting himself. If he kept doing that he was going to crush his hand. “Stop it! Please, stop!”