Almost Wonderful

by Christie Ridgway

  "Moscow to London via Paris and L.A.? I know we had shitty upbringings, Pri—Cilla, but our schooling wasn't so bad. Pretty sure you'd see there's no logic in that."

  There wasn't logic in anything at the moment. Particularly how she was absolutely electrified by the presence of Ren who was gazing on her like she was a ditzy puzzle and not a desirable woman.

  Though she'd been doubting the desirable part for months already. Her fingers wandered again to the shorn ends of her hair.

  She forced her hand to her lap. "So what exactly does bring you home?"

  He drew up his knees and rested his wrists on the top of them, his big hands dangling. "I got a package from Gwen's lawyer, telling me about some box she left me, as well as a key to this place. Then Bean tracked me down. That was a first."

  "String Bean" Colson, the band's lead guitarist and Ren's father. "What did he have to say?"

  Ren shrugged. "The gist of it was he wanted me to come to the canyon, look things over at the compound since the band's been gone for months. That, coupled with Gwen's death..." Looking down, he ran a finger over the tattoo on his wrist. "I decided to check in."

  His gaze lifted to her face. "What are you doing here, Cilla?"

  Hiding. Licking my wounds. Trying to resurrect my sense of self in the one place where I always found comfort. "I received my own package from Gwen—including a key as well. So I decided to leave my place at the beach and move to the canyon for a while. She left me her costume collection and I thought I might sort through it from here."

  A brief smile gave her a glimpse of Ren's straight white teeth. "You always liked to play dress-up."

  Didn't that make her feel five years old? "It's my business now," she said, bristling a little. Cilla's career had been seeded by Gwen. The older woman had left home at sixteen and become an infamous band groupie. Over the years she'd amassed a vast number of costumes from the most renowned rockers in the world and Cilla had always been fascinated by them. "I make custom clothes for professional dancers, skaters, and yes, even music stars."

  "We really have been out of touch," Ren said. "I had no clue."

  Cilla lifted a shoulder. "Every Lemon kid left the compound as soon as he or she could and never looked back."

  He studied her. "Which means you, as the youngest, was alone at the end."

  At the beginning and in the middle too. But they'd all had to raise themselves with only Gwen as a stabilizing figure. "I'm okay." She had been, anyway, until Tad Kersley.

  "Sure you are," Ren murmured, his gaze not leaving her face.

  His steady regard lifted chill bumps on the surface of her skin. She suppressed a shiver and tried to think of something to drop into the awkward silence developing between them. Her tongue darted out to wet her lips.

  Ren exploded into motion. "I've gotta get into a shower."

  Cilla drew back. "Oh, sure. And I can make you some breakfast before you leave."

  "Leave?" Ren paused in the process of scooping up his discarded clothes.

  "You know." She made a vague gesture. "I'm here. I'll keep an eye on the compound."

  "All alone? It's pretty isolated."

  It was better than sharing that isolation with him. Cilla wasn't up for dealing with the way he made her tingle all over. Even if she was only just looking, her sexuality was already messed up enough without having to brush up against Ren-tosterone on a daily basis too. "Really, I'm good."

  He was looking at her again, in that intense fashion of his. One hand absently traced over the bare skin covering his ribs, re-drawing her attention to all his masculine bone and muscle. God, he was gorgeous, she thought, her own flesh turning hot and her breath catching once again in her throat.

  "Yeah," he agreed softly. "I can tell you're good."

  Not if he could read her mind. Not if he could know how his sexy body and his beautiful green eyes made her hyper-aware of every erogenous zone between her head and her heels. "So then..."

  "We'll talk about it after I shower."

  Her palms went damp in desperation. "Really, Ren—"

  "I'll think about it."

  "Look." She grasped at straws. "It's not seemly."

  "What?" he asked, clearly puzzled.

  Did rock royalty even comprehend such a word? Cilla waved her hand. "Even if you stay at Bean's house, your old house—"

  "If I stay, I'm staying here."

  "Well, I'm staying here." She had to spell it out for him? "So, you know...you can't. Two single people, one a man, one a woman, sharing close quarters..."

  A smile split his face. "So that's not 'seemly'," he said, shaking his head. "Priss—"

  "Cilla."

  His smile didn't dim. "C'mon. 'Two single people'? Surely we're more like...like..."

  Oh, don't go there, she thought on an inner groan. I've enough doubts about myself and my attractiveness to the male sex without you saying what I think you're about to say. But then, of course, he did.

  "...brother and sister."

  Ren exited Gwen's small, canary-colored cottage that dripped with gingerbread trim and strolled into the morning sunshine, its warmth immediately starting to dry his shower-damp hair. Narrowing his eyes against the California-brightness, he sucked in a breath and tried shaking off the strangeness of the morning.

  Jet lag was seriously screwing with him, he decided. Usually a few hours of sleep would clear his mind. But today, he'd opened his eyes and things had gone from weird—an unexpected woman in his bed—to weirder.

  Priscilla Maddox's mouth had turned his normal morning wood to a rod of aching steel.

  Shit.

  Shoving that thought from his head, he turned in a circle, taking in the pool and tennis court in the distance as well as the three homes where he and the other rock royalty had grown up. At seventy-five yards away, Bean's place was closest. Western-styled, with a shake-shingle exterior and a front door sporting a steer skull, it looked the same as when Ren had lived there. Beyond it was where Mad Dog Maddox had built a rock-faced castle-type abode, with a Rapunzel tower which Ren remembered had been a particular refuge for little Priscilla. The third member of the band, Hop Hopkins, had a severe glass-and-chrome two-story home where Beck, Walsh, and Reed had grown up.

  His mind snagging on the missing member of that family, Ren pulled his phone from his jeans pocket and pressed a speed dial number.

  "Yo," a male voice answered. "Isn't it like the middle of the night wherever you are?"

  "I thought when you went home everything was supposed to seem smaller," Ren said to his half-brother Payne, by way of answering. "It's all so...so." So sun-drenched. So lush. So bright with flowers and birds and colors.

  The arresting blue of Cilla's eyes.

  There was a small silence. "Are you telling me you're at the compound?"

  "Yeah. I needed a break." When he said it, Ren realized it was true. He'd been on a grueling schedule for months, years, maybe, and if he told the complete truth, learning of Gwen's death had thrown him a little. "And Bean put the pressure on me to personally ensure the place was doing okay in the Lemons' absence."

  "That's bullshit. A gardener comes by. The pool guy. Seven of the nine of us live within an hour's drive if traffic isn't jammed. We'd look in if asked."

  "Well, I'm in California now." And not resenting the arm-twisting so much. He did need a breather. Then his brother's words sank in, seven of the nine, and he remembered his purpose for calling. "Why the hell didn't you call and tell me that Beck is missing?"

  "I didn't know you'd care."

  That rankled. Ren paused as he started up the path that led toward the fruit orchard planted on the hillside behind the pool. "Way to make me feel like an asshole."

  "I didn't mean to," Payne responded mildly. "We all live pretty independently."

  "Shit," Ren muttered under his breath. "Give me a Cami report," he ordered, referring to their younger half-sister, Campbell. "And I don't want to hear that—surprise!—she's married with a passel of chil
dren."

  "As if any of the Lemon progeny are eager for that state," Payne said, "given that not one of us knows what a normal, healthy relationship looks like."

  Ren grunted. His brother had that right. "So, she's what...?" Not much would surprise him, not after he'd realized that little Priss—Cilla—had actually grown up and now had a career.

  "She runs one of my wrecking yards by day," Payne said. "Getting gigs to sing by night."

  "Hmm." Ren ran his fingertips over the yellow skin of a lemon as he breathed in the scent of their blossoms. That's what Cilla had smelled like this morning, he realized. Citrus blossoms. He remembered that Gwen used to rinse the little girls' hair with water infused with the tiny flowers and he wondered if Cilla continued the practice. "The wrecking yards doing okay?"

  "I'm in my element."

  Ren knew that was true. His brother had been crazy for cars—and totaled a few—before he'd even had a driver's license. They'd all learned to drive a golf cart around the seven-acre compound as soon as they could reach the pedals. Payne had convinced a handyman to strap blocks on them so he could crash and burn earlier than the rest.

  "So how long are you staying?" Payne asked now.

  "I don't know that I am," Ren said, grimacing. As much as a vacation sounded like an appealing idea, there was the issue of Cilla to consider. Finding her sharing the pillows had been a surprise, and a bigger shock came when he realized she'd gone from the coltish adolescent he remembered to a lovely, blue-eyed blonde with a tight body and an adorable tendency to blush.

  It scared the hell out of him.

  No, scratch that. His reaction to the succulent small package that was Cilla Maddox was what alarmed him. And the intensity of that alarm was only further alarming.

  Shit.

  She was too sweet for a man like him. Too good for what he'd wanted to do to her, with her, the minute he'd put his eyes on her. But her bare legs and the touch of her pink tongue to her lush upper lip had made him ache like a raw nerve. As much as he found her worry about seemliness amusing, she had a point.

  Two single people, one a man, one a woman, sharing close quarters...

  Too bad it sounded so damn tempting.

  A crackling noise came over the line from Payne's end. Likely the sound of him breaking into a package of his favorite breakfast of strawberry Pop-Tarts with sprinkles. "You came all this way just to take off again?" his brother asked around a mouthful of unhealthiness.

  "Cilla's here."

  "Yeah?" Payne munched again. "Cami ran into her at a club where she was playing a couple months back. She's into costume design or something."

  "Mmm." Ren swung around to glance at the cottage and his gaze instantly found the woman in question. She'd wandered out of the cottage too, and stood in a shaft of sunshine. It caught all the gold in her cap of wavy, bouncy hair. A pair of cropped jeans hugged her curvy hips. The outside seam on each side of light denim was embroidered in a dark blue pattern that was repeated on the straps of the sleeveless, peasant-y top she wore. The hippie-chic style suited her. A dozen narrow bracelets circled one wrist and he remembered that each of her fingernails had been painted a different color.

  The Byrds T-shirt had looked damn good on her too, the logo of five swirly letters in red and yellow on black cotton draping her high breasts.

  "She had a boyfriend with her," Payne added.

  Ren went instantly alert. "What?" Maybe that was why Cilla wanted to get rid of him. She was at the canyon for nookie-time with the man in her life.

  "They broke up, though. Cami and Cilla made a date for coffee and when that day came, Cilla said the guy was history. Cami figured she'd really decided to move on because she'd also lost her long mane of hair."

  Something about that story sent a cold finger down Ren's spine. He shrugged the uneasiness away and ran his palm over his clean-shaven cheek. "She's not a big fan of being at the compound with me."

  "What's the big deal? You're practically a brother to her."

  Except Ren wasn't, he thought, closing his eyes. He was seven years older and back in the day, he'd had little contact with her. And no man who was practically a brother to a woman would be experiencing this unsettling and powerful surge of raw horniness every time he looked at her.

  Maybe he should have gotten laid more often in Moscow.

  What warned him next, he couldn't say. But he opened his eyes in time to see a couple of scruffy young men summiting the ten-foot wall that separated Gwen's cottage from the narrow, one-lane road that led to the compound. Cilla still remained in her ray of sun, unaware of the strangers invading her bucolic moment right behind her back.

  A wave of protectiveness welled in Ren's chest and he started toward her at a run. "Gotta go, Payne," he told his brother. "But just so you know, Cilla's no sister to me."

  Buy LIGHT MY FIRE (Rock Royalty Book 1)

  Buy LOVE HER MADLY (Rock Royalty Book 2)

  Buy BREAK ON THROUGH (Rock Royalty Book 3)

  Buy TOUCH ME (Rock Royalty Book 4)

  Buy WISHFUL SINFUL (Rock Royalty Book 5)

  Buy WILD CHILD (Rock Royalty Book 6)

  Buy WHO DO YOU LOVE (Rock Royalty Book 7)

  Buy LOVE ME TWO TIMES (Rock Royalty Book 8)

  Excerpt – TAKE ME TENDER

  Billionaire’s Beach Book 1

  © Copyright 2015 Christie Ridgway

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  Sabrina fair

  Listen where thou art sitting

  Under the glassie, cool, translucent wave,

  In twisted braids of Lillies knitting

  The loose train of thy amber-dropping hair…

  —JOHN MILTON, COMUS: A MASQUE

  One

  A good cook is like a sorceress who dispenses happiness.

  —ELSA SCHIAPARELLI, FASHION DESIGNER

  Slowly threading through the tables of the darkened restaurant, Nikki Carmichael refused to let a single tear fall. No, she wasn’t going to cry, though the night’s last entree had been plated and served two hours before and the last patron escorted out the door thirty minutes ago. For the final time, she’d heard the clear-bell clink of the wineglasses greeting their partners as they were slid into their nightly resting place in the rack over the bar. The kitchen’s enormous stock-pots that had simmered broth all through the dinner service were now clean, their steam no longer able to corkscrew the baby hairs that escaped her braids.

  Pausing beside a table, she tweaked a white linen napkin already folded in the signature Fleming’s twist, ready for the next day’s dinner rush.

  The dinner rush Nikki wouldn’t be here to see, sweat over, or even swear about, as from now on a different sous-chef was responsible for the production of the restaurant’s elegant meals.

  Still, she wasn’t going to cry.

  After all, she’d been the one to turn in her resignation. And she’d had plenty of time to accustom herself to the idea of leaving the place where she’d worked since cooking school.

  Not to mention that she never cried—not since she was fourteen and her father told her at her mother’s funeral that crying was something big girls didn’t do. Don’t let anyone think you’re weak.

  At the locked door of the employee break room, with nothing left to do but gather her things and head home, she keyed in the pass code and then pushed it open.

  “Surprise!”

  Startled, Nikki took an instinctive step back and felt that familiar, dangerous doughiness in her right knee. Her leg almost gave way, but she gritted her teeth and fought for balance. The small crowd in the room didn’t seem to notice, and then she was being dragged inside.

  Colleen, the youngest member of Fleming’s full-time waitstaff, grinned at her. “You didn’t think we were going to let you go quietly, did you?”

  Nikki had really hoped so. She didn’t know how much longer she could remain upright on her listing leg.

  But slices of the pastry chef’s celebrated Chocolate Can’t Kill You cake were already set
on a rolling cart beside champagne glasses filled with bubbly. The dishwashers, grizzled Joe and his baby-faced sidekick, Carlos, passed out forks. Colleen danced around with the champagne.

  “To Nikki!” she finally said.

  And everyone there, from the bartender, to the waitstaff, to her favorite prep cook who must have made a return trip just for the occasion, echoed the words, their glasses held high. The enthusiastic goodwill surprised Nikki all over again. She’d inherited her keep-your-distance DNA from her dad, so she didn’t get too friendly with people, not even coworkers.

  In the convivial atmosphere, though, Nikki did okay through the next few minutes, sipping at the champagne she hoped would work like ibuprofen. Then Colleen asked her about her future plans.

  “Do you have your next chef job lined up? You said you had prospects.”

  It took a moment for Nikki to clear her throat of her latest swallow and her sudden awkwardness. “Not, um, yet. I’m still, uh, sifting through those prospects.”

  “I have a friend—”

  “What about—”

  “Why not—”

  The room filled with suggestions. Wearing a polite smile, Nikki listened to each of them. Her excuse for leaving Fleming’s was creative burnout, so their ideas ran the gamut from Japanese to Egyptian to a place that touted a Swiss-Argentinean fusion cuisine.

  That last gave her pause. Swiss-Argentinean fusion cuisine. What would that be, exactly? Reuben sandwiches?

  After the cake and champagne were consumed, the well-wishers walked her out to her car. She was forced to smooth her gait as she headed across the blacktop, pretending for the crowd she had two completely functional legs. She’d never wanted pity, or worse, the inevitable questions: Why not see a surgeon? Surely some doctor could…? There were reasons that wasn’t going to happen.

  Once home, in the smallest rented condo Santa Monica had to offer, she called out, “Fish, I’m back,” then limped about to gather a 32-ounce bag of frozen baby peas and a week’s worth of unopened mail. With a sigh of relief, she perched on the recliner in the living room, setting the envelopes on the small table bearing a lamp, her answering machine, and the goldfish bowl.