Maybe it was the song, he thought. Perhaps it had goosed his imagination into conjuring up a woman who wasn’t really there. The night they’d been together, despite the bravado she’d exhibited in public, he’d sensed the brokenness inside her. Had it confirmed by dawn.
As he settled into his seat, he smiled at Rachel. “Sorry for disappearing like that. Do you need a fresh drink?”
She indicated her full glass. “Ren ordered me another.”
“You met him then?” Brody asked, looking at the dark-haired man across the table.
“And me,” his sister Cilla said. “We introduced ourselves during your absence. We’re just starting to get acquainted.”
Brody pretended to wince. “Don’t believe everything she says,” he told Rachel. “Anything bad that was done to her was all Bing, I promise you. She never could tell us apart.”
Cilla rolled her big blue eyes. “And here I was relating all your good points. He truly is the white knight of the family.”
White knight? He remembered the train wreck that was his eighteenth birthday. Then another memory overlaid that ugly one, and he saw himself ripping off the clothes of a certain blonde, desperate to get to her skin as she writhed against him, hot and eager. Hardly.
Pushing the recollection away, Brody sent his little sister a speaking glance which she ignored.
“How did you two meet?” she asked Rachel.
“I haven’t heard that either,” Alexa said, leaning in.
Rachel flashed Brody a quick smile. “My parents recently bought a fixer-upper on The Strand in Hermosa. They called in Brody and Bing’s construction company for an extensive remodel.”
“To create a tasteful beach cottage,” Brody added for Lex, who had been known to complain how filthy-rich owners of surfside Southern California homes took former bungalows and turned them into modern monstrosities. “We’re looking forward to working on it.”
“My brothers started their career early,” Cilla said. “As kids, they built elaborate forts and treehouses deep in the canyon behind the compound. I swear we wouldn’t see them for days on end.”
Rachel’s eyebrows rose. “Really? What did you do for food?”
“Oh, we had stashes of the essentials at our various lairs,” Bing put in. “No boy needs much more than peanut butter, crackers, and Pop-Tarts, after all.”
“Didn’t you have to go to school?”
Brody and Bing looked at each other, smiling wryly at the teacher’s question. Nobody had been any more concerned with their attendance record than where they spent their sleeping hours. So they’d routinely escaped the chaos of the compound…until adolescence arrived and they’d become willing participants in its pandemonium.
Cilla released an exaggerated sigh. “I begged them to take me along on their canyon adventures, but they were selfish and unfeeling big brothers.”
Guilt scraped over him like sandpaper. Selfish and unfeeling. God, how fucking true. As he’d edged into his teens he’d become more and more like his egotistical father, Mad Dog Maddox. The idea turned his stomach now, and his disgust must have shown on his face because Cilla’s expression turned contrite.
“Bro,” she said, stretching her arm across the table toward him. “I’m teasing.”
He shoved back his chair, needing a moment away. “Let me get you a fresh drink, Cill.”
As he left the table he heard Ren raise his voice in protest, but he kept moving toward the bar.
It didn’t surprise him when a small hand snagged his elbow. “Brody.”
Looking down at his little sister, he checked his stride and sighed. Though she was the youngest of the Rock Royalty, she’d taken on the role of mother hen. He tugged on the ends of her hair.
“I’m okay. We’re okay.”
“Yeah?” Smiling, she squeezed his arm. “You sing a mean Eddie Vedder, you know. Your date was enthralled.”
“Good,” he said. “Now do me a favor and keep her entertained for a few minutes, okay?”
“I don’t need a drink.”
“But I need some fresh air.”
Cilla studied his face, then went on tiptoe to kiss his cheek. “I wish your conscience didn’t weigh on you so heavily.”
“Believe me.” His grin felt crooked. “I’m no saint.”
“Forgive yourself for that,” she ordered, then released him to head back to their table.
Brody continued toward the exit, threading through the crowd stocking up on beverages and conversation before Cami’s next set. The minute he pulled open the door, cool, moisture-laden air slapped him across the face. He sucked it in, moving along the building to stop in the deep shadows beneath the roof’s overhang. There he propped his shoulders against the club’s exterior wall.
The parking lot was packed, and as he stared into the night, his mind wandered to a different stretch of asphalt on a different night. It had been rain-slick, too, and water had spotted the vehicles there—stripped-down choppers as well as bulkier motorcycles; heavy duty trucks with bed-mounted rusty toolboxes; low-slung luxury sedans, sleek and spoiled.
A honky-tonk sound had filtered through walls that seemed to pulse with music and life.
Brody, following his buddy toward the front door, had barely registered the other man’s claim that Satan’s Roadhouse was the hottest bar between Santa Monica and Santa Barbara. He hadn’t given one shit about its rep. He’d been in a low mood that day and had only wanted to numb himself with another night of booze.
As they’d pushed inside, heat from the jam-packed bodies and the roaring fireplace in one corner had swamped them.
And then Brody’s blood had been set on fire at his first glimpse of the sweet and dirty blonde boot scootin’ atop the battered wooden bar.
All of a sudden his attention snapped back to the present. A woman was circling the far side of a dented SUV, a thin sweater now covering her lace blouse. Her blonde head was bent over her phone.
Brody stilled. Blinked. Shook his head.
This was no figment of his imagination stepping around puddles, her shoulders hunched against the cold as she made her way to the club’s door.
Ashlynn.
Without thinking, he strode for the heavy metal contraption and yanked it open just as she stepped beneath the overhang. For a brief second she hesitated, her gaze still focused on the screen of her cell. Then she murmured something—Thank you? Fuck you?—and without further acknowledgment of his presence or his politeness, she and her boots crossed the threshold. In the beat of a heart the woman was lost in the throng.
After a moment Brody forced himself inside and his attention away from the direction she’d disappeared. Family and friends were waiting. His date, the kindergarten teacher. The woman who might be his salvation.
Following the other female could only lead him back down the path he’d promised to step off weeks before.
Christ, it wasn’t as if he thought he’d been any good for Ashlynn, either.
But she was there in his head as he returned to his table near the stage. Bing sent him a piercing look he pretended not to notice. Instead, he made an effort with Rachel, drawing her out and then into conversations with the others of their party. They talked about Cami, about what they hoped she’d play later that night. Someone brought up the weather, which wasn’t as boring a topic as it seemed since Southern California was actually having some after years of drought. Cilla asked Rachel about her kindergarten class, and he pretended to listen.
But in reality he was back at Satan’s Roadhouse. That night, he’d found a place at the bar, at the opposite end from where the blonde was captivating the audience with her twitching, denim-covered ass and barely concealed cleavage. He’d ordered a beer and two shots of tequila, and after throwing one back he’d given his attention to the show.
Hell, why couldn’t he banish her from his head? She’d been there for weeks and weeks. Her looks, her scent, her taste. Not that he was proud of it, but he’d had dozens of one-night stands ove
r the years. Yet everything about that time with her was unforgettable.
Her kisses.
Her moans.
Her tears.
Something prickled at the back of his neck, and he rubbed there, then glanced over his shoulder. Ashlynn stood near the bar, talking with a couple of the tough-looking men who’d accompanied her into the club. Her back was to him, and he focused on those waves of pale blonde hair, recalling the silk of them sliding between his fingers. Against his face.
Over his cock.
Fuck.
He couldn’t help wondering how she was. She’d been sleeping when he’d left her in that single-wide trailer, with the silvery tracks of her sadness drying on her cheeks. His sister Cilla said he was a white knight, but he was sure he’d been no such thing in Ashlynn’s eyes. He’d known he couldn’t save her.
And to try and fail would only serve to hack more slices off his soul.
Yet now he couldn’t look away from her. Stupid, he berated himself, to be mired in a memory that didn’t deserve all this attention.
Approach her, a sensible voice said, trying to convince him he could be a normal person. Say a simple “Hello.” Perhaps it will dispel all the residual drunken drama.
And then he could really move on.
Without allowing himself a second thought, he stood and moved away from the table. He didn’t bother with an excuse for those he left behind. This wouldn’t take long.
Face to face with Ashlynn again, he’d be able to convince himself that what had happened between them was nothing more than a casual hook-up between strangers. Nothing more. Nothing serious or important.
As he approached her from behind, her two companions shifted their attention to him, their heads lifting to check him out. He ignored their suspicious glances, but wasn’t surprised when Ashlynn slowly turned to look at him.
His belly clenched. Her face was flushed, her mouth pink, her eyes, surrounded by spiky black lashes and thick liner, only made her irises appear more like clear water.
It hit him again, hard, that she wasn’t of this world.
In his brain, images of that night played like cards slapped against a table. His mouth at her ear. Her lips on his throat. His palm skating down her naked belly.
He clenched his hand instead of reaching for her.
“Ashlynn,” he said. The toes of their shoes were nearly touching.
Her brows rose over her mirror-like eyes. “Do I know you?” she asked.
Chapter 2
Thinking of what her self-possessed sister might do under similar circumstances, Ashlynn Childe worked hard at keeping her expression blank and met the man’s eyes without the slightest flinch. God, she hoped he’d buy the lie that she’d forgotten all about him. Then, insulted, he’d turn and never look her way again.
Men were like that, right? They couldn’t stand the idea of being unmemorable.
He continued to study her with those remarkable, bright-blue eyes, his gaze flicking over her skin like flame.
“Brody,” he said. “We met at the roadhouse.”
Beside her, Sam and Marcus, two of the regulars at Satan’s who’d accompanied her tonight to one of the music clubs on Sunset Boulevard, shuffled their feet, and she could feel them relax. You encountered a lot of people when you ran a bar.
Ashlynn nodded. “Ah. We do get a crowd.” Her voice sounded cool, just as if she was, indeed, channeling the unflappable Brae.
Oh, who was Ash kidding? Her sister wouldn’t bother faking forgetting a man she’d slept with. Instead, her sister would give him a friendly hug and an affectionate kiss on the cheek. If she was interested in a second round, she’d press a wet and wild one to his mouth.
Ashlynn definitely didn’t want a second chance at this tall, rugged man with the movie-star looks and the all-knowing eyes who was right now staring her down.
During their first encounter, he’d slayed her. Broke her. Wrecked her. Ruined her.
It had started off untamed and unrestrained, and she’d heedlessly tipped into the molten darkness of desire, reveling in the intoxicating distraction that offered more pleasure than the vodka she’s been sucking down. But as the night wore on and he stripped off the last of her clothes, her defenses had somehow disappeared, too. Escape became impossible when what began as skin-to-skin instead felt like the man had found her heart and her soul.
And then he’d stroked them, caressed them, touched every bleeding wound on their surfaces.
She’d wept at the painful goodness of it.
And immediately was desperate to become numb again.
“Night off for you?” he asked now.
At his casual tone, she breathed easier, certain it signaled he didn’t detect the way the memories of them together were stumbling around inside her head like drunks in the dark.
“We’re closed on Wednesdays,” she said.
Though maybe she should be reconsidering that. The restaurant/bar that had been in her family for generations had never opened mid-week. But was it a mistake to shut down that income stream? So many decisions had been dumped in her lap. She could hardly deal with one before another reached a crisis point.
A bottle of beer was thrust into her palm, and she half-turned to thank Gus Baker, another member of their group and her right-hand guy at the roadhouse. Without him, she’d be really lost.
Gus was staring at Brody, his ragged mustache nearly twitching.
“I know you,” he said, one of the fingers wrapped around his own beer shooting out to point at the other man. “Velvet Lemons, right? That compound in Laurel Canyon?”
Ashlynn’s eyes rounded. What the heck? Velvet Lemons? Her one-time lover was way too young to be part of the infamous band, wasn’t he?
“You’re his son. Mad Dog’s son.”
Well, that was a surprise. Though they’d not shared any family history that night…despite the other intimacies.
“Yeah. Mad Dog’s kid.”
Her one-night stand didn’t seem thrilled to make the admission.
“Brody Maddox,” he said, stretching out his hand to shake.
Gus did so with enthusiasm and shared his own name. “Part of the Rock Royalty, Ash,” he said next, glancing at her. “This here’s one of the kids of the Velvet Lemons—biggest band in the world.”
She might have been the sister raised with a stick up her butt, but she knew of the Velvet Lemons. Even her mom was familiar with their song list…though it was because she constantly played a satellite radio station over her house’s speakers that turned the group’s classic rockers—from screamers to power ballads—into instrumental pablum guaranteed not to offend or excite.
“I used to party over there during high school,” Gus continued, still for her benefit. “Grew up in the next canyon over, and we’d sneak in on the weekends.”
“Fun,” she said, for wont of something better.
“More than fun. Crazy.” Ash’s right-hand guy gave a sentimental shake to his head and shifted his attention to the other man. “I haven’t been to one of those no-holds-barred bashes in over a decade.”
Brody’s mouth twisted into a semblance of a smile. “Me neither.”
“Well it’s great to meetcha. I think I saw you from afar there once or twice, always surrounded by naked, beautiful puss—” He broke off to flick a glance at Ashlynn.
“Pussy,” she finished for him, because that’s what Brae would have done. It was just a word, Brody Maddox was just a man, this was just an awkward moment that would surely pass any second now. If her face was hot, she pretended it wasn’t so.
“That must have been the life,” Gus muttered, his gaze on his beer.
“Oh, yeah. The life.” The wry tone went undisguised. Then Brody glanced over his shoulder. “Looks like Cam’s almost ready to play again. I’ll get back to my table.”
Relief cooled Ash’s burning skin.
His gaze came back to hers. This time, she couldn’t stop her small fidget.
“Goodbye,
Ashlynn.”
Goodbye, Ashlynn. He’d not said that to her following their night together. After her crying jag, after he’d comforted her in his arms, she’d fallen asleep in his embrace. When she’d woken, he’d been gone.
Still mired in the memory, she watched him turn from her, preparing to walk out of her life. Then, her mouth opened.
“We hope to see you at Satan’s again,” she called to his retreating back.
Hell. What had prompted her to speak again? But she knew exactly why—she’d always been her own worst enemy. It was why she’d spent all those years away from Topanga Canyon, under her mother’s rigid thumb. Though forever she’d longed to be free and honest with her every emotion like Brae, even now Ash reverted to the impeccably polite.
Come to our tea party, our house for drinks, after-theater coffee and dessert. We’d love to have you.
Brody Maddox stilled. Then, he spun around. “I don’t know—”
Gus snapped the fingers of his free hand. “You definitely need to come back, man.”
Both Ash and Brody stared at her right-hand guy.
“What?” her one-night-stand asked.
“He’s a contractor,” Gus said to Ash. “I remember hearing about that now. And you could use someone to make those repairs we need at the roadhouse…and to talk about the renovation of the back room.”
“Gus—”
“You know I’m right, Ashlynn.”
She made a face. See where good manners got her? “I’m sure what we need is nothing like what, um, Brody does.”
She tried saying the name like it was new to her. Like she’d never uttered it, pleaded using it, when his mouth was between her widespread legs, eating her like she was juicy fruit, and she had both sets of fingers clutched in his hair.
Now he looked mildly amused. Was he sensing her sudden panic?
“Actually, renovation is our specialty,” he said.
Toying with her, Ash decided. He realized she’d been bullshitting about not remembering they’d ignited the sheets of her bed in the single-wide behind the roadhouse, and now he was enjoying watching her squirm as she tried keeping up the pretense.
Wild Child (Rock Royalty #6) Page 2
