by Cherrie Lynn
“Is that douche bag with her?”
“If you’re referring to Nic, she didn’t say, but I’m assuming he is.” Judging from the lazy, throaty, contented tone of Heidi’s voice, she might have just rolled over from making love to call Iris and check on her boys. Not that Iris had much experience in those matters, and certainly it wouldn’t do to tell him about her suspicions.
“He’d better be,” Eli all but snapped.
She raised an eyebrow at him. “Pardon?”
He turned and stalked away from her, showing her that his back was as densely covered with tattoos as his front. “Better she’s on his dime than mine,” she heard him mutter. He executed a perfectly graceful dive back into the water.
Money? That’s what he was pissed about? Ugh, these people. Giving up on her novel at last, Iris chucked it into her bag, stood and let her cover-up slide down her arms to pool on the lounge chair. She deserved a little relaxation time herself.
HIS HEAD BROKE THE surface of the water as Iris discarded her cover-up. Flicking the wet hair out of his eyes, he did a double-take. Her swimsuit was a modest black one-piece, leaving everything to the imagination . . . and imagine he did. Breasts on the small side, hips slender but perfectly proportioned. He couldn’t help himself. Something about the clean lines of her body tightly hugged by the discreet black fabric was more enticing than if she’d been out here exposing all in a G-string. As he contemplated the mystery of her, she took off her hat, then lifted her slender arms to take down her hair bun while long, ink-dark strands cascaded around her shoulders. She strode toward the pool with a bright smile for the boys.
Eli found himself grateful he was fully submerged.
Iris placed a dainty foot at the edge of the pool and pushed into an impressive dive, darting across the bottom and breaking the surface on the other side. With her black hair slicked back, her delicate features were only enhanced, a stunning natural beauty that one didn’t find too often. Most of the women he’d known had paid for their looks, his ex-wife included. Which was fine; he was all about doing whatever the fuck one wanted to do. But this creature before him was practically mythical.
She treaded water easily and chuckled at whatever antics Seger and Dylan were up to. They were playing with some of the other kids in the pool now, splashing and laughing. Iris kept her distance from them all. He hadn’t realized he had eyes only for her until a beach ball hit him upside the head, and he whipped around to cock a warning eyebrow at his elder son. Seger dissolved into laughter.
But it was refreshing to see that one having a good time. Eli worried about him a lot. Dylan probably didn’t remember much about the divorce, since they had done their best to hide any animosity from the kids and the press. But Seger had walked around with a sadness in his eyes for months after Elijah moved out, which had just about broken him and Heidi both. The one thing the two of them had always been able to agree on was doing what was best for their sons. Now Seger was reaching that difficult age Eli remembered all too well: old enough to think he knew everything, always frustrated to find he didn’t. The age when minor problems felt like major, life-ruining catastrophes, when everything seemed like someone else’s fault.
Seger probably considered every bad thing in his life to be his dad’s fault. If Eli would have to shoulder that blame for the rest of his days, he was afraid it would break him. It already seemed too heavy a weight to bear.
Iris’s dark head emerged from the water beside him. He hadn’t noticed her swimming up. “They’re so funny,” she said lightly. “They’re great kids.”
Eli rubbed the back of his neck uncomfortably. “Yeah.”
“They’ve really been looking forward to this.”
He almost asked, “Have they?” but stopped himself. At that moment, asking for confirmation about his own children’s feelings from an outsider . . . No. He wouldn’t do that. And he hated—absolutely fucking despised—that the boys had to be deprived of one parent to spend time with the other. The last time they had been on the road like this, their mother had been with them. They were so fucking resilient, though. He loved the hell out of them. Sometimes it was too much to take, and now the damn nanny was watching him while he had one of those out-of-nowhere rushes of emotion.
“I’m sorry about before,” she said. “I’ll step away to take her calls if you want me to.”
He frowned at her. “Huh? No, I don’t care about that.”
“Oh,” she said softly, her little pink mouth holding the form of the word for a moment after she said it. “Seemed like it made you mad.”
Yeah, well. Heidi had crawled under his skin a long time ago, and try as he might to get her out, he still felt her wriggling there. If Iris wanted to know the damn truth, he might feel better if she took every one of Heidi’s calls where he could hear. At least he would know what the two of them were talking about. “Don’t worry about it.”
“Just so you know, I feel entirely uncomfortable with this situation too. I mean, this isn’t exactly what I signed up for.”
He’d thought her eyes a dark blue when they first met, but out here in the sunlight, they were as bright as the endless sky stretching above them. “You and me both,” he said.
She chuckled. “What do you mean by that?”
So many things. He wasn’t even sure which. Little in his life had been what he’d signed up for. “Nothing.” He would tell her not to worry about it, but he’d already said that once.
“I think things will go more smoothly if we communicate,” she said. “If there’s something you need from me, let me know. I’ll do my best to accommodate.”
“What if I told you to get on a plane and go back home?”
Something akin to hurt flashed in those sky-blue eyes. He steeled himself against it as he waited for her sharp retort. But when that retort came, her voice was gentle. “Please, I’m trying here. And I want to be here for them too. I could go home, sure, and that would be easier for me because I wouldn’t have to deal with any of this. But I’m here because they are.”
He tore his gaze away from her and pinned it on his children. “This is a paycheck for you.”
“Yes, it’s a paycheck. It’s a job. But you know what? I love my job. I’m grateful for it every day. I’m thankful to know your sons and help take care of them.”
Eli scrubbed a hand over his wet head. “Look, maybe your intentions are pure. I don’t know, because I don’t know you. They seem to like you, though, and that matters a lot to me. I just don’t get why she needs you here. All. Fucking. Summer.”
“I don’t think it’s fair that you project your mistrust for Heidi onto me.”
“Don’t fucking psychoanalyze me.”
She recoiled a bit. “That wasn’t what I was trying to do.”
“I don’t think you realize yet what you’ve gotten into. It’s going to be a long tour. Frankly, Iris, I don’t think you can handle it.”
Her dark brows drew together. “Frankly, Elijah, I’ve handled you so far, so I think I can handle anything.”
At least she had cut the Mr. Vance shit. And he kind of liked hearing his name roll off her tongue. But he barked with laughter at her words. “Yeah, for all of an hour, collectively. I probably shouldn’t be worried about it. I give you a couple of weeks tops, and you’ll be going back home through no fault of mine. Because it gets rough out here.”
She shook her head. “I couldn’t do that. I think you’re bluffing, anyway. You wouldn’t bring your kids out here if it was that bad, and Heidi surely wouldn’t let them come whether I was here or not.”
He ignored the truth she had pounced on. “Would Heidi fire you if you left?” The sudden uncertainty that clouded her features told him that she wasn’t really sure. He had to laugh again. “She would, wouldn’t she?”
“I guess you would like that. I guess you would enjoy a fixture in your kids’ lives being cast out because you’re basically throwing a temper tantrum over eight weeks.”
He clamp
ed his jaw together and looked over at Seger and Dylan again. He and Iris had managed to keep the heated conversation to themselves so far, so neither of his boys seemed privy to what was being discussed. “I doubt they would care,” he said nonchalantly, trying to cover the sting of another truth she had uncovered. In the grand scheme of things, what were eight measly weeks? He had the rest of his life to spend with his boys, didn’t he? Just what in the fuck was his problem? “Look, we haven’t even gotten started yet—”
“And we’re already on the wrong foot,” she said primly. “What I came over here to do was start over from scratch, but you won’t let me try.”
“Show me,” he said, looking back at her again. “Show me why you belong here. Because you can yap at me all day long and it won’t make any difference.”
“I’m tempted to tell you that I don’t have to prove anything to you, but fine. Out of respect for the fact that you’re those boys’ father, I’ll give you that much. If you want me to show you anything, though, you have to cut me some slack. You have to let me do my job.”
“Fair enough.”
Her brow smoothed over when he said it and, to his surprise, she lifted one small hand out of the water, holding it forward and staring him directly in the eyes as she waited for him to shake it.
He looked at it, and at her, scoffed, then accepted her cool, firm grip in his own. Her fingers were wet and supple and against his better judgment, he imagined them wrapped somewhere else.
But what he thought was, Game on.
Six
What am I doing here?
Iris observed the line of people wrapped around the outside of the venue as the black SUV she and the boys rode in carried them around to the back of the massive building. Opening night of Aesthetic Ruin’s highly anticipated tour, and the fans were turning out in droves. Elijah had been here for a good portion of the day for sound check, so she had kept the boys with her until time to join him here.
Their driver checked in at the gate to the back lot and then pulled up beside a line of idling tour buses. Seger and Dylan were exclaiming in glee, and no sooner had the driver shifted into Park than they dove out of the vehicle in a footrace to the back entrance.
“Wait,” Iris called after them, hurriedly grabbing her things. She felt small and inconsequential as she climbed from the SUV, dwarfed by the imposing structure ahead of her that would soon be crammed with thousands of screaming fans and somewhat intimidated by the sleek, dark buses with their blacked-out windows. Which one of them would be her home for the next two months? Did she go there now? Check in with someone? Elijah had given her no indication of what to expect. But he wouldn’t, would he? He would enjoy her confusion. I give you a couple of weeks tops, and you’ll be going back home.
Those words hadn’t stopped echoing through her head from the moment he’d said them. They had kept her awake last night. They had been with her while she dressed, while she ate, while she tried to wrangle two boys who were way rowdier than usual, excited for the coming night.
What kind of failure would she be if he turned out to be right? If she tucked tail and ran? That thought more than anything forced her to inject steel into her spine. She belonged here. She had as much right to be here as all the other people hurrying about, the ones with lanyards and laminates.
The driver went around to the back of the SUV to collect her and the boys’ bags while she retrieved Seger and Dylan and wondered if she should swallow her pride and text their dad to ask him what the hell to do. Wait on the bus? Come inside the building?
But then she noticed that the driver had begun walking toward the buses with their luggage in tow. He must know what was up. Tentatively she followed, the boys at her side.
Things were getting real. Until this moment, Elijah Vance had merely been her boss’s ex-husband. The boys’ father. Someone who didn’t like her and didn’t want her here, but whom she’d been able to stand up to so far on Heidi’s authority. Here, now, among all these people within her field of vision and beyond, he held dominion. This was his world; he was king of it, and she had no doubt his word was law.
Her mouth was dry as they drew nearer to the bus, her heartbeat as ragged as when she’d stood up to him in the pool yesterday. She’d marveled then at how confident her voice sounded when she was going to pieces inside from his nearness, his scathing looks, his razor-sharp words. Never had she encountered anyone who hated her for no good darn reason, and she wasn’t quite sure how to handle it.
Keep doing what she was doing, she supposed, but it hurt. He’d told her to show him why she was here, and she fully intended to do that if he would let her. If a summer of his suspicions and accusations didn’t do her in first.
The day had been on the cool side and breezy. Late afternoon was just beginning its slow fade to early twilight. Iris wore jeans and a navy T-shirt with a long white cardigan, her hair in a high ponytail. She nearly stopped dead in her tracks at the sight of a gorgeous, leggy blonde stepping off one of the buses laughing, her feet encased in what must be five-inch heels, tanned skin on full display in her leather booty shorts and slinky sequined halter top. Iris’s heart hit the pit of her stomach. Dear God, I hope that’s not our bus. Following behind her was a similarly dressed and equally gorgeous brunette. Nothing they wore was actually indecent—all the important bits were covered, anyway—but Iris had to resist the temptation to slap her hands across the boys’ eyes. Dylan probably couldn’t care less yet, but Seger was getting to that age. His tongue was practically hanging out.
“Scoot,” she instructed firmly, putting a guiding hand on his back. The driver was leading them to the adjacent bus, thank God, and Elijah himself stepped down from it upon their approach.
The show was a few hours off, yet she was surprised to see he only wore ratty jeans and an old black Megadeth T-shirt that molded nicely to his physique. Even casually dressed, he exuded a rugged, edgy charisma. Iris wasn’t exactly sure what she’d been expecting to see; from what she’d seen online of his live shows, he certainly wasn’t all studded leather and chains or anything like that. He might very well go onstage in what he had on right now and still look the part of international rock star.
“Hey, dudes,” he said, his grin lighting up his face, and the boys rushed to him. Dylan jumped on him, giggling as Eli clamped an arm around his waist and turned him nearly upside down. Seger slipped past them and onto the bus steps. As Eli set Dylan back on his feet, his eyes met Iris’s above the boy’s head and darkened somewhat. He didn’t have a smile for her, but he tipped his chin up minutely. “Come on in.”
Her fingers tightened around the strap of her purse, and she understood that he could’ve shattered everything at that moment. She’d handed off his sons to him, they were in his care, and he now stood tall and obstinate between her and their home for the next eight weeks. He could have sent her packing then, but he hadn’t. “Thank you,” she said softly, relief washing through her. Eli went up the bus steps. Somewhat expecting the door to slam in her face, she approached timidly, trying not to notice how nicely those jeans hugged his thighs.
Inside the bus, the lighting was muted, the air cool, and she gazed around in wonder. Everything gleamed black and ivory. There was a sitting area with plush couches on either side, a huge flat-screen TV dominating one wall facing the front of the bus. A kitchenette with shining stainless-steel appliances and granite counter tops—she didn’t even have granite counter tops.
Starry overhead lighting led down the narrow hallway beyond, where the bunks would be. Beyond that, she supposed, would be the bedroom where Elijah slept.
Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. She’d crafted all sorts of cramped-space nightmares in her head, but this was incredibly nice and spacious enough. And private—black blinds covered all windows, blocking out the world beyond.
Seger and Dylan were already fighting over bunks as if there weren’t several to choose from. Nothing could be easy with those two. Iris didn’t much care herself, since they b
oth wanted to be on top and closest to their dad, and she definitely wanted to be nearest to the floor . . . and preferably farthest away from their dad.
She sat on the edge of one of the couches and looked around, listening to Eli sort out the bedding situation for them. Of course, no sooner had they figured it out than the boys took off for their dad’s bedroom anyway. Apparently, he had a massive entertainment center replete with video games back there. Most likely they would spend most of their time there.
Eli emerged from the hall and glanced at her. She stiffened, sitting up straighter. “Did you eat yet?” he asked.
She opened her mouth to speak but had to clear her throat before she could force the words past the dryness. “They had a late lunch, but they might be hungry already.” She had been too nervous to eat.
“What about you?”
“I’m fine.” Waving a hand dismissively, she looked away.
“Well, catering is up, is all I’m saying. I can show you if you want to go.” He stepped forward and picked up a tablet from the table across from her, which he handed to her. “This controls pretty much everything here. Lighting, TV, if you want to watch movies or listen to music, there’s a lot preloaded. I guess you heard the boys picking out where they want to sleep. Everything else is up for grabs, so get what you want.”
She nodded and placed the tablet aside. “Thanks.”
“I warn you, you’re gonna get bored.”
“With those two around?”
He chuckled at her affectionate tone. “You have a point there.” He gestured down the hall. “The bathroom is also back there. We’ll be making a lot of hotel stops too, so we won’t always be crammed in here. I can get you a schedule so you’ll know where we’ll be and when. If there’s anything you need, tell me.”
“Okay.”
“You look terrified.”
She glanced up to find his gaze on her and shifted uncomfortably. Well, what do you expect? That’s kind of your fault. “I’m fine. I’ll adjust. I think I might have just seen my first real-life groupie out there.”