Now someone was at my door.

I knew one thing. Behind that door was not a Rock Chick. They all had their Hot Bunch boys at home and it was past bedtime. They would be nowhere near my door.

So it was probably someone who needed me.

I wished I had an office with a hotline. This hitting my pad business, interrupting me while I was sitting on my ass in a sexy dress in a dark apartment evaluating my life was not working for me. Not that that happened all the time, but once was enough.

The knock came again, and when I gave it time and there was more knocking, I knew they weren’t going to let up. So it would seem I had to haul my ass off the floor and tell them to take a hike.

This, I did.

Except when I got to the peephole, I saw Ren out there.

He wasn’t looking down the hall this time. He was looking at the doorknob as if he expected to hear the locks turning.

Fuck.

I pulled away from the peephole and rested my forehead against the door.

He knocked again.

Fuck!

Okay, I was Ally Nightingale. I figured whatever this was wasn’t going to be a lot of fun, but I didn’t shy away from anything.

Sucking in breath, I unlocked the door and opened it.

Ren stood there in all his glory.

I swallowed the lump that suddenly clogged my throat and asked, “What are you doing here?”

“You didn’t look good after Sadie’s thing, honey,” he answered.

I didn’t look good because I wasn’t good.

And he’d noticed and done something about it.

Why couldn’t he be a dick?

I mean, seriously.

I didn’t ask that.

I asked, “Where’s your date?”

“I was worried about you. You weren’t pickin’ up your phone. Dropped her and came to you.”

Again.

Why couldn’t he be a dick?

Seriously.

“You still don’t look good, baby,” he whispered, and it happened.

What happened was something that never happened. Not to me. I was a Nightingale. I was a cop’s daughter. I was the daughter of a cop’s wife. I was tough. It was born in me and bred in me.

So it took serious shit, like Indy marrying my brother—something she and I both wanted since forever—to make me lose it.

But right then, I lost it.

I felt it happen and had no hope of stopping it. The wet forming in my eyes, making my vision bright. Then the tear breaking loose and gliding down my cheek. Then one on the other side.

“Ally,” Ren murmured, eyes to my cheeks.

“I was mean to her,” I whispered.

His eyes came to mine.

“Baby,” Ren whispered back.

Another tear.

“I was mean to her, and that night, she was raped.”

“Honey.”

Another tear. “She looks like a fairy princess and she was raped.”

Then I totally lost it, taking two steps back to escape at the same time I stupidly lifted my hands to cover my face and hide my emotion (which would make escaping difficult, seeing as I couldn’t see).

But I got no further.

The light from the hall was extinguished because Ren was inside, and I knew this because I was being held tight in his arms.

As I felt the strength of his arms surrounding me, the heat from his body penetrating, one of those hiccoughing sobs burned up my throat and made my body buck in his embrace.

God!

I so totally hated crying!

His arms separated, one going low and again tight around my waist. The other one moved so his hand could stroke my back and I heard him encourage into the top of my hair, “Talk to me.”

I didn’t know why I did it. I just knew I needed to do it and he was the only one around.

So I did it.

I pressed my hands and face into his chest and let it all hang out.

“I thought she’d been mean to Daisy. I thought she hated Hector. And I came to Lee’s office the day she came to Lee’s office to ask for his protection.” My head shot back and I cried, “And I was mean!”

His hand soothingly stroking my back (and I had to admit, I’d lost it, but it still was soothing) moved to cup my jaw and he replied, “I know what went down with Daisy and Sadie, and also Sadie and Hector, and Sadie’s not the kind of girl who lets people in. So at the time, honey, you couldn’t think anything different.”

“She got raped that night, Ren!” I stated loudly.

“I know, baby,” he said comfortingly.

“Now she’s a Rock Chick and you heard her tonight!” I kept talking loudly, tears sliding from my eyes. “And I haven’t figured out how to make amends.”

“You and your posse taking her in and having her back is doing that, Ally,” he pointed out.

“Obviously not fast enough!” I returned. “But none of my posse was ugly to her. Except me and Shirleen, but Shirleen got her chance to make amends. Sadie even asked for her.”

And this was true. Shirleen was Darius’s aunt, Lee’s receptionist, and also a Rock Chick of the Daisy variety (which meant she wasn’t attached to a Hot Bunch boy, but she was a Rock Chick all the same).

She’d been snippy with Sadie that day. But when Sadie finally reported her rape, she’d asked for Shirleen to be there.

“Ally, baby, what happened with Sadie tonight didn’t have anything to do with you.”

“I know that,” I snapped, yanking out of his arms and taking a step away. “But she…” I shook my head. “God, that monster broke her wrist. Gashed her face. Made her feel tawdry.”

“Come back to me, honey,” Ren urged.

I shook my head again. “No. I can’t.” I stopped talking, started pacing then kept babbling. “I have to sort this out in my head.”

I continued pacing and Ren didn’t say anything.

This didn’t last very long before he said something.

“Jesus, you really can’t deal with being mean,” Ren murmured incredulously.

I stopped pacing and whipped around to face him. It was dark but I still could feel he was watching me.

“Not to someone who doesn’t deserve it!” I yelled. “I’m all for a smackdown if a bitch is a bitch. But Sadie is no bitch.”

“No, she’s not,” Ren agreed cautiously.

“So that means I kicked a sister when that sister was low. I don’t do that shit, Zano.”

“Fuck, you’re back to Zano,” he muttered.

“What?” I asked sharply.

“Nothing, honey. Just come here, will you?”

I shook my head again. “No. I…” my eyes narrowed on him and I re-asked an earlier question. “What are you doing here?”

He gave me the same answer. “I was worried about you.”

“You ditched your date because you were worried about me?”

“Yes,” he answered immediately.

Shit.

What did I do with that?

“Ally, look at me,” he ordered.

I was looking at him, or at least I was looking at his shadow. But he sensed I wasn’t focused, and how he could sense that, I had no clue. It weirded me out and made me feel all warm inside at the same time.

Still, I focused on him and he sensed when I did that, too.

Yikes.

When I did, hesitantly and gently, he asked, “Did something like what happened to Sadie happen to you?”

Oh God.

He thought I’d been raped.

That was why he was worried.

I couldn’t let him think that so I replied softly, “No, Ren.”

“Back to Ren,” he whispered.

Oh shit.

He was trying to figure me out.

I couldn’t let that happen.

Okay, time to end this.

“I—” I started to do that, but that was as far as I got.

“Shut up and listen to me.”

I clamped my mouth shut, and I did this with a bit of surprise and not a bit of temper since he’d suddenly turned macho alpha on me.

Before I could start yelling, he started talking.

“I don’t know what’s up with you, but tonight, watching you at the gallery in a dress that succeeded in making me fight my dick getting hard faster than that other one, and your response to what went down with Sadie, I don’t give a fuck.”

He’d been watching me?

When?

And how did I miss that?

Ren kept talking.

“You take the backs of that crew of yours like your blood flows through their veins. Indy may be their foundation, Daisy and Shirleen the emotional support. But you’re the backbone.”

Jeez.

How did he know so much about the Rock Chicks?

And why did what he said make me feel even warmer inside?

And last, why the hell was he saying this shit at all?

He didn’t make me wait for an answer to the last.

“You don’t need to make amends to Sadie. You’re set on giving her a lifetime of sisterhood the like she’s never had before and never even dreamed of having. That’ll do it, so you can let that go.”

That was all nice, and true, and made me feel better, but unfortunately he wasn’t done.

“You’ve got your way, the way you are and the way you are with the ones you care about. And that tells me, a man gets in there, you give that to him, the children you give him, that man will be all kinds of lucky. And I’ve decided we’re gonna see if that man is me.”

Oh my God!

Was he crazy?

He’d just been gazing softly at Ava (well, not “just”, but not three months ago either!) and now he was saying this shit to me.

“Zano, we’re done,” I reminded him.

“You can be done, but I’m not. So we’re gonna explore this and see where it leads until we both make a decision we agree on about where it’s heading.”

Oh crap.

Now he was giving me the macho alpha bossy shit.

“Zano, I—”

“Shut it.”

My back snapped straight. “Don’t you tell me to shut it, Ren Zano.”

I watched his shadowy head shake before he stated, “Baby, you’re gorgeous. The way you wear a dress is goddamned foreplay. The way you give me everything and nothing, making you a challenge only a real man would accept, is all kinds of hot. The way you give as good as you get in bed, totally unselfish at the same time phenomenally greedy… fuck,” he growled, and I felt that growl straight in my happy place. “You’re the best I’ve ever had, Ally. Bar none. And the way you love, stubborn, tough, unshakable, is unbelievably fuckin’ beautiful. And still you’re a serious pain in my ass. But I found, not havin’ you, I got off on the pain. I missed it. So I’m takin’ it back and we’ll see how it goes.”

“I know how it’ll go,” I returned. “Nowhere. We’re done, Zano.”

“Tell me you haven’t missed what we had,” he demanded.

I clamped my mouth shut, because even for self-preservation’s sake, I couldn’t utter that colossal of a lie and I was totally down with lying if the situation warranted it (or when it didn’t and I just needed to save my own hide).

He knew it, damn it all to hell, and I knew he did when he whispered, “Come here, Ally.”

I put my hands on my hips and stated, “If you want to rewind and start up again, I’ll consider it. But, pointing out, we’re rewinding, not rewriting. We’re fuck buddies, Zano. We enjoy each other. You go your way. I go mine.”

“We were never fuck buddies, Ally.”

I wished.

I also rolled my eyes.

“Now come here,” he went on.

I rolled my eyes back to hm.

“Tell me, exactly, why it is I have to walk the three feet that separates us?” I asked.

He was on me in a flash, which meant I was in his arms, plastered to his body. He had one hand in my hair cupping the back of my head, holding it steady for whatever he wanted to do to me.

Great.

That was on me. I’d challenged the alpha and there I was.

I knew better.

One could say I was seriously off my game tonight.

God!

And he felt good. So freaking good. Hard with his heat burning into me.

He was also in a suit.

I was screwed.

“Do you agree to fuck buddies?” I pressed, even as my hands lifted to his biceps and felt the rich material of his suit jacket.

Nice.

“Absolutely not,” he replied, right before he dropped his head and I felt his lips on my neck.

Very nice.

“Zano, we should get this straight before we start this up again,” I told him, even as my hands slid up his arms to his shoulders then around his neck.

His lips slid to my lips and he invited, “You make your plays, Ally. I’ll make mine. And we’ll see where this is gonna lead.”

Unfortunately, that sounded all kinds of fun.