But it wasn’t just that.

I went on.

“And you’ve got the Ava thing.”

Now that was definitely not a lie.

His head cocked to the side, his eyes went guarded, and he asked, “The Ava thing?”

I wasn’t going to go there, but also, I didn’t want to take him there. Things were settled with Luke and Ava. They were all kinds of happy. Ren probably knew that and I shouldn’t remind him of it. In fact, I shouldn’t have said anything.

I moved us around that. “What I’m saying is, if you’re cool with it, I’m cool with this being casual.” I smiled at him. “In fact, I’d be way cool with that.”

He studied me a moment before he moved into me, getting close. He leaned around me to put his plate in the sink, straightened, caught my eyes again and stayed close.

He was talking as gently as I did when he replied, “Had women say that to me, honey, but they didn’t mean it.”

“I’m not like other women.”

His gaze moved over my face before locking on my lips and he murmured, “I’m sensing that.”

I didn’t know if that was good or bad, but I was taking it as good by the heat in his eyes.

“So if we continue to hook up, I’m down with casual. Yeah?” I pressed so I could get away from the heat of his eyes. And also, the heat of his body. Both were doing good things to my happy place, which would mean I might not get my take of the tip jar at Fortnum’s because, if I jumped him, I had a feeling I wouldn’t want to come up for air.

As answer, he said quietly, “I like you.”

Oh f**k.

There it was. My happy place got happy. My stomach dipped. But my heart squeezed.

“I like you too,” I stated in a defensive matter-of-fact way. “But I’m not ready—”

He cut me off. “No, Ally, what I’m sayin’ is, I like you. And if all you got in you right now is casual, I want more of you so I’ll give you that. But women say shit they don’t mean. I get that they do it to protect themselves and mean it when they say it. Then they get trapped in a place they created. This guy you had, you need time to get over that, I get you gotta take it. I’ll also give it to you. But if the casual we got shifts and you get stuck and don’t communicate with me the shift you want, which means I hurt you when I have no intention of doing that…” He took in a breath. “I like you and I don’t want that to happen. So I’ll take casual, honey. Just as long as, along the way, you’re straight with me. And in return, I’ll be straight with you.”

I could be straight.

Mostly.

I nodded and asked, “So, do we have a deal?”

He smiled.

My heart again squeezed.

Then he answered. “Yeah, baby. We got a deal.”

Chapter Three

Fucked Up As Love

Rock Chick Rewind

Two months later…

I was sitting in another bar; not like Club. This one was seedy and I didn’t like it.

But I was all over finding out what the f**k was going on. I’d had an informant tell me she worked that bar, although I didn’t know what “worked that bar” meant and only got the response, “you’ll see,” so I was there.

Informants sometimes sucked. A lot of time they were full of shit, and a lot of other times they got paid even better than me. Fortunately, this wasn’t my problem. My “clients” coughed that up.

But the case I was on was confounding me.

Usually, I loved a bit of confounding. Finding a piece, fitting it into the puzzle, making the picture become clearer.

But with this chick, things never came clear. They just got fuzzier. And it was annoying.

I didn’t get it.

But I would.

See, a friend of a friend of mine came to me, needing my services. He’d talked to his girl and his girl told him everything was a-okay.

But, according to him, she was totally lying.

Since her family didn’t have any money, he was saving up for the wedding of his girl’s dreams, seeing as he was gone for her. So he couldn’t go to someone like Lee because Lee was seriously pricey. But he was worried and he needed answers.

So my friend told him about me.

It was another boy/girl problem (most of them were; more indication you shouldn’t get mired down in romance). This time the girl had the boy’s diamond on her finger. She seemed into him; completely in love, over the moon at the prospect of being married, but dragging her heels in doing something about it.

Her behavior had also reportedly changed. She’d disappear, sometimes for long periods of time. Not weeks, but days and nights. She would also not return texts or pick up calls, and have weak excuses about where she was and why she was incommunicado.

They didn’t live together; not yet. This was because she was religious and wanted to wait until after marriage (fishy, because who did that anymore?—especially when she was letting him bang her; God could see all, so it wasn’t like she was pulling one over on the Big Guy).

But the dude had the keys to her place. He’d gone in when she wasn’t there and rifled through her shit, even bills and bank statements. Nothing was amiss. There were no drugs. No empty bottles of booze piled up in the recycling bin. No stockpiles of firearms and explosives or blueprints of banks.

Nothing that he could see.

Enter me.

I didn’t do this for a living. I didn’t do it for much of any payment. I spent my days in Fortnum’s, my nights at Brother’s, and not too long ago, got caught up in the next Rock Chick drama. This was my friend Stella’s big thing with another of Lee’s guys, Mace (seriously? How were we all connected, most of us for years, and this shit was happening now?).

That one got serious ugly with all the Rock Chicks again on the line; drive-bys, couch mutilations, and Stella’s apartment had exploded.

Yes.

Exploded.

Kaplowy.

Dust.

But now, as luck kept having it (thank God), all was good (outside of all Stella’s belongings being blown sky high and her being underinsured; but luckily, she’d just signed a recording contract and landed her hot guy, so her future was bright) and as usual, we were moving on while waiting for the next one up.

My guess, it would be Lee’s last unattached guy, Hector. But there were bets (yep, the posse bet on this shit) on me.

Not a chance.

I’d lived through six of these and had intimate details. No way that shit was happening with me. Some over-the-top macho guy forcing his way into my life, taking it over and bossing me around?