Why had we agreed it shouldn’t happen again?
Oh, right, because she wasn’t whoever she was now. This Bess was a temptress, intentional or not. Her hair was silky soft, her scent somewhere on the side of floral, but with hints of vanilla that made me want to lick her like an ice cream cone. And those freaking glasses. My God, I wanted to fuck her in her thigh highs, red heels and black-rimmed glasses.
I downed half my Jameson to settle down. The point of this meeting was to get her to retract her review, not to get her out of her skirt. She’d already shot down my attempt at that anyway.
I hadn’t planned on the word vomit that came out about the day she left for college or Christmas Eve. It pissed me off, though. No matter what happened between us, no matter that we didn’t talk all senior year, she was leaving—going away—and I figured whatever went wrong between us would be put aside to say goodbye. Apparently, she’d ridded herself of me long before then.
Too bad for her, I was back and not going anywhere until I had answers and a retraction of the review she admitted had a personal slant to it.
I slammed back the rest of my drink, heard her heels clicking on the tile floor toward me, spun around and stood up.
“Ready?” she asked.
“For dinner. I’m starving.”
She heaved a sigh and gave me an exaggerated blink. “It’s been nice catching up. Good luck to you, Derek.” Then she turned and headed for the lobby.
“Where do you want to eat?” I asked, not letting her off the hook. I glanced down at my jeans and t-shirt. “I’m not really dressed for anything too fancy, but I remember you love a good burger.”
She stopped and faced me, let her eyes wander over my face, then down to my chest, my waist, my legs. When she looked back up her expression was odd, almost sorrowful. “What?” I asked.
Bess shook her head slightly. “I don’t want to regret this.”
Her words were heavy with meaning. I wasn’t sure I was ready for that much meaning. “It’s only dinner.”
She reached up and put a hand on my shoulder. “It’s never only anything with you.”
I wasn’t sure she meant that in a good way or a bad way. Maybe she didn’t know either. “Burgers then?”
Bess let her shoulders relax and her mouth shift into a smile. “Burgers.”
She turned and strode toward the doors. “Forgiveness?” I asked.
“Not on the menu,” she said, flinging the words over her shoulder.
“Maybe not tonight…” I said.
“Maybe not ever.” She smiled at the doorman as we passed.
I gave the valet the ticket for my car and he had it pulled around. This time I made sure to open her door before the valet, and not just to get another look at her legs. But that was a bonus. I needed to put her at ease, to make her a friend again. A friend who didn’t want to sabotage my career.
Maybe a friend with benefits.
Seriously, how was she resisting me?
Traffic was a cluster, as always. We sat and crawled along. It gave us plenty of time to talk, but she didn’t utter a word, and neither did I. It was like a hold out. Who would talk first? Who was I kidding? We both knew it would be me.
“So, The Scene’s been around for what? Five years now?”
She fidgeted in her seat, sliding her hands under her legs. “Four.”
“And you’re already one of the top entertainment magazines in the country, right?”
“That’s right.”
She wasn’t exactly encouraging conversation. “How are Jean and Paul? And Emmy?” I already knew the answer. My mom filled me in on all the neighbors during our weekly call every Sunday night. Not that I asked.
“Fine. Emmy just had my third niece and Mom and Dad are travelling right now in Europe. Mom loves sightseeing at castles.”
“Who wouldn’t?”
She turned to me, eyes wide. “You’ve been?”
“To Europe, yes. Last year. On tour with Generic Obsession.”
“Right. G.O.”
I wasn’t sure if the way she said my old band’s name was suggestive of sarcasm or not, so I let it go. “Not a lot of time for touring castles, though,” I said.
“That’s too bad. I was there last year, too, covering the Inner Disgrace tour for The Scene. They got some down time for sightseeing, so that was fun.”
My eyes should’ve been on the road, but I couldn’t stop myself from staring at the side of her face. She had to feel my eyes on her, but kept right on looking straight out the front windshield.
Fucking Inner Disgrace. She toured with fucking Inner Disgrace. Jack Dickface Stewart headed up I.D. Did she sleep with him? With that fuckwad, Jack Stewart?
I pictured him on top of her and wanted to put my fist through something. Thinking of her with anyone gave me the urge to become violent. This was Bess. Bess from next door. Bess didn’t have sex with guys.
I was such a fucking idiot. Like she’d been waiting around to screw me all this time. I didn’t honestly think she was a virgin, but until right then, I didn’t think about her ever being with another man. Obviously, she had been. She was a smoking hot twenty-seven-year-old woman. Smart. Successful. Who wouldn’t want her? I was the only one too stupid to notice before today.
“Did I say something?” She asked, eyeing my white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel.
“No. I mean, Inner Disgrace—Jack Stewart—isn’t my favorite topic, but it’s fine.”
“I should’ve realized. Being competitors…” She smoothed her hair and turned to look out the side window.
“Were you and Jack—you know,” I asked, curiosity getting the better of me.
Her head snapped back my direction. “How is that any of your business?”
“I guess it isn’t.”
“No. It’s not.”
She just kept shutting me down.
“Where are you taking us, anyway?” she asked, getting testy.
“My house.”
“What? Why?” She did this little head jerk thing that I remembered from high school. When she got mad I’d imitate her and she’d start laughing, but probably not anymore.
“Because I make better burgers than you can get anywhere else.”
“What if I tell you I’m vegetarian?”
Another shot to the nuts. “That would be regrettable.” I chanced a look in her direction. “Are you?”
She frowned. “No.”
I started laughing. “God, you hate me.”
Bess
“I told you I don’t hate you.”
“You’re just determined to hate my burgers?” he said, still chuckling.
“I was looking for an excuse to get out of going to your house. It’s the last place I ever thought I’d end up.”
“You used to practically live at my house growing up.”
“I know.” It was difficult to think about all the time we spent together as kids. All the races through our back yards, forts under blankets, swimming until our eyes burned from the chlorine. “A lot’s changed since then.”
“What?” An edge of annoyance sounded in his voice. “What’s changed so much that you can’t come over and have dinner at my house?”
“For one, we’re adults.”
“So what? I’m going to throw you on my floor and ravage you because we’re adults? Is that what you’re afraid of?”
I wasn’t afraid of it and that was the problem. The thought of him ravaging me made my heart palpitate and my legs weak. It sent heat flushing up over my breasts. I’d thought of him making love to me more times than I could count. Infinite times since first learning what sex was all about and fantasizing about it.
“No. I’m not afraid of that. But, we’re not kids anymore. It’s…complex.”
“Invalid reasoning. You got any other flimsy excuses?”
I didn’t need anymore. He was reason enough with his dark-stubbled jaw, jutting cheekbones, intense gaze and a body Michelangelo could’ve sculpted
. It looked like it was carved from stone. I wouldn’t mind running my hands over his chest, down his waist—this line of thinking had to stop.
“I was looking forward to going home and changing out of these clothes. They aren’t very comfortable.” It was a terrible excuse, but I didn’t want to give up and let him win unchallenged.
“I’m sure I have something you can throw on. Got anymore I can bat over the fence?” He looked over and winked. His eyes were obscene. Long and cat-like with a thick fan of black lashes. His profile was Romanesque. If it wasn’t for the small pock mark above his left eyebrow—a chickenpox scar—he’d be too perfect to be human. At least physically. Mentally and emotionally he was far from it.
“Sounds like you have an answer for everything.”
“Always do, Bessy Lou.”
Embarrassment flared inside me and I sat bolt upright, straining against the seatbelt. “Do not call me Bessy. That’s a cow’s name.”
“Whoa. I was only teasing.” He held up a hand in surrender. “Won’t happen again. Won’t even refer to the burgers as Bessy.”
I knew he didn’t remember the summer after eighth grade when he called me thunder thighs when we were swimming. I lived on Diet Coke and salads with fat free dressing that summer. I didn’t hold that against him though. Boys that age are all insensitive and obnoxious. But calling me Bessy wouldn’t fly.
About five minutes off the highway, Derek turned up a winding road and pulled through a gate enclosing a steep driveway. The enormous house was as expected of an L.A. mansion: square and modern with a lot of glass. It was a far cry from our identical, small ranch houses in Santa Cruz. It didn’t look like somewhere I would picture Derek.
“It’s corporate owned,” he said, explaining the style not matching his taste—unless it did now.
“Do you like it?” I asked.
“No. It’s too new. No character. You know me, I need creaky front steps and peeling paint.” He smiled at me and my insides thawed. Maybe I did still know him a bit.
We got out of the car and entered the house through a door in the garage. It opened into the hallway off the kitchen. A wall of windows lined the back where a cedar deck enclosed an enormous crystal blue pool. The kitchen was manly and mammoth with black marble countertops and cherry wood cupboards. “I’ll grab a bottle of wine and we can sit on the deck. Once you’re comfortable, I’ll fire up the grill and start cooking.”
“I can help,” I offered, then was smacked with the sense of playing house. Getting cozy with Derek Bast was dangerous. I had to remember that.
“I’ve got it covered. You’re my guest and I had to practically tie you up and drag you here, so I’m not going to make you help me.”
Tie me up? Those words sent another flash of heat through my body.
I watched him take two wine glasses out of the cupboard and select a bottle of red. “When did you start drinking wine?”
One New Year’s Eve when we were young we sneaked a bottle of wine into my bedroom. We each took a big gulp, gagged and grimaced and swore never to drink anything but the cocktails they made with juice or soda to mask the pungent, bitter taste of the alcohol.
He looked over his shoulder while uncorking the bottle. “When did you? Or don’t you?”
“I do. Started drinking wine in college, I guess.”
“I started when the business dinners with the big wigs came along. At first I hated it, but it grew on me.” He grabbed the bottle and two glasses and strode to a sliding glass door. “Come on out.”
The sun was just above the trees. A bright orange ball in the sky. To the right and down the side of the mountain, the ocean roiled and waves crashed. “I can’t believe this is where you live,” I mused.
“It feels like a hotel. It isn’t home to me. Home is still in Santa Cruz even though I haven’t lived there for nearly a decade.” He poured me a glass of wine and handed it to me, pulling out a chair at an umbrella table beside the pool.
I sat down and he claimed the next seat around the circular table. “Should I turn on some music?” He picked up a remote from the middle of the table. “Nothing by me. Promise.”
A pang of regret struck. “I don’t hate your music. I have strong opinions about this Unholy Union project you’re doing with Adrian, but that’s not reflective of your work as a whole.”
He smiled. Below the corner of his lip where his chin creased, a small dimple dented in. If I remembered correctly, it rarely ever showed, only when he smiled his most sincere smile. No smirk, no grin, only his true smile. “Thank you. That’s nice to know.”
Derek turned on some mellow music, then leaned forward and picked up my foot. He slipped one shoe off, then the other. “Those hurt me just looking at them. Not that I don’t love looking at them on you. But, they have to kill your feet.”
I stretched out my toes. “You get used to them. I love high heels so I’ve learned how to wear them.”
He eyed my fishnet thigh highs. Was he going to dive in, hook his fingers around the tops and pull them down my legs? “You have goose bumps,” he said. If only he knew they were from the path his eyes made over my skin and not from the breeze that was rather warm. “I’ll find you something to change into.” He stood and held out his hand.
I hesitated before taking it and letting him lead me inside. “This is the great room,” he said, as we strolled through. The cream colored carpet was thick and lush under my feet. A fireplace was built into a stone wall that climbed from the floor to the cathedral ceiling, and a second-story balcony jetted over the far end. “The master suite is down here in the back corner.”
Master suite. In my apartment that meant a room big enough for a double bed and a chest of drawers that you can barely stand between. Forget about pulling the drawers all the way out.
We turned down the hallway and Derek opened a set of double doors at the end. “I’ve never slept in here,” he said, pausing on the threshold. “It’s too big and reminds me of a place I shouldn’t be allowed in.”
I knew what he meant. It was pristine. Filmy curtains, porcelain figurines, crystal vases of flowers. It was straight out of a design magazine. “Where do you sleep if not in here?”
“The couch.” He shrugged and ran a hand over his messy hair. “I don’t know. Things happen so fast. Sometimes it doesn’t sink in, I guess.”
Or maybe he didn’t want it to sink in.
I stood there and studied him, not caring that he watched me right back. It never occurred to me that stardom strips you from being anyone else. Once you board that train, there’s no return trip. Your mark on history is made, your page written in the books. Derek Bast was a sensation. A star. He could quit and take up plumbing, but the world would always know him as the lead singer of G.O., and if he was lucky, the world would forget to note his foray into Unholy Union.
“What?” He asked. The word was almost a whisper, a hoarse rasp. His eyes were sullen, like I knew a terrible secret about him that I wasn’t letting him in on.
“Do you want to live here?”
He leaned back against the door jamb. “I’ve never really thought about it. I’ve been on tour the better part of the past five years. I’m not used to living alone. I don’t know what to do with myself and all the time I have when I’m not in the studio.”
I leaned against the jamb across from him. “Why Adrian? What made you join him?”
He looked into the bedroom, linked his fingers and rested his hands on top of his head. “It’s not easy to stay relevant if you don’t change. Fans are fickle. They love you one minute and are onto the next great thing the second you look away.” He tracked his gaze back to me, looking at me out of the corners of his eyes. “I don’t know anything else, Bess. If I wake up tomorrow and don’t sell another record, I’m done.”
I almost asked him about the millions of dollars I know he had stocked away in savings, but I didn’t think he was talking about making money. He was talking about being someone. Who would he be if he wasn�
�t making music?
His mark was already made—written in the books.
Three
Derek
The look on her face said it all. Without being Derek Bast, lead singer, I was nobody. I couldn’t let that happen. Not because of her review. Not for any reason.
“Twice today you’ve mentioned being worried about your career,” she said. “Is there a reason you’re concerned?”
I let my eyes fall to the floor and found her small feet, encased in the black diamonds of her fishnet stockings. Her toenails were painted purple. “It’s nothing. Only hypothetical.” Except it wasn’t. If Joe was questioning the tracks Unholy Union recorded, it was only a matter of time before he cancelled the contract altogether. I’d seen it happen a hundred times. Never to me. I was one of the untouchables. One of the best. The one the studios all wooed to get me to make a deal.
I was still on top, but feeling like I was teetering on the edge ever since that damn review came out this morning. “How can one person’s words make you question everything you’ve worked so hard for?”
My eyes snapped up to hers. I knew the anger brewing again inside me showed. She blinked and looked away. Her fingers came up to her mouth and pressed against her lips.
Oh God, was she going to cry? “I just meant, why do I let it get to me? You know?” I tried my best to backpedal. “Everyone is entitled to their opinions. I can’t be loved by every person who hears my songs. It’s statistically impossible.”
Bess looked back at me, her eyes watery. “I…” she shook her head, took off her glasses to dab her fingers at the corners over her eyes, then dove for me. Her hands cupped around the back of my head, pulling my lips down to meet hers. The heat of her mouth filled me. I devoured her. She tasted like the past and present, things known yet unknown, roots grounding me and wings setting me free. “Bess,” I whispered, just to hear myself say her name. Bess. The girl next door.
I lowered us to the floor and held her against me, exploring her lips and tongue with my own. I rested my thumb over the pulse in her neck, feeling it thrum and pound. I kept my eyes open, wanting to see her, to catch every flicker of pleasure that crossed her face.
Cover Me: A Rock Star Romance Page 2