One Wicked Lick from the Drummer (The One Book 3)

by Ainslie Paton

  The buzzing in Mena’s brain ceased. “I still have a job?” How could that be? She folded her arms over her stomach to try to quell the worming of unease.

  “He threw you off your game from the moment you laid eyes on him. Never seen you get wobbly before. And I get it. He is something, the size of those hands, I mean, I’d think about it. And you, been a long time since you were about anything other than work and I was worried about you.”

  Where was Caroline going with this? “I’m not sure I—”

  “Look, here’s the thing. As your boss, I’m horrified and outraged and I’m going to hold you to account. After your suspension, without pay, mind you, you’re on probation. When you come back, all the problem clients no one wants will be in your portfolio. But you still have a career here if you can restore my confidence in you.”

  Caroline’s voice had a hard, no-nonsense edge to it. Amelia gurgled and they both looked at her.

  Mena uncrossed her arms and took a breath. She wasn’t losing her job. That was hard to take in. “I don’t know what to say?”

  “Thank you. It was a mistake and I will never do it again would be a start.”

  “Thank you. It . . .” wasn’t a mistake, right up until her lies caught up with her. “I will never do it again.”

  “I know you won’t. This is incredibly out of character for you. And as a female into talented men with enormous hands and tiny egos, I’m your cheer squad,” Caroline said, “Although if you wake that kid, that could change.”

  And that was even harder to take. Nothing in line with her expectation of being marched off the premises, her career in tatters, her disgrace waving like a red flag to other potential employers.

  “That version of me, the one who has sore nipples, gets no sleep and good grief, my hair is terrible, also, my husband is still traumatized by the birth and won’t have sex with me—that woman needs the details.” Caroline made a gimme gesture that was not to be disobeyed.

  What kind of detail did she mean? “We, ah, had chemistry and I take full responsibility. I initiated contact that was of a sexual nature.”

  “You fucked him and then couldn’t get enough.”

  Mena made a sound of shock and gave up trying to tiptoe around her indiscretion. “I wanted him from the moment I fell into the boardroom. He was willing. I didn’t seduce him. No, I guess I did, but he was happy to be seduced. It was definitely consensual.”

  “The woohoo get it girl part of me needs more detail. Is he good in bed?”

  Oh, this was too much. “Are you sure you—”

  “It’s unprofessional of me but I don’t care, you broke the rules first. What does this mean to you? Were you just tired of having no social life, was it opportunistic, two horny people late at night succumbing to an overwhelming passion? You smiled a little too flirtatiously, he took your hand—he took his shirt off.”

  “Caroline!”

  “Other than milk, spit and poo and yelling at my husband, there is nothing else going on in my life. I miss work. I miss my clients. I need this.”

  “I don’t know what to say.”

  “Tell me why you did it?”

  Mena paused. Caroline glared. She might be cheer squad, but she was still the boss. “We’ve met before,” Mena said.

  “Before that day you fell into the boardroom?”

  “Fifteen years before.”

  Caroline closed her eyes. “This is everything.”

  Mena needed to talk. All her calls to Vera had gone unanswered. “He was on the top of my drummers-to-sleep-with list.”

  Caroline squealed and they both looked at the baby, who made another sleepy gurgling sound but didn’t open her eyes.

  “I love it. I love it. So you—wait. You slept with drummers. You had a list.” Caroline said, elated.

  “I was very different back then. I was goth and I used a different name. Philly.”

  “Oh Philomena Grady, I am in awe of fifteen years ago you. Were you an actual groupie?”

  Mena nodded. “I was confident he wouldn’t place me.”

  “But he suspected. He asked if you’d met before.”

  “He did,” Mena broke eye contact and looked at the top of her swept clean desk. “I lied.” She forced herself to focus on Caroline again. “I’ve changed a lot and I figured he would be different too. That success would’ve changed him, spoiled him. I didn’t want my whole sordid groupie past tumbling out and negatively influencing my career.”

  “Sordid?” Caroline looked simply delighted. “Are you ashamed of your groupie past?”

  “I didn’t think Swire and Yallop would appreciate my early career choices. It’s not like I volunteered for Meals on Wheels.”

  “Hmm, but you got over that and you told him who you were.”

  Mena shook her head. She wasn’t ashamed of her past, not even now. She was ashamed about lying to Grip. “I didn’t tell him. I should have. He caught me in my lie. He worked it out for himself.”

  “Knew he was sharp. He just got bad advice from other sharks and he’s too nice a guy. He’s perfect for you.”

  Mena blinked at that, feeling a sting under her eyelids. “I fucked it up.”

  Caroline’s hands flew up. “Nooo!”

  They both looked at Amelia. She blew a bubble.

  “Fifteen years ago, I was obsessed with Grip and I had skills getting what I wanted. I never expected to ever see him again or to want him so badly. I never expected him to want me as I am now.”

  Caroline kicked off her other shoe. “This is so romantic.”

  “It’s really not.” The despair that twisted in Mena’s stomach tasted sour in her mouth.

  “You have a secret history, instant chemistry, and it’s forbidden and so delicious. Oh, the struggle until you give in to it.”

  Yes, all of that, yes. Another excuse she’d found to lie.

  “Details.” Caroline was enjoying this a bit too much.

  “I tried to stop it at one time except—” Mena hung her head.

  “He’s a sex god.”

  “Yes, he is, and he hasn’t changed. He’s the same unassuming amazing musician and beautiful person I was obsessed with. I’m still obsessed with him, but I was lying to him and he figured it out and I thought I had it under control but I wrecked everything.”

  “Oh my God, this is the greatest thing. How?” Caroline was definitely enjoying herself too much.

  “Back then he drew on my hip and I had it converted into a tattoo.”

  “He didn’t just draw on a million girls, did he? He remembered you.”

  “Not at first. I wasn’t taking any chances and kept it covered with makeup. But we were in the hot tub and there was some vigorous towel drying and more sex and he must’ve noticed the makeup had gotten rubbed off while I was asleep. He thought he’d bruised me, so he looked closer.”

  “Potentially bruising sex. I am in heaven.”

  And Mena was in purgatory. Keeping her job only made her feel worse, as if it sanctioned her behavior. She had to make Caroline see what a loathsome person she was.

  “What’s worse is that all the way back when he was drawing on my hip, he’d wanted more. He told me he remembered Philly as the one who got away and still I lied about who I was to him. I behaved unforgivably.”

  “He was devastated.” Caroline clutched both hands to her heart. She was missing the point. Mena was going to have to hammer it home.

  “I betrayed his trust and our history. I humiliated him. I made him distrust me in every way, including my financial advice. He was furious and he has every right to be.”

  Caroline’s expression changed. She wasn’t the sleep-deprived executive on mat leave in need of entertainment anymore. “Are you worried what was once consensual might become vindictive?”

  “No. Before he found out the truth, he volunteered to come in and talk to you about it. He wouldn’t hurt me back.” That wasn’t Grip. “I’m worried I’ve lost the only man I ever loved.”

  Caro
line bent forward and picked up her shoe, waved it Mena. “That’s not going to happen.” She put the shoe on. “You were right when you said you had a talent for getting what you wanted. You have always applied that to your work with clients. You need to think this through. Put a strategy together. If you’re genuinely sorry and if he’s the man you think he is, and you find the right way to apologize and mean it, he’ll forgive you.”

  Mena frowned. Grip’s anger had been a current in his body, hot, sparking. She’d seen how the light in his eyes had gone dark.

  “My job is making sure our client understands we know we messed up and we will make it right. Your only job right now is to go get the man you’re in love with and ask for another chance.”

  She’d felt sick. She’d felt anger with herself. She’d been unable to sleep and unable to be still and now Mena felt tears queue in her eyes. Grip would never trust her. He would never want her again. And as unexpected as it was, she was in love with him.

  “I don’t know how.” She looked at Amelia who opened her eyes, the deepest blue, and smiled.

  “That’s probably wind,” Caroline said, scooping to rub the baby’s cheek and pick up the carrier. “Your suspension starts now. I’ll review your investment plans, which I know will be in good order, and ensure Grip is comfortable with our advice and continuing as an S&Y client.”

  Caroline moved to the door and Mena came out from behind her desk, body wavering, dizzy with emotion. She would pay in career terms, but the cut was far less deep than she’d expected. She might bleed forever over losing Grip.

  At the door, Caroline paused. “It would be all shades of wrong if I made getting Grip back a condition of your continued employment.” Amelia opened her eyes and looked at Mena in horror, her bottom lip trembling. Mena felt that horror up and down her spine. “But I’d be super pleased to see that level of tenacity from someone we’d still consider for partnership one day,” Caroline said.

  Mena would’ve wailed in distress, but Amelia got there first.

  TWENTY

  Grip stumbled off-stage, heat steaming from his body, skin glossed with sweat. It’d been an indulgence to close the show on a ratshit, held together with gaffer tape and glue, upright piano, and he’d played it literally to pieces. The backboard had fallen off and the damper pedal broke. He’d thumped it so hard, one of the casters shot straight through the toe-block, and it’d lurched to one side.

  He’d played through it all, lucky jeans on, shirt off, effortless, first to stunned silence and then as the rest of the band and all the other artists performing in the charity concert finale joined in, to whistles, screams and thunderous stadium-shaking applause.

  It wasn’t Beethoven but it was his and he’d fucking loved every minute of it. He was fully alive again, straight in his head again, as if he’d finally sweated the deceit and disappointment of Philomena Grady out of his system for good.

  One of the boys was probably going to take a swing at him. They’d walked this though, but since this was a hastily thrown-together gig, there wasn’t a proper rehearsal, and no one had heard him play. They’d all heard him now and he wasn’t going to silence that part of himself again.

  Evie got to him first, from her spot at the side of the stage where she’d stood to watch Jay perform and to see Layla Flowers sing one of her new songs.

  “You sneaky weasel.” The punch she threw at his bicep slid off harmlessly. “Where did that come from?”

  He shrugged, tamed his smile, trying to come off way cooler than he felt. “I’m a deep guy. I have hidden, you know, depths.” And wings on his feet to soar above them.

  “They’re not hidden now. Knew you played, but that,” she shook her head, “that was wildfire. Abel is going to rip you a new one.”

  Abel had never been interested in using a piano and Grip had never pushed the idea until this concert had come up, giving him the perfect excuse to indulge his whim. In the rush to get organized, no one had much cared and the change-up had seemed like something fun to do for one night when the stakes were so low.

  It didn’t feel like a whim now, a piece of unexpected mayhem for the diehard fans. It felt solid, a gap filled, a break mended.

  By the time Abel forced his way through, Grip had given up any semblance of trying to be nonchalant. They stared at each other. Abel’s what-the-fuck look made Grip laugh.

  “Yeah, I know. Crushed it,” he said, using the T-shirt he’d tucked in the back of his jeans to wipe his face.”

  “Fuck,” Abel said. He turned to Evie and said it again, looked at Grip and said it third time. “Are you high? What did you take? Was that some one night only random mastery, or could you always do that, do it again?”

  “I wouldn’t want to do it every night. Might run out of old piano stock. They have to be the right kind of hanging in there to oblige by falling apart.” Florence had warned him to be gentle with the upright. Never mind. Nothing she couldn’t repair, so he could break it again. And he wanted to do it again, not every performance, he was drummer first and always, but now and then for kicks, for feeling fucking fantastic, and for the fans.

  “I can’t believe you held that back all this time. We have to record it,” Abel said.

  “You have to write for it first.” He’d played a mash-up medley of songs from all of the performers; riffs the audience could recognize interspersed with his favorite classics. They couldn’t record that.

  “Fucking dark horse,” Abel muttered. “All this fucking time.”

  He got swept up then. Isaac and Oscar rumbling him. Layla Flowers, musicians and techs and managers he’s known for years seeking him out to express surprise, congratulate him, want the gory details. He didn’t give them that, but he partied, drank a bit too much, let loose after two weeks of walking around with thunderclouds over his head and a piano’s worth of weight on his shoulders.

  He got hit on more that night than he could remember ever being hit on and it was tempting to give a beautiful woman the nod, sneak in a quickie in an empty corridor or take her home and make a night of it. Maybe that’s what he needed to do, get back on the horse, fuck for fun and forget about falling in love.

  It was late and he’d stopped drinking, stopped pretending he was over Mena, when someone let a bunch of groupies in, party girls, full of clever tricks and giggles. They made him realize what he’d lost and found and lost all over again. He was on his way out when he saw her. Killer curves, black leather and lace, pale skin and midnight hair. She stood apart from the others, watching him, waiting. Different, the same. Unmistakable.

  Extraordinary.

  Philomena.

  The disappointment inside him hadn’t burned out, it built a protective firewall around his heart. He looked through her and kept moving, but she put herself in his path.

  “Grip, please.”

  She said it hesitantly and he focused on her, saw the flickering of her eyes, the way she tugged at the tiny skirt she wore over fishnets and thigh-high heeled boots. She sounded like hesitance and remorse. She should be nervous. She looked like sin and he was seduced all over again.

  “Stay a moment.”

  He had nothing to say to her, and it hurt to look at her, but he couldn’t get his feet moving.

  “You didn’t answer my calls, my messages. I didn’t know how else to reach you.”

  Whatever she had to say, it was too late. It was too late after day one. “Christ. You lie about who you are and then you do this to rub it in my face. You are something fucking else, Philly, Mena, whoever you are.”

  “I’m both.”

  “Do you think I care what you call yourself?”

  She flinched and he almost reached for her. “I don’t expect you to care, but I wanted to see you. I wanted to apologize,” she said.

  Coming here, looking like this, she was trying to manipulate him again. And he was almost ready to let her. “You see me and that’s as far as you get. I don’t hook up with groupies anymore, and I don’t fall in love with li
ars.”

  “I’m sorry. Grip, I’m sorry.”

  He was tired, his bones too heavy to carry. When he thought he was over her. A good night ruined. “Go home, Mena,” or go find some other sucker to fuck over.

  “I never meant to lie to you. I have no excuse. I was greedy and I was afraid and I didn’t trust you enough to be truthful, and that’s all on me.”

  Greedy he could fathom, he’d been greedy too, but he’d done nothing to make her afraid, even agreed with Caroline Swire that Mena’s advice had been good, better than good. For the first time he had a plan that felt like it matched the life he wanted to live, a mission to use his money well for himself and for what he could do to help others.

  “Afraid of what?” To say she was afraid of him was an insult.

  “That you’d be different. That I’d fall for you again and you wouldn’t want the real me, the whole of me.”

  It was nothing he’d done. He put his hand up. “I don’t want to hear it. You are not who I thought you were. I spent a week with a girl called Philly who was a shining genuine extraordinary person. She knew how to listen and how to laugh. She knew how to give. She wasn’t a fucking liar. I fell in love with her. I didn’t think she’d disappear. You can’t play dress-ups and be that person again. You can’t go back, not to fifteen years ago, not to two weeks ago.”

  “I don’t want to go back. I never fell out of love with you, but I let you go because I needed to make something of my life. I am still the same underneath. I did this to try to prove it.” Mena dropped her gaze. “I can see now it was another terrible mistake.”

  Was he supposed to buy that, the contrition? This stunt she’d pulled. The way she held herself stiffly as if she was brittle, the way she braved her discomfit. Fuck. Fuck. He wanted to buy it so badly. The fact she was Philly and she was Mena and when she looked up at him, gorgeous face full of anxiety, he wanted to pull her into his body and make the hurt and anger go away.