Chapter 3
CHAPTER 3
Four years earlier
Lita stared at the stranger across the fancy, gleaming hotel table.
The stranger stared back.
Good lord, the man was…incredible. Big, commanding, sharp. Distinguished, too, with the beginnings of silver threading the hair above his ears. If she were given to embarrassment, he would have been gorgeous enough to inspire a twinge of self-consciousness, since at present, she was shoveling donuts into her gob like a shipwreck survivor who’d just been rescued from a deserted island. In a way, she had been rescued downstairs in the bar. So why did she feel like she’d been sent back out to sea…in an even more turbulent storm?
When she’d ventured into the bar tonight, she’d envisioned herself being grudgingly assisted and taken upstairs by some checked-out, soulless asshole, of which there were plenty in Los Angeles. This man was the furthest thing from checked out. He was so present. A buzz crawled up her skin the longer he stared. He’d barely strung a sentence together since he’d carried her into the room, splashing cold water from the bathroom sink onto her face. They’d conversed enough for him to ascertain what she’d like to eat—chocolate donuts, chocolate anything—which he’d promptly ordered from room service.
But that voice. That clipped, dictator voice had made her shake.
Especially when he’d called to her through the slightly ajar bathroom door as she’d showered, making sure consciousness hadn’t failed her again.
Lita swallowed half of a donut without chewing, brushing the crumbs off her fluffy, white hotel robe, before picking up another one. “Aren’t you going to eat one?”
“No.”
Another shiver wracked her spine. “What’s your name?”
“James.” His eyes snapped with emotions she could barely pin down before they shifted or expanded or disappeared. “And yours?”
“Lita.” She sipped her hot chocolate. “Thank you for this.”
“You’re welcome.” He laid a flat hand on the table. They both looked down at it, as if it were a third party interrupting them. “You came along at an unfortunate time, Lita.” His head gave a tight jerk, jaw clenching. “I haven’t been feeling like myself.”
“Really.” She set the donut down, her stomach executing a series of flips. Nervous ones, but not the type that made her want to run. Not the type she’d experienced before. These were hotter, fuller, curious. “How do you feel…instead?”
“I have hunger.” His dark gaze swung up, gluing her to the plush leather seat. “I don’t know if it can be fed like yours.”
What was going on here? Lita felt almost hypnotized, lured in by his rasping, cultured voice. She recognized interest and arousal in men, had it directed at her often, but this? This was utter famishment. He reminded her of a vampire who’d been in hiding from the sun, unable to hunt. And now a deer lay before him, vital and tempting, life flowing through its veins. She was the deer.
Man . How crazy were her thoughts right now? The lack of food must have gone to her head. After the trouble she’d just escaped, she shouldn’t care what went on under another man’s surface. Shouldn’t allow this odd, instantaneous attachment to take hold.
The fuller her stomach became, though, the more her thoughts cleared. The more of James she saw. His interest in her, as he watched her mouth chew, was almost as thick as the leash around his neck, keeping him in place. If the lights in the room weren’t so dim, she could probably make it out. Strain bracketed his masculine mouth and he appeared to be swallowing golf balls down the column of his powerful throat. One…after…another.
“How did you get so hungry?” James asked, his tone suggesting he was reclining back onto a bed of nails.
Lita rejected the outside ugliness from entering the room. “I could ask you the same thing.” Her legs were steady as she stood and rounded the table, compelled by some force she couldn’t deny. Maybe it was his clear attempt to restrain himself, to fight the attraction so obvious between them. She stopped beside James, but he stayed still as stone. “I’m full. What happens now?”
His eyelids drooped, fist mashing against his forehead. “Go.”
That single, tortured word caught her in the chest. God, he was holding back so much. What would happen when it roared out?
Why was she trembling with the need to find out?
There was danger lurking beneath this man’s surface. Also known as the last thing a homeless girl wanting to turn her luck around needed.
Too bad danger was the only thing that had ever made her feel alive.
Lita walked past James to the lamp and flipped off the gentle light before returning to his tense figure, sliding between his outstretched legs…and opening the robe. “Feed yourself.”
The air crackled as James stood slowly, so slowly, rising to his full height. When Lita glimpsed his changed expression, she realized that—at her invitation—a change had snapped through him like a cracking whip, despite the way he rose without hurry. The vampire’s dirt nap had officially ended and the invisible leash was no more. Power rippled over his beautiful body as it pressed close, a hand finding her hip inside the robe, squeezing, his mouth sliding against her ear.
His breath went choppy after issuing a single unexpected command.
“Crawl.”
* * *
Lita had a blister on her ankle. It rubbed and rubbed against the back of her red Converse, growing angrier and bloodier by the hour. All it would take to fix the injury was a Band-Aid, but she didn’t have time for that shit. Didn’t have time to take her shoe off, remove the protective strip from its paper packaging and apply it. Performing such a practical task wouldn’t make sense when the world around her had been painted different colors, and normal, everyday activities proved impossible. Sleep wasn’t happening and the act of procuring food seemed like a monumental effort just to feel sick afterward, so she simply walked. Walked and walked around Los Angeles with headphones covering her ears, the star of her own depressing music montage.
Empty didn’t begin to explain the sensation beneath her bones. She felt…dead. In a way, she was . This life, the band, had all been orchestrated by James. Their conversation the morning after they met was still vivid in her memory. Crystal clear and sparkling like drinking glasses fresh from a dishwasher. James had asked her, “What do you do , Lita?” And she’d answered, “I drum.”
That was all it took. He’d found a lead singer and a bass player within two weeks, throwing them together inside rented studio space, and thus, Old News was born. James’s life prior to that time was still a mystery to her. To everyone. If what he’d said before leaving was true, his every action over the last four years had been in the interest of helping her. Out of guilt? Kindness? Lita didn’t know. But none of it seemed real without him standing at her back, watching her from behind dark sunglasses.
Holy, holy shit, she missed him. Okay, they’d had their fair share of squabbles and arguments. More than their fair share. But there’d been some incredible moments wedged in there. Like the time the tour bus had blown a fan belt in Mexico and they’d shared a six-pack on the roof, staring at the sky and waiting for help to arrive. Or the time she’d convinced him to walk out on stage and sing the encore with Old News, which he’d started with a scowl on his face, but ended up smiling.
Dammit. The way he’d left was unfair and stupid , and she wanted to rage at him. Fine, he’d been right about one thing. Lita hadn’t understood the intensity of his needs. He’d blindsided her with the force and sharp quality of them. They were complicated and dark. But her response had been…light. The blinding, white light of an atomic blast. She’d liked James holding her down and saying those frightening words into her hair. Liked the abrasive tone of his voice, liked her strength running out, little by little, until she could only submit. That almost unbearable lift in her stomach, the glorious clearing of her mind…she’d been chasing that feeling by causing trouble for so long, never quite achieving it.
He’d left before she could get a handle on her runaway desires, what they meant, how to voice them. If he’d just given her a minute, she would have begged for more. Would have reassured him that the trust between them was still intact and nothing could damage it. Nothing except him leaving. Leaving her to this existence he’d created and managed from behind the scenes, but neglected to leave the instructions behind.
James wasn’t even home, so they couldn’t properly have it out. His old Mustang wasn’t in the driveway of his house in Santa Monica. Hadn’t been for three days. He’d vanished. And part of her worried that starving nineteen-year-old girl had fabricated his existence in the first place. After all, who gave up their own life in exchange for some scrawny, homeless girl’s success? No person she’d met before him, that was for damn sure. Her own parents hadn’t been in the picture since she turned sixteen, having moved down to Mexico with the settlement they’d received when Lita’s mother broke her ankle on a public bus. After that, she’d floated, living with friends until meeting her one and only boyfriend.
Shaking off the uncomfortable memory of how that unhealthy relationship came to a close, Lita turned her focus to step one in tracking down James. And she would track his sexy backside down, even if it were just to give him hell. But she hoped it would end in more. It had to.
Sarge Purcell was the lead singer of Old News and the closest thing resembling a friend to James. Which is why Lita was stomping up the driveway of his newly purchased beach house at eight o’clock in the morning. If anyone knew where their manager had gone, it would be Sarge. She felt a tad guilty for interrupting his first official week in Los Angeles since returning from New Jersey with his girlfriend, Jasmine, but hey. Desperate times.
Lita rapped on the fogged glass front door and waited. The sound of crashing waves from behind the house should have been soothing, but they only sounded like bombs going off in her ears, exacerbating the headache pumping behind her eyes for days without pause. Just focus on this one thing.
The lead singer opened the door in a pair of gray boxer briefs, but Lita didn’t even blink. When you’ve lived on a tour bus with someone, modesty goes extinct with a quickness. Sarge’s hair was finger-raked and haphazard as usual, but Lita had a feeling it was Jasmine’s fingers that had been doing the raking. Lita’s theory was confirmed when Jasmine stumbled through the living room behind Sarge, wearing nothing but a white sheet.
“Hey, Jasmine,” Lita called, but her voice came out sounding thready, since she hadn’t spoken since…when? Since James left? “Sorry to have interrupted the sexing.”
Sarge grinned, displaying the reason his face ended up on countless magazine covers. “Ah, it’s fine. You’d be interrupting that no matter when you showed up.”
“Don’t take this the wrong way, Sargeant, but you’ve turned into a smug bastard.”
He threw a proud look over his shoulder, sending a smiling Jasmine snuggling into the couch cushions. “If a man wasn’t smug over landing that woman, he’d be an idiot.”
An ache formed so quickly in Lita’s chest, she sucked in a breath. “Yeah, well. I’m trying to make my own bastard look smug. You want to help me out with that?”
Sarge’s expression lost its humor. “I don’t know where James is, if that’s why you’re here.” He crossed his arms and leaned on the doorframe. “What happened between you two?”
Lita’s laugh sounded full of liquid. “I wouldn’t even tell you after a bottle of tequila.” She pushed past her bandmate into the house, heading straight for the kitchen. “Speaking of tequila, where is yours?”
“Cabinet above the toaster,” Jasmine said, her voice muffled.
“Thanks.”
Lita busied herself pouring the golden liquor into a coffee cup while Sarge went and put on a T-shirt. When he joined her in the kitchen, she’d already knocked back two shots. Sarge took a seat on a barstool, while watching her with obvious concern. “So it’s true. He’s stepping down as manager. I honestly thought he was screwing with me.”
“So you have talked to him.”
Sarge shook his head. “Voicemail. He doesn’t answer when I call back.”
Tears pressed behind Lita’s eyelids, pissing her off. Goddammit. She’d never cried this many days in a row, including the week she’d binged on Grey’s Anatomy while driving through Europe on the tour bus. “Do you know where his family lives?”
“I don’t even know if he has any family.”
Lita tossed back another two fingers of tequila. “How do we know exactly nothing about him after four years ?”
Sarge scrubbed a hand over his face. “Maybe that’s how he wants it, Lita.”
“That’s not how I want it.” When her voice broke, she closed her eyes. “Please, you have to help me find his big, dumb face. I can fix this.”
Her bandmate reached out, setting his big hand atop her head. “You know we’ll do everything we can.”
“Thanks,” Lita mumbled, shrugging free of her friend’s comforting gesture. She didn’t want to be comforted or soothed. It would only be temporary until she found James and filled in the massive crater he’d left gaping in her middle.
Jasmine came into the kitchen, walking right into the crook of Sarge’s outstretched arm, as if they’d been apart way too long. “Don’t you have security guards who travel with Old News to shows?” The gorgeous ex-factory worker split a look between them. “A lot of those guys are ex-cops. Maybe they can help?”
For the first time in days, Lita felt the blessed spark of hope. “That might actually work. If someone else does that favor asking.” She plunked the empty coffee mug into the sink. “They all hate me because I’m always ordering the crowd to mosh for their lives. Doesn’t exactly make their job easy.”
“No, I wouldn’t think so,” Jasmine said, obviously fighting laughter. “I can help make the calls. James helped get me to Sarge when I almost lost him. I’d love to return the favor.”
After that, there was no one in the room but Sarge and Jasmine. The lead singer looked like he might organize a sacrifice of himself on an altar to the gods just to thank them for creating his girlfriend. Jasmine couldn’t stop staring at his mouth. And yeah…they were seconds from boning on the kitchen island, so Lita shoved the bottle of tequila into her purse and skirted past them toward the front door. “I’ll be down on the beach getting shit faced when you guys are done.”
Once outside, she took a fortifying breath and slipped the cell phone from her back pocket. She couldn’t sit still and wait for other people to help her anymore. Something had to be done now before she went crazy. Maybe just then, buzzed on tequila and emotionally drained wasn’t a good time to start owning up to her mistakes and acting like an adult, but time kept passing, passing, passing without James, and that felt like a horrible travesty. A waste of valuable minutes.
It was time to take control of her own life. Her own fate. No one was responsible for Lita’s happiness but her.
She went down to the beach and started making calls.
* * *
James sat outside the hospital, hands clasped between his splayed legs. He’d left his cell phone back at his roadside motel in an effort to allay temptation. For so long, he’d had the device holstered like a six-shooter, ready to draw if someone needed him. No, not just someone . Lita. He felt naked without news of her right at his fingertips. Several times since driving back to his hometown of Modesto, he’d checked the gossip websites and police blotters, praying nothing about Lita would show. His habits were firmly ingrained and he couldn’t trust himself yet to stay away should she land in hot water.
So far, there had been nothing, apart from news agencies following up on her recent arrest and subsequent release from jail. She hadn’t called or e-mailed, telling him he’d finally succeeded in scaring her off.
Good. He’d always known she was smart.
James breathed through the horror of having scared the one person he’d dedicated his life to saving from pain. Relief would come eventually, along with the conviction he’d done what was right. If it didn’t, at least he’d know Lita was happy. Somewhere without him.
A shadow filled the sunlit walkway in front of the bench where he sat, temporarily lifting him from mental torture. He lifted his head to find his mother running a Kleenex beneath her eyes. “How is he?”
“Better,” she responded with a sigh. “Still no movement on the right side of his body, but he’s communicating with the white board and marker. He won’t try speaking just yet…I think because it feels so unnatural with only half his mouth.”
James gave a tight nod. “Still no desire to see me, I assume?”
His mother’s sympathetic look was unbearable, so James stood and paced away. He’d been home for six days, following the phone call from his mother informing James that his father had a stroke. Over a decade had passed since the last time he’d been face to face with the man—frankly, he’d been content to remain in contact with his mother only, when there was an occasion or major holiday. Unfortunately, the family landscaping business didn’t run without his father, so his mother had begged James—their only child—to step in until the company’s manager returned from a family reunion trip overseas. Regardless of James’s non-relationship with his father, there’d been some solace in being needed after relinquishing his title as manager to Old News. As protector to Lita.
Working with his hands had given James some place to direct the restless energy, so he’d taken a labor role in addition to the managerial responsibilities. The last six mornings, he’d spent digging trenches, planting trees, hauling rubble. And six afternoons in a row, he’d been refused entry to his father’s hospital room.
The sidewalk outside the hospital had begun to fill up, presumably with a shift change, if the amount of personnel was any indication. People rushed up the walkway to take advantage of the final hour of visiting time before the dinner break. An unnamable tug of consciousness pointed out an anomaly among the moving mass of people. A flash of life, of static, that didn’t belong with the rest. Sort of like déjà vu that wouldn’t stop, just looping back and around, keeping him edgy.
Holding up a finger for his mother to pause in the vocal listing of medication the doctor had administered to her husband, James turned in a circle, the pulses in his wrists hammering. When his gaze lit on the cause of his body’s visceral reaction, it took James a moment to believe what his eyes were telling him.
Lita marched up the hospital walkway, all out war written on her beautiful face. The way she sometimes looked during a drum solo. Concentrated brilliance. Jesus God, how? How had he made it this long without a glimpse of her? James took an involuntary step in Lita’s direction, his body obeying instinct. And instinct said, I need to go get mine . There was nothing but bone-melting fulfillment upon his first eyeful of the girl who ruled him. Always would—no denying that fact. But when his brain registered the entire picture, his mission stalled out, giving way to an avalanche of other . Lust, denial, anger. They whipped around him like a whirlpool, sucking him down into an ocean of chaos.
An all-too-familiar thrift shop outfit covered Lita’s body, cheap material hugging her swaying hips, the crop top’s leather fringe ending at her belly button. The outfit she’d worn the night they met.
When Lita’s Converse scuffed to a stop on the sidewalk in front of him, James’s fists were shaking with the need to get hands around some part of her and keep . A roar escaped him instead. “ What are you doing here? ” He barely registered his mother’s startled gasp beside him. “What kind of game are you playing?”
“ Game? ” Green eyes blazing, she turned around to execute a stiff karate-type kick in the air before facing him again with her shirt’s fringe still swinging. “How dare you call this a game when I’ve spent six days and four bus transfers tracking you down.”
An invisible hand squeezed his neck. “Why?”
“Why.” Shaking her head, she looked downright disgusted with him. “I’m so mad at you, James, my mad grew a second head and ate the first one.”
James realized two things at once. One, he’d always classified his feelings for Lita as sheer obsession, but the fact was, he was achingly, irrevocably in love with her. Which meant letting her go would be infinitely harder than his fool self had thought. And two, blood soaked clear through the back of her favorite Converse, so much that it left droplets in her wake on the concrete sidewalk. “Why…” He had to take a moment to formulate the question, the sight of injury on her person was so abhorrent to his peace of mind. Can’t breathe . “Why the fuck are you bleeding?”
“Is this your mother or something? It is , isn’t it? We’re arguing in front of your mother.” Lita threw up her hands and sagged at the same time. “So be it, James. Your family will think I’m crazy and that’s too bad. I am crazy. If you want to get rid of me, you better start working on a restraining order.” A passing group of nurses were staring at Lita, bottled drinks in their hands. “Hey. Yeah. I know. The crazy has arrived. Why don’t you just…drink your stupid lemonade, huh?”
Only half of her words had penetrated the graying haze surrounding James, his sole focus on her right ankle. “I can’t have this conversation when you’re bleeding.”
“I’m always bleeding when you’re standing in front of me,” she said, chin lifting. “You just can’t see it.”
His hurt lurched. “Lita…”
She stomped the injured foot, nearly spiraling him into a heart attack. “Yeah, I know. I say things like that now. Get used to it.”
The whole situation was getting out of hand. James didn’t know what her goals were in traveling three hundred miles, but she’d wasted her time. He’d finally found the strength to direct his brand of destruction away from Lita and seeing her, hearing her, smelling her, nearly touching her, was fucking with his resolve in a catastrophic way. “Why are you wearing that?” James gritted out.
She glanced down at her attire, as if riding four buses with both thighs completely exposed was a mere afterthought. When she looked up at him again, those teeth were busy chewing away at her bottom lip, stirring his neglected male flesh. It didn’t help matters when Lita stepped closer, dropping her voice to a whisper. “I don’t think I should answer that in front of your mother, James.” She let out a shaky exhale. “Anyway, you…you’re wearing jeans .”
God, how could she make a statement of fact sound like those final strained words before an orgasm? His cock wasn’t handling the public sidewalk seduction well at all, thickening inside the restrictive denim, his balls weighed down in a hot rush. On top of his aroused state, Lita’s injury demanded his attention. Now.
“Mother, I will call you later.”
James stepped forward and scooped Lita up against his chest. Something he’d done on more than one occasion when shows got too rowdy, but it felt very different now. Instead of her protector, he was a predator carrying her away from the light. Away from normalcy, where she belonged.
“How is your father?”
He felt her breath against his neck clear down to his toes. “Awake. Alive.”
“Okay.” She laid her lips against his pulse. “Do you want to talk about why you weren’t inside when I pulled up?”
“No.” He jerked away when every instinct screamed to lean in, absorb the touch. Tell her everything. “How did you find me?”
Lita laid her head on his shoulder, running him through with an invisible sword. “I had a little help from our security team.”
“Impossible. You make their life hell.”
“Yes, I know. They might have mentioned it a few hundred times.” She exhaled, ruffling the hair at the back of his neck. The best feeling he’d had in six goddamn days. “Old News is playing two bat mitzvahs and one wedding this summer. For free. I haven’t met our new manager yet, but I doubt that will earn me a spot as teacher’s pet.”
Despite the situation with his father and knowing this moment with Lita couldn’t last, James almost laughed. “Only you.”
When they reached his Mustang, he noticed her ankle was dripping onto the sidewalk and didn’t manage to swallow the gruff sound that left him. “How could you let it get so bad?”
It took her a moment to release his shoulders when he set her down on the passenger seat. “I think…I thought if I hurt enough, you would feel it and come back. I wanted to punish you, too. For leaving.” She crossed her arms over her middle. “The only way I could do that was to punish myself.”
His hand curled into a fist on the car’s roof. “Can’t you see how wrong that is?”
“Yes. We were both a little wrong.” She held his gaze from below. “But I’m going to make it right.”