“And last, I give you lead guitarist Len Feast,” Lucas said.
Feast stared at her for a long, silent moment. “Have you hired a new housekeeper on, Fletch?” he finally asked.
If the rest of the band thought Feast’s comment was funny, they didn’t show it. If anything, they became too quiet. Lucas gave Feast a stiff smile as he went to the bar and took up one of the fluffy white towels stacked there. Miranda tried to remain close to him, but he made a beeline for the bathroom. “A quick shower is in order for me, love,” he told her. “The boys will keep you amused.”
Lucas left Miranda to fend for herself, as much as he hated doing it. If she couldn’t hold her own against Feast, then she wasn’t the woman he thought she was.
Miranda bit the inside of her lower lip to stop herself from calling after him. After a two and a half hour set followed by a forty-five minute encore, Lucas was drenched with sweat and in dire need of a wash and rinse. The whole band could use it, from what Miranda saw. Feast, whose saturated T-shirt lay in a wet heap on the floor, lounged on the sofa in only his pants and his recently acquired G-string. A very pretty woman with green eyes, blonde hair and the shortest miniskirt Miranda had ever seen lay half sprawled over him.
“So,” Feast started. “Lucas says you’re a writer.”
“I’m a reporter.” Miranda wanted to put her coat on, to better facilitate a fast getaway, but Wet Willie was now wearing it and rifling through her pockets.
“What do you report on?” Feast grabbed a bottle of Cristal by the neck and took a noisy swig of it.
“Sports.” Miranda narrowed her eyes. She didn’t care for the demanding tone of his questions.
He snickered. “What does a bird like you know about sports?”
He’d struck her most sensitive spot, and Miranda returned fire. “I know that the English aren’t particularly good at too many of them.”
Feast didn’t respond immediately. When he did, he got personal. “I’ve always found Americans to be rude and insulting and too bloody stupid to know that they’re being so.”
“I find the English to be pretentious, overbearing, self-righteous, supercilious blowhards,” Miranda responded prettily.
Feast sat upright, rolling the woman off of him. “Americans are frivolous and gaudy.”
Miranda took a step toward him. “Your accent is prissy.”
“Your accent is obscene.”
“English football is a sport for bloodthirsty hooligans,” Miranda said.
“American football is for head-banging morons.”
“The monarchy is obsolete,” Miranda spat.
Feast shot to his feet. “Your president is a fool.”
Miranda’s path cleared as she made her way toward Feast. “America, for better or for worse, gives the world the promise of possibility.”
“You gave the world Happy Meals and Levis!”
With stealthy calm, Miranda went in for the kill. “You gave the world the Spice Girls.”
An audible wince resounded through the room. Feast stomped toward the bar and was pouring himself a short whiskey when he noticed the book poking from Wet Willie’s pocket. He took it, read the front cover, and laughed.
“That’s mine,” Miranda told him.
Feast leaped out of her reach. “Finders keepers.”
“Give it back,” she demanded.
“You didn’t say the magic word.” He held the book behind his back.
Miranda held out her hand. “Give it back now.”
“Make me.”
Those two words had gotten Miranda into countless scrapes during her grade school years, and the words had the same effect on her as an adult. Taking a page from Blind Rage’s book, she lunged at Feast when he rounded the bar. She grappled with him for the paperback while the band egged them on. Feast’s woman ran to the bathroom door and pounded on it with both fists. “Your new maid is killing Len!” she wailed through a thick Italian accent.
“I’m all right, Izzy!” Feast yelled. He impishly transferred the book from hand to hand, holding it well out of Miranda’s reach as she tugged on his arms. She hooked her heel behind his ankle and tripped him to the carpet, and he brought Miranda down with him. His hand slipped as he tried to brace her fall, and he struck her across the cheek with the book. Miranda, who was only mad before, got pissed.
Lucas heard Feast’s shouts and Izzy’s banging on the door the instant he turned off the shower. After hastily swathing a towel about his hips, he sprinted from the bathroom and parted the circle of fight fans to see Miranda and Feast on the floor. Miranda had him in an iron headlock, and Feast’s face was the color of an overripe raspberry.
“I leave the room for five minutes and a Wrestle Royale breaks out between my girl and my best friend?” Lucas railed as he separated them. “Honestly, Feast.”
Feast’s normal color was slow to return. “She started it!”
“No, I didn’t.” Miranda panted for breath and used the back of her hand to touch her nose to make sure it wasn’t bleeding. “He started it.”
“Anyone but you two, tell me what happened,” Lucas ordered.
Feast’s blonde stepped forward. “Your servant—”
“You’re hardly an impartial witness, Isabella,” Lucas said. “And Miranda is not my housekeeper, maid or servant.” He shook his head, amazed that he’d never noticed Isabella’s intellectual shortcomings.
“Feast took her book,” Garrison said from his corner far out of the fray. “Then he hit her with it.”
A storm brewed on Lucas’s face. He tugged Feast to his feet and slammed him against the nearest wall, to Isabella’s screams.
“It was an accident,” Feast insisted as his band mates scattered.
Miranda grabbed Lucas’s arm. “It really was an accident. He was teasing me. I overreacted. We were just playing around, right Feast? Mr. Feast?”
Lucas held him a moment longer before releasing him with a little push. “You’ll go too far one of these days, mate.” He cupped Miranda’s face. She seemed none the worse for the experience. Unlike Feast, she actually looked like she had enjoyed the scrape. “I’ll dress and then I’ll take you home.”
“Izzy’s got a friend in, Fletch,” Feast said. Miranda followed his line of sight toward the bar, where a buxom redhead sucked on a maraschino cherry. “Come back to the hotel with us. You’re well overdue for a some good fun.”
Miranda, convinced that her spine was telescoping, made an effort to stand taller.
“I have other plans, Feast,” Lucas said sharply.
“What?” Feast said, shrugging a shoulder. “You and Yoko have tickets for a midnight mumblety-peg tournament?”
“Give Miranda her coat, Wet.” Lucas fixed his dark gaze on Feast. “We’ll be leaving soon.”
“Look at yourself, Fletch,” Feast demanded. “You’re a love-struck poof! You’re supposed to be our dark, brooding god of sex, not bloody Hugh Grant pining after Divine Brown!”
Lucas’s knuckles cracked as his hands fisted at his sides. He fixed a cold stare on his oldest friend. “Don’t make any plans for tomorrow. You and I need to talk.”
“Agreed.” Feast shot a withering look at Miranda.
Lucas left her alone again, to get dressed. Miranda half hoped for another round with Feast, but he disappointed her by collecting Isabella and her redheaded friend and leaving. Garrison tugged Miranda’s coat from Wet Willie, and helped her into it. The coat was damp and warm, evidence as to the origin of Wet’s nickname.
“I didn’t mean to cause a fight,” Miranda said. “I’m sorry I disrupted your band.”
Garrison returned her book to her. “Lucas has to smash Feast’s face in a’ least once every couple ‘a years. Feast needs it. ‘E never got his arse kicked in enough at Oxford, the spoiled wanker.”
“Feast went to Oxford?” Miranda was surprised.
“Aye,” Garrison said. “‘E’s got himself papers in applied chemistry. ‘E’s a bloody brain. ‘E just
doesn’t got a full servin’ ‘a common sense.”
* * *
“It’s been a hard tour, but I shouldn’t be this worn out,” Lucas said. He set his motorcycle helmet on the small circle of Miranda’s dining room table. His heavy black boots clomped noisily over her bare hardwood floors as he joined her in the confined space of her kitchen. “Perhaps I’m getting too old for all this travel.”
“You’re not old. Mick Jagger was still putting on a good show into his fifties.” Miranda’s voice came from deep within her refrigerator. She was starving, and all she’d done was sit on a stool in the darkened wings of the Arena stage, unlike Lucas, who’d spent over three hours on full throttle. She wanted to feed him, and she was embarrassed that she had little more than condiments and leftovers to serve.
“Jagger hasn’t toured in decades,” Lucas said. “He’s a national treasure that must be preserved. In fact, for the past twenty years he’s been kept under glass in a museum basement in London. An animatronic replica is sent out when the band tours.”
“That would explain his dancing.” Miranda withdrew from the fridge clutching a small bowl of day-old rice, a grilled chicken breast, half a Vidalia onion, a green net bag holding a few grape tomatoes and a tiny tin of sliced black olives. She set the items on the countertop next to the stove. “I could order in Chinese. There’s a place near here that stays open until three on the weekends, or I could throw something together. I think.”
“Bernard said you didn’t cook,” Lucas smiled.
“Chopping and re-heating is not cooking.”
“What can I do to help?”
The kitchen seemed to shrink with him in there with her, and she was keenly aware of his every move. He reached around her for a paring knife, and she felt the warmth of his body. She turned to grab something from the fridge, and she caught a whiff of his freshly showered scent. He worked beside her, chopping garlic gloves, and Miranda was alarmed by her comfort with him.
He leaned in close to her to scrape his garlic into a skillet where Miranda had started the rice dancing in hot vegetable oil with a dash of dendi, the bright orange oil extracted from the African palm of northern Brazil.
“My Avó Marie Estrella used dendi the way Italian cooks use olive oil,” Miranda told Lucas, who had begun slicing the chicken breast into long strips. “She was a very good cook. That gene bypassed me and went to my sister, Calista. I got my other grandmother’s cooking ability. Grandma Ilene’s food was just awful. She thought she was the best cook in the world, though.”
Lucas laughed lightly. “I think every family has one of those. For me, it’s my Aunt Kerry. Every year at Christmas she makes rum cakes for everyone. My dad’s still using his as a doorstop.”
“My Grandma Ilene made macaroni and cheese for a potluck dinner my softball team in high school was having to raise money for new uniforms,” Miranda started while she sautéed her garlic and rice. “She used to cook pasta the way normal people cook rice, you know, until all the water is absorbed. She put the gloopy, watery macaroni in a baking dish with about six bricks of Velveeta and cream cheese, baked it for twenty minutes, threw some crushed saltines on top, and then presented it at the potluck. She was so mad because everyone thought it was a dip.”
“Well, it seems her heart was in the right place,” Lucas said, laughing along with Miranda as she added his chicken strips to the skillet. The tomatoes, sliced onion and black olives followed, and once satisfied that everything had warmed through, Miranda scraped the contents of the skillet into a big glass bowl. With the steaming bowl propped in the crook of one arm, she grabbed two forks from her cutlery drawer and led Lucas into her living room.
“I’m sorry,” she said when he took a fork and sat on the sofa. “Do you want a plate?”
“This is fine. I’d do it like this myself, if I were at home.”
Miranda sat on the floor on the opposite side of her low cocktail table. “If you were at home, your chef would’ve had a seven-course meal waiting for you. My place is much more humble.”
“It’s charming.” Lucas liked the simplicity of Miranda’s apartment. Since it was the third floor of a deconsecrated church, it had fascinating architectural details: wide, deep windows, exposed brick walls and polished bird’s eye maple floors. The lower level was an open atrium sparsely furnished with light-colored, natural woods and upholsteries, and the upper level was accessed by a set of wide, bare maple stairs. Lucas assumed that her bedroom was somewhere atop them.
Miranda took a bite of the rice. It wasn’t her best, but it would do. “Your guitarist doesn’t like me.”
“It’s not you.” Lucas ate heartily. This was truly the best meal he’d ever had, and it was only leftovers. “It’s any woman. Most of them couldn’t survive Feast’s baptism by sarcasm.”
Most? Miranda wondered how many there had been.
“Feast was particularly virulent with you because he feels especially threatened. We’ve been together from the beginning. It’s always been hard for him when someone comes between us.”
Miranda blanched as she set down her fork. “I’m the Other Woman?”
“You’re the woman. Feast knew that I’d fall in love someday, and that I’d belong to someone else.”
“You say things that make me doubt my sanity.” Miranda went to the kitchen for something to drink.
“He’ll adjust, in time,” Lucas called after her.
“I didn’t mean Feast. I meant that word. You use it so easily.”
“Which word?” Lucas asked.
“Love.”
“On the contrary, Miranda, I use it only when I mean it. I don’t even use the word in my songs.”
Miranda returned with two bottles of beer. She gave one to Lucas.
“I’ve got another Corona in there, too,” she said, holding up the beer she’d chosen for herself. “I’ve got some cachaça and a couple of limes. I could make a couple of caipirinhas, if you’re more in the mood for a cocktail. If you like mojitos, you’ll love caipirinhas.”
“As much as I like cachaça, this Guinness suits me perfectly, you wonderful girl,” he chuckled, saluting her with the dark brown bottle.
“Bernie loves Guinness.” Miranda resumed her seat at the cocktail table.
“The man has excellent taste,” Lucas proclaimed. “And now who’s guilty of the liberal use of the word ‘love?’”
“I used it in this case because Bernie genuinely loves Guinness. He says it tastes like soy sauce, but he loves it because it’s Irish, and he’s very proud of his heritage. But you write love songs. How can you say that you don’t use the word love?”
“Love is a feeling that can be conveyed far more effectively using other words.” He moved the rice bowl and their beers aside, and leaned closer to Miranda, overwhelming her with his proximity. “For example, I died of old age every day I spent waiting to see you again. I lost my heart the first time I looked into your eyes, and I lost my soul the first time you kissed me.”
“Are those lyrics from a song?” she asked softly, his gaze making it impossible for her to move or even look elsewhere. “Because if they are, they’re really cheesy.”
He leaned over the table until his mouth was an inch from hers. “Those are lyrics from my heart, inspired by you.” His words had turned her to honey and when his lips met hers, his touch set that honey boiling. Her desire for him mounted within her with the force of a geyser.
In a show of monumental restraint, Lucas didn’t strike the bowl and the beers onto the floor and spread her over the cocktail table. He’d been hungry after the show, yes, but he could have done without food. He could have done without air. All he wanted was Miranda. Every time he had looked offstage, he’d seen her there in the wings, and at no point had she taken out her book. He’d sung some of his favorite songs not to the thousands of fans who had paid to see him, but to the one woman who was the answer to his unspoken prayers.
As she rose on her knees to deepen the kiss between them, he
knew that he had to end it before it got out of his control.
“I should have asked before I did that.” He licked his lower lip, tasting her sweetness on it. “I guess I’m not the gentleman I thought I was.”
She took a deep breath, and her billowy shirt seemed to flutter against the rapid beat of her heart. “I’m sure you’ve got a great room at the Ritz-Carlton or the Harborfront Regency, but you’re welcome to stay here tonight. It’s no castle, but it’s cozy. And I have a really big bed.”
He threw back his head and laughed out loud. “How can I resist an invitation like that?”
She sat back on her heels. “I’m no seductress, Lucas. I’m twenty-nine in two days and I’ve had exactly three lovers in my life.”
“Only three? Did you grow up in a convent?”
“I was a late bloomer.” She grabbed the rice bowl and took it into the kitchen.
“How late?”
“Not until the night of my college graduation.” She returned to the living room, this time sharing the sofa with him. “I was twenty-one years old. My best friend Tracey and I decided that we were tired of being virgins, so—”
“Tracey?” Lucas interrupted with a titillated twitch of an eyebrow.
“Tracey is a he, not a she,” Miranda clarified. “He was a computer information systems major with this big, crazy Afro and the nicest smile. He had this really attractive self-conscious quality. He was a high school nerd who blossomed in college, but never realized that he’d blossomed. On graduation night, we just did it. We got some books—”
“How studious.” Lucas sat to face her.
“The Joy of Sex, Kama Sutra…you know. We spent the night at his place.”
“Was it satisfactory?”
“Some parts of it were better than others.” She lowered her face to study her thumbnail.
“It didn’t end well with this man?”
She shook her head. “He was more serious about me than I was about him. I went into the whole thing as a reconnaissance mission. It was a learning experience, and I never pretended otherwise.”
“Did you care for him?”
“Of course. He was my best friend for four years. He showed me how to computerize my football betting pools, and I taught him how to fill out a baseball scorecard. We couldn’t have done what we did if we hadn’t respected and cared for each other. I just didn’t love him the way he loved me.”
Crush Page 12
