Finally, I pulled away and expelled the tension on a heavy exhale. Then I sent her a smile. “Come on, let’s put this all away for a while. Enjoy tonight. Each other. Have fun.”
Apparently, I’d grown another head because she looked at me like I was insane.
It could be argued.
“You want me to have fun with you?” It was all a disbelieving accusation, but beneath it was a lightness that hadn’t been there before. “And don’t think I didn’t notice you changin’ the subject. You want to talk? Then you need to actually talk.”
“We will, Vi. Soon enough. Just…want to spend a minute with you. Breathe. Besides, you and I used to have a ton of fun.” So what if the innuendo made its way in.
“Don’t you dare, Richard Ramsey.”
I hitched up an innocent grin that wasn’t innocent at all. “What?”
“Don’t try to sweet talk me.” A smile played around her lips.
“Don’t you know sweet talking you is my favorite pastime?”
“You are impossible, you know that?” She bit her lip, trying not to laugh.
A chuckle rumbled in my chest, lost to the sudden buoyancy that fluttered in the air. I reached out, touched her face, this time in straight-up adoration. Heart pressing full. My thumb traced the angle of her cheek. “God, I missed you.”
Agony and affection vied for dominance on that sweet, stunning face, girl just staring at me, our connection a steady thrum in the atmosphere.
A tether.
A bond.
Didn’t know how long we stared before she shook herself out of it. “Are you going to feed me or what, Superstar?” It was a tease. A taunt.
“Superstar? Not even close,” I told her.
“Pssh…I’ve heard the rumors about you and your band. Know you made it big. Just like I knew you would.”
She started to climb out.
“Stay right there. Don’t move.”
I hopped out and rushed around the front, opened her door, and extended my hand for her to take it.
She glared at it like it was a viper. “Richard.”
“I’m just bein’ a gentleman like my ma taught me to be.”
Those captivating eyes rolled. “You really do love to sweet talk me, don’t you?” She took my hand, those long legs exposed as she shifted around to slip out, skin glimmering in the light, that fabric sweeping up those thighs I was dying to get lost in.
To lose myself in that delirium-inducing body.
Need pulsed.
I swallowed it down, but it didn’t want to go anywhere when she climbed out and it left her standing an inch away.
Lust. Greed. Want.
They pummeled me at gale force.
I somehow got it together and took a step back.
I should have been awarded a gold medal.
“Let’s feed you, gorgeous girl.”
So I was pretty sure the no touching thing might be off the table because I couldn’t let go of her hand, and she didn’t seem like she could let go of mine as I led her into the upscale restaurant, the best in Dalton.
Inside, it was dim and swanky. Place decorated in an antique, lush vibe.
Heavy tapestries and oversized carved wooden furniture, small alcoves lit by candlelight to create an intimate setting.
At the hostess stand, I gave my name. I thought the girl who couldn’t have been more than nineteen working it might have pissed her pants because her eyes went round when she saw me. She started to stammer, “O-oh…oh yes. Richard Ramsey. Right this way.”
The girl kept stealing peeks at me as she led us through the main floor to one of the private tables. She was way younger than me. Someone I didn’t recognize or know. Which was kind of unsettling considering this was my hometown.
But I guessed things did change.
We ducked into the secluded nook, and I held out Violet’s chair. She slipped into it, and I moved to sit on the opposite side. The girl passed us our menus.
“I…um…so…have a good dinner.” She ducked out without saying anything else.
Violet suppressed a giggle.
“Don’t even,” I mumbled, pretending to turn my attention to the menu.
Her giggle got louder. “Told you.”
“What did you tell me?”
A blush was lighting her face. But it wasn’t shyness eliciting that alluring color. It was pride. “Superstar,” she mouthed.
“Not even,” I said again.
She laughed, and she kept her voice subdued considering the entire restaurant was held in a low drone of voices and clanking dishes. “Did you see that girl back there? She tripped all over herself with the mention of your name.”
I waved it off. “She did not.”
“Yes, she did. I bet you could go up to her right now, ask her to go home with you, and she would.”
Somehow, she was all playful grins when she said it.
But I wasn’t laughing. “Wouldn’t happen.”
“Bet you a hundred bucks.” Violet’s grin was even wider.
Faster than she could process it, I had tossed my menu onto the table and had shifted so I was right in her face, leaning off to the side and over the small circular table.
I was assaulted anew.
Violets and dreams and life.
Wanted to glut myself on it.
“It wouldn’t happen.” The words were hard.
Emphasized.
Confusion filled those violet eyes, that perplexed gaze searching my face.
My teeth ground with the ferocity of the confession. “It wouldn’t happen because I would never ask her to go home with me. Not her or anyone else.”
That confusion grew in strength, girl’s mind racing toward disbelief.
The energy shifted.
A fierce severity that blustered from my flesh.
The determination.
Her entire being rattled. “Don’t you dare start tellin’ me lies, Richard. I’ve come to terms.”
It was such a lie, I could taste her defense on my tongue.
I squeezed her wrist, my nose at her cheek, brushing across the silky flesh before I was moving for her ear. “You. Are. My. Wife.”
It was hard.
Vicious.
Possession bounded through my blood.
“And that fuckin’ means something to me.”
Shock froze her, like she didn’t dare breathe. Didn’t dare move.
I couldn’t bear to ask if the same had applied to her.
I couldn’t blame her if it hadn’t even if the thought made me want to go on a crime spree.
It’d been six fucking years, and believe me, that truly could drive a man to insanity.
“Six fuckin’ years.” The declaration came on a roll of pain.
Physical.
Mental.
Tension ricocheted.
Dancing through the flames that leapt and lapped in the secluded space.
I edged back enough to meet those eyes.
To stare into eternity.
Didn’t matter if I had her or not.
She was the forever that had been written on my heart.
Twenty-One
Violet
Sage eyes stared me down with the sort of severity that could blast through a concrete wall that was ten-feet thick. Sear through every resistance. Blow through every reserve until there wasn’t a single thing left but vulnerabilities.
Oh God, did it ever put my rationale at a stark, glaring disadvantage.
My daddy was right.
I was not just fine.
Every fractured piece that I was trying to hold together was quaking and quiverin’, my shredded insides I’d sewn up in flimsy threads threatening to bust apart.
He hovered an inch from my face, our noses close to brushing, that dark aura shifting into something far more dangerous. The carved, sharp angles of his gorgeous, chiseled face were tense with the truth there was no denying.
That energy spiked.
Like tiny
daggers impaled in my spirit.
I couldn’t allow myself to get lost in those eyes and those hands and that body. To get lost in those words that wanted to soothe away some of the hurt.
To heal a small portion of the hole that gaped from within, knowing that maybe there was a chance that this man had been as lonely as I had been.
I cleared my throat and sat back in my chair, breaking the connection that strained and swelled, doing its best to cast its hypnotizing spell.
One that could so easily leave me swept away.
Adrift.
Forever lost in his eclipse.
“Violet.” It was a soft breath. Frustration and helplessness.
“I don’t know what to say to that, Richard.”
The waiter appeared at our table, bursting the bubble.
Richard sat back with a sigh of disappointment.
“Welcome to Delonge’s. Can I bring you something to drink to get you started with tonight?”
Richard looked at me, watching me like every word I said was precious in his sight.
I cleared the agony from my throat.
This was not easy.
Not easy at all.
Sitting in his space was making it monumentally more difficult to keep my wits about me.
To remember.
“I’ll have a glass of moscato,” I managed.
“Sir?” the man asked, swiveling his attention to Richard.
“I’ll have whatever local beer you have on tap. You pick.” Richard said it like he couldn’t be bothered.
“Perfect. I’ll be right back with the specials.”
He left, allowing the tension to come sweeping back in.
Shifting, I forced a smile, swearing to myself I could get through this.
I just needed to deflect.
Stay on safer topics and not the ones that would crush me.
“Tell me about the band. About Rhys and Emily. What it’s been like the last six years. I bet you all got up to some shenanigans.”
A true smile twitched along Richard’s plush lips. He sat farther back in the chair, that lean body built of sinew and strength slung back in the seat, wearing jeans and a button-down, the sleeves rolled up his forearms that my gaze kept drifting to. He had one tattooed arm stretched out to the table so he could fiddle with the corner of the fabric napkin folded by his bread plate.
I couldn’t help but watch the muscles tick and jump. The way his easiness was fueled by an undercurrent of hostility.
“We’ve written some damn good songs, that’s for sure.”
“I bet.”
He quirked a brow. “Have you listened?”
I huffed out a reticent sound. “I did my best not to, but seein’ as how every time I turn on the radio of late, your band is suddenly playin’, it’s been a whole ton harder.”
I sent him a wry smile.
Superstar.
I shouldn’t care to be proud, but I was.
A light chuckle rumbled off Richard’s tongue, and he rubbed his hand on the back of his neck. “After playing that awards show, things happened fast.”
My brow pinched, realizing I’d missed so much. Six years gone, and I had no idea what had happened in between.
“But I thought that big record company had been trying to get y’all to sign a long time ago? All the way back to when…” I trailed off at that because I couldn’t bring myself to say it.
Back when we’d come to our end.
Anger flashed across Richard’s face. So sudden and shocking it jarred me back.
“It wasn’t a good deal for us.”
I could feel the frown pinching my brow. “If you didn’t sign, how did Emily end up back there? In that position?”
That lump in my throat throbbed. The same horrible, sick feeling I’d gotten when I’d seen Emily on the news. What I’d felt when Richard had mentioned it back in his truck.
The vein in his thick neck pulsed, and the hand on the table that had been relaxed tightened into a fist. “We were back in talks with them when everything went down.”
Uncomfortable laughter filtered out because I didn’t have the first clue how to navigate this. Actually talking with Richard. Not when every time I mentioned something serious, I could see the barricades go up. Walls fifteen miles high. The man giving me nothing but vague answers and indistinguishable reasoning.
Every word laced with ambiguity. With an undercurrent of a warning.
The problem was, when he looked at me with those eyes, I felt like a floodgate had been opened somewhere in those colossal walls. An access point.
It was becoming harder and harder to disregard what my daddy had said. About him having secrets. Ugly secrets.
Him telling me he was in trouble.
God. Maybe I should just cut and run. Save myself the agony. I glanced toward the door as if making the escape might eradicate it all.
The hurt and the questions and the need that wouldn’t let me go.
His hand shot out, pinning mine to the table. “Don’t be afraid. Not of me.”
I laughed a harrowed sound. “You might be an asshole, Richard. Selfish to the extreme. But I know you’re not a monster.”
Richard stared me down, looking at me through the lapping flame of the candle in the middle of the table, the man revealing more than he’d ever shown.
This stark, cutting grief.
“Want to make it right, Vi. I’m asking you for that chance.”
I flushed when the waiter suddenly returned with our drinks, and I jerked my hand back, thankful for the reprieve.
The weight too heavy.
The questions more than I could bear.
The man rattled off five or six specials that I barely processed.
Because it didn’t matter how desperately I was trying to protect myself, I was too enraptured by the man sitting across from me.
I fought for normalcy. To act like this was no big deal. That we were just two old friends catching up and I couldn’t feel myself splintering apart.
I ordered a filet, then I took a shaky sip of my drink, and I was back to searching for lighter subjects before I fell.
Stumbled.
Completely tripped.
I forced a bright smile. “But now you have a new label. That’s so great. Just like I knew y’all would. When are you going to be recording? Is anything going to change for y’all? When do you leave? Is there a big tour coming up? Goodness, I bet you get to fly on a private jet now.”
I was slinging out the words like they could fill up the space and blot out the tension. Like I could erase the things we were really wanting to say.
A smirk quirked his sexy mouth, and he set his elbow on the arm of his chair, his index finger propped against his temple to keep his head supported.
The locks of his brown hair flopped that way.
Gorgeous.
Sexy.
A punch to my senses.
I shifted in my seat.
“What, are you trying to get rid of me?” The words teased from that wicked tongue.
“I think I’d be wise to,” I told him honestly.
“And what if I asked you to keep me?”
“Then I would ask you to stop breaking my heart.”
Nope.
There were officially no safe subjects with us because in an instant, we were already right back in the toil of it.
The waters holding us under starting to boil.
Richard leaned forward, the movement stealing my breath, his features flashing grief. “I’m sorry, Violet, so fuckin’ sorry that I wasn’t there for Daisy. That I wasn’t there for you.”
Hurt slashed with the mention of her name.
So intense and fast that a shudder raked through my body. My hands shot to the edge of the table to cling to it for support.
I guessed he really did want to talk.
Cutting out the fluff and going right for the gullet.
“Are you?” It wheezed from my aching throat. “Are you reall
y sorry, Richard, for taking the easy way out when I reached out to you? When I swallowed my pride and begged you to come back to me? To be there for us?”
“Yes.”
He said it so simply.
Frank.
Sure.
And still with enough regret to blow me to bits.
“I don’t believe you.”
The scariest part was the words I’d tossed back were nothing but a lie. Because I did. I knew he was telling the truth, even though I was terrified to accept it.
A song came on over the speakers, playing softly like they’d been doing all night. But this time, I took notice because that captivating voice was filling my ears.
Overtaking my senses.
Richard.
Singing soft and smooth and low.
Raw, unbridled emotion.
Carolina George was playing on the radio. The lead on this one belonged to Richard, Emily’s sultry voice lamenting in the background.
My stomach twisted in a roil of knots.
God, I couldn’t outrun him anywhere I went. Considering he was sitting there right across from me, I figured I was pretty much screwed.
Those eyes flared.
Lust and love.
The man taking in my reaction and knowing exactly what he did to me.
His voice alone could be my demise.
He slowly stood, rising to his towering, powerful height, covering me in a shadow that I knew could obliterate.
The hand he extended completely decimate.
“Come here.”
It didn’t come close to feeling like a request.
“Why?” The word was a tremor.
“I want to dance with the prettiest girl in the place.”
Oh god.
He remembered.
Every cell in my body ignited with the need I still felt, with this love that wouldn’t let go, with the terror that bound and raced and wailed of the danger he posed.
But I was a fool.
A fool who took his hand and let him pull me into his arms. I let him start to lead me in a slow, sensuous sway. Just moving from side-to-side, one strong arm looped around my waist and the other curled around the back of my bare neck.
Tingles streaked.
Emotion surged.
Tears burned in the back of my throat as he held me close.
Falling into You Page 20