by Karina Bliss
“I had…ill health in my teens, which forced me to drop out of school.” With tapered fingers she pulled the roll into smaller and smaller pieces. “Then spent all my twenties working days and studying nights to get my library degree.”
Devin was attuned to picking up wrong notes; her story was full of them. He shrugged. “Don’t tell me then.”
She glanced up. “What do you mean?”
“You don’t have to lie, just tell me to mind my own damn business.”
“You know, Devin, civility has a social purpose. It stops people from killing each other.”
He grinned. “I like to live dangerously.”
“That’s fine,” she said seriously, “as long as you don’t hurt bystanders.”
All alcoholics left casualties in their wake. Devin had to work to keep his tone flippant as he replied, “You say don’t a lot, you know that? You’ll make a great mother.”
She said nothing. Glancing over, he saw a bleakness in her expression that shocked him. He knew that level of despair intimately. Instinctively, he laid a hand over hers. “What did I say?”
“Nothing.” Sliding her hand free, Rachel gave him a small smile. “I’d have thought it would be easier studying business at an American university, considering most of your tax is paid there.”
He picked up his glass and took a sip of water before answering. “My royalties come in from a dozen countries and I’ve got more money in tax havens than I have in the States.”
“Don’t tell me then,” she said.
He laughed. “Touché. You’re right, I don’t want to talk about it.”
When she dropped her guard-for about one millisecond-her smile was breathtaking. “Were you aware you have over four million Internet pages devoted to you?”
Devin leaned back in his chair. “If you’ve done your research there’s no point trying to impress you.”
“You could tell me your bio was grossly exaggerated,” she said lightly.
He could have played that card. It surprised him that momentarily he wanted to. “It’s not.”
If there were excuses, he wouldn’t make them. At sixteen he’d jumped on a roller coaster that had given him one hell of a ride for seventeen years. And if the gatekeeper had said, “Son, you’ll be famous, songs you help write will be an anthem for your generation, but it will cost you. You’ll all but destroy your body and soul, you’ll lose your identity, and when it’s over you’ll lie awake at night wondering if you’ll ever get it back,” Devin would still have bought a ticket.
They finished their bread in silence.
RACHEL DIDN’T KNOW WHAT to think. The idea of Mark hanging around someone who could so coolly acknowledge such an appalling past made the hairs on the back of her neck rise.
But she wanted to be impartial-or at least as impartial as she could be with her son’s welfare at stake. Heck, who was she kidding? She was a wreck over this. Fine, then. She’d factor in her emotional bias when weighing the evidence. Because it was important to her to be fair. God knows she’d had enough people judging her as a teenager not to jump to conclusions about someone else.
And while Devin was arrogant beyond belief, brutally honest to the point of rudeness and far too confident in his own sex appeal-flashing a charmer’s grin to the waitress delivering their meals-he also had an appealing self-awareness.
He took another sip from his water glass and Rachel wondered if she was being lenient simply because he’d given up alcohol. Having been raised by a drinker, she found it was a very, very big deal to her. Surely that meant some sort of rehabilitation had taken place?
But did it extend to drugs…groupies? She didn’t want Mark to be exposed to those, either, or any of the character traits she associated with rock stars-excess, selfishness, immaturity. She needed more information.
As she picked up her knife and fork, she asked casually, “Why study here…New Zealand, I mean?”
“When you’re running away, the end of the earth is a good place to go.” He glanced up from his steak. “I’m sure you read about my meltdown and the band’s collapse on the Internet.”
“Yes,” she admitted. But in his business, “taken to hospital suffering from extreme exhaustion” was all too often a euphemism for drug overdose or alcohol poisoning. As she ate her fish, her gaze dropped to his fingers, long, lean and powerful-musician’s hands. “Do you miss any of it?”
“I don’t need the temptations of the music industry right now.”
That sounded promising, but his clipped tone told her that she should change the subject. Reluctantly, Rachel backed off. “So, is your brother still in L.A.?”
“Yeah, Zander’s re-formed the band, with a new lineup.”
Devin’s curt tone hadn’t changed, but she was too surprised to notice. “Can he do that?”
He shrugged, putting down his fork. “He owns the name, and as the lead singer, he’s got the highest profile. For a lot of fans that will be enough.”
As Devin spoke he folded his arms so the dragon tattoo on his hand curved protectively over one muscled biceps. It struck her that he was suffering.
“But not all of them,” she said gently.
Devin looked at her sharply. “Did that sound maudlin? It wasn’t meant to. It was my fault as much as anyone’s that the band fell apart.” His mouth twisted. “Collapsing on stage disqualifies me from lectures on professional dignity. If Zander wants to try and wring a few more dollars out of the Rage brand, let him… Shit, I am still bitter, aren’t I?”
There it was again, the self-awareness that made him likable.
“Speaking of bitter,” he added, “how’s Paulie?”
It was her turn to squirm. “Back in Germany.”
“You let him lay a guilt trip on you, didn’t you?” Devin picked up his fork again and stabbed a potato croquette. “I just bet he made the most of it.” His gaze trailed lazily over her face. “You’re too nice, Rachel. If you ever want tips on how to behave badly, come to the master.”
She frowned. “What exactly do you teach your disciples?”
His gaze settled on her mouth. “That depends,” he said, “on how bad they want to get.” Green eyes lifted to meet hers and a jolt of sexual awareness arced between them, catching Rachel completely by surprise.
WHAT THE HELL WAS that about?
Devin washed his hands in the restaurant’s washroom, taking his time. He’d made the comment to wind her up, and yet when she’d looked at him he’d been tempted to lean forward to taste that kiss-me mouth. Yeah, and get lacerated by that sharp tongue of hers. And he couldn’t even attribute his crazy response to the demon drink. Devin smiled. Still, it had been mutual-the attraction and the immediate recoil.
“I’m glad someone is enjoying their evening,” said a weather-beaten old man at the next basin.
“It’s taken an interesting turn.” Reaching for a hand towel, he glanced at the old guy in the mirror. He looked like Santa Claus in a polyester suit-big-bellied, grizzled white eyebrows. Only the beard and smile were missing. “Your date not going well?”
Santa grunted. “I booked our dinner weeks ago and we’ve got a makeshift table by the bloody kitchen.” The old man lathered up his hands, big knuckled and speckled with age spots. “Figure they stuffed up the booking but the snooty-nosed beggars won’t admit it.”
Devin experienced a pang that could have been conscience; he hadn’t had one long enough to tell. Tossing the used hand towel into the hamper, he said casually, “Big occasion?”
“Fortieth wedding anniversary. Drove up from Matamata for the weekend.” With arthritic slowness, the old man finished rinsing, turned off the tap and dried his hands. “We’re dairy farmers, so this time of the year’s a bit of a stretch for us, but the old sparrow wanted a fuss. Might as well have stayed home if we were going to eat in the bloody kitchen.” He grimaced. “Sorry, mate, not your problem. Have a good night, eh?”
Devin resisted until the old man reached the door. “Wait!”
Damn Rachel. “Let’s swap tables. It’s not a big night for us.”
“No, couldn’t put you out.”
Devin said grimly, “Happy to do it.”
“Why should you have to put up with clanging pots and swinging doors?” The old man’s face brightened. “Tell you what, we’ll join you.”
“JUST CALLING TO SEE how the date’s going with the rock star?”
Shifting her cell phone to the other ear, Rachel glanced in the direction of the men’s room. “I told you, Trix, it’s not a date. It’s-” an interrogation that’s taken a disturbing turn “-just dinner.”
“Rach, the guy’s been in seclusion for months. It’s a real coup…ohmygod!” Rachel held the phone away as her assistant’s voice rose to a non-Goth squeal. “You should be selling your story to the tabloids! I’ll be your agent.”
Rachel speared a green bean. “Here’s your headline-I Had the Fish, He Had the Steak.”
“Obviously you’ll need to have sex with him to make any real money.” The bean went down the wrong way and Rachel burst into a fit of coughing. Trixie read that as encouragement. “You can’t deny there are plenty of women who’ve got famous through sleeping with a celebrity,” she argued. “You could even get a place on a reality TV show…you know, celebs surviving in the Outback.”
Rachel dabbed her streaming eyes with a napkin. “Tempting as the prospect is,” she croaked, “I think I’ll pass.”
“You’ll never get famous as a librarian,” Trixie warned her.
“Oh, I don’t know. Melvil Dewey invented the Dewey Decimal System over one hundred and thirty years ago and everybody knows his name.”
At least Trixie’s nonsense was steadying Rachel’s nerves. So she’d been momentarily sideswiped by the guy’s sex appeal. She was female and he was prime grade male.
“For God’s sake, don’t tell him one of your hobbies is finding wacky facts on Wiki.” Trixie sounded genuinely horrified. “You’ll lose whatever credibility we have.”
Rachel laughed. “Goodbye.”
“Who was that?” Devin asked from behind her, and she jumped, her nervousness returning. Not for a minute did she believe he was seriously attracted to her, but she had an uneasy feeling he’d try anything-or anyone-once.
“Trixie, my assistant. She-” told me to sleep with you “-had a work query.”
Devin took his seat and signaled for their waitress. “There’ll be another two people joining us.” He filled Rachel in. “And this is all your fault.”
But she was impressed by his gesture-finally, signs of a conscience. And secretly relieved they wouldn’t be alone.
She was starting to have doubts about her ability to manage him.
The Kincaids-Kev and Beryl-arrived. Only halfway through the introductions did Rachel realize the downside of Devin’s generosity. She’d lost her opportunity to grill him further about his ethics.
“So, Devin, you’re a Yank,” said Beryl as they’d settled at the table. Plump and pretty, she was like a late harvest apple, softly wrinkled and very sweet.
Rachel tried to remember if Yank was an acceptable term to Americans.
“Actually, Beryl,” Devin said politely, “I was born here, but moved to the States when I was two. My dad was an American, my mother’s a Kiwi.”
Beryl looked from Devin to Rachel. “And now you’re repeating history. How romantic.”
“We’re not-” Rachel began.
“She’s my little ray of Kiwi sunshine,” Devin interrupted.
Rachel said dryly, “And he’s the rain on my Fourth of July parade.”
Devin chuckled. Beryl murmured, “Lovely.”
Her husband eyed Devin from under beetled brows. “What do you do for a crust?”
He looked to Rachel for a translation. “Job,” she said.
“Student,” said Devin, after a moment’s hesitation.
“You’re a bit old, aren’t you?” New Zealand country folk were only polite when they didn’t like you. Rachel hoped Devin understood that, but the way his jaw tightened suggested otherwise.
“Changing careers,” he answered shortly.
“From?” Kev prompted.
“Musician.”
“How lovely,” Beryl enthused. Rachel suspected she often took a peacekeeper’s role. “Would we know any of your songs?”
Devin’s smile was dangerous as he turned to the older woman. “Ho in Heels?” He started to sing in a husky baritone. “Take me, baby, deep…”
“Oh, Kev,” Beryl clapped her hands in delight. “Don’t you remember? Billy-that’s the agricultural student who worked for us over Christmas-played it in the milking shed.”
“Cows bloody loved it,” said Kev. “Let down the milk quicker.”
Rachel looked at Devin’s stunned expression and had to bite her cheek. “Was it a ballad by any chance?” Her voice was unsteady.
“Slow? Yeah, not that the other bloody rubbish…sorry, mate.”
Devin began to laugh.
“Did you know,” Rachel said, fighting the urge to join him-one of them had to keep it together, “there was a study done at Leicester University that found farmers could increase their milk yield by playing cows soothing music.”
“Is that bloody right?” marveled Kev.
Devin laughed harder.
Kev and Beryl looked to Rachel for an explanation and she dug her nails into Devin’s thigh to stop him. It didn’t. “Conversely,” she said, hoping the effort not to laugh was the cause of her breathlessness, and not the warm unyielding muscle under her fingers, “Friesians provided less milk when they listen to rock music.”
“Well, I never.” Beryl smiled indulgently at Devin, who was wiping his eyes with a napkin. “You Yanks have a different sense of humor from us, have you noticed?”
Devin bought the restaurant’s best bottle of vintage Bollinger for Beryl and Kev, who insisted that Rachel accepted half a glass for the toast.
Devin explained to the old farmer that even a sip of alcohol would kill him, then gave Beryl a ghoulish description of how his pancreas had almost exploded.
Rachel thought he was laying it on a bit thick, and told him so while Beryl and Kev debated the menu. He looked at her with a gleam in his eye. “You see right through me, don’t you, Heartbreaker?”
“Heartbreaker yourself,” she said tartly, but somehow it came out as a compliment.
“Frenzied Friesians,” he murmured, and Rachel gave in to a fit of the giggles.
CHAPTER SEVEN
DEVIN SAT BACK and admired her. Laughter lightened Rachel’s seriousness, made her accessible. He was pretty cheerful himself. For the first time in New Zealand he didn’t feel like an outsider.
However weird his life had been as a rock star, it had nothing on Beryl and Kev and the obscure facts that popped out of Rachel’s luscious mouth. There was something appealing in the librarian’s quirky nerdiness. She didn’t give a damn about his fame or his opinion and Devin wanted her.
In a corner of the restaurant, a guitarist propped himself on a bar stool and started strumming on a Lucida. The playing was average but his voice was true enough for the flamenco ballads.
Kev thought Sinatra would be nice and requested “Blue Moon,” then sang along in a surprisingly good tenor. “Played the captain in the local production of Gilbert and Sullivan’s H.M.S. Pinafore last year,” he confided to Devin. “Bloody great night this, mate. All it needs is dancing.”
On the quiet, Devin handed over some bills to the management and a few now-empty tables were cleared away. Delighted, Kev and Beryl did an anniversary waltz, moving lightly around the floor. One number led to another. Touched by the elderly couple’s obvious nostalgia, other diners joined them.
The effects of champagne still sparkled in Rachel’s eyes. Devin held out a hand. “Shall we?”
“I haven’t danced for years…you okay with a shuffle?”
She did better than that. As long as Devin distracted her with conversation, her body moved
with his in perfect rhythm. She only stumbled when she concentrated on the steps. Which was unfortunate, because Devin didn’t want to talk-he wanted to savor the softness of Ms. Rachel Robinson.
So he encouraged her to expand on her theory of why musicians were so often good at math. “They’re both about playing with nonverbal patterns so there’s a lot of commonality there.”
As she warmed to her subject Devin found he could get away with an “Mmm” and a “Really?” Gradually he drew her closer, until her body was right where he wanted it.
“Mmm.”
THERE WAS SOMETHING in that last “Mmm” that jolted Rachel into awareness that she was dirty dancing with Devin Freedman.
One of his muscular thighs cleaved snugly between hers, his chest was a wall of hot muscle against her breasts and his “Mmm” still vibrated on the top of her head, where he’d been resting his chin.
And the hand supposed to be around her waist was caressing the upper curve of her bottom. About to protest, she became conscious that both her hands were in exactly the same position on his anatomy. She jerked back. “Excuse me a minute.”
In the bathroom she splashed her face with cold water and sprinkled a few drops down her neckline, appalled and ashamed. Obviously, three sips of five-hundred-dollar champagne was an aphrodisiac. Why hadn’t there been a warning on the bottle?
“Remember you’re here to assess his character,” she admonished her guilty reflection.
Rachel put her hair up in the tight ponytail Devin hated. She’d outgrown her partiality for bad boys after the last one got her pregnant.
Back in the main restaurant, the music had stopped and a small group-which included Kev and Beryl, diners and kitchen staff-milled around Devin, who stood with his arms folded, scowling. The dragon on his forearm was a guardian across his chest.
Kev caught sight of Rachel. “Talk him into it, love…all we want is that song the cows like.”
One glance at Devin, and Rachel knew not to try. “We don’t have that kind of relationship,” she said quietly, hoping to remind people of their own tenuous connection to him.