One Taste

by Cari Quinn

  Peeling out into the night, he headed for the back roads that the cops forgot. He opened the windows and let the speed and the cool air push out the anger. Need for her clawed at him. She’d burrowed into him and had become part of him so fast.

  Did the secrets mean more than being with her? Just the idea of her not being within reach or a phone call away tightened every muscle in his body. No. No, it wouldn’t hold him back.

  At least not for now.

  He turned onto the main drag until his motor whined at the steep incline of home. His street was always busy. Being a half mile from the bars and restaurants of North Beach gave him access to everything a bachelor would want. He slowed for a group of people milling around his building.

  Christ, what now? He pulled into the alleyway. For once there was a spot available. Thank fuck, because he didn’t have the patience to find parking tonight.

  “There he is!”

  A white beam of light blinded him and a pack shuffled at him as if he were in a bad zombie movie. He shot his hand up to block the light and three more zeroed in on him. “What the hell?”

  “Is it true that you’re MJ’s newest boyfriend?”

  “Have you been having a secret affair?”

  “Have you been hiding MJ for all these years?”

  “Are you engaged to MJ?”

  The questions came from everywhere, reporters rolling over each other to get an answer.

  “What are you talking about?” As soon as he asked the question he wanted to snatch it back. The cameras and microphones pressed in on him.

  “You are Nathan Cross, correct?”

  “I—what? How do you know my name?” Confusion boiled into anger as he pushed through the crowd. Who the freaking hell was MJ? “Back off!”

  They jostled and squeezed in on him until all he could see was faces and cameras and the air shut off in his lungs. When one of the microphones glanced off his cheek he lost it. He shouldered through them like he’d done on the field as a teen. One went down, but he didn’t stop to see if they were okay. He lunged up the steps of his apartment building, digging his key out of his jeans. The lobby was public domain and they followed him in.

  “Nate? Are you all right?” His neighbor, Jonas Reynolds, shouldered back two male reporters and a cameraman that had to be three bills.

  “Elevator,” Nate managed to spit out.

  Jonas nodded and ran for it, jabbing the up button. He held open the door, but for the first time the mob stopped. The large red sign over the elevator that said Private Property, No Solicitors had never been more welcome.

  The questions, however, intensified.

  “Are you having a love child?”

  “Are you secretly married?”

  “Do you have threesomes with this guy?”

  Nate’s eyes bugged out and he slapped the door close button inside the car.

  “What the fuck?”

  Nate shook his head. “I don’t know. I came home to find that.”

  “Who’s MJ?”

  The name niggled, but damn if he could place it.

  “Maybe one of those L.A. babes,” Jonas joked. “You think someone more famous than me lives here?”

  Their apartment building wasn’t exactly a dump, but it was definitely middle income. Nate laughed. Jonas was the lead singer of his brother’s group, Sylar. And while they were moving up the ranks, they were still pretty small-time. “Nah, I think one ego is enough for this building.”

  Jonas leaned back, crossing his tattooed arms. “You’re just jealous because I get the hot chicks.”

  “I’ve got my own hot chick.” Surprised that he’d blurted that after all his bitching that evening, he scratched the back of his head.

  “Yeah, your brother mentioned you were enjoying the carnal delights with some chick. Didn’t realize it was getting serious. Of course, I haven’t seen much of you lately, so that makes sense.”

  The elevator opened and they both got off. “Miranda. She’s a pain in my ass some nights, but I’m into her.”

  “Is she hot?”

  Nate laughed. “Yeah, she’s very hot.”

  “Then as long as the crazy-to-hot quotient is acceptable you’re good, dude.”

  Nate clapped his hand on Jonas’ shoulder. “You are certifiable.” He nodded to the stage clothes his friend wore. “What, the guyliner didn’t bag you a girl tonight and you had to come home alone?”

  Jonas batted bloodshot eyes rimmed with smudged black liner at him, ever the jokester. “You do realize what time it is, right?”

  Nate frowned and dug out his phone. “I guess we’re both doing the walk of shame.”

  “Indeed. I think my shame was a lot more fun than yours, bud.”

  “Bet on it.” Nate sighed and opened his door. “Thanks for the assist.”

  “Any time. And just think, someday that’ll be my mess in the lobby.” He rubbed his hands together. “What a rush.”

  “Not exactly the word I’d use.”

  Jonas grinned. “Well, you don’t have the fame monster riding you like the best lap dancer on the strip.”

  Nate laughed. “You are a sick individual.”

  “If only you knew.” He popped the knuckle on his thumb. “Were they saying MJ?”

  “The name seems vaguely familiar, but the only MJ I know is Michael Jackson and he’s long dead.” Again, it niggled. He was so brain battered he couldn’t drag two coherent thoughts together in his head, let alone come up with a Hollyweird name.

  “Probably some Paris Hilton wannabe and this is her fifteen minutes of fame.” Jonas waggled his eyebrows and shoved at his long black hair. “Catch ya later.”

  Nate flicked on his TV, the mindless chatter of a repeat of the show that had been on at Miranda’s booming out of his surround sound. He stripped off his jacket then his belt, leaving them both on his couch. He had less than three hours before he had to leave for his shift.

  We’ve found our most unusual tip yet! With raw footage from a vacationer in San Francisco’s North Beach—

  Nate rolled his eyes, reaching for the remote. Didn’t they have anything else to talk about other than the crazy escapades of some socialite with more money than sense? Two blondes filled the screen on the top of a plush bar in what had to be Los Angeles. A male model type was grinding between them, but it was the two girls who stole the spotlight. Dancing as if they were professionals, they wore next to nothing, uncaring that they were in public or that camera flash bulbs were going off around them.

  He frowned, his thumb pausing over the power button as one of the blondes did a slow swivel. He wasn’t sure if he recognized the move or had been conditioned from all the footage on TV as of late. Her skirt rode low on her hips, showing a flash of a tattoo along her torso. He leaned forward. He knew from living in California especially that lots of women had similar tattoos these days, but it looked just like Miranda’s. Then the woman looked over her shoulder, right at the camera.

  The flash was too fast to tell for sure, but the patch of freckles along Miranda’s neck seemed to be just about the— He swallowed as another scene spliced in of the same two blondes. Partying again, nightclubs and celebrity red carpet affairs flew by in pictures and video splicing at its best. In each one of them it showed this woman in various forms of party-girl frenzy, not to mention a different male on her arm, sometimes two.

  His stomach bottomed out as each portion of the quick clip seemed to slow down in his mind, showing bits of this woman as she flirted and laughed, the neck so familiar to him and yet not at all. The blonde hair threw her look off and her body was painfully thin with eyes as flat and lifeless as he’d ever seen. Shadowed with booze and drugs.

  James Cavanaugh was easy to distinguish. She’d made more headlines this past year than some of the top movie stars. But this woman, he vaguely remembered hearing about her. Watching television wasn’t really his thing, but every once in a while he had to listen to his brother Matt go on about Tinsel Town.

&
nbsp; In the next clip, James and the woman were being arrested. She growled at the camera as she thrashed drunkenly against the cop. The eyes didn’t lie. “Miranda,” he said without a breath in his chest.

  And now, the footage you’ve been waiting for. You just gotta love digital cameras on phones these days. A tourist caught the clip of his life here. She may have changed her hair and her look, but MJ Lyons never changes her ways.

  The video changed to daytime footage, the busy footpath of the Embarcadero. It zoomed in on him, leaving out the fact that Stella was wound around them, all it showed was Miranda leaning back over the rail, with his mouth at her neck. Her breasts arched up in invitation, her laughter, so sweet to his ears at the time, now sounded like a bad skin flick.

  So who’s the new mystery man? And what is MJ doing in San Francisco these days?

  He sat back, rewinding the footage thanks to his DVR. It was no less damning a second time through. He slowed over images of Miranda and James Cavanaugh. The intimate touches between them grated on him. But as familiar as the woman was with Miranda’s body, there was a vacancy in her eyes—MJ’s eyes.

  The doll eyes he hated to see when she was with him.

  He hit the power button and sat in the dark until the pounding of his heart steadied. That wasn’t his Miranda. But which one was the lie?

  Chapter Eleven

  With head in hand, she tabbed through her emails, her nose only a few inches from the screen. Eight accounts to update, four new proposals to finish, a slew of junk email and she couldn’t remember word one of any of them.

  “Miranda?”

  Bleary eyed, she looked up. Focusing took too much effort.

  “Glasses.”

  She dragged them off her head and Leo came into view.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Of course.” She turned her chair back around. If Leo was checking up on her she must look like week-old goat cheese.

  “Maybe you should head back up to the apartment. We can handle things here.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Sugar, you’re anything but fine.” New Orleans slid from his perfect lips. Another sign that he was worried. The only thing that ever bothered her about Leo was that he was too pretty. Who had a perfect face and wore perfect clothes? It just wasn’t right, and she was from the land of the beautiful.

  “I just had a long night.”

  He grinned and a pair of dimples winked from the dental Disney World that was his mouth. “Oh then I’ll leave you be.” If he wanted to think that she was in a lust hangover then let him. Questions would cease. She looked up and Max’s furrowed brow put that idea to bed. Where she should be. In bed, sleeping because she’d stared at her ceiling for the entire night.

  Just how close were the media hounds to finding her? If they knew about Telegraph Hill then she was dead in the water. And she hadn’t been able to put it away before Nate caught her. She must have looked like a damn guppy when that story had come on. Instead of reining it in like any other night, she’d fought with her boyfriend and…

  She smacked her forehead on the cool surface of her desk. Because she deserved it and she’d officially made him more important than any other man in her life since she’d moved to San Francisco. She was stupid and shortsighted. She’d been taken in by a pair of shoulders and a mouth that even Leo couldn’t compete with.

  “I’m an ass.”

  “Of course you are, sweetheart, but why?” Max put a comforting hand on her shoulder and she felt the prick of tears. She didn’t deserve the comfort.

  “I screwed up, Max.”

  “Well, tell me how and why and we can fix it. Super Stud seems like the forgiving sort.”

  She lifted her head. “I didn’t say it was about Nate.”

  “Come on. Like there’s anything in this world that can make you give yourself a desk concussion?”

  “The state of our contracts, the fact that payroll’s going to be tight this week.” Hell, she was going to have to dip into her own accounts to pay her employees. Her grandmother’s accounts. The ones she almost never touched. She dug two fingers down the center of her forehead. “Or the fact that Declan snagged two of our accounts because he under-fucking-bid me by twelve percent?”

  “That’s just business and makes you put your pretty little nose to the screen and work an extra eight hours. Only a man can cause this kind of reaction, love.”

  Disgusted, she locked her computer and pushed out of her chair. “I’m going upstairs to take a nap.”

  “Running away never helped anyone in love, Miranda.”

  It worked for her, dammit. The shrill ring of her phone shredded her last nerve. She snatched it up and Max peeled her fingers off.

  “I think I should take this one. Miracle Designs, this is Max.” He paused, his eyebrow lifting. “You’re looking for a Randy?”

  Miranda snatched the phone out of his hand. “Macy?”

  “How’d you know it was me?”

  Her best friend’s Demi Moore voice had never been so welcome. “No one else calls me that.” She sniffled, squeezing her eyes against the prick of tears for the third time that morning.

  “You need to look at the entertainment channels once in a while. Just because you don’t want to live in L.A. anymore doesn’t mean you can let all your instincts wither.”

  She fell into her chair. Her knees simply wouldn’t hold her up anymore. “What?”

  “Jesus, Randy. It’s on every blog and Twitter account. For the love of Gucci, who the hell is Nathan Cross?” She knew that Macy was still lecturing her, but the words had been lost in a sea of white noise the moment she’d said Nate’s name.

  How had they found her, how had they found Nate?

  “Miranda?”

  She tried to hold on to the receiver but her hands were shaking too hard. “Max?” He took the phone from her. He must have talked to Macy before he shut off, but she couldn’t be sure.

  Nate knew. He had to know. She held on to the chair arms, finding enough strength to hit the door running. Max and Leo both shouted after her, but she just kept on running. Up the stairs and to her personal computer, she flipped it open and switched the television on. After a quick scan of the TV Guide, her pulse roared in her ears. She didn’t even have to go off that channel.

  Nate’s strong-featured face was washed out with the camera lights, and the long fingers that had given her unending pleasure the night before were now batting away lenses and microphones. Memories of the terror of getting crushed by reporters stole her breath. To see him having to deal with it ripped her to shreds.

  His gray eyes were confused and startled. A knife to his neck would have caused less shock than cameras shoved in his face. And the crowd of reporters just kept shouting her old name. Firing questions about them as a couple and for fuck’s sake about them having a love child.

  She’d have pictures of herself with a baby bump by tomorrow.

  The only thing she could count on was that they didn’t know where she was. Even as her breath stalled in her lungs, there was relief. She slid to the floor and paused the screen. Nate’s heavy leather jacket-clad arm blocked the cameras but his other hand was fisted for battle.

  She’d brought that on him. Her secrets and the specter of her bad judgment followed her everywhere. She fumbled her cell phone out of her pocket and found Macy’s number. They usually kept their lives separate except for the odd email or text. But here and now she needed an old friend’s voice.

  “Jesus, who did you hand the phone to?”

  “And hello to you too.”

  “Randy, who was the hunk of delicious on the phone?”

  She laughed. “The one person even you probably couldn’t seduce. But I think he’d love you.”

  “I think that’s the first time you’ve ever mentioned putting me in your current life.”

  Shame crawled over the fear. “I—”

  “It’s okay,” Macy interrupted. “I get that you needed to get as far away from t
his circus as possible. Even if it meant leaving me behind.”

  She pressed her forehead into her knees, the tears soaking through her pants. She never wanted to hurt Macy. She’d completely shut off from everyone and everything that had ever been tainted by MJ. “I’m sorry. I never meant to make you feel like you didn’t matter.” How many different ways could she hurt the people in her life? How many different kinds of hell were going to follow her around because of MJ?

  “Oh babe, you’re not allowed to start crying on me here. Buck up. Seriously, cut with the histrionics.”

  She sniffled. She didn’t cry, dammit.

  “Your sister is freaking out that you’re getting more press than her. You know that, right?”

  “My bratty sister is not the problem here. I would love to hand her every news bite, every blog post and every fucking tweet that has goddamn MJ Lyons’ name associated with it.”

  “You know, MJ wasn’t all bad, babes.” The voice was quiet and clicked the shame up another notch.

  No, there wasn’t only bad in that time. She’d managed to find bits of life in the midst of the parties. There had been parts of her that Grandmother had seen, behind the too short skirts and many moments of drunken debauchery. But the end product always had her pushing the envelope. And that was as much on her as it was on the situation. “I wish I remembered those times a little better, Mace.”

  “Let me come out there.”

  Instinct shouted no. Macy was just as hounded by the press as she was but God, she wanted a friendly face. She needed a friendly face. “Yes. Please, Macy. I-I could use a friend.”

  “It’s about fucking time. I’ll be there by the end of the day.”

  Her cell fisted in her hand, she huddled between the couch and her coffee table and dissected program after program. She saw Nate and herself from every angle on that fucking pier as more videos came in from YouTube and Twitter. Grainy, clear and in between. It was always her in the midst of abandon. Under that was a happiness she hadn’t ever seen in herself. And that scared her more than anything on this earth.