by Ally Blake
“Honey,” Lori said, pushing, always pushing, “you can’t even design your own wedding shoe. You, who could draw a shoe for the Princess of Persia with your eyes closed.” Isn’t that telling you something?
“That’s because I want them to be perfect. The only wedding shoes I’ll ever wear,” Callie said, playing with one of the company’s own slogans. Funny girl.
Lori forced a smile and asked, “Does this mean you’ve set the date?”
“No,” Callie grumbled, twirling the pretty, bow-shaped diamond engagement ring around her dainty finger. “And I wish everyone would stop asking us that or Jake’ll blow a gasket. There’s the tour coming up in the fall and half an album to record before then, so not till after that.”
It took every effort for Lori not to point out that if the guy wanted to marry her he’d do it. But, honestly, it wasn’t as if Lori had a serious clue why men did the things they did.
“And you,” Lori pressed. “You’d have to make room, too, remember. Fashion Week is coming up. And next spring’s collection proofs still aren’t finalized. Your business is as important to you as his is to him.”
Callie’s smile was flat. “I’m sure I could find room in between sketching out crap, and having no ideas at all.”
Lori’s stomach clenched. Hard. Another massive hurdle she had to jump in order to right the ship. She had to find a way to help Callie get her mojo back, and fast. Break schmeak. Lori might be doing a grand job of keeping the business problems from her sister, but even she couldn’t keep a whole country-load of creativity-sapping gossip reined in.
Lori pulled her next ace from the deck, knowing she was running out fast. “I’ve been thinking we should try to coax Lita up from LA.”
“Oh yes, yes, yes.” Callie perked up.
The sisters had met the entertainment reporter years back, when Calliope Shoes first began getting attention on red carpets one award season. One of Lita’s first assignments had been an interview with a certain up and coming shoe designer, who’d been terrified. She’d been gracious with Callie while she and Lori had hit it off like soul sisters.
“I’ll call her,” Lori said circling Lita’s name on her diary. See if she’s interested in doing something at the same time. About the song? About Callie and Jake? Something.
“Girls’ weekend!” Callie said, tipping to the edge of the chair. “We need a fourth so I’ll drag Sydney up here, too. I miss that girl’s blueberry pancakes like nothing else. And she hasn’t even met Jake yet. So let’s make it soon.”
Lori wrote down ‘Sydney,’ Callie’s best friend from back in Fairbanks, and circled it three times. “Consider it done.”
“Excellent. Now, how about Dash?” Callie asked.
Lori felt the blood leave her belly to land in her face. Her pen kept circling so she didn’t have to look up. “He’s not invited. As far as I can tell he’s not a girl.”
“Ha! The stubble, the shoulders, the loose rugged nature-boy thing; what he is, is a total hunk.”
That she couldn’t deny. Not when the man didn’t even try to keep his gaze averted from her mouth. The feel of his breath against her neck as he leaned in close, his big calloused hand guiding her fingers over the strings, giving her goose bumps. His deep rumbling voice flinting sparks throughout her insides.
“He’s the least girly man I’ve ever met. Jake exfoliates,” Callie added in a stage whisper. “You should ask him out.”
Lori placed her pen on the table with exaggerated calm. “Jake? We’re close, honey buns, but not that close.”
Callie’s eyes glittered. “I meant Dash.”
“I’m not going there.”
“What? Why not? The guy’s—”
“I know what he is, Callie. He’s difficult. And slippery. And unreliable. And he can’t go five minutes without making me want to smack him.”
Callie’s smile grew so wide it near split her face in two. “The catch cry of women the world over moments before they fall into a man’s arms.”
“Not this woman.”
“If you say so.” Callie went back to her magazine.
Leaving Lori to pick over the conversation word by word.
Callie’s suggestion wasn’t completely daft. There was something there; even if it was nothing but friction that set off the spark.
But appealing as the man was—in a broad, physical sense—he was the antithesis of the kind of man Lori envisaged herself spending time with.
There was selfishness in the way he kept himself so far apart from everything and everyone. A blithe imperviousness that, if she was being absolutely honest with herself, she envied as much as it frustrated her.
So why couldn’t she stop thinking about it? About him?
And while she was never the one to instigate a conversation about Jake, somehow she found herself asking, “Is that wisdom born from experience?”
“You mean Jake and me?” Callie asked. “Nah. The first time I looked into his baby blues I was done. Don’t get me wrong. It was terrifying. Especially since, well, you know, I was holding his fiancée’s foot at the time. But I knew what I felt. And I’ve never doubted it a moment since. Like the song says, I saw him, I picked him, I knew. Thanks to you.”
“Me?”
“You taught me to recognize what I want, to own it, and to go for it.”
Oh. Well, crap.
“Well,” said Lori, tidying some random papers on her desk, “I could never date anyone prettier than me, so that’s that.”
Callie laughed. “I’ll give you that.”
Lori took it, too, even if it wasn’t true. The men she dated could be as beautiful as humanly possible as far as she was concerned.
But Dash?
He might be capable and Thor-like with the ability to cook a pasta sauce, but the man had left the biggest rock band in the world at the height of their success. She’d have to be certifiable to believe he had it in him to stick to anything normal.
Callie slapped the magazine on her thigh and stood. “Back to the grindstone, then?”
“Please.”
When Callie closed the door behind her with a soft click, Lori continued scribbling in her diary a few moments more.
Dash had been a surprise. And his temperament frayed her limited patience. But the more she got used to the ‘stubble, the shoulders, the loose, rugged nature-boy thing,’ the more blasé she’d be.
Yep, the next time she saw Dash Mills she’d be so chilled even he’d notice.
Lori realized that she’d been doodling a pair of dark eyes, crinkling at the corners. Considering Callie had been given all the artistic talent and Lori none, it was pretty darned specific.
She moved her keyboard over the blotter and shuffled her mouse to bring up her email. Time to get back to work.
Chapter Four
Dash hadn’t shared an all-nighter with a bottle of scotch since the early days with the band, and that Monday morning he remembered why.
He’d been led there by a hard weekend. An anniversary of sorts. Twenty-one years earlier he’d made the move from his home town of Melbourne, Australia, to live with his Uncle Pete in Sausalito. His great-uncle, actually. Having grown up on the other side of the world, he’d never met the man before that time, and yet it had turned out to be the relationship that had most fully shaped his life.
He’d endured such anniversaries on his own before. But for some reason that weekend had groaned by with just him. And the dogs. And the quiet.
The quiet that had salvaged him after the constant noise of a life on the road had felt, for the first time…cavernous. Hence the scotch.
Still nursing the remains of what had been a mighty hangover, Dash flinched when Bowie’s woof pierced the air a half second before a knock rapped against his front door.
He downed a mouthful of medicinal leftover osso buco, then followed the sound of claws against wood.
“Jagger! Bowie!” he hollered, his voice rough as bark. They ignored him as usual, scratching
against the door hard enough to leave marks.
He gave each a rough scratch that sent them both scrabbling.
Then he opened the door to Lori Hanover, who was glaring into her bag and muttering to herself.
Her hair was down—probably because the last time he’d told her he liked it up—her heels were high, and her dress was short. The latter threatened to slip from one creamy shoulder until she briskly hiked it back into place.
And after the hollow of his past few days, all kinds of noise rushed into his head like a tidal wave into a bottomless well. Need and agitation, desire and fitful memory, came together like a whump whump whump behind his ears, and his sore head wasn’t the only body part that came to the party.
“Morning, Lori,” he said, leaning against the doorjamb, feigning nonchalance.
“Dash,” she said on an outshot of breath before blowing a loose curl of hair that had caught on her eyelashes. Her reproving gaze began at his bare feet, then the ragged knees of his old jeans, the fraying memory-bands around his wrist, then his chest.
For whatever reason her gaze stayed there an extra beat.
So he puffed himself up a little, enjoying, way more than was smart, the giveaway pink rising in her cheeks.
Back to frowning into her bag, she wriggled her shoulders, as if trying to shake something off. Him, if he was any kind of reader of human nature.
Which was tough. She’d brought this on herself, whatever this was.
Barging into his life. Messing up his quiet. And after the weekend he’d had, his patience was worn thin.
Which was when he noticed the guitar case tucked between her feet; black with a swirling floral imprint pressed into the leather. The ache in his head increased at the thought of sweet, mellifluent Barbarella lying in a bed of pink fur or leopard print velvet. It was nearly enough to make him demand her back.
No, a voice insisted inside his head. The thing was meant to be used. If not by him, then someone else.
“Been practicing?” he asked.
“Sure.”
“Liar.”
Shards of sunlight collected in the prettiest shade of green before her eyes narrowed. “I actually have a life outside of our delightful get-togethers, Dash. An extremely busy one, where down time is unheard of. So, when I’m here let’s cut the bullshit and stick to the lessons.” Her gaze shifted back to his bare feet, and he could have sworn she coughed out a laugh. “I’m not here to bear the brunt of whatever bug has been up your ass for the past four years, I’m here for my sister and my sister alone.”
Her speech came so far out of left field, Dash stood taller, wondering if perhaps he had the stink of scotch on him. But as Lori muttered and grumbled and shook out her bag in frustration, he figured it was just her. Never a more cutting woman had he met. Even the clones at the record company had known how to have fun.
“I’m guessing the ‘chill’ rule has been forgotten?”
Her shoulders sank, and she lifted her head, swishing her hair over her shoulder as she gave him a flat stare. Contrition flitted briefly across her eyes, but hell, they were pretty.
“I can’t find my phone,” she said, which he figured was her version of an apology. She glanced back at the car. Silvery-blue this time, convertible. And no driver. “I must have left it with Mack.”
“No calendars, no clocks, no machine telling you what to do. How will you survive?” He moved away from the door. “You coming in or not?”
Glowering, as she’d clearly picked up on his less than amicable mood, at least she came.
“Speaking of your sister, how is the lovely Callie?” he asked as she followed him toward the kitchen. “Showing any signs of becoming a bridezilla?”
“If Callie had her way, she’d marry the guy tomorrow.”
“The guy?” Dash glanced over his shoulder. “You not a fan?”
Surprise flashed within her vivid eyes before she shut them down tight. “I’m sure Jake is great guy.”
“Damned by faint praise.”
“That’s not what I—”
“I’ve known Jake a long time, Lori.” He turned, walked backward. “I love the guy like a brother. Meaning I know his flaws better than most.”
“Like the fact that he’s been engaged before? And how well did that turn out?”
Ah, so she was protecting her sister. Couldn’t fault her there. “That wasn’t so much a flaw as…not looking where he was going.”
Lori stopped walking in the shadow of the hall. Her voice had lost its usual stridence as she asked, “Are you suggesting he somehow…tripped into his last engagement?”
Dash laughed, the sound swallowed by the shadows of the hall, yet the tightness inside unwound a little. “A very public break-up does wonders for a motivated country and western singer? You do the math.”
Lori blinked at him, shifted her bag higher on her shoulder, and he saw the wheels turning in her mind. “I’d wondered. But even so, in my experience you can’t make a man stick around for love or money if he really wants to go.”
“Hence the fact that Jake didn’t. Not once he found what he really wanted.”
“Callie,” she said, rubbing her temples.
“He’s all in there, Lori.”
Her brow furrowed, her eyes huge in her face. “You really think so?”
“I do.”
Rather than jump for joy, she stared off into space. “My little sister’s getting married.”
In the semi-darkness, with its open, shifting, warm kind of quiet, he wondered if perhaps he wasn’t the only one who’d had a shitty weekend.
And it hit Dash like a sledgehammer; there was one way he could think to make them both feel a whole lot better.
“I’m sorry about back there with the phone and the…” she said, cutting into his eddying thoughts.
“Bug up my ass?”
Her mouth curved into a smile, and the prettiness was like an explosion inside his head.
“You are here at the suggested time as I requested, and I should offer the same courtesy.”
She pursed her lips and took a long deep breath in and out. Her version of chilling, he expected. While he felt anything but chilled by the glossy pink pout, the light gleaming off the curves of her long legs, the way her dress kept threatening to fall from over the rise of her shoulder.
Little Dash came to the party. “Down boy,” Big Dash muttered.
Lori’s gaze searched for his huskies, who were once again off somewhere else and of no help to him at all.
“Coming?” he asked, voice like he’d taken a hit to the windpipe.
She nodded, and led the way; her swinging hair like a metronome, her swaying hips matching the drum beat behind his ribs. Beneath his shirt he scratched his belly right where the drums reverberated, but the itch remained.
The woman was autocratic, quick-tempered, and the exact kind of person he’d done a hell of a lot to keep out of this life. But, hell if he didn’t want her with a kind of urgency he hadn’t felt in a long time.
Maybe it was as simple as biological imperative and bad timing. Maybe the last remnants of scotch in his veins and osso bucco warming his belly came together to create some kind of short circuit in his brain. Maybe it was the fact that in rubbing him the wrong way, the sparks she enkindled bordered on pyrotechnic.
It didn’t matter. The thought was out there now.
She hit the living room and perched on the edge of his couch, lush and warm-blooded, and when she opened the guitar case it revealed classic black lining, thank everything good and holy.
“Go Barbarella.”
Oblivious to the battle being fought inside his head, Lori followed the direction of his gaze and asked, “Is that the company who made her?”
Dash’s cheek twitched. “She’s a custom Alhambra—I bought her during our first pub tour through Spain. Her name is Barbarella.”
“Dare I ask?”
Barbarella was one of his oldest guitars, but not his first. Sofia—named aft
er the girl he’d had a crush on when he’d been given his first guitar at the ripe old age of thirteen—was long gone; smashed against a speaker at one of The Rifts earlier pub gigs. Mourned deeply. Last time he’d had more than a sip of Dutch courage before performing.
He watched as Lori slid the strap over her waves and tucked Barbarella onto her waist, leaving her long lithe legs bare below, and her breasts resting on top. “Barbarella was all about the curves.”
“Of course it was.” Then, “Give me a minute to see if I can remember this, okay? Then we can get back to your terrible teaching.”
“Done.” Dash forced himself to lean back on the couch when every part of him wanted to lean in, to drink in her scent, to glean an accidental touch or two.
While Lori lined up the music in neat straight lines and then blinked at it as if it were a dragon about to devour her whole. Lucky dragon. For it was some kind of woman sitting on his couch. Lush lips smeared in some kind of gloss that made them look recently-licked. Taunting eyes that made a man want to immortalize them in song. Curves that begged to be traced by a kiss, a palm, a tongue…
Lori took an inordinate amount of time to get herself set up, then, brow furrowed deep enough to leave marks, she strummed. The sound was terrible. Dash stuck a finger in his ear and gave it a wriggle.
“Shut up,” she said, and proceeded to attempt the next note.
“I’m at your service.”
The glance she shot him made him wonder if she was aware of the kind of service he was contemplating. What she’d do if he leaned in, slid a hand into her hair and kissed her. Would she moan against his mouth? Would she taste as good as she smelled? Would she feel as warm and soft as she looked?
She went back to attempting to play.
Which was the smart move. Because despite her efforts to follow his house rule, she was a pain in the rear of mammoth proportions. A woman who had a near breakdown at the thought of losing her phone was the embodiment of everything he vowed he’d never let back into his life.
Every touch, every kiss, every tumble between the sheets would have consequences. Making a move on a woman like Lori would be akin to forcing a continental shift.