“Game on, bitches,” Rhonda yelled their way.
With her heart thundering, Dee gripped her arm. “Chill! Are you trying to start a riot?”
Rhonda lifted an eyebrow. “We came here to fight, not shop at Wal-Mart.”
As Dad had told her to, she shaded her eyes with her hand and scanned the area for brewing trouble. Why hadn’t she remembered to wear sunglasses, too? Reporters, probably hungry for blood, thronged the perimeter, and a couple of police cruisers sat in the parking lot.
Some guys with long hair gathered on the sidewalk. They were pulling long things out of dark cases. Oh, no. Weapons? No, guitars. Guitars!
“Looks like we’ve got entertainment,” she told her friend, her stomach relaxing a little bit. “I wonder whose side they’re on.”
Their Confederate flag soon gave her the answer, and her stomach sank again.
“Wait. They look familiar. Is that Breeze? Here?”
She hated to admit it, but she enjoyed their music and their sexy looks even more. Especially the lead singer, Rodney Walker, dressed in black as always, including the cowboy hat capping his golden-brown hair. His short beard behind the microphone, just a shade darker. He looked even better in person than digitally.
It was clear they liked the South, where they were from, but they’d never said anything racial. Or taken sides. Don’t ask, don’t tell, right? Seeing them here, though, soured her taste for them forever.
As a matter of principle, she’d have to change the station from now on when their songs played on the radio. And delete the picture of Rodney she’d downloaded to her computer. The one she gazed at whenever she needed a little eye candy to relax her between cases.
Her parents joined them, and Dad jerked his thumb toward Breeze. “What is this, Woodstock? Why doesn’t our side have a band?”
“Shit. We’re already outnumbered,” Rhonda said. “We’ll have to fight harder.”
The word fight tensed Dee’s stomach up again.
“You girls be careful,” Jeremy told them as he gripped their shoulders. “I’m going to hang out on the sidelines with your mother. She’s too old for this kind of thing.”
Dee grinned. “And you’re not?”
He flexed his biceps. “Quit making eyes at the band,” he warned her before he left. “They’re the enemy.”
Why did the enemy have to look so good? The breeze lifted Rodney’s thick, silky hair, making her want to run her fingers through it. He sure filled out his long-sleeved shirt and tight pants. With his solid build, he’d feel fantastic in bed. Throbbing electric guitars filled the air, but his voice grabbed her the hardest. Rich and bluesy in the center and rough and male around the edges.
After the first stanza, her panties were soaked. Lord, help her. She didn’t belong here. Maybe she should go home and take a cold shower. If burnout from work was her problem, she could deal with it in much safer ways.
The arousal sizzling through her reminded her what her parents had told her about grandchildren, though. If she wanted a relationship, it was about time to start one. But not with some flag-waving bigot. With an everyday guy who shared her values about racism and everything else.
“Ready?” their group organizer asked.
“Let’s go,” Rhonda yelled, thrusting her sign into the air like a spear.
Dee fell into the line behind her friend and marched. She vocalized with the others while waving her sign around.
Damn. She’d barely started and had already gotten a splinter in her palm and broken a nail.
“I can’t hear you,” Rhonda complained.
So, she yelled louder, her voice mixing with Rodney’s until she didn’t hear anything or anybody else. What was wrong with her? Had her hormones gone whacko? She tried to ignore him as she marched, focusing instead on the issue that brought her here.
Why did the line have to pass so close to the band, practically at their feet? When she glanced at Rodney, he seemed to look back. Was that a wink?
“He winked at me,” she hissed in Rhonda’s ear.
“Then give him the finger,” her friend shot back. “Never mind. I will.”
She’d been doing it during the whole march, working her sign with one hand and her finger with the other. Was fighting hate with more hate the answer? Dee didn’t think so.
“This is supposed to be a peaceful rally,” she reminded Rhonda.
“I’m just expressing myself. Besides, we already asked the city nicely to take down that butt-ugly statue, and they didn’t listen.”
“We can still be firm without fighting.”
“You sound like your hippie parents,” Rhonda joked. “Most of the peace and freedom you enjoy today is because somebody fought in a war.”
She had a point. If not for the Civil War, they might be in leg irons right now, picking cotton on some miserable plantation.
So far so good here, though. No one had killed each other yet. In fact, Dee had had her fill, and her feet were starting to hurt in the black patent-leather sandals she’d worn.
“How long do we have to march?” she asked. “Thanks to the media, the town officials have surely seen and heard us already.”
“Until everybody leaves. If we go now, it’ll look like we’re running away.”
Great. They could be here all night. She could think of worse things than spending the night with Rodney, but not under these circumstances. And he couldn’t be more wrong for her.
“You hungry?” Rhonda asked. “I’ve got candy bars in my pants pockets.”
“You did come prepared. Maybe later,” she replied. “I don’t really want to know what else you packed in those pockets.”
Weapons? Her father carried a knife, but she refused to. She didn’t have time for a regular workout routine, but she tried to keep in shape. If things got bad, she’d be hauling ass out of here.
Their line circled back to face the statue, now surrounded by shouting and angry gestures. Someone from their side threw a
