“Nah,” I said. “Medium, usually. Why?”
Nate held up one hand as he wrote on a t-shirt with the other. Finally, he picked up the shirt and showed me his handiwork.
In big red letters across the Valjean branding he’d written ‘Nora O’s Ryder’.
I spat a laugh and Nora huffed.
“Grow up, Nate!” she said, rolling her eyes.
“Is it a shirt of lies?” Nate smirked.
I pointed at him. “Loved Despicable Me!”
“It was so good, eh?” Nate grinned.
“Are there two of them now? Is that what’s happening?” Miss Fern sighed.
I shrugged. “I babysit. I don’t know what his excuse is.”
“He’s a child,” Nora said.
“Only on the inside!” Nate said, quite proudly and I snorted.
Nora stood up. “I’m done. I need a drink. I suppose a club is out of the question?” she asked me, totally resigned and ready for me to say no.
But that wasn’t the new plan. “Not at all.”
Everyone looked at me then.
“Wait on,” Nate said. “If Nora’s going clubbing, I want to go, too.”
“Have you finished your homework?” Brax asked him.
Nate stuck his tongue out at him. “Yes, Mum.” He threw the t-shirt he’d just ‘signed’ to me. “Here you go, mate. On the house.”
I looked at Nora over the offending item of clothing and smirked. She smirked back.
“Hell, if I’m allowed clubbing, I’ll wear it,” she said.
Nate was hurriedly making his way through a stack of photo posters. “Not without me, you’re not.”
“Meet and Greet starts at eight, ladies…” Miss Fern said, half-reminder and half-warning.
I winked at her. “Consider them pumpkins. Home by two.”
“I think you’ll find it was midnight.” But Miss Fern smiled.
“I’m getting my bag,” Nora said.
Brax, Zach and Cooper decided to go their own way for the night, so that left Nora and Nate going out clubbing. I coordinated with the other security detail about protocol and Anton said he’d come along with me.
Nate took Anton’s chin in his hand. “Oh, a fella’s gotta get drunk to kiss this mug.” Then he winked and patted Anton’s cheek. “Or does he?” And sauntered off towards the elevator.
I looked to Nora, who was not going to give me any explanation as to what I just watched, then to Anton, who was a little more forthcoming as Nora followed Nate out.
“Nate likes to think he shocks people,” Anton said as we, in turn, followed the others.
“And I thought I liked to shock people.”
Anton shrugged. “Be interesting to see if he still made those jokes if he knew I was gay.”
“You think he wouldn’t?”
Anton gave me a smile. “On the contrary, I think he would.”
And this was one of the things I loved about my job. Not only did I get to meet sexy women like Nora, but I met different people and groups with different dynamics and I got to watch how they all interacted. I got to see what their in-jokes were. I got to experience a little bit of their lives.
The cynic in me would say I enjoyed experiencing other people’s lives because it let me avoid experiencing my own. And, maybe that was true. But, I figured, as far as coping mechanisms went, it could have been worse. Like I’d said to Bert on that first Champers Day, all of us could have had worse coping mechanisms.
Nate directed us to a club and the driver pulled up outside. Anton had given the run down of his protocols for when we got inside. I, of course, had different directions.
As Anton hung back and kept watch from a respectable distance, I kept up with Nora and Nate. If either of them thought it was weird, they didn’t say anything. The four of us were let into the VIP section and drinks were ordered.
“Anton, my man!” Nate called. “Shots!”
Anton merely shook his head once and went back to pretending he wasn’t there.
“Ryder?” Nora said, the very coaxing nature of her voice making me stand to attention.
“Miss Curry?”
“What did I say about that?” she chastised.
“Nora?” I amended.
“Better. Shot?”
I nodded. “Why not.”
Drinks flowed freely and even I was glad I didn’t have to pay. I measured myself, made sure I paced myself. That was what I was here to do after all. Let Nora lose control and be right beside to make sure she stayed safe.
At some point, Nate caught the eye of – in his words – a pretty young thing, and went off to do what Nate Glenn did best. Which left Nora and me sitting on the lounge over a tray of shots.
“This the new plan then?” she asked over the music.
“What?” I asked as I finished my drink.
“You get me drunk and I might sleep with you?”
I grinned. “I don’t need or want you drunk for that.”
“You seem to have a very high opinion of yourself.”
I grinned. “Someone has to.”
She looked me up and down. “Do you dance, Ryder?”
I nodded. “I’ve been known to.”
She held her hand out and I took it.
“Good,” she said. “Dance with me.”
She dragged me back downstairs and onto the dancefloor, not afraid to get her body up close and personal with mine. Her arm wound around my neck as she swayed to the music. And all the while, her eyes were pinned to mine like it was some sort of challenge. I didn’t know exactly what it was, but I was more than happy to meet it.
“You got something in your pocket, or just happy to see me?” she asked me, pressing her leg between mine.
“If I said it was something in my pocket?”
“Then, I might be disappointed,” she purred in my ear and I was momentarily convinced I could fall in love with her right there.
I was beginning to think it was a good thing nothing had happened about this attraction we had. If we’d jumped into bed that first night, I might not have been getting to know her so well. I might have taken a different approach to her safety and I quite liked what we had going on.
I was going to need one hell of a cold shower when we got back to the hotel, but I could handle that.
7
Nora
My initial fear and anxiety were easing. It had been over two weeks of not seeing or hearing anything weird or freaky or chilling, and I was beginning to think that Ryder was right; it had been opportunity, a once-off.
There’d been nothing in Adelaide and there was nothing here except the same thing I’d seen for the last five years of our careers; general fans doing typical, harmless fan things.
We’d got through the Meet and Greet – a whole day of lines and lines of people wanting autographs and pictures and voicemail messages. Who even used voicemail anymore? I’d felt apprehensive at the beginning. As time had gone on, though, and no one did anything more than the usual gushing over how much they loved me and Valjean and our music, I’d relaxed fully. This was the life I knew. I could navigate this seamlessly.
Ryder was there through it all, faded into the background like all the other security, but never out of sight. He was like a beacon of safety in a sea of potential uncertainty. Which gave me conflicting feelings after the previous night.
He wasn’t the first security guard I’d danced with. He wasn’t the first security guard to get a boner while we were dancing – alright, while I was rubbing my body up against theirs. He was, though, the first security guard whose boner had got me excited. To that degree anyway.
I’d wanted nothing more than to pull him close and kiss him like my life depended on it. I’d wanted to see what he tasted like right there on the dancefloor. I didn’t care if a million people saw us. I didn’t care if it got plastered all over the news. I wanted him more than all of that.
O
r, did I?
Because I hadn’t done anything.
And it wasn’t just the worry that people might get the wrong idea about us if they saw. I’d partied with plenty of people I’d slept with and there’d been pictures all over the net without speculation I was about to slip into a big white dress or anything.
I had to admit to myself that there was a tiny part of me who didn’t want to share him. To share our moment. I’d wanted our moment – if we had a moment – to be just between us. I wanted to keep something – I wanted to keep him – to myself for once.
But he was making that idea very difficult as we took a break and Ryder came over to me as I was getting a drink.
“How’s it going?” he asked.
I shrugged and shook out my hand. We might have spent a huge portion of the day before signing stuff, but there was always more to sign.
“Fine. Good. I need to get a new stack of pens, though.”
He gave me that crocked smile. The one that made his green eyes sparkle and made my stomach knot.
“I meant, anything out there that’s worrying you? Are you comfortable?” he asked.
“There is one guy who keeps staring at me…” I started and I saw Ryder snap to attention. “He’s been over in the corner wearing this dark ball cap, dark jeans, and this cheesy Ramones t-shirt.”
He’d obviously been taking it in, making himself a mental picture…then stopped and looked down at his chest.
“Very funny,” he said, but his lips were fighting a smile.
“What? You stare at me a lot, know what I’m saying?”
“It’s my job,” he told me.
I shrugged. “Whatever. You can admit you like me, you know.”
“Oh, I can admit it?” he laughed.
I nodded. “You wouldn’t be the first.”
“From what I hear, it’d be a first for you to admit it.”
I smirked. “Admit what?”
“That you like me.”
“Do I like you?” I asked innocently, knowing exactly what the answer was to that.
“Nora Curry, you wish you knew how good we’d be together.”
“Oh, do I?”
He nodded. “Oh, yeah.”
“You think you know?”
He tapped the side of his head. “I don’t just keep potential creeps up here, you know.”
“What exactly do you keep up there?”
“Well,” he started as though he was about to launch into a full description. “It just wouldn’t be appropriate for me say any more. On account of how you don’t like me and all.”
Did he just…? Was he actually going to pretend like he was some gentleman who wasn’t going to tell me in full explicit detail exactly what he wanted to do to me when I had just asked him to? Was he really going to play the ‘Oh, you’re not interested’ card? Did this guy have more game than I had originally suspected him of having?
It seemed he did.
“Nora?” Emma called. “Time.”
I didn’t know what to say to Ryder. My mouth hung open uselessly for a moment as I tried to pull words into a sentence. The wittier the better. But nothing came.
“You just keep your eyes on me, buddy,” was all I came up with.
“Wouldn’t dream of looking anywhere else,” he replied.
I felt a little flush as I walked back to my seat.
Emma had done her job, though, and there was another set of my signing pens waiting for me. I just wished I could say I paid attention to what I did with them. I didn’t, I kept looking at Ryder.
How could a guy just stand in a corner and look sexy?
Like the other guys, he had his hands behind his back and his legs were parted a little. Even from that distance, I could see the cheekiness on his face. I could picture the twinkle in his eye as he watched me sign paper after poster after shirt after book. Now and then, his eyes left me and scanned the crowd. But it wasn’t long until they were back on me again.
And I wanted more than his eyes on me.
In Ryder, I felt like I’d found a kindred spirit. There was a connection. A spark. From the moment I first saw him, it felt like we shared a secret. I didn’t know what that secret was, though. It was like he knew me, knew who I was, and I knew him. Or, better yet, he wanted to know me and I wanted to know him. I hadn’t felt that since my last crush back in my teens.
I was caught between fantasies. I kept picturing dragging him into my hotel room and crushing my lips to his. But I also pictured pulling two beers out of the fridge and sitting down to chat with him over drinks that weren’t hampered by loud club music.
Mostly, it was the kissing thing. But every so often, it was the talking thing. Both of which totally threw me off my game.
“Where have you been all morning?” Coop asked me at lunch.
I blinked. “What do you mean?”
He kicked his head towards the conference room where there were still crowds of people waiting for us to come back.
“You’ve just been going through the motions.” He looked around. “Are you worried about the stalker?”
It felt like the first time that day I was being totally honest about something. “No. We haven’t seen any more about him for, like, weeks.”
“It was Tokyo, two weeks ago.”
“What? Are you a clock now?” I huffed, thinking it was perfectly my luck that the one time my brother can keep his own time was when I’d rather he didn’t.
“I’m a concerned older brother who has to look out for his sister because she won’t do it for herself.”
I pointed to Ryder. “That’s what Emma pays him for.”
“Yeah,” Cooper huffed a humourless laugh. “You get how thankless my job is now? And I’m stuck with it for life.”
“No one asked you to care,” I grumbled.
“No,” he agreed, taking my chin in my hands and making me look at him. “But I can hardly help it when I’ve got a sister like you.”
It was the mushiest we ever got with each other. Maybe we should have been mushier. Maybe we should have said we loved each other more often. But we knew. When you saw your brother every day, you didn’t need to tell him. He knew. Likewise, you knew he loved you. It was in all the teasing. It was in all the digs. It was even in all the fights.
I gave Coop a nod. “Yeah. Well, I had a good role model.”
“If you say Brax, I’ll never speak to you again,” he said with a wry grin.
I shoved him. “Go away,” I told him, not wanting to ruin the moment but not wanting it to go any deeper.
He left me and was replaced by Ryder with a bottle of water he held out towards me.
“Drink?” he asked.
As I took it from him, our fingers brushed and I felt my heart flutter excitedly in my chest. I looked at him and I saw the mischief in his eyes. I saw the answering interest. We stood there, for too long, both holding the water bottle between us. Neither of us interested in pulling away or breaking the connection we had.
“All right, people, five minutes,” Emma called. “Spit, swallow, cover it up. I don’t care, but be public-ready in five. You hear me Brax?”
“Yeah, yeah,” he muttered as he walked out. “Five minutes. Keep your knickers on.”
I gently tugged the water bottle towards me and Ryder finally let go of it.
“Thanks,” I said, holding it up.
He nodded. “No worries.”
“I didn’t realise catering was part of security’s job.”
His eyes were all smoulder. His mouth was all supple possibility. His words were all dripping in velvet.
“My job is very…diverse.”
“That must be hard.”
He shook his head. “Not at all. It’s quite simple really.”
“How so?”
“It’s all about satisfaction. And my job is to satisfy you, Nora Curry.”
Did I really have to go back to adoring f
ans for the next six hours?
Needing to swallow hard, I covered by taking a sip of the water and nodded. “So far, so good.”
“Yeah?”
I nodded again as I raked my eyes down and up his body. “So far.”
As I walked away, I added a little more sway to my hips, knowing he’d be watching. It was easy in my heels, the great big things that had become part of my brand that I took too much pleasure kicking off at the end of the night.
Leaving things the way we did, I felt like I had the upper hand. I felt like the one in control of whatever back and forth we were doing. So, I could take him watching me for six hours. I could take the heated look he gave me or the mischievous grin he flashed now and then.
I could take it the rest of the way through the Meet and Greet and then back up to my room.
“All right, you let me know if you need anything else tonight, ma’am,” Ryder said with his easy cheek.
There was one thing I needed from him.
“Ryder…” I said as he made to walk out, my hand on his arm.
He looked back at me, his eyebrow raised in questioning anticipation. “Yeah?”
I hooked my finger in his jeans waistband and pulled him towards me. “Don’t leave.”
Ryder’s eyes searched mine as the corner of his lip tipped in a crooked grin. “Do you like me or something?” he teased.
“I want you…or something,” I told him.
He nodded like he was thinking. “I can go with that.”
He kicked the door closed behind him and took a step towards me. One hand went to my cheek and the other to my waist as he took another step. Without hesitation, he dipped his head and caught me in a breathtaking kiss. It didn’t take my breath away because it was savage passion. Quite the opposite. It was soft and earnest. It surprised me. It felt like it surprised him, too.
Suddenly, everything changed and there was that passion. Our kiss deepened and our hands couldn’t get enough of each other’s bodies. It was like they had to search every inch, sear it into memory. My arms wound around his neck and my fingers slid into his hair.
He overwhelmed my senses. His smell enveloped me in a bubble of warm spices and something tangy I wanted to lick. His body was hot and hard against mine.
Rollie & the Rocker (Grace Grayson Security Book 4) Page 5
