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gaze. “He was hurting, Steph. We didn’t even know he was film-
ing the parts with the model until the shoot was almost done.
Mark found out and came to drag us out of an interview to try to stop it. The rest of us were under the impression it was going to be a band performance video only. Phillip pitched the rest privately to the director who was salivating all over the camera
when we showed up on the set.”
Steph imagined their diminutive manager Mark throwing a
fit at hulking Phillip, and it made her feel momentarily better.
“Phillip was pretty pissed at the shoot.” David offered, as if
Phillip’s drunkenness would soften the blow somehow. Images
from the video dominated Steph’s thoughts, and she tried to un-
clench her teeth.
“He seemed to be having a good time with it. Guys, I get it.
Artists use stuff from their lives all the time.” Steph shrugged.
David and Scot exchanged another conspiratorial glance, and
Steph titled her head at them, wearing her annoyed face.
“What?” She pointedly looked at Dave, whom she knew
would cave.
“The model took him home.” He replied, unable to meet her
eyes. Steph wasn’t prepared for the gut punch of this develop-
ment. Not only had he reenacted their antics for the camera, but he’d hired a look-alike stand-in to “re-enact” them privately as well.
“Wow.” She downed half her drink, when the lobby door
opened and Phillip stepped through it. Though she was thirty feet away and he’d cut his hair, she’d have known his confident
mannerisms and amazing body anywhere.
On the heels of David’s revelation, seeing him stung more
than she’d prepared herself for. Attractive as ever, he was darkly tanned, and his hair had been bleached even blonder by the sun.
He wore a white sleeveless shirt, and his tattooed arms looked
bigger than she remembered. When he reached back with one
arm and pulled his shirt off over his head, she knew for sure he’d 63
TAMMY COONS & MICHELLE PACE
been hitting the gym and doing a lot of lifting. As he turned in their direction, she saw the new tattoo he had over his heart. Unfortunately she’d also caught glimpses of it in the fucking “Fire Woman” video. She couldn’t tell what the tattoo was from this
distance, but it was black like the rest of them and looked sort of Celtic in nature. Then, she was too distracted by the lost look he wore to bother getting a better look at it.
He’d spotted her; that much was obvious. He’d been kick-
ing off his sandals and froze mid-movement. As his smoky eyes
rested on her face, he stood up tall, and his jaw tightened.
“Oh shit.” She didn’t realize she’d said it out loud until Da-
vid whipped his head in her direction. Phillip turned away from
them immediately, and she glanced at Dave. He opened his
mouth to speak and then snapped it shut. Steph turned her entire body toward him (purposely away from Phillip) and took a
hearty sip of her drink.
“You look like you want to say something, David. Spit it
out, already.”
“He still loves you.” David blurted and then turned red all
the way to his hairline. “Sorry.”
Steph looked down at her cocktail and played with the
straw. Even though it was utterly selfish, she wanted to believe him. She’d turned him away, and he’d shut her out. But she still wanted him to want her. It was wrong and prideful and oh-so-textbook Steph Brier behavior. This was one of many huge char-
acter flaws that she needed to work on.
Add it to the list.
She found it difficult to look in Phillip’s direction and diffi-
cult not to. Thankfully, she heard a splash and saw his golden
hair bobbing in the water.
Steph swigged down the rest of her caipirinha in one gulp.
It burned all the way down, and she was glad. “It’s been a long
day, boys. I’m going to go lie down for a while before dinner.”
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The cool water did nothing to ease the burn Phillip felt in
every cell of his body. No matter how prepared he thought he
was for it, seeing her again knocked the wind out of him and
nearly brought him to his knees. He’d presented his heart to her, and she’d ripped it out through his throat.
He tried to ignore her as she left Dave and Scot at the table
and headed in his direction, but she was more stunning than ever and he couldn’t look away. She was no longer frighteningly
gaunt. A glimpse at her bare leg poking out from the slit in her long sarong showcased lean muscle definition she’d never had
before. Her scorching hair was the longest he’d ever seen it and curly in the heavy tropical heat. Her skin was a lovely pinkish
brown from being in the sun, so he figured she’d either been
prepping for the beach or spending a lot of time out-of-doors. He was so captivated by her appearance that she was ten feet from
him before he realized she was looking directly at him with those devastating aquamarine eyes that mirrored the sea behind him.
He gripped the side of the pool as if gripping onto his pride.
She wore a determined look and pivoted in his direction. Primal
urges warred within him. The first was to flee, even if it meant jumping off the nearest cliff-face into the rocky waters below.
The second was to pull her into the water and ravage her in full view of anyone in the pousada. It was a fairly well-matched tug
of war between the two.
Stephanie stopped a foot from the edge of the pool, and be-
fore he could stop himself, his eyes were entangled with hers.
“Hey.” Her voice had the same raspy timbre he had always
adored, like a prima donna who’d smoked a box of cigars and
drank a bottle of whisky the night before. Like every other aspect of Stephanie, her voice was a contradiction. You couldn’t have
the sweet without the savory.
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TAMMY COONS & MICHELLE PACE
He opened his mouth to reply and paused. He couldn’t say
“how are you”, “lookin’ good”, “I fucking love you, you vicious
little bitch,” or any of the other things that jumped to mind. So he closed his mouth and just nodded at her in greeting. She
kicked off her shoes and stepped forward. Crouching down, she
took a seat on the side of the pool. Her shapely legs were in the water inches from him. He could have moved forward two feet
and been between them, his eyes level with her waist. It was hard not to think about how she’d respond to that. He also could have grabbed her by the ankle and yanked her in. It was equally appealing.
An awkward silence fell between them, and Phillip waited.
She’d approached him, so the ball was in her court.
She cleared her throat. “So how’ve you been, Phillip?”
He cocked an eyebrow. “Seriously?”
“W…Well…you know, how are things…with the band?”
She looked down at her lap.
He pushed back from the side of the pool. “You didn’t
come over here to ask me about Fury. What do you want, Steph-
anie?” He refused to make idle chit-chat when he couldn’t get
the image of Clive Richards pawing her out of his mind. Stepha-
nie heaved an exasperated sigh.
“You know, I thought we could do the mature thing. Try to
smooth things over privately so we aren’t remember
ed as the two
assholes that ruined the wedding.”
He laughed heartily and shook his head. Steph looked as if
he’d slapped her.
“Smooth things over? There’s nothing to smooth over, love.
It’s ancient history. I think we should just try to avoid each other this week.”
Steph paused and drew in a long breath. He anticipated an
argument, anger, or some other emotional outburst. Instead, she
simply nodded and climbed to her feet.
“You’re absolutely right, Phillip. It’s old news.”
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He watched her gorgeous backside as she bent to pick up
her shoes, and he wanted to call out to her to come back. Some-
how, he suppressed the urge and let her leave.
It seemed like only yesterday when she’d shut him down in
a similar fashion and he’d been too devastated to see straight.
When he stumbled out of her hospital room, he’d hopped in his
Aston Martin nearly plowing down several paparazzi as he sped
to the market. He’d bought a bottle of Tullamore Dew and a car-
ton of cigarettes and drove back to the cottage. He’d sat by the brook for hours, drinking from the bottle and chain smoking. His thoughts were a hazy blur of a future without her.
He stumbled inside, knowing from experience that he was
close to passing out. He steadied himself on the doorframe of the master bedroom, and his eyes fell on the silk nightgown he’d
peeled off of Stephanie the night before. It lay on the hard wood floor as a taunting reminder that he’d never again hold her.
Tears sprung to his eyes, and anger clouded his vision. He
be damned if he’d shed one more fucking tear over her. She
couldn’t even be bothered to have a discussion about marrying
him. He’d been dismissed like an unwelcome servant. His last
memories of that night were cradling bloody fists and passing
out on the couch so that he didn’t have to lie on the sheets that smelled like her peppermint shampoo.
Daylight had seared through his closed eyelids, ripping him
from his restless slumber. He had sat up, and the room spun.
When normal vision had finally returned, he’d realized just how
much damage he’d done the night before. Overturned furniture,
broken dishes, red-tinged holes in the white washed walls all
brought back flashes of the previous evening. He’d looked down
at his own hands and saw they were bloody and swollen.
“Bloody hell.” He’d murmured, when he discovered that he
couldn’t close his right hand. He’d completely lost control and
what was worse, he felt his feral rage threatening to surface
again. He couldn’t be around people in his current state of mind.
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TAMMY COONS & MICHELLE PACE
If he stayed, his sisters would come looking for him. Worse, Ad-
am or Cedric might show up. He knew he needed to get far away
from Stephanie, and he wasn’t ready to face the rest of Fury.
Phillip tossed his guitar case and luggage into the boot of
his car and slid in behind the wheel. As he pulled away from the cottage, his phone rang. He pulled it from his pocket and studied Stephanie’s name flashing on the screen. A cold numbness overtook him. He braked on the bridge and tossed his phone into the
brook.
He drove to the coast and parked his car in his storage gar-
age. His uncle’s place on Inishmore was the one private refuge
he was still had. Uncle Cal was the black sheep of the family, set apart by his crusty military exterior that didn’t mesh with the rest of them. It had been months since he’d been out to the isle, but the moment he stepped onto the rocky beach, he felt the weight
of the world slip from his shoulders. As he made his way up the
bank toward the tiny seaside pub, a mahogany Irish setter trotted up to him.
“Hey there, Fi.” He greeted her, rubbing her behind the
ears. He glanced up at the porch of the pub and saw his Uncle
Callahan leaning against the doorframe with his arms folded
across his barrel chest.
“Hiya, Boyo. Those golden locks of yours are lookin’ a wee
bit girly.”
Phillip didn’t smile. “Got a razor?”
An hour later, he sat at the bar rubbing his newly shorn head
and nursing a pint of Guinness.
Callahan shook his bald head as he made sweeping circular
motions on the bar with a cloth. “Well, you won’t have to worry
about being recognized. You look like a cancer patient.”
“Good. I need a change of pace.” Phillip rubbed his finger
across the shiny wood of the bar, refusing to look his uncle in the eye.
“So what brings you out here to No Man’s Land?”
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He took a long pull off his stout and smacked his lips as the
burnt barley flavor engaged his taste buds in a familiar dance. “I just needed somewhere to slow down.”
He stuck out his lower lip in a mock pout. “Ahhhh. The
rock star life got you down?”
Phillip said nothing and continued to pick at the label on a
nearby bottle of booze.
“What happened to your hands?” Callahan’s complexion
was rosy from drinking and his attention unflinching. “How
about that bruise on your jaw? Cat got your tongue, Nancy
Boy?”
Again, he had no response. Phillip cast his steely eyes up at
Callahan once, then back to his beer.
The corner of his uncle’s mouth lifted. “This is about a
woman, isn’t it?”
Phillip polished off his pint in one swig. Before the bottom
of the glass hit the bar, there was a fresh one in front of him.
Phillip spent the following three weeks in a booth at the pub
overlooking the sea poisoning his liver and writing songs. When
he wasn’t feeling creative, he took aimless walks on the craggy
beach with his guitar and Fiona the dog. He sat on the cliffs and played or just smoked. Once in a while he went out fishing with
Callahan on his boat.
One night, Callahan’s old Navy buddy, Bones, came to vis-
it. He was a tattoo artist from Dublin. and he was overjoyed at
Phillip’s drunken suggestion that he ink him up. Phillip wanted
something Celtic over his heart. Bones nodded and drew up a
design. When he explained its meaning, Phillip swallowed hard
and nodded. Callahan said nothing, but poured him a shot.
About halfway through the tat, his uncle spoke. “Here,
Wanker. You won’t be able to take the pain without another drop
of the creature.”
Hours later, Phillip stumbled to the water’s edge, guitar in
hand. He looked down at his blackened and bloody chest.
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TAMMY COONS & MICHELLE PACE
“Stephanie.” He slurred and attempted to launch into his
latest creation. He was too drunk to find the fingering for the
first chord. He stood and turned to head for a warm place to pass out, when he stumbled over his own feet and tumbled into the
water. Fiona, who had been napping on the porch, started bark-
ing, and moments later Callahan and Bones were dragging him
from the sea.
“Go put on some coffee for this young lady.” Callahan in-
structed Bones, who made himself scarce. As Phillip lay on his
side chokin
g up salt water, Callahan grabbed him by his shirt
collar and pulled him to his feet. “Listen to me, you silly bastard.
You need to crawl to that lass on your hands and knees. Tomor-
row.”
“She doesn’t love me. I asked her to marry me, and she said
no!’
“Then ask her again, lad. It’s painfully obvious you’re in
love with her. Your entire life, you’ve never given a single
thought to anyone but your spoiled fucking self. Until now.”
“She’s killing me. I can’t see her.”
“Listen to me. You need to quit being an ignorant little git.
Anything worth having is worth bleeding for. I realize you’ve
been coddled your entire life, but I’m not afraid to be the one to tell you to grow the fuck up.”
“Screw you, Callahan.”
“You’re doing a pretty good job of screwing yourself when
you could be off screwing your lady. Maybe she didn’t want a
pampered little pussy for a husband who spends more time look-
ing in the mirror than looking at her.”
“Up yours, Cal! Steph’s my whole world. You have no
fucking idea.”
“Well, well, I guess even ‘the charmed one’ Phillip Kersey
can’t always get what he wants. Welcome to the human race,
Boyo.” Callahan released his grip, and Phillip went sprawling
back onto the rocky ground. “You know I love you, but I want
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you gone tomorrow morning. Pack your shit and go. If you can
manage to step down from your pedestal, go beg that girl to take you back. She must really be something.”
As his uncle headed for the pub, Phillip called after him.
“Help me up!”
Without a pause in his stride or a second glance, he whistled
for Fiona, who trotted after him. “Help yourself up.”
As hung-over as he was, he was gone on the first ferry be-
fore sunrise the following morning. As he drove toward Galaway
Airport, he thought long and hard about Callahan’s barbs. He
knew his uncle’s points were valid. His massive ego had allowed
him to assume Steph would say yes, though he’d never even told
her he loved her until the day he had proposed. In Galaway, he
purchased and activated a new cell phone and cringed when he
heard that his voice mailbox was full. Before his flight took off for London, he’d listened to every hang up and message he’d
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