She hugged him. “Clint. It’s good to see you.”
“You don’t know how much I appreciate you stepping in for Rusty.”
Oh, she thought she did, if the sizable check she was going to get out of this was any indication.
“Damned appendix,” he groused.
She’d known Rusty for years—the mandolin circle was pretty small, after all—and sincerely hoped that he’d be better soon. “How’s he doing?”
“Better,” Clint told her. “Should be out of the hospital in a few days, but by then the tour will be over. I’m ready to go home, be with my family, but I can’t let my fans down, and if we don’t play ‘Whiskey Dreams’ and ‘The Long Haul’ they’re gonna be mighty pissed off.”
“Whiskey Dreams” and “The Long Haul” had both been number one hits for Clint this year, so he wasn’t exaggerating. She loved that she’d had a part in both recordings, that her sound was there as well.
“You’re ready, right?”
She nodded, unwilling to lie aloud. Though she hadn’t practiced tonight with the band, she’d practiced all the same. She wasn’t worried about missing an intro or hitting the wrong note. She was more concerned with tossing her cookies onstage in front of everyone. Her gaze slid to Bryant, who was standing a few feet away, scanning the crowd from his vantage point offstage.
His uniform was simple—black boots, black jeans, black T-shirt. He wore several corded bracelets around his wrist and a single cord around his neck. She couldn’t make out the charm there, but wanted to get a better look at some point. He’d crossed his arms over his chest, making the muscles in his arms bulge in a mouthwatering display. He rested on the balls of his feet, ready for action, and though she knew he wouldn’t hurt her, there was something quite dangerous-looking about him at the moment. He was a predator, looking for prey, and any fool who made the mistake of crossing him would bitterly regret it.
She didn’t want to cross him, Layla thought, taking a shallow breath as her nipples beaded behind her bra. She wanted to slip and slide all over him, lick him from one end to the other—all points north, south and in between. She wanted his hot, carnal mouth suckling her breasts, those big, warm hands against her skin. It was a purely visceral reaction, one that she didn’t seem to be able to control.
Of all times for her libido to suddenly surge to life, Layla thought with furious despair. This reaction to him wasn’t uncommon—he’d always affected her like this, one of the few men who ever had, and his appeal was the most potent by far.
That’s what made him dangerous to her.
But now was neither the time nor the place and she unhappily suspected her sister Rita would consider her a traitor were she to form any sort of relationship with Bryant, even the fleeting hot-monkey-sex variety.
She sighed and, as though he’d heard that little exhalation, Bryant turned to look at her. He didn’t smile. Nothing in his expression changed. But those melting butterscotch eyes absolutely held her enthralled. She couldn’t look away, could scarcely breathe, and the desire that weighted her limbs in that moment should have brought her to her knees.
“So you know your cue,” Clint was saying. “You’ll need to slide into position as soon as we wrap up ‘Lead Me On,’ which is second in the lineup.”
With effort, she tore her gaze away from Bryant. “Right.”
“‘The Long Haul’ is fourteenth, immediately following ‘Right Where I Belong.’”
So songs number three and fourteen. There was a good break in between. What the hell was she supposed to do in the interim?
Clint smiled at her. “We’ve got an ongoing Super Scrabble game, and so far, Bryant is kicking all of our asses. It’d be nice if you could give him a run for his money.”
Bryant? Kicking their ass at Scrabble?
Having heard his name, he turned to face her. The corner of his mouth kicked up into a half grin that set her panties on fire. “You look surprised,” he said. “What? You didn’t think I could spell?”
“Of course not,” she said. “I just didn’t know you could win with four-letter words.”
Clint’s eyes widened, then he guffawed. “I think she’s going to give you a run for your money, Bryant.”
Bryant stared at her. “I’m up for a challenge.”
Fiery chills raced up the backs of her suddenly wobbly legs. Any more innuendo in that sentence and she’d have an immaculate orgasm, Layla thought.
And if anyone could give her one, it was Bryant Bishop.
“DAMN, SHE’S HOT,” GUS Winston said, eyeballing Layla with the kind of prurient interest that made Bryant want to cleave his skull in two. “Not exactly pretty, but sexy as hell.” He looked over at Bryant. “Does that make sense?”
“Only if you’re writing poetry for her,” Bryant told him, tipping a bottle of water into his mouth. He desperately needed to cool off.
“She married?” Gus wanted to know.
“Not that I’m aware of.”
Gus grunted, then smiled. “Sweet.”
“But you are,” he reminded him.
“I know that, dammit,” Gus retorted, shooting him a scowl. “I was thinking about you.”
Bullshit, but Bryant wasn’t going to call him on it. Though the majority of these guys were faithful to their wives, some of them simply couldn’t resist the relentless temptation and, sadly, there were too many women in the audience who didn’t give a damn if the guys in the band were wearing rings or not. Clint had no less than twenty women a night throw themselves into his path with the express purpose of wanting to polish his knob and he always refused. He was committed to his wife, to his family. He was an admirable man, and nothing Clint had managed to do professionally had impressed Bryant as much as that fact.
Frankly, because of his own proximity to Clint, the band and the roadies, Bryant was propositioned almost as much as they were.
He’d never indulged.
In the first place, any woman who simply wanted to lay a musician wasn’t a woman he had any interest in, and secondly, there was something quite degrading about being the runner-up. When he made it with a woman, he wanted to know that she’d wanted him first, not that he was just a damned consolation prize when she couldn’t land the drummer.
“There’s my cue,” Gus announced, then strolled onstage. In honor of the holiday season he’d put a big red bow on the brim of his hat.
Bryant hung back, carefully watching Clint and the guys he’d put on the floor. It was nice to be able to monitor from the sidelines, to avoid the crush of the crowd. He tapped his earpiece. “How’s it looking down there, Austin?”
“The usual, boss. Screaming girls in skimpy tops, rowdy guys in cowboy hats.”
He spied a big redneck in the front row. “Keep an eye on the hoss in the wife-beater, left of center stage. John Deere hat, soul patch. He looks like he’s had one too many already.”
“I’ve been watching him,” Austin relayed. “He’s sippin’ from a flask. He could be trouble.”
“Keep me posted.”
“Will do.”
Satisfied that everyone was doing their jobs, Bryant finally allowed himself to glance over at Layla. He’d known exactly where she was—could feel her presence pinging him like sonar—but he’d been trying to avoid looking at her because…Hell, he didn’t know. To test himself? To see if he could avoid her?
Because he was an idiot was a better answer.
What he saw made his eyes widen and a hot expletive slip between his lips.
She’d set the mandolin aside, was bent at the waist, taking deep, gulping breaths into her lungs.
Shit.
Not altogether convinced he could help her, Bryant nevertheless couldn’t make himself not try. He hurried over. “Layla?”
“What the hell was I thinking?” she gasped, her hands on her knees. Her voice was thin and shrill. “Have I lost my freaking mind? I know my limitations. I know what I am capable of and what I am not, and going out there—” she gasped a
gain, wheezed and choked on more air “—is so far out of my comfort zone I might as well not even have one.”
They were halfway through “Lead Me On.” It was a four-and-a-half minute track. He had two minutes to get her to pull it together and go onstage.
“Layla, what the hell is the problem? If you knew you couldn’t do this, then why did you agree to it?”
She looked up at him as though he was the one who’d lost his mind. “For the money, fool! Why else? Do you know what he’s paying me? I’d have been an idiot to turn that down! I wanted to pay off my land and start my house. I wanted to plant fruit trees and sweet peas. I’d forgotten about the sweet peas,” she said absently, then looked up at him. “Don’t you just love those flowers? Aren’t they the most beautiful little flowers in the world? Wholesome and sweet. Oh, God,” she wailed, her face crumpling. “I can’t do this. I—”
He’d often wondered why she was forever in the studio and never touring with a specific band. Mystery solved. “Layla, I don’t give a damn about fruit trees and sweet peas,” he said, giving her a small shake. “You’ve got to pull it together. You’ve got less than a minute and a half to be ready to walk out there and play. Straighten up,” he told her, grasping her shoulders.
She resisted. “I can’t breathe if I straighten up!”
“Yes, you can.” He gave her another little shake and tugged. “Did you tell Clint you’d do this?”
She gave him a wild-eyed, indignant stare. “Of course I did! I’m here, aren’t I?”
“Then you have to do it. You gave your word.”
Her anguished expression became even more pained and her frantic gaze darted out toward the stage. Her mouth turned white around the edges and for one horrifying instant he was afraid she might actually faint.
His gaze dropped back to her lips.
Clearly a distraction was in order.
“You have the sexiest mouth I’ve ever seen,” he remarked, sliding his thumb over her bottom lip.
She blinked, startled. “What?”
“I’ve wanted to kiss you for years.” And because that was the truth and she needed a distraction and he wasn’t accustomed to denying himself, he did just that.
He kissed her, and while the earth didn’t tilt on its axis, his own world did. Her lips were soft and warm and she tasted like chocolate and mint. He’d expected her to be a bit jarred by his preemptive attack, to be hesitant before fully settling in.
He’d been wrong.
The instant his mouth touched hers, she melted against him like a taper candle too close to a flame. She sighed as though she’d been waiting, too, and then her arms wound around his neck, her hands tunneled into his hair, and she tangled her tongue around his own, sucking it into her mouth.
Layla Cole flat knew how to kiss.
She knew when to slide, knew when to suckle, knew when to lick and knew how to keep the perfect balance of moisture between their mouths.
He could literally eat her up.
His heart kicked into an irregular rhythm, the balls of his feet tingled and a distant ringing sounded in his head—a warning bell he resolutely ignored—as he filled his hands with her ass. She made a little mewling sound and licked a slow path over his bottom lip. Incredibly, he felt that caress along the head of his straining dick and instinctively rocked against her. She was tiny, he realized as his hands slipped over her waist and up her back. He’d never realized how small, how petite she was.
In the dimmest recesses of his mind he registered the final strands of “Lead Me On” and, breathing heavily, wrenched his mouth from hers.
“You’d better go,” he said.
Her lids fluttered drunkenly. “Go where?”
He smiled and handed her the mandolin. “Onstage.”
She gasped as comprehension dawned, then hurried out.
Well, that had worked brilliantly, Bryant thought, still reeling from the kiss. Maybe she’d need more distraction before her next performance.
One could hope, anyway.
4
LOST IN THE SOUND, LAYLA was milking the final note from her instrument before she had the presence of mind to realize that there were roughly twenty thousand people watching her. She finished with a flourish and waited for the applause to end and the intro for the next song to begin before she disconnected the amp from her mandolin and made her way back offstage.
He’d kissed her.
More significantly, she’d kissed him back.
Quite enthusiastically.
Her cheeks blazed right along with the rest of her and a cold sweat broke out across her brow. Her gaze skittered around backstage until she found Bryant. He was seated at the Scrabble table, arranging his tiles as though everything was right with his world.
Hers felt as if it had been upended and she was hanging on to what was left of her sanity with her fingernails.
“Well done,” he said, without looking up. “You wanna play?”
“You kissed me,” she said blankly, because she couldn’t think of anything else.
He arranged a word on the board, his nimble fingers easily managing the slippery tiles. He had nice hands. Strong and capable. “You needed a distraction. I was afraid you were going to hyperventilate and pass out.”
A distraction? That’s all it had been? Despite the instant prick to her ego, she’d almost prefer to think of it that way. Really. If she thought hard enough, she knew she could come up with a reason why that would be so. Why it would be better to believe that he really hadn’t wanted to kiss her, but had merely done her a favor.
She was having a hard time being grateful.
“Sit down,” he told her. “I’ll deal you in.”
Because she couldn’t think of a single reason not to, Layla did as he directed. He handed her a slide and the required tiles. She quickly examined her letters and then the board. “What did you just play?” she asked, clearing her throat.
This was surreal. Utterly surreal.
“Delicious,” he told her, pointing it out for her benefit. He looked at her mouth and absently licked his lips.
Had she been drinking anything, she would have choked. “Definitely not a four-letter word,” she muttered, feeling her face flame even more.
He laughed. “You okay, Layla? You’re looking a little flushed.”
So that’s how he wanted to play it, huh? He wanted to kiss her, spell suggestive words on the Scrabble board and then pretend she was the only one who’d been affected. Layla inhaled deeply.
She thought not.
She’d felt a definite bulge against her belly and he sure as hell hadn’t had to greedily grab her ass to get her attention. “I’m fine,” she said, putting her own word onto the board.
He grunted and his twinkling gaze met hers for the first time over the table. “Lick?”
“Don’t forget my double word score.”
Smiling, he bit the corner of his lip and jotted down her points. After careful consideration, he quickly played again.
Nuzzle.
Suppressing a grin of her own, she commended him on the use of his two z’s, then set about making her own word. I’ll see your nuzzle and raise you a massage, Layla thought. Gratifyingly, Bryant’s eyes narrowed and he shifted covertly in his seat.
“Have you always had stage fright?” he asked. He played a caress.
It was her turn to shift. Her nipples tingled and her breasts felt as if they were going to plump right out of her bra. “I have,” she admitted. “Made the whole Cole Family Chorus experience quite miserable, I can tell you that. I try to avoid the stage, stick to the studio.” She laid suckle on the board and waited for his response.
“I can hear you, you know,” he said, his lips twitching when he saw it.
She frowned. “Am I shouting?”
“No, I mean, I can hear you in the music. When I’m listening to the radio, I can always tell when you’ve collaborated, when you’ve laid the track. You’ve got a unique sound. It’s beautiful. Haunt
ing.”
Surprised, she tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and felt her middle warm with pleasure. “There are several mandolin players in Nashville.”
“True, but none of them can pull the sound from that instrument the way you do.” He played slow and leaned back in his chair. She liked the way his muscles moved beneath his shirt, remembered how his firm waist had felt beneath her hands.
“Thank you,” she murmured, adding hot to the board.
He looked up and his gaze tangled with hers. “Three-letter words?” He tsked. “Are you even trying?”
She grinned and gave a shrug. “I thought I’d stick to our theme.”
“In that case—” He quickly arranged his letters, using the t in her hot to make wet. “I’ll follow your lead.”
Layla felt her nether regions weep and a deep, dark throb built low in her loins. She chuckled softly, then chewed the inside of her cheek. She looked at her tiles and tried to come up with something equally depraved. She settled for nibble and imagined doing just that to him. Where would she start? she wondered. Shoulder? Neck? Ass?
“You’re up,” he said.
She glanced at him. “What?”
“Time to go back onstage.”
Panic hit her anew and her palms slickened. She felt her heart accelerate, her breathing go shallow and the tips of her fingers become numb.
He shook his head and sighed, and the sound had as much resignation as anticipation. She wasn’t sure what she thought about that, but knew it wasn’t entirely flattering. “Clearly I’m going to have to distract you again.”
“I’ll be fine.”
He stood and tipped her chin up with a single finger. His touch sizzled through her. “Better safe than sorry,” he murmured.
He kissed her again…and she was neither safe, nor sorry.
Which didn’t bode well for the rest of the tour.
Or maybe it did, depending on how one decided to look at it.
“WHERE ARE YOU GOING to plant your dogwoods and sweet peas?”
It Must Have Been the Mistletoe... Page 9