by Nalini Singh
Only the cheating bastard had never had any intention of leaving his wife; he’d arranged to have Lily deported when he was tired of her. She’d been four months pregnant with Thea at the time, and the only reason Thea knew the entire story was because she’d badgered it out of her mother at eighteen.
Now Lily squeezed her hand, smiled. “Ah, baby, I got over my hurt a long time ago. Your papa had a great deal to do with it.” A storm of love in her eyes, of joy. “He taught me that there are good men in the world, loyal, loving men who understand the meaning of honor. I hope you remember that and not just what that one did.”
Thea knew her mother was right, but she couldn’t get the image of Eric with his head buried between the bimbo’s thighs out of her head. “I trusted him, Mama.” Her voice broke. “I thought he liked me the way I am.”
The hurtful words Eric had flung at her continued to cut like razors. You’re a ball-busting bitch who should’ve been born with a penis! I needed a real woman to fuck—at least she isn’t hell-bent on emasculating me!
Rising when Thea started to sob in earnest, the first time she’d truly cried since it all happened, Lily came around the table to hug her against her body. Thea turned, wrapped her arms around her mother’s petite form. Unlike Thea, Lily was barely over five feet tall. As a teenager, Thea had hated her height and features because they made it obvious she wasn’t her papa’s biological daughter.
Soon as he’d realized the reason for her morose mood, her father, Wayan, had sat her down and told her that nothing could ever change the fact she was his eldest daughter, his small shadow who loved to go fishing with him and who’d made his heart burst when she called him Papa for the first time as a two-and-a-half-year-old.
Thea had never again questioned his love and their relationship was one of the most powerful bonds of her life. Her relationship with her younger sisters was as strong. The two were only teenagers, Lily and Wayan having waited to extend their family. Thea adored the giggling flirts and was so happy that they, as well as her parents, got along with Molly and vice versa; Molly hadn’t been to Bali yet, but the six of them had all chatted over video calls.
Lily pressed a kiss to the top of Thea’s head when she finally drew back after crying out all the tears she’d been holding inside for months and months. It felt as if a great big obstruction was gone from inside her chest, the air cleaner, sweeter, the world brighter.
“Write to your man,” Lily said after using the bottom of her T-shirt to wipe away the remnants of Thea’s tears, much as she’d done when Thea was a child. “I’ll bring you ginger tea to ease your throat and cake to ease your heart.”
Thea drank the tea, ate the lusciously rich vanilla cake that sandwiched an equally decadent chocolate layer, then read her memo over again and hit Send.
David was sitting on the beach, trying to work on a difficult combination of guitar chords in an effort to keep his mind off the fact that Thea hadn’t replied to his memo, when his phone buzzed. The stubborn hope in his heart gave a nervous jump. Telling himself it was probably just one of the guys, he took it out of his pocket, glanced at the screen.
Thea.
Blood a roar in his ears, he set aside the acoustic guitar he’d borrowed from Noah and pulled up the message. It was empty, with three attachments: one was text, the other two images. He took a deep breath of the salt-laced air and clicked on the text attachment, gritting his teeth as it loaded. It seemed to take forever, wave after wave rolling in to shore in front of him, leaving sea foam that popped and faded away into nothing under the cool afternoon light.
Then there it was, a return memo.
Reasons Why Your Reasoning Is Flawed
Introduction: In which I, Thea Arsana, explain the flaws in your argument, per your memo titled Reasons Why You Should Give Us a Shot.
Re your first point: Schoolboy Choir is my client. I’m not about to hand the band off to anyone. I certainly don’t need my business partner or our associates to look over my work. I am brilliant at what I do and I can separate my personal life from my professional.
That professional life has brought me into contact with any number of musicians. You must agree that those in your field do not make for excellent long-term relationship material. In evidence, I attach photos of one of your peers caught with his pants down with a woman not his wife. I believe you are friends with said peer and have been known to have a beer with him. It is often said that we are the company we keep.
You are deliciously sexy. Noah, Fox, and Abe have nothing on you. Don’t take that as encouragement. Sexy men can only get into trouble—see my previous line of reasoning.
The fact you see me as hot is a point in your favor, but I am not going to be swayed by your admittedly excellent way with words. As someone who also possesses excellent oral skills as well as a tight focus on the objective at the center of the oral discussion, you’re going to have to try harder to impress me.
Conclusion: Regardless of our acknowledged belief in one another’s hotness, the main obstacles to any relationship remain unchanged: you are a client, and you are a musician. Even if I decided to make an exception to my No Dating Clients rule, I, as a woman who works with musicians, know all too well that the species cannot be trusted. And trust is everything to me.
David read the memo five times over, getting more frustrated with each read. If the “excellent oral skills” comment wasn’t a sexual one, he needed to start taking remedial reading lessons.
…a tight focus on the objective at the center of the oral discussion…
Now all he could think about were Thea’s perfectly painted lips on his cock. She was always put together head to toe, and she liked to wear lipstick this color that was kind of between pink and red. She changed it up, but that was her favorite. And it was the one he saw in his mind as she moved her lips up and down his erection, her eyes looking up at him and her hands on the backs of his thighs, nails digging into his flesh. The possessive clasp of her mouth left his penis wet and shining and Jesus, he was going to come in his pants if he wasn’t careful.
He growled, closed his eyes, and tried to think back to his swim in the icy seawater and how it had almost frozen his balls off. God, Thea’s hot mouth would’ve felt so good aft—“Fuck!” The devious woman, he realized, had planted the image in his head deliberately, in retaliation for his memo.
Grinning through the agony of an arousal so deep it actually hurt, he clicked on the first photographic attachment because clearly, he was an idiot, and his mood dived. It was a tabloid shot of Will Taylor, poster boy for country music.
Will and David weren’t best buds, their personalities as different as their styles of music, but Will liked ice hockey. So did David and Noah, and the three of them had run into each other enough times at the games that they’d started grabbing seats in the same rows, getting a post-match beer together to discuss the game play-by-play. Of course, the tabloids had blown up the casual relationship into a bosom friendship.
Thea, of course, was too smart to fall for that. But there was no denying that David knew Will and that Will had cheated spectacularly on his beauty-queen wife. He’d taken his lingerie-model girlfriend to Barbados. Then the jerk had stuck his dick into her on a “romantic and secluded” beach.
And a pap with a long-lens camera had enjoyed one hell of a big payday.
Deleting the photo attachments because the last thing he wanted to look at was Will’s pasty ass, he read Thea’s memo again, this time focusing not on the statement that had made him so happy but on the truly important paragraph. The one to do with cheating. It was also the one thing it was impossible to prove he wouldn’t do.
David knew he’d never cheat, but he also knew his promise wouldn’t be enough for a woman who’d already had her trust betrayed.
Thea wouldn’t agree to be with him until she trusted him not to stomp on her heart. And the only way he could prove his faithfulness was to be with her, to show her he loved her to the point of insanity.
>
Catch-fucking-22.
Chapter 4
Thea walked into her parents’ kitchen in her pajama pants and tank top, ready for her morning jolt of coffee. Seeing her mom, she said, “Morning,” then yawned, still half-asleep. “Did Papa give you flowers? They’re gorgeous.” Striking with color and texture and scent.
In fact, she thought, walking over to rub one vibrant orange petal between her fingertips after she’d poured herself a cup of java and drunk enough to wake up, the bouquet was unique and tailored—far beyond anything Thea would have expected from her father. Wayan adored his wife, but his usual idea of romance was to buy Lily a new shovel.
Not that he ever allowed Lily to use it. No, Thea’s father always dug Lily’s plots himself, a small, secretive smile passing between husband and wife each time he did so. Thea had only discovered the reason behind that smile a year past; the knowledge made the moment even sweeter.
That was what Thea wanted, that deep, private, enduring bond.
Now, Thea faced her beaming mother, her own lips curved. “I guess he’s finally picked up something from you.”
Lily patted her cheek. “They’re not from my man, Thea Alice. They’re from yours.” With that, she winked and walked out of the kitchen.
Coffee forgotten, Thea just stared at the extravagant arrangement, her mouth dry and her blood thunder in her veins. It was only flowers, she told herself. She’d received flowers before. Eric used to send her white roses to make up after a fight. She’d thought it was cute at the time. Later, she’d figured he must’ve settled on white roses because they were simple and effortless to order from a florist. No reflection or forethought required.
What sat in front of her was in no way a straightforward order.
They had come from a local florist, but Thea knew that florist, had seen their arrangements. This was unlike anything they had ever done, the look so distinctive that the instructions had to have been highly specific.
“Stop stalling, Thea,” she muttered and jerked off the small black envelope pinned to one side of the luscious, fragrant bouquet.
Her name was printed on it in silver. Telling herself to calm down, that it probably wasn’t even from David but from someone who wanted her to jump ship and take over the PR for another band, she lifted the flap and slid out the silver on black card… and stopped breathing: Will is an idiot. I am not an idiot. Full memo to come.
That was it. No signature. Not that she needed one. Feeling as giddy as a girl with her first crush, she picked up the flowers, put them carefully in one of her mother’s large glass vases, and carried the arrangement up to her second-floor room. Her sisters weren’t yet awake or there would’ve been much squealing.
If Thea was honest, she felt like squealing herself.
Shutting her bedroom door, she put the flowers on the wide ledge in front of the window and sat cross-legged on her bed to look at them. She wasn’t that easy; flowers were a quick, pretty fix that didn’t alter the underlying issue of trust. But still… He’d made an effort. That meant a lot.
Chest tight, she picked up her phone. I got the flowers, she messaged, knowing it had to be near lunchtime in his part of the world.
His response arrived two minutes later. Having seen exactly how slow he was at typing things out on his phone, she grinned. He had to have started composing a reply as soon as he received her message.
Did you get the note?
Yes. I’m looking forward to the memo.
A knock on Thea’s door, high-pitched giggles coming through the wood. Have to go. Little sisters.
Marjorie and Ella tumbled into the room the next second. Squealing, they oohed and ahhed over the flowers, then jumped on the bed with her and demanded information about her “boyfriend,” drawing the single word out in a singsong tone that had her laughing.
“Tell us, tell us, tell us,” Marjorie said. “Or we’ll have to torture you.”
“Yeah?”
Marjorie and Ella shared a look at her unconcerned response, then pounced, tickling Thea until tears ran down her face, and this time, they were happy ones. She’d missed her two siblings. They’d visited her earlier in the year and all three of them had gone crazy in Disneyland, but it was good to be here, to spend a concentrated amount of time just being with her family.
When she finally had a chance to check her phone again, she saw David had sent one more message: The red one reminded me of you. It’s so fucking beautiful.
Thea went to the bouquet, and touched her fingers to one of the flame-red blooms. It was glorious. The petals were soft and velvety, curling gently outward from a golden core that held another, hidden core of opulent cream. Heart sighing, she pulled out one from the bouquet, intending to clip off the stem so she could tuck it behind her ear.
“Ow!”
Glancing down, she saw a red bead of blood on her skin; the stunning flower had tiny green thorns all down the stem.
Laughter shook her shoulders. He had to have made a special request that the thorns not be stripped or the florist would have done it as a matter of course. “Okay, David,” she murmured, “point to you.” She could get on board with a man who saw beauty in her thorns.
Of course—her smile faded—Eric had said that at the start, too.
David knew he couldn’t rest on his laurels. Thea might have replied to his memo, might even have swapped messages with him, but she was far from convinced. Throwing some meat on the grill on the back terrace of the hotel, he thought about his next move.
“What’s eating you?”
He looked up, saw Noah watching him with open curiosity in the dark gray of his eyes. The band’s guitarist had arrived from the mainland a few hours ago, but the two of them had been doing their own thing until now. “Nothing.”
“David, you’re drumming a steak knife and a fork against the edge of a grill you haven’t turned on.”
David looked down, saw Noah was right. “New beat,” he said, trying to shrug it off. He wasn’t ready to discuss Thea; back at the start, when he’d first started falling for her, the others had razzed him about his “crush,” but that had stopped a long time ago. His friends had realized it was serious for him, that any teasing would be rubbing salt in the wound.
Noah raised an eyebrow. “Yeah? This new beat requires raw meat?”
“Shut up if you want to get fed.” He got the grill going. “Abe here, too?”
Noah shook his head, his blond hair brilliant in the early evening sun. “Gone for a walk.” Hitching himself up on the wooden railing of the terrace, the cookout area sheltered from the wind and from the prying lenses of paparazzi cameras by the natural curve of the land, he wrapped his legs around the thick posts. “Want some help?”
“Make a salad.”
“Real men eat their meat as it’s meant to be eaten. On its own.”
“I’ve seen you drinking that weird green shit for breakfast.”
“That weird green shit is energy in a bottle.”
And Noah, David thought, needed the hit. The other man didn’t sleep much. He was almost always the first one up and awake when they were on tour; the only way David, Fox, or Abe could beat him to the dawn was if they just didn’t go to bed. “Will potatoes insult your manly taste buds?”
“Not so long as there’s butter involved.”
David pointed out the bowl of mashed potatoes on the outdoor table. “As ordered.” He cooked when he was stressed; another man might’ve thought that was odd. That man probably hadn’t grown up in a home where the kitchen was the center of the house, warm and welcoming and always a little crazy.
Even when they’d lived in a tiny two-bedroom place, the entire Rivera family would end up cramming themselves into the kitchen, talking over one another, chopping and stirring and doing homework. His father had often pulled long hours and his mom had to go to bed early in order to be ready for her morning shifts, but no matter what, the family always ate dinner together at the narrow kitchen table.
David had been so homesick the first week at boarding school that he’d stopped eating. Without Abe, and then Noah and Fox, he wasn’t sure he would’ve survived the culture shock despite his burning desire to make his parents proud, give them and his brothers a better life.
“So,” Noah said from his perch, “you cooked and you were drumming with a steak knife. What gives?”
That was the thing with Noah. Voted one of the world’s most beautiful people recently, complete with a cover photo shoot where he was dressed only in ripped jeans that were barely hanging on, a wicked smile on his face, the guitarist pulled off the laid-back musician routine so well that most people never realized he was always stone-cold sober in company unless with those rare few he trusted down to the bone.
The fact was, Noah’s intelligence was a blade; it was Noah who’d read all their gig contracts back when they couldn’t afford a lawyer, Noah who’d made sure they walked away from things that would’ve equaled handcuffs in the long-term.
So David didn’t try to bluff. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Fair enough.” Hopping off the railing as David put the steaks on two plates, the other man went inside and came out with a couple of beers.
They ate outside, and as they did, they talked about music. It was what had first brought the four members of Schoolboy Choir together, and though they were now bound by deeper bonds, it remained an integral part of their relationship. Noah was working on a song he’d mentioned to David before and grabbed his guitar to show David what he had so far. “Think you can do your magic?”
“Hmm.” David asked him to play it again, tapped out a clean, precise rhythm with his knife and fork on the edge of the table, using the clink of the fork against his plate to replace the sound of the cymbals. “Yeah, I can feel it.” He played some more, accompanying Noah as the other man segued into one of the band’s biggest hits.