“Someone you care about,” he said.
“What?”
“Go through the pain of losing someone you care about.”
Whoa.
Whoa, whoa, whoa.
We were not going to go there.
Time to change the subject.
“What’s the scar from?”
“Bullet to the gut,” he shared without hesitation.
I closed my eyes tight, visions of Luke with a gaping, bloody wound at his belly danced unhappily through my head. I didn’t like the visions, they scared the shit right out of me so I opened my eyes again.
“When?” I asked.
“Last summer.”
“How?”
“Babe,” he said softly and with a hint of regret. “I can’t tell you that. The cases we work are confidential.”
“Right,” I said.
“I’m good at what I do.”
“I’m sure you are.”
His hands drifted up my back, pulling me closer. “You’re hangin’ on to this to hold me back. You’re a lot stronger than you’re sayin’ and you know it,” he told me.
“How did Vance feel when he was trying to staunch the blood pouring out of Jules?” Luke’s body went still at my soft words and I knew it was wrong to use this against him but I kept at it. “I get the impression from both you and Jules that you two are close. You were there. How did you feel seeing her lying there bleeding?”
His face changed, to my shock he let me see the pain slice through it and it hurt like hell to watch.
Then he said, “Quiet, Ava.”
“You want me to go through that?”
One of his hands slid up my neck into my hair, twisting it gently in his fist. “You wanna know what I want?” he asked.
Um. No. I definitely didn’t want to know what he wanted.
Before I could get a word in, he told me. “I want the old you to come back and make me laugh. I want the new you to toss your attitude around and make me hard. I liked comin’ home tonight to you, even knowin’ you were pissed at me. I liked leavin’ last night for work, knowin’ you were in my bed. I might like it for a week or I might like it for a lot longer. I can’t make any promises. All I know is, I want you now and you want me even though you won’t admit it. And I’m gonna do whatever it takes to give us what we want for as long as it lasts until however it ends.”
“You never listen to me,” I told him, beginning to get angry because I was right, if his latest speech was anything to go by he didn’t.
“I listen to you,” he said.
“Then you don’t hear me.”
“Ava, I hear you,” he was beginning to sound impatient.
I stared at him. He stared at me. This went on for a while.
He sighed and touched his lips to mine then said, “I’ll take you to dinner.”
“I don’t want dinner,” I shot back.
His eyes started to melt. “All right. I’m hungry but I’m happy to eat somethin’ else.”
Ee-yikes!
“I’ve just realized, I’m hungry. Let’s go to dinner.”
He gave me a half-grin.
We went to dinner.
Chapter Thirteen
Solid
It was the middle of the night again when Luke rolled, taking me over the top of him, settling me on the other side of the bed.
“Why do you do that?” I mumbled sleepily.
I was about to fall back to sleep, feeling his hand tag the back of my knee and pull it over his hip when he murmured, voice husky, “You’re on the wrong side of the bed.”
I cuddled into him, sliding into dreamland. “Then I’ll sleep on this side.”
I was so out of it, I didn’t realize all that my words said nor what it meant when, upon hearing them, Luke’s arms went tight around me, pulling me deep into his body.
“This side’s the wrong side too,” he told me.
That got my attention, because it made no sense.
I tilted my head back and looked at him in the dark. “What?”
“I can’t sleep on one side too long, the wound still gives me some pain.”
For some reason, I felt imaginary pain in my own belly at his words.
To hide my reaction, I stated the obvious, “Then just roll over.”
“If I roll over, you won’t be in arms reach.”
I blinked then, sleepy or not, I started to get angry. “Luke, I’m not going to sneak out of your bed in the middle of the night and do something stupid.”
“That’s not why I want you in reach.”
Whoa.
Whoa, whoa, whoa.
Stop right there.
Time to go to sleep.
I dipped my chin and closed my eyes. Then because I had Barlow Bitch Blood pumping through my veins, I muttered, “You do that with all your women, they’ll think you’re nuts.”
“I’ve never done it with another woman.”
Really.
Stop.
Time to nap for fifty years.
“Babe?”
“Yeah?”
“If you’re awake…”
I cuddled into him again. “Very sleepy,” I whispered, feigning a sleepy voice.
I felt his body start shaking with silent laughter and somehow, while he was laughing, I fell back to sleep.
* * * * *
My eyes opened and I saw a wall of chest.
My first thought was, Crap, Luke’s not in the shower.
Okay, so that was actually my second thought. My first thought was, Hmm. Yum.
Last night Luke and I walked from his loft to Wynkoop’s Brewery and had beer and dinner. During dinner, he took a call that made his mouth go tight and his eyes move to me. I had an Eek Moment thinking he’d found out about my visit to Uncle Vito through his varied tough guy, macho man, bounty hunting, private eye sources.
Relief flooded through me when he got off the phone and said, “Sorry babe, something’s come up. After dinner I gotta meet Hector. I don’t know how late I’ll be.”
Therefore the mouth tightening meant, for Luke, him missing another opportunity to “give me the business” and for me, relief that I’d dodged the bullet again.
“That’s okay,” I told him breezily.
He gave me a half-grin, totally knowing my thoughts.
He had walked me home and left me in his loft after giving me a hot and heavy kiss that left me in a Luke Lip Fog.
Looking at my face he said, “If you take care of yourself again, you’ll owe me.”
All righty then, I could scratch that off my list of Things to Do While Luke’s Away.