“You’re a beautiful soul,” Essence cooed in my ear. “And I sure am glad I know what’s put that gray in your aura that hasn’t gone away. Now I can help you bring back more pink, add some yellow and get you some green. But I want you to promise me you’ll call on me no matter what comes for you, you’re in my little cottage, or not. I love you like one of my own, Rebel, and it eats me you didn’t lean on me. I might no longer be young, but my heart’s working just fine, and you’re in it and just like you wanna take care of the ones in yours, others feel the same about you. So let us take care of you. Okay?”

“Okay, Essence.”

“Now go get your brains banged out by that beautiful biker,” Essence bid. “You come home, I want details. All that’s him, I’m sure the Goddess gave him a beautiful member. Be good to it, it’ll be good to you.”

I started giggling.

“Right. This little mama’s gonna light up a doobie,” she told me. “If any day deserves some good reefer, today is that day.”

“Don’t let Boz get too stoned,” I warned.

“We’ll be just fine. You hear that, Rebel girl? We’ll be just fine.”

“Love you, Essence,” I whispered.

“Love you back, child. Don’t be good,” she replied, then rang off.

I put my phone down and picked my beer up.

“My take from your end of that, which wasn’t much, she read you and good,” Rush remarked.

“Hmm,” I hummed, swallowing beer, wishing it was more tequila.

He grinned at me and slugged back more of his own beer.

Then he leaned into his forearms on the counter across from me.

Okay.

Straight up.

I could simply look at this man for eternity.

He was that amazing.

“You wanna take our beers in and watch TV?” he asked.

Okay.

Straight up.

I could kiss this man for eternity, not only because he was a fantastic kisser, but because he was just that sweet.

Things had been extreme, but he had not once made a mention, or even assumed a look like he was ticked about what was interrupted on his couch.

And I felt him hard against me, we were going fast and it was getting intense and all that had been outstanding, and then he was racing us across town to look at a dead body.

Not a word.

Not a look.

And now he was offering me beer and TV.

No pressure.

Just unwinding.

In his house, where he’d moved me in to look after me.

On our first date.

“You know, I can probably call Diesel. Head down to Phoenix. Put up with their sex noises, and D and Mad will look after me, and Molly will feed me, and I’ll be safe. You don’t have to move me into your awesome bachelor pad to look out for me.”

“You stay, am I eventually gonna get laid?” he asked.

But it was a tease.

Still.

I gave it to him straight.

“Yes.”

His gaze grew gentle on me, not heated.

He wanted that, but he wasn’t going to push it and he liked my honesty and showed it.

I mean, seriously?

This guy really could not be real.

“I like my space, Rebel,” he said quietly. “But I also like you. Lived twenty-nine years waking up mostly alone. Spent the last ten coming home to an empty house. I figure I’ll get off on the change.”

That was nice, him continuing to be so sweet.

But I was staring at him.

“What?” he asked.

“You’re twenty-nine?”

“Yeah.”

How could he only be twenty-nine?

He didn’t look twenty-nine.

All right. Riding his bike, sun and wind explained those little lines by his eyes.

But he did not act twenty-nine.

He acted far older (read, far wiser) than that.

“What?” he asked again.

“I’m thirty.”

“Yeah?”

That yeah was more so?

I was staring at him again.

I was one year older than him.

Maybe not even a year.

Why did I instantly jump to the thought he might not be all right with that?

The way he was looking at me, he was all right with that.

Something else struck me as I kept staring at him.

Which made me continue to stare at him.

Essence had told him her Woodstock orgy story on first meeting, and he’d grabbed my hand and dragged me out the door to get to her not even knowing there was a dead body that involved me on the street outside her house.

He just thought something was wrong with Essence, he grabbed me, and he booked.

“Rebel?” he called.

I said nothing.

Just kept staring at him.

Because it wasn’t even just that.

When he and his brothers took me to that cabin, he’d told me he knew Diesel was bi.

He’d talked of Diesel and Maddox and Molly since. So had I.

He agreed hate was a burden.

He was a biker dating a woman whose brother loved and intended to commit to a man.

And Rush hadn’t said anything. He hadn’t even given me a facial expression to share he was not down in some way with that.

It was what it was. It was how Diesel was. Essence was how Essence was.

And for Rush, that was it.

I grew up in Indiana, and one could not say every citizen in that state had some prejudice, great or small. A lot of folks were awesome.

One could say it was far from the most tolerant state in the union.

And my house was one of the least tolerant ones I knew.

I grew up listening to vile, venomous shit about blacks, gays, Mexicans, Muslims, hippies, and it went on. Hell, my father and Gunner had written off the entire state of California as liberal losers and wouldn’t have a problem if they seceded from the union.

Rush didn’t just buy his date potato chips and fry fantastic hamburgers for her. (And not once had I seen my father cook a meal for my mother, even though he refused to allow her to grill steak because she “ruined meat,” even though she never ruined his chops, burgers, cutlets or meatloaf, just that grilling was “man’s work”—the asshole.)

Rush was more.

So much more.

He was the real deal.

I came out of my thoughts when Rush’s hand wrapped warm around mine and gave it a squeeze.

When I focused on those eyes—those insanely beautiful eyes—he asked, “Where are you now?”

“I don’t wanna watch TV,” I whispered.

His hand tightened further on mine.

I twisted my fingers so I could tighten them on his too.

Then I slid off my stool, holding on to him, but now tugging him.

He came around the counter.

It was me who led us to his stairs.

Up them.

To his bedroom.

He’d admitted during the tour that not only were the framed photographs of his family and his brothers that were dotted around the house the product of his little sister and stepmother interfering with his décor, but together they’d picked his bedclothes.

When I met them, I’d congratulate them on a job well done.

The sheets were a slate gray, they had a sheen, so they not only were masculine and attractive but looked expensive.

His comforter was swirls of dark blues and grays with some chocolate brown thrown in, and it was manly but smart and crazy appealing.

They’d given him euros with shams that were on the floor. And the comforter was askew because he clearly didn’t make his bed, just threw the covers back.

But on that low, contemporary, mattress-only king-size bed with its short headboard that looked covered in black python, those sheets were the shit.

I thought this during the tour.

After I walked him into his own room, I just turned to him, ready to get busy in that bed.

He put his hands to my hips and kept me walking, just backwards.

Toward the bed.

And all of a sudden, I felt weird.

I didn’t have hang-ups about sex.

I did, back in the beginning. A woman didn’t grow up in the house I grew up in and not have hang-ups about sex.

I left two days after my nineteenth birthday, and although I’d gone back, I never looked back, and after I found a few good lovers who guided my way, I found my way past that.