An Ellora’s Cave Romantica Publication
www.ellorascave.com
Love Fool ISBN 9781419911897 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Love Fool Copyright © 2007 Anna J. Evans Edited by Briana St. James. Cover art by Syneca. Electronic book Publication October 2007 This book may not be reproduced or used in whole or in part by any means existing without written permission from the publisher, Ellora’s Cave Publishing, Inc.® 1056 Home Avenue, Akron OH 443103502. This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the authors’ imagination and used fictitiously.
LOVE FOOL Anna J. Evans
Trademarks Acknowledgement The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of the following trademarks mentioned in this work of fiction: BMW: Bayerische Motoren Werke Coke: Coca-Cola Company Mazda: Mazda Motor Corporation The Rolling Stones: Rasskazov Anatoly Tilt a Whirl: Sellner Manufacturing Co., Inc. VW Bug: Volkswagen Aktiengesellschaft Corporation
The Fool As the ”0” card, the Fool is the card of possibilities. He/she is a traveler, on the way to a brand new beginning. But the card carries a warning as well—stop daydreaming and watch your step. The Fool ultimately stands for a new start. It signals movement, not just to a new home, but to a new job, a new way of seeing the world and maybe even a brand new life. The flip side of a fresh start is—as Janis said—there’s nothing left to lose. Sometimes the “0” of the Fool can look a lot like rock bottom. But the gift of the Fool is that they treat their fresh start with a light heart. They may have no idea where they’re going, but for the Fool, the most important thing is to just get out and play. Unfortunately, sometimes this naiveté can end in disaster. Mandy and Joe are both Fools—travelers on their way to new and exciting places. For Mandy it’s a new job, a new city and a wild new way of living. For Joe it’s a new way of thinking about women, sex and love. Both of them are aware of their precarious positions as “Fools”, and how dangerous a place the world can be for those without the proper degree of cynicism. Their challenge? To find the strength to be true to themselves and love with the optimistic, joyful, passionate heart of the Fool.
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Chapter One Mandy Miller was not the type of girl who woke up in a strange room, staring at a strange ceiling, with a pounding headache, a pair of skinned knuckles and no underwear. The fact that all of the above was true at the present moment was enough to send her bolting into wakefulness at a speed that was also fairly unusual. “Shit,” she muttered, immediately regretting the choice to sit up as the pounding headache turned into a supernova of agony that made her stomach gurgle and bile rise in her throat. “Are you going to throw up?” came a deep, gravelly voice to her right. “Ahhh!” “What?” “Oh my god. You scared the crap out of me.” “Is that a no or a yes?” asked the rumpled, but undeniably gorgeous man beside her. His dirty blond hair might have been a mass of unruly waves and his deep blue eyes still slightly puffy from sleep, but his wasn’t a face that could ever be called anything but strikingly handsome. He was the type of man who encouraged a second or third glance, and that would have been if he’d had his shirt on. At the moment, with the golden skin of his sculpted chest on display and nothing but a sheet draped across his hips, he was enough to send your average woman spiraling to her ruin in a whirlpool of all-consuming lust. Good thing she wasn’t the average woman. “I’m so sorry to ask, but…who are you?” Mandy squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, as much to block out the sight of the tempting man beside her as to fight the ever-more-insistent pukey feeling in her tummy. “Ouch. That hurts, I thought last night was something special,” he said in a voice that was more suggestive than wounded. “So we…um. Did we…?” Mandy trailed off, somehow unable to form the words. She had never had a one-night stand, let alone one that she didn’t remember. She was a serial monogamist and proud of it. This just couldn’t be real. She was probably going to wake up any second in her own frilly little bed, amazed at how vivid a little too much tequila could make your dreams. Tequila. Oh no. Surely she hadn’t had that many shots. Had she? Why had she ever thought a shot contest with three men twice her size was a good idea? Irish liver or no, body weight had to be taken into consideration, preferably before you blacked out and woke up in a 6
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strange man’s bed with no idea how you came to be there. She wanted to turn over a new leaf, to let loose a little of the free spirit she knew was inside her, but this was a little too free. Hell, it was a lot too free, and now she had to deal with the consequences. “You don’t remember?” He sounded just sympathetic enough to make Mandy open her eyes. She promptly wanted to shut them again, however, when her gaze met his and a rush of heat flooded through her body, causing her nipples to tighten against the scratchy fabric of a white button-up shirt that was way too large to be her own. Her breath caught as a sharp wave of longing shot from her nipples down between her legs. She literally had to fist her hands in the sheets to keep from reaching out and running her hands over the crisp hairs that peppered the man’s beautiful and inviting chest. Mandy immediately reconsidered her average woman status. She was average, very, very average, and she wanted to do about fifty different wicked and un-average things to the complete stranger she had just met in her bed. “We did, didn’t we?” she asked, slowly lying back on the two pillows behind her and pulling the sheet up to her chin, as if the prudish pose would do anything to make up for what she’d evidently done. If Mr. Studly could make her react like that with just a look, she must have done a lot more than look last night. Sure, it had been almost a year since her last nookie encounter of the fully consummated kind, but that wasn’t because she didn’t have a hearty sexual appetite. She had just reached a dead end when it came to her love life. Hell, life in general. But all of that was going to change now that she’d finally left Los Angeles and her work-all-the-time-for-barely-enough-money-to-pay-her-rent life. She was in Austin, Texas now. It was hippy cowboy country, the best of the south with a little big city charm and a healthy Democratic majority thrown in. Here, she would finally be able to relax and see what kind of woman she might have been if she hadn’t been born the daughter of rock music’s most notorious bad boy. See what fun she might have had if she hadn’t become an emancipated minor at sixteen, started her first full-time job at eighteen to avoid taking money from her father or his hideous friends and spent most of her time since then trying not to be like her dad more than trying to be herself. Herself. Who the hell was herself? She had no clue, but she hoped to finally find out. At the moment herself was apparently a twenty-four-year-old woman with a horrible hangover, memory loss and a strange cowboy in her bed. So far, not so good. “You always put your hat on before your clothes?” she asked as Mr. Studly reached out to his bedside table, fetched a dark brown suede hat and positioned it on his head with an easy gesture that said he’d done the same a million times before. “Don’t want you to see me with bed head.” His wicked smile revealed startlingly white, even teeth. Could teeth be sexy? She wouldn’t have thought so, but that smile set her entire body to thinking about a kind of nibbling that had nothing whatsoever to do with food.
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“Are you that vain?” “I was thinking it might jog your memory.” “Not really. Sorry,” Mandy denied, though there was a strange tickling somewhere deep in her brain that she supposed was her tequila-muddied synapses making an effort to put two and two together to make something close to four. “Well then, maybe this will help,” her cowboy said in a soft, sensuous tone that caressed her in places no voice should be able to touch. Carelessly, he tossed his hat to the floor, and then he was suddenly on top of her, that bare chest only inches from her still aching nipples. His thick muscled arms flexed on either side of her and his lips descended toward hers with a predatory hunger that took her breath away and made her undie-less sex start to pulse with anticipation. “Mmm!” Mandy hummed, sucking her lips into her mouth and biting down. “What?” he asked, nuzzling her nose with his, his breath puffing warmly onto her face smelling slightly of cinnamon. How could the man have fragrantly delicious morning breath? He was clearly not of this earth. Maybe she’d been abducted by aliens last night. That seemed more likely than the forgotten one-night stand. She felt tempted to peek under the sheet and see what kind of equipment Jose was sporting. Surely aliens didn’t have your normal, average, everyday guy parts and— “Jose!” Mandy shouted into his face before quickly clamping her mouth shut. She refused to breathe on another human being this morning. It would just be cruel and unusual punishment. “You remember,” he said with a devilish little smile before he dropped his lips to her neck and began trailing soft kisses from her jaw down to the collar of what she assumed was his shirt. “You don’t look like a Jose.” Mandy tried not to close her eyes and moan, to arch toward that mouth, to thread her hands through that silky blond hair and pull him as close as two beings could possible get. She didn’t know if it was the tequila still floating around in her system or some sort of pheromone overdose, but she couldn’t ever remember being this aroused this early in the morning. She was a night person. She didn’t like to speak more than five words before noon and at least five cups of coffee, but right now she would gladly get up and make breakfast, recite the Gettysburg Address and stand on her head if it meant he would keep touching her, kissing her and gradually settling the delicious weight of his body down onto her own. “That’s what you said last night.” His words were muffled as his mouth kissed past the hollow of her throat, down the slightly freckled skin of her chest, to where her shirt was still presently buttoned. Mandy did moan then, a small sound that turned to a gasp as his strong hands closed around her rib cage, holding her firmly in place while his mouth went to work on separating button from hole. “I mean, you just don’t look very…ethnic,” Mandy heard herself say, regretting the words as soon as they were out of her mouth. 8
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What was she thinking? After spending five years as a party planner to the stars, she should know better. She was usually the Queen of PC, but obviously her mind wasn’t functioning properly this morning. She was too worried about how in the hell she was going to stop this from going any further when all she wanted was to let go and let him ravish her ten different ways. Her pussy was already aching painfully, throbbing with the need to have him pumping away inside her, tunneling as deep as he could possibly go. She even had a hunch this cowboy was capable of filling more than the emptiness of her body, that maybe Mr. Blue Eyes might be able to ease the painful emptiness in her heart as well. “That’s what you said last night, though not so diplomatically,” he said as he set to work on another button with his skillful mouth. “I’m sorry, I don’t think I can—” “That’s all right. No one seems to have a problem believing there are red-headed Italians, but most have issues with blond Mexicans.” “No, I meant I can’t do this,” Mandy said, bringing her hands to his face, effectively stopping him before he managed to undo another button. If he put that mouth to work on her full, aching breasts, swirling that tongue around her tightened nipples, maybe pulling them into the wet heat of this mouth…she would be done for. There would be no turning back and she couldn’t let that happen. She wasn’t into casual affairs. She never had been and she wasn’t about to start now. She wanted a wilder life, but also a better life here in Austin, and that wasn’t going to happen if she started banging complete strangers. She didn’t want to throw away her fresh start by falling for a cowboy who, other than the fact that his name was Jose and they’d apparently slept together, she didn’t know from Adam. And she would fall, she had no doubt about that. That was her specialty, falling hard for the wrong kind of man again and again and again. But she was tired of being the good woman who sat at home, wondering where her boyfriend was and what or who he was doing. From now on, she was going to be the wild one, the girl who took no prisoners in the bedroom or out of it, and she would find herself a nice, steady man to be the calm center in the eye of her storm. Perhaps her reasoning was a bit flawed, but she figured she could at least give it a try. After all, if she were the crazier half of a couple, she felt she might really have a chance at a future. Because no matter how free spirited she decided to be, she would never cheat on a man whom she loved, never risk losing something so precious. Too bad she couldn’t say the same for her former flames. Bad boys, every last one of them. They looked different, came from different backgrounds and worked different jobs, but they all had one thing in common—they were heartbreakers, cheaters and master manipulators. Looking at the handsome rake whose face she now cradled in her hands, she couldn’t believe that he’d be any different. Men that beautiful just couldn’t be faithful, at least not in her experience, and experience was the best teacher—or at least the harshest.
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“I’m sorry, this just isn’t right,” she repeated, wiggling slightly beneath him, hoping he would remove himself from the bed before she lost what little willpower she had mustered. “Why not?” he asked, his blue eyes looking deep into her brown with an intensity that made her shiver. “I’m just…I don’t…” “You don’t have one-night stands?” he said with a smile that seemed almost affectionate, like he knew her more intimately than he possibly could have. It was the smile of a man who laughed at your jokes, who knew what kind of cereal you liked to eat, who thought it was cute that you were scared to watch horror flicks after dark and still had your favorite stuffed animals tucked away beneath your bed. “Did I tell you that last night too?” Mandy asked, her voice husky with more than physical need. She had dreamed of a man looking at her just like this, smiling at her with such honesty, such…what was the word? It couldn’t be love. He was a complete stranger, wasn’t he? Then why did she feel like she was coming home when those strangely sexy teeth smiled in a way that was for her eyes only? Oh no, it was happening again. She was falling, fast, and had suddenly lost all desire to even try to run. What was she going to do with herself? She was going to have to think long and hard about that as soon as she was able to concentrate on anything but the hard, warm, male body snuggling into even more intimate contact with hers. “You didn’t have to. It was written all over your face.” Then he kissed her with a gentle, insistent passion that took her breath and all concerns about its freshness away.
***** Joe knew it was wrong, much more wrong than not telling her that his friends called him Joe, not Jose or even Joseph. It was worse than putting them both in a cab back to his place rather than looking in her wallet to see if he could find her address. It was worse than taking her clothes off last night and putting her to sleep in one of his shirts. It was even worse than stripping down to his boxer briefs and lying down beside her because he couldn’t resist the temptation of sleeping in the same bed with such a gorgeous, crazy and sinfully sexy woman. It was wrong—horribly wrong—but he couldn’t seem to help himself. He’d wanted to make love to the woman with the wild, curly, nut-brown hair and almost black eyes from the second she’d walked into his club. But he shouldn’t ignore the fact that she assumed they’d already slept together. It might be giving him an unfair advantage. He should probably tell her that all she’d done was drink too much tequila, pass out on the pavement outside the club and then ride home with him in a cab. He should probably tell her that he’d only taken off her jeans so she could sleep more comfortably, that he had never dreamed that she wouldn’t be wearing underwear, or a bra for that matter. Most women he knew wore underpants. It was a given. It was an honest mistake that he’d discovered that she 10
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didn’t and that the discovering had made him ten times as wild for her as he was before. “Amanda,” he whispered against the soft skin of her lips, the word nearly getting lost as her tongue swept through his mouth and a wave of physical need rocketed through his body. He’d never wanted to possess a woman the way he did this stranger in his bed. He wanted to drive his aching cock into her softness, wanted to feel her clawing at his back with those long, elegant fingers and short, sensible nails. He wanted to see her dark eyes grow darker with passion, wanted to feel her cling to him as she came with a power she’d never known, screaming his name and begging him to never stop fucking her. “I want you so badly.” The catch in her voice told him she didn’t say those words to just everyone and made his chest ache with a different kind of need. What would it be like to be the one man in this woman’s bed? To be the person she said good night and good morning to every day? He hadn’t thought he’d ever wonder that about a woman again, not after the past year and a half and a divorce that had felt like it was ripping his heart out through his nose with a rusty fishing hook, but the thoughts were there, he couldn’t deny them. “I want to be inside you more than I want to keep breathing,” he heard himself say as their tongues grew more frenzied and her soft hands slid down his back to tease at the waistband of his boxer briefs. God, how he wanted her to keep going, to slide her hands down until she gripped his ass in her hands. He wanted to feel her fingers digging into his flesh, pulling him deeper and deeper inside her, showing him how much she wanted everything he could give her. “Please, I want to feel you inside me,” she said in a voice that was innocence and temptation all wrapped up in one irresistible package. He knew then, without a doubt, that he just wasn’t going to be able to stop. Joe promised himself he would tell her the truth later, but right now he needed to give them both what they’d been aching for since the night before. “I want to see you first.” He pulled away from the warmth of her embrace just long enough to pull at the closure of her shirt, feeling a surge of excitement as the buttons flew and her stunning curves were revealed. He’d forced himself not to look last night, concentrating on the business of getting her into his shirt and tucked in to sleep, but now he let himself drink in every inch of her. She was a fairly petite woman, no more than five feet four inches, even in boots, and light enough for him to lift into the cab without making much of an effort. The western-style shirt and jeans she’d been wearing last night had made her look like she was on the scrawny side, but nothing could be further from the truth. Her waist was small and her shoulders narrow, but her breasts were each a perfect overflowing
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handful and her hips flared out with feminine fullness, hinting at her truly spectacular ass. She was perfect, the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen, and Joe had seen a lot of beautiful women. Most people counted his ex-wife as one of the most stunning women in Texas, but he’d always preferred a woman who made do with what nature had given her. He would rather run his hand over the soft swell of a woman’s gently rounded stomach than know the flat plane of flesh under his touch was the result of a fat-sucking needle being shoved repeatedly under his partner’s skin. “That’s my pooch,” she sighed as he let his lips play over the flesh beneath her bellybutton, his cock throbbing more insistently as he caught the slightly musky scent of aroused female rising from between her soft thighs. “I like your pooch,” he said, bringing his hands to the back of her knees and slowly spreading her wide. He wanted to taste her, felt compelled to let his mouth claim her, feel his tongue tunneling into her salty heat. “No,” she said, her hands fisting in his hair and holding him with a strength and firmness that surprised him, though it shouldn’t have. He’d been blown away by the force of her personality as much as by her looks. There weren’t many women who could come into his club and convince Joe’s entertainment manager to give an unknown band his stage for a month of Thursdays at no charge. But she’d said she was going to deliver the hottest thing to hit the stage since the Rolling Stones and Cliff had believed her. And so had Joe, even though she’d been five shots into a drinking contest with his off-duty staff before he’d had the pleasure of meeting those flirtatious, intelligent brown eyes. “Kiss me here first, please.” As she said the words, she lifted one hand to cup her breast and ran her finger over the dusky, tightened peak. Her eyelashes fluttered slightly as she caressed herself and Joe knew his mouth was hanging wide open. He’d never thought seeing a woman touch herself could be that sexy. Obviously, he had been terribly, terribly wrong. As he cupped her breasts in his hands and brought his mouth down to kiss and suckle and lick at her pebbled nipples, Joe began to wonder who was claiming who and if he really cared. Hadn’t he always dreamt about a woman just like this? A woman who would take what she wanted, give as good as she got and always let him know exactly how to please her? I have, heaven help me. He moaned against the nipple he was circling with his tongue. Thankfully, Amanda was too busy crying out and arching into his mouth to hear that he’d just lost the battle against common sense—and a piece of his heart in the process.
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Chapter Two Mandy was lost in a sea of pleasure and sensation, quickly becoming more flesh than brain, every inch of her body burning, hot, straining to assimilate how two complete strangers could come together with such fevered perfection. Once she’d given in to the urge to tug on those silky blond locks, to ask for what she was craving, a surge of raw passion she hadn’t known she possessed flowed out of her and into him and back again. “Yes.” She cried out as his hand fisted in her hair and pulled, forcing her head farther back, giving him total access to her throat and urging her breasts even closer to his torturous mouth. “Do you like this?” His grip grew just a little tighter, to the point she might have thought was a little painful if she hadn’t been drunk with lust. “Yes,” she screamed when his mouth closed over her nipple again and his teeth bit down gently on the turgid bud. She’d never known she wanted to be taken like this, but she did. She wanted him to demand his pleasure from her and wanted to take her own with equal violence. For some reason, with this unknown man, it was possible to be completely, authentically Mandy. She told herself it was only because he was a stranger, because they hadn’t made any promises or invested any part of their hearts. “Can I taste you now?” The desire in his voice brought her amazingly close to the edge of completion. “Oh yes, please, please,” she begged, whimpering as he parted her thighs and lowered his handsome face between her legs. She could tell herself all the comforting lies she wanted, but she already had more feelings for this stranger than she’d had for her last two boyfriends combined. Maybe it was the way he smiled, the way he so easily switched from following her lead to demanding she submit to his will. Or maybe it was something too ephemeral to nail down so easily. All she knew was that something in his smell, the taste of his skin, the feel of his lips now trailing up the inside of her thigh, told her she didn’t need to look for that certain someone anymore. Mr. Right had picked her up and taken her home. Sure, she might have been too drunk on tequila shots to remember how it had happened or even the first time they’d made love, but there was no way she was going to forget the second time. “Jose, oh god,” she moaned as he opened his mouth and licked up the length of her exposed sex, dragging his tongue slowly from the slick heat of her center to the swollen nub of her clit.
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“You can call me Joe,” he whispered into her thighs, his hot breath puffing over her clit seconds before his mouth descended, completely covering her sex. His tongue teased her entry as he suckled her to within seconds of what she sensed was going to be the most shattering orgasm of her life. “Oh god, Joe, don’t stop.” She cried out as her hips bucked into his mouth and her pussy contracted with a violence she wasn’t sure was healthy. But oh god, it was good, so good, almost too good. The waves of pleasure flooded her body, banishing her headache, making every nerve ending sizzle with a kind of satisfaction she’d only read about in books. So this is what they had been talking about. This was what shattering meant, what an explosion of pure pleasure really felt like, what it meant to leave your body and soar to some unknown place where pain had never existed. “God, I wanted you to come like that,” he muttered between her thighs as she came back down to Earth, his tongue still delving in and out of her even slicker, wetter channel. His fingers dug into the flesh of her thighs as he obviously fought to keep from claiming her pussy with more than his tongue. “That was…” she began, but found she was still too drunk with satisfaction to describe the pleasure he’d given her. “You’re so beautiful.” He moved back on top of her, bringing his lips to hers so that she could taste her own salty heat in his mouth. “You’re beautiful, Joe,” she said, feeling a little silly for calling him beautiful, even though she thought he was. Men didn’t like being called beautiful, right? They preferred “handsome” or something a little more masculine. And he had told her to call him Joe, hadn’t he? She’d been so high on pheromones she couldn’t be sure. “You’re amazing,” he murmured into her mouth as his heavy, swollen sex brushed against her thigh, making her gasp and squirm beneath him. Mind-blowing orgasm or not, she still wanted to feel him pushing inside her, maybe even wanted it more after tasting the intimate flavor of her pleasure on his lips. “I still want you inside me.” She lifted her hips and trapped his erection between their bodies, loving how bold he made her feel free to be. “Yes, ma’am. I’m going to get a condom, stay right there,” he smiled against her lips, his hand squeezing the curve of her bottom one last time before he scooted to the end of the bed and disappeared into the bathroom. “Joe,” Mandy muttered to herself when his stunning backside vanished from view and she could once more think about something other than the fact that she’d never seen such a perfectly shaped ass in her life. Why did the name seem so familiar? Sure, there were tons of Joes in the world, she knew several herself, but there was something in the name that nagged at her, as if her subconscious were trying to issue a warning. But that was crazy. Jose was Spanish for Joseph, so it made sense that he might go by Joe. After all, she herself had been unthinking enough to comment on the fact that he 14
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didn’t look like a Jose. He’d probably gotten tired of the same reaction from others and decided to use Joe and just avoid the issue. “Spermicide or no spermicide?” he asked, popping his head out of the bathroom with a smile that reminded her of a little boy about to get his Christmas presents. “No spermicide, please.” “Lubricated or ribbed?” “Um, whatever,” she said, enjoying the feeling that she was as exciting as a Christmas present, but not quite sure how she felt about his wide variety of condom choices. It seemed to kill the mood a bit. She had never assumed the man was a monk, for god’s sake, but she hadn’t assumed he was a playboy either. Playboy. Joe Playboy, no, Joe Palboy, no, still not quite right. “Joe Paloma! You’re Joe Paloma!” she screamed, sitting up in bed and clutching his shirt with its now useless buttons in front of her bare breasts. “I am.” He had a slightly confused look on his face as he emerged from the bathroom, condom in hand, and erection still jutting proudly toward where she sat on the bed. God, he was huge, she hadn’t noticed before, but even with the revelation of his identity killing most of her sex drive, she couldn’t help but wonder what it would have felt like to have all nine or ten inches of that thick cock driving between her legs. Or maybe pumping into her from behind while he did that thing he did with his fist in her hair. Man, she’d really loved the fist in her hair. Too bad she had to flee this bedroom as fast as her tequila-and-orgasm-befuddled legs would carry her. “Where are you going?” he asked, the expression on his face quickly transforming to something very like despair. “Gotta go, Joe,” she said with a little laugh as she struggled into her jeans and shoved her feet into her cowgirl boots. He would get over the despair. It wasn’t as if he didn’t have a different girl in here every night. Hell, he could probably have some lucky lady over by noon, even if it was Sunday. Joe Paloma was Austin’s most notorious womanizer, owner of Austin’s hottest music venue and a successful music producer who, if rumors were to be believed, hadn’t even been able to be faithful to his ex-wife, a former Miss Texas turned model, turned modestly successful country-western singer. He was trouble with a capital T and an R and could be trusted with a woman’s heart about as much as Cookie Monster in a room full of cookies. And Mandy had thought she had found Mr. Right. She was an idiot, but at least this time she could blame the tequila. “Wait, please, what’s wrong?” he asked, but she was already headed toward the door. Thank god his apartment was one of those large, open, urban loft spaces that had become so popular in the thriving city, at least she had a clear path to the door.
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“Amanda, wait!” “You can call me Mandy! See you Thursday!” she called over her shoulder, wincing as she realized she really would have to see him Thursday, and then wincing even harder when she flung open the door and the bright sunshine hit her sensitized eyes. Large picture window. Nice for looking out on the city, bad for making it to the elevator without reawakening the splitting headache. It was going to be a long day, a long month for that matter. She was going to have to see that man this Thursday, and every Thursday for the rest of March. His was the hottest club in town. If she were really going to make a name for herself in Austin, and finally have the chance to be the talent manager she’d dreamed of becoming, she was going to have to suck it up and pretend this had never happened. Pretend she hadn’t fallen into bed with the most notorious bad boy in Austin, that he hadn’t made her wilder than any man in her entire life, and that she hadn’t been halfway to being in love with him by the time his tongue finished working its magic between her legs. “Right, right, right.” She hurried toward the elevator and dashed inside seconds before the door to his apartment opened behind her. She thought she heard him shout something as the doors closed and she headed down to the lobby of the building, but she couldn’t be sure what. The movement of the elevators, combined with the sunshine and the horrible knowledge of her own stupidity, finally finished the job on her stomach. It took every last bit of her willpower to hold her mouth closed until the elevator doors opened. Then she dashed into the lobby and heaved the contents of her stomach into a potted plant. “Oh my god,” screamed a blonde woman who had just walked in from outside. The older man at the desk just stared, however, his disgust abundantly clear on his lightly creased face. “I’ll take this with me,” Mandy said, picking up the plant, which thankfully wasn’t potted in something too heavy for her to heft. “I’ll clean this up and get you a new plant and bring it back, I swear on my soul.” The man at the desk nodded and the blonde woman covered her mouth and stepped away from the door as Mandy dashed through, her shame now as complete as it could possibly get before ten o’clock in the morning.
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Chapter Three “You’re late. Wow, I can’t believe you’re late. You’re never late,” Torrance, the lone girl in the band, said as Mandy plopped down on the bench at the outdoor café, clutching her mocha-mint latte like the last line to her sanity. She’d forgotten about the meeting with the band, the band, her only client and her first chance to prove herself to the Austin music scene. She was almost an hour late and would have been even later if the café where they’d agreed to meet hadn’t happened to be only a few blocks away from Joe’s apartment. Her car was probably still parked in Paloma’s parking lot, since she obviously hadn’t been fit to operate a vehicle last night. She was glad she hadn’t been dumb enough to drink and drive, but her lack of transportation had forced her to tote her puke-filled potted plant with her to the meeting. She’d dumped most of the dirt and offensive taco-smelling contents in a dumpster on the way over, but the entire experience had her feeling even more ashamed of herself. And to top it all off, she didn’t even remember eating tacos last night. The entire morning just proved the theory that you should never assume things are at an all-time low because they can always get worse. “I’m so sorry, I swear it won’t happen again,” Mandy said, hoping her forced smile disguised how green around the gills she was still feeling. The two men and one woman seated at the table were already looking at her a little strangely. She couldn’t imagine what they would think if they knew she’d just woken up in a mysterious man’s bed, lost her car, thrown up in a potted plant and wasn’t one hundred percent sure she wouldn’t do something else ridiculous in the next ten minutes. Seeing the way the day had started, she wasn’t making any promises. “No problem, it’s just weird,” Torrance said with a shrug. “We thought you died,” Damon Darren, the youngest and usually the quietest band mate, piped up with utter solemnity. “Or had a car wreck, or were in the hospital, or had been kidnapped by aliens or people filled with evil intent,” Piper, Damon’s older brother, added. They were both pale young men with dark black hair, but where Damon practically exuded “shy artist” vibes, Piper was a loudmouth who could rarely be convinced to shut his trap for more than three minutes at a time. “Good to know I’m so boring that no one would assume I might be nursing a hangover,” Mandy said dryly. She had been going out a lot more since she moved to Austin two months ago. She was practically a socialite compared to the homebody she’d been in L.A., but apparently she still had “calm and responsible” tattooed somewhere on her forehead.
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“You’re hung over? For real!” Piper shouted this, far louder than Mandy would have liked. No need for the entire riverside café to know, not to mention that the volume made her head start throbbing again. “Could you take it down about three notches, please?” “I just can’t believe it. I’ve never even seen you drink a beer, let alone enough beers, plural, to leave you hung over. You being from L.A. and all, we thought you just drank water and did yoga and maybe snorted a line or two to keep—” “Piper, please,” Torrance said in her typically dry and even tone, casually flipping her shoulder-length brown bob with the red streaks out of her eyes. She’d known both of the Darren brothers since they were kids and was the only one who could seem to get Piper to quiet down or Damon to open up. Not for the first time, Mandy thanked god for the other woman. If it weren’t for Torrance, she doubted the trio would have ever organized themselves enough to enter the open mike night competition Mandy had attended the first night she arrived in Austin last January. Of course, if they had been a bit more organized, they would have won the competition and the representation of the top band manager in Austin. A little more organized than that and they would have already conquered the Texas music mecca and gone on to dominate the airwaves. Which was exactly where Mandy planned to take them. She might not be able to play an instrument to save her life and hadn’t even sung in the shower since the day she moved out of her father’s Hollywood Hills mansion, but she had an ear for talent. She knew that the three musicians beside her had what it took to be something special. She might have been a bit bold telling the guys last night that they were the next Rolling Stones, but it wasn’t too far from the truth. They had a classic rock sound, with enough folk influence to woo the critics and enough alternative flavor to win over the eighteento thirty-five-year-olds. They were the perfect raw material. Now if she could just figure out how to mold them into polished little musical gems by next Thursday, her reputation would be made. It could be done. It had to be done. She refused to admit even the possibility of defeat. This was her new life and everything was going to fall into place. She would not fail again, in her career or her personal life. Crap, her personal life. So far, not so good on that front, but she decided not to think about that until after she’d finished her meeting and somehow found her way home for a long, cold, lust-and-hangover-reducing shower. Was it even possible to be this sexually frustrated after vomiting in a potted plant? Apparently so, since she couldn’t get the visual of Joe, naked and aroused, out of her head. Before he’d emerged from the bathroom, she’d never thought a cock could be a thing of beauty. But her mouth practically watered when she thought of his thick, proud shaft and the plump, blushing head that graced the top of his erection. She wanted to feast on him like some exotic and incredibly sexual mushroom. She
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wondered if he’d mind having his cock compared to a mushroom. She really loved mushrooms, but you never knew how men would take— “So, did you have to do the walk of shame this morning?” Piper asked. “What?” Mandy blinked away all thoughts of cocks and mushrooms, hoping she could catch up with the conversation. That was the trouble with tuning Piper out. Sooner or later, he asked you a direct question and you had to try to figure out what you’d missed. “You know, the walk of shame. I can’t help but notice you’re wearing the same shirt you had on yesterday afternoon. Bet those are the same jeans too.” “Piper, please,” Torrance repeated with a little less patience. Obviously her band mate had already started to wear on her nerves this morning. Mandy couldn’t blame her. Piper was wearing on her and she’d only been here five minutes. “Please what?” Piper asked, anything but innocent. “Can it, man.” Torrance sighed. “Only if you’ll take me home and put me in your pantry.” Piper leaned over and plopped his shaggy black hair down into her lap. “You’re never getting in my pantry. That ship has sailed, my friend,” Torrance said, once again with that unbelievably even tone, though she did scoot away from Piper’s nuzzling head and flip her hair out of her face twice in rapid succession. It was a nervous gesture and Mandy had already planned to get her a headband or a hairclip or something. Torrance tended to flip when she was onstage and though it didn’t seem to interfere with her bass playing, it was distracting. Besides, those were the types of things managers did, tend to the finishing touches that helped create a polished act out of what once had been merely another garage band. “We never did it on a ship.” Piper grinned as he popped back into a seated position. “Shut up, Piper. Pretend that you were raised with manners.” Damon’s tone was quiet but deadly and did indeed make Piper shut up and Torrance flip her hair three more times before taking a deep pull of her latte. Torrance and Piper were both twenty-two and, from the off-color jokes Piper made, Mandy assumed they used to date in high school. But she would swear that the only sexual tension in the band was between Torrance and the younger of the Darren brothers. Whenever Piper seemed to cross the line with his teasing, Damon was always there with a hard word and the silent threat that he would do whatever it took to make sure Torrance didn’t feel uncomfortable, even if it meant ditching his own brother and the front man for the band. And Torrance, though not prone to emotional displays of any kind, smiled at Damon far more than she did any other living organism. “Okay, I’ll end the suspense. You’re booked for Thursday,” Mandy said, hoping to get them all back on track. She silently reminded herself never to leave the three of them alone except when they were at practice or in the studio. No need to let sibling rivalry or male jealousy or whatever the hell it was ruin a perfectly fantastic band. They just
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needed to hold it together for a few more years and they would outgrow the sometimes-weird dynamic that plagued them. Right, and she just needed a few more years and she’d quit falling in love with every man she slept with. So many lies to tell herself, so little time. “You’re fucking kidding me!” Piper yelled, once again causing more than a few heads to turn their way. “I am, actually, because it’s not just this Thursday, but every Thursday through the end of March.” Mandy knew she was glowing as she watched all three band members’ jaws drop open in shock. “No offense, because you’ve been great as a manager so far and all, but how in the hell did you manage that? Paloma’s never books for more than one show at a time, especially unknown bands,” Torrance said. “Well, they had a cancellation for this Thursday, the next Thursday I won in a game of pool, and the third and fourth Thursdays were how I got my hangover.” “You got the entertainment manager drunk and took advantage of him, didn’t you? Wow, Mandy, didn’t think you had it in you. If you’re whorin’ yourself around for us then—” “Show some fucking respect, Piper,” Damon said in a commanding tone, nothing that would draw the attention of the other tables, but enough to silence everyone at theirs. “I was just kidding, bro, chill the fuck out.” Piper had a smile on his face, but there was more than a hint of anger in his voice as well. “It was a shot contest. Tequila. And I think we should all chill the fuck out and take the rest of the day off. Though I would appreciate it if we could keep the whorin’ references to a minimum, Piper. I plan to bang my share men, but it will all be for my own pleasure, not the betterment of the band.” “Good to know,” came a deep voice from behind her, a voice that made a shiver of pleasure skitter down her spine, and her mind turn to thoughts of erotic mushrooms. Before she turned around, Mandy reminded herself that she was a new woman now. She was a woman who flew through life by the seat of her pants, a woman who would ride roller coasters without clinging to the hand bar, who didn’t beat herself up for mistakes that had already been made, and who could look directly in the face of the man who had been busy between her legs not two hours before and smile as if they were simply old drinking buddies. Right. And pretty soon—what was that phrase?—oh yes, and pretty soon, monkeys were going to start flying out of her butt.
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Chapter Four Joe did his best to keep his face unreadable, grateful for his dark sunglasses. His eyes always gave him away. His ex-wife had teased him mercilessly about his inability to keep a secret, whether it was what he’d gotten her for Christmas or how devastated he’d been when she’d confessed she didn’t love him anymore, and was leaving him for one of his oldest friends. The pain of the past year and a half had made him better at concealing his emotions. He had perfected his devil-may-care attitude, partying as hard as he had ten years ago and screwing any willing woman who crossed his path. All while pretending his heart wasn’t a girlishly wounded place that ached when he woke up alone in his bed every morning. But something about hearing Mandy confess that she planned to bag her share of willing partners made him insanely jealous, overcome with the urge to snatch her curvy little body up from the bench and throw her over his shoulder while he yelled something incredibly mature and non-Cro-Magnon like, “Girl, mine!” “Joe!” She smiled over her shoulder, her grin growing wider as she leapt up from the bench and threw her arms around his neck for a big hug that completely threw him for a loop. After the way she had run from his apartment, he hadn’t expected a warm welcome. In fact, he’d been fairly sure she would think he was a stalker for throwing on his clothes and following her. So, what was with the hug? Maybe she had multiple personalities. It would be his luck lately that the one woman who’d interested him in months had a few extra “people” running around in her head. Still, he felt his arms close around her of their own free will, his appendages not at all concerned about the state of her mental health, just fantastically pleased that he got to press her body against his for the second time before lunch. Speaking of lunch…maybe she would want to go get lunch? And then come back to his apartment and finish what they’d started before breakfast, and stay over for dinner, and sleep in his bed again tonight? Hell, maybe she should just go ahead and move her things in, because there was no way he wanted to let her out of his sight in the foreseeable future. He was already addicted to her smile and the curve of her sweet bottom in his hand and— “Hey, Mandy. Long time no see,” he said with a casual laugh as he pulled away from their embrace. What the fuck was he thinking? The last thing he needed was to risk his heart with a woman who had no interest in being faithful. Imagining his wife in bed with Cameron for the entire last year of their marriage, fucking his best friend before taking a shower
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and coming home to fuck him, had almost killed him. He didn’t share well with others, not when it came to a woman who interested more than his dick. Especially not with a woman who smiled up at him like he was the most amazing person she’d met in the last several years. Amanda Miller’s smile should be illegal. It was a dangerous weapon that he was sure had left more than a few broken hearts in its path. “I’m sorry I ran out like that, you probably thought I was nuts.” “She’s not nuts, our little chipper’s from California,” a pale young man with a shiteating grin on his face piped up from the bench. Joe didn’t like him already. He reminded him entirely too much of himself when he was young and cocksure and full of more attitude than sense. “I had entirely forgotten I had a meeting,” Mandy apologized with a little laugh as she pulled him away from the table. He was fairly sure she shot the kid behind her a dirty look, but when she turned back to him, her big brown eyes sparkled with warmth and intelligence and…affection? Surely it wasn’t affection. She hardly knew him and hadn’t seemed to like him that much half an hour ago. Still, eyes like that were enough to make a man hope and his sunglasses were doing nothing to keep him from falling heart first into those soft, velvet depths. He had to get out of here, the faster, the better. “You forgot your purse.” He willed the smile away from his own lips and held out said purse, ready to back away as soon as she took it from his hand. Running away from a girl like she had the cooties might not be the most mature or suave choice, but it seemed the only way to protect himself from this particular woman. She turned him into a mass of adolescent symptoms that had nothing to do with who he was. Since the divorce, Joe Paloma had been the ultimate ladies’ man, the most sought after bachelor in Austin, and the kind of bad influence that mothers warned their daughters about before they went dancing at his club. He did not worry about losing his heart and he did not run for cover because some wild-haired woman with a gorgeous smile and equally stunning ass made him feel weirdly alive and happy. “Wow, seems like you made me forget a lot of things.” She laughed again, her cheeks slightly red, but not a trace of embarrassment in her tone. “It was my pleasure,” he said with what he hoped was a slightly wicked grin, glad to be regaining his footing a bit. Harmless flirting, that was all this was. If he couldn’t handle flirting with a woman who had come on his mouth less than an hour ago, he might as well retire from the womanizing business altogether. Mandy blushed a little deeper in response to his words and looped her arm through his, pulling him farther away from the other people at the table before she stood on tiptoe and whispered her next words directly into his ear. “No, if I remember correctly, it was my pleasure. But maybe next time we’ll get to concentrate more on yours.”
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“So you think you might be able to fit in me in somewhere?” he asked, trying not to let his surprise color his tone. The hug had confused him, but the blatant propositioning left him totally baffled. The woman was a complete contradiction…and it made him psychotically hot. “Oh I think you’ll fit just fine,” she said in a husky voice that had his cock straining against the fly of his jeans, insisting that they see how good a fit they would be right there in the middle of the café. “I meant in your busy social calendar. Banging tons of men takes time.” He shrugged, and tried to act as if the idea of any cock but his own pumping into the slick heat between her thighs didn’t make him fighting mad. “Yeah, well, I guess you would know,” she said, then hastily added with a flutter of her hands, “I mean, about banging lots of women, not men.” “I guess I’ve had my share.” There was a real smile on his face as he reached out and smoothed a wild brown curl off her face. So maybe that was the problem. Mandy assumed he wasn’t into monogamy. He had certainly done nothing to discourage that assumption in the last year and a half. But something in the way she’d looked up at him this morning—with that incredible vulnerability in her eyes and an uncertainty in her smile that said she didn’t know how to fight feeling more for him than physical attraction—had made him reconsider the desirability of being the biggest man-slut in Texas. Monogamy could be a good thing, especially if it involved the woman in front of him naked, willing and in his bed on a regular basis. “That’s why I thought you’d understand. I’ve always wanted a fuck buddy,” she said with a chummy punch on his upper arm. “A fuck buddy?” he asked, his newfound hopes of starting a more meaningful relationship plummeting to the wooden planks at his feet. “Yeah, you know. A friend who you, um…” “Fuck?” “Okay, maybe not.” She backed away from him with an embarrassed look. “Wait.” He reached out and grabbed her hand, nearly losing his ability to breathe from even that simple contact. The woman made him want, need, ache to hold her, taste her, make love to her, more than he could ever remember wanting or needing or aching for anything in his entire life. “You didn’t sound like you liked the idea,” she said, her lips parted and her breath coming faster, making him wonder if she felt that same strange, inexplicable connection between them. “I like that idea just fine. What sane person couldn’t use another buddy?” He slowly pulled her closer until they were pressed together, pelvis to pelvis, in front of a Sunday morning brunch crowd that was starting to grow more than a little interested in their conversation.
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“Right,” she said. “Buddies are…good.” “And fuck buddies are even better,” he said, closing the last bit of distance between them. He couldn’t help but moan as he parted her lips and swept her coffee-, mint- and sugar-laced mouth with his tongue. She echoed his moan and returned his kiss with an urgency that made his already swelling cock surge to a state of maximum enthusiasm. The sudden, dramatic shift in the direction of his blood flow left him feeling lightheaded. Or maybe it was her fingernails combing through the back of his hair that did it, or the way she tilted her hips forward to fit more snugly against his pulsing arousal, or the raw hunger he felt simmering, barely controlled, beneath her sinfully soft skin. Whatever it was, he knew he should put a stop to the kiss before he embarrassed himself. Whether he actually lost consciousness or gave in to the urge to bend her over the nearest table, tug down her jeans and take her from behind, he was going to regret the outcome one way or the other. Fainting like a fifteen-year-old girl from a simple kiss would irreparably damage his reputation as a stud and primal mating in public was illegal the last time he checked. Knowing the state of Texas, either one might be punishable by the death penalty. “Then I’ll see you Thursday,” he said, ending the kiss with a final nip of her full bottom lip. His voice sounded rough and gravelly even to his own ears, leaving little doubt as to how much of her he wanted to see the next time they crossed paths. If a fuck buddy was what she wanted, he would be more than happy to oblige. After all, wasn’t sex without commitment his specialty? His longing for something more meaningful was nothing more than an isolated incident, a moment of madness he would chock up to too many late nights in a row and more than his fair share of tequila shots the evening before. Mandy was really no different than any other woman who he’d had the pleasure to take to his bed on a recreational basis. Sure, she might actually have more personality than your average leafy green vegetable, but that would only make her more entertaining in the sack and out of it. Who said you couldn’t be friends with your lovers? A fuck buddy wasn’t a half bad idea, especially if said buddy had a beautiful pair of tits you were dying to get your mouth on again as soon as humanly possible. “Thursday,” she echoed, her eyes half closed and her lips still swollen and slick from their kiss. “Don’t wear jeans,” he ordered, partly because he was dying to see those legs of hers in a skirt and partly because she’d seemed to like a little dominance. The way she’d cried out and gone limp in his arms when he’d fisted his hand in her hair had nearly made him come without her so much as breathing heavy on his cock. “Don’t wear jeans?” she asked with a slightly raised brow. “Is that a problem?”
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“Hell no, I’m not even going to wear panties.” Her eyes issued a challenge that he was more than ready to answer. “I noticed you didn’t seem to care for them,” he said with a genuine grin. “I think lingerie is highly overrated.” “Bare is better?” “Bare is definitely better,” she said with another flush of her cheeks. “Good.” He then leaned in close enough that his lips were buried in her wild, fragrant curls. “Because I want easy access to that beautiful pussy.” “You can have all the access you want, but I better remember it this time, Mr. Paloma.” She turned her head and bit down hard on the lobe of his ear, sending an electric shock of desire down to where he was already nearly bursting. Then she walked back to her table, tossing a naughty grin over her shoulder that he hated to share with the rest of the café. He wanted that grin to be for him and him alone. Too bad she’d probably never so much as look in his direction again after he confessed that they hadn’t actually had sex yet. He had to tell her the true version of last night’s events before things went any further. If she’d only been looking for a one-night stand, it probably wouldn’t have mattered, but she had said a fuck “buddy”. Buddies didn’t lie to buddies, even lies of omission. “Right,” Joe muttered to himself as he left the café. His throat clenched and a bitter, metallic taste filled his mouth, the usual symptoms that accompanied thoughts of his former “best buddy”. Cameron had been his friend for nearly ten years, the best man at his wedding and the only person he’d confided in when his and Hope’s relationship had started to sour. He’d felt like the ultimate fool when he’d finally discovered the truth and couldn’t stomach making anyone else feel the same way. So he would tell Mandy the real story before things went any further. If that caused her to lose interest, then so be it. In the end, it might even be for the best. He would do well to remember that buddies could be dangerous and that sometimes a friend could betray you as completely, hurt you as deeply, as any lover. With those cheery thoughts foremost in his mind, Joe headed back to his apartment, the place he’d been calling home since his former best friend moved into the house he’d purchased his third year of marriage, when he’d still stupidly thought he was living happily ever after. He’d been an idiot, a clueless, love-blinded idiot, but he’d vowed never to be in that position again. It was a blessing from above that Mandy had nipped his monogamous urges in the bud. The last thing he needed was to be so horribly vulnerable. Love had only made a fool of him once, but once was one time too many for him to have any urge to get back on that particular horse.
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Chapter Five “I’m not going to throw up,” Mandy whispered as she stepped out into the relatively quiet night, grateful for a moment away from the noise inside the club to clear her thoughts. She hadn’t even seen Paloma’s namesake so far this evening and she was already a mass of symptoms. She just couldn’t do this. What had she been thinking? The truth was she hadn’t been thinking. She’d been lusting, playing, pretending that she could pull off some sort of sexy minx routine. She wasn’t a sexy minx, she wasn’t even a sexy kitten. She was more like a moderately sensual beagle dog, a nice, dependable animal that followed a routine, was loyal to the end and might occasionally hump someone’s leg. “Leg humping…now that’s sexy,” Mandy muttered to herself. Could she be any more of a complete fraud? Even her thoughts were unsexy. “Are you okay?” “Ahh!” Mandy screamed, nearly twisting her ankle as she spun toward the sound of Torrance’s voice. “Guess that answers that question,” the younger woman dryly observed as she pulled out a cigarette and lighter. There was no smoking inside the club, something that Mandy took for granted being from L.A., but which seemed to irritate some of the native Texans. “I’m just anxious. Too much coffee today, I guess.” Mandy laughed nervously and worked an absent hand through her tangled curls. She hadn’t even had time to go home and shower before the show. The day had been too packed with errands, all the final things that had to be done before the band made their Austin debut on the main stage at Paloma’s. That’s what she should have been nervous about, the fact that her band was getting ready to perform for a huge crowd in less than half an hour. Instead she was stressing about a man, another Mr. Wrong, who had convinced her to come to the club tonight wearing a skirt and no underwear. She always wore underwear. Why had she acted like last Saturday night’s lack of lingerie had been anything more than a laundry emergency? Maybe because she wasn’t completely sure that was the truth. She didn’t like wearing a bra, never had. Neither could she deny that there was something sexy about feeling her pussy bare to the cool night air as she scurried back and forth from her car unloading flyers at all the local bars.
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Besides, Joe hadn’t made her do anything. She’d gotten herself into this situation all on her own by following that naughty voice inside her whose identity was still uncertain. It was either the quiet, seductive whisper of the authentic Mandy or a bona fide she-devil intent on ruining her new life. Did she really think she could pull off something as sexually liberated as having a fuck buddy? She’d never been able to separate attraction and emotion and Joe Paloma was not a good test subject. He was too gorgeous, too sexy, too smart, and then there was that “little boy lost” look that snuck into his eyes every so often. There was a vulnerable, sweet man in there somewhere, and that was the part of him that called out to Mandy even more strongly than his gorgeous body or the cock she hadn’t been able to stop fantasizing about for the last four days. She’d never been able to resist a bad boy with a wounded heart. She always wanted to save him and she supposed, by saving him, save herself. Ever since she was a little girl, she’d dreamed of what it would feel like to be so important to someone, so vital to their existence that she knew they would never leave her alone. She recognized that her need to be so terribly necessary stemmed from feeling unnecessary to her parents. Having your mom leave you on your dad’s doorstep when you were three years old and never come back would probably do that to a person even if the dad had bothered to do any parenting. Mandy’s dad hadn’t. He’d been too busy touring to do much more than hire a nanny and a night nurse for his only offspring. Still, knowing why you craved a toxic substance was not that effective in killing the craving. “Are you dating anyone right now, Torrance?” Mandy asked. “I’d rather have every piercing on my body become infected simultaneously.” Her face was typically expressionless as she blew out a stream of smoke, but her tone was even more disdainful than usual. “Bad experience?” “Experiences, plural. You’re thinking about Paloma, huh?” “No, I’m thinking about what an amazing job you all are going to do tonight and how the critics are going to love you as much as I do,” Mandy said, opening the door to the backstage entrance. “You’re such a bad liar.” “I do think the critics are going to love you,” Mandy protested. “I don’t think he’ll bite…unless you’re into that.” “Do I look like I’m into that?” “I don’t know. What does someone who likes to be bitten look like?” “This conversation is not helping, Torrance,” Mandy warned, motioning her through the door ahead of her. “Maybe you should have a drink,” Torrance suggested, crushing out her cigarette on the brick wall beside the door.
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“I don’t drink on the job.” “Mandy, the place is packed, Piper was actually here fifteen minutes before call time, and I’m wearing a sparkly headband. Your work here is done. You should go have a drink and enjoy yourself. We’re going to be great, don’t worry.” Torrance had a gleam of confidence in her eye that put a part of Mandy at ease that she hadn’t even known was agitated. Between the busy day and her apprehension about seeing Joe again, she’d managed to ignore how anxious she was about the band’s first performance, not to mention the reception of said performance. “No one needs anything? Water? A group pep talk? A neck massage?” Mandy asked as she followed Torrance into the darkness of the backstage area. “We’ve got tons of water and a pep talk would probably be detrimental. Damon and Piper aren’t speaking,” Torrance said. “But don’t worry, they actually play much better when they’re pissed at each other.” “When aren’t they pissed at each other?” Mandy asked, fighting the urge to stomp back to the dressing room and jerk a knot in each of the Darren brothers’ heads. The animosity between the two brothers was starting to get ridiculous. Weren’t you supposed to outgrow sibling rivalry beyond a certain age? Not having any siblings, Mandy couldn’t say from personal experience, but twenty-two certainly seemed old enough to quit being a dip shit. “When Piper’s not being an asshole and Damon’s not—” “Damon’s not what?” the younger Darren brother asked from the shadows just inside the door. “Ahh!” Mandy screamed, jumping half a foot in the air and then pressing her hand over her racing heart. “What’s with the lurking and sneaking tonight?” “I’m not lurking,” Damon said, his voice soft and hurt. “Right, of course,” Mandy sighed, getting ready to run damage control on the most sensitive member of the band. “I guess I—” “Can we have a second?” Torrance interrupted, her voice colored with some emotion Mandy couldn’t quite identify, but she prayed wouldn’t interfere with the night’s performance. “Sure, no problem. I’ll be stage right if you need anything,” Mandy said, gratefully making her escape, deciding after a moment’s hesitation that she could trust the pair alone. They both wanted this night to be successful as much as she did, if not more. They would surely be mature enough to settle whatever awkwardness was between them. Besides, she could hardly handle her own emotional rollercoaster at the moment, let alone get onboard the strange interpersonal Tilt-a-Whirl that was Tastes Like Chicken. Tastes Like Chicken. The name really didn’t do it for her, but the band was dead set on keeping it and their rattlesnake logo. Since it was the only thing the three of them could seem to agree on, Mandy had abandoned her crusade to find a name that had a
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more classic feel. There were plenty of successful bands that had ridiculous names and a rose by any other name would still give her allergies. Stage right was more peaceful than the area truly behind the performance area and Mandy felt a bit of the tension ease from her body as she leaned against the aging brick walls. It was nice to be alone in the near darkness with the smell of the old wooden stage and the noise of the crowd outside muffled by the heavy velvet curtains. The sound and lighting controls were all housed in a booth at the opposite end of the club and wardrobe was stage left, so she had the small area to herself. There were a few old-fashioned weighted ropes that she assumed could be used to close the red velvet curtains, but no one was standing attendance at them. The curtains were already open and had been open every time Mandy had visited Paloma’s. She approved of the decision. The elaborately painted mural at the back of the stage was too beautiful to be concealed. The homage to a traveling carnival had attracted her to the club as much as its stellar reputation. She couldn’t wait to hear the songs that had become so familiar to her these past few months played in front of the vividly colored, yet melancholy, artwork. Her gut told her that the combination of music and mural would create the perfect mood to showcase the depth and sophistication of Tastes Like Chicken’s catchy songs. “Upbeat, but thought-provoking,” came a deep voice that seemed to emanate from the lush curtains themselves. For the first time tonight, however, Mandy wasn’t surprised. This was the voice she’d been so anxious to hear. “That’s probably the strangest compliment I’ve ever received.” “It’s the word on the street. I’m looking forward to hearing this excellently publicized phenomenon for myself.” “Thank you,” Mandy said, that devilish voice inside her helping to banish the last of her nerves as well as any reservations about the wisdom of trying to engage in a little harmless sex between friends. It didn’t hurt that, when Joe Paloma stepped out from behind the second layer of red velvet, he looked good enough to eat. Dark jeans encased the strong legs that she knew felt absolutely perfect when they slid between her thighs, and a black button-up shirt clung to his broad shoulders and tapered to his waist. The soft, suede cowboy hat was once again firmly in place, but it didn’t look at all strange or forced. Whether it was the fact that she was in Texas and at least a third of the men walking into the club were wearing hats, or that Joe Paloma really spent his spare time roping cattle, the hat seemed as much a part of him as his sandy blond hair or perfectly hairy and veiny forearms. Why were veins on a guy’s forearms sexy? Hell if she knew, but they were. Just looking at the strong, tanned flesh beneath his cuffed sleeves made her ridiculously wet, a condition that might not be wise in a skirt with no panties. God, she wasn’t wearing panties! What’s worse, she suddenly wanted to lift up her skirt and show him just how bare she was beneath. She wanted to reach down and run her fingers over the swollen lips of her pussy, to slide lower and dip into that well of
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wet heat, spreading her own juices up to her clit and circling that ultra-sensitive place until she came with his eyes on her like a physical caress. She was a shameless hussy, but for the first time since she’d been indulging her wilder side, she didn’t feel at all embarrassed. There was no blush heating her cheeks, only a racing of her heart as she tried to decide if she really had the gumption to act out such a brazen fantasy. “Nice skirt,” Joe said, the look he gave her bared legs enough to send another rush of moisture between her thighs. He looked hungry and she had a feeling it wasn’t a condition that could be cured by any of the excellent bar food on Paloma’s menu. “Thank you. Some bossy man insisted I not wear pants.” She leaned back against the brick wall behind her and let one knee rock out to the side. Her skirt rode higher on her thighs, but she didn’t move to adjust the softly worn jean material. “Damn bossy men,” he said with a smile before he started to stalk toward her with a very predatory look in his eye. “Wait. Stay right there.” She held up one hand, motioning for him to stop while the other hand traced a slow, tantalizing trail up her inner thigh and under the hem of her skirt. “Now who’s bossy?” But he stopped, his gaze shifting with undisguised curiosity to her thighs. “I just want to show you that I’m a woman of my word.” Mandy’s voice was a husky, sensual sound she barely recognized as she slowly lifted her skirt and showed him just what she wasn’t wearing underneath. A bolt of raw desire shot through her as Joe’s cocky expression faded away and his jaw dropped open in shock. The look on his face was priceless, sexual hunger laced with a bit of awe and a healthy dose of male appreciation. The combination made her feel powerful, dizzy with the swaying force of her own very female sexuality. Her racing heart sped faster as she moved her hand to the plump lips of her pussy, slowly tracing the outside of her hungry flesh while the biggest playboy in Austin watched from a stunned distance and a crowd of several hundred people murmured behind her. This wasn’t her. The Amanda Miller she knew wouldn’t dare risk discovery or unveil her slightly doughy thighs like they were some perfectly shaped work of art. But it felt so very right to let herself go this way, deliciously wild, yet strangely comforting. This bold woman, this confidant temptress, was who she was meant to be, and she wasn’t going to stop to question the validity of her actions anymore. Maybe she would regret this foolish experimentation at a later date, but not now, not when she was enjoying herself so very, very much. With effort, she drew in a deep breath and heard it released as a low moan as she allowed one finger to slide up into the slick, molten heat of her center. Even the slight penetration of her finger felt so wonderful, so perfect as it pushed in and out of her achy, swollen channel. She couldn’t wait for more, for the thick length of the bulge she could see growing beneath Joe’s jeans to be taking its place. Just thinking about all that
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hard, male flesh tunneling inside her while she clung to those strong shoulders, her legs locked around his narrow hips, was almost enough to make her come. “Jesus, Mandy.” Joe’s voice was shaking slightly. “I wasn’t expecting this. I don’t know what I was expecting, but—” “I told you I wasn’t going to wear any panties,” she said, a small shudder working through her as she lifted her gaze to meet Joe’s. The look of admiration and need, shock and pleasure, on his face was more than she could have hoped for. She’d never seen a man so knocked off his center by pure lust and the experience was one she knew she would crave again and again. “Can I move now?” he asked, his eyes darkening to a blue that was almost black. “On one condition.” She let how desperately she wanted him show on her face, hoping he could see she’d been dreaming of his cock since she woke up in his bed last Sunday. “Anything.” “I want you inside me. Now.” Before she could even recover from the erotic thrill of hearing her own voice commanding her lover with such confidence, Joe flattened the hard planes of his body against her, shoving her back into the rough bricks with a fierceness that spoke of his own need. “God, you taste so sweet,” he mumbled against her mouth, his tongue twining with hers, tasting her so deeply that she was forced to open completely, to relax her jaw as she let her tongue claim him as thoroughly as he was claiming her. “Fuck me, Joe. I want you in my pussy.” She looped one leg around his waist, gasping as her slick, bare flesh made contact with the rough fabric of his jeans. “Wait, I have to—” “I’m ready. I swear I’m ready. Can’t you feel how wet I am?” Mandy asked, grinding her pussy against the thick ridge of his cock, thrilled by how rough the denim felt against her sensitive tissue. It almost hurt, but not quite, and riding that edge between pleasure and pain made her even wilder. “Mandy, wait,” he said, cupping her face in his hands. “Why?” The seriousness in his eyes was enough to make her slow the rocking of her hips. “There’s something I have to tell you. I just wouldn’t feel right doing this until I do.” “Oh god, you have a weird disease,” Mandy said, her eyes growing wide in her face. It would serve her right. The first time she decides to have sex with a virtual stranger in a public place, he turns out to be rife with bacteria, or viruses, or whatever. “No.” His laugh crinkled his eyes and made him look even more handsome, not to mention helped revive her rapidly cooling lust. “You have a girlfriend?” 31
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“No.” “A boyfriend?” “No, I’m a pussy fan from way back,” he said with another chuckle and a soft kiss on the tip of her nose. “I meant what I said about being buddies, Joe. I’m not looking for forever, if that’s what you’re worried about. I just want to feel you inside me. Please,” Mandy said, embarrassed that she still ached for him so intensely after time out for serious discussion. “Even if this is the first time?” he asked, that vulnerable look in his eyes that made her tempted to fall for him with more than her lust-addled body. “What do you mean?” “We didn’t have sex the other night. You passed out, I took you back to my place, gave you a shirt to sleep in and that’s all.” “No nookie?” “No nookie.” “Oh,” Mandy said, wrinkling her brow as she digested the information. He hadn’t really told her that they’d had sex, but he hadn’t done much to discourage her assumption either. That should probably make her angry, but for some reason, it didn’t. She wanted him because she wanted him, not because she thought they’d already been together. She was actually glad she would be completely sober and mentally present for their first time. “I’m sorry if I let you think anything else. I’d like for us to be friends too, and I didn’t want to start things out with a lie.” His hands moved down to knead the bare flesh of her hips, as if he could tell his confession wasn’t going to make her run. “That’s honorable of you, Joe.” Mandy’s eyes fluttered closed as those wide hands moved to caress her buttocks. “You sound surprised.” “I am, a little.” “You shouldn’t believe everything you hear. I’ve had my share of lovers, but I’m not an asshole. I don’t want to hurt you, or anyone else,” he said, the hurt in his voice abundantly clear. “I don’t want to hurt you either.” Mandy cupped his face in her hands and marveled a bit at the pain she saw in his eyes. He was trying to hide it, that was obvious from the way his jaw flexed under her touch, but there was definitely a wounded soul somewhere inside the confidant man pressed so tightly against her. “Thanks, I appreciate that.” He smiled as one finger traced the sensitive seam of flesh right before her thigh turned into something more intimate, causing a shudder to work through her body and her pussy to renew its demands for satisfaction. “I do want to fuck you until you can’t stand, however.” She forced a bit of the bold temptress back into her tone. She couldn’t stand here and let her heart melt into his 32
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wounded baby blues. She didn’t want to hurt him, but she didn’t want to get hurt herself either, and there was a much better chance of avoiding anything but pleasure if they kept this about wild, uncomplicated sex. “I’ll be able to stand.” “You sound awfully sure of yourself,” Mandy teased, bringing her hands to the close of his jeans. Her nipples tightened with awareness as she realized all of that hot male need was for her and her alone. Slowly she dragged his zipper down, suppressing a moan as the silken, burning length of him fell heavily into her hand, unimpeded by boxers, briefs or any other male underwear varietals. “Don’t look so shocked, I couldn’t let you free-ball alone.” “I don’t have balls.” She relished his sharp intake of breath as she closed her fingers around his thick shaft and stroked him forcefully—just once—up and down his engorged member. “And I’m going to be the last one standing.” “You’re not going to be standing at all because I’m going to have you up against that wall.” His voice was once again laced with that confidence that made her entire body throb. “Okay, you win, this time,” she half gasped, half giggled as he parted her legs and hitched her up around his waist. “Jesus, Mandy, you are so wet.” He groaned into her neck as his shaft slid up and down against her slick center, making her writhe with pleasure. She was so close, so incredibly close and he wasn’t even inside her yet. “There’s a condom in my back pocket,” she gasped, struggling to hang onto her sanity for just a few seconds longer. “What a girl scout.” He reached back and fumbled the small blue packet from her jean skirt, ripping it open with his teeth. He held her firmly with one arm and slid the sheath on with a fluid movement, the action so familiar and effortless that it might have bothered her if she were in the mood to care about his numerous conquests. “You’re really good at that,” she said, not at all concerned at how he came by his skill with a condom, just glad he was finally ready to fuck her. “I’ll show you what I’m good at.” “Thank god, I want you inside me right—” “Wait,” he said, his body tensing suddenly against hers. “No, now,” she moaned, wriggling against him, determined to have his cock in her without further delay. “I think there’s someone coming,” he whispered, his voice tense and hesitant, though the thick head of his erection teased at her entry. “I don’t care,” Mandy said, tightening her legs around his hips and succeeding in pulling his cock just the slightest bit deeper into her pussy. “You don’t care?” He sounded shocked—and incredibly turned on.
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“I. Don’t. Care,” Mandy repeated, emphasizing her words with another thrust of her hips, her abandon arousing her to the point that she knew she would die of frustration if he didn’t push the rest of the way into her pulsing channel. “Then I don’t either.” He rammed home with a force that made her cry out. He filled every empty aching inch of her, his width stretching her to the point that it almost stung, almost hurt, but didn’t because it felt so fucking good. “Fuck me. Hard,” she demanded. “God yes.” He thrust deeply, swiftly, inside her, giving her exactly what she had been craving since the second she laid eyes on the stranger in her bed. She knew she was going to come in seconds, no matter who happened to come upon them. Because you like the idea of being watched, you want someone to see Joe fucking you. This time the devilish little voice in her head didn’t make her worry. It just made her hotter, wetter, and then she was spiraling out of control, completely lost to a kind of wicked pleasure she had never known.
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Chapter Six Joe heard Mandy cry out as she came, her pussy clenching down around his cock with a force that actually slowed the speed of his thrusts. In that moment, he knew he wasn’t going to be far behind her. “I love feeling you come on my cock,” he whispered into her wild hair. He was near to exploding from the combined stimulation of the woman in his arms and the knowledge that someone could be listening, hearing her cry out, maybe even seeing his half bare buttocks clenching as he thrust in and out of her heat. “Oh god, oh god.” She clung to him, biting gently on the flesh of his neck. “I want you to come again.” He slowed his thrusts and moved a hand between their bodies, finding the swollen nub of her clit with his thumb and applying slow, even pressure. “I can’t, I don’t—” “Yes, you can. Come for me, Mandy. Come for me again,” he demanded, punctuating his words with deep thrusts of his cock and insistent circles of his thumb. “Oh god,” she cried out, and he felt her body start to convulse around him. She arched in his arms this time, her fingers digging into his shoulders hard enough to draw blood if he hadn’t been wearing his shirt. “That’s it. God, I love making your face look like that.” His words turned to a groan as he came inside her, his orgasm rocketing through him, nearly buckling his knees. He leaned into her, struggling to breathe as the sharp release pulsed through his body, shaking him to the depth of his being before it finally started to lessen in intensity. “Don’t drop me,” she half gasped, half giggled, clinging to him with her arms and legs, pulling his cock even deeper into her slick heat. “Never. Couldn’t let you win,” he laughed, hugging her closer and nuzzling her neck. He wished they were near a bed so he could lie down and snuggle her sated body next to his, pull her tight little ass into the curve of his body and spoon for a good thirty minutes. Shit, he was having spooning fantasies. This strictly physical buddy thing just wasn’t going to work out. You didn’t want to cuddle your pals and he didn’t know a single buddy in his acquaintance who wouldn’t threaten him with a gun if he so much as mentioned the word “spooning”. “Joe. Shit, Joe. Wow.” She hugged him closer and feathered slightly frantic kisses over his forehead. “I hope that means it was one fifth as good for you as it was for me.” He slowly pulled his softening cock from her body and set her down on the floor. 35
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“Wow,” she said again, the expression on her face slightly dazed and her hands shaking as she smoothed her jean skirt down. God, how he hated to see that beautiful little pussy covered. “I didn’t see anyone, did you?” “I guess whoever was coming got the message,” he laughed, a little shaky himself as he turned and looked over his shoulder, glad that they were still alone. Most people would turn and walk the other way if they happened to come upon two people in a compromising position, but he wasn’t sure about some of his raunchier employees. Knowing those guys, he and Mandy could have been met by applause and asked to make a comment for the camera when they were done. There were definite down sides to every Tom, Dick and Harry’s cell phone having a record video feature. “You want to come back to my office and clean up before the show starts? I need to change my shirt.” He kept his tone even and forced his attention to remain on pulling off the condom and zipping up his pants, not on the woman in front of him. If he let himself look at her flushed cheeks, at the way her eyes shone with satisfaction mixed with a hint of vulnerability, he was going to lose all chance of pulling off even one casual encounter. He wanted to hold her far too much already, no need to make things worse by letting himself look at her face and imagine that she wanted to be in his arms as much as he wanted her there. “Oh right. Yeah, that might be— Um, yeah,” she said, her voice trembling slightly. “Sorry about your shirt, I guess that’s my fault.” “That’s fine, you can mess my shirt any time. I loved feeling how wet you were,” he said, risking a small smile in her direction and feeling his heart do a cannonball down into his gut as he saw the tears shining in her eyes. “Are you okay?” “Yeah, I’m sorry. I’m just—” “It’s okay. Don’t cry.” He put what he hoped was a comforting hand on her slim shoulder. “I just…want a hug.” Her sobs mixed with laughter as she swiped at her face with the back of her hand. “Well, shit, come here then.” He pulled her into him with a little laugh and hugged her tight. “No, I’m just being stupid,” she said, trying to pull away, but he tightened his arms and held her in place. “Let me hold you,” he demanded, grateful to feel her soften and wrap her arms around his waist, turning her cheek to rest against his chest with a small sigh. “Fuck buddies don’t hug,” she said, her voice small and defeated. “Who said?” “I don’t know. I guess I just assumed. I’ve never had one before.” “I wanted to hold you too,” he said, his chest warming with the beginnings of a tenderness he didn’t ever think he’d feel again. He knew he should fight the feeling
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with everything in his power, but instead he dropped his lips to the top of her head for a soft kiss. He was a hopeless case, at least with this woman standing so close. “You did?” she asked, lifting her face to his. “I did. I was even having spooning fantasies,” he confessed with a smile, unable to keep from telling on himself when he looked into her eyes. How could a face look so innocent one minute and so devilishly seductive the next? He had no clue, but he was already falling hard for both faces of Amanda Miller. “I love spooning,” she said. “Me too, but only with someone special. Like, maybe, a really good buddy.” “Yeah, Cliff looked like he enjoyed a good snuggle,” Mandy laughed, that devilish twinkle back in her eye. “Almost as much as tequila, but don’t tell him I told you so. Now let’s go get cleaned up and I’ll buy you a shot before the show.” “God no, how about just a beer? I want to remember how I got home tonight.” She took the hand he held out without a second thought, letting him lead her back to his office, a small room that was originally the green room for the performers in whatever play was touring through Austin in the early nineteen hundreds. He’d built on to the back of the stage when he purchased the building, adding a larger space for the performers to rest and relax and keeping the smaller room for himself. He liked the feeling of the cozy space and being part of the history of the building. Though, as a kid, he’d hated the fact that half of his family’s rancho was composed of crumbling century-old buildings, he found the age of his club comforting. But he realized that tastes change with age. He knew he wouldn’t have fallen for his ex-wife if they’d met when he was a little older, a little wiser. She was beautiful and more talented than he’d wanted to give her credit for, but she didn’t have that certain spirit that made him feel more than lust for a woman at this point in his life. There was just an ineffable something about a few women he’d known, a softness that had nothing to do with not being strong. It was a quality that reminded him of his mother, a woman a lot of people in his town had thought the consummate fool. Every year she gave a third of their profitable rancho’s earnings to the church and was always willing to take food or clothes or even loan money to people in need. But Joe had realized at a young age that his mother wasn’t a naïve sucker, she was simply incredibly kind and had a hopeful spirit that inspired everyone around her to be a little bit better, a little bit nicer to their fellow man. Jesus. That was where he’d seen that strange mix of devilish innocence before. His own mother. She was the only other woman he’d known who could radiate purity even when she was telling her three children to play outside and don’t dare come in for the next hour because she and Papa had something important to discuss in their bedroom. The realization was more than a little disturbing, making him wonder if maybe he did need some sort of therapy. Hope had suggested it during one of their divorce mediation sessions, said that maybe he needed someone to talk to about his feelings. At 37
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the time, he’d told her thanks, but no thanks. He knew exactly how he felt. He was psychotically angry and terribly hurt, neither emotion something that would be cured by anything but time. But maybe he’d been a little hasty. If he was falling hard for a woman who reminded him of his mom, maybe his psyche was a little more twisted than he had assumed. He loved his mom, no doubt about it, but he didn’t love his mom. “Joe? Are you all right?” “What? Yeah, fine. Come on in, there’s a bathroom in the corner if you need it,” he said, forcing his thoughts back to the present. “You had the funniest look on your face.” She smiled as she walked toward the bathroom, her hips swaying with a little seductive rhythm that he was almost completely sure was unconscious. She was just one of those women who were sexy even when they weren’t trying to be. “I was thinking about my mother.” He sighed, trying not to admit that even Mandy’s impossibly dark brown eyes reminded him a little bit of Mama. “Oh, I’m sorry. Is she dead?” “No, no,” he said, wondering at what kind of expression had crossed his face to inspire that assumption. “She’s alive and well. She’s still in Mexico with my dad.” “Oh. You must miss her.” “I do. But I try to visit at least once a year.” “My mom left me with my dad when I was three.” A confused expression came over her features as soon as the words were out of her mouth. “I’m sorry, I don’t ever talk about that. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. First the hugs and now the revelations.” “I like revelations and you already know how I feel about hugs.” He wanted to close the distance between them and steal another embrace, one that might take a turn for the carnal if he could convince her to help him christen his desk. A vivid mental image of Mandy sprawled out on his Texas-sized desk, completely nude, with him standing at the end driving into her until she writhed with pleasure, shot through his mind. He felt his cock start to thicken against the rough fabric of his jeans, already preparing for another round of hot, fast, mindless fucking. If the show wasn’t about to start and he didn’t feel the profound need to make sure their next roll in the hay was a long, drawn-out experience that would leave Mandy too sated to even think about leaving his bed, he knew he would cross the room and pull that little brown tank top over her head without even asking if she was ready for more. She was obviously as hot for him as he was for her. He’d never felt a woman so wet with so little foreplay and even now her nipples tightened against her shirt with only one heated glance. “Yeah, I do.” Her mouth quirked at one side before she took a deep breath, sighed, and then dashed to the bathroom and shut herself inside.
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At least she hadn’t run as far as she had the first time they’d shared an intimate moment. Damn, an intimate moment. That’s what it had been, no doubt about it. No matter how frantic their coming together had been, it had been more than sex. It had been intimate, with feelings more powerful than lust simmering below the surface. It had been a long time since he’d wanted physical closeness beyond a quick screw and even longer since he’d wanted to know everything about a woman’s life, to sit down and have a heart-to-heart, to share the ghosts from their past and their dreams for the future. “Boss, one of the kids from the band was looking for their manager. Have you seen her?” Cliff asked, popping his head in the door without so much as a knock. Joe had never asked any of his employees to knock before, but he thought about making a new rule at the next staff meeting. That fantasy with Mandy and the desk was too vivid to go unlived. Despite the fact that the thought of being observed had turned him on a few minutes ago, he didn’t really want to share how sexy she looked when she came with anyone else. “She’s using the restroom, I’ll have her out in five,” Joe said. “It’s fifteen to curtain. I’ve got the kids in the green room,” Cliff said, lingering in the doorway with a weirdly troubled look on his face. “What’s up, Cliff?” Joe asked, stripping off his black button-up shirt and grabbing a white one from the small closet beside his desk. “Mr. Joe, you know I’ve never said anything about anything,” Cliff said, his usually pale, freckled face growing a shade of dark red as he crossed his beefy arms across his chest. Cliff had always reminded Joe of a Viking escaped from another age. At six foot seven and well over three hundred and fifty pounds, he’d started working at Paloma’s as a bouncer, but had been promoted to entertainment manager within a few months. He was as clever as he was enormous and had a knack for sniffing out talent and making sure each show went off a little bit more smoothly than the last. Still, as he’d said, he didn’t really say much…about anything. He was a doer, not a talker, and the fact that he apparently had something on his mind, something troubling him enough to make him instigate a heart-to-heart with his boss, made Joe stop buttoning up his new shirt and give Cliff his complete attention. “Spill it, Cliff. Is there a problem with the band, are they giving you trouble?” “No, sir, it’s their manager.” “What about her?” Joe asked, knowing his tone had cooled rapidly from the second before. He’d known Cliff for years, but if he was getting ready to lodge a complaint about Mandy, he didn’t know how he would handle it. How could anyone have a problem with that woman? She was as professional and dedicated to her work as she was beautiful. He’d never seen such a large crowd for an unknown group and he knew that
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her dedicated efforts as their manager, publicist, stylist and overall biggest fan had made that happen. He was going to make a lot of money tonight on liquor sales and he had her to thank for it, but that wasn’t enough to win his loyalty. No, it was something else entirely. He didn’t know the details of her background, but he could sense a fellow hard luck case when he met them. She’d had to work hard for what she had, overcome a lot of obstacles to find success, and he respected that more than he could say. It was one of the biggest problems he had faced in his marriage. Hope had grown up as a privileged princess and took for granted so many things that Joe considered a blessing. Despite his family’s success in the ranching business, there had still been times when they’d had less to eat than was comfortable, times when they wondered how they’d be able to afford simple things, like a new pair of shoes for the next school year. And when he’d immigrated to the United States shortly before college, he hadn’t had a dime to spare. There wasn’t a day that went by that Joe didn’t appreciate the fact that he had enough money to buy whatever kind of fruit he wanted at the grocery store, let alone that he lived in an enormous house with a beautiful view and a shower that sprayed water from four sides. Or used to live, anyway. He hadn’t even fought Hope when she said she and Cameron wanted to buy out his share in the house. He couldn’t deal with the memories that haunted the place, memories of being newly wed to a beautiful woman and filled with satisfaction that he had achieved the American dream. He didn’t like being reminded that he had been so stupid and shallow, choosing a partner more for her status and ability to inspire envy than for their individual compatibility. He’d wondered a thousand times how his life would be right now if he’d chosen a woman who made him laugh, who he respected as a person and who enjoyed sex as much as he did. That’s the thing that had surprised him most about Hope’s affair. She’d never seemed to enjoy physical intimacy. No matter how hard he worked to please her, she rarely came and always had to go take a shower as soon as they were finished having sex. She would have been physically ill if she’d had to spend a night walking around with the stickiness of their lovemaking between her legs and would never have craved something as simple as a hug from her husband. “And if you do, I’ll lose a lot of the respect I have for you,” Cliff said, his words breaking through Joe’s thoughts. Jesus, had he completely zoned out? He had never had this much trouble keeping his mind on the present, but since last Saturday night, when a woman with everything it took to make him lose his heart passed out in his arms, he’d been introspecting far more than was comfortable. Now he had to try to figure out what the hell he’d missed. Cliff had always treated him with an admiration that bordered on worship. Apparently he’d worked for a lot of real scumbags and really valued how well Joe treated all of his employees. Paloma’s was the only club in the city that offered medical and dental to all staff with over a year’s experience, but Joe knew that treating his staff exceptionally well was the best way to 40
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make sure that the service and entertainment at his club was equally exceptional. It was good business, not to mention that he liked being able to make other people’s lives a little easier. The idea that he might lose the respect of a man he had called a friend as well as an employee bothered him, a lot. Enough that he was going to have to admit that he’d missed half of what Cliff was saying. “She’s a special woman. I don’t know why I know so, but I do,” Cliff said with a shrug and a blush that was almost purple. “Mandy?” Joe asked, finally catching on to what this weird moment was all about. “She’s not the type you treat like those other girls you’ve been seeing,” Cliff said with a curt nod. “I know, Cliff.” Joe was relieved, though not sure what it said about his life that Cliff felt obligated to protect an innocent girl from his evil clutches. “I’m going to behave myself, you don’t have to worry.” He turned his attention back to his buttons. “Is that all?” “That’s it. See you after the show,” Cliff said, turning to walk away, the moment clearly behind them. Too bad Joe couldn’t put his thoughts away so easily. He hadn’t needed Cliff to tell him that Mandy was something special, he’d known it from the first second he’d looked into those big brown eyes. Something about her called to him, something that was more than even the sum total of all of her desirable qualities. Sure she was beautiful, talented, funny, hard-working and a sex goddess of unequaled proportions, but the way he felt compelled to hold her, pull her close to him and never let her go was something he’d never felt before. It was almost as if his soul sensed that he’d found that elusive other half he’d been longing for and was sending up an alarm. He’d better snatch Amanda Miller up and make her his before he lost the only woman who could make his dreams of a marriage as full and long-lasting as his parents’ become a reality. “Hey. Was somebody here? I thought I heard you talking,” Mandy asked as she emerged from the bathroom, causing his heart to do that strange flip-flop in his chest that it did every time he saw her face. “Cliff said someone in the band is looking for you,” he said. “Come on, I’ll walk you to the green room.” “Thanks,” she said, then added in a voice that was more tightly controlled than he’d ever heard from her, “and thanks for being so nice about everything.” “Mandy, you’ve been nothing but nice to me. Why wouldn’t I be nice to you?” “I-I don’t know, I guess—I don’t know,” she said, her brows drawing together in confusion. “You make people want to be nice to you.”
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“Really?” She looked up at him like he might have been smoking crack while she was in the bathroom. “Cliff was warning me to treat you right.” “No way,” she said, her eyes wide in her face and a puzzled smile on her lips. “And he’s not an easy guy to win over.” “I guess I should get black-out drunk more often if I make that good of an impression.” Mandy laughed, though it wasn’t an entirely comfortable sound. “I don’t think that had much to do with it.” “Yeah, and the hangover was a bitch.” “Not to mention that I don’t want you getting picked up and carted away to another strange man’s apartment.” “You want to be the only strange man in my life?” she asked with a teasing smile. “I might want to be the only man in your life, period,” Joe heard himself saying, knowing the truth of the words but unable to believe his thought filtration system had allowed such a sentence to come out of his mouth. She was going to think he was completely insane. “You’re nuts,” she said, “and I’m not presently considering dating anyone crazier than myself.” Then she opened the door to the green room and closed it just as quickly in his face, leaving him more than a little stunned until she opened the door and poked her head out again. “If that meant you wanted to date.” “It did, and I would, and I think you’re much crazier than I am.” “Really? And wild too?” “At least twice as wild. I think you might even be a bad influence.” Joe felt a goofy smile take up residence on his face. So much for playing it safe. “Okay, well…shit. Okay, one date.” She smiled, but the rest of her expression looked like she wasn’t sure that dating him was a state of being any more desirable than being plunged into shark-infested waters. Then, before he could think of anything to say to ease her mind, she slammed the door in his face again. “Not as enthusiastic as I’d like, but it’ll do,” he said to the door, wondering what the hell he’d gotten himself into.
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Chapter Seven Texas was experiencing record-breaking high temperatures and the entire town of Austin was outside enjoying the summer-like weather. Zilker Park, one of the city’s most popular outdoor play areas, was only a few miles from her apartment, so Mandy had ridden her bike over early Thursday afternoon. Good thing too, since parking was practically non-existent. Every spare inch of the massive metro park was covered with moms and strollers, kids crawling over playground equipment, and hip, young singles lying out on the grass in as little clothing as possible. Mandy felt positively modest in her super-short cut-off jean-shorts and red bandana tank top, but was glad she hadn’t dared her bikini just yet. Between promotions for the band and staying up late scouting the rest of the manager-less talent Austin had to offer, she hadn’t had much time to make it to the gym. She was blessed with a fairly decent figure naturally, but she would like to get a little thigh toning and some pooch busting in before she bared it all. It also didn’t hurt matters that she had sort of lost interest in baring herself to anyone but one special, hot, gorgeous, amazing, sexually delicious and talented man. “You’re so in lurrrve,” Torrance laughed from the towel next to her. Lately, she and the lone female band member had been hanging out outside of organized functions and Mandy was really starting to consider her a friend as much as a client. Still, she could do without the mind reading. “I didn’t even mention his name,” Mandy protested, rolling over onto her stomach and snatching her novel from her backpack, intent on focusing her attentions on someone else’s love life. Love life. It was her love life. She was falling for Joe Paloma, hard and fast and completely, and she was starting to not care whether it was the smartest decision. Of course, what else was new? “Stop it. Now you’re second-guessing yourself. He’s totally into you. I don’t think he even looked at the stage all night, he was too busy falling head first into your dark brown limpid pools.” “I’m that easy to read? Really?” Mandy asked, wrinkling her nose, which was starting to feel a little sunburned. “Totally transparent, but so is he. I can’t believe everyone thinks he’s such a playboy. Or maybe you just bring out the eager little love puppy in Mr. Joe.” “Eager little love puppy, kind of reminds me of someone else I know.” Mandy pretended great interest in her book. “Will you stop with that? It’s never going to happen.”
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“Right, of course. Who would want to date a man who’s gorgeous and talented and completely crazy about you?” “A man? He’s still a teenager.” “A very mature nineteen, if you ask me.” “He’s three years younger,” Torrance protested, though Mandy could see the hint of a smile twitching at the edges of her lips. “So?” “And I used to date his brother in high school.” “We all did stupid things in high school.” “I don’t want to talk about this.” Torrance shoved her dark glasses more firmly over her eyes and flipped over onto her back. “Fine, and I don’t want to talk about my scandalous and completely fun and carefree fling.” But Mandy knew she had that goofy grin on her face again. That grin that said she was having the time of her life with a man who was as amazing and sweet and wonderful and funny out of bed as he was in it…not that she was getting quite as much of the “in” part as she would like. Since last Thursday, they’d met for a long Sunday brunch, a quick Tuesday late afternoon snack, and had been out to dinner the night before. They’d been having a wonderful time and Mandy was undoubtedly well fed, but for some reason, Joe had firmly doused all her attempts to lure him into semi-public quickies. He’d made his escape from the ladies bathroom where they’d been ten minutes into a heavy petting session, and refused to take last night’s good night in a deserted parking lot any further than some heated kisses. He had invited her back to his place Sunday afternoon and Wednesday night as well, but Mandy had made excuses both times. She told herself they were good excuses, that she had plans that couldn’t be broken and that she hadn’t had time to buy a new plant for his foyer so she couldn’t very well show her face in his building. Besides, potted plant vomiting incident or not, she really didn’t have time to sleep over at a strange house, in a strange bed. Too bad she wasn’t fooling herself for a minute. She was scared to start sleeping over, intimidated by the idea of leaving a toothbrush at Joe’s place, of starting to move a few of her things over and finally feeling that ache in her heart whenever he was any farther away than the next room. She always got too attached, too fast. But she really thought she had learned her lesson after the messy breakup that had convinced her it was time to leave Los Angeles for good. By the time she and her boyfriend Hunter had called it quits, he wasn’t even coming home most nights and rarely offered to help pitch in with the smallest bills, let alone the rent. Still, it had taken irrefutable evidence of his cheating for her to finally give notice on their shared one-bedroom. She kept hoping he would come home, come back to her and the life they had started to build together before he’d decided that his
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future as a rock star depended more on partying with the right people than practice and promotion. When she’d found out he was sleeping with the front woman for one of L.A.’s most popular punk bands and confronted him with his betrayal, he hadn’t even apologized. Instead, he had gotten angry, telling Mandy that he was willing to do whatever it took for him to succeed and she should be too. If not, she was only going to be holding him back. He seemed to think she should be okay with him fucking other women as long as it was in the best interests of his career. She’d left the city less than a month later, never happier that she had kept the secret of her father’s identity. At least she knew that, whatever she and Hunter had been to each other, it was genuine for a short amount of time. She couldn’t imagine how horrible it would have been to think that he cared for her, but find out years later that he was only after her father’s rock and roll connections. And her pop would have been only too happy to help Hunter if it meant getting back in Mandy’s good graces. He’d visited an ashram in India about two years after Mandy became an emancipated minor and come back determined to forge a relationship with his only offspring. He’d gone out of his way to try to rekindle a father/daughter bond that had never been much more than a passing acquaintance. Mandy had finally consented to weekly lunch dates and the exchange of birthday and Christmas presents, but nothing more. The hurt from feeling abandoned for most of her childhood, and ignored the one time she’d asked her father for help, was still too strong for her to forgive and forget, no matter how much she would have liked to have a seminormal parental figure in her life. “Call time is an hour later tonight, right?” Torrance asked. “Yeah,” Mandy said, glad to put away all thoughts of her father and Hunter and anything else remotely “fraught”. “I know you didn’t forget, so I assume that is a subtle hint that I should make sure Piper is on time?” “Such a perceptive band manager. How did we get so lucky?” “I already told Piper that call time is the same as last week and told Damon not to tell him any differently. So he should be there at least thirty minutes before the actual call, even if he’s late.” “Smart woman.” “Not really, I think a smart woman would be taking more aggressive measures,” Mandy said, feeling a little lump in her throat. She hadn’t planned to address the Piper issue today or at any point before they fulfilled their four-show obligation at Paloma’s. But keeping her concerns from Torrance was starting to feel a little bit like lying and that was one sin even the new, naughtier Mandy couldn’t stomach. “Aggressive measures. Does that mean what I think it means?” Torrance’s voice slipped back into the emotionless monotone she used for strangers and times when she wasn’t feeling comfortable.
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“Don’t take this the wrong way, Torrance, but we both know he has an attitude problem and I think there’s another problem brewing that I don’t feel comfortable pretending isn’t there.” “He’s the front man for the band and we’ve all known each other since we were kids,” Torrance said, bolting to a seated position on her towel with a sigh. “I don’t want to piss him off.” “I don’t want to piss him off either, but I think if he got off whatever he’s on half the time, his moods would be a lot less unpredictable.” Mandy sat up and rested a cautious hand on Torrance’s knee. “He’s been recreational with the stuff since high school. He usually keeps it under control. I just think the stress from playing more high profile gigs is making it worse. I’m sure he’ll cut back in a few weeks.” “And if he doesn’t?” “He will. That won’t be an issue.” “Torrance, I know you smoke cigarettes, but I’ve never even seen you drink more than a couple beers. Granted, smoking cigarettes is a nasty habit that could eventually kill you—” “I’m trying to quit. I’m down to like four or five a day.” “Exactly. So why does it seem like you don’t have a problem with Piper using something hard enough to seriously mess with his ability to be a functioning member of the band? And possibly kill him in the process?” “Will you lay off? At least he doesn’t black out on the sidewalk outside the club we’re playing.” “That was an isolated incident and one I’m not proud of. It’s not a way of life. If it were, I would be fine with the nasty way you said that or if you asked me to get some kind of treatment before we kept working together,” Mandy said, angry and hurt and ashamed all at the same time. The old Mandy would never have had to deal with someone insinuating she had a drinking problem, which made her wonder what kind of person she was becoming. She couldn’t deny that she’d been happier since she’d been indulging her wild side, but maybe that didn’t mean as much as she thought it did. Wasn’t there some saying about the road to hell being a happy one? Or maybe it was that it was paved with good intentions. She couldn’t quite recall, but she’d only had two glasses of chardonnay last night so at least her drunken habits couldn’t be blamed for her fuzzy thinking. Besides, she knew that she didn’t have a problem with alcohol. Sexy men and semi-public lovemaking, however… “Piper will never go get treatment, he’ll quit first and then we’ll have no lead singer and there will be no band to manage. Is that what you want? Do you want us to fail?” “Do I act like I want you to fail? Have I been busting my ass working twelve-hour days to promote your shows because I want you to fail? Did the turn-out last Thursday
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and the amazing review in the paper two days ago seem like you’re headed for failure? You’re headed for success and I just want to make sure all three of you are prepared to handle it,” Mandy said, knowing her tone was about as hard as it ever got. She didn’t like playing the bad guy or even defending herself. She preferred to walk away from a situation when emotions got too heated, but she couldn’t afford to let Torrance think she was a wimp who could be walked over or that she wanted anything but the best for her and Damon and Piper. “Mandy, please, just drop it. Piper will be fine. We’ll all be fine if you just let it go.” Torrance gathered up her towel and backpack without looking her in the eye. “I’ll let it go for now, but I won’t keep my mouth shut if it keeps getting worse.” “Good, then we’ll be great because Piper can handle himself,” Torrance said, standing and slinging her pack onto her shoulders. “So I guess we’re not going to go catch the play?” Mandy fought the urge to tear up. She hadn’t really been that excited about watching the Shakespeare in the Park, but she had looked forward to an afternoon with a girlfriend spent soaking up the sun and maybe sharing a light lunch before they parted ways to get ready for Taste Like Chicken’s second appearance at Paloma’s. “I have something I need to do. I’ll see you tonight,” Torrance said, then started weaving her way through the other blankets that littered the giant lawn, headed toward where she’d parked her own bicycle. Mandy watched her red-streaked head bob away, noticing the way her pale shoulders hunched inside her black tank top. She looked like she was shutting down around herself, getting ready to protect her body from a beating, and Mandy felt horrible that she was the one responsible. Still, pretending there wasn’t a problem never made the problem go away. Ignoring Piper’s obvious drug trouble wouldn’t help him regain control, just like pretending she wasn’t getting ready to repeat her pattern of falling hard for the wrong man wouldn’t keep her heart from getting broken. She could pretend that Joe was different, that she was a wilder woman who wouldn’t get hurt, and that happily ever after was something she would find if she kept looking for love in all the wrong places, but that wasn’t going to help her create the life she longed for. The pretending had to stop, on all fronts. “Great.” Mandy gathered up her towel and book, not relishing the idea of another difficult conversation in one day. But she had to let Joe know how she was starting to feel before they went any further, even if that meant no more lunch dates or dinner dates or long walks along the river. She would get over the loss. She had other friends in Austin, or had until Torrance decided that she was the Queen of Buzzkill. But god, she was certainly going to miss the sex. It didn’t seem fair to only get to feel him inside her that one time. She wanted more, had the horrible feeling that she’d
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always want more where Paloma was concerned, and that even the most he was willing to give probably wouldn’t be enough. It never was when you wanted it all.
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Chapter Eight “All the shelves are stocked and I put the reorder form on your desk. Do you want me to turn out the lights?” Kara, the most efficient bartender in the history of the world, was already heading toward the master switch behind the bar. Joe was usually more than ready to make a run for the parking lot as soon as Paloma’s doors closed at one o’clock in the morning, but tonight he’d found every reason to linger and driven half his staff crazy in the process. Still, the liquor had needed to be stocked and reordered. Maybe not at this exact moment in time, but sooner or later. “No, I’ll get them. I think there are still a few people backstage. I’ll wait until everyone clears out for the night. But you can go, thanks for staying.” Joe crossed his arms over his chest and tried not to fidget as he leaned against the freshly cleaned wood of the bar. It had been a long night and he should have been exhausted, but he felt like he’d downed a pot of coffee instead of two light beers. Where was she? He couldn’t wait to see her again, had been fantasizing about what they were going to do to each other all day, and was impatient to get their night together rolling. It had been far too long since his cock had been busy between her legs and he was suffering from a state of arousal that simply wasn’t healthy. He needed her—now—and was dying to give them both the satisfaction they’d been denying themselves all week. Not to mention that he was more than a little anxious to see if he could convince her to take their budding relationship a baby step further. After she’d turned down his sleepover offer last night, he’d started to worry. Maybe she wasn’t feeling the same feelings that kept him sleepless in his bed, wishing she were there beside him. Maybe she really was after some casual fucking and nothing more. She clearly wanted him but was shying away from the intimacy of sharing the same bed together for an entire night. But maybe, after everyone else had left and they had the chance to christen his desk with a little wild, I-haven’t-fucked-you-in-a-week-andbeen-dying-with-want-for-you sex, she’d let him bundle her into his car and whisk her away to his apartment for a much-needed all-night session. He knew Friday was the band’s day off and Mandy could be convinced to sleep in. So he planned to make sure neither one of them went to sleep tonight before they’d explored every inch of each other, or before she’d come on his mouth, cock, fingers and anything else he could think of a minimum of six or seven times. “I saw Cliff leaving on the way to your office.” Kara yawned as she brushed her spiky white-blonde hair from her face.
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“Really?” Cliff never left before the backstage area was completely clear. Joe hadn’t seen Mandy or the band leave through the front, so he’d simply assumed they were still back in the green room, rehashing another successful—though perhaps a bit less controlled— performance. But maybe they had already left through the back. Joe could understand if there was still some need for Mandy to stay with the group, and they hadn’t had any definite plans for after the show, but a simple “goodbye, talk to you later” would have been appreciated. He felt a feeling very similar to double-chili dog indigestion cramp his insides from his stomach to the top of his throat as he realized she had left without saying a word. If they had spoken at all earlier in the evening, he might not have worried, but she’d been avoiding him all night, finding a reason to scamper away on some urgent errand as soon as he had come within twenty feet of her. They’d had a wonderful evening the night before, and she’d seemed more than excited to see him again. What the hell had happened between last night and tonight to make her decide he wasn’t worth a “so long, sucker”? “Yeah, I think our cars are the only ones left in the parking lot,” Kara said, pulling her keys from her purse and dawdling next to him, plucking anxiously at one of her several nose rings. “Sorry, Kara. Let me get the lights and my keys and I’ll walk you out,” Joe said, finally realizing why his most dedicated employee was acting even more dedicated than usual. Kara had a punk look and a toughness about her that fooled most people, but Joe knew how uncomfortable she got when she had to walk to her car alone at the end of her shift. The parking lot was well lit, but downtown Austin wasn’t the safest place in the world and Joe always stayed to walk her to her car if Cliff wasn’t going to be around. He suspected she’d had a bad experience or two that had made her so cautious and he didn’t want her to feel she was risking another one by working until closing time. “It’s no big deal. I know it’s stupid to be nervous—” “No it’s not. You’re a beautiful girl, it’s late, and there are a lot of creeps out there.” Joe dimmed all but the few lights he usually left on for the night. “I’m not a girl, old man,” Kara laughed, and looped her arm through his as they headed toward the back door, obviously relieved that she wasn’t going out alone. Not for the first time, Joe wished he could smash a fist into the face of whatever asshole had made such a strong young woman afraid to walk fifty feet alone after dark. “That’s right, I am an old man. What are you, twenty?” Joe smiled down at Kara’s spiked head. “Twenty-one, or I couldn’t serve liquor, chief,” she said, sticking her pierced tongue out at him. “Besides, that band manager isn’t much older.” “Mandy?” 50
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“Yes, Mandy,” Kara mimicked the way he’d said her name, fluttering her eyelashes. “She’s twenty-four.” Joe hated that the way he felt about Amanda was so painfully obvious that even Kara felt free to tease him about it. “That’s only three years older.” “Yeah, but that’s only eight years younger than I am, not eleven.” Joe let the backstage door close behind them and turned to make sure the lock had engaged. With over three hundred thousand dollars of equipment inside, he always made damn sure his club was locked up tight before he went home for the night. “That’s cool that you have younger women issues. Most guys are just the opposite, the younger the better,” Kara said, the disdain obvious in her voice. “Most guys are idiots.” “Yeah, you’re not an idiot, but you were still a man-slut.” “What?” Joe asked, glad they were already in front of Kara’s car and his stopping dead in surprise wasn’t completely obvious. “That’s what Cliff said. He said you were the one who coined the phrase, so don’t get mad at me.” Kara held up her hands in innocence before she put her key in the door of her old VW Bug. “I’ll have to ask Cliff to keep his mouth shut,” Joe said, wondering what else his allegedly tight-lipped entertainment manager had been chatting about with the other employees. He vowed never to go drinking with the man again. Tequila always loosened his lips, but he had assumed he was safe with Cliff as a sounding board. Apparently that wasn’t the case. “Don’t get your boxers in a twist, it wasn’t like it was any secret.” “Good to know my man-slut status is already a well-known fact,” Joe said, holding open Kara’s door. “Was. I can tell you’re crazy about that Mandy chick, and I wanted to tell you I’m glad,” Kara said, her face as serious as he’d ever seen it. “Thanks, I guess.” Joe’s stomach kicked up another batch of angst as he silently wished that “that Mandy chick” was one fifth as crazy about him. He’d done it again, fallen for a woman who couldn’t care less and it was obvious to everyone from his oldest friends to his youngest employees. Fabulous. Nothing to make you feel like even more of a complete fool than having an audience of your nearest and dearest looking on, watching you fall flat on your face. “You’re welcome. I mean, you can’t let one bad experience turn you against love forever, you know?” “You’re a wise young woman. Now get in your car so I can go home, alone,” Joe said. “Later, boss.” Kara stood on tiptoe to give him a quick peck on the cheek before she leapt into her car and started the engine, her radio sending up a loud squawk of what Joe couldn’t consider music. He was open-minded about what qualified, had to be in 51
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his line of work. But some of the stuff the younger crowd listened to made him feel like he was an out-of-touch old codger who had no business pretending to be on the cutting edge of anything. “Drive safe.” Joe waved as Kara’s beat-up, more rusted than red Bug pulled out of the parking lot. Something about the girl made him wish he’d had a sister rather than two brothers, or maybe that he would have a daughter if he ever found a woman who was as crazy about kids as he was. He’d foolishly thought that Mandy might be that woman. “I see you finally made it out of there,” came a voice from behind him, a frighteningly familiar voice considering they’d only known each other a little over a week. As if summoned by his thoughts, Mandy stood at the far corner of the lot, her dark blue Mazda parked right next to his BMW. He couldn’t believe he hadn’t sensed her presence as soon as he stepped outside. He could usually smell her coming from a block away, not her perfume, but that certain scent that was purely her own, the lush fragrance that made his cock spring to attention. “You didn’t bother telling me you were going to wait outside or I would have been out sooner.” Joe smiled as he walked toward her, wanting to be annoyed. But he was just so glad to see her leaning against his car, wearing that same little sexy black dress she’d had on earlier, that he couldn’t manage to arouse any emotion other than profound anticipation. “I actually had to leave. Piper wasn’t fit to drive home, so Torrance drove his car and I followed. I was hoping you’d still be here when I got back.” A smile pulled at the corners of her full mouth but her eyes held a hint of uncertainty. “What’s wrong?” Joe asked, stopping a few feet away, not trusting himself too close to her. He wanted her so badly, was so ridiculously pleased to see her, he knew he would kiss first and ask questions later. From the look on her face, however, there were some questions that needed to be asked before they took things any further. “At first I thought you and Kara had…you know,” Mandy said, her eyes darting down to the pavement and back up again. “We didn’t.” Joe felt his jaw clench as he tried to control his temper. Evidently he’d made this reputation for himself. It wasn’t Mandy’s fault that she thought the worst. Still, he had hoped that she was aware of how he felt, that she could sense he didn’t want to be with any woman but her. He hadn’t told her how he felt or asked for anything exclusive, so he had no right to get angry, but then again, neither did she. “I realized that,” Mandy said, the smile on her lips becoming full blown before it faded slowly away, replaced by that same anxious, uncertain look. “Is that the only thing bothering you?” Joe asked, cutting himself some slack. He wasn’t going to get angry with Mandy, but he wasn’t going to beat himself up for their lack of communication either. They’d only been dating a week, for Christ’s sake. She would have thought he was nuts to ask for an exclusive relationship that fast, let alone
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confess that he was madly in love with her and wanted to know how many children she thought would be a good number to shoot for. He knew what he felt for her seemed completely genuine, but even a part of his own mind wasn’t sure. Was it possible to fall in love with someone so fast? In such a short amount of time, could you even be sure your date wasn’t a closet serial killer, let alone know that the two of you had the potential to form something strong and long lasting? “No, it’s not. What’s bothering you?” Mandy asked, taking a tentative step closer. “We weren’t talking about me.” “We could start though.” “Nothing’s bothering me.” “You’re such a bad liar.” “I thought you liked that.” Joe crossed his arms at his chest to keep from reaching out, taking her in his arms, and kissing her until they were both too distracted to have anything resembling a serious discussion. He liked the fact that she was so perceptive, but that didn’t mean he had to be comfortable with the current situation, especially when he’d been feeling like an idiot a few seconds before. He’d just been presented with hard evidence that his smitten state was ridiculously obvious to the entire world. It must be obvious to her too. Was that why she had been avoiding him, was she here to tell him that he had violated the laws of the fuck buddy system and she was ready to call it quits? It was an all-too-possible option and left him feeling unwilling to talk about anything until he heard what was on her mind. After all, what was the point in telling her that he wanted more from her if all she wanted was a quick end to what they’d barely gotten started? “I can’t do this, Joe,” Mandy said, her big brown eyes filled with regret. Great. It was exactly what he’d feared was happening. She was finished with him. Might as well make a clean cut and get it over with. He knew how to make this easy for both of them, he’d broken things off with his share of casual flings. But for some reason he couldn’t bring himself to speak the words, to pretend that it was okay with him for her to walk out of his life. So he did the exact opposite of anything that could be considered smooth, but the only thing he thought might get her to give him a second chance. “I think you can.” Joe closed the distance between them in one large step and pressed Mandy back against the driver’s side door of her car. If he had scared her away with his reluctance to keep their interaction fast, hot and a little dangerous, then he had a pretty good idea how to repair the damage. The air between them was immediately thick with the attraction that never failed to surge to life the second they touched. It was more than desire, more intense than
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anything he’d ever known, a soul-deep craving to merge with another being who he knew was too special to be thrown away without a fight. “Joe, wait,” Mandy said, placing her hands on his chest, though her touch was more of a caress than a demand for more personal space. “I’m tired of waiting and I think you are too.” His mouth descended on hers with a force that wasn’t tender or compassionate. She didn’t seem interested in his softer side, so he’d give her what she wanted, all of his raw need without any of the complicating emotion. It wasn’t the way he’d wanted to proceed, but as long as he ended this night with Mandy in his arms and in his bed, he would take her on whatever terms he could have her.
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Chapter Nine Mandy moaned against Joe’s lips, immediately responding to the sweep of his tongue through her mouth. Her body softened against his as he pressed even more tightly against her, pinning her to the car door with a force that was almost painful. She hadn’t been sure what to expect from Joe after she’d spent the evening avoiding him, but this sure as hell hadn’t been it. He’d seemed so sweet and funny and understanding on all of their dates, she had almost forgotten that predatory part of him, that look he had that made her feel he was the hunter, and she prey all too ready to be captured. “Open for me,” he demanded, his words humming against her lips, making more than her mouth tingle. “Joe, I—” “Quit talking and open your mouth.” His hand fisted in her hair and forced her head back. Mandy gasped and went limp in his arms, surrendering completely to the deep strokes of his tongue in her mouth, shocked at the way he was behaving, and even more shocked at the way her body was responding. The twin pillows of her lips were swollen and erotically sensitized in a way she’d never experienced. Waves of pure lust emanated from her mouth to every nerve ending in her body. Her nipples tightened, straining against the thin fabric of her dress as she arched into him, trying to bring every aching inch of her body into closer contact with every inch of his. “This is what you want, isn’t it?” Joe asked, his mouth leaving hers and the hand still buried in her hair pulling her head forcefully to the side, exposing her neck. Mandy held her breath, waiting for him to kiss her there, to stroke the sensitive column of her neck with his tongue as he’d done the night before, but instead his mouth opened and he took her jaw in his teeth, biting down with a firmness that let her feel his strength. Something primal in her responded to the feeling of teeth on skin and a shiver of desire worked its way down her body, ending in a rush of wetness between her legs. “I think you’re the one who likes to be bitten,” Mandy said, her voice thick as she took the lobe of his ear in her teeth and bit down, drawing a gasp from his throat that made her own breath come faster. She loved teasing him as much as she loved being teased, and it was hard to decide which side of the fence was more fun. “I like anything that involves your mouth on me,” Joe said, hand loosening in her hair. “But why don’t you let me lead tonight?” “Joe, you know I—” “Mandy.” Joe silenced her with a soft finger at her lips. “I’m going to fuck you now. If you really want me to stop, you can open your mouth and keep talking.”
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Mandy felt her eyes grow wide as saucers, but she kept her mouth shut, unable to resist playing along with this game that was making her hotter than she had dreamed possible. She was an independent woman and had never had any fantasies about being dragged off to some man’s cave and ravished. But she couldn’t deny that her skin was crawling with a desire that had her squirming against Joe, trying to get her aching, throbbing clit in contact with the thick ridge she could feel pulsing inside his jeans. “Hold still. Don’t move until I tell you to move if you want my cock in your pussy.” Joe’s breath puffed warmly over her lips, making another gush of desire flood between her thighs. She’d never been this wet, and from the look in Joe’s eyes, he was just getting started. Thank god she’d chosen to slip on her black thong panties tonight or the evidence of her excitement would be dripping down her thighs. Of course, that might not be all bad if it meant Joe would see she was past ready and cut short whatever erotic torture he had planned. “You’re not holding still,” Joe warned. “Joe, I really like this, but I think—” “What did I tell you about talking?” His voice was hard as he pulled away and spun her to face the car. Mandy braced herself with her hands and struggled to draw a full breath as Joe pressed against her, fitting the length of his erection between the cheeks of her ass. “Do you want this?” His hands gripped her hips and pulled her back as he thrust his own hips forward, showing her how ready he was, how hard and thick and perfect. “Yes,” Mandy moaned, her voice ripe with her surrender. “Then do as you’re told,” he whispered into her ear, the feel of his breath on her skin making her want to arch against his cock, an urge that she fought with everything in her. She wanted this, wanted it more than she could have dreamed. She would do whatever she had to do to get him inside her as quickly as possible. Any last fleeting urge to talk fled as Joe ran his hands over her body with a proprietary air that left no doubt that he would be claiming her, owning her and would refuse to tolerate anything less than her total surrender. Her nipples tightened into twin points as his hands cupped her breasts possessively through her clothes, rolling the erect nubs in his hands with a roughness that made her pussy clench and her arms tremble. She was already dying for him, dripping and aching and ready. She wanted to tell him to stop touching her there, to free his cock, pull up her dress and fuck her without any further attempts at meaningless foreplay, but she bit the inside of her lip instead. She would draw her own blood before she would do anything to keep him from being inside her. “Are you wearing panties tonight?” Joe mumbled into her hair while his hands continued their torturous work at her breasts. “Don’t answer, I’ll find out for myself. Spread your legs.”
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Mandy whimpered and did as he asked, spreading her legs and nearly losing her control as one of his hands start to move up her thigh, toward where she needed him to touch her so desperately. “Garters. These are nice.” Joe played at the top of her stocking, stroking the skin just above where the nylon ended but not moving any farther, not finishing the journey up to where her pussy was pulsing hungrily for his fingers, his tongue, his cock, anything at all to press inside. Mandy heard a sound amazingly similar to a growl rumble low in her throat, but she didn’t open her lips. She would show him that she could win this game. She was strong enough to wait, to hold on to her control no matter how long he played with her. “What was that?” Joe asked, the hint of laughter in his voice making a part of her boiling angry. She both loved and hated the way he made her feel so off her center, so completely vulnerable and dependant upon obeying him in order to receive her pleasure. “I’m sorry, I couldn’t hear you.” Joe drew back his hand and delivered a sharp smack to the part of her ass laid bare by her thong. “I’m not supposed to talk, remember?” Mandy gasped, trying not to moan at the unexpected pleasure flooding through her. She didn’t enjoy being spanked, did she? God if she knew, but there was no denying that her skin burned with awareness where he had slapped her and that her pussy responded to the heat with a burning all of its own. “When I ask you a direct question, I expect an answer.” “I’ll give you an answer in a minute.” “That sounded like a smartass remark,” Joe said, a warning in his tone. “Fuck you.” Mandy’s voice was breathy with anticipation for whatever punishment he had in mind for her disobedience. “No, I think you want me to fuck you. You want it so badly you’re shaking,” he said, proving his point by tracing a finger down the crack of her ass, following the silky fabric of her thong down until just before he would touch where she was aching for him before pulling away, making her shake. “Joe, please.” “Please what?” “I’m going to scream if you don’t touch me.” “I am touching you,” Joe said, delivering another sharp slap to her ass that did make her moan, especially when his large hand smoothed over the stinging skin, taking away the burning with a touch that was unbelievably reverent. “Please,” Mandy sobbed, giving in to the urge to arch her bottom closer to his cock, starting to lose the last of her self-discipline. “I don’t know how to do this.” She had never felt anything like this in her entire life. She was completely consumed by raw physical need, primed and dying to fuck. Not make love, not have 57
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sex, just fuck, be fucked, to feel Joe taking her right here, up against her car in the middle of the parking lot. She didn’t even care where they were or who might be watching, not even in the sense that she found the idea titillating. This wasn’t about the thrill of semi-public sex anymore, it was about a hunger that had to be fed before she went insane. If she didn’t feel Joe’s cock ramming into her in the next two seconds, she was going to lose her mind, become a creature ruled by her animal urges, ready to do anything it took to satisfy the mating instinct. “You know how, you’re perfect. I want to fuck you more than I’ve ever wanted to fuck anyone in my life,” Joe said, the conviction in his words making her tremble with pleasure. “I want, oh god, Joe, I want—” “Is this what you want?” Joe asked, his voice strained as he pulled aside the scrap of fabric covering her sex and slowly smoothed the tip of his finger over her entry. “Jesus, Mandy. You’re so wet.” Mandy couldn’t even form words anymore, could only cry out and strain to get more of his finger inside her, to stop the teasing strokes of his hand through her slick, swollen folds and get him to fuck her with his fingers if he wouldn’t fuck her with his cock. When he pulled his hand away instead of tunneling inside her aching channel, she felt a sense of loss that was almost heartbreaking. Tears formed in her eyes and a sob of desperation broke from her throat before she heard the sound of his zipper dragging down and felt the thick, pulsing heat of his erection as he sprang out against her thigh. “Yes, oh yes,” Mandy sighed, arching her ass, making it easier for Joe to pull aside the dripping fabric of her thong, spread her swollen folds and position the head of his cock where she was dying for him to be. The raw, purely male sound of triumph he made as he thrust up into her made Mandy’s knees weak. The feel of his thickness spearing through her, combined with the knowledge that his hunger had been as fierce as her own, was almost enough to tip her over the edge. Her pussy tightened around his cock, now buried deep inside her, and she knew if he reached around her body and put the slightest pressure on her clit, she would explode. “Don’t come until I tell you to,” Joe demanded, his voice thick with need as he started to thrust in and out of her, his passage made easy by the ready state of her body. Mandy pulled in a deep breath and struggled to obey his command, but everything about this moment they were sharing was working against her. The feel of his cock thrusting so deeply inside her body, the sound of their bare flesh slapping together as he fucked her with more passion than she could remember experiencing in her entire life, the smell that was so uniquely, wonderfully Joe hovering around her as he buried his face in her hair and wrapped one strong arm even more tightly around her waist— any one of the factors would have had her near the edge. As it was, she knew she was going to disappoint him because she couldn’t get much closer to the completion without anticipation becoming fulfillment. Her womb
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was already so tightly contracted, her clit so swollen and aching, that in a few more of his swift strokes she was going to lose herself completely. “Come, baby. Come now.” Joe’s fingers slid down over her clit at the same second he thrust more deeply inside her than ever before. Mandy screamed something as she came, maybe his name, but she couldn’t be sure. She was too consumed by the waves of pleasure sweeping over her, rolling her beneath them, inside of them until her vision blurred and her awareness narrowed to the bliss radiating from her cunt to every inch of her body. It was almost too much sheer physical joy to be accommodated by one body and way too much for her emotions to handle without spilling the secret she had been trying to conceal from Joe since the first time he’d lowered his mouth between her legs. “I love you, Joe. God, I think I love you.” She threaded her fingers through his and clung to him as he continued to thrust inside her, not caring if he thought she was insane, only knowing she had to let him know how he overwhelmed her, body and soul. “Mandy, oh god,” he groaned, pulling his cock from her body before pressing his pulsing erection back between her buttocks, his hot cum splashing over her bare skin with an eroticism that was entirely surprising. Getting covered in ejaculate wasn’t sexy—at least she hadn’t thought so before. But now she couldn’t imagine anything more satisfying than feeling his essence on her bare skin, except maybe tasting him on her tongue or sucking the salty heat of him deep into her mouth. “You weren’t wearing a condom,” Mandy said, her breath still shallow as she reached around and pulled a finger through the stickiness now starting to drip down her back. “I’m sorry, I swear I was tested last month and I’m clean. Shit, I didn’t intend for us to go that far out here. I wanted to take you inside and—” “What’s wrong?” Mandy asked around the finger in her mouth, the finger that had been slick with his cum a second before. She would have felt embarrassed for indulging the urge to taste him if the look on his face hadn’t been completely enraptured. “I’m completely in love with you,” he said, his emotions laid bare on his face as he swallowed with obvious difficulty. If she hadn’t known better, she would have said he was on the verge of tears. But surely he couldn’t be sincere, couldn’t really feel as rocked to the core by what was happening between them as she was. “You don’t have to say it just because I did,” Mandy whispered, having difficulty meeting his eyes. She wanted to believe the affection she read there was real far too much for it to be wise. “Did you mean it?” Joe turned her around and took her face in his hands, giving her no choice but to face the feelings between them. “I did. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about, before we—” “Jesus,” Joe said, the anxious look fading from his face as he broke into a laugh that ended with an enthusiastic claiming of her lips. 59
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“It’s not that funny.” Mandy nibbled his bottom lip and wrapped her arms around him. She wasn’t sure what his “Jesus” meant, but the way he held her felt too perfect not to return the favor. “It’s just that I assumed you thought I was getting too serious, violating the fuck buddy code or something by trying to take you home with me every night, so—” “You decided to have your way with me in the staff parking lot?” Mandy asked, amazed that they had both worried about the exact same thing. God, she might have finally found a man as crazy as she was, crazy enough to fall hard and fast and completely. “I had to convince you I was still all about no-strings-attached, wild, casual sex.” The boyish look in his eyes was completely at odds with the powerful, commanding man who had dominated her body only a few minutes before. He was a study in contrasts and quickly becoming the only man she could ever contemplate loving. “You’re wild all right. We could have been caught. I know there’s a patrol car that comes through here every hour,” Mandy teased with a naughty smile. “I know, we could have been carted off to jail for being complete sex perverts,” he said with an equally naughty grin. “You are a sex pervert, no doubt about it.” “A sex pervert who gets to take you home with him tonight?” Joe brushed a strand of hair from her face with a tenderness that made it a little harder to swallow. “On one condition,” Mandy said. “Anything.” “I need to go clean up in the bathroom.” “Done.” “And then we have to go pick up a potted plant on the way to your place,” she smiled, fetching her purse from the hood of the car and popping her trunk, knowing that it was high time she made nice with the staff in the lobby of Joe’s building. After all, she planned on being an incredibly regular visitor. And if the way Joe looked at her was any indication, she might one day soon be calling the Metropolitan Heights Apartments home sweet home.
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Chapter Ten Torrance took a deep breath and held it as she closed the door. Thank god Piper was finally quiet. Still, she tiptoed away from his room as quietly as the squeaky floors of the Darren brothers’ aging house would allow and didn’t start breathing easier until she reached the end of the hallway and turned into the brightly lit kitchen. “He’s asleep?” Damon asked from where he leaned against the counter, his solemn expression strangely out of place next to the flamingo wallpaper she had helped him hang last month. Damon was the only person in the world she could have convinced to hang such an outrageous wall covering, but then, he had an appreciation for the bizarre that rivaled her own. Not for the first time, she wondered what the nineteen thirties bungalow the brothers had purchased a few years back would look like if she and Damon were living there together. She never would have thought she’d be the type of girl who would want to play house, especially with a man three years younger who really wasn’t much more than a boy. But she couldn’t deny how sad she felt every time she had to get in her car and leave, and it certainly wasn’t Piper that she ached to see every morning over coffee. “Yeah, I think. Passed out is probably a better way of putting it.” Torrance took the steaming mug Damon held out toward her. “You shouldn’t drink coffee this late,” he said, scooting over to make room for her to lean next to him—close but not too close. He’d been very cautious since their discussion about changing the nature of their relationship last Thursday. He’d even given her more physical space, in addition to the time she’d asked for, but he really shouldn’t have bothered. She was so hyper-aware of him, of how his bare, nearly hairless chest was starting to look like it belonged on a man, not a boy, of the way his faded blue pajama pants hung on his narrow hips. Hell, even his bare feet on the linoleum somehow managed to turn her on and she was never what she would have called a foot person. He could have been three miles away and she would still have been lusting after him, but also still entirely certain that she couldn’t act on her feelings. She’d already helped royally fuck up one Darren brother and she had promised herself that she wouldn’t make that same mistake again. Seeing Piper so totally out of control tonight had only reinforced her decision that it was best if she and Damon stayed good friends. Good friends didn’t break each other’s hearts or drive each other to develop life-threatening habits. “Then why did you make it for me?” Torrance cleared her throat and buried her nose in the French roast, doing her best to look anywhere but at the man standing next to her. 61
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“Because I know you like it. And I figured you’d need a little pick-me-up.” “You figured right.” Torrance sighed, wishing she had spent the last hour out here sipping coffee with Damon rather than trying to talk Piper down from an extreme case of paranoia. Seeing him raving about his jaw disintegrating and his teeth falling out had been one of her least favorite experiences with the man, and there had been several to choose from. “You didn’t have to do that, you know. We could have taken him to the ER and let them deal with it. Maybe we should have. We’re not doing him any good by facilitating this shit,” Damon said, the anger in his tone surprising her. She’d known he was worried, but she hadn’t realized how worried. “Damon, it’s never been this bad. I’m sure he’ll get it under control—” “Bullshit, Torrance. He’s not going to get it under control and I’m sick of pretending that him snorting his half of the mortgage payment up his nose every month is okay with me.” Damon slammed his cup down on the counter and started pacing around the small room. “Not to mention that I’m worried about his health. He might not give a damn, but he’s my brother and the only family I have left. I don’t like seeing him like this.” “I know, I don’t either,” Torrance said quietly, still desperately wishing they weren’t having this conversation. She’d been sure that Piper would cut back on his habit after their initial public performance, once he realized they could handle an audience more sophisticated than those of the tiny dive clubs they’d played for years. But he’d only gotten worse. Pretty soon there wasn’t going to be an option other than to confront him with the problem, and confront herself with her part in helping create the habit in the first place. “You could have fooled me.” Damon nailed her with one of those soul-deep looks that made her feel there was nowhere to hide. “What are you trying to say, Damon? I never acted like I approved of—” “But you never acted like you disapproved either, Torrance. You’ve always treated Piper with kid gloves. You let him push you further than any other person on the planet and still put up with his shit,” Damon said, slowly closing the distance between them. “That’s not true. I put him in his place when I need to.” “But not half as often as you should. What about tonight, onstage? Did you enjoy that crap he was pulling?” Damon now stood only a breath away, making her uncomfortable enough to put down her coffee and stand up straight, just to put a few extra inches between them. “That’s not the issue right now.” “So you did enjoy it?” Damon stepped impossibly closer until she could feel the heat of his skin on hers and had to lift her chin to keep looking into his eyes. “Stop it, Damon.” He knew perfectly well she hadn’t enjoyed the way Piper was touching her onstage tonight.
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But what the hell could she have done about it? They were in the middle of a show and she’d had a guitar in her hands. She couldn’t very well shove him off or tell him that rubbing up and down her back like a cat in heat wasn’t appropriate. In any case, the crowd had seemed to like it, so at least her discomfort wasn’t a total waste. “See there, you have no trouble keeping me in my place. Is that because you think I’m a soft touch, or because I don’t push you far enough?” Damon asked, a strange light in his eyes as he lowered his hands to the counter on either side of her body, trapping her in the circle of his arms. Torrance didn’t know how to answer that question. She was so thrown by the way Damon was acting she couldn’t even think of what to do next. Of course, it was incredibly hard to think when his bare chest was only inches from her face. The heat of his body touched her like a physical caress, and the smell of his skin made her feel more lightheaded than the whiskey and Coke she’d had earlier in the evening. She’d never wanted a man like this, never been so lost in pure desire that she felt dizzy with it, and knew her hands would be shaking if she took them away from the counter behind her. “Or are you still in love with him? Is that why you’ve been avoiding me all week?” Damon asked, the catch in his voice making her raise her eyes to his. “Of course not. Are you crazy?” Her lips parted and her nipples pulled tight inside her tank top as she got an up close and personal look at the heat in Damon’s gaze. Right now, he seemed the furthest thing from a boy. The look in his eyes was one hundred percent man and more than enough to make it almost impossible to breathe, impossible to keep from closing the final inches between them. “Then what is it? Why the soft spot for my brother?” “I don’t have a soft spot for—” “Don’t lie to me, Torrance. If you’re not going to give this thing between us a chance because of Piper, I deserve to know the reason. I know it’s not because you used to date in high school. You’re too smart to still feel guilty for being the first girl to break Piper’s heart. There have been plenty of others since then. You know Piper falls in love every other week.” “I’m not going to talk about this, Damon. Just let it go,” Torrance said, starting to get angry. What had happened between her and Piper was none of his business, not to mention the one thing she’d never told anyone, not even her parents or her sister. She wasn’t about to confess all to Damon tonight because he’d decided to pull some kind of tough guy routine. “I can’t let it go. Can’t you see that I’m crazy about you? I’ve been in love with you for years, Torrance, and it’s killing me that you won’t even—” “You’re only nineteen,” Torrance protested, trying to break out of the circle of his arms but finding Damon wasn’t budging. “This isn’t about how old I am.” His arm closed around her waist and pulled her to him.
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“Stop it,” Torrance begged, her entire body sizzling with awareness. She closed her eyes and fought the urge to arch closer to Damon, to wrap her arms around him and never let him go. “Look at me.” “I am looking at you.” Torrance opened her eyes and stared at his chest, refusing to risk another glance at Damon’s face. “Just tell me you aren’t interested in me, that you don’t feel how amazing it could be between us, and I’ll never mention it again.” Damon leaned down to try to catch her eyes, his lips brushing softly across the top of her head. “Damon, please,” Torrance said, not sure what she was asking for. Did she really want him to let her go? Or was she already too weak to resist the urge to discover how it would feel to kiss the lips she’d been fantasizing about for longer than she would ever admit? “Just say the words and this is over, Torrance,” Damon whispered. “What about the band, Damon? This is what we’ve worked so hard for—” “I don’t give a shit about the band.” Damon emphasized his words with a tight squeeze that brought her even closer to his body, close enough to feel the hard length of him pressing against her belly, and draw a small sound from the back of her throat. “That’s not true.” Torrance dropped her forehead onto his chest and prayed for the strength to resist taking what she wanted, screw the consequences. Sure, she felt responsible for Piper’s lousy mental state, to a certain degree. But she had her own regrets about the choices she’d made as a teenager and Piper never seemed to give a good goddamn how she felt. He had certainly never deferred his pleasure to spare her feelings. She couldn’t deny that she resented that, maybe more than she had realized until this exact moment. “No, it’s not true. I care about my brother, and you, and making music together. But if it came down to it, Torrance, if I had to choose you or this career, it wouldn’t even be something I’d have to think about.” Damon’s arms loosened around her and one hand moved gently beneath her chin, forcing her to tilt back her head and confront the truth that was so very clear in every line of his face. Torrance tried to think of what to say, how to respond to a kind of love she wasn’t even sure she deserved—especially since she’d done her best to paint him as a kid too young to know what he wanted or how he felt. But none of the words flying through her mind seemed right, not when she still couldn’t believe she’d almost missed this chance. After years of dating artists and musicians and wondering if she’d ever find a man who could understand her dedication to her music but also have his values in the right place, she couldn’t believe she’d nearly overlooked one of the few people she had ever met who felt the same way she did. Music and artistic goals were important things, but if they interfered with the chance to have a good life with a partner you loved—and maybe someday those two point four kids she secretly dreamed of—then there wasn’t any choice to be made. Love 64
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and family came first, everything else was just for kicks. Even if that meant giving up Tastes Like Chicken and making use of the music education degree she’d earned in college, she knew she wouldn’t regret the decision for a second. “Hey, Damon?” she asked, slowly lifting her arms to twine around his shoulders, the rightness of being in his arms no longer something she felt inclined to deny. “Yes?” The cautious note in his voice was accompanied by a decidedly wary expression. It seemed he was having as hard a time believing she’d finally come to her senses as she was, a state of being she was going to do her best to eliminate on a permanent basis. “I love you too.” “Jesus Christ, I can’t believe I’m hearing you say that. Say it again.” “I love you.” “With no ‘buts’?” The doubt finally ebbed away, leaving his big brown eyes shining with an exhilaration she couldn’t believe she was responsible for, but vowed to be worthy of inspiring. “No buts, let’s give this a try,” Torrance said, the smile stretching across her lips feeling more genuine than any had in years. She had a feeling her infamous cool wasn’t going to be making much of an appearance in the near future. How could you play it cool when you were so deliriously excited, so completely thrilled to be getting a chance at your biggest dream? “Even if Piper doesn’t like the idea?” “Piper’s a big boy and I think you’re right. We haven’t been helping him or the band by making excuses for why he acts like a dip shit.” A weight she hadn’t even realized she’d been carrying eased from her heart. Whatever had happened between her and Piper, it was the past. She had to move on and forgive herself. If he couldn’t do the same, that was his problem. She finally knew that her days of beating herself up for Piper’s mistakes and taking more than her fair share of abuse were over. “And here I thought I was going to have to seduce some sense into you,” Damon said, his eyes dark as the smile on his face grew just the slightest bit wicked. “So that was your plan?” Torrance teased, a few wicked thoughts racing through her own mind as she pressed her hips closer to where he was still hard for her. “I don’t know if it was so much a plan as a fantasy.” Damon’s eyes half closed as his hands smoothed down her back to cup the cheeks of her ass, pulling her into even more intimate contact with his cock. “You’ve been having fantasies about me?” Her breath was already shallow and the tightening in her belly left no doubt she would soon be helping a few of those fantasies make their way into reality. “Why, Torrance Abbot, are you flirting with me?” Damon asked with a quiet laugh and the softest brush of his lips against hers.
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“You wish.” Torrance smiled even as the pressure of his mouth on hers became more insistent and the tightening in her belly became a bona fide aching between her thighs. “I do wish, have wished.” Damon’s hand cupped her breast through her thin cotton top as his tongue met hers. “I’m not flirting, I’m propositioning.” Torrance moaned, digging her fingernails into the muscle of his back as he found her erect nipple and began to tease her flesh with the pad of his thumb. “I can’t wait to fuck you, Damon.” “God, Tor, you keep talking like that…” “And what? You’re going to fuck me right here, right against the counter with all the flamingos watching?” Torrance asked, amazed that their familiar teasing felt so right, even in the light of this very new dimension of their relationship. “I was thinking the couch in the living room, but if you want it right here, you know I live to please.” Damon unbuttoned the fly of her jeans and slid his hand down the front. Her breath caught and her body tensed as one of his long fingers smoothed down over her clit, teasing the erect nub for the barest moment before he delved into the well of heat between her legs. “Is this for me? Is your pussy this wet for me?” He groaned as two fingers started to stroke in and out of her, building the desire that had already grown to critical proportions. “It’s not for the flamingos.” Torrance struggled to keep standing with wobbly knees. For a nineteen-year-old, the boy certainly knew what to do with those fingers. She was already so close to the edge, more than ready to feel the thick bulge in his jeans pressing between her legs. “Let’s go to the couch, Damon. I want you inside me.” “Let me get something from the bathroom and—” “No, I want you bare. I’m on the Pill, and I’m clean.” Torrance moved her hands to the close of his jeans, dying to touch his skin, to feel the velvety softness she knew she would find covering his steely length. “I haven’t had sex in almost a year. I’m practically a born again virgin.” “Funny you should mention that word,” Damon said, a trace of uncertainty in his tone as he slowly withdrew his hand from between her legs and stilled her efforts at his zipper. “I hope it won’t be a problem, but I figure I should tell you before we take this where I really hope we’re still going to go.” “What word?” Torrance took his hand and pulled him toward the living room. Whatever was bothering him, she knew it wasn’t going to bother her and the sooner they got to the couch, the sooner he’d be inside her. She couldn’t wait to feel him filling the aching place between her legs. It was more than a physical craving, as much about the need to feel close to the man she loved as to find release while his cock was buried deep in her pussy. Though she had to admit, the cock buried in her pussy part was pretty high on her wish list at the moment.
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“I’m a virgin.” Damon didn’t sound ashamed, but the look in his eyes made it clear he’d had a few people give him a hard time for his sexless state. “Really?” Torrance asked, more than a little surprised. Damon dated and he’d even had a steady girlfriend for a few months last fall. Not to mention the fact that he was incredibly gorgeous, nearly twenty years old and had an innate sensuality that drew as much female attention as Piper’s blatant flirtation. “I’ve had a few opportunities, but I wanted it to be with someone special.” Damon’s eyes were soft as he reached out and took the bottom of her tank top in his hands and pulled it over her head in one smooth motion. “I wanted it to be with you, but I never dreamed I’d get this lucky.” “I really love you.” Tears unexpectedly filled her eyes as she moved into his arms, holding him close, relishing the feel of their bare skin against each other. “So I guess this means you don’t mind,” he said with a quiet laugh, his eyes a little shiny as he cupped her face and gave her a sweet kiss that very quickly turned into something hotter. “Of course I don’t mind, I’m flattered. I’ve never been anyone’s first.” Torrance helped Damon undo her pants and wiggle her jeans to the floor, unbelievably thrilled to be standing in front of him in nothing but her smallest pair of briefs. “But I may not last long the first time if there’s anything to those virgin myths,” he warned, shucking his own pajama pants and boxers before hooking his hands over the band of her panties and tugging them to her ankles. His sound of appreciation as he uncovered her thatch of curls was enough to convince her she might not last long either. She was already so wet and ready, her clit standing at attention, begging for any part of him to touch her where she ached to be touched. “That’s all right, I’ll give you a second chance,” Torrance said, her tone husky and deep, by far the sexiest sound to ever come out of her mouth. With a shiver, she stepped out of her discarded underwear and closed the distance between them, taking his cock in her hand, marveling at the long, hard length of him. God, he was beautiful, and hers, all hers. For the first time, she sort of understood the way some men got all puffed up about taking a woman’s virginity. It was thrilling to think no other woman had ever felt Damon sliding inside her, and a part of Torrance wished it was her first time too. Not that two virgins was a recipe for pleasure, but she already knew that coming together with this man was going to be the first time her heart was properly involved. It almost made sense that it would be the first time for her body as well. “What about a third and a fourth? Your hand feels so amazing, I can’t even imagine what it’s going to feel like to be inside you.” He sucked in a deep breath and brought his hands to her breasts, quickly taking her to the edge simply from the feel of his rough fingers on her sensitive tips. “And a fifth and sixth, but we may need to get a little sleep before morning,” Torrance teased as they tumbled onto the couch and Damon rolled her beneath him,
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settling between her thighs with an assurance that had her entire body humming. He might technically be a virgin, but the way he touched her told of a great many close calls and a lot of practice driving women completely mad with his touch. “Sleep is overrated, that’s why I made the caffeinated coffee.” Damon positioned the head of his cock at her entry and pushed slowly inside her tight, wet heat. “You are a scheming, evil man,” Torrance gasped quietly, unable to believe how perfectly he filled her, or how close she was to finding release simply from feeling Damon inside her. “Who is no longer a virgin.” The same wonder she felt was clear in his eyes as he started to move slowly, reverently inside her, finally teaching her what it felt like to make love to a man. He was right about the first time, he didn’t last that long. But the second time, Torrance came twice before he spilled himself with a cry inside of her. By the third time, she was begging him to come, wild to feel the unique thrill of driving him beyond control, to relish the pulse of his cock deep in her pussy, the sounds he made, the words he whispered in her ear as they collapsed on the couch in a pile of sweaty, satisfied flesh. And by the fourth time… “How many times did I come?” Torrance let Damon lift her into his arms and aim them both toward the bedroom. They had agreed to tell Piper about their decision to be more than friends in the morning, as well as demand he do what was best for the band and himself by getting help. But it would have been a little tacky for him to learn the new nature of their relationship by finding them naked on the living room couch, so Damon had called a time-out for relocation before they decided if they were up for round five. As sated as she felt at the moment, Torrance couldn’t imagine another pouncing session in the near future, but she’d felt the same way before rounds three and four, so she wasn’t going to place bets either way. “I think three, but I kind of blacked out for a few minutes, so I can’t be sure,” Damon said with a little laugh. “Me too. I’ve never felt anything like that before.” Torrance snuggled deeper into his arms, relishing the smell of their joining lingering in the air around them. It would probably be wise to hop in the shower before they hit Damon’s old futon, but right now she felt too weak to walk, let alone shower, and was enjoying the decadent scent of their lovemaking far too much to want to wash it away. “I’ve never even imagined something like that was possible. You’ve thoroughly ruined me for all other women.” Damon’s arms tightened around her possessively. “I hope so, but you’d probably feel kind of lame by the time you were forty if you’d only slept with one woman in your entire life,” Torrance said with a giggle, a sound she hadn’t heard coming from her body since she was twelve. The boy did something to her, something that might interfere with her hip factor, but made her happier than she’d felt in a very long time.
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“I doubt it, not if that woman was you.” His sincerity made Torrance’s heart hurt a little bit, in the good way. “You’re a cheesy bastard.” She planted a soft kiss on his lips as he lowered her to the bed. “That’s not true, I know exactly who my father was.” He crawled in beside her and flicked off the bedside light, and Torrance immediately moved into his arms. Her eyes grew heavy as soon as her head hit his chest and she tuned in to the steady thump of his heart. She never would have dreamed they’d fit together so perfectly, that lying in his arms would be the most comforting thing she’d ever known, but she was inexplicably grateful. “Mr. Mike was a good one.” “He was, one of the best,” Damon said, his voice filled with a sad acceptance. Piper and Damon’s parents had been killed in a car wreck when Damon was only fifteen. Piper rarely mentioned his mother or father, but Damon had come to the point that he could share his memories of his parents with an easy fondness. Torrance couldn’t imagine what she would have done without her mom and dad. She admired the way Damon had made peace with his loss. “I wonder if he and your mom would have approved?” Torrance asked, thinking of the warm, loving couple she had known since she was old enough to ride her bike without training wheels and had crash landed in their driveway. Caroline and Mike Darren had taken her inside to bandage her knees and introduced her to their sons, eight-year-old Piper and five-year-old Damon, who soon became her constant companions. The Darrens had been thrilled when she and Piper started dating in their sophomore year of high school, but the accident came several months before their hellish breakup. That was another thing that made Torrance’s decision all those years ago so much harder. She had felt so guilty for taking away what Piper saw as his chance for a new family, but she’d been so young, too young to decide on a forever with Piper or feel ready to be a mom. Torrance felt a little chill dance over her skin as she realized she would have to tell Damon the truth sooner or later. It was ancient history, but he deserved to know that she’d nearly made him an aunt all those years ago. If they were going to try to take this thing between them as far as they could go, she had to be completely honest about anything that might have the potential to damage their future. She’d been with enough liars to know that she didn’t want to be one, but considering the clock by the bed showed nearly five in the morning, she figured that was a conversation that could wait for another time. “They loved you, you know they did. And they’d be happy to see me so happy. You’re the only one for me, Tor, I hope you know that,” Damon said, pulling her closer and planting a kiss on her head. “I do. You’re crazy and I probably am too, but I do.”
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“I’m not crazy. I just don’t see the need for quantity when I have such quality.” “Is this the same man who just finished fucking me for the fourth time in less than three hours?” Torrance teased, a smile on her face. “You know what I mean, but that does bring up an interesting question.” “What’s that?” Torrance asked, twining her fingers through the hand Damon offered. “Do you think you’re up for round five?” He laid her palm on his cock, once again as hard and thick as it had been ten minutes ago. “I’m definitely going to have to quit smoking if I’m going to keep up with you,” Torrance laughed as Damon pulled her on top of him, her laugh quickly turning to a sigh of pleasure as he filled her completely, reaching every empty place in her body and her heart, completing her as perfectly as he would—hopefully—continue to do for a long lifetime to come.
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Chapter Eleven “Answer the phone, damn it.” Mandy stalked the area outside the stage door, willing someone, anyone, to pick up their cell and press the green goddamn button. “Shit,” she cursed as Torrance’s away message clicked on for the tenth time. Where in the hell were they? If one or all of them weren’t lying on the side of road, bleeding from head wounds, then the entire band was in deep trouble. Mandy couldn’t remember the last time she’d been this angry and knew if she hadn’t been wearing open-toed sandals, she would have kicked something—hard. “We’ve only got ten minutes to call time, Miller. I’m going to let the closing band go first and give them a heads-up for a possible second set.” Will’s usually friendly face showed his annoyance. “I understand, and I’m so sorry, Will. I’ll keep trying to track them down, but I can’t make any promises,” Mandy said, completely ashamed of herself. Sure, she was there on time. But if she couldn’t be counted on to bring her talent with her, could she really call herself a successful manager? The band’s vanishing act was going to ruin any chances of them being invited back to play Paloma’s, not to mention severely hinder her ability to book other gigs. Austin was a small town when it came to the music industry, and word would get around that Tastes Like Chicken wasn’t a reliable booking. She would be lucky to get them a Monday night, late night appearance at one of the local coffeehouses playing for stale pastries and mocha lattes, even after the good press following their first two performances. Not to mention that her own ability to land other clients would be impacted. If her first, and presently only, clients came away from their first high profile booking with a bad reputation, their manager would be held at least partially accountable. “Don’t apologize, just get ’em here,” Will said with a friendly squeeze of her shoulder. “Think where they might have run off to, and make sure they’re here by ten after and we won’t mention this to anyone.” “Thanks, will do,” Mandy said with a small smile, though Will’s assurance didn’t make her feel as optimistic as it should have. She had already called each band member’s cell phone, Torrance’s apartment, Piper and Damon’s home phone, the practice studio and every single restaurant or bar she had ever known the trio to frequent. She had even managed to track down Torrance’s parents’ home phone, but unfortunately, other than scaring her mom half to death, she hadn’t accomplished anything during that ten-minute chat. Short of calling all the local hospitals and maybe the police station just in case, god forbid, one of them had been seriously hurt or arrested, she was out of options. 71
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“See you inside.” Will opened the stage door just as Joe emerged from the building, anger and frustration mixed on his own face. “Will, the sound booth needs to talk to you about the change in the schedule,” Joe said, his tone tight and his irritation abundantly clear. Will nodded and disappeared into the darkened backstage area, leaving Mandy alone with the man who had made the past week one of the best in her entire life. They had spent just about every waking and sleeping moment together. She couldn’t remember ever being happier. She already had her own toothbrush and clothes drawer at his apartment, and had slept over at his place six out of the past seven nights. On the seventh, they had been out at a restaurant near her apartment, so he had stayed with her. They’d been getting along so perfectly that Mandy couldn’t wait for the six-month lease on her apartment to expire in June. Joe had already issued the cohabitation invitation and she couldn’t imagine anything that would make her less than thrilled to share his bed and his life. Unfortunately, she hadn’t anticipated a disagreement of the professional sort. If Joe raked her over the coals for her failure to keep her band in line, would she still feel the same way about him? Sure, a part of her felt she deserved a little raking, but the very fact that Joe had been so wonderful in every other aspect of their relationship made her reluctant to settle for anything less than the complete package. In her mind, that meant that the man in her life was supportive and in her corner even when circumstances weren’t ideal. If Joe couldn’t see that she had tried her best to honor her commitments and behave professionally, then she knew her enthusiasm for their future would be affected. “What’s up, Joe?” she asked, breaking the silence. The way he was standing—with his hands fisted on his hips, staring at the ground in front of her like the very concrete near her feet offended him—was starting to make her nervous. “This is bullshit, Mandy.” Joe brushed past her and stalked down the alley. He still refused to look at her, keeping his eyes glued to where the brick walls gave way to the main street as if he expected the band to appear at any second, simply because he willed it to happen. They were both stubborn, no doubt about it, and Mandy felt her head start to pound a little harder as she wondered if they were getting ready to have the fight to end all fights. If there was one thing that could make this night any worse, that would be it. “I’m sorry.” Mandy took a deep breath and tried to steady herself, to pretend that his censure didn’t hurt as much as it did. “Everything seemed fine at practice yesterday and I spoke with them this afternoon. I understand that you’re frustrated with me, but—” “Are you crazy?” Joe turned back to her with a softness in his eyes, his frustration melting away as he closed the distance between them. “I know you’re on top of everything. You’re one of the most professional people I know. I’m just frustrated for you. I wish those kids were here so I could give them a kick in the ass, help them get their heads on straight.” 72
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“Really? You’re not angry with me?” Mandy asked, sinking into his arms, though a part of her still couldn’t believe he’d said what she thought he’d said. But then she had that problem a lot with Joe. He was just too perfect, possessing every quality she had ever dreamed of finding in a lover or a life partner. Sometimes it was hard to believe her own good fortune. “Why would I be angry with you?” Joe asked, the honest confusion clear on his face. “Because my band isn’t here?” “You’re here, and those three are old enough to be held accountable for being where they’re supposed to be, when they’re supposed to be there.” “Okay, true, but maybe you should be mad. Honestly, I anticipated there being a problem with Piper and I should have done more to head it off at the pass,” Mandy said, voicing aloud what was bothering her the most. She’d had a bad feeling about Piper after last Thursday’s show. He had obviously been fucked up to an unacceptable degree during the performance, and she should have done more than make sure he got home safe. She should have told him that he had to get control of his drug problem before he put his career and his life in jeopardy. But between Torrance’s response to her concerns and her obvious distraction with a certain club owner, she had let the Piper situation slide. Now she was paying for it. “What could you have done? Piper is who he is. You knew you were taking a chance when you agreed to work with the band in the first place,” Joe said with a casual shrug. “Well thanks, but that really doesn’t make me feel any better.” Just because what he said was true didn’t mean she had to like it or to particularly care for the fact that he didn’t mind rubbing her risky decision in her face. “I’m not trying to make you feel better—” “Screw you too,” Mandy said, starting to rethink her opinion of Mr. Perfect. “Hey, I’m not trying to make you feel worse either.” Joe held her tight when she would have pulled away. “Unfortunately, people like Piper are one of the realities of this business. It may be cliché, but a lot of talented musicians have problems with drugs, or alcohol, or women, or a combination of all three. You can do your best to help them keep it under control, but in the end, keeping their shit together is their responsibility.” “So you don’t think my career as a manager is over?” “No way. I don’t even think the band’s career is over. Torrance and Damon are in a good place. If you can get Piper under control, you’ll have a great band. They’re really, really talented and I’m willing to do my part to make sure this situation is chalked up to unavoidable circumstances.” “You would do that?” “I think people deserve second chances.”
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“But what if I can’t handle Piper?” Mandy was beginning to think she wasn’t up to the drug counseling aspect of this job. She could wear a lot of hats without feeling overwhelmed, but when it came to making sure someone didn’t kill themselves or someone else with their reckless behavior, she would rather let someone else handle the job. “If you can’t get Piper under control, you could always find another front man or woman for the band. They’re easier to come by than—” “I don’t know if Damon and Torrance would go for that. Damon’s his brother and Torrance is incredibly loyal to Piper…for some strange reason I can’t begin to understand.” “Then you can find another band or bands to manage. I can help you connect with a few people. I rarely produce anymore, but I still know who to talk to if you want to find some hot, unrepresented talent.” “You mentioned that before. I guess…I don’t know. It would feel like I was abandoning them at a crucial time if I started getting too active with soliciting other bands right now,” Mandy said, unable to believe he was making his generous offer for a second time. The first time he’d mentioned putting her in touch with Austin’s music elite, she had half assumed he was kidding. She knew he cared for her, but found it amazing that he was ready to risk his reputation by helping her out. She believed in herself and he obviously did too, but she had yet to prove herself and it looked like her first client was going to crash and burn before they fulfilled their first significant performance obligation. “Listen, I know you’ve got a big heart and you care about these kids, but you’ve got to think about what’s best for yourself first. Not to get preachy, but you’re in a better position to help others if you can get your own career in a solid place,” Joe said, throwing her with how quickly he had come to the root of her problem. She always cared too much. Whether it was business or pleasure, she had a bad habit of letting emotion cloud her good judgment. And while she’d made a concentrated attempt to look at Joe and her feelings for him from a different angle, she hadn’t tried nearly as hard to shine the cold light of logic on her only clients. “You’re right. When you’re right, you’re right,” Mandy said with a sigh. “There’s something a man doesn’t hear from a woman too often,” he teased with a smile she knew was meant to cheer her up. “Oh please. I’m perfectly willing to admit that, on rare occasion, the penis-owning members of the population have something worthwhile to say.” She tried to mimic his light tone but failed miserably. She still felt too horrible about the way it looked like this night was going to go down. She hated to see what she and the band members had all worked so hard for slip through their fingers. “It’s okay, Mandy, it’s not the end of the world.” “I still feel like I could have done more.” 74
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“Maybe you could have, and next time you will. But for now, give yourself a break.” He held her close and dropped a quick kiss on the top of her head. “Yeah, yeah, but I’m not telling you you’re right again.” Mandy wrapped her arms around Joe’s waist, glad he had been honest with her about his opinion of her situation. Though it might not have been the easiest pill to swallow, she was grateful for his input and found that the conversation made her trust him even more. It was nice to know that he wasn’t just telling her what she wanted to hear, that he wasn’t afraid to offend her a little if that was what it took to help her figure out a problem. “I wouldn’t expect—” Joe was interrupted by a furious buzzing from the left front pocket of his pants. “Vibrate mode, kinky,” Mandy joked, actually starting to feel a little better. Joe was right. She had busted her ass and done the best job she knew how to do at the time. She would learn from experience, try to keep from making the same mistakes again, and that’s all she could really ask of herself. The present situation was out of her hands. “You’re the kinkiest responsible person I’ve ever met. Don’t mess with me, woman.” Joe pulled out his cell phone with an evil wink that made a rush of awareness sweep over her skin. “You haven’t even seen kinky yet, Paloma. Just wait until you see what I’m almost not wearing under this dress.” Her naughty grin transformed to a full-fledged laugh as Joe’s eyes grew wide and he made a half-hearted attempt to slide his hand up her thigh as he flipped open his phone. “Paloma.” His face sobered quickly, however, as the person on the other end began to speak. “What is it? What’s wrong?” Mandy asked, anxiety immediately tying her stomach in knots. Whether it was manager’s intuition or just an unlucky guess, she knew whoever was on the end of the line was handing out some bad news involving someone from her one and only band. “Okay.” Joe held up a hand, asking her with his eyes to wait just a second. “I’ll send my own personal attorney down to the station to sort this out, but you two need to get to the club as soon as possible.” “What?” Mandy hissed, unable to believe that her hunch about calling the police station might have actually proved worthwhile. “Yes, I’m serious. Good, we’ll see you in twenty minutes.” Joe snapped the cell phone shut with a thoughtful, yet annoyingly calm, look on his face. “What happened? If you don’t tell me in the next ten seconds, I’m going to spontaneously combust.” Mandy grabbed Joe’s hand and squeezed a whole lot harder than she’d planned before she abruptly released him. Obviously she didn’t know her own strength when channeling this much adrenaline. “You’re not going to believe it when I tell you.” “Just tell me!”
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“Torrance was arrested for cocaine possession with intent to distribute.” “What?! That’s ridiculous. She doesn’t use drugs, I’d bet my rent money on it,” Mandy said, anger suddenly coursing through her system. There was only one person who could have managed to get Torrance in this kind of trouble. And letting someone else take the blame for his stash or whatever the hell had happened was the only thing that could make her angrier than she was already. Thank god Piper wasn’t in front of her right now or, open-toed sandals or no, he’d be getting her most vicious kick right where it would hurt him most. “They haven’t decided to press charges, so there might still be some way out of it, but Torrance shouldn’t try to handle this without an attorney.” “I can’t believe this. You know it has to be Piper’s. He’s the only one of the three of them that I’ve ever seen out of control. Torrance has never had more than one or two drinks at the bar after their set. I can’t see her carrying around enough coke to get arrested for possession with intent.” “I agree, and maybe I’ll be able to convince the little son of a bitch to come forward. I’ll have a little talk with him tonight. The state of Texas doesn’t fuck around when it comes to drug possession. They send people away for twenty years to life.” “Not if it’s someone’s first offense.” “I’m not trying to scare you, but yeah, I’ve heard of it happening before.” “Shit,” Mandy said, a horrible sinking feeling in her stomach. She’d had no idea the arrest was this serious. The idea that Torrance might actually go to prison made her wish more than anything that she could go back in time to that day in the park and convince the other woman to address Piper’s problem before it was too late. “Don’t worry, I’m going to go call my attorney. She’s one of the best in the state and I’m sure she’ll be able to help Torrance. Just get ready to deal with the brothers. They go on in thirty minutes,” Joe said, turning back to the stage door. “Wait a second. I know you told them to come here, but you don’t really expect them to play, do you?” Mandy wondered if she’d missed something while her mind struggled to assimilate the depth of the shit Torrance was presently in. “Yeah, they’re going to play. They have an obligation and they’re going to fulfill it.” The tone in his voice suddenly made her wonder what kind of father he would be. Hard ass, but fair, she would guess, the kind of dad who wasn’t afraid to set limits to protect his kids and exactly the kind of father she had wished for when she was growing up. “Listen, Joe, I appreciate the point you’re trying to make and I think you’re going to be an amazing dad someday, you already have the voice down and everything, but—” “Really? I’m glad you think so, because I’ve been meaning to ask you how many kids you think we should shoot for.” Joe turned back to her with that little-boy-aboutto-get-his-Christmas-presents look that had made her start to fall so hard for him just a few unbelievably short weeks before. “You’re not serious.”
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“You know I am.” “Yeah…I do, I know you are.” Mandy suddenly found it hard to breathe. “And I think I could be persuaded to answer that question, but it’s a little overwhelming right now.” “Understandable,” Joe said, then added with a wicked smile. “Just tell me, more or less than three?” “I don’t know, maybe exactly three?” “Good answer. We don’t want to be too outnumbered.” Joe winked one of his heartbreaker blue eyes at her before he opened the door and disappeared into the club. “But, but…I don’t have a bass player,” Mandy said to the closed door, finally remembering the point she’d been trying to make before Joe had knocked her feet out from under her. Had he really just popped the “how many munchkins” question? She knew how she felt about him and how he obviously felt about her, but secretly believing you were going to take a relationship all the way and having your significant other directly ask you how many kids you wanted were entirely different things. Jesus Christ, he wanted kids with her! He wanted the happily ever after, ’til death do you part, grow old and slightly paunchy together life that, only a few months ago, she hadn’t believed was a possibility with someone so exciting. “Hey, Mandy.” Joe popped his head out the door. “What?” she asked, her voice soft. “Is it wrong that the idea of having kids makes me horny as hell?” “I don’t think so. I mean, they call it making babies for a reason.” “No, I don’t mean making babies, I mean the idea of you being the mother of my kids, of having a family. It turns me on,” he said with a wide grin, showing off his weirdly sexy teeth. “It turns me on too,” Mandy laughed, unable to deny the pulsing that had started between her legs when she thought of starting a brood of little Palomas. “So at least we’re both perverts. Okay, I’m really going to call my lawyer this time.” Then he disappeared again, leaving Mandy ridiculously turned on and still at a loss as to how her band was supposed to perform without at least one of their members— maybe two if she gave in to the urge to strangle Piper. There was no way she would be able to find a replacement bass player in the next half hour. Austin was overflowing with quality musicians, but she didn’t know the scene that well yet, didn’t have the connections that would help her locate the right person in the shortest amount of time. “Damn it,” Mandy said, whipping out her own cell. She could try to ask Joe if he knew anyone who might step in last minute, but she had a feeling he wanted the Darren brothers to suffer a little bit, to learn a bought lesson about the importance of taking care of each other and sticking together as a band. Personally, she would rather their music not sound like shit and give them a bought 77
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lesson of her own after the show. But that meant she had to find a bass player and find them fast, and there was only one man in the world who might be able to help her make that happen. Mandy drew in a deep breath as she typed in the California number, suddenly awash in the complicated emotions that never failed to surface when she got ready to converse with her only parent. She’d spoken with her father a little over a month ago and sent him Tastes Like Chicken’s demo tape—more as a meager attempt at daughterly bonding than to ask for his advice—but she hadn’t gone out of her way to nurture the father/daughter relationship they’d been working on before she left L.A. Still, she had a feeling he would do his best to help her, because he was her dad and, despite his rather lackluster performance in the role earlier in her life, he did love her. He really did. For the first time in a hell of a long time, she finally felt ready to admit that truth, as well as the challenge it presented. By the time Edmond Miller’s familiar voice picked up on the second ring, she had acknowledged that her old man was long overdue for a real second chance. “Hey, Dad, it’s me,” Mandy said, calling him something other than Edmond for the first time in years. It was a little scary, but it felt good. It was long past time to mend this particular fence, especially if she planned to ask her old man to walk her down the aisle in the near future. If Joe thought she was going to start making babies before they tied the knot, then he had another thing coming. She might skip wearing underwear on occasion and have sex in parking lots, but she wasn’t that unconventional.
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Chapter Twelve “It’s going to be fine,” Joe whispered into Mandy’s hair, which seemed even wilder tonight, as if it were responding to her tension by curling even further out of control. Joe loved the way the black curls frothed around her face with a life of their own, couldn’t resist burying his face in them at every opportunity and found that even the slightest brush of his hand through the soft tendrils had him hard and ready. But what else was new? He spent the better part of his time with the woman in a fully erect state, his cock aching to be buried inside her even if they’d only finished making love a few hours ago. He was becoming a certifiable sex fiend, but thankfully she seemed equally insatiable, instigating their encounters as often as he did. “I don’t want it to just be fine, I want it to be very good.” Mandy’s knee jogged up and down as she nibbled the tips of her fingers, more nervous than he had ever seen her. It was almost enough to make him wish that he hadn’t insisted the Darren brothers take the stage. He had believed they deserved to learn a lesson, but not at the price of Mandy’s sanity. “Are you sure you don’t want a drink?” Joe asked, already motioning to one of the cocktail waitresses working the intimate clutch of tables at the back of the club where he and Mandy had made a habit of sitting. “No, I want to be completely sober when I rip Piper a new asshole.” “I thought I was going to get that job.” “I think I should do it. If I ever want him to respect me, I have to do the ripping.” “I don’t think one glass of wine would interfere with your ripping ability.” “It might. Wine makes me mellow and I don’t want to be mellow,” Mandy said, her nervous fidgeting increasing as the lights dimmed in the main part of the bar and Candy, the announcer in the sound booth, welcomed Tastes Like Chicken to the stage. “Don’t think there’s any danger of that,” Joe muttered to himself, sending the waitress who was working her way over away with a small wave. “Oh my god, I’m going to throw up. This is going to be bad, this is going to be very bad,” Mandy muttered, the tension in her voice enough to make his own throat tight. “You’re not going to throw up. I’m telling you, they’re going to make this work.” Joe patted her hand, deciding it was best not to offer his complete opinion. If it had been his judgment call, he would have sent the two boys out onstage alone. The sound might have been a little different, but they would have managed. Throwing an untried bass player up there who had only had ten minutes to talk over the set with a very agitated Piper and an almost completely closed-lipped Damon was a much bigger gamble. But Mandy had seemed confidant that whoever had recommended the 79
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guy knew what they were doing. For her sake, he hoped so. She was so hard on herself, she’d no doubt take the responsibility for any failure entirely on her own shoulders. “Shit, shit, shit,” Mandy chanted under her breath while her stomach actually growled loud enough for him to hear it over the sound of the crowd welcoming the band to the stage. “Are you really going to throw up? Do you need me to find you a plant?” Joe asked, only half kidding. “You promised never to mention that again, you asshat.” “Asshat?” Joe laughed, glad that his teasing had at least succeeding in helping her look a little less pale. For a second there, he’d really thought they were going to have to make a run to the bathroom. “You are a big old bastard asshat, and I’m going to rip you a new one right after I finish ripping Piper a new one.” Mandy gave him a smack on the leg that wasn’t entirely painless, reminding him of the night they’d spent taking turns with a pair of handcuffs and riding crop. Mandy had enjoyed their spanking play so much she’d wanted to experiment, but by the time they were done, Joe had been sporting the most red welts on his ass. Not that he’d minded, of course. The entire experience had turned him on more than he could have ever imagined and he couldn’t wait to see what they thought up to play with next. “Do you think we’ll still be as wild when we have a rugrat or two running around?” Joe asked, taking Mandy’s hand and bringing it to his lips. “I would imagine so.” “But we might be too tired to be as wild as often. My brother has two little girls, says they wear him out more than riding a full day at the ranch.” He kissed the center of her palm before giving in to the urge to nibble the flesh just below her thumb. “You’re thinking about Wednesday night, aren’t you?” “Whatever gave you that idea?” “You’re biting me,” Mandy said, “and it’s not entirely painless.” Joe laughed and dropped her hand, stealing a quick kiss as the band started to play. They had joked the night of the riding crop that neither one of them wanted to experiment with pain, but that something “not entirely painless” might be interesting. He loved that she had remembered, that they already had private jokes after such a short amount of time. Hell, he just loved her, fell a little deeper every morning he woke up with her on the other side of the bed. He knew letting himself fall for Mandy was the smartest thing he’d ever done. He’d never felt this way about anyone, even his ex, and he couldn’t believe he’d thought he’d known what love felt like before the woman next to him walked into his life.
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“Oh my god, they sound really good.” Mandy smiled as she wrapped one arm around his neck and pulled him to her for another kiss, one that ended with a bite on his lower lip. “They do sound good,” Joe seconded, deepening the kiss, tracing the seam of her lips with his tongue. “No tongue in public. It’s in bad taste.” She giggled, meeting his tongue with hers despite her protest. “I think you taste pretty good.” “You are such a dork,” Mandy said, a smile on her lips as their mouths met again. “I embrace that aspect of my personality, which makes me even sexier. Right?” “Absolutely.” Then she gave him one of those special smiles, the ones that let him know she was as smitten as he was. “If I didn’t know you would say no, I’d try to lure you back to my office right now.” Joe ran his hand up her bare thigh, wishing he could keep going under her little red and black striped dress until he found out exactly what she was—or wasn’t—wearing under there tonight. With Mandy, you could never tell. It was one of the more outrageous aspects of the grounded woman that drove him absolutely insane with lust. “You’re right, I would say no.” Her expression sobered even though she shifted her chair closer to his to give him easier access to her thigh. “They sound really good so far, but I’m too nervous to hear how the rest of the set goes. Besides, I feel kind of guilty being so happy when things are such a mess.” “It’s going to be okay. Torrance should be meeting with my attorney right now and we’ll talk to Piper together after the performance. If I speak with Angela and the police haven’t agreed to drop the charges, then we’ll do our best to convince him to take responsibility for his part in this, whatever that might be.” “I’m sure he played a pretty significant part. Damon gave him that black eye and I can’t see that happening unless he more than deserved it.” Mandy looked to the stage where Piper, black eye more than obvious even from a distance, was still performing one of the best sets of his life. The kid obviously thrived on a certain degree of drama, a characteristic that reminded him of his ex-wife and made Joe thank god he was building a relationship that thrived on a healthier kind of passion. “I don’t know, I think there’s something more going on there. They seemed unusually hostile when I picked you up from practice on Tuesday.” “Maybe a little, but they’ve always had a certain amount of hostility between them. It’s one of the things that bothered me most about the band in the very beginning. I know siblings fight, but I always wanted a brother or sister so badly that I couldn’t imagine letting a relationship deteriorate to that point. But then I guess…” “What’s wrong?” Joe asked, wondering at the thoughtful expression on her face. “I talked to my dad tonight.”
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“And how was that?” Joe asked, moving his hand from her thigh to rest lightly around her shoulders, allowing his touch to become more comforting than sexual. She hadn’t told him much about her family life, only that her mom had abandoned her when she was three and that her dad hadn’t been around most of her childhood because he traveled a lot with his work. That had been about the sum total of her familial revelations, but it was enough for Joe to get a clear picture of what a lonely little kid she had been, and that her relationship with her dad still wasn’t the ideal father/daughter bond. “It was strangely good. We had a nice talk. I think I finally realized that I was at least partly to blame for a lot of our problems. I’m not a kid anymore and he’s not the jerk he used to be, so it seems silly to keep treating him the same way.” “So you’re ready to give him another chance?” “Yeah. I actually invited him to come out and visit if he wants,” Mandy said, shooting him an anxious look and resuming her nervous knee-bouncing under the table. “That’s great, he can stay at my place. I’ve got the extra bedroom. As long as he doesn’t mind his daughter and I sleeping in the same bed together, then—” “He won’t mind.” Mandy cut him off with an awkward laugh. “You never know.” His parents still didn’t allow unmarried couples to sleep together under their roof. Joe had brought his ex down for her first and only visit a few months after they were engaged and she’d bitched endlessly about the hypocrisy of being forced to sleep in the guest room. He’d assured her they would be able to sleep together after the wedding, but that he respected his parents’ values and wasn’t going to fight with them about something that would be a non-issue in a few months. It had turned out to be a complete non-issue, since Hope hadn’t gotten on with either of his parents and had refused to accompany him on any other visits. To this day, he had yet to have the experience of sleeping in his childhood room with a woman, but he hoped he might be able to change that before his next trip. If Mandy was letting him talk kids, she had to be thinking in the same direction he was. He’d wait a few more weeks, maybe a month or two if he really wanted to give himself an exercise in restraint, but he knew he’d be popping the question before too much longer. Screw convention, he was too in love to give half a shit. “You don’t know my dad. He’s…different.” “My mom and dad only speak Spanish. That’s fairly different,” Joe said, not adding the fact that it had driven his ex-wife absolutely crazy. He knew Mandy would never treat his parents like inferior beings simply because they couldn’t communicate in English, but he suddenly felt the need to get the information out in the open. “I speak Spanish.” Mandy shot him a weird look before she laughed and leaned over to give him a kiss.
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“What was that for?” “I love you so much, feel so comfortable with you, that sometimes I forget we don’t know everything there is to know about each other.” “Me too, but I can’t believe you didn’t let me in on that little secret sooner. Here I’ve been thinking you didn’t understand those things I say when we’re in bed and you make me forget how to speak English.” “I think I would have understood them even if I didn’t speak Spanish.” Mandy’s eyes darkened with that wicked look she got sometimes. That look never failed to make him wonder how he had gotten to be such a lucky bastard, to have the privilege of being with a woman so sweetly sinful. “Any other secrets I should know?” Joe asked, really wishing they would have the chance to be alone later. He always lusted after Mandy, but since their little discussion outside, he’d been turned on to a ridiculous degree, his body obviously ready to start baby making as soon as humanly possible. “I speak a little French and some Portuguese too. My mother was from Brazil. I think she might live there now.” The desire vanished from her eyes as quickly as it had appeared, though whether it was the mention of her mother or something else, he couldn’t be sure. And it didn’t look like he was going to have the chance to find out. “What the hell?” Mandy asked, her attention flying back to the stage as the constant, steadying sound of the drumbeat suddenly vanished. It left the song the band was playing hanging in mid-air, something breakable that could smash into the ground and shatter into a million pieces. The crowd murmured as Damon calmly stood, placed his sticks on the stool where he’d been sitting and walked off the stage. The lead guitar and bass continued to play, but Piper faltered as he turned to watch his brother leave, the expression on his face one of pure shock. The new bass player, an older man probably closer to fifty than forty, though he had a rock look that made you wonder, just shook his head, as if he couldn’t believe he’d landed in the middle of such a steaming pile of shit. “I can’t believe this, I can’t believe he just walked off.” Mandy’s eyes were wide and her hands held up in front of her as if she could somehow manage to stop the disaster with the defensive gesture. Joe bolted from his chair and headed back to the sound booth, wondering how in the hell he was going to explain the abrupt and very public dissolving of the band that half the people in the audience had come to see. Tastes Like Chicken had been one of the most popular debut bands to play at Paloma’s in years. He could freely admit that his motives for insisting they appear hadn’t been completely unselfish. Sure he wanted them to learn a lesson and feel justified in paying both them and their all-too-deserving manager the booking fee, but he also wanted to avoid disappointing around a hundred patrons who wouldn’t have been at his club tonight for any other reason.
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He’d nearly reached the door to the booth when he heard the two guitars starting to find their rhythm, and then Piper’s voice filled the room once more. Joe turned back to the stage, his jaw more than a little tight, still tensed to put a stop to the performance if he had to. But he was willing to wait just a little longer, to see if the two remaining musicians could make it through the rest of the set. He would guess they were only about three songs away from completing their forty-five minutes. If the crowd could be persuaded to stay with them, they still had a chance to keep from crashing and burning. “Joe, wait,” Mandy hissed, working her way through the tables to where he stood. The look in her eyes told him she was thinking exactly what he was, still hoping for a small miracle. Considering the two men had never played together before, the new bass player wasn’t familiar with the songs, and Piper was obviously going through some major emotional upheaval, it would indeed be miraculous if they managed to pull through the next five seconds let alone the rest of the set. Mandy stood at his side and laced her fingers through his, bringing both of their hands to her lips and muttering under her breath as she directed all her focus toward the stage. From the look on her face, he couldn’t tell if she was praying or making a list of all the ways she would make the Darren brothers pay for daring to fuck with her. Knowing Mandy, it was probably the latter. She was a sweetheart and he’d seen her spiritual side, but she wasn’t the type to pray about something so relatively minor in the greater scheme of things. “You’re going to kill them, aren’t you?” Joe asked, unable to keep from testing his theory. “I’m going to kill them until they’re almost dead, then let them heal so I can kill them again. I can’t believe this crap, and now I don’t know who’s pissed me off more, the younger one or the older one,” Mandy said, the words flying from her lips, though her gaze stayed glued to where Piper was still playing. “Remind me never to get you this pissed at me.” “Don’t ever cheat on me or lie to me or betray my trust and you don’t have to worry.” “Good to know, same here.” Joe wanted to pull her into his arms and give her a big hug, just to thank her for being who she was, a person who got it, got him, in a way he’d never imagined possible. “Are they getting better or is it just wishful thinking?” she asked, squeezing his hand. “They’re getting better, much better,” Joe assured her, some of the tension easing from his own body as he watched Piper’s focus come back to the music. Within a few minutes, he could almost feel the rest of the crowd relax, could see them start to respond to the music and not the interpersonal drama occurring on the stage. Piper was drawing them in, making them share his single-minded focus. The kid would never be one of his favorite people, but Joe had to admire his commitment, his ability to put aside the rest of his bullshit when it came time to do what he was best at.
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Despite his assurances to Mandy that she could find another front man or woman for the band, Piper would be a hard musician to replace. Not only was he talented, he had the kind of charisma that could make or break someone in the competitive music industry. “They’re actually going to survive this.” Mandy’s voice was filled with wonder as they finished the song and started in on another with the audience clearly behind them, cheering even more loudly than they had before Damon had left the stage. “They are.” “Good, I want them all to be alive and well when I make them wish they were dead,” she said, a little smile on her face that was practically scary. If the Darren brothers thought they were dealing with some pushover who would let them call the shots, they had been sadly, sadly mistaken. Joe smiled as he anticipated seeing his hellcat in action. He wouldn’t miss watching how she was going to handle those boys for anything in the world. She was going to be fierce, commanding, and he had no doubt that he’d be dying to fuck her by the time she was finished. But then again, what else was knew? “What are you laughing at?” Mandy asked, shooting him a suspicious look out of the corner of her eye. “Nothing, absolutely nothing.” “You behave or I’m not going to let you watch,” she said, an edge in her voice that really made him wish they were both naked. “How do you know I even want to watch?” “I know you, Mr. Paloma.” As she turned her attention back to the stage, Joe realized that she really did. It was almost scary and completely wonderful, and he couldn’t imagine anything that could make him happier.
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Chapter Thirteen Damon parked Piper’s ridiculous-looking black and blue Honda CB one twentysomething motorcycle in a red zone outside the police station, half hoping it would be towed away. He couldn’t believe Piper had even bought the thing, let alone attempted to ride it. The bike was nearly as old as he was and equally unreliable. But it was “deck”, or whatever stupid, fucking word Piper’s hipster friends were using to indicate how cool something was or was not. But then his brother had always been the type to give too much of a shit about the ridiculous. “Damn it,” Damon cursed as he tripped on the curb and stumbled, nearly hitting the pavement before he caught himself and slowed his mad dash into the station. He had to stop thinking about Piper or he was going to do something violent. Besides, it wasn’t Piper who had made him agree to play tonight, it was some twisted sense of obligation, some part of him that figured Torrance wouldn’t want him to blow their third performance at Paloma’s. Not that he knew for sure what she would have preferred. He hadn’t had the chance to talk with her for more than two minutes since he had called her Wednesday night and asked for her help. He’d needed someone to drive Piper’s car home from the practice studio. Piper had vanished on his new bike and been gone for hours. The owners of the lot were threatening to tow both of the Darren brothers’ cars if they didn’t get them off the pavement in thirty minutes or less, so Damon made the call to Torrance. She’d been great about it, making it to the lot with plenty of time to spare and agreeing to follow him back to the bungalow. He’d handed her the keys to the car with a smile, already anticipating a light supper of grilled cheese and tomato soup and a long evening spent in his bedroom alone with the only person he’d been able to think about all week long. He’d never imagined she wouldn’t even make it to the house. It drove him crazy to think how the simple act of handing her one set of keys over the other had landed her in such trouble. If he’d driven Piper’s car instead of Torrance, he would be the one who had the flat, the one who—through a purely evil piece of bad luck—had a police officer with a drug dog in his car pull over to help change the tire. He hadn’t spoken to Torrance except for a few minutes on the phone after her arrest and wasn’t exactly sure what had happened, but somehow the dog had sniffed out a huge bag of cocaine in the back of Piper’s car. Torrance had been arrested, and even though the car was registered to Piper and she swore the drugs weren’t hers, they wouldn’t release her. Damon had already been at the police station for hours when he’d finally gotten a clearly smashed Piper on the phone. And then, even after hearing that Torrance was probably going to be slapped with some serious drug charges for what the police had
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found in his car, he had still refused to come forward. He’d even had the balls to say that the coke wasn’t his and he wasn’t going to take the rap for some “whore who would fuck both him and his nineteen-year-old brother”. It had taken Damon ten minutes to get to Piper’s friends’ apartment, but the whitehot anger that had coursed through his system hadn’t cooled a single degree. He’d swung at him before Piper even had a chance to stand up from the lime green couch where he had been sitting, connecting with his stomach and then moving on to blacken Piper’s eye when his brother returned the swing and missed. Piper’s friends had eventually pulled them apart, but not before Damon had shown Piper just how much damage a “nineteen-year-old pain in his ass” could inflict. After that, he had finally simmered down enough to realize how late it was getting, and had called the direct line to Paloma’s to let them know that Tastes Like Chicken wouldn’t be able to make it to the performance. The lady at the front desk had freaked out and connected him with Joe Paloma’s cell phone before he’d had the chance to snap his own cell shut. Damon hadn’t really wanted to speak with Joe. He was an intimidating guy when he wasn’t mooning around over Mandy, but he had filled him in on the situation and was more than pleasantly surprised with his response. In the end, that one accidental call to Joe would probably end up helping Torrance more than anything else he could have done. He had never expected the club owner to send his own personal attorney over to the station, but he was appropriately grateful for the generosity. Damon didn’t know anything about drug law or lawyers in general, but even he had heard the name Angela Verdano. She was one of the top defense attorneys in the state of Texas, and Damon felt much better about going to play the gig knowing that Torrance had someone top-notch coming to help her out. Besides, it seemed the one way he could thank Joe for what he’d done for Torrance. Still, by the time he’d finally arrived at Paloma’s and set eyes on his brother’s face and the swollen eye he’d given him only a few hours before, he’d had a hell of a time maintaining one ounce of enthusiasm for playing the gig. He just wanted to be with Torrance and—if he couldn’t be with her—be waiting for her when she was finally released. Tastes Like Chicken, their music, their history as a band, as friends, none of it meant anything to him if he didn’t know that Torrance was going to be okay. Seeing Piper working the audience like it was any other show, like Torrance wasn’t in the biggest trouble of her life and it was all his fault, had finally been too much for Damon to stomach. Walking off the stage had felt like the best decision he’d made in ages. Fuck Piper, fuck being the responsible brother and trying to be understanding and supportive. Piper could go to hell for all he cared. No matter how this situation played out, whether Piper continued to deny responsibility for what he’d done or not, he could safely say his brother was dead to him. He’d offer to buy Piper’s half of the house, and if he wouldn’t sell, then they’d list the house and split the profits. The Austin real estate market was ridiculously hot and they’d probably make a tidy sum. And it wasn’t as if Piper couldn’t use a little money. 87
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Damon had come into his small inheritance from his parents’ estate over a year ago, but he hadn’t spent a dime. His part-time work at the sound studio and freelance mixing and editing more than paid his portion of the mortgage and bills. Piper, however, was down to his last few thousand dollars and hadn’t been chipping in for their house payment in months. Which just made him wish even harder for the damn bike to be towed away and buried in some deep, dark hole. What kind of asshole would buy a bike when he already had a car payment he couldn’t manage and had been mooching off his kid brother for almost six months? “Hey, I’m the one getting out of jail, why do you look like you’re about to kill somebody?” a wonderfully familiar voice asked from a few feet away. He looked over to see Torrance standing in the middle of the automatic doors. He’d heard the doors open, but he would have missed her completely if she hadn’t caught his attention. “I was thinking about people who don’t deserve that much of my consideration,” Damon said, crossing to her, wanting to give her a hug, but suddenly aware of the petite woman beside her. “Angela Verdano.” The woman held out a hand that Damon eagerly shook. “Mr. Paloma said he’d called you. I can’t thank you enough for—” “You may not want to thank me yet. You’re the younger brother, right?” “Yes, this is Damon,” Torrance said. “Sorry I didn’t introduce you, my manners aren’t in top form after the past eight hours.” “Nice to meet you, Damon,” Angela said with a small laugh before she continued in what seemed to be her usually firm, swift and slightly aggressive way. “The district attorney’s office has agreed to drop the charges against Torrance. She has no prior arrests, not so much as a speeding ticket. The drug test she agreed to submit to before I was here to advise her to do otherwise also came back completely negative.” “Thank god.” Damon felt a weight ease from his chest and let one arm wrap around Torrance’s waist, unable to resist touching her, giving her what comfort he could manage on the steps of the police station. “But they’re definitely going to call your brother in for questioning, Damon. I don’t know why they didn’t do it sooner, except the arresting officer was positive Torrance knew the drugs were in the car.” Angela rolled her dark brown eyes, eloquently expressing her low opinion of said officer. “I am, apparently, a very guilty-looking person even when completely innocent,” Torrance said in her typically dry way, though he could tell she still wasn’t quite up to finding much humor in the present situation. “I’m having flashbacks to the third grade Christmas pageant.” Damon was glad to see Torrance was at least on her way to something resembling normalcy. Hearing the fear in her voice during her one rushed phone call had torn him apart. In over ten years of knowing the strong woman beside him, he’d never heard her that scared, and he sure as hell never wanted to again.
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“Shit, I’d forgotten about that,” Torrance laughed. One year, on the evening of their school’s annual Christmas play, the baby Jesus had been stolen from the manger minutes before the performance. Torrance, who was supposed to sing the first solo, had been the only person near the scene and the teacher coordinating the show had been positive she was responsible. Nine-year-old Torrance had stood there with the guiltiest expression in the world, enduring a fairly vicious harangue by both the organizing teacher and her assistant, without saying a word in her own defense. Not two minutes later, one of the first grade girls had come out of the bathroom with the doll soaking wet in her arms, announcing that she’d given the baby Jesus a bath and he was ready for the show. “That woman never did apologize, did she?” Damon asked. “I don’t think so, but I’m not expecting an apology from the Austin City Police either. If Angela hadn’t been here, I don’t think they would have ever let me out of there. It was a very enlightening look into the alleged ‘justice’ system.” “Glad I could help. Any friend of Joe’s is a friend of mine. He’s an amazing guy,” Angela said, a hint of warmth in her voice for the first time. It was accompanied by a suppressed grin that made Damon wonder at the nature of their relationship. Damon had never heard of Joe being involved in any kind of trouble serious enough to warrant being on close terms with a criminal defense attorney. So it seemed likely that their connection was more personal in nature. He hated to think how Mandy would feel about that. “Angela is married to Joe’s brother,” Torrance supplied, clearly reading his thoughts. Good thing he didn’t have anything to hide from the woman, because she had a knack for knowing what he was thinking that was eerily uncanny. “I didn’t know Joe had a brother.” “I didn’t know that Joe had a serious girlfriend,” Angela said. “I’ve already made Torrance promise to get your manager over to my place for dinner. It’s the fee I’m charging for my services. I just have to meet the woman who’s finally tamed the selfproclaimed man-slut.” “I had to sell Mandy out. Angela charges like five hundred dollars per hour. Besides, we’re invited too and she wooed me with promises of wasabi-grilled salmon.” Torrance smiled, obviously having bonded with the older woman sometime in the past two hours. But then Angela reminded him a little of Torrance. She had a tough air about her but a softness in her eyes that gave you the feeling that—once you had won a place in Angela Verdano’s affections—you had made a friend for life. “I don’t think Mandy will mind. She and Joe were typically, sickeningly in love tonight,” Damon said. “I think they’re ready to announce their blissful state to the world.” “Sickeningly in love, huh? I can’t wait to see this,” Angela laughed. “I’ll be in touch, Torrance, and we’ll firm up a date for this little rendezvous.” “Sounds good, and thank you for everything,” Torrance said. 89
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“Not a problem but, Damon, you may want to seek counsel for your brother. I won’t be able to help you with that.” Angela’s face was once again stern and her tone all business. “Because he’s a lying son of a bitch?” He couldn’t be happier that Torrance was out of trouble, but that didn’t mean he didn’t want to make Piper pay for putting her there in the first place. “No, because I have two big cases starting next week. We lawyers can’t discriminate on that kind of basis. If we did, we’d have no clients. See you both soon.” Angela turned toward the parking lot, stepping toward her car with a swift stride that belied the late hour. “I’m exhausted,” Torrance said as they watched her go, finally leaning into him and wrapping her arms around his waist. “And I’ve had more than enough of the police station. If I never come back here for the rest of my life, it will be more than fine with me.” “Come on, let me take you home.” Damon held her tight to his chest, hoping she could feel how much he treasured her, how he was going to do his best to make sure nothing like this ever happened to her again. “I doubt Piper will be at our place tonight, but I’d appreciate the chance to crash on your sofa.” “You know I’d rather you crash in my bed,” she said as they turned toward the parking lot. “I was hoping, assuming you’d forgiven me for getting you into this mess in the first place.” “It wasn’t your fault.” “Not the drugs, but calling you to help keep Piper’s stupid car from getting towed. I shouldn’t have—” “No, I shouldn’t have said yes. It’s my fault. I promised myself I would treat Piper differently, but when he freaked out last weekend, I totally lost my nerve.” She followed him to where he’d parked the motorcycle. “That’s not your fault. There was no reason for him to be that angry. What you and he had was a long time ago and—” “Damon, there’s something I have to tell you,” she said, suddenly pulling her hand from his and crossing her arms at her chest. “Okay,” Damon said slowly, willing his mind not to jump to any conclusions. Torrance and Piper were over, had been over for years. There was no reason for Piper to have thrown the fit he did when he’d found out they were a couple, no reason for him to call Torrance a whore or treat her as anything less than the good friend she’d always been to him. The look on Torrance’s face might be making his stomach churn with anxiety, but he refused to believe that anything was still going on between her and his brother. It was impossible, unthinkable, and he trusted her too much to even let such a stupid suspicion take root in his mind.
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“When Piper and I were together in high school…” “Yes.” Damon crossed his own arms and tried to keep his expression completely neutral. “This is really hard.” Her breath rushed out through tight lips before she sucked in another deep breath and held it. “Just tell me, Tor, before my imagination gets the better of me. Please,” Damon said, itching to touch her, to cup her face in his hands, to rub the tension from her shoulders, but forcing himself to hold still. He knew Torrance well enough to know better than to try any form of physical contact when she was this stressed. She would either run like hell or bite his arm off, and he was pretty attached to both her and his appendages. “I had an abortion. I found out about the…the baby right after your parents were killed. Piper wanted to get married and keep it, to start a new family together, I guess. But I couldn’t go through with it. I was too scared,” Torrance said, a hitch in her voice that told how close to tears she was becoming. “I didn’t know. I’m so sorry.” Damon was shocked by what she’d said but didn’t understand why she thought it would make such a difference to him. It was a sad thing, but Torrance and Piper would never have made it as teenage parents. Torrance would have had to handle all the responsibility on her own, and both she and the baby would have suffered. “Do you hate me?” Torrance asked, finally looking him in the eye. “Are you insane? Of course I don’t hate you. I’m just sad that you had to go through that. And knowing my brother, that you had to go through it alone.” “He was so angry, Damon. He said that I’d killed his child and he’d never get over it,” Torrance said, an uncertainty in her tone that drove him wild. “Torrance, don’t you dare tell me you’ve been letting that asshole make you feel guilty for that all this time. You know he wouldn’t have been able to handle a kid. He wouldn’t have helped you, wouldn’t have been a good parent, and look at how he’s turned out. Would you want him to be the father of your kid, the guy who would let one of his oldest friends take the rap for his stash? You did the right thing,” Damon said, willing her to believe him. “He didn’t start using until after. Maybe he wouldn’t have started at all if—” “Tor, you can’t take that on yourself. Piper made his own decisions, and there’s no one to blame for the shitty place they’ve landed him but himself. We all have crap we have to deal with, things that make us sad, that challenge us, but he didn’t have to choose to respond to those challenges the way he did. It’s not your responsibility, it’s not my responsibility, it’s Piper’s.” Damon felt an easing inside his own mind as he spoke the words. He’d done his own share of feeling guilty, of thinking he could have done more to help Piper, could have prevented him from getting so out of control, but in comforting Torrance, he’d finally managed to comfort himself. “You’re right, I know you’re right.” She took a deep breath. “God, I feel so much better. I wish I’d gotten that off my chest a long time ago.” 91
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“Me too. I wish I had known so I could have helped.” “No one knew. You’re the only person I’ve ever told.” “Not even your parents?” “Not even Cecilia,” Torrance said, though that fact didn’t surprise him at all. Torrance’s parents were some of the most open-minded people he’d ever met. Her sister Cecilia, on the other hand, was Tor’s polar opposite. She was a tightly regimented woman who would have had a heart attack if she’d found out her little sister had done something as irresponsible as become a teenage pregnancy statistic. “I’m honored to be the first,” Damon said. “I want you to feel safe telling me anything.” “Even if I tell you that there’s no way in hell I’m going to ride this bike?” “I brought the extra helmet.” “I’m afraid of motorcycles,” she said with a slightly shamed grin. “You’re not kidding.” “Nope, not kidding.” “Then we’ll take the bus,” he said, taking her hand and walking toward the corner where he was fairly sure they’d find a bus stop. “That’s okay? You’re not just going to leave it there, though, are you?” “I think I am. It’s a decision that I’m okay with.” Damon squeezed her hand. “I’ve walked away from a few things tonight, but nothing that I regret.” “Why do I not like the sound of that?” “Come on, let’s catch the bus. I’ll fill you in on the way home,” Damon said. “Home, I do like the sound of that,” she answered, breaking into a run as the brightly lit city transit bus came into view.
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Chapter Fourteen “Thank you so much, Van. You were really wonderful, in spite of the rather challenging circumstances.” Mandy pumped the hand of the only musician in her life who wasn’t driving her crazy. Too bad he wasn’t actually a member of her band. “I’ve seen worse.” Van shrugged before he pulled her into his rather sweaty embrace. “And you should know better than to shake my hand, girl. I’ve known you since you were in diapers.” “Not true. I’m positive I was potty trained by the time my mom dumped me on Edmond.” Mandy tried to relax and enjoy what was obviously meant as a show of affection and nothing more. She had known Van forever and he’d only ever been platonically sweet. Still, she didn’t know if she was quite ready to fully embrace any of her father’s friends, no matter how nice or helpful they might be. It just brought back too many memories, threatening to make her relive all the horrible days before she’d finally decided, as a sixteen-year-old girl, to move out of her father’s house for good. “How is Ed? I can’t believe he didn’t call to tell me you were moving to Austin. I would have thrown you a welcome bash, introduced you to some really cool people,” Van said, brushing his long, thinning brown hair from his eyes with a grin. “Edmond’s great, keeping busy as always. But I asked him not to tell anyone I was moving. I was trying to make a fresh start, you know how it is.” Mandy turned her attention to scan the backstage area. She hadn’t seen a sign of Piper or Damon and was dying to go hunt them down in earnest, but had been waylaid by Van before she’d had the chance. Considering he was largely responsible for this night not completely crashing and burning, she felt obligated to chitchat for at least a few minutes. “Fresh starts are good,” Van said with an easy grin, as if he completely understood. That was the good thing about the man, he always seemed to know when to quit asking questions, a quality that almost made her want to give him another hug. Almost. “They are, but old friends are priceless. Thank you again for coming out here on such short notice and putting up with—” “Quit it. It was fun. Now tell me where to get a beer and I’ll get out of your hair,” Van said, shocking her again with his perceptiveness. Of course, maybe her itch to get hold of her wayward charges was simply painfully obvious. After pointing her father’s old friend toward the bar and ordering him to put his drinks on her tab, she headed toward the men’s dressing room. If Piper thought he would be safe from her clutches by something as small as a men’s room sign, he had
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another think coming. She’d gladly confront any number of young, naked musicians to get her hands around his throat, though she probably wouldn’t enjoy the experience considering the physical fitness of most of the men who had performed tonight. They were a scrawny lot, not that even the biggest stud on the Austin music scene would have held much interest for her at this point. Even if she hadn’t been totally gone on Joe, she was too angry to enjoy something as innocent as ogling semi-clothed rocker dudes. “You look like you’re going to kill someone,” an achingly familiar voice sounded from the darkness just outside the doors that separated the men’s and women’s dressing areas. “Edmond?” A delighted smile stretched across her face and her heart jumped with an excitement that was totally unexpected. “I thought I was Dad now?” He stepped out of the shadows, an answering smile on his own face that told just how happy he was that she was glad to see him. Poor guy, she really had put him through the wringer the past several years. She hadn’t even realized how much so until she’d seen him waiting there, looking more like a worried parent than a famous rock star. He must have jumped on a plane as soon as they got off the phone a few hours past. Not such a big deal when you had a private jet, but still unbelievably sweet. “What are you doing here, Dad?” she asked, falling into the arms he offered. God, how long had it been since she’d hugged him, really hugged him like she meant it? She had no idea, but it had obviously been too long. “I thought I’d come thank Van personally for the favor, and see if there was anything else I could do to help.” “That’s so nice, but you’ve already helped a ton. Van was great, I think he was the only thing that kept the performance from being a total wash.” “I can’t believe that. The demo tape you sent sounded solid. I would have thought the two boys could have held it together.” “You listened to the tape?” Mandy asked, not knowing why she was so surprised. Her dad hadn’t been the dismissive man she’d grown up with for a long time, and it was past time that she stopped making assumptions based on who he used to be. After all, hadn’t she just been thinking that it was time she stopped beating herself up for her own poor judgment calls? Just because she’d chosen half a dozen Mr. Wrongs didn’t mean she couldn’t have finally found Mr. Right. She had just needed to quit second guessing herself, and find a man who could appreciate her impulsive, optimistic nature, a fellow fool for love who wasn’t afraid to fall. It didn’t seem fair not to give her dad that same chance, the chance to prove that people could change their lives for the better. “I did, and I liked it. I think you’ve made a great choice. They have a lot of potential.” Mandy felt a swell of pride, despite the fact that she was fairly certain Tastes Like Chicken was finished for good. It was still nice to know that one of rock’s legends, an icon who also happened to be her old man, thought she’d made a solid call as far as 94
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talent was concerned. Now if she could just manage to do better in the interpersonal dynamic department… “Hey, Dad, when you were first starting out, were you as big a pain in the ass as everyone says you were?” Mandy asked, the bare bones of a devious scheme beginning to take root in her mind. “Bigger, most likely,” Edmond said with a surprised laugh. “Do you think you might be able to give a certain young man a really good talk about why being a difficult, drug-using, risk-taking, dip shit is not in his greater interests or the smartest way to become rich or famous or even, oh, I don’t know, live a long time?” “I think I could.” “And be really, really scary while you do it?” “I can see it’s not just the clothes that are a little sassier than usual,” Edmond said, laughing again, this time his usual booming belly laugh that never failed to turn every head in his direction. But, for once, Mandy didn’t mind if her father became the center of attention. If a bunch of crazed fans came running, she’d just try to enjoy basking in the glow, relish getting a first-hand dose of the abundance of personality that had made Edmond Miller a superstar. She was done trying to hide, could finally say she was ready to embrace her heritage. She’d certainly put up with all the downsides of having a rich, famous, culturally iconic father. Now she was ready to gratefully accept some of the perks of her parentage. Letting her dad teach Piper a lesson he would never forget seemed a good place to start. She’d heard Piper mention his music more than once. He was obviously a fan, and she couldn’t think of a better way to make a serious impression. “I’ve been embracing my wilder, more impulsive nature.” “Really? How’s that working out for you?” Edmond asked with a slightly concerned twitch of his eyebrow. “Fantastically. I’ve been having the best sex of my life,” Mandy said, unable to suppress a giggle fit as her rock star father turned bright red. Maybe he wasn’t as unconventional as she’d thought. She just might have to ask Joe to sleep on the couch tonight if Edmond took her up on the offer to sleep at her new boyfriend’s apartment. “Amanda Morning Glory Miller—” “I officially changed my name when I emancipated myself, Dad. No offense, but I’ve never really felt—” “I know, I know. I didn’t choose your middle name, it’s not my fault.” “I know, and I understand that you’re trying to be firm, and I appreciate it. It’s really cute.” Mandy impulsively stood on tiptoe to give her dad a kiss on the cheek. “Just, please, don’t start following too closely in my footsteps.”
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“Don’t worry, Pop. I’m still the same nice, responsible girl underneath it all. And I can’t wait for you to meet Joe. He’s really something special. I have no doubt you’ll approve.” “I’m sure I will. I’m glad to have the chance to meet one of your men, for once.” He paused, seemed to consider something, then continued at a lower volume. “And since things seem to be going well here, I’ll just say again how sorry I am for what happened. The whole situation was—” “You don’t have to say it again, I know you’re sorry. I heard you say it a million times, but I’m finally ready to understand what that means,” Mandy said, realizing that the pain associated with the memory of the night she’d left her father’s house for good was starting to fade. He’d been having a party and one of his friends had cornered her in the basement. She’d managed to get away before groping turned to something more serious, but the night had truly turned tragic for her when she’d tried to go to Edmond for help. He had only laughed and told her to grow up and stay in her room if she didn’t know how to party. He’d been beyond wasted at the time and she should have known better than to take his words to heart, but she could admit now that striking out on her own hadn’t been so bad. The increased independence and responsibility had made her the person she was today, and she usually liked that person pretty well, especially since she’d come to terms with her more free-spirited urges. “So you finally believe I’m not the same jerk I was when you were sixteen?” “I guess so.” “You guess so?” “I know so, but I also know that it didn’t matter how much you apologized until I was ready to hear it. I’m ready now, I’m sorry it took me so long.” “You don’t know how long I’ve wanted to hear you say that,” he said, his famous, steely gray eyes actually getting a little misty around the edges. “I love you, Dad.” Amanda threw her arms around Edmond’s neck, unable to believe she had held on to anger for so long when forgiveness felt so good, so wonderfully freeing. Her entire personal life was shaping up in a way she hadn’t believed possible. She just had to believe that the same could happen for Tastes Like Chicken. She’d sic her dad on Piper, find Damon and deal with him herself, and hope that Torrance could be persuaded to give both boys another chance. They would pull together, find a way through the drug charges mess and emerge a tighter, more functional unit. She refused to tolerate anything less, not when she was so close to having everything she had ever dreamed of.
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Joe watched Mandy throw her arms around the older man’s neck and was almost left behind as his thoughts dashed off on ten different tangents, all of which shared a singular theme of rampaging suspicion that he did his best to control. This was not what it looked like, no matter what his eyes were seeing. He knew Mandy and she wasn’t the type. She couldn’t be interested in someone else, even someone who looked remarkably like one of the most famous rock stars of the past thirty years, someone who— “Holy shit,” Joe muttered. That wasn’t a man who looked like Edmond Miller, that was the Edmond Miller, in the flesh, in his club, looking down at his Mandy like he was completely in love. “Amanda Miller,” Joe mumbled to himself, his brain trying to deny the connection even as his lips stumbled upon the truth. They had the same last name, they were hugging like they never wanted to let each other go, and Mandy had tears in her eyes as they pulled apart. She was married. He had fallen completely, madly, will-you-have-my-children in love with a married woman. And not just any married woman, but a woman married to a rock star with more money, fame and connections than he would ever accumulate, even if he lived to be a hundred. She must have thought him the biggest fool in the entire world. No wonder she hadn’t wanted anything but a no-strings-attached fling. She was probably only waiting for the chance to make up with her rock star hubby, biding her time until he came to mend whatever rift had sent her running to Austin in the first place. “Angela’s on the phone for you, line three in your office,” Will said as he brushed by him with an armful of microphones. “Thanks,” Joe said, knowing he had to take the call but wishing with every fiber of his being that he could close the space between him and the happy couple and wrench Mandy out of her husband’s arms. His caveman instincts where she was concerned had never been stronger. But what would punching out Edmond Miller and throwing Mandy over his shoulder really accomplish? Nothing. It would accomplish nothing. She would still be a married woman who had lied to him, manipulated him and used him for a little get-back-atyour-ex sex therapy. All that was bad enough, but she’d also said she loved him, let him say he loved her, let him believe that there was hope for them to have a future together. How could she have listened to him talk about how the thought of having children with her turned him on when she had no intention of staying with him, when she was still so obviously in love with another man? “Shit,” he cursed as the phone in his pocket started vibrating wildly. The last thing he wanted to do was talk to anyone. He wanted to howl at the moon, he wanted to break things, he wanted to down a fifth of Jack Daniels and wait for the anger to kick in. Whiskey always made him angry, and anger was highly preferable to
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the cutting emotional pain that was presently coursing through him, making his entire body ache with the force of Mandy’s betrayal. “Paloma,” he answered, surprised that his voice sounded so amazingly normal. But then, his vocal cords must still remember how to hide his emotions. It hadn’t been that long since he was struggling to conceal his broken heart from the first woman who had played him for the fool. Of course, dealing with that pain suddenly seemed like a walk in the park compared to this. Apparently, the more deeply you loved, the more deadly the sting of your love’s duplicity, because at the moment he would give anything to be hurting over Hope. Suddenly his ex banging his best friend was no big deal, nothing compared to the soul-crushing knowledge that the woman he had come to think of as his soul mate was already married to another man. “It’s Angela. I got tired of holding. If you’re not going to answer the landline, why do you keep asking me to call there first? It’s a waste of time and number punching,” his sister-in-law said, her brisk, confidant tone making him inexplicably sadder. Only a person who had no doubt that their home life was in perfect working order could sound so entirely in control. “What’s up, Angie?” Joe said, turning to walk away as Mandy kissed her man on the cheek and they embraced for the second time in three minutes. He wouldn’t be able to carry on a conversation if he had to spend another second looking at another man’s arms wrapped around the woman he considered his. “I just finished up at the police station. They’ve declined to press charges against the girl from the band—” “That’s great.” “But they’re going to call in the other kid. I already told his brother that he should look into other representation. I would offer to help, but I’m covered up next week.” “It’s no problem, I’m sure he’ll find someone. You’ve done enough already. I really appreciate the way you dropped everything to go help—” “Torrance is a sweet girl, it was my pleasure, but you might not be appreciating me quite so much after you get my bill.” “I’ll pay it, whatever the cost, I didn’t expect you to work for free and—” “Don’t be crazy, I don’t want your money. You’re family.” “Hey, your time is valuable, I know—” “Please, don’t be weird, you should know better. I don’t want cash, I want details.” “Details?” “On your new girlfriend. I’ve heard that you’re insanely smitten, that the biggest man-slut in Texas is practically ready to take the plunge a second time,” Angela said, the happiness in her voice unmistakable. She and his brother Carlos had been wonderfully supportive during his divorce, but he knew it had bothered Angela that he didn’t hold out much hope for a happily ever after of his own once he and Hope had split. For a woman who spent most of her 98
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time defending the scum of the earth, she was awfully optimistic about true love conquering all. But then she’d been lucky enough, or sensible enough, to choose the right man the first time around. His brother was totally committed to Angela and vice versa. They were one of the most functional, loving couples he’d ever met. “I don’t really want to talk about this, Ang. It’s not a good time.” Joe’s throat tightened painfully as he realized that only a few minutes past he would have been more than happy to introduce Amanda to his brother and sister-in-law. Hell, a few minutes ago, he was certain that he was going to have exactly what they had, the love of a lifetime with a woman he could only see himself falling deeper and deeper in love with as the years passed. “No problem, but start thinking about when would be a good time, because you’re going to bring her to dinner really soon. Maybe next weekend if I can work it out with Carlos’ schedule at the hospital,” she said. His brother was a surgeon, his wife a highprofile attorney, and they still found the time to be completely devoted to each other. It was enough to make a recently heartbroken man physically ill. “Next weekend’s not good. I really can’t—” “You’re bringing her, Joe. I made Torrance promise to get her manager over here. She and her boyfriend are going to come too. It’ll be great. I’m going to make salmon,” Angie said, the tone in her voice allowing no further discussion. The woman was a steamroller, and not for the first time he wondered how his brother, a man raised in a traditional Latino household, had managed to make it work with a woman so opposite the paradigm they had been raised with as children. But Carlos always said he didn’t want to be the boss, that the job didn’t pay well and that Angie was much better at running their lives than he would ever be. Joe had never been completely convinced, but he had to admit that he would have gladly let Mandy steamroll him a little if they’d stayed as happy as they were together. “Come on, Joe, you know you love my salmon.” “I do, and I’ll talk to you later about nailing down a day, Angie. Thanks again,” Joe said, ending the call. No sense in forcing himself to tell his sister-in-law the truth just yet. A man deserved to nurse his wounds in private before everyone else was invited to survey the carnage. “Will, I’m leaving early. Can you close up for me tonight?” Joe asked as he pulled his keys from his pocket, knowing he had to get out of the club before he lost what was left of his control and gave in to the urge for a nasty confrontation with Mandy and her other half. “No problem,” Will said, then added in his usual even tone, “but did you see who’s backstage?” “I did,” Joe said tersely, turning toward the door to the parking lot. “Should he get the royal treatment? I mean, I know he’s probably not going to agree to play or—”
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“He’s not going to be invited to play. He’ll set foot on my stage when hell freezes over,” Joe snapped before he banged out the door into the uncharacteristically steamy spring night, already thinking about the amber fluid waiting in the carafe on his bar at home. As far as he was concerned, the sooner he was drunk, the better, though a part of him already realized that even whiskey wouldn’t kill this kind of pain.
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Chapter Fifteen “Joe?” Mandy called out as she opened the door to the apartment. His car was parked downstairs and she expected him to answer right away. But her voice was met by silence, a weird silence that reminded her of the moment in a horror movie right before the ominous music begins to play. Joe had given her the key a few days ago, but she hadn’t had to make use of it until now. They’d always entered and exited together, and it felt strange to come in by herself. Still, there was no reason for her to feel like an intruder. He wouldn’t have given her the key if he didn’t want her to come and go as she pleased. So why did she suddenly feel so anxious about entering the apartment that—even in so short a time— had come to feel like home? Slowly, she made her way through the kitchen, which was as immaculate as always. She’d yet to see Joe use a single one of the shiny copper pans that hung above the stove and they rarely ate any meal in except breakfast. Mandy—being a confirmed believer in the maxim “no food before at least three cups of coffee”—usually just skipped the morning meal altogether, though she enjoyed sitting with Joe while he wolfed down a few bowls of cereal. They’d already established a morning routine that she looked forward to—wake-up nookie, followed by a couple’s shower and then breakfast over the paper and a laptop email check. Though still not a morning person, it was downright amazing how much more she looked forward to the start of the day now that Joe was in her life. “Hello?” she called again as she emerged into the large living room/dining room/office loft area. The lights were all on, but there was no sign of Joe at the desk, or on the plush leather couches, or at the scarred wooden dining table that was swiftly becoming her favorite place to organize her thoughts. “Joe, are you here?” she asked more loudly, her stomach starting to churn as the “something’s wrong here” feeling increased. Where the hell could he be? To her knowledge, there were no common areas in the building except the lobby and she hadn’t spied him on her way in. Either he was in the apartment or he’d gone for a walk, though she didn’t think even a man as big as Joe would feel entirely comfortable taking a walk by himself at nearly three in the morning. “Joe?” she called again, refusing to listen to her gut for the first time in weeks. It might have been leading her in the right direction lately, but she was not going to tolerate any doomsday prophecies about Joe having been knifed in an alley and left for dead. Fate would not do that to her, not after she’d finally managed to find the one man in a million who matched her so perfectly. No, she was going to turn the corner into the
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bedroom and see Joe asleep, preferably in the nude, so that she wouldn’t have to coax his clothes from his body before she ravaged him until the sun came up. “This can’t be happening.” Mandy’s heart started beating triple time as the perfectly made, unoccupied bed met her eyes. Just a few hours ago, she’d been certain that everything was falling into place in her life. Torrance had called her cell only a few minutes after Edmond began his talk with a stunned Piper and announced that she wasn’t going to be charged in connection with the drugs. She apologized for not taking Mandy’s concerns seriously and said she was willing to do whatever Mandy thought was best for the band, including auditioning new lead singers. She’d then handed the phone to Damon, who was with her at her apartment, a development that hadn’t surprised Mandy in the least. She had known it would only be a matter of time before the two friends admitted the feelings they had for each other went beyond the merely friendly. When she hadn’t found Damon backstage, she’d figured there was only one other place he could be. He had, thankfully, apologized for walking off the stage in the middle of the performance, and asked for the chance to make up for his part in ruining the band’s first major booking. He’d said all the right words but hadn’t seemed as genuinely penitent as Torrance. But once Mandy made it clear that Piper would only be allowed to continue as part of the band if he worked to become a person everyone could live with—onstage and off— Damon had gone out of his way to thank her for everything she had done. He had apologized again and promised to do whatever he had to do to make nice with her and Mr. Paloma—who he had correctly judged was also mightily pissed about the stunt he had pulled. Mandy told him she would talk with Mr. Paloma, but she was fairly sure Joe would give the group one last chance at his stage and the opportunity to fulfill their four-show obligation to the club. They might have been a pain in his ass, but there was no denying they were packing in an audience. Despite the drama of tonight’s performance, or maybe because of it, the crowd outside the backstage door had been nearly triple the size of the crowd on their first Thursday. It was a shame, really. Neither Torrance nor Damon were there to greet their new fans and Piper had to rush straight to the police station to give his statement. Mandy had helped him find a lawyer who would meet with him before he spoke with the police, but hoped he wouldn’t need quite as fierce representation as she had assumed. Piper had sworn to her that he had nothing to do with the drugs in his car, that they had to have been put there by someone else. Mandy, though she fully realized she might want to kick herself for being a trusting idiot at a later date, believed him. Piper could claim an abundance of bad personality traits, but he didn’t have a history of lying to her. Add that to the fact that he’d seemed far more worried by the fact that his motorcycle was missing than the charges he might be facing, and Mandy could only assume he was telling the truth. If he were guilty as
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sin, surely even he would have the sense to be a little more concerned about the statement he was about to make than what his brother had done with his new toy. Evidently, Damon had taken Piper’s motorcycle when he left Paloma’s and lost it somewhere between the club, the station and Torrance’s apartment. Mandy didn’t even want to know the story behind that strange disappearance. She’d had enough of both the Darren brothers’ ridiculous behavior tonight. She would make it abundantly clear at their next meeting that they were on zero-tolerance status. The next person to piss her off, no matter who that happened to be, was out, and if she didn’t see a one hundred percent improvement in everyone’s behavior, she was going to dump them all without a second thought. She was Amanda Miller, she-cat and super talent manager, hear her roar. “Yeah, right,” Mandy whispered, running a frustrated hand through her tangled hair. She knew she could find other talent to work with, especially if she took Joe or her father up on their offers of assistance, but Tastes Like Chicken was her baby. She’d found them, groomed them and busted her ass to get them a high profile gig and the publicity to make a dynamite first impression. She didn’t want to give up on them without a fight. At the moment, however, she wasn’t in the mood for anything except a hot shower and several hours of uninterrupted sleep. She’d looked forward to thoroughly pouncing Joe first, but that didn’t look like it was going to happen. Whether his car was parked in the garage or not, he just wasn’t here. There was probably some very simple, mundane explanation for his absence, but that didn’t help quiet the uneasiness that had filled her the second she walked in the door. She tried to tell herself that her apprehension was misplaced. Joe was a big boy. He’d been taking care of himself for years before she appeared on the scene. He wasn’t lying dead in a ditch, he hadn’t been kidnapped by aliens or terrorists, and there was no way in hell he was spending the night at some other woman’s place. She trusted Joe more than she’d ever trusted a man, including her father. He wouldn’t cheat on her, especially after the talk they’d had earlier in the evening. The mere idea was so ludicrous that she couldn’t even believe it had made its way onto her subconscious list. “So it has to be aliens,” Mandy whispered to herself as she whipped out her cell, determined to get to the bottom of whatever the hell was going on. She wasn’t going to be sleeping anyway until she knew that Joe was all right, and preferably on his way to join her. “Ohmygod!” Mandy yelped as a phone began to ring from inside the master bath, and not just any ring, but Joe Paloma’s signature ring, the chorus of an old country song that he’d programmed into his cell that always made Mandy smile. It also never failed to get the damn song stuck in her head for the next several hours, but she’d never been happier to hear it than she was now. Snapping shut her own phone, she rushed to the door of the bathroom and froze dead in her tracks. “Joe, are you…what the hell are you doing?”
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“Mandy? Are you really here?” he asked, sounding like a kid who had just discovered that it had actually been some other kid’s puppy that had been run over trying to cross the street. “Of course I’m here, where else would I be?” Mandy cautiously moved farther into the bathroom, just to make sure she was really seeing what she thought she was seeing. “I really love you, you know. I really, really do,” Joe said from his position in the large whirlpool tub. There wasn’t any water in the tub, and he hadn’t bothered taking his clothes off before he climbed in, two facts that would have made the situation strange enough if he hadn’t been wearing some sort of hat made out of newspapers on top of his tousled blond hair. “I really love you too. Is there something wrong?” “If I had to go back and do it all over again, I would. Even though it was all a lie, a big…fat…lie,” he said, emphasizing the last three words by knocking an empty bottle against the side of the tub. “Are you…drunk?” Mandy moved toward the tub, wondering what had prompted Joe to get wasted, play arts and crafts with their morning paper and climb fully clothed into the tub. Whatever it was, it must be serious, and she should probably try not to laugh at him, no matter how ridiculous he looked. “Completely piss faced.” His expression was deadly serious as he stared her down, and the hollow look in his eyes started to worry her. “Joe, what’s wrong? Did you get some bad news or something? Are your mom and dad okay?” Mandy tried to think what sort of tragedy would make Joe seek solace in a bottle. She’d seen him drink before, and usually enjoyed imbibing right along with him, but she’d never seen him drunk. Both of them stopped before a light buzz became anything more. Since the morning she was lucky enough to wake up in a stranger’s bed and find the love of her life, she figured she shouldn’t press her luck where alcohol was concerned. Surely next time, the gods of whiskey, wine and song wouldn’t smile on her quite so sweetly. “Don’t pretend you don’t know. I saw you, Mandy, with my own two eyes,” Joe said, gesturing toward his eyes with such force that she worried for a second he might accidentally jab one out. “Relax, Joe. Give me that bottle, you’re going to smash it in the bathtub and we’ll end up soaking in broken glass.” Mandy closed the last of the distance to the tub and reached over to snag what looked like an empty tequila bottle from his hand. “Hands off,” Joe said, holding the bottle out of her reach. “Give me the bottle, jerk. Didn’t we swear off tequila a few nights ago?” “I was out of whiskey and I think we know who the jerk is around here,” Joe said, his tone defiant. The fact that he sounded like an overgrown kid would have almost been funny if he weren’t glaring at her with a very grown-up animosity.
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“What are you trying to say?” Mandy abandoned her attempts to grab the bottle and fisted her hands on her hips. He was obviously upset with her for some reason, and it had better be a good one. As far as she knew, she hadn’t done anything to deserve this kind of treatment, which meant Joe better have a damn good story or she was going to be forced to rethink all those wonderful things she’d been thinking about the man. “Don’t do this to me, Joe,” Mandy rushed on before he could speak. “I know we jumped into this relationship really fast, even after I’d promised myself that I wasn’t going to do that kind of thing anymore, but you have to understand how I feel about you. I’ve never been this sure about anything or anyone in my life. I trust you, would follow you off the edge of a cliff if you promised me we’d be okay.” “We’re not on a cliff. We’re not even outside.” “Joe, don’t be ridiculous. Don’t you understand what I’m saying? I love you, you’re the one for me. The One, do you know how special that is? I just can’t believe—” “You can’t believe? What about me? I can’t believe! I can’t believe you said you loved me, I can’t believe—” “I do love you, psycho!” “I saw you fucking another man!” Joe yelled, the hurt in his eyes too terrible for him to be pretending. “Joe, I don’t know what you saw, but I haven’t fucked another man since I woke up in your bed three weeks ago,” Mandy said, willing him to believe her. “Okay, so you weren’t fucking him yet, but you were hugging him, kissing him. He’s your goddamned husband, so I assumed you went out and fucked him after you left the club. It’s three in the goddamned morning so—” “I was tying up loose ends with the band and getting my dad settled at his hotel, that’s why I’m late. As for my ‘husband’ I have no idea what you’re—” “Your dad?” Joe asked, his entire body growing eerily still and his hands tightening on the empty bottle until his knuckles turned white. “Yes, my dad, he flew in right after…oh my god, you thought my dad was my— Oh my god, Joe, are you insane? He’s old enough to be my…dad. Gross, he is my dad,” Mandy said, a laugh erupting from her chest as she realized what must have happened. Joe had seen her with her dad and jumped to all the wrong conclusions. Silently, she thanked god that something so easily explained was behind Joe’s strange behavior, that the panic that had filled her a few moments ago was entirely unnecessary. She was still going to get her shot at happily ever after with this man, this crazy man who descended into a pit of despair and drank himself into the bathtub because he thought he’d lost her. Other women might find the behavior a little on the extreme side, but she wouldn’t have it any other way, felt honored to be the one person capable of hurting Joe so deeply because she knew that she never would. “Edmond Miller is your dad, that’s why your name is…”
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“Amanda Miller. Amanda Morning Glory Miller before I had it legally changed.” Mandy perched on the edge of the tub, wishing she could throw her arms around Joe and give him a big hug. “Now will you give me that bottle?” “I can’t believe this. I can’t believe you didn’t tell me,” he said, letting her take the bottle from his hand. “I would have told you, eventually,” Mandy said, setting the bottle in the bathroom trashcan. “You didn’t trust me?” “Of course I trust you, I don’t know why I didn’t say anything. I guess I just got in the habit of not telling anyone who he was so long ago that it didn’t cross my mind to…” “You must have thought I was an idiot when I offered to help you. Like you need my help when your dad is Edmond Miller,” he said, still sounding sad. “Joe, my dad and I haven’t been on good terms until very, very recently. I was emancipated at sixteen and have been supporting myself for years. I was grateful for your offer of help, I still am. And I would never think you were an idiot…though I am wondering about the newspaper on your head.” Mandy ran a hand down Joe’s ridiculously handsome face, which was somehow even more striking with the silly newspaper cone on his head. “It’s a dunce hat,” he said. “A dunce hat?” Mandy asked, plucking the creation from his head. “I felt like a fool, figured I might as well look like one.” “I see, and you’re sitting in the bathtub because…” “Um…I don’t really remember.” Joe looked around the bathroom like he was seeing it for the first time. “I still have all my clothes on.” “Yes, you do,” Mandy laughed. “How full was that bottle when you started drinking?” “Mostly full, I think, but now it’s mostly empty.” “You drank the whole bottle?” “Mostly,” he said seriously, then added with a goofy grin, “So you aren’t married?” “No, I’m not married, you drunkard,” Mandy laughed. “You want to get married? To me?” “Are you sure you want to ask me that question, Joe?” Mandy asked, her heart doing a slow lingering dive into her stomach. This wasn’t the romantic proposal she’d always dreamed of, but for some reason it got to her, made her feel more loved than a night of wining and dining that ended in the typical bended knee. Her man had wanted to crawl into a hole and drink himself into oblivion because he thought he’d lost her and now he wanted to stake his claim.
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Who was she to stop him simply because he might be too wasted to remember what he’d done in the morning? “Yes, I do. I want you to be my wife. Right now. I’ll go book two flights to Vegas, we can be married by tomorrow afternoon,” he said, struggling to a standing position in the tub and taking both her hands in his, crushing his newspaper hat in the process. “Why are you laughing?” “You’re nuts. The only place you need to go is straight to bed,” Mandy said, even though she was well on her way to getting completely choked up. “I love you, Amanda Miller. I never dreamed I could love someone this much and I know I’m never going to love anyone like this again. If you don’t say you’ll marry me, I’m going to sit back down in that bathtub and never get up again. ’Cause without you, nothing that I thought was important seems important anymore.” Joe’s words were slightly slurred, but the truth in his eyes was enough to make her tears spill over the edge of hers. “Joe Paloma, I never believed I’d find a man like you, who would love me the same way I loved him, absolutely, completely, holding nothing back, with every single sane and crazy bone in his body. If you think I’m ever going to give you up, then you—” “Is that a yes?” Joe cupped her face in his hands and smiled down at her with undisguised joy. “Yes, of course it’s a yes.” She sighed as Joe’s lips met hers. He tasted like tequila, her least favorite liquor since three weeks ago, but she didn’t care. She was suddenly consumed with need for him, drowning in the mad desire to stake her own kind of claim. “Come to bed,” she demanded against his mouth, throwing the crumpled dunce cap to the ground and pulling him from the bathtub. “I’m not sleepy,” Joe protested as his tongue swept through her mouth with a confidence born of total possession. “Neither am I.” Mandy reached down to grab the bottom of her dress and pulled it over her head in one smooth motion. “God, Mandy. You’re going to be my wife, I can’t believe you’re going to be my wife,” Joe mumbled as he took in what she almost wasn’t wearing with a humbled expression that justified every penny she’d spent on the custom-made creation. The lady at the lingerie store had sworn that the intricate pattern of lace and satin would drive even the least adventurous lover into a frenzy of lust, so she had eagerly anticipated the effect the outfit would have on her already passionate partner. “So you like it?” she asked, her breath starting to come faster as Joe knelt in front of her and laid a soft kiss on the swell of her belly. “I love it, I love you. I’m the luckiest bastard in the world,” Joe said, continued to make love to her pooch with his lips and teeth and tongue even as his hands begun to trace slowly along the zigzag lines of satin that ran from her breasts, around her waist and then dropped sharply to her pussy. 107
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There, the peach fabric parted over her sex before joining together into a thong that traveled up the length of her ass and connected with the straps that hugged her waist and flowed back into the bra top. The crotch-less creation had been hell getting into, but the twenty minutes she’d spent struggling with straps and scraps of fabric suddenly seemed a small price to pay when Joe’s breath hissed from his body as he discovered the secret between her legs. “God, Mandy, what are you trying to do to me?” he asked, even as his fingers started to play through her slick, swollen folds. “Drive you crazy, make you want to fuck me so badly that you can’t even wait to take my panties off.” She threaded her fingers through Joe’s hair and moaned as he slid one thick finger inside her, deep into where her body was already so ready for him to slide something thicker, hotter. “Spread your legs,” he demanded. Mandy steadied herself with her hands on his shoulders and did as he asked, though she suddenly wished she’d thought to take off her high heels. She was going to have a hell of a time keeping her balance if Joe was planning to do what she hoped like hell he was planning to do. She’d been dying for him to taste her again, to feel the intimate caress of his mouth between her legs. That hunger, combined with the level of emotion coursing through her body, was probably a recipe for a twisted ankle or worse. “Joe, don’t, I’m going to fall.” The electricity that shot through her body when Joe dropped his head and curled his tongue around her clit was even more intense than she had anticipated. “You’re not going to fall, I won’t let you fall,” Joe whispered against her heated flesh, drawing a moan from her throat as he slid his tongue deeper into her folds and then moved away again. He teased the throbbing nub of her clit with the tip of his tongue, using just enough torturous pressure to tighten the knot of desire low in her belly impossibly further. “You’ve had a lot to drink and—” “I’d never put you in danger. If I say I won’t let you fall, then I won’t let you fall. Trust me, Mandy,” he said, keeping his tongue busy, using deft strokes that soon had her center weeping with need, her channel pulsing with a hunger for penetration, and the lips of her pussy plumped and swollen. After a few short weeks, the man knew how to work her body like no other. She couldn’t imagine the depths of passion they’d have after a year, two years, a lifetime. “I love you, Joe, so much,” Mandy said, her voice thick with more emotion than she knew how to handle. Joe responded in Spanish, but for the life of her she couldn’t translate his words. She was suddenly beyond language of any kind, lost in the feeling of his mouth between her thighs. His hands cupped her buttocks and pulled her closer, into more intimate contact with his passionate feasting upon her pussy, closer and closer until he could slant his mouth and lap deep into her very core. He thrust into her again and
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again, even as he suckled her clit and his tongue traced impossibly intricate patterns on the erotically sensitized flesh. Mandy finally had no choice but to surrender to her pleasure, trusting that Joe would indeed be there to catch her if she fell. “Oh god,” she moaned, her knees buckling as the spiraling desire within her reached its culmination. Bright lights flashed behind her closed eyes and her womb began to contract in clutching waves of pure bliss, but she didn’t fall. Joe wrapped his arms under her thighs and up the length of her back, supporting her weight even as he spread her legs just a bit wider, allowing him even more intense access to her pussy, where he continued to lick and suckle until her already pulsing sex began to tighten once more. As a second violent wave of release swept through her, Mandy heard Joe’s cry of satisfaction join her own and looked down to see his eyes glazed with raw admiration, an appreciation for her pleasure that went beyond anything she’d ever known. He muttered words of encouragement into her pulsing flesh, drinking in the slick heat between her legs with an enjoyment that was abundantly obvious, and no doubt one of the sexiest things she had ever seen. “I love you, Mandy, I love the way you smell, the way you taste, I could live on—” “Fuck me.” Mandy pulled away from his mouth and dropped to her knees on the bathroom floor. Hands still clumsy from the aftershock of her orgasm, she fumbled at the close of his jeans, suddenly unable to wait another second to have him inside her, to be as closely joined to the man she loved as was physically possible, to show him how precious he was to her with every wiggle of her hips into deeper contact with his cock. “On the bathroom floor?” Joe asked, his voice hesitant, though he helped her dispose of his clothes in record time. “Right here, right now,” Mandy demanded, lying back on the fuzzy white bathmat, propping herself on her elbows so she could watch Joe’s face as she spread her bent legs wide. “Yes, ma’am, let me grab a condom and—” “No, no condom. Let’s see if we can get started on those ‘no more than three’,” Mandy said, gripping his shaft and guiding him into where her body ached for him and only him. “Don’t you think that’s a little fast, Miss Miller? We’re not even married yet,” Joe moaned, even as he thrust his hips forward, filling every last inch of her, stretching her tight channel to accommodate the full thickness of his bare arousal. “Do you think it’s premature to be proposing to a woman you’ve known three weeks?” Mandy whispered into his mouth as his tongue swept against hers, promising her so much more than the fulfillment of her body, promising a lifetime of love and passion with a man who understood that some risks were too precious not to be taken. “Not for a second,” Joe said. “And I can’t wait to start on all the rest of it, I can’t wait to spend my life proving that this was the smartest crazy thing I ever did.” “Call me crazy, but I don’t think this is crazy.” 109
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“Neither do I,” Joe said as he increased his rhythm, working his cock in and out of her body with a sensual magnificence that quickly brought her to the edge. “I think it’s perfect.” “Me too,” Mandy said, tears welling up in her eyes even as she started to laugh, laugh and come, two bodily sensations she’d never experienced at the same time, but which felt unbelievably good together. “I can feel you coming, oh god, Mandy, I fucking love you.” Joe’s hips bucked forward one last time and hot streams of release shot deep inside her welcoming body. “I fucking love you too,” Mandy seconded, hugging him to her with her arms and legs, relishing the feel of his weight when he finally relaxed on top of her, as out of breath as she was. She stared at the ceiling with a goofy smile on her face for god knows how long before, with a contented sigh, she turned her head to kiss Joe’s slightly scruffy cheek. Not even the chill of the bathroom floor beginning to work its way through the fuzzy bathmat could lessen the perfection of the moment. She truly felt she could quite happily live out the rest of her life right there on the floor of the master bath as long as Joe was there beside her. “Don’t leave,” Mandy mumbled sleepily as Joe rolled to his side. She had no idea how she could be at all sleepy on one of the most uncomfortable surfaces in the world, but she couldn’t deny that her eyes felt a little heavy. “Are you cold?” He reached up and pulled one of the extra-large bath towels from the rack and spread it over them both. “No, I just like feeling you on top of me,” she said, snuggling closer and resting her head on his chest when he wrapped his arm around her shoulders. “Give me a few seconds and I think that can be arranged.” He hugged her to him and planted a kiss on the top of her head. “I think a shower should be arranged, you smell like a margarita gone wrong,” she teased with a yawn. “I think a shower could be arranged for me, but you need to stay just like you are, just a little sweaty and smelling like a woman who came two or three times on my mouth and my cock,” Joe growled in that husky voice that slid over her skin and made her perfectly warm nipples begin to pucker against the thick towel. “Three times, but I need to clean myself, it’s been almost a day since my last close encounter with the bathtub.” “Nope, no shower for you, I like you dirty,” Joe yawned. “I’ll show you dirty in a minute,” Mandy yawned back, closing her eyes and promising herself she’d fight with him about taking that shower right after she rested. After all, a girl could only relish the feel of her man’s cum leaking down her thigh for so long before the craving for sensual decadence began to war with the lust for a little soap and water.
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“Yes, please, show me dirty,” Joe mumbled and then they both stopped talking, falling into a deep, satisfied sleep, the kind of sleep that comes only to children and those brave enough to love with the heart of a fool.
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Epilogue Joe Paloma was not the kind of man who woke up naked on the floor of his bathroom with a god-awful hangover, a bath towel as a blanket and a beautiful woman in his arms. A beautiful naked woman who had promised to be his wife and who had let him come deep inside her pussy last night because she was ready to start on the first new addition to their family. “Does your head hurt?” Mandy asked sleepily as she stretched against him, her bare skin on his by far the best feeling he had ever known. “Like nobody’s business,” Joe said, his voice raw and hoarse from dehydration and a night spent on the cold bathroom floor, but filled with an unmistakable happiness. “And somebody drooled on my chest while I was asleep.” “I can drool on you anytime I want,” Mandy said, rising up on one elbow to gaze down into his eyes. “Do you remember what happened last night?” “You took advantage of me in my drunken state?” “Of course, and what else?” “You agreed to marry me and asked me to come in your pussy because you want to be the mother of my children and you’ll love me until the end of time?” he asked, not even the pounding in his head enough to wipe the shit-eating grin from his face. “That’s pretty close,” she grinned back. “Don’t ever do that again, by the way.” “What, come in your pussy?” “No.” “Lick your cunt until you come so hard I have to hold you off the ground?” “No.” “Fuck you with my cock until—” “Don’t tempt me if you’re too hung over to follow through with this, Paloma,” Mandy said, straddling him where he was fully erect and dying for her to take him in her hot little hand and slide him into her even hotter pussy. “I’m never too hung over to fuck you, my future wife. Never. Now tell me what I’m not supposed to do again before I get so busy making you come that I forget to ask,” Joe said, bringing his hands to her full breasts, cupping each one like the erotic treasure it was. “Don’t ever doubt me. I’m yours, end of story,” Mandy said, her eyes rolling closed as he began to roll his thumbs over her puckered tips. “The feeling is mutual,” Joe said, completely at peace for the first time in a hell of a long time, not even the shadow of a shadow of a doubt left to plague his mind.
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“Good, ’cause I love you.” “I love you too, you crazy woman.” “I’ll show you crazy if you’ll help me get out of this outfit,” she giggled. “No way, I think you should wear this, and only this, for the rest of our lives.” “Joe—” “And never shower again, just walk around smelling like sex and looking like—” “Joe—” “My beautiful sexy wife.” “I’m going to kill you.” “No, you’re going to come on my cock.” “I’m going to come on your cock and then I’m going to kill you,” she said, her words turning to a moan as she impaled herself on his erection, angling her clit down into deeper connection with his body, letting him get his mouth on her spectacular tits. “At least I’ll die a happy man,” Joe said with a smile, knowing that truer words were never spoken.
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About the Author Anna J. Evans came back to her true love of writing fiction after working Off-offoff-Broadway and in a few Hollywood C-movies. She quit the biz to become a stay at home Mom-Writer and she’s loving every minute of it! Anna lives in Arkansas with her Air Force husband, her real-life romantic hero, their three kids and all the stories still making their way from her imagination to the page. Anna has been awarded multiple Recommended Reads for her paranormal and fantasy erotic adventures, but her favorite feedback always comes from fans. So feel free to drop her a line or join her newsletter, http://groups.yahoo.com/group/anna_j_evans_newsletter/ Anna welcomes comments from readers. You can find her website and email address on her author bio page at www.ellorascave.com.
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Also by Anna J. Evans Bad Apple Decking the Hollisters Enchanted Main Attraction Off the Deep End Seducing the Enemy Sinfully Sweet
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