Bad Ava giggled and she sounded happy.

* * * * *

After our mini-post-drama make out session, Luke took me out of the kitchenette and in the hallway the black guy I’d never met was talking to another guy I’d never seen before and Shirleen.

“Shee-it,” the black guy said when he saw us. “You white girls got attitude. Far as I can see, these boys need to get their heads examined. I’d put up with that shit for about a f**kin’ second.”

Any normal person would politely pretend that they hadn’t heard a thing. I was learning quickly that I was not surrounded by normal people anymore.

Since normal for me was a Dad who would up and leave, a fading beauty queen of a mother who was so engrossed in her own life she forgot her daughters had one too and might need her help, and my two “fuckin’ sisters” who were mean as snakes, I figured not normal was not so bad.

Shirleen had different thoughts and turned on the black dude. “Like black women don’t have more attitude then ten of these white women,” she declared as if that was a good thing.

“Black women don’t give you shit by yellin’ at your ass for, f**kin’, ever. They get fed up, they quit bitchin’ and burn down your house or stick you with a knife. Makes it easier. Either way you know it’s time to get your shit together and you just gotta call your insurance man.”

“And you are?” I asked before Shirleen could retort like she looked like she was preparing to do, big time.

“I’m Smithie,” he answered. “You dance?”

I blinked at him, stunned by his bizarre question. “Do I dance?”

“Smithie.” For some reason Luke’s voice was a low, warning rumble and Smithie’s eyes turned to him.

“What? You too? What’s f**kin’ wrong with strippin’? Daisy stripped and everyone likes Daisy. Lottie strips, everyone likes Lottie.”

I was stuck on the “stripping” explanation to “do you dance”?

Then it dawned on me that Smithie must be the owner of the strip club where Jet worked as a cocktail waitress during her drama and where her sister Lottie was currently a stripper (and the best one in the Rocky Mountain region if rumor could be believed).

“Now that Daisy’s with Marcus, she strip anymore?” Shirleen asked.

“No,” Smithie answered.

“Lottie got a man?” Shirleen carried on.

“No,” Smithie snapped, cottoning on to Shirleen’s point.

“Luke look like the type of boy who’d let men watch his woman take her clothes off while she’s dancin’ around on a stage with baby oil slathered all over her body?” Shirleen pushed.

“All right, all right, f**k,” Smithie muttered. “Can’t a man recruit? Nothin’ wrong with asking.”

I looked at Luke. “I think I need cookies.”

He gave me a half-grin and touched my nose.

What he did not do, I noticed, was charge out and buy me cookies.

I demoted him from The Best Man Ever to just The Best Man I’d Ever Met. Superman would have charged out (hell, he’d have flown) to get Lois Lane cookies. I was pretty sure of it.

Luke’s eyes moved to the other man who hadn’t said anything. The other man was huge (as in enormous), every inch of him, as far as I could tell, was muscle.

“Jack, you in on the meeting?” Luke asked him.

I sucked in breath.

Jack.

Jack was the guy in the surveillance room that saw me start to put my hand down my own pants.

Shit!

I stared at Jack. I thought Jack would ogle me, give me a look, something, anything, to communicate, like a lecherous, icky man, that he knew what he knew.

Jack didn’t even glance in my direction. He kept his eyes on Luke.

“Brody and me are takin’ shifts in surveillance,” Jack told Luke. “Other than me Lee’s pullin’ everyone off assignments until Dexter is found. Even Monty’s goin’ into the field.”

Wow.

I didn’t know who Monty was but the way Jack said it I got the feeling this was a big thing.

“Well!” Shirleen snapped. “What you all standin’ around for? Shit. That dickhead’s gonna be drinkin’ piña f**kin’ coladas in Mexico before you all pull your fingers out of your asses.”

I sucked in breath yet again and, at the rate I was going I was going to pass out. Still, I wasn’t certain Luke would take to anyone, even a scary Shirleen, telling him he had his finger up his ass.

I turned to him. “Luke –” I said softly to try and tame the wild beast before he went gonzo again. Luke’s hard eyes moved from Shirleen to me. He wasn’t happy with her but he also wasn’t going to go gonzo. I let out a breath then started a different (read: safer) subject. “I’m not sure I want Lee to –”

“Decision’s made, babe,” Luke said. “Lee doesn’t often change his mind. The sooner this is over, the sooner we can all focus on other shit.”

“Yeah, like the next one of you white bitches who tears into one of these boys lives. Who’s up next, is it that Hawaiian guy?” Smithie asked.

“Far as I can tell, it’s Ally. She’s due,” Shirleen countered. “That cop boyfriend of hers got himself into the FBI. He’s off to DC. No way in hell Ally Nightingale is gonna leave Denver. Soon, she’ll be a free agent.”

“My money’s on Hector,” Jack threw in. “He’s a wild man. Some woman’s gotta tame him before he gets himself killed.”

“I’ll take that action,” Shirleen said.

“Oh my God. This is cool,” I breathed, excited to be in on the ground floor, finally, of one of these bets, especially when it wasn’t one that involved me.

Luke’s hand came to the back of my neck. “Babe.”

I turned to face him, lost in the excitement. “Who do you think it’s gonna be?”

“I don’t wish this shit on anyone,” was Luke’s answer.

As much as it killed the mood, I had to admit, Luke had a point.

“Lord!” Shirleen shouted, reaching the end of her tether. “Do I have to go out and whack this guy personally?”

Yikes.

Luke sliced a killing glance at Shirleen before he pulled me into him with pressure at my neck and kissed me softly.

“I want you to stay in the offices and I don’t want you to do anything stupid,” he warned when he was done.

The knee weakening I experienced with his kiss vanished and I glared at him. He gave me a half-grin, totally unaffected by the glare.