by Taryn Belle
She settled for a partial truth. “I guess it just symbolizes the beginning of the end. Australia’s the last stop, and then it’s back to reality.”
Dev traced his finger up her arm. “I don’t know about you, but I’m loving my reality right now.”
Her belly flopped over. Loving. There was no point in denying it—it was exactly the way she felt.
Fuck.
“Dev Stone, as I live and breathe.”
Kiki glanced up to see a heavyset woman looking down at Dev with a smile. Her hair was pulled back into a tight ponytail that made her head look too small for her body.
“Petra,” Dev said, standing to kiss her cheeks. “Wonderful to see you again. This is... Kiki Becker.”
Kiki extended a hand, not missing Dev’s omission of her title. Even if she still worked for him, her place in his life was firmly established as something else now. Yet another reminder that she’d let this whole thing go too far.
“I’m Dev’s assistant,” she clarified. “He asked me to be here for the interview.”
“Of course. Petra Niemer, Connect Magazine,” the woman said with a light German accent, seating herself beside Dev. Kiki knew the magazine from the newsstands, a continent-wide European publication and the direct competition to Hello! Petra withdrew a small recorder from her briefcase. “I know you have a show to prepare for tonight, Dev, so I’ll cut right to the chase if you don’t mind.”
“Fire away.”
Petra started the recorder and started tossing out questions to Dev about his early beginnings, the difference between the European and American music scenes, his impression of German fans and the inspiration for his latest album. And somehow, with Dev being Dev, he was able to turn the whole thing into something that was about Kiki. Instead of looking at Petra as he replied to her questions, he gazed intently at Kiki like she was part of his answer. He flipped his hair back and trailed a hand up his bare arm so deliberately she could almost feel it on her own skin. He turned his hips toward her and opened his legs, giving her a perfect view of his package. The nonverbal exchange was even obvious enough for Petra to pick up on, judging from her glances at Kiki. She felt heat sweeping up her body. She was so distracted by Dev’s arousing body language that she hadn’t listened to much of anything he’d said, and that suited her just fine. She’d made a vow to herself not to read his press when the tour began. She’d told herself it was because she wanted to get to know him for herself, drawing her conclusions about him by her own experience rather than by a collection of filtered statements, but that wasn’t the whole truth, was it?
She had watched one interview early on, after their very first night together. And it was the reason guilt weighed on her as heavily as a backpack filled with stones.
Dev broke eye contact with her for a moment, and she was jerked back into the present.
“...but the time comes for new ideas,” he was saying. “Sure, I think of retiring sometimes. I started off writing, and sometimes I think I’d like to go back to that. Producing, maybe. Seventeen years has been a long run.”
“So you’d like to settle down? Have a family?” Petra asked, leaning forward in her chair.
Kiki froze.
No.
She was certain that the mild blush on her cheeks was turning to the shade of a ripe tomato. She felt sick. She could feel Dev’s eyes boring into her, but she couldn’t meet them. Using her fingertip to fish a nonexistent speck out of her beer, she waited.
“Definitely,” Dev said.
Definitely. The word reverberated in her head.
“I think I’ve always known I’d want a family someday,” he continued. “The whole shebang—wife, kids and dog. Musicians love to complain about how hard it is to hold a relationship down, but the truth is that it’s just a matter of priorities. If you get to that point where meaningful connection with someone feels more important than everything else that’s going on in your life, then you make the leap.” He paused. “Of course, it helps if you finally meet the person.”
Kiki couldn’t have helped lifting her gaze to Dev if her life depended on it. She found his face and there were those aqua eyes, directly on her. Her cheeks burned hard enough to tingle. A wave of panic washed over her. She wanted nothing more than to get out of there, but she was trapped. Dev’s assistant by day, his lover by night, and destroyer of his dreams if she kept up this charade any longer.
She forced herself to stay in her seat with a promise: as soon as the interview was over, she would walk away from him for good.
* * *
As Dev watched Petra’s retreating back, he could feel the dull thud of regret beat in his gut. He was a fucking fool to have answered her question honestly. He should have hedged it, played it cool, told her questions about his personal life were off-limits. But he’d walked right into it, made brazen by how amazing things had been going with Kiki for the past week. There was no way she couldn’t be feeling what he was feeling—he’d been sure of it.
But he’d forgotten one thing, that the Kiki he’d had to talk into taking a job with him was a serious flight risk. Beneath the amazing sex, the honest revelations and the deep emotional connection, she was still as skittish as a prey animal. And her expression had told him everything he didn’t want to know.
He turned to her. She was already gathering her belongings up, her face etched with that jumpy look that he’d thought was gone for good. “I think I forgot my phone on your bus,” she said as she scrambled around in her bag.
Your bus. Not our bus, not even the bus.
Dev stood up with her, and together they walked in a silence so unbearable he finally had to break it. “Leave it to me to make everything awkward,” he said as they reached the door to the bus.
“Hmm?” Kiki responded distractedly, taking the two steps up and entering the lounge. She immediately started searching the room for her phone.
“I said that was a little awkward,” Dev repeated. “Do you think you could stand still for a minute?”
“Sure! It’s just that I’m supposed to be in a meeting with Wardrobe right now, so maybe...” She glanced at her watch and frowned.
“Kiki.”
“Uh-huh?” She reached for her phone, finally located on the bookshelf, and dropped it into her bag. Still not looking at him. Wanting to get away from him as fast as humanly possible. As if Venice had never happened, as if the past week of domestic bliss and deep conversations and the kind of earth-shaking sex that had him feeling things he’d never felt before had only happened in his imagination. And she had felt it, too—he knew she had. So why was she so goddamned resistant?
He placed a hand on her shoulder to still her. “I should have told Petra to mind her own business. But...” He shook his head, searching for the right words. “I’ve made it my policy to be honest when I do these things. It’s all part of what I was telling you before—putting the celebrity on an even playing field with the public, at least as much as I have the power to.” He squared his jaw. Screw it—he wasn’t going to play games, and he certainly didn’t see a future with any woman who was going to, either. “I guess I thought you were the kind of person to appreciate that.”
“What, brutal honesty?” Kiki snorted. “Believe me, I got plenty of that in my last marriage and I can handle it just fine.”
“Then why don’t you try being honest with me? What are you so afraid of, Kiki? Why does the idea that I have feelings for you freak you out so much? I mean, Jesus Christ! Have I been alone in those bedrooms? I thought you were there with me, I really did! Or was that all just regular sex and casual conversation to you?”
“You know it wasn’t.” Her voice trembled.
“Do I? How?”
Her eyes were shiny. “Listen, Dev, I... I’m just not a commitment kind of girl, okay? And you made me change my mind about that. I saw...something with you I’ve never seen w
ith anyone else. But I’ve tried the commitment thing, and it just didn’t work out for—”
“Why?” The word was out of Dev’s mouth before he could stop it. Fuck it. An explanation—after everything that had happened between them, she owed him that much at least.
Kiki’s brow tensed and then smoothed again. “Why? Because I thought I was cut out for that kind of life, but I’m not. You made me break all my own rules, Dev. I’m already falling for you—I mean, Jesus, who wouldn’t? Any woman would walk to the ends of the earth for you. And I’m so sorry that when you decided you want a different kind of life, you chose the wrong woman to think about doing it with.”
“But you’re not the wrong woman!” Dev slapped his fists down on the table in frustration. “My heart is yours, can’t you see that? I’ve already given it to you, and guess what? I don’t want it back! So you need to give me a reason, Kiki—a real reason. Because you are really good at avoiding the questions that matter. And after the time we’ve had together, you owe that much to me.”
But Kiki was shaking her head wildly. “I never should have let it go this far. I never should have moved into your tour bus and gotten all cozy with you. It just—this doesn’t feel like the real world. Being on tour, living on four wheels—I fooled myself into thinking it didn’t count.”
“Didn’t count?” His throat worked up and down. Was this really happening? Had he really opened his heart and soul up like he never had before to a woman who told him their time together didn’t count? “A reason,” he repeated furiously. “Give me one.”
Kiki drew herself up, crossing her arms over her tiny chest. She looked like she was going to break for a moment, but then her expression steeled again. “All you need to know is that you’re much better off without me.”
“Oh, yeah?” He whirled around, paced a couple of times and then stepped close to her again. “Then say it, Kiki. Tell me right now that you’re fine with going back to a life without me. That you’re fine with never feeling our bodies move together again. That you’re fine with not waking up and looking at me and knowing that what we have is fucking magical. And then I’ll let you go, no more questions asked.”
She squirmed under his gaze, her defiant expression finally wilting. But still she said nothing.
Dev forced his voice to be calm. “I get it, Kiki. Your mother rejected you, and apparently your ex-husband did, too, which proves nothing other than that he’s the biggest asshole on earth. But I won’t do that to you. Can’t you get that through your head? If you would just let yourself trust—”
“Trust?” Kiki spat the word out like it was poison. She was backing away from him now, clutching her handbag to her chest as she moved toward the door. “Believe me, Dev, okay? You just have to believe that this is for the best.” Her back hit the door, and she reached around for the knob as he watched helplessly. “I’ll stay on as your assistant until the end of the tour. But you don’t want anything more from me other than that.”
And then she was gone and Dev was watching the door bang shut behind her. He clutched his hands to his head, wanting to scream at the top of his lungs. Instead he spun around, stalked toward the lounge and stopped cold in his tracks.
On the bookshelf next to the sofa, Kiki had placed two souvenirs from their day in Venice together: a colorful vase of Venetian glass and a caricature sketch they’d had done by a street artist. He picked up the drawing. In the picture, a hotshot-looking Dev was playing his guitar while Kiki stood beside him rolling her eyes. They’d giggled like a pair of teenagers when they’d seen it. The kitchen was tidied up the way she liked it with the dish towel folded into a neat square. Hanging on the bathroom door he could see his robe, the one she’d taken to wearing each morning. This bus had always felt like a prison cell to Dev, requiring all his strength to not climb the walls or crawl right out of his skin during the endless commutes. But when Kiki had been with him it didn’t feel like that. For one short week, this strange place had felt exactly like home. Which was only one reason he wanted to insert that maddening woman into his life and keep her there forever.
And she had stuck around day after day, letting him believe that could happen.
Dev let the drawing fall to his feet, resisting a childish urge to stomp on it. A sick feeling was bubbling up from his belly to his chest. Helplessness. He was used to dealing with his problems alone, probably a result of feeling he had to pretend everything was wonderful since he’d made it big. In the beginning he’d hinted to his family and friends that his life wasn’t as rosy as they imagined, but their unsympathetic silences and dubious looks soon brought that kind of talk to a grinding halt. Dev learned that it was better that way anyway, because as much as they couldn’t relate to him, he also couldn’t relate to the stability of their world.
Trust started to erode as friends he’d known his whole life suddenly showed up asking for business loans or a celebrity introduction. Meanwhile, the wall between him and his family grew. Though he knew his parents were immensely proud of him, their main focus always seemed to be on their media empire. Dev remembered feeling a flare of jealousy when his father announced that Alex would be taking over the family business after their mother died. And it wasn’t just because they’d be working together, it was that Alex was so damned self-assured. His little brother was fine with working behind the scenes. He didn’t need an audience to feel worthy, and Dev desperately envied him that.
Right now Dev would have traded a thousand audiences to have Kiki. The calm he felt when he was with her was worth so much more to him, but the situation was completely out of his control.
He had to do something or he was going to lose his mind. He could call his little brother for some advice, he thought. Even though the brothers had never been tight, Alex’s recent visit to Moretta had cleared the air between them, and he seemed like someone Dev could turn to.
But no. He’d given Kiki every chance to explain herself, to make things right again, and instead she’d just walked away. If he was going to break a thirty-six-year habit by reaching out to his brother for support, it better be for a really good reason—not a woman who’d let him believe she had feelings for him and then dropped him like a hot fucking potato.
CHAPTER TWELVE
DURING HER SHATTERING conversation with Dev, the last things on Kiki’s mind were the ramifications of returning to her own tour bus. But she’d definitely failed to consider one thing: the crowded space was very inconvenient for emotional meltdowns.
By the time she stepped into her temporary home for the first time in a week, it was seven o’clock at night and she’d managed to hold it together for three hours while she completed the day’s tasks. Whatever was happening with Dev, unprofessionalism wasn’t an option for her. After she’d left his bus she’d immediately swung into action, blanking her mind out by helping to fix a wardrobe emergency, answering a slew of fan mail and taking a taxi to three stores to look for Scotty’s beloved Skittles. I can fall apart later, she kept telling herself.
But now later was here, and she realized for the first time how her bus mates would probably look at her: Dev’s assistant-turned-lover, pitched out of his bed just like all the others. There was no mistaking the lull in conversation that her entrance caused, but she didn’t even care. Kiki knew that what she’d had with him was special. No other man would ever compare to Dev—she accepted that as fact. The only question was whether she’d be able to get over him enough to even consider letting another man touch her.
Her tears were dangerously close to falling. It’s for the best, she reminded herself as she climbed up to the sleeping quarters in search of privacy. You got the worst over with, and now you just have to stand your ground. If he found out the truth about you later, it would be even worse.
Her bunk was still there, seemingly untouched, but there were several people lounging on their own beds. She dropped down on the mattress, grateful for the curtain she
could pull around it. Her hands went to her face as silent tears coursed down her cheeks. Images flashed through her brain—Dev’s eyes meeting hers in the beer garden, his fists slapping down on the table, his incredulous expression as she’d walked out the door.
It was the hardest thing she’d ever done. But she wasn’t willing to make a man like Dev compromise his dreams to be with her—and that was exactly what he’d do if he knew the truth about her. He’d tell her they’d find a way to make it work, that all he really needed was her, and she’d let him talk her into it because he was the only man on earth she wanted. Then one day reality would set in, and he’d wake up and realize he’d made a huge mistake.
She couldn’t bear it.
From the handbag at her feet, Kiki heard her phone ringing. She lifted her face from her pillow, which was now soaked in tears and smeared with mascara, and stared at it miserably. The only person in the world she wanted to hear from right now was Dev, but she knew that was both an impossible and unfair expectation. Hooking the handle with her foot, she brought the bag to her hand and halfheartedly dug her phone out.
Nicola Metcalfe, the screen informed her. Kiki sighed. She hadn’t talked to her friend since she’d left for the tour, only sending her a few texts along the way. And she hadn’t said a word to her about Dev. But it was Sunday afternoon on Moretta, and Nicola was likely calling for a full download—which was the last thing Kiki was up for right now.
She let the call go to voice mail, but a minute later a text came through. Call me the minute you get this.
Kiki suppressed a groan. Nicola wasn’t in the habit of bossing her friends around, so it had to be something important. Wiping her tears away, Kiki focused on making sure her voice was steady when she hit the call button. She was almost starting to panic, thinking something might really be wrong, when Nicola picked up and addressed her in a stern voice. “Becker. What the hell is going on?”