Page 210 of Rock Chick

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After we closed Fortnum’s,Eddie drove me and the Crossfire the one block to my house and parked it in the second space I owned behind the house, a space relegated to visitors.

I was pretty certain I was going to start hyperventilating at the idea of the visitor’s parking spot being the permanent residence of Lee’s Crossfire, but I managed to tamp down the panic.

We walked through my back yard. Eddie took my keys and opened the door.

The minute I walked in, I knew something was wrong.

“Someone’s here,” I whispered to Eddie and put my Walgreens bag on the kitchen counter.

Eddie turned and looked at me. “No shit, there’s a television on.”

Okay, so maybe I wasn’t a natural born detective with a keen sense of danger.

“Stay here, I’ll check it out,” he ordered, pulling a gun out of his waistband and walking into the dining room.

I followed him.

He turned to me. “Which part of ‘stay here’ didn’t you understand?”

“You’re not leaving me behind. I don’t like to get left behind. Sure, I get kidnapped and find dead bodies when I don’t stay where I’m supposed to be, but I’m pretty certain it’d be worse if I stayed behind.”

Eddie gave me a look that said I was quickly curing him of his unrequited passion.

We walked through the living room, up the stairs and the TV was on in the second bedroom. The minute I hit the landing and looked into the TV room, I came to an abrupt halt.

Eddie walked into the room and asked, “What’s up,hombre?”

I could see through the open door that Lee’s huge-ass flat screen TV was in the place where my old-ass tired TV used to be. I could also see some frames stacked against each other on the floor and leaning against the wall.

I turned my head the other direction and saw two big suitcases on the floor in my bedroom, one of them open, and it appeared to have exploded. Men’s clothes, or more to the point,Lee’sclothes, were all over the floor.

I looked into the bathroom and there was an open dopp kit on the counter of the bathroom vanity.

Lee had moved in.

I wandered into the TV room. My desk no longer had all my cute stationery, fun girlie boxes, knickknacks and brightly colored journals that I collected but never wrote in carefully lined up on the attached shelves with my laptop closed. Everything was shoved around. There was a huge flat screen monitor, wireless keyboard and mouse, and a bunch of other crap littering the surface and floor, and all sorts of cordseverywhere.

There was also an enormous safe next to the TV stand.

Lee was flat on his back on my big, red, poofy, deep-seated, comfortable couch. All my fancy toss pillows, which were normally arranged artfully, were shoved up behind his head and shoulders. He had a beer dangling from his fingers and a baseball game on.

He and Eddie were chatting, but when I came in Lee looked at me.

“Hey,” he greeted.

I didn’t answer. It was a physical impossibility.

I wandered out of the room and into my bedroom.

I was vaguely aware of Eddie leaving and was staring at the exploded clothes when Lee walked into the room.

“Cherry’s gonna be all right,” Lee told me.

I didn’t answer. Not that I wasn’t glad, as any good human would be, that Cherry was going to live to see another day where she could make other mortals feel inferior, just that I was freaking out.

I walked forward and opened my closet doors. I put both my hands at the very end of the hangers on one side, and with all my might I shoved them to the other side. It was a superhuman effort. Hangers clacked together and all my clothes scrunched up and I managed to free about a foot and a half of space. I stepped back and looked at Lee’s exploded clothes on the floor.