Wishful Sinful (Rock Royalty Book 5)
Page 2
As if he could hear those cells shouting himself, Walsh abruptly swung his chair around.
From twenty feet away, she jolted as his dark gaze touched her. He was a big, beautiful man, with broad shoulders and thick hair that he ran his hands through in times of stress. His eyes were keen, and she thought they always saw everything—except for the fact that she was a woman, of course. He’d never acted the least bit inappropriate with her.
So her concern about the Mexico trip was all on her side.
Now one of his brows quirked up, and she quickly mimicked bringing a coffee cup to her lips. Want one? she mouthed. At his brisk nod, she escaped.
With Walsh still involved in his phone call, it wouldn’t hurt to start the morning with a chat with her friend Melody. By now that woman would have the coffee cart on the first floor up and running.
Dark-haired Melody, dressed in leggings topped with a colorful striped tunic, glanced up as Honey approached. From stacking cookies in their plastic case, she immediately shifted to the espresso machine. “Latté?”
Honey nodded. “And a large regular for Walsh when I head back upstairs.”
As the other woman steamed the milk she sent Honey another look. “Did you have a nice weekend?”
When I wasn’t stewing about the mess I’d made at work. “I wore the workout clothes you gave me for my birthday to spin class Friday—and received several compliments.”
Melody beamed. “Then you should take me up on my offer to be your personal shopper. You get lost in all those dark and dull colors. You want people to look at you.”
Tugging on her black jacket, Honey frowned. “No, I don’t.” Especially at work. There she wanted people—ahem, Walsh—to notice the good job she was doing, not the kind of fashion statement she was making. “And anyway, you know I loathe shopping.”
“It’s something I just don’t understand,” Melody said, passing over a steaming paper cup.
“Maybe I’m missing a gene or something.” Honey sipped her latté.
“I almost believe that,” Melody said, “seeing how you’re immune to that hunky boss of yours.”
The heat crawling up Honey’s neck must be due to the coffee. She avoided answering by taking another swallow.
“I tried to start a flirtation with him myself last week,” the other woman continued.
“You’re married to Mark.” Honey heard the shock in her own voice. “You love Mark!”
“I didn’t say I tried to start an affair,” Melody said, wiping down the counter. “But what woman can’t resist chatting up a man who has those looks?”
Honey sighed. “See, I don’t know how to do that.”
“Flirt? You want to flirt with Walsh?”
“No.” They’d had a new hire last year, a topnotch female engineer, which all the firms were eager to employ. The woman had developed a thing for Walsh right away. Her skirts had skewed shorter by the day, she’d had an inordinate amount of questions for the boss, and Honey had to figure he’d finally shut down her hopes, because she’d resigned after less than two months on the job. From Walsh’s grim expression, she’d known the episode hadn’t been a pleasant one.
No way was Walsh interested in a workplace romance.
Not that he looked at her in that manner. Not that he’d ever look at her in that manner.
Not that she wanted him to.
Another flush of heat rushed up her neck.
“So…” she said to Melody. “Can we talk about something else?” Flirting and romance were topics she liked to avoid. While there’d been a man or two in her life, she hadn’t been any better with them than she was at picking separates that coordinated. Her aptitude at finding a match was definitely lacking, and discussing it wasn’t going to make her day any better.
“Sure,” her friend said. “What’s the latest with the family drama-rama?”
It wasn’t a cheerier subject, but she grabbed it anyway. “My parents are still in the midst of their contentious divorce, and my twin brother and sister are dealing with the repercussions of their unwise choices.” She let out another sigh. Her teenage sister had been dazzled by an edgy, older guy and ended up giving him information that allowed him to steal from Payne Colson’s business—all because Honey had gotten her siblings an afterschool job at his car salvage business.
Guilt gave her a hefty pinch. “Payne has let them keep working there, believe it or not.”
Melody shrugged. “Teens need second chances. I did my share of stupid stunts.”
Intellectually, Honey agreed. But she wished all of it had never happened. Though Walsh wasn’t related by blood to Payne, for all intents and purposes they were brothers. So her siblings had done damage to one of his. Her sister Lucy’s boyfriend had stolen from Payne’s business, and Lucy’s twin, Jeb, had sprayed “graffiti” on the yard’s metal entrance sign to deflect suspicion. He’d been caught, the truth had come out, and Honey couldn’t help feeling responsible.
On top of that, now she’d messed up at her job as well—the job she’d better get back to.
“I guess I’ll take that coffee for Walsh now.”
It was time to face the man and make him see—through rational, sensible dialogue—that he was better off leaving her at home the weekend after next.
In the MadSci offices, he was still on that call or maybe on to another. She slipped his cup onto his desk and then turned to her own, where she stowed her purse and flipped on her computer. The rest of the staff had yet to arrive, so she used the relative quiet to jot a few notes for herself on a pad.
Realizing she was down to the last sheet, she moved to the supplies closet located inside the designated lunchroom space. The shelves were a jumbled mess, she discovered. Engineers might have orderly brains, but they weren’t much for physical tidiness.
“There you are,” a low voice said.
Honey nearly jumped from her skin. Spinning, she faced Walsh, who loomed in the doorway, his hands braced on the jamb.
“I thought you might have run out on me again.”
She swallowed. “I wouldn’t do that.”
He quirked a brow. “So you’re in here hiding instead?”
“I’m not hiding.” Honey pressed her hand over her unsteady heart. Walsh looked so big standing there. The other scientists, engineers, and IT types at the firm came to work in nerd-casual, but today Walsh was decked out in his usual tailored slacks, tie, and dress shirt rolled neatly up to his elbows. His suit jacket was hung, she knew, on a padded hanger behind his office door, but even without it he appeared all-business.
“I came for a scratch pad. I stayed to straighten up.” She gestured at the messy shelves, but nerves made her arm go wild, and she actually knocked a stack of pads and an open box of pens to the floor.
Mortified, Honey felt her face heat, and she instantly bent to gather the scattered items. Walsh crouched too, and when she glanced up, his eyes were on her and he was close. So close, she could smell laundry soap and his shampoo.
Too close.
“You’re not wearing glasses,” he said softly.
Her face burned. She wasn’t wearing glasses because she’d broken them during that silly scene at Payne’s house. And she didn’t have a spare pair because the fact was, she really didn’t need glasses. They were the slightest of corrections, and if she was honest, mostly used as armor between herself and…
Her boss.
While she enjoyed looking at him, she had never wanted him to look back, afraid of what reaction she might have—surely she’d make a fool of herself—if something came into his eyes like…
Oh, God. Like she saw right now.
Walsh was looking at her like she was a woman.
No! No, that couldn’t be, could it? They’d worked closely for two years, and he’d never before had that warm light in his gaze. It flicked over her now, sensitizing her skin and making it prickle.
Perhaps she was coming down with something.
A crush on your boss.
Walsh rose, too, the pens clutched in one big hand.
He had such long, strong-looking fingers.
Wrenching her gaze from them, she shoved the pads of paper onto the shelf. Then her boss stepped up behind her. She could feel the heat of his body all along her back. Inhaling a careful breath, Honey struggled to ignore the delicious feeling of being feminine and small in comparison to his taller, rugged presence.
When he dumped the pens in their container beside the paper, she stared at his arm, muscled and sprinkled with dark hair. Task accomplished, he braced his palm on the shelving, effectively caging her in.
“Honey,” he murmured.
She should have changed her name, she thought, and not for the first time. To Hortense or Hildegard or Hazel. It was cruel of her parents to give her this one, which was too easily misconstrued as an endearment.
“You’re going on the trip with me, right?” Walsh continued in that same hushed tone.
Oh, God. Just the way he spoke the request made her ache to say yes. His voice was low and beguiling, and she imagined hearing it with the counterpoint of waves crashing on a moonlit beach. That would cause her so much trouble.
“I can’t,” she managed to croak out.
“Why not?”
Swallowing, she attempted to gather her sensible thoughts and her rational arguments. But they dissolved like sugar in hot water with the man standing so close. She could smell his delicious scents and sense his powerful masculinity. “Because…”
Her voice trailed off as she felt his touch. One of his long fingers caught a lock of her hair, and as he tucked it behind her ear the pad stroked along the arch.
Goose bumps raced down her neck.
“Because…?” he prompted.
She reminded herself of what she’d wanted to prove to him when she’d arrived at work this morning. That she was a calm, collected assistant. A reliable admin who could be counted on to manage things in his absence. That flustered person he’d glimpsed on Friday was an aberration, and she had very lucid, logical reasons for wanting to be left behind.
“Honey,” he said again, and his breath stirred her hair. “What’s going on? Why don’t you want to go?”
When she couldn’t make her dry mouth form an answer, he touched her again, pulling more of her hair away from her face. He leaned closer until they were almost cheek-to-cheek. Her body trembled and her brain short-circuited.
“Why don’t you want to go?” he asked again.
Prompting the most flighty, most female response from her she could ever have imagined. “Because I don’t have anything to wear!”
Chapter 2
It might make him sound like a dog to admit it, but since he was seventeen, Walsh had never spent time on deciphering a woman or her words. Honey had not even given him a chance at it in the supplies closet. She’d made her final declaration, then pushed past him. By the time he’d followed, the business day had begun. The offices were humming. Staff bustled about, walking through the halls, calling greetings, and answering ringing phones. With his employees enmeshed in their daily tasks, he could only do the same.
Unfortunately, after less than an hour, Walsh realized he couldn’t remain as focused as the people who worked for him. So he shut his office door—unusual—and snuck in a call to Cilla Maddox. Though Cilla was the youngest of the Velvet Lemons kids, she was also the acknowledged mother hen. They all figured she channeled Gwendolyn Moon, the infamous groupie who had lived at the band’s compound when they were growing up. She’d been the strongest, steadiest maternal influence they’d had, and it was her death from cancer that had brought Ren and Cilla back to Laurel Canyon which in turn had caused the Rock Royalty to begin bonding together as adults.
Cilla picked up his call, her voice happy and bright. No matter his own inner turmoil, it made him smile. Her romance with Ren had brought a new chapter to the lives of all those who had grown up as the progeny of the Velvet Lemons. Each son and daughter had hit eighteen years old and left the Laurel Canyon compound and everything that was wrong there. But when Ren and Cilla got together and with their fathers out on an open-ended global tour, the nine adult children of Mad Dog Maddox, String Bean Colson, and Hop Hopkins had decided to reclaim the place where they’d been kids—and they’d decided to claim each other as family as well.
It seemed to suit all of them.
“What’s up?” Cilla said now.
He found himself talking. “I’ve always been driven to take things apart to learn how they work before putting them back together.”
“Okay.” She sounded encouraging, though unsure of where he was going.
“It makes me itch if I wonder about something and it’s a mystery.” When he wanted to understand a piece of equipment, he was driven to strip it down.
You could strip her down, a voice in his head suggested.
Strip down Honey?
Good God. What was he thinking? Honey?
Okay, okay perhaps he should leave well enough alone. Leave his admin at home without any poking, prodding, or, for fuck’s sake, stripping.
“Walsh?” Cilla prompted.
“Uh…” Then he shook his head. Letting this drop wouldn’t afford him any peace. Even thousands of miles from her, his mind would be on the cipher that was Honey Brooks when it should be on the new alliances he wanted to forge.
Yeah. He’d better figure this out.
“I don’t understand why Honey’s averse to this upcoming business trip,” he said. “It makes no sense that she’d be reluctant to accompany me.”
“That’s why she tried to resign on Friday?”
“I guess.” He shoved his free hand through his hair. “I told her we were going to a resort in Mexico, and that’s when the quitting talk began—though she did come back this morning.”
When he’d caught sight of her, a tight knot in his shoulders he’d been unaware of had loosened. “But she still hasn’t agreed to go with me.”
Cilla seemed to absorb that. “What reason does she give?”
“It’s about clothes.” The idea baffled him. “She said she has nothing to wear.”
After a long pause, the noise that came across the phone sounded suspiciously like a muffled laugh.
“All right,” he ground out. “What am I missing?”
“I’m reminding myself you have no sisters and your interactions with women appear to be on the most superficial of levels.”
“If you’re saying I’m only into them for sex,” he said impatiently, “I probably won’t deny it.”
This time she didn’t muffle her laugh. “I’m saying that I doubt you’ve put your big brain to the task of figuring out the female one.”
“Fine. I’ll admit that. Why do you think I phoned you? And what the hell does any of this have to do with what Honey’s going to wear?”
“Oh, hey, I’ve got another call coming in that I have to take.”
“Cilla, please.” If he sounded as if he was begging, so be it. “You can’t leave me hanging like this.”
“Okay, okay.” She began talking faster. “I can tell you one thing for sure. If she’s worried about her clothes, that means the person who’s going to see her in them is very important to her.”
Huh.
The person who’s going to see her in them is very important to her.
That rattled around in his head until it was time for the Monday afternoon meeting with his engineering team. Honey always sat in, and today was no different. She took her usual seat at the other end of the oblong table from him―a notepad, a pen, and her tablet in front of her.
Walsh sat in his own chair and indicated to the assembled group that the reports should begin. As the first man launched into the status of his current project, Walsh found himself tuning out the engineer’
s voice and tuning in to Honey. Without those glasses perched on her nose, a person could really notice her thick lashes. They were a few shades darker than her hair and made her deep blue eyes stand out that much more.
Unaware of Walsh’s regard, she was doodling with her pen on her notepad. Then the man seated beside her—Tim, one of the newest hires—poured a glass of ice water from the pitcher standing nearby and passed it to Honey. He smiled at her grateful look and then slid her paper his way as she sipped the liquid.
Walsh frowned. The lanky kid—he couldn’t be more than twenty-five—was drawing something on Honey’s pad instead of paying attention to what his supervisor, Arne, was saying.
Though Christ, Walsh could hardly blame him for that. Arne had a tendency to lecture in a droning voice that he made up for in brilliance, and the short emails he’d send after the meeting that would highlight the salient points of his oral report.
Still, it irked Walsh to see the little smile that tipped up the corners of Honey’s mouth when Tim slid the notepad back. When she once again picked up her pen, his eyes narrowed. Were they going to spend the meeting passing notes like schoolkids?
Maybe she didn’t want a long weekend with Walsh because she had a standing date with another work colleague!
At the thought, he shoved his chair back and rose to his feet.
Gazes around the table swiveled to him, and Arne’s drone cut off.
Walsh felt like an ass.
“Sorry,” he said, and stalked along the carpet. “Keep going. I just need some water.”
Honey leaned forward to reach for the pitcher. “Let me—”
“I can do it.” Standing between her chair and Tim’s, he filled a glass while letting his gaze casually drop to the notepad sitting between the two.
The other man had drawn a cartoonish figure on the page that looked to be made of boxes and dials. A thought bubble hovered over its head which read, “What do you call a robot you buy? A robought.”
It was cringe-inducing, right? But Walsh was glad to note it wasn’t particularly intimate or potentially harassing. Honey, however, might consider it cute, and for some reason that ignited a slow burn in his gut that didn’t abate when he retook his seat. The fire smoldered there for the rest of the meeting, adding yet another mystery for his mind to mull over. What the hell was he fuming about?