by Nan Comargue
A frown suddenly marred his handsome face, reminding her of a series of sexy pouty ads he’d done a few years ago. Was that for the jeans company or the cologne? It was so hard to remember. Everybody wanted Finn Carter for their brands. His smoky, sexy good looks were a perfect vehicle to sell anything from vacation spots to athletic shoes.
He shook his head slowly. “I don’t even know your birthday.”
“Why would you?” Maggie asked reasonably. “I never told you what it was.”
Her breathing started to slow down to a normal pace again. Maybe he wasn’t going to fire her after all. Maybe she really was the only fixture in his constantly changing retinue of professional hangers-on, as one popular magazine had once described her in a slim side panel to a long spread about Finn.
“You know my birthday,” he pointed out.
She ventured a tentative smile. “June sixth. Every female between the ages of twelve and eighty knows that.”
He leaned back in his chair, his eyes narrowing. “And I get presents from pretty much all of them. What did you get me this year?”
Maggie flushed. “A pen.”
“Right.” His beautiful voice was suddenly flat.
“It was a very nice pen,” she found herself protesting.
“So nice, in fact,” he said, “that you bought one for every single one of your male clients, didn’t you?”
How did he know that?
“Yes, that’s right,” she told him, her voice clipped.
“What did you get your female clients?”
“A silver hairbrush set.”
He nodded. “Perfect. Absolutely perfect.”
In spite of herself, Maggie asked her next question. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
He spread his hands out on the desk and she couldn’t help noticing how strong they looked, lean and tanned and incredibly masculine. Like the rest of him. A sex symbol since he was a teenager, the smooth unlined features that had first captivated the hearts of other adolescents had given way to an austere beauty that was both elegant and primally natural. It contrasted with his music, which had started out being pure pop and was now folksy and plain. His last album had had a definite country bent to it and had reached triple platinum in record time.
“You play it safe, Meg.” That was his particular nickname for her. “All the time. About everything.”
He made it sound like an insult, which he no doubt meant it to be.
“I’m a lawyer,” she said, as if that explained everything.
“Lawyers hook up,” he pointed out. “Lawyers date. Lawyers get married. Lawyers get their hearts broken.”
Not her. Not ever.
Her only relationship was with her job and, by extension, her clients. It was better that way. Safer.
Her mother had married four times, always searching for that perfect man and that perfect relationship. After each divorce, she’d fall into a depression that lasted more and more months each time and as soon as she partway recovered, she’d foolishly rush back into the very next marriage. It was crazy. And it was never going to happen to her.
Inspiration hit her.
“Let’s make a deal,” she said. “I’ll stick to only giving you legal advice from now on and you can go on getting your heart broken. I won’t say a word, I promise.”
Finn’s mouth quirked. “What about the name calling?” he asked.
Her face felt hot again. “I won’t call you any more names.”
“Let’s leave that part out of the deal,” Finn told her, extending his hand over the desk. “Only the next time you call me a prick, I’ll show you what a real one looks like.”
He already had hold of her hand, so Maggie had no choice but to shake on it.
She spent the next few hours after he was gone wondering what he had meant by those last words.
* * * *
In that hour before the show started, it all came crashing down on him. Finn had heard about performers who felt lighter as they were about to go on stage, how they forgot everything about their ordinary lives in those anticipatory moments.
For him, it was the opposite. The nerves that had been working on him all day now coalesced into a gigantic ball of anxiety.
He’d been anxious all his life—how could he not be with the kind of pushy, chaotic parents he’d ended up with? But most of the time he was able to hide it behind rock star veneer, pushing all the worries beneath a smirking provocative mask.
Those minutes before the performance were different. It was as if the more makeup they smeared on him, the more he retreated back to a primal version of himself. The child version whose life had been an endless round of head shots and auditions and gigs in two bit county fairs. The teenaged version who’d let all the so-called instant success—after years of hard slog—go to his head—and his cock.
“How’re you doing, hon?”
He glanced up at the brassy blonde who peered around the door to his dressing room. He couldn’t remember the woman’s name or anything about her except that she was one of those employees who belonged to the venue. The kind he would never see again.
“All right,” Finn drawled in response to her question, hoping she wouldn’t notice how damp his T-shirt was. His head was pounding. So was his cock.
Obviously, the woman took the reply as an invitation of sorts because she soon insinuated her entire body through the door, pushing her back up against it to shut it again.
It was a nice body, sleek and trim in a short black dress paired with funky combat boots.
“We’re working on the stage issues,” she informed him. Then she pulled a comic face. “I heard your lawyer’s on the way.”
Meg? She would love that. Finn could just picture her puckered up face as she dealt swiftly and harshly with the venue staff. That no nonsense act she did was so much more effective in person than over the phone, which was how she usually put out fires while he was touring. Yet she wouldn’t think so. She would probably prefer to be doing crosswords in bed or whatever Meg thought of as suitable entertainment.
He frowned. She was single now but in a few years she might have a few kiddies tucked up in bed with her. Kids and a minivan and a husband named James or Ted or Peter. An executive type. The kind of man who hadn’t spent his whole life shimmying on stage for money.
Fuck. His headache was worse than ever. Fuck Meg and her perfect little future. And double fuck to Peter or Ted or James. Finn already hated him.
“You seem tense,” the woman said, crossing the room toward him. “Maybe I can help with that.”
He didn’t know what he had said, maybe it was just a nod, but a moment later the woman was on the floor between his spread thighs, unzipping his jeans. The entire incident had happened often enough not to surprise him anymore. In every venue in every city there was a brassy blonde or a cute redhead or a no nonsense brunette.
The no nonsense types were the best, the ones that sucked and fucked like they intended to make a career out of it, intent yet without inhibition. He loved those women most of all, maybe because they reminded him of…
No. He never let himself go there. Not anymore. He knew exactly what Meg thought of him. To her, he was just another client she had to deal with for a certain number of hours a day until she was able to go home to Ted—and their future kids.
Finn’s stomach clenched as the blonde drew deeply on his erect dick.
Adrenaline poured through his system. He wanted to hop on his motorcycle and ride at furious speeds until he worked it out of him. He wanted to get up on stage and sing until there was nothing in the arena but his voice. He wanted to forget that this was his life, far from boring but also far from normal.
Finn closed his eyes.
He wanted… Fuck, he wanted what he couldn’t have.
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About the Author
Nan Comargue is a thirtysomething romance and erotic romance writer who has been reading romance novels all her life. She prefers
sexy confident heroes who win over slightly introverted heroines (read: nerdish types) but she writes about everything from angel-warriors to cowboy ménage.
Email: [email protected]
Nan loves to hear from readers. You can find her contact information, website and author biography at http://www.totallybound.com.
Also by Nan Comargue
Captive Angel
The Gamble
Snow Fire
Rock Star
All Together Now: Country Hearts
At Your Service: A Lady for Two
Wild After Dark: Darker Nights
Boots, Chaps and Cowboy Hats: Three to Feud
Wanton Witches: Sudden Storm