by Bella Andre
Ashley didn't say anything, didn't tell him that one day the pain would go away, didn't make promises about time healing wounds. She simply pressed her face into his chest and held him even tighter--and it was exactly what he needed.
She was exactly what he needed.
Chapter Six
Ashley never wanted to let go of Drew. But as soon as she felt the tension slide from his body, she made herself loosen her hold and step back so that they could continue their hike.
"I've never told anyone that before," he said after a few minutes of silently walking through the sand, side by side.
He'd never know how much it meant to her that he'd felt safe enough to share so much of himself. "I won't tell a soul."
"I know you won't. You would never betray anyone's trust, would never hurt anyone, would you, Ashley?"
"I hope I never do."
When she'd been thinking about going on tour with Drew, she thought she'd only be granted access to him periodically between interviews and shows. She hadn't thought she'd get to spend so much time with him. And the truth was that if she had, she would have been even more nervous. Because when someone had as big a crush as she did--seriously, at this point, she was just going to have to own up to it already--every time he looked at her the way he was right now, she went from zero to a million on the flustered scale.
"Your brothers and sisters all sound really great. I know about Grant's business prowess already, and Sean plays baseball at Stanford, right?"
"He's actually focusing more on photography now. I'm hoping I can convince him to take the pictures for my next album."
"That would be amazing. And if you could convince Grant to open a record label one day, you'd not only get to work on everything with your family, but you could also put whatever pictures you want in your liner notes."
"You know what," he said as his gaze sharpened on her, "Grant would probably run one hell of a label. I always figured the admissions people at the biz school had to know what they were doing, but if they turned you down, I'm not so sure they do."
Ashley couldn't ever remember a man looking at her the way Drew did. As though she was special. Feeling flustered by the attention, she quickly said, "You have three other siblings, don't you?"
His lips quirked up slightly at the corners as if he knew exactly what she was doing--redirecting the focus from her back to his family. "Olivia is going to graduate school for education in the fall. She's the most serious one of all of us. Justin is Sean's twin, but they're not much alike. Justin's a science genius and is usually locked away in a lab, also at Stanford. And then there's Madison." He grinned. "She's a bundle of energy. She wants to open a restaurant one day and be a chef and is always giving people something to taste-test. They're all coming for my birthday next week when we get to New Orleans."
"Your family sounds amazing. I can't wait to meet them." She paused for a moment before realizing he hadn't said anything about his father. "How's your dad doing?"
"He's pretty much a shell of himself now. My mom was everything to him--his sun, moon, and stars." He stared out into the desert. "I've often wondered if they were the exception." He looked back into her eyes. "Or is it possible for the rest of us to find a love that strong? That pure?"
When he looked at her like that--with such dark, deep intensity--she forgot how to think, how to speak. How to do anything but feel. And in the end, all she was able to say was, "I don't know."
But, oh, how a secret part of her wished that there were a love like that waiting out there for all of them...even though her experience with her own parents had left her with a deep core of cynicism.
"Do you have any siblings?" he asked.
"No, it's just me."
"That's what I thought after seeing the pictures in your father's office. He sure loves you."
"I know, but I wish he'd get rid of those pictures."
"Why? You were a cute kid."
"A cute kid with the world's biggest glasses and braces. And that perm." She had to laugh at herself. "It seemed like a good idea at the time. Needless to say, it wasn't."
"You're really close to your dad, aren't you?"
"We always spent a ton of time together, even when I was really little. I remember doing puzzles with him and reading together."
"What about your mom?"
Compared to what he'd been through, her situation should have felt like nothing now. But she still tensed up simply from knowing she was going to talk about her mom. "We don't have much in common. She didn't have much in common with my dad either. They split up when I was fifteen."
"That's rough."
"It was better that way."
"Why?"
"Because they are so different. You know my dad--he's all about lists and plans and seeing things in black and white. But my mom..." She shook her head. "She hates lists and plans. And her world is all color, all the time. My dad once said that if anyone should have known that the odds of their being able to make it work were next to nothing, it should have been a statistics professor." She'd meant for it to come out sounding like a joke, but it just wasn't possible for her to find any humor in the situation, even all these years later.
"Did they love each other?"
She'd never known a man who spoke as easily about love as Drew did. Then again, she could see how growing up surrounded by so much of it in his great family would have made a really strong impact. Strong enough that he was asking her the really hard questions.
"While you were wondering if anyone else could have the kind of love your parents shared," she finally replied, "I was wondering how my parents could have gotten together in the first place--and why they stayed together for so long." She'd never spoken to anyone else about what went on in her house, but just as Drew had shared so much with her, now she felt the same urge to share herself with him. "They fought all the time, but they even did that differently. My mom fought loud and passionate and hot. My father fought with silences and freezes."
"And you were stuck in the middle of it all."
She looked up at him in surprise. "How did you know that?"
"Because you love them both. And you're also made up of both parts, the passionate and colorful and the cool and analytical."
"I'm not like both of them," she said automatically. "I'm just the cool, analytical part like my dad."
"That's not true. I've seen tons of passion from you already."
"When?" It wasn't until the word was out of her mouth that she realized their conversation had just gone way off track.
But before she could tell him he didn't need to answer her, he stopped and said, "When we were talking about the power of music. When you were standing up to the security guards at the airport. And out here just now, when we were talking about, well, everything."
Hardly able to believe what he was saying about her--not only that he thought she was full of passion, but also that he had examples--she stumbled over a bump in the sand and would have gone to her knees if he hadn't caught her in his arms for the second time in one day.
"I'm not..." The feel of his hands on her bare skin where her shirt was riding up slightly over the waistband of her jeans had her breath going and her sentence faltering. "I'm not normally so clumsy. I promise you won't always have to catch me."
"I like catching you."
His simple words stole her breath...and made her heart pound at what felt like a million miles an hour. Rather desperately, she tried to remind herself how charming he was with his fans. And that if one of them had fallen in front of him, he would have reached out to catch her, too. But just then, with his arms still around her, it was hard to pay attention to those reminders. Hard to do anything but wish he would be overcome with the same attraction that was all but devastating her--and kiss her.
Oh God, she was losing it.
Dreaming of Drew's kisses was a one-way trip to crying herself to sleep at night on the bus if he took some other girl into the back room. Which was why she mad
e herself step back out of his arms...even though she was quickly realizing that it was her absolute favorite place to be.
*
All Drew wanted to do in that moment was kiss Ashley.
He was mesmerized not only by her gorgeous mouth, but also by every one of her expressions, from surprised to pleased, from empathy to frustration. And a second ago he could have sworn that she wanted that kiss as badly as he did. But instead of taking it, she'd pulled back.
Damn it, he knew she was right. He'd promised her father he'd keep his hands off her.
Knowing the best first step in trying to cool off would be to head back to the bus, he said, "It's pretty hot out here." Hot was a ridiculous understatement for the temperature, just as desire didn't even come close to what Drew had felt from the first moment he'd set eyes on Ashley. "Do you want to turn back?"
"Actually, I love the heat." She held out her arms and lifted her face to the sun as if to soak in more of it. She was so beautiful, the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen. "And I've always loved watching the flames dance in a fire, too. I never thought I'd get to see them made out of rock, though. Thank you for bringing me here, Drew. It's been the most wonderful surprise."
"Heat. Flames. Ash." She opened her eyes and looked at him as he said, "It all fits you. Fits you perfectly."
She licked her lips, and he couldn't stop his gaze from dropping again to the damp flesh. Her breathing hitched in her chest, and the very thin thread still holding his self-control together snapped. But when he was halfway to reaching for her to drag her against him so that he could devour her mouth, he looked into her eyes...and saw the panic in them.
Damn it, the last thing he wanted to do was scare her. Especially after he'd promised her last night that he would be a perfect gentleman. Stealing a kiss from her today wasn't just breaking his promise to her father--it was breaking his promise to her.
"Maybe," he made himself say, "we should head back before James starts freaking out."
*
For the rest of the day, Drew continually reminded himself that he needed to rein in his attraction to Ashley. But every time she laughed--or so much as looked him in the eye--he had a harder and harder time remembering why. She drew him in as no other woman ever had. Not only physically, but also because she got him and his music on a really deep level.
By the time he strode on stage that night, he was more than ready to burn off his pent-up energy. They went five songs over, not just because the crowd was great, but also because he knew what awaited him when he got offstage was another night alone on his bus with Ashley. Trying to stay away. Trying not to kiss. Not to touch. Not to devour every beautiful inch of her.
But even if it was nearly killing him to keep his hands off her, he couldn't have put her in with his crew. She was too fresh, too gentle. He didn't want to risk anyone taking that away from her.
And when he played "One More Time" for the second time, he didn't just play it for his mom. He played it for Ashley, too.
"Great job tonight, guys," he told his band before he headed off to the meet-and-greet room.
James handed him a towel as they walked down the long backstage hallway. "You seemed closer to your old self out there tonight. Got something you're trying to work out of your system?"
Drew could guess his bodyguard knew damn well exactly who he was trying to work out of his system. But it was clearly a rhetorical question, because James followed it up with the piece of information that Drew needed most.
"Ashley is already in the meet-and-greet room with Max."
"Thanks for keeping watch over her." He'd already made it perfectly clear, more than once, to his entire staff that both Drew and her father would kill them all if anything happened to her.
"My pleasure. She's smart, pretty, and has a big heart. I'm glad she's joined us."
They were the same things Drew had been thinking--or, rather, trying not to think about.
Then again, there were a lot of things he was trying not to think about: his mom being gone and his dad being a wreck; the fact that not only could he not write a song worth a damn anymore, but also how he felt like he was faking it more and more every night on stage; how Smith Sullivan was waiting for him to deliver a great soundtrack for his new movie soon and had no idea that Drew had a grand total of zero good songs for it so far; and the meeting he'd be having with the label the following morning, where they were sure to drag out the golden handcuffs again.
Chief Records had sent cardboard cutouts of him to stores with the last album. More and more, he felt like that was what he was becoming--a cardboard cutout of himself. A guy playing the role of Drew Morrison for the crowds, for the press. Even with his family and friends.
Only with Ashley in the desert today had he felt a little bit like himself again. At the very least, he'd finally been honest about some of the pain of losing his mom. But even then, he'd made sure not to go too far by admitting that ever since the moment his mom had become so sick that they knew she was never going to recover, his songwriting had left him as if it had never been there in the first place.
He hadn't told her that even the way he heard music now seemed to have changed--that what used to move him no longer did, and that now it was almost like he was hearing entirely different tonal patterns in his head.
And he hadn't admitted that sometimes he just felt like getting on a horse like he had in Australia and going walkabout...only this time he wouldn't come back and get on another stage, wouldn't play the same songs everyone wanted to hear, because he couldn't. Because he didn't feel like the same guy anymore.
Because he wasn't even sure who the hell he was anymore.
"Drew." He felt James's hand on his arm. "You okay?"
No.
But he stuffed the silent answer down as quickly as it had bubbled up. "I'm good." He'd been raised never to lie, but over and over during the past year that was exactly what he'd been doing. Again and again until it should have gotten easier just to keep telling those lies. Instead, though, it had only gotten harder.
Ashley, he thought as he quickened his pace down the hall. He wanted to see her. He needed to see her. Today she'd made everything matter again, at least for a little while. Just knowing she'd be there in the meet-and-greet room made his heart beat a little faster.
As soon as he pushed through the doors, he sought her out. The screams of the fans he was about to meet barely pierced through as he scanned the room and found her standing in the corner with Max. He smiled at her, and she looked surprised for a moment before smiling back. And mouthing, You were great tonight.
The answering grin on his face was a real one. And it felt good. So good that when he turned to his fans, he barely felt like he was faking being Drew Morrison.
Chapter Seven
During the meet-and-greet, Ashley watched and learned and took notes on her tablet. Drew had never met anyone so focused on her purpose, and it only served to make her more attractive.
Clearly, he wasn't the only one who thought so, because the venue manager wouldn't stop interrupting her. Every time Drew looked in her direction, the guy was trying to get her attention. With a drink. Or a joke. Couldn't he see that she was working? And why the hell wasn't Max or James squashing the guy like a bug?
If she had looked at all irritated, Drew would have been over there in a millisecond with the guy pinned against the wall begging for mercy. But she wasn't frowning. On the contrary, she was actually smiling a little, even laughing softly at one point.
Jealousy ate at Drew, taking big chunks of him in its jaws and grinding him into pieces. More distracted than ever, he barely stopped one of his more mature fans from yanking off her shirt in front of an eight-year-old girl. In fact, the woman already had her top more than halfway off when Ashley grabbed the little girl's attention by asking if she wanted to put on a concert T-shirt and take a selfie with him.
Drew gestured for James to come deal with the woman, who had no business exposing herself in fron
t of a kid, then turned and gave his full attention to the little girl. Afterward, he went to thank Ashley, but she was back in her corner where the venue manager had clearly been waiting for her so that he could hit on her some more.
Finally, he finished meeting his last VIP fan and headed over to her. Just in time to hear the guy say, "This has been a lot of fun, Ashley. Any chance I can get your number for the next time you're in town?"
Before she could reply, Drew said, "You ready to head to the bus, Ash?"
Her surprised gaze shifted to Drew. He'd called her Ash out in the desert when he'd been talking about all the fire she had inside and how well it fit her. But tonight he'd deliberately said it in the most possessive way possible.
The venue manager put up his hands and took a step away from her. "Sorry, man. I didn't realize she was taken." In a really polite tone, he added, "Great show tonight, Drew. It will be our pleasure to have you back soon." And then he was gone.
Ashley was frowning as she walked out of the room with Drew. A couple of minutes later they were back on the bus, James had wished them both a good night, and Drew had given Max the all-clear to head for Los Angeles.
"Taken? Did he actually think that you and I are..." Ashley shook her head as if the final word was too preposterous to even say aloud. "Together?"
"I'm pretty sure he did." Drew knew he should probably feel a little guilty for helping the guy's assumption along, but he didn't. Not in the least. Not when that guy wasn't good enough to touch even one hair on her head.
"Wait...does everyone think that you and I are together?"
"Maybe the guys at the airport did. And I fielded some questions at the radio stations about you." And there had been more than a little speculation online that must have been put up there by the fans he'd met that morning. But he didn't think Ashley needed to know about what people posted on the Internet. Hell, none of them did. "But the guys in the band and the crew know you aren't." Even so, he would place bets on the fact that most of them didn't really believe Drew wasn't going to sleep with her soon. Probably because only a total idiot would keep his distance from a woman like her.