by Cecilia Tan
It was. “You read my mind,” I said, as I took the covered plate from her gratefully.
“No problem, Ricki,” she said. “Leave the dish on the tray and I’ll take care of it after you’re done in here.”
“You should go home,” I said. “You shouldn’t be here this late.”
“Don’t be silly. It’s not like you’re paying me by the hour.” She shooed me back into the room.
I returned to my seat under the eagle. The sandwich was a pressed baguette with melted cheese. I bit into the crisp crust and felt better immediately.
Gwen and Schmitt went over some upcoming dates for the monthly parties and I mostly just nodded in agreement while eating. Paul would check it against my calendar.
And then the meeting was thankfully over. Gwen stood and thanked Schmitt for coming. “See you at breakfast, Rick’? I’ve got that audition early in the morning.”
“Yep. See you in the morning, Gwen.”
She flounced off and I brushed the crumbs from my hands over the tray. “Will you see yourself out?” I said to Schmitt.
Schmitt stood also and set down his empty teacup. “Rickanna, I did want to say one more thing.”
“Oh?” Where I was standing the wings of the eagle loomed over me and I moved to the desk, pretending to look for something in the small stack of papers and things on the blotter.
“Yes. I know it can be quite intimidating to have one’s first BDSM experience in public, so I wanted to extend the offer to you.” He coughed noisily. “The offer, that is, of my services. Perhaps something as simple as a spanking? I am quite experienced in these matters. I would be happy to enact the scene in private if you so wished.”
So that’s what all his jockeying for time and trying to have a meeting with me alone was about: propositioning me. What I felt most at that moment was disappointment. I wasn’t afraid of Schmitt. I wasn’t even particularly disgusted at the come-on. Men can be like that. I suppose what disappointed me most was that Grandpa Cy had mostly associated himself with good people, trustworthy people. Schmitt had been his closest associate of all, and when I was little he’d been almost like an uncle or a second grandfather. So although I expected men to be pigs and hit on me inappropriately—this was hardly the first time it had happened to me—I’d hoped Schmitt was better than that.
But, no. Just a filthy pig in the end. I broke out of my frozen deadpan and forced myself to laugh a gentle yet dismissive laugh. The don’t-be-silly laugh. “Oh, Conrad, you’re always thinking of my well-being. But you know I think of you like an uncle.” I hoped an incest implication was enough to deter him.
“I do care for you dearly, Ricki,” he said, and I wasn’t sure my message of “no” was getting through.
“Thank you for the kind offer,” I said, “but I’ve got this one covered.”
“You needn’t even be unclothed for a spanking, you know,” he said, and I wondered just how much “no” it was going to take to get him to give up. Had he even heard what I said? “You could simply … bend over … right now.”
Sigh. Very disappointed. I folded my hands and gave him what I called my “skeptical schoolmarm” look, complete with headshake and clucking of my tongue. “And you could simply walk out that door and never, ever mention this conversation again.”
He opened his mouth to protest but something must have started to sink in because nothing came out.
For emphasis I twirled one finger in a circle and pointed it at the door.
“Perhaps I’ve been mistaken,” he said gruffly, blinking almost in surprise. “If so my apologies. My sincere apologies.” I think I know why they call it backpedaling now. He practically walked backward out of the room, repeating the apologies a couple of times on the way, vacillating between looking at me and looking at where he was going. Pathetic, really.
I waited until he had shut the door behind him. Then I e-mailed Paul asking him to take care of booking a locksmith to come sometime when I could be present to change the lock on the office door and to redo the combination on the safe.
And then I texted Sakura.
What the fuck is wrong with men? Why is it always guys who are making utterly inappropriate come-ons who can’t take a hint?
She wrote back: Because they live in a fantasy world and reality doesn’t intrude. A fantasy world where you lust after them as much as they lust after you.
Hah, I replied. I think it’s just that once their dicks get hard there’s no blood left for their tiny brains.
This isn’t about Axel, is it??
No. Not about Axel. Not at all. If anything the incident made it painfully obvious to me how well Axel did listen to me. I think me and Axel are getting along just fine now.
I still had to figure out how the heck I was going to keep us out of the papers, but … one thing at a time.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
HOLD FAST
AXEL
The next day The Tinseltown Tab came out and I learned more about Ricki Hamilton in the ten minutes I was sitting in the waiting room outside the recording studio reading it than I had in the previous two months. I found out she got her MBA at Wharton—Ivy League!—right out of UPenn and that her sister Gwen was Ivy, too. Well, okay, the Ivies let in a lot of the kids of the rich and famous: that’s how they afford the less affluent kids, right? Still. They don’t take you in if you’re a complete dunce. I was pretty sure Ricki and Gwen were every bit as smart as they seemed.
She was going to hate the article, though. The reporter had managed to get an interview with her father, who was supposedly in rehab and, I would have thought, wasn’t allowed to talk to the media. But what did I know? Maybe the woman had talked to him before he went in and they’d held the story until now.
After reading the article all I could think was, despite her protests, no wonder Ricki was weird about rope. I considered tearing out the pages and taking them with me to read again later, but decided that might be frowned on by the nice folks at the record company who put magazines out to make a friendly impression in their waiting room. They probably wouldn’t want it sitting there all ripped up.
So I took the entire magazine. I stashed it in my shoulder bag with my lyric notebook and tablet.
Mal and I went to check out our new rehearsal space after that. Ford, Chino, and Samson met us at a boring-looking strip mall. Next door was a former video rental store (now vacant), and next to that a tanning salon. Our space had once been a small gym of some kind. The front was the office and reception area, and the back was a fairly large, fairly soundproof room, which was what we needed. The floor was concrete and you could see marks where various pieces of equipment had been bolted down once upon a time. That the place had a whirlpool bath still installed, that we could use if we cleaned it out a little, was an unexpected plus.
The rest of the day was spent moving gear into the new place from Mal’s condo, Christina’s office, and a room at Capitol’s offices we’d been using as storage since the Grammys. The plan was to start working on material for the next album, but we weren’t going to record anything for a while. Now was the time to start jamming, and playing bits of songs for each other that we’d been writing, and see what came together. We didn’t need any fancy audio equipment for that. Anything we wanted to stick down on demo we could use our phones or a laptop for. For now, not only did the regular gear need to be set up, but we had to make a run to the store to buy chairs. Then, after playing halfway through one song—“Rock the World,” which is kind of loud—we decided we needed a little more sound-dampening, so we made another trip to Home Depot for egg crate foam and mats for the floor.
Taking five guys to Home Depot is never a quick trip. But it’s not like we were in a hurry.
Ford’s dad dropped by while we were sticking up the egg crate foam and invited us over to his place for dinner. We declined—I think we all wanted to play all night if we could—and instead ordered a pizza, and Chino went out and picked up a couple of crates of Mexican beer. An
d that meant a third trip to Home Depot, this time for a refrigerator, and then we pretty much had a rehearsal setup we could live with for the next couple of months.
We hadn’t played together since the Grammy performance and I think everyone was really eager to get back in the saddle. When you’re in a band, it sounds corny to say it, but it’s kind of like being married to a bunch of guys. Sometimes you want to kill them, but you miss them when you’ve been apart.
“You guys ready to rock like Grammy winners?” I said when everyone was finally picking up their instruments again after we got the fridge running.
Chino played a little drum fill. “What should we start with?”
“How about ‘Short Fuse’?” Ford suggested.
I shook my head. “Let’s start with something that doesn’t push the high notes first thing. How about ‘If This Car’s Rockin’?”
There was general agreement on my choice and off we went, playing through a couple of our older songs—“Gravitate,” “Hold Fast,” “Don’t Look Away”—to knock the rust off before we started tossing around ideas for new material.
Around two in the morning Christina called my phone to harangue us not to stay up all night.
I put her on speaker and laid my phone on top of an amp. “You guys,” came her tinny voice. “It’s two a.m.”
“We know,” I said. “That’s why I picked up the phone. I figured it was something urgent.”
“No, just reminding you to go to bed.”
“What are you, our mother? Why should we go to bed?” I motioned to the other guys who made noises of agreement with me. “Seriously, Chris. Do we have to be somewhere tomorrow?”
“No,” she admitted. “So did you start writing anything new yet?”
“It’s our first rehearsal, Chris. We’re still knocking the rust off.”
“Well, remember, this is the album that will make or break your careers. A one-hit wonder is great, but you need to have this one not only break big but break big internationally. And if it doesn’t, well, that’s all the more reason to set up this separate deal for the UK. I can basically double the money up front if Rothschild will go for it, you know.”
Mal was rolling his eyes. He was as un-thrilled about trying to figure out what the British pop charts would like as I was. As if writing songs wasn’t hard enough as it was. “Christina,” I said seriously. “We love you. But leave us alone when we’re writing, okay?”
“Okay, okay. Just wanted to remind you. Well, don’t stay up too late!”
I got the feeling she felt we already had, but I laughed and said, “Bye, Chris. Don’t call too early tomorrow. None of us will pick up.”
We didn’t actually play all night, only until about four, and then we went off to our various places to sleep. Samson and Ford were both staying at Ford’s dad’s place in Laurel Canyon, which had a couple of spare rooms. Chino—I’m not sure where Chino went. I went back to Mal’s in Santa Monica where I’d converted his couch into a blanket fort because the morning sun could be kind of bright.
All of which means I didn’t re-read the article or call Ricki about it until well into the next day. I texted her first in case she was in the office.
Saw the piece in TTT. You doing okay?
The answer came quickly, as if she already had the phone in her hand.
No. I’m stuck here on media blackout.
Oh? Here=home?
Yes.
Great. I called her. I was lying on the couch, the blanket under me now, and I could hear Mal in the shower. “Hey. Want me to come over and relieve your boredom?”
“Who says I’m bored?”
“You used the words ‘stuck here,’ ” I pointed out.
“True.”
“I’ve got rehearsal, but I’ll beg off after a couple of hours to save my throat if you want to see me.” I didn’t think the guys would be too pissed at me. They’d get over it.
“I don’t know, Axel …”
I knew there was a ton of reasons why the article might make her feel bad about herself and about relationships and about kink. But I played it light: “Don’t know what: if you really want to see me or if you want to put up with my horny magnificent self? I can be good, you know.”
“I don’t know if it’s a good idea for us to … keep doing what we’re doing.”
Uh-oh. I hoped she meant the dom-sub thing and not the whole relationship.
I kept my cool. “I don’t know, either. Why don’t we get together and talk about it.”
“This is going to sound corny, but … it’s good to hear your voice.”
That did not sound like a woman who wanted to kick me to the curb, did it? “I’ll come by late. Nine or ten, okay?”
“Okay.”
I was distracted and jittery all through rehearsal. Granted, some of that may have been the coffee. LA is a driving town. Everyone drives everywhere. Having a car of my own, even if it was a rental, was kind of a new experience for me. Having a car of my own in a town where there was drive-thru everything—including coffee—was even newer. So I had picked up coffee at a drive-in window, at one of these places where the names of the sizes are all translations of the word large. Which means they don’t indicate how large. They should probably be translated as giant, gigantic, and gargantuan if the state of my bladder was any indication. Next time get merely massive, Ax.
But the guys were also not fooled. Let’s put it this way: I knew they were onto me when they started working on a song called “PW.” For Pussy Whipped. I think Chino was the one who suggested it, but I was too distracted thinking about Ricki to pay attention to them making fun of how distracted I was. Let’s face it: there’s not much you can hide from your band. They know you too well and when you play music together … not to be too woo-woo or anything but … you sense each other’s emotions.
They knew what was what. Mal threw me out after a couple of hours with the admonition to work on some lyrics by myself while they jammed. He was angry but I knew it was also his way of doing me a favor.
I probably should have been more worried about him being pissed at me but honestly I couldn’t feel anything other than happy I was about to see Ricki. It was that stage of puppy love or new love or whatever you want to call it where the surges of emotion are so strong they get in the way of actual thought. So although I knew she was upset and was having some second thoughts (or maybe third thoughts), all I could feel was euphoria at the fact I was about to see her.
At the gatehouse to the Governor’s Mansion, the guard gave me directions on how to drive through the grounds to the private garage. I wasn’t sure what would happen if I made a wrong turn and I didn’t want to find out. They had a fair bit of land and it was hilly; from the gate you couldn’t even see the house.
When I pulled up to the garage door set in the side of a hill, it opened automatically and I eased my car in.
The suited man I knew as her head of security was there to greet me. “Mr. Hawke, I’m Reeve. Ms. Hamilton is awaiting you in the kitchen. I’ll show you in.”
“Thanks. I think maybe we passed the kitchen on my first time here but I wouldn’t bet on me being able to find it again.”
He gave me a tight smile and led the way.
She was in the kitchen making something, her back to us. I was half expecting a butler to announce me. But Reeve was like a ninja, totally silent, and he faded into the background once I stepped into the kitchen. I slipped onto a stool at a counter island that looked like it had come right out of a home and garden magazine. I guess when you can afford the best, you get the best.
I could hear the whisk in the pan.
“Don’t you have servants to do that?” I asked, then felt a little guilty for startling her, because she jumped.
When she turned around she pretended she wasn’t startled, though. “I don’t keep the kitchen staff here this late,” she said. “Besides, I don’t need a chef to make me hot chocolate.”
“I dunno, Rick’. It can be t
ough work to break up all the lumps in Swiss Miss.”
She gave me a critical look.
“Isn’t it a little warm out for hot chocolate?”
The look intensified. “Sometimes a woman’s need for chocolate has nothing to do with the temperature.”
“No argument here.”
She went to fetch what was on the stove. She set two mugs on the counter between us, drizzled liquid caramel from an unmarked squeeze bottle into them, and then from the saucepan poured a dark liquid striped with beige foam. The mugs were each filled about two-thirds of the way and she gave me one.
“I didn’t know when you were coming,” she said, as if apologizing for the scant amount.
I had the mug halfway to my mouth. “Whoa, whoa, you aren’t giving me chocolate you intended to drink yourself, are you?”
“I can always make more if I need it,” she said, coming around to the stool next to mine. She took a sip and closed her eyes, a long sigh of relief coming from her as it went down. It was like her body relaxed as the chocolate seeped in.
I had a sip myself, and yes, it was ridiculously rich and decadent. No wonder she’d given me that look; this was not Swiss Miss.
When she opened her eyes I took her mug, poured from mine until hers was all the way full, and then gave it back to her.
“Chivalry is not dead,” she joked, but she took it and gulped gratefully.
“Maybe I just decided it’s in my best interests not to get between you and your chocolate,” I said.
“Hm. You’re smarter than you look.” She tipped the mug back, taking it in silky swallows. When she was done, she had a rim of chocolate along her top lip.
“There’s plenty for me right here,” I said, and pulled her gently toward me until I could lick her mouth and kiss her clean. Which I did, with slow and luxurious sweeps of my tongue.
She leaned her forehead against me. “You said you could be good.”
“Wasn’t that good?”
“Axel. Seriously.”
“Okay, seriously. If you want me to be hands off tonight, I will. It’ll just take more willpower to resist you if you’re covered in chocolate.”
