“Well?” Luke asked.
“Sss!” I hissed, moving directly to my occupied chair.
“Give it up, Shirleen,” Vance ordered.
I lifted my hand, slapped my fingers against my thumb at him and snapped, “Zzzp!”
I stopped. Dumped my Prada on the desk. And put my hands to my hips to glare down at Lee.
He didn’t move.
Though his mouth did.
“Indy called you seven times last night.”
“Ava called five,” Luke put in.
“Jules called three,” Vance added.
“Sadie called Indy, Ava, Daisy and Jules repeatedly,” Hector stated from the couch.
“Stella and me were out to dinner with Roxie and Hank, and those two were manning their texts like they were planning the Normandy invasion through them,” Mace shared.
I swung an arm out to indicate all five men.
“I’m not talkin’ to all you all,” I declared.
“Indy only let up when Roam and Sniff got home and checked in on you after I told them to do that,” Lee announced.
My eyes got huge and I forgot I wasn’t talking to him.
“You told my boys to check in on me?”
“They said you were in bed, reading,” Lee replied. “And I took that as I didn’t have to go out and murder someone for bein’ a dick to my girl.”
So that was why they knocked on the door and stuck their heads in.
Both of them.
Usually it was just a shouted, “We’re home, Shirleen!”
“What excuse did you use to tell them they had to check in on me?” I asked.
“As far as they knew, you were out with the Rock Chicks. They always check in on you after you’re out with the Rock Chicks. They didn’t think anything of it since my wife is a Rock Chick, you were supposed to be out with her, and who knows what you all get up to.”
“What, with stun gunning and car chases not out of the ordinary,” Luke filled in.
This made sense.
And this was true. Whenever I was in after being out with the Rock Chicks, one or the other of my boys checked in physically.
Just not both of them.
“You’re in my chair,” I pointed out to Lee.
“Technically, it’s my chair,” he returned.
This was true too.
Fine.
He wanted to play it that way?
I picked up my bag, mumbling, “I’ve been meaning to take some time off.”
“Shirleen, you can have your chair back when you tell us how it went last night,” Lee stalled me.
“Who says I want my chair back?” I asked. “Maybe I want to call Daisy and have some brunch before we go shopping.”
“Daisy’s at work at Ally’s office, and anyway, I know you’re not talkin’ to her since she called you last night, ten times, and you didn’t answer her either,” Lee retorted.
“The girls bought themselves Shirleen’s Patented Silent Treatment for a whole week for their shenanigans,” I shot back.
Suddenly, Lee’s expression shifted.
And I’d become accustomed to a lot from these men. Their hotness. Their sweetness with their women. Their occasional scariness when they got pissed or on edge.
Even so, I took a mini step back at the look that hit his face.
And the tone of his voice I’d never heard in my life and I’d known Lee since he was a teenager.
“You didn’t have a good time?”
“We’re going to a movie tomorrow night.”
Lee relaxed.
“So you had a good time,” Mace growled.
I drew in a big breath and let it out on a sigh.
“Yeah,” I told Mace. “He’s nice. He’s handsome. He didn’t blink at me ordering a four-course meal at an expensive restaurant and he was right there with me. So we’re gonna take in a movie tomorrow.” I then glared at Mace. “Happy?”
Broody Mace left the building and he smiled at me. “Yeah.”
I turned back to Lee. “Now will you get outta my chair? I got invoices to send.”
Or not.
I was feeling the need to have a new outfit for movie night. An outfit I could order online and pick up at Nordstrom on the way home.
“So it’s all good,” Lee noted, straightening his long body out of my chair.
“The date was all good,” I corrected. “You men and your women interfering with my life and setting me up like that was all bad.”
“Can’t be bad if you had a good time,” Vance pointed out.
I positioned myself in front of the chair Lee had vacated and skewered him with my eyes.
“And what if it had been a disaster?” I asked.
“We would have killed him,” Vance answered casually.
This might have been sweet, or funny, if it wasn’t possibly true.
“You’re officially not allowed to kill or maim or otherwise torture Moses Richardson even if things don’t work out with us,” I decreed.
“So you had a good time,” Hector remarked, having risen from the couch to stand between Mace and Vance in front of my desk.
He was grinning.
I looked among the testosterone brigade. “You’re all pretty pleased with yourselves, aren’t you?”
“Pretty much,” Luke rumbled.
His lips had formed a half-grin.
Okay, they got what they wanted from their interrogation, it was time for me to shop.
So even as I sat my ass down, I had a hand up, shooing them. “Fine. Now git. This conversation is at an end.”
As I spoke, my purse rang.
I reached in, took out my cell, saw the number was local but not programmed in.
As much as I wanted to ignore it because in all likelihood it was someone trying to sell me something, I couldn’t.
Local could mean a local marketing call.
It could also mean I forgot I scheduled the boys in for their dental cleaning and the dentist office was calling to remind me, which would be good, since if that was the case, I’d forgotten (mental note: put dentist appointments in planner; second mental note: buy dental appointment stickers). Or the school was calling about something. Or Roam’s girlfriend’s father was calling to schedule an inter-family meeting to discuss the variety of reasons why chicken and waffles were never happening again.
So I took the call.
“You got Shirleen,” I said into my phone.
“Mornin’, baby,” Moses said into my ear.
Heat and goose bumps both fought for control of the surface of my skin.
“Hey,” I whispered, my eyes dropping to my desk, but that desk, the office, the men and the world had vanished.
Everything had become Moses.
He was calling me the morning after a date.
No messing about for him making me wait to hear his voice, pretending he didn’t want to connect with me, letting me know right away I was on his mind.
“How’d you sleep?” he asked.
“Good,” I lied.
I didn’t sleep.
I kept reliving that kiss, the sound of his laughter, the sight of his smiles, his words about me being perfect over and over again.
It was the best sleepless night in history.
“Good,” he replied. “So, might be too early for a home date, but I got a slow-cook brisket recipe that’ll knock your socks off. I introduce you to that, you introduce me to Tarzan. Work for you?”
I loved brisket.
“Alternately, the Mayan has a retrospective screening of Set It Off. We can hit The Hornet after,” he went on.