by Nadia Lee
Devlin’s eyes grew large. “The Very Bossy Engagement?” He laughed. “What the hell are you reading?”
“Chick book,” Max said. He sounded like he was in shock.
Cole frowned like he was trying to remember something. “I think Teri liked that one…”
“She likes Emma Grant?” What a coincidence. My baby sister, and now Cole’s fiancée. Emily must have been more famous than I’d realized.
Or maybe not, because Cole looked confused.
“Who’s Emma Grant?” Dev said. “Your new girl?”
“Hot?” Max grunted.
“Is she a rebound? Hotter than Caitlyn?” Cole said.
I considered that. Emily was nothing like Caitlyn, and I didn’t think of my ex when I was around Emily. She wasn’t hot in the flashy, overtly sexual sense. Not like Caitlyn or the women who swarmed around us—or around Dev in particular. Emily was beautiful in a quiet and almost nerdy way, seemingly unaware of her feminine appeal. Or maybe she simply didn’t care about people who only wanted her when she had perfect makeup and a thousand-dollar dress on.
But no matter how messy her hair was, whether she wore glasses or not, or what crazy shirts and pants she put on, she made me feel alive. Interested. Engaged. She was one of a few women who didn’t make me feel like I had to be “on”…being the rock star Killian Axelrod. I could just be a guy, who happened to live next to her house, and she treated me that way, even though she now knew who I was.
It was liberating and sexy as hell.
And she tasted like heaven, too, my dick reminded me as it swelled.
“Of course she’s hot. Why would you date an unhot chick?” Dev said before I could answer.
“Unhot isn’t a word,” I said.
“It is when you’re discussing people.” Dev grinned. “Got a pic?”
“No,” I said, not wanting to share even her official author photo. I didn’t want Dev checking her out when she and I hadn’t cemented anything yet. We’d had that one kiss…and the dinner. I wanted us to be an official couple before Dev met her. That way, he wouldn’t scare the shit out of her by wanting to know if she was a faithful type or some bullshit like that. “She’s a writer, and my next-door neighbor.”
“But… The Very Bossy Engagement? That’s a thick book. She worth all that effort?” Dev asked, growing more serious.
“It’s a good book.” I defended Emily’s creation, feeling like she would’ve done the same for my music. I hoped.
“I watch chick flicks with Teri,” Cole said. “They aren’t that bad. I mean, as long as you don’t mind watching something dull that your woman thinks is funny.”
“Obviously they weren’t her books adapted into movies,” I pointed out.
“You have a fucking crush on her,” Dev said.
Max grunted his agreement.
“Shut it,” I said. I liked Emily and all, but a crush? That sounded so…junior high.
“Your face is getting red,” Dev said.
“He’s right.” Cole grinned, the traitor.
“He hasn’t slept with her yet.” Dev said.
“Uh, guys? Hello? I’m, like, right here with you.”
“Yeah, right there blushing,” said Cole.
“It’s the lighting. Sunset.” I gestured in the direction of the windows.
Cole guffawed. “Does the sun set at three sixteen p.m. in Virginia?”
“Fuck off,” I said, since I couldn’t come up with a better comeback.
“Just do her and you won’t have to read about bossy engagements anymore,” Dev said. “Besides, it isn’t like you can stay in Virginia indefinitely. Do her before June. It’d be a bitch driving back and forth between Virginia and Dallas.”
I paused. June wasn’t even two months away. But that was when our vacation was over, and we were supposed to get back together and start working. We’d be in Dallas, and Emily would be here. In Kingstree.
The idea of being away from her clenched around my chest and squeezed until it hurt. For some bizarre reason, I couldn’t imagine not having breakfast together. Or just hanging out, reading her books and talking with her.
Loud knocks on the door came, pulling me out of the sudden funk.
“Billy’s!” the man at the door boomed.
“Gotta go. It’s my plumber.”
“Is that what you call her?” Dev laughed harder.
Even Max and Cole sniggered.
“It’s the plumber. For my water heater.” I gave the gang the Vulcan salute. “Fuck off and prosper.”
I hung up and opened the door to a couple of burly-looking men who looked like they could play extras in a prison yard scene. Then I prayed they knew what they were doing with water heaters.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Killian
The next day I got up early and went for a hard run. I kept thinking about what my band mates had said.
June First.
Then no more Emily.
Despite the sweat pouring down my body, I felt a cold shiver along my spine. It made my teeth clench.
Cole and Teri stayed together despite a lot of time apart and all the bullshit that came with him being in a rock band because they’d known each other since forever. Emily and I had barely exchanged a kiss.
If I left Kingstree in June, she’d move on. Probably find some other guy who didn’t play the drums or guitar or sing. The fucker might have heard of Emma Grant before meeting her. Might even be a fan and consider it his duty and privilege to cook for her. If gods loved me, he’d be terrible in bed. Otherwise, Emily would let him stay for more than ten minutes.
It was a predictable outcome. And unreasonable of me to expect she’d pine away for me or swear off other men forever. But her with some other guy sat in my belly like a lump of cold, congealed fat. I wanted to barf, even as my legs moved faster, my strides long and furious.
My jaw ached. I forced the muscles to relax. My dentist would be unhappy if I cracked a molar.
After looping around the trail three times, I headed home. Billy’s Plumbing had replaced my water heater, and it was producing plentiful hot water.
But I’d be damned if I’d take advantage of that.
I grabbed my stuff—and breakfast ingredients—and went over to Emily’s house. It was after eight, so she was probably up. Or maybe she’d be sleeping in after finishing her project.
I knocked extra quietly just in case. If she was sleeping in her room, she wouldn’t hear me. But if she was in the living room, she would.
She opened the door with a confused look, squinting at me through her glasses. She’d told me she wore them when her eyes felt too dry for contact lenses or if she’d stayed up too late. I hoped she’d been up all night thinking about me. But it was more likely she’d been thinking about her next book.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, sweeping her gaze over my sweaty body.
I watched her mouth move as she spoke. Everything inside me tightened, blood pumping hotter and faster, even though I should have been cooling down after the run. “Here for a shower, like always.”
“Isn’t your water heater fixed? I saw the contractor’s van outside your house yesterday.”
“Oh…you did? Yeah, uh, the water heater they brought over was DOI.” Dev would be proud. He believed white lies were perfectly ethical, if done in the service of getting a girl you wanted. I wasn’t a fan of lying in general, but I had kept my promise not to play the drums, so I felt like I’d earned the right to use her shower.
“DOI?”
“Dead on installation.”
Her frown grew deeper. “Seriously? Didn’t they test it before bringing it over?”
“Probably not. If they’d installed it in somebody’s house, it wouldn’t look new. People don’t want to pay new equipment prices for stuff that looks used,” I said, certain she wouldn’t know anything about contractors or how they worked. Most people didn’t. Hell, I didn’t. The crew that had come yesterday probably tested the water h
eater before leaving their office to make sure they wouldn’t have to come out a second time.
“Oh. Well, okay.” She let me in and went to her tablet on the coffee table.
I followed her inside, thanking my lucky stars Emily bought my story. The house looked tidier. No empty beer bottles or candy wrappers.
Since I was sweaty, I put the pancake mix and bacon on the counter and went upstairs for a quick shower. I still didn’t have a plan for what to do about leaving in June and Emily being in Kingstree. I couldn’t exactly ask her to come with me. We weren’t anything yet.
But I felt like I couldn’t leave her behind, either.
The thing was that I didn’t know how to move us to the next stage soon enough that when I broached the topic of going to Dallas, she wouldn’t look at me like I’d lost my mind. If it had been any woman but Emily, things might’ve gone smoother and easier. I could’ve dazzled her with my fame or songs or whatever. But then, if Emily were the type to drool over all that, I wouldn’t like her.
Catch-22s were a bitch.
I should let my subconscious work it out. A perfect plan would probably bubble up from somewhere. Running hadn’t produced anything, but maybe sticking my finger into a live socket would. Self-torture might work, the way Emily had claimed.
When I was back down in the kitchen, Emily was tapping at her tablet, her eyebrows pinched. I made pancakes and fried up the bacon—feeding her could never hurt whatever plan I’d come up with later—then served everything on the dining table.
“Breakfast is ready,” I said.
“So soon?” She sniffed. “Mmm, bacon…”
Her smile made my chest puff out like a peacock. She came over and we sat down to fill our stomachs.
“Hey, which do you like better?” she asked, showing me a picture of a book cover on the tablet. After a moment, she flipped to another image. The model was the same, but the lettering was different. One had a swirly font in hot pink and baby blue, and the other had a blockier one in red and white.
“Is that your cover?”
She nodded. “I didn’t get to finalize it earlier because my cover artist was sick.”
“I like the pink and blue.” My sister would like that one, and Emily was selling to women.
“Really?” Her eyebrows went up. “Not the block font?”
“Women like pink.”
“Hmm. True.” She looked at the pink and blue version again. “You’re probably right.” She grinned. “The model’s hot no matter what font you put around him.”
Was he? I wasn’t paying attention to the guy at all, but I should’ve known that would be Emily’s focus. “Lemme see that again.”
She gave me the tablet. Yeah, he was a handsome bastard. Smirking, his eyes on the potential reader. The suit worked for him, too. But I bet he didn’t look nearly as good out of his clothes. Most men didn’t, I decided, ignoring the small bit of acidic burn in my belly. “You like guys in suits?” The last time I’d put on a suit was Grandma’s funeral.
“Oh yeah. Nothing says billionaire like a man in a suit. And I like ’em pretty. Real pretty. As long as they’re pretty, they don’t have to be in suits.” She gave me a long, speculative look, opened her mouth like she wanted to say something, then cleared her throat. “So. When are they coming back to replace your defective heater?”
No way that was what she wanted to ask. And she didn’t have to sound so eager to get rid of me. I’d been a pretty decent hot-water borrower. “They weren’t sure. Next month, maybe?” It was the first thing that popped into my head. So I added in mumble, “Something like that.”
She dropped her jaw. “Next month? Who are they again? I’m going to blacklist them.”
Sorry, Billy. But I’ll leave a fair review on Yelp. Which actually wouldn’t be all that complimentary, especially given how uncaring and uninterested their phone person had been when I contacted them. “They weren’t very specific.”
“You didn’t pay them for the nonworking heater, did you?”
“Uh, no. Not yet.” Oh look: my nose seemed to have grown two inches. “I’ll pay them when they replace it.”
“Next month, geez. Are they mining the iron to make the heater with?”
“Probably.” I laughed as her eyebrows moved up and down in outrage. I didn’t think she was aware of the tic, and it reminded me of an angry marmot I’d seen on a documentary once.
“So, does this mean you’ll be coming over to use my shower for the foreseeable future?” she asked, a little too casually. And I swore there was something hopeful in her gaze. Whether she was just interested in my breakfast or the bare chest display, she wanted me to stick around.
That put me in a much better mood. “I doubt I’ll be for too long.” I used the same casual tone she had, trying to see how she’d react to what I was about to say. “If nothing else, I’ll be going to Dallas in June.”
She studied the three strips of bacon on her plate, then finally picked one. “For what?”
“That’s where our studio is.” Dallas was a good choice because Teri lived there. It gave Cole a chance to be with his fiancée as much as possible. “Gotta get back to work sometime.”
Emily looked up. Surprise crossed her eyes, even though her features were set in neutral line. “So you’ll be gone?”
“Yeah.” Then I casually added, “You going to miss me?”
I wanted her to say yes. I wanted her to realize maybe she liked me a lot more than she’d expected and decide to move our relationship further. Not limited to a kiss or ten minutes in bed, but much, much more.
She swallowed her water. “I’ll certainly miss your breakfasts.”
Disappointment tugged at me, hard. Then stung pride wrapped around me like armor. “I can teach you how to make it before I go.” It’d give us more time to spend together.
“No, thank you. I prefer that you cook.” She cleared her throat. “Besides, I don’t normally eat breakfast like this anyway. You’ve been spoiling me.” She focused her gaze on me. Her eyes were as clear as the pond on the outskirts of the town. They were the kind of eyes that could pull a man in and make him forget his own name.
“I like you, Emily.” The words tumbled down from my lips before I could regain my better judgment.
She inhaled sharply, the tip of one eyebrow tilting up. “Even when I take all the Bouncy Bare Monkeys and Hop Hop Hooray?”
“Even then.”
Her soft lips parted. “Killian, I—”
Darth Vader’s theme blared from my phone and shattered the moment. Shit.
Emily straightened and pulled back a bit. “You should answer that.”
I hit the red button. “It can wait. I want to know what you have to say.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Emily
I bit my lip, my mind blank. It was ridiculously ironic that I, a writer, couldn’t think of anything clever to say.
But when I wrote, I got a chance to revise. I couldn’t travel back in time and emend a real-time conversation. And that was why I hadn’t been able to say any of the things that had been flashing through my head since Killian said he’d be gone in June.
Weird. Why hadn’t I thought of that possibility before? He might be from Kingstree, but he’d left. He had his own career and things to do. Tours and interviews. Maybe professional conferences. Did musicians have music conferences?
I didn’t want him to teach me how to make breakfast like him. I wanted him to be here and make the breakfast every day. Or at least stop by every morning.
When had I become so dependent and needy? The realization was scary, but there was nothing I could do to change how I felt. It was as though Killian had somehow managed to slip through my shell and lodged himself inside me. Like a grain of sand that later became a pearl.
I was going to miss him. Even if he’d said he liked me, it didn’t change the fact that he was going to be gone in June. Being one of hundreds of notches on his bedpost wasn’t my idea of a nice spring fli
ng.
His phone rang again. He swore.
“You should definitely answer that. Nobody ignores Darth Vader and lives,” I said, relieved at the interruption. Whoever was calling must have been ultra-scary for him to assign that ring tone.
Sighing with irritation, he answered it. “Yes, Mir?”
I started eating again, trying not to listen to his call in case it was private. That wasn’t like me, either. I listened to phone conversations all the time. I liked to guess what the other person was saying and what the speakers’ relationship was. Sometimes I got story ideas that way.
But Killian was a celebrity. He wouldn’t like people using details from his life in a book—even if it was fiction—when it might be recognizable to oodles of music listeners around the world. I wouldn’t want to use him that way. He’d earned his spotlight, his fame. Nobody had the right to leech off it.
He hung up, looking annoyed. “Sorry. That was my sister.”
Darth Vader was his sister? “Is she okay?” I asked even though what I really wanted to ask was: Are you okay? Whatever she wanted couldn’t be good, especially if she was the evil Sith. And I understood better than anybody how complicated and dysfunctional a family could be…and how you couldn’t ignore it, no matter what. Just look at the way I’d been dealing with my parents’ marriage.
“No. She’s on her way here. To visit me…supposedly.”
Supposedly? Weren’t they close? Or maybe they’d fought recently?
“Surprise visit, my ass,” he muttered.
Yup, definitely annoyed. “Do you need to get going?” I wished there was something I could do for him. Except what could I do? I wasn’t his family or girlfriend or anything. I was just a neighbor.
Three firm knocks came from the door. I glared, wondering about the interruption. I hadn’t ordered anything.
Killian got up and opened the door. “Hey, Mir,” he said.
His sister was here? Like, at my house? But why?