“First thing I shared,” the woman, apparently called Essence, bragged.

Rebel pointed a finger, in what Rush suspected but couldn’t be certain after the winding route they took was toward the Pepto Bismol house, the sight of which had long since been lost to the jungle. “Go find Major Nelson.”

Essence threw her head back and roared with laughter.

While she did, Rebel smiled at her.

And the earth stood still.

He didn’t know her. He’d seen her twice, been in her actual presence once, and flipped through a number of pictures of her.

He had no idea the weight she carried on her face.

Not until then.

Not until it lightened and grew incredibly more beautiful with humor and the clear and unhidden affection she had for this crazy old lady.

Oh yeah.

If his first meet with this firebrand hadn’t clenched it (and it had), that did.

He was definitely fucking her, more than once.

If she was even a decent lay and she ever smiled at him like that, he was keeping Rebel Stapleton for a long time.

Essence stopped laughing and started to move toward where he’d stopped midway up Rebel’s walk.

“I’ll let you two young ’uns commune.” She halted at him, looked up, and he braced because hippie dippie was gone. She might be made of petals and fairy dust, but the woman had her brand of steel. “You hurt her, I know some Hell’s Angels and they’ll tear you apart,” she warned low, rearranged her face, threw a smile over her shoulder at Rebel and called, “Peace out,” before she skipped to the gate, through the opening, and was swallowed by the city wilderness.

“Could you find your way out of here?” Rebel asked, and he twisted back to her. “Or if I shut the door in your face, will you be lost in Essence’s fairy garden forever and become a biker gnome?”

He moved the rest of the way up the walk, saying, “I don’t wanna find out.”

She didn’t get out of the door, so he had to stop at it, feeling vines drifting in his hair.

Jesus.

“Is this surprise visit going to annoy me?” she asked.

“Probably,” he answered.

She started to shake her head. “Rush—”

“Baby, unless you got an oven in there you cook kids in, let me in so we can talk without me strong armin’ your shit to get you to do what I want you to do.”

That was when it happened.

She smiled at him and it didn’t have the affection she gave the crazy old lady.

But it had humor.

He felt it in his chest and his dick.

So it definitely worked.

Enough he put his hand in her belly and pushed in.

She let him, turning to the side so he could get all the way in.

Sadly, this meant his hand had to drop and was no longer connected to her warmth.

He’d deal.

For now.

She shut the door.

He looked around.

He did it remembering Hawk’s words.

Bohemian wasteland.

He wondered if Hawk, or whoever did his recon for him, had actually been inside or if this assessment had been made just from Essence’s pad and her run-amuck garden.

He was guessing from what he was seeing that was a yes, they’d been inside.

“Please tell me this place came furnished,” he begged.

“I’ve lived here six years. This is all mine,” she replied, on the move. “Want tea?”

Tea?

He followed her, trying not to slam his head into the low lintels.

The big house was probably built in the 1800s.

This place seemed like it was built in the 1500s.

“You do meditate, don’t you?”

“Yup,” she said, putting a butter-yellow kettle on the gas burner of a stove that had to have been crafted in 1932, and if he didn’t see her light it and hear the clicking of the flint to catch the gas, he might have thought it was wood burning.

He stood in the small kitchen with its cupboards painted in flamingo pink and sky blue with a few red drawers thrown in, had cobalt-blue tile on the walls, and a double window over the farm sink that was opened wide and filled with vases of all sizes containing cut wildflowers.

This was not a woman who directed porn films.

Doing that was probably slowly killing her.

Another reason to get her ass out.

“Essence told me you weren’t a hippie,” he said.

“I’m not,” she replied, pulling down mismatched coffee mugs. “I’m one with my Chi.”

He stared at her.

She stared back a beat before she busted out laughing, arms wrapped around her middle, doubled over, the whole bit.

Her head came up, even if her body didn’t, and she was still laughing.

He took in her face.

And oh yeah.

Fuck to the yeah.

He was keeping her for a long fucking time.

“Your face,” she spluttered.

He leaned his hip against a cabinet and crossed his arms, feeling his lips twitching.

She straightened, pulled her shit together, and admitted, “I’m not sure what Chi is. I still meditate. It’s relaxing and it clears the garbage out of your head.”

“Right.”

“You should try it,” she suggested.

“Not gonna happen.”

Her eyes twinkled and she shifted to another cupboard to grab some tea.

“Babe, I don’t drink tea,” he told her.

She held up a baggie of what looked like herb, the kind you smoked, except more colorful. “This is more caffeinated than Starbucks.”

“Rebel, baby,” he said low, “I do not drink tea.”

She took him in with a look on her face he liked, tipped her head to the side, causing her hair to glide over her bare shoulder and down her arm, something else he liked and felt in his dick, and she asked, “Coffee?”

“Sure.”

Her lips turned up and she turned back to the cupboard and came down with an aqua-colored ceramic French press.

He watched her move to a fridge that looked old fashioned, was the color of a tangerine, but he knew it wasn’t vintage to the house because it was shiny-new, very orange and had letters that spelled SMEG on it.

She came out of it with a flowered tin of what he hoped was coffee.

“You do know, even not strong arming, this convo is going to go the same as the other one,” she told him, not catching his eye now, the words coming out like she didn’t want to say them, but she had to.

“Still gonna try,” he said softly.

“Right,” she whispered.

He gave her a minute before he went on.

“And you know why I’m here taking another shot at that, Rebel.”

She looked at him then.

She started to open her mouth, but he beat her to it.

“And don’t deny it.”

She shut her mouth.

“You felt it,” he declared.

She turned back to the tin and wrested off the top.

While she was scooping coffee into the French press, he repeated, “Rebel, admit it, you felt it.”

“Felt what?” she asked the coffee.

“The need to jump my bones.”

Her head jerked his way.

“You think a lot of yourself, stud,” she snapped.

But there was pink in her cheeks.

Totally wanted to jump his bones.

“You shot outta your car and got right in my face, pissed as shit I’d put myself in danger, hijacking you on Speer. Not pissed we hijacked you and not putting you in danger, me,” he pointed out.

“Fuck,” she muttered, going back to the coffee.

Yeah, she’d given it all away with the first words she’d spoken to him.

“And what woman gets hijacked and lectures the man who hijacked her about precisely how to hijack, seein’ as she was not goin’ Thelma and Louise on his ass because it might hurt him and his brothers?”

She carefully put the top of the tin back on and said nothing.

“You knew you weren’t in danger from the start,” he continued. “You were worried about me. No woman worries about a man she just met, he hijacked her or not, if she doesn’t want to fuck him.”

“It was a stupid, strong man, biker stunt, Rush, when as you can see,” she said as she moved back to the fridge, “Essence would have led you right to my door and offered condoms.”