Finding Rhythm

by Lara Ward Cosio

  What she changed first was his physique. With her encouragement, he’d transformed his body into something completely different. Shedding twenty-five pounds, his face suddenly had defined cheekbones and jawline, showcasing a previously hidden handsomeness. With cardio and weight training, he had added sculpted muscles to his six-foot-two frame. That and the new energy he felt had been addicting. Once he started, he hadn’t stopped. Ashley’s vocal appreciation had been a great motivator, too.

  “Tell me what you need, Marty,” Shay said, interrupting Martin’s reverie. “I want to help.”

  Martin blinked and swallowed hard. “Exactly what I needed to hear, man.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  What Martin needed most of all was the time and space to figure out his shit. But he didn’t say that, not in so many words, anyway.

  “It’s all right that I stay with you? Jessica mind?” he asked Shay.

  “No, she’ll be fine. We’ve got room, of course.”

  “Cheers, mate.”

  Shay led him down the hallway toward the back of the house. There was a spare bedroom overlooking a small garden. The simple queen-sized bed, side chair, and dresser would do just fine and he told Shay as much along with his thanks.

  “Care to settle in while I ring Jess?” Shay asked. “I’ll just give her a heads up.”

  “Grand, yeah.”

  Left alone, Martin dropped the duffle bag he had hastily packed and sat down heavily on the bed. His cell buzzed with an incoming text. It hadn’t stopped since he got off the plane. Without looking, he knew it was Ashley. As soon as he had told her he would be in her area, she’d invited him to join her for an afternoon hike. She’d spent the last hour trying to convince him that the fresh air would be good to clear his head. He didn’t doubt that. What he did doubt were her ulterior motives now that he was well and truly on the outs with his wife. But mostly, he doubted his ability to resist the temptation to fuck her senseless. The sexual tension between them had been building for months.

  ~

  Ashley Davis had been a part of Martin’s world before he even registered it. She’d been added to Rogue’s tour technically as the band’s fitness and wellness coach. But her primary role was really as a low-key sober coach for Danny Boy, Shay’s recently recovered addict brother. Martin and the others in the band had agreed to her presence without much thought. In fact, Martin hadn’t thought much of her for the first couple weeks of their return to the tour after the unexpected hiatus they had taken in the summer. Rogue had taken their time touring through New Zealand and Australia, with several days off spent at their friend Christian Hale’s home right on the beach. It had been a relaxing way to get back into the grind.

  It was on their tour stop in Abu Dhabi when things changed. Martin should have been using his free time to enjoy the wealthy capital of the United Arab Emirates. It was a fascinating city, with an endearing obsession for claiming world records for anything from the fastest roller coaster, to the tower with the greatest lean, to the largest hand-loomed carpet. With majestic mosques and palaces to explore, the waterfront Corniche promenade to wander along, and high-end shopping opportunities, there was plenty to see and do. Even their hotel, the Shangri-La, offered Las Vegas-like experiences of its own, including Venetian-style canals and gondolas, a private beach, five swimming pools, and its own upscale souk-themed shopping mall.

  But Martin had long stayed on the narrow path his wife preferred when touring, keeping to the hotel and the venue for the most part. And if he did anything more adventurous, it was always at the behest of his bandmates. Being a content family man, he didn’t yearn for much more—nor would his wife have tolerated even the suggestion of rock star excess. She had set her expectations long ago, when they married as twenty-one-year olds. Marriage and family were the priority, and just because he happened to be in a world famous rock band didn’t mean he should ever forget that—or open himself up to temptations he could otherwise avoid.

  To that end, Martin limited his explorations of the cities they traveled through, choosing instead to hang out with either Shay or tour crew. On this particular day, he tagged along as Shay, Gavin, and Conor cycled through various free weights and cardio machines at the hotel’s co-ed gym, finding that the company, such as it was, was better than being alone. He rather enjoyed watching the fellas exert themselves while he sat comfortably on the floor, making smartass remarks as “encouragement.”

  “Oh, watch your form there, Gav,” he said with mock-seriousness. He had no idea how exactly Gavin should be lifting the barbells, but the sneer he got in response was a kick.

  When Ashley entered the room, Martin didn’t even offer a hello. Though Danny Boy had rejected all her efforts to befriend him, she had become a positive presence with the band members, getting to know their preferences and offering personalized snacks and meals. As a certified personal trainer, she was in excellent shape with long legs and lean, sculpted muscles. She often joined Conor and Gavin when they went running, keeping up with their pace. It wasn’t unusual for her to work out in the hotel gym with them as well.

  Instead of checking in with the guys working out, however, Ashley grabbed a medicine ball from the chrome rack against the wall and joined Martin on the mats, sitting cross-legged across from him. He sat with his legs splayed out in front of him as he lounged.

  “Catch,” she said and threw the ten pound ball at him.

  Instinctively, Martin reached for the ball and almost dropped it, the weight surprising him.

  “Give a fella some warning!” he said with a smile.

  “Sit up straight,” she told him. “And throw it back to me.”

  Accustomed to doing as he was told, Martin followed her orders. He threw the ball back by pushing it straight out from abdomen-level and felt his muscles tense with the effort. If he could call them muscles, that is. He had never jumped on the exercise bandwagon his bandmates favored. It wasn’t that he was lazy, exactly, he just couldn’t be bothered. He’d never had the ego about his body that a guy like Conor did. He didn’t need to exorcise his demons with exercise like Gavin did. And he didn’t need to be in physical shape to play his instrument like Shay did. Besides, Celia, his wife, had never given him the impression she fancied him for his looks.

  Ashley didn’t try to engage him in conversation, but rather just kept throwing the ball at him. He felt obligated to keep at it, even as a trickle of sweat ran down his temple. The ball seemed to grow heavier with each throw, and he struggled to maintain an even breathing pattern. Bloody hell, how long was this going to go on? It would be impolite to stop, but he didn’t have it in him to continue.

  “Five more,” she said, reading the struggle in his face.

  “I—”

  “You can do it.”

  She seemed so sure of this that he found the will to push through. When she finally caught the ball and let it rest in her lap, he took a deep breath and smiled wearily on the exhale.

  “It feels good, doesn’t it?” she asked.

  He met her eyes, not quite sure what she intended. She had medium-length wavy sandy blond hair with bangs that skimmed the thick lashes of her soft brown eyes. To Martin, she looked like the epitome of the California girl she was.

  “The exertion,” she said. She licked her lips. “It feels good, right?”

  Despite the fact that there was no mischief in her eyes or tone, he felt his body react and he quickly pushed his hand over his crotch. Then her expression changed. The corner of her mouth turned up on one side. She slowly stood and adjusted the seat of her purple and gray patterned workout pants. They quickly snapped back into place, hugging her fit body like a second skin. The white crop-top tank she wore was a loose contrast, and left Martin wanting to peek under it.

  “See you all for breakfast in thirty?” Ashley asked, addressing all the men in the room. The band booked a penthouse suite with a full kitchen in addition to each person’s own suite so that there was a communal spot for everyone to gather
and eat or just lounge. Ashley took ownership of the kitchen, preparing group breakfasts and snacks.

  Gavin, Conor, and Shay all agreed, but Martin sat wide-eyed as he considered what had just happened. He hadn’t even given Ashley a second glance before now. She was nice, but he hadn’t had occasion for anything beyond a cursory conversation. She treated all the band and crew with detached politeness, never engaging with any of them. There was no way she had meant anything by the impromptu workout session with him, nor that “exertion” question. Jesus, how hard up was he that he had gotten halfway erect at the mere mention of a word?

  Truth be told, he was desperately hard up. It had been three weeks since the band had resumed the world tour, and though he had seen Celia for a short visit home along the way, he hadn’t been laid since before they went back out on the road. Since well before then. So that was it, he mused to himself. He was now so pent up that all it took to get him hard was a pretty woman looking him in the eyes. It made him feel like a teenager with no control over his hormones rather than the thirty-two-year old man that he was. Make that, the thirty-two-year old married man.

  Vowing to ensure that he didn’t make Ashley uncomfortable for what was obviously his issue, Martin looked up in time to see her turn back as she reached the door of the gym. She still wore that crooked smile. And then her eyes drifted downward to his crotch and he felt a rush of blood go with it.

  “You get what you were after?”

  Martin heard Conor ask the question but was slow to look up at him. And he certainly wasn’t going to get up. Not until his renewed hard-on had gone away. When he did look over at Conor, he noticed the guitarist had removed his shirt and a sheen of sweat covered his chiseled chest. He didn’t have a six-pack. He had an eight-pack. And every other muscle was just as defined. Ashley should have been giving Conor her attention.

  “What’s that?” Martin asked.

  Conor lept up and gripped the silver bar above his head. His muscles flexed as he did a series of pull-ups that made Martin’s arms ache all over again just from watching.

  “Your workout with Ashley,” Conor said, his voice not even strained as he curled his knees to his chest repeatedly. “That was all you were after?”

  Martin raced to think how the brief episode might have appeared to the others. He found it hard to believe that Conor could have seen anything more than the exchange of the medicine ball.

  “I mean, get your arse up,” Conor continued, “and do a real workout. About fucking time you quit being so lazy.”

  The relief he felt at not being found out was palpable. Martin grinned amiably and stood. “Nah, that was plenty for today.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The now too familiar sound of a text notification brought Martin out of his memories of Ashley and to the present reality of her vying for his attention. He could hear Shay down the hall in the living room speaking on the phone.

  Looking at his own phone, he saw Ashley’s simple question: “Yes or no?”

  That was the bottom line, wasn’t it? Would he or wouldn’t he with her? She was willing. He knew as much. If he listened to his body, the answer was clear: a resounding yes. Yes, for god’s sake. Yes, let me tear your clothes off and ravage you. Better yet, unleash the passion you’ve had bubbling under the surface for all these past months and drown me in it. Show me, without holding back even a little bit, how much you want me. Because, damn it, he needed to be wanted and desired.

  Keying in “yes” on his phone, he hit send before he could stop himself.

  “I’ll pick you up in forty-five minutes,” she wrote back. “Send me Shay’s address.”

  Once he replied and dismissed her text, the phone’s screen returned to its normal background pic. It was of his three boys, Donal, Colm, and Sean. In the candid shot, the boys were roughhousing with each other on the stage of the 3Arena during the soundcheck for Rogue’s Dublin show. The theatrical lighting lit up their blond hair and white smiles. Though they were going after each other in their usual aggressive way, they looked like angels in his eyes. The boys were everything to him. Celia had said she would tell them Martin needed to do some more touring for Rogue during this separation. But all he wanted to do was fly right back home and gather all three of his kids in his arms for an epic wrestling match.

  “All set,” Shay said from the frame of the open bedroom door. “Jess will be home around eight and we can have dinner, yeah?”

  Martin looked up, suddenly feeling nauseated by his conflicting desires.

  “You all right?” Shay asked.

  “Em, yeah.” Martin took a deep breath and released it with a barely audible moan. What had he done? Ashley was on her way, which minutes ago seemed like exactly what he wanted. But now, he was back to feeling the same way about her that he had for months: she wasn’t worth risking everything he held dear.

  “Another beer?”

  It took him a few seconds, but Martin smiled at this offer. Shay was a caretaker. He had come to the right place. “No, but can you do me a favor?”

  Martin fit just fine in the passenger seat of Ashley’s blue and white Mini Cooper. Shay, on the other hand, had his knees uncomfortably pressed against the back of seat. Ashley whipped the car across the Golden Gate Bridge, moving in a hurry toward Mount Tamalpais, a state park in Marin County, just north of San Francisco.

  She hadn’t hidden the disappointment that washed over her face when Martin informed her Shay would be joining their hike. Shay wasn’t exactly pleased to be there either, but he’d agreed when Martin got down to the crux of the matter.

  “Why do you need me to go with you?” Shay had asked when Martin begged this favor of his friend.

  “I just do. I need someone else there,” Martin had said.

  “For what? She’s your mate, right?”

  “Look, I just need this, okay?”

  “Tell me why, Marty.”

  “Fuck’s sake,” Martin said. He shook his head and closed his eyes. “Because I’m not sure if I want my marriage any longer. But I’m not sure I want to fuck up any chance I have of saving it either.”

  Shay hadn’t said another word. He just went to the kitchen to fill two large stainless steel water canisters and got ready to go.

  It was on one of these canisters that Shay was now relentlessly tapping his fingers, finding a rhythm along with Mumford & Son’s song “The Wolf” from their album Wilder Mind. Ashley had it blaring from the Mini Cooper’s stereo. She had an indie-hippie sensibility, though she claimed to be a fan of Rogue’s harder rock sound. She’d insisted on having the moon roof open and the windows down during the drive, so conversation was impossible, which was likely her goal with Shay unexpectedly tagging along.

  The next song to play was a more subdued one. Ashley turned her eyes from the road to look at Martin as she sang along with a line she had long found especially applicable to him: “You can be every little thing you want nobody to know.”

  This had been her pitch to him for a while now. She’d seen something in him that pivotal day in the gym, something she said no one else did. And from that moment on, she’d pursued him—at first subtly, like at their post-workout group breakfast that same morning, then more aggressively.

  Martin’s nerves were rattled when he arrived at the penthouse for breakfast to find that none of the other guys had made it there yet. They were cleaning up from their workouts and taking their time. Ravenous, Martin had jumped in and out of the shower.

  And now he found himself alone in Ashley’s company as he sat on a barstool at the long kitchen counter, watching her crack the shell of one egg after another and carefully separate the whites from the yolks.

  “We’ll step it up a bit tomorrow,” she said as she continued to prepare the ingredients for what looked like vegetable omelets. She sliced a red bell pepper to add to the piles of onions and mushrooms already on her cutting board.

  “Pardon?”

  “Tomorrow. We’ll do a little more of a workout.”


  “I . . .”

  She stopped working and looked up at him. “It’s good to get the blood flowing.”

  Good god. She did it again. He was frozen still as desire coursed through his body.

  “Eager, I see.”

  Jolted by the commentary coming from James, Rogue’s manager, Martin sat up straight and swallowed hard. A wiry redhead, James had been with the band since the beginning, having impressed the boys by throwing around music terminology and name-dropping industry producers as if he had first-hand experience. The band’s success was as much of a surprise to him as it was to anyone though, since he had been all talk. But his confidence and dogged determination, combined with the band’s efforts, was the magic combination to propel them all to dazzling heights of success. James had also, early on, developed a keen sense of how to manipulate the media, a talent that had come into play over the years more times than any of the band members ever realized as he was able to quash most damaging tabloid stories lobbied at them.

  “What’s on, then?” James asked, seating himself next to Martin.

  “Veggie egg white omelets,” Ashley said. “And spinach-banana-peanut butter smoothies.”

  “Jaysus,” James said. “At least tell me you’ve got some sausages or something with some lovely grease to it?”