by Nalini Singh
The fact she'd held on to the company despite her relationship with that prick, Vance, and that the company had gone from strength-to-strength in a relatively short period of time, was a testament to Sarah's drive and will. A man like Vance would not want "his" woman to have any independent passions, things he couldn't control.
"She's changed, hasn't she?" David looked up from where he sat in the armchair next to Fox's, his hand stilling on the music sheet.
"Yeah, Sarah never struck me as entrepreneurial." Noah's voice was thoughtful rather than judgmental. "But man, she was really young when you two first hooked up." A nod at Abe. "Twenty-one right? I guess she's just growing up and into herself."
Abe nodded, unable to speak past the sudden knot in his stomach.
He couldn't understand the reason for that knot until Molly dropped by an hour later. She was on her way home after running an errand in the city, but she'd picked up a box of fresh-baked muffins for them. "Wouldn't want my favorite men to starve," she said with that warm, wide smile that marked her as far too nice for Hollywood.
As Fox demanded a kiss, then asked her about a project she was working on for her one-woman research and editorial business, Abe realized Fox and Molly were growing together. Being each other's support and strength.
Sarah was alone. Had always been alone in many ways. Even when she'd been married to Abe.
The realization was a gut punch that crushed all the air out of him.
"How're the wedding preparations going?" David said to Molly.
Molly beamed. "I'm so glad you asked!" Running back into the hallway, she returned with a giant bakery box. Inside were at least ten tiny boxes. "Cake."
"I love cake," Abe put in, trying to get into the mood of things--he wasn't about to ruin Molly and Fox's excitement because he was sick to his stomach over his fuckups.
"Charlotte's going to make the cake," Molly told them after pressing another kiss to Fox's dimple, pure delight in her expression as she spoke of her best friend. "She arrived in the country two days ago without telling me, and today she gave me the surprise of my life by turning up at the house with two sets of handmade cake samples."
A pointed glance at Fox. "Funny how she had the code to open the gate when I hadn't yet given it to her since she was meant to arrive tomorrow."
Fox just whistled.
Laughing, Molly kissed him again, then pointed to the box. "This is the second set. I'm taste-testing the first set with the women tonight. I need you all to tell me your favorites since Fox is being no help at all. When I ask him what flavors he prefers, he shrugs and says, 'Cake is cake.'"
"Swap out cake with pancakes," Fox drawled, "and I'd be your man."
She put a little notepad on the coffee table on which she'd left the muffins and cakes. "I'm going to let you taste the samples in peace," she said. "But if you don't give me some real feedback, I'll stop bringing you muffins."
As a threat, it was effective.
After she left, they decided to get some coffee and try the cakes before working on another piece.
Fox made notes for Molly. "See?" the lead singer said. "I'm being helpful."
The four of them were proud at being able to narrow things down to a rich vanilla cake with chocolate-buttercream frosting; a cake that was labeled as "champagne," with a frosting they couldn't figure out but that tasted hella-good; and a passion fruit cake with cream cheese frosting.
Happy for his friend but still pissed off at himself, Abe was glad to get back to the music. It had always given him firm ground on which to stand. A little while later, after they paused so David could fix something that was out of alignment on his drum kit, Noah said, "Um, so..."
Schoolboy Choir's guitarist never sounded like that. He usually projected an image of not giving a shit about anything--the rest of the world might be happy to go along with that, but his close friends all knew it was a front, Noah a man you could count on to be there when you needed him.
"Are you going red, man?" a wide-eyed David asked as all three of them focused on Noah.
"Shut up," was Noah's pithy response, and yeah, there was a hint of red on his cheekbones.
Not a blush though, Abe thought with a frown. This color seemed to have more to do with a surge of emotion. Whatever he wanted to talk about, it was important to Noah. Staying quiet, Abe let Fox handle this--the other man knew all Noah's secrets, though David and Abe had witnessed his demons, could guess terrible things underlay them.
"Hey," Fox said, staying relaxed in his chair. "This is us. Blood brothers forever." A reminder of the promise they'd made on a boarding school playground after getting involved in a fight against a group of bullies that had left them bloody but victorious. "What's up?"
CHAPTER 8
"I HAVE THIS THING," Noah said at last.
Blowing out a breath, he shoved a hand through the golden blond of his hair. "A song. It's not Schoolboy Choir material."
"If it's yours," David said, "it's Schoolboy Choir material. We're not a threesome--" He groaned as the rest of them, even Noah, cracked up.
Fox was the one to say it. "Sorry, David, you're a nice guy, but ain't no menage a trois happening here."
Rolling his brown eyes, David said, "You idiots know what I mean. Schoolboy Choir has four members. It is whatever we bring to it."
Abe nodded, his grin fading as Noah's expression turned nervously hopeful. Even with friends, the guitarist didn't often show emotion so openly. "Play it for us," Abe said. "If we don't like it, you know we'll tell you."
Others might not have understood why that made Noah's shoulders relax. Those people hadn't made music together for over ten years, from the time they first started the band way back in boarding school. They didn't understand what it was to put your soul out there and hope people didn't kick it. Having friends who had your back? It was everything.
Sarah had always had his back.
The thought was a hard one to bear--because Abe knew he hadn't had hers. Not the way she deserved. Not the way she needed. If he could go back in time, he'd pound himself bloody, but he couldn't. He had to live with the consequences of his actions, live with the fact that he was the one who'd made Sarah leave. It was all on him. No one else.
Music in the air, faint and quiet, a melancholy backdrop to the words Noah began to sing. The guitarist had a good voice, and this song, it needed that smooth, powerful voice, not Fox's gritty edginess.
The song he sang was about a sparrow with a broken wing, and it fucking tore Abe's heart right out of his chest, left it bleeding on the floor.
A stunned silence was Noah's applause after the final word faded from the air.
Then Abe and David blew out their breath almost at once while Fox just looked at Noah in a way that made it clear exactly how deeply the song had impacted the lead singer.
"Goddamn. That's powerful, man," Abe said, his voice thick with a bucket load of emotions. "It made me think of Tessie, like she's flying free same as that bird in the song."
Noah's dark gray eyes held Abe's, his throat moving as he said, "Yeah."
Nothing more needed to be said. Abe didn't talk about Tessie, not even to his closest friends, men who'd all known and played with his baby sister and who'd stood beside him at her funeral. Sarah had pushed open that door with the raw honesty of her own grief and now "Sparrow" had shoved it open wide.
A deep but gentle rhythm, David beating it out on the drums.
Nodding, Fox picked up the guitar he'd set aside and began to weave his music with David's.
Abe wasn't even aware of moving from his keyboards to Tessie's piano.
It just felt right to pull off the dustcovers, to take a seat on the piano stool and add the beauty of the keys to the music his blood brothers were creating. "Sparrow" wasn't a song for keyboards or fancy arrangements. It was pure and beautiful, and it needed the same accompaniment.
When Noah began to sing again, Abe knew they'd gotten it right.
And as he played, he knew
Sarah's heart would break when she heard this song... but that she'd love it too. Because heartbreaking as it was, "Sparrow" also held a deep vein of hope of which Abe wasn't sure Noah was aware.
Abe wanted to grab on to that hope, use it to feed his hunger to fix the worst mistake of his life, but he knew the hope didn't belong to him. Sarah had told him to go. He had no right to challenge her decision, to fight to be allowed back in. He'd given up that right the day he'd lied to protect himself.
The day he'd told her he didn't love her.
PART THREE
CHAPTER 9
ALMOST EXACTLY THREE WEEKS AFTER THE HOT, sweet, passionate hour that had haunted her thoughts no matter how many times she told herself to forget it and move on, Sarah braced herself to see Abe again. There was no way to avoid it, not when, in approximately twenty hours' time, she'd be attending the wedding of Schoolboy Choir's lead singer.
She still couldn't believe she was about to spend the night at Molly and Fox's house prior to the other woman's wedding. After her and Abe's drawn out and bitter divorce battle, a battle fueled by pain and hurt and a love that refused to die, she'd never expected to be invited back into the band's world.
Then the men had sent her flowers after Aaron was stillborn.
And Sarah had realized for the first time that maybe Fox, Noah, and David did see her as a person, not just as the woman who'd been Abe's arm candy for a few years. The fact that Abe had sent her flowers too? Sarah still wasn't sure she'd truly processed that. Her ex-husband would've never done such a thing... but her Abe would have.
But this, tonight, it wasn't about her and Abe. It wasn't about the boys at all.
It was Molly who'd invited Sarah to a coffee date not long after Sarah left the sanctuary Molly and Fox had provided after Jeremy hit her. Sarah had offered to go to a hotel, or to Lola's empty apartment, but Molly wouldn't hear of it given Sarah's shocked and shaken state and her need for protection from the paparazzi. Sarah had expected it to be a one-off kindness, their paths never crossing again; with Molly engaged to one of Abe's closest friends, she'd figured the other woman's loyalties wouldn't permit her to be friends with Abe's ex.
Then Molly had reached out.
That first coffee meeting had been followed by others where Sarah got to know Kit and Thea better too. They--as well as Molly's best friend, Charlotte--had all had the best time at Molly's "Cake-Testing Fiesta" a couple of weeks earlier.
Of course, both Thea and Kit had been around while Sarah was married to Abe, but back then, jealous and feeling like a fraud, Sarah had rebuffed what, in hindsight, she could see had been attempts to foster a friendship. Thankfully, neither woman was holding the past against her. And tonight all of them would help celebrate Molly's impending wedding.
Smiling at the idea of the "girls' night in" that Molly had chosen in lieu of a bachelorette party, she checked she'd gathered everything she needed to take to Molly's. That didn't include a wedding gift--as per Fox and Molly's request, she'd made a donation to a small charitable foundation that helped children deal with the loss of one or both parents. Knowing what she did about Molly's past, Sarah understood the charity must speak deeply to her, but what the other woman couldn't know was how deeply it spoke to Sarah as well.
Perhaps if their friendship endured--and she so hoped it would, would work hard for it--she'd talk to Molly about it one day.
As it was, she'd made a far more substantial donation than could be expected of a wedding guest, and she intended to add them to the list of charities to which she donated regularly. All had to do with helping lost children. The safe arms of this charity would've been out of her reach even had they been around in her part of the country, but as long as it helped one child, it was worth it.
Shaking aside the memories of the ruins of her childhood, she took another look at the dress she intended to wear for the wedding. Knee length, with the fabric a deep shade of turquoise, it bared her arms but had a high neck. The interest came from the origami-style folding on the upper left, from her shoulder to the curve of her breast.
Elegant and pretty at the same time, the dress spoke to both parts of Sarah--the girl who loved sparkle and shine and prettiness, and the woman who knew the world treated you better if you appeared confident and wealthy, with no hint that you'd ever once worried about looking trashy.
On her head, she'd wear a fascinator that matched the dress except for some subtle accents in a vibrant citrine.
Sarah touched her fingers to the pretty confection of it before closing the hatbox in which it sat.
She adored it as much now as she had in the shop where Molly had taken her girlfriends so they could all get hats or other headgear for the wedding. Sarah would've never picked something like this on her own, would've thought it made her look foolish. It didn't. As Kit had said, it made her look like one of those upper-class English people who went to "posh" country weddings.
Grinning, she checked a box that held a pair of simple black spike heels and an equally unadorned clutch. The heels, they were a gift from Abe. Not the shoes themselves but Sarah's comfort in wearing them. Before Abe, she'd always worried about her height, aware she topped most men. Put her in heels and she topped the vast majority of men.
But with Abe...
"You're perfect sized." A sudden grin, his hand cupping her face. "I get to kiss you as much as I like without getting a crick in my neck." He claimed her lips in a molten kiss to underscore his comment. "And in bed, we line up exactly right."
Toes curling at the memory, Sarah realized her cheeks were flushed to the burning point. It didn't help when she had to walk into the kitchen to retrieve her keys; her eyes went immediately to that counter, the one on which Abe had taken her so hard and deep, where he'd made her come until her thighs quivered.
"Breathe, Sarah," she ordered herself even as her fingers trembled on the keys. She couldn't go back down that road. She'd admitted long ago that Abe had the ability to hurt her more than any other man on the planet.
That was what she had to remember, not how good he made her feel when he put his hands on her.
Because he'd be there tomorrow afternoon at Molly and Fox's "backyard wedding," as Molly was calling it. She and Fox were determined to slide under the paparazzi's noses and have a celebration unmarred by flyovers as the media fought to take photographs. As part of that, the guest list was strictly limited and everyone knew not to say a word to anyone who might purposefully--or accidentally--spill the beans.
All staff hired for the event had the same reputation as that which was the foundation of Sarah's business: flawless discretion about clients.
Getting into her car after loading everything she'd need tonight and tomorrow, Sarah turned the vehicle's air-conditioning to high, then drove out. Despite how friendly Molly had been, Sarah might have felt awkward about tonight, as if she were barging in, except that Molly had made it a special point to ask Sarah to come.
"We can hang out and talk," Molly had said with that huge smile of hers that made it impossible not to smile in return. "And as a bonus, we'll all be here for the morning pampering and makeup session."
"Are you sure?" Sarah had asked, undone by Molly's generosity. "I don't want to intrude."
"You're my friend, Sarah." The other woman had squeezed her hands, her brown eyes luminous. "We might just be starting out in that friendship, but I know it's one that'll last."
Keeping Molly's words in mind, Sarah drove through the gate after someone opened it for her without her having to push the buzzer, bringing her happy little red car to a halt in front of the house. Three other vehicles were already there: a black sports car, a midnight-blue BMW, and a large, dark gray SUV with rental plates. She'd just opened the back passenger-side door to start gathering up her things when the front door of the house was thrown open.
Molly ran out, dressed in a fabulous halter-neck swimsuit in black, a white sarong tied at her waist. "Sarah!" Her eyes sparkled, every inch of her bubbling with joy. "You'r
e here!"
Laughing, Sarah met Molly's hug halfway. "So," she said, "you're just slightly happy to be getting married?"
"Hah!" The other woman pushed playfully at Sarah's shoulders. "I can't wait to be Molly Webster-Fox!" She looked about an inch away from floating off the ground. "I've decided I'm going to be that newlywed--you know, the one who gets monogrammed towels and shows off her wedding photos at every opportunity."
Infected with Molly's happiness, Sarah grinned and said, "Why not?" She pulled out the garment bag in which she'd zipped up her turquoise dress.
"Let me take that." Molly folded the bag carefully over her arm, then took the hatbox so Sarah could grab her overnight bag and the shoebox. "I'm so glad you could come. We are going to have way too much fun. There will be giggling and cocktails and dessert."
Sarah'd had girlfriends when she was growing up, but her home life hadn't allowed her to spend time over at their homes or ask them to visit hers. And after she'd run... Well, she'd never actually hung out with a bunch of women and giggled. It sounded oddly appealing.
Having grabbed everything, Sarah shut the car door, then followed Molly into the house. The curvy woman with creamy skin and soft, ink-black hair that curled wildly when not tied back, led her to a large downstairs room. "This is our dressing room," she said, hanging Sarah's dress on a clothing stand. There were already three other dresses on there, as well as Molly's wedding gown.
Molly brushed her fingers over the antique lace on it before putting the hatbox on a table and indicating Sarah could place the shoebox beneath it. "Come on, I'll show you where you can leave your overnight bag."
That proved to be another downstairs room, this one set up as a guest room. "I thought you'd like the view into the garden," Molly said. "It'll be private even during the wedding since the garden's hedged off to be a secret nook."
"It's wonderful, Molly." Sarah put down her things. "Thank you."
The other woman beamed. "You want to change into your suit? We're going to hang by the pool."
Sarah felt a stab of that old lack of confidence, a sudden awareness of her height and size. "Can I spy on what the others are wearing first?" she asked in a whisper.