Fast? This wasn’t fast. This was warp speed

Kitty Sue was staring dreamily ahead, not focused on a thing and we’d all melted into the atmosphere. She was picking wedding colors, she was deciding china patterns, she was mentally knitting baby booties, she was planning her visit to my mother’s grave to impart the blissful news.

Shit.

I twisted back to Lee.

“Asshole,” I mouthed.

He was unfazed at my word though he seemed somewhat fascinated with watching my mouth form it.

“I brought you a change of clothes and some of your stuff,” Ally said, reaching behind us and grabbing the coffeepot. “Looks like I should have brought more.”

I moved my glare to her.

She was just as good at ignoring it as Lee, better, she’d had more practice.

“I’ll take some of that. Indy already has a cup,” Lee murmured.

“Not surprising,” Ally said, pouring coffee into three mugs.

They were acting like it was business as usual at Lee’s condo, just like it was any other day and I decided I was most definitely in an alternate universe because this was all just plain old nuts.

“Listen people!” I cried, trying to get everyone’s attention. “This is not what it seems.”

Ally looked at me.

Kitty Sue’s happily dazed eyes focused on me.

Lee’s hard thighs tightened on my sides and his forearm wrapped around my chest and neck. His chin dipped to the curve of my shoulder, his lips at my ear.

“Don’t spoil Mom’s moment,” he murmured there.

“What is it, then?” Kitty Sue asked.

Lee’s fingers dug into my shoulder and I could feel the muscles flexing in his forearm at my neck. I took one look in Kitty Sue’s eyes.

Damn it all to hell.

“We’re taking it slow,” I said for lack of anything else to say, like, the truth.

Wouldn’t sound so good to say, Your son is trying to extort sex from me. News at eleven.

Kitty Sue breathed a sigh of relief, sent us a dazzling smile and put sugar in her coffee.

Ally wandered into the living room.

Lee brushed my hair aside with his chin and softly kissed the spot where my shoulder met my neck.

I guessed that was his way of saying thank you.

It was a good way.

“Hey, where’s Rosie?” Ally asked.

I froze.

So did Lee.

We’d completely forgotten about Rosie.

“Fuck,” Lee said, moved me forward and jumped off the counter, prowling into the living room. I caught a good look both of his muscled back and his ass in his jeans and went a little weak in the knees.

“Liam Nightingale, that mouth!” Kitty Sue admonished.

I followed Lee, but he was already moving out of the living room and through the kitchen.

I looked at the quilt and pillow on the couch.

No Rosie.

“Fuck!” Lee said from somewhere else in the condo.

I ran to him.

The second bedroom door was closed, the bathroom door was open, with the bathroom empty. I walked into Lee’s room and he stalked out of his bathroom.

“That f**king twat,” Lee muttered.

“Mouth!” Super-power-Mom-eared Kitty Sue called from the kitchen.

Lee could always swear really, really well. He’d been doing it since I could remember.

Lee walked to the dresser and slid a drawer open. He pulled on a navy, long-sleeved t-shirt that fit super-snug to his chest and arms and grabbed a pair of socks. I watched as he sat on the bed to pull on the socks and a pair of black motorcycle boots with square toes and silver hoops at the sides.

Seriously kickass boots.

I shook my head to clear thoughts of Lee’s boots and started to worry about Rosie and why he would leave, what he was doing, where he was going and what was in that pot-addled brain of his.

Then something occurred to me as Lee got off the bed.

And for the first time that morning, I smiled.

If I found Rosie first, and got the diamonds back to their owner, then I wouldn’t owe Lee a thing.

Hee hee.

I was so happy with my thought, I had to share it.

“I guess this puts a crimp in your sex extortion plans.”

I’d timed my “nanny nanny foo foo” very poorly. Lee was close enough to hook me around the back of the neck with enough force to send me slamming into him. He gave my hair an erotically rough yank, tilting my head back.

Then he kissed me.

It was a hard, deep and serious kiss with a liberal dose of tongue.

My toes curled into the thick carpet.

When he lifted his head, he said, “I have plans for you. Don’t leave this apartment.”

I nodded.

I had every intention of leaving his apartment.

He watched me.

“Indy, you leave this apartment, I’ll come lookin’ for you.”

“Jeez, we haven’t even slept together and already you don’t trust me.”

“I’ve known you all your life not to mention the fact that my idiot sister is in the next room and when you two get together it’s like Laurel and Hardy do Denver.”

“It is not!”

“What about that time you bought scalped tickets to a Garth Brooks concert from Carmine Alfonzo?”

Carmine Alfonzo, better known as Uncle Carmine. We’d known him since we were seven, he used to ride the squad car with Dad.

“He was in disguise!” I defended myself.

“He was wearing a baseball hat,” Lee returned.

“Yes, but he’s a Cubs fan, he was wearing a Sox hat. His head should have been on fire.”

The sides of Lee’s eyes crinkled in a grin that didn’t involve his mouth but was nevertheless ultra-effective and let go of my hair.

“We aren’t finished yet,” he told me.

“Yes we are,” I retorted.

Lee’s crinkles disappeared and his face got serious.

“This is happening between you and me,” he threatened.

I wasn’t entirely sure what “this” meant since he announced to his mother and sister that we were “together”. Considering what I did know was that a goodly part of it involved us being naked, in his bed, participating in activities which required my avid participation, I wasn’t going to have any part of it.

“No, it isn’t,” I snapped back.

“We’ll talk about it later.”