The fact the job involved Nora didn’t distract me from it. It made it more personal.
It was a dangerous line I was treading.
I knew the job should never be personal.
With Nora, I couldn’t help it.
She was all I thought about.
When she was signing whatever a fan thrust in front of her.
When she was posing for a camera.
When she was on stage performing.
When she was in her room next door. So close, but so far away.
Her body had drawn me in, but her mind and her mouth kept me hooked.
I wanted another night with her. Badly. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d wanted anything more than I wanted just one more night with her. Even if that was all I’d ever get. Even if all we did was throw back a few beers and talk more about our awkward teen years. I just wanted one more night when it was her and me against the world.
But she was saying no.
One-Night Nora was sticking to her moniker.
That was fine. The world didn’t revolve around me. At the moment, it seemed to revolve around her. And I just had to be thankful that while she wasn’t going to bed with me at least she wasn’t going to bed with anyone else either.
“I don’t know if I want room service or to go clubbing,” she said to me as we walked back to her hotel room after an interview in the conference room.
“Are you asking my opinion, or thinking out loud?” I asked.
She threw me a smile. “Can it be both?”
I grinned. “Those are two very different activities,” I said as I swiped her door card over the lock.
As I opened the door, I gave the room a cursory sweep, then held it open for her to enter.
“Always the gentleman,” she said cheerfully.
“I think you’ll find it’s tactical,” I answered cheekily.
“Oh?”
I nodded as I did a sweep of the bathroom. “It gives me a chance to check the room’s safe before you enter it.”
“So, not you being polite, then?”
“Can it be both?” I asked with a wink.
“I guess it can.” She sat on the bed and started pulling her shoes off. “Is that something you learned? Like special security school? Or does it just come naturally?”
I laughed. “Security school? I wish. A chunk of it was basic training. Quite a bit of it is common sense. A lot of it was learning on the job.”
“How much call does Adelaide have for stalker threats?”
“Yeah. Not much. Most of Grace Grayson’s gigs are escorting high flyer’s wives to events they don’t want to go to. We do a bit of general security for companies, but most of it is to make people look good in certain situations.”
“Then where did you learn all your safety stuff.”
“Military.”
She nodded. “Your commander. The Grace of Chaos.” She looked at me to confirm she had it right.
I nodded. “Yup. We were all in the military together. We all moved to Adelaide with Chaos and Hawk to work for them when we retired. A civ life without the boys seemed a little too…daunting, so Tank, Nico and I all jumped at it. No questions.”
Daunting was putting it mildly. The idea of being without my team on a daily basis after barely seeing the back of them for five years was more than daunting. It was terrifying. The idea of going back home made it feel like it’d just erase the previous years, leaving me with nothing but the bad memories and the trauma. At least this way, we could surround ourselves with people who got it.
“You’re not from Adelaide originally?”
I shook my head. “Country Victoria boy, me.”
She snorted. “What? Like a farm?”
I nodded. “Like a farm, but not quite a farm. Just the middle of nowhere.”
“Wow. I can’t picture that.”
“Me either. Anymore. I’m not sure even me mum would recognise me these days,” I said, totally making the whole situation more real.
I hadn’t meant to do it. Not consciously. I just couldn’t help this concept that had been pattering about my head lately; the concept of finding more with someone. Maybe Nora wasn’t the right someone. Maybe I was still too fucked up even for a cat. But how would I know if I didn’t give it a try?
Nora could be the right someone. I refused to deny the potential. I could talk to her. I wanted to talk to her. I was attracted to her, mentally and physically. The rest I could discover in time. Including our compatibility, or lack of.
“The military was hard?” she asked.
I’d thought she’d run away from the realness, not lean into it.
“No harder than anyone else’s service, I’m sure. But I walked away more fucked up than I went in.”
“Life has a way of…” She stopped like she was lost for words.
“Changing you?” I suggested.
She nodded. “Changing you,” she agreed.
The moment kind of stagnated there and it felt a lot like I’d ruined it.
“So,” I said more jovially. “Decided between room service and clubbing?”
She nodded, seeming distracted by her thoughts. “Room service, I think.”
“Okay. Well, you let me know if you change your mind. I’ll be in my room.” Kicking myself for being too vulnerable and needy and desperate, and ruining the rapport I had with this awesome woman.
She got up to walk me to the door – all of two steps away. “‘Night, Ryder.”
“‘Night, Nora.”
I opened the door and, as she went to take it from me, our hands brushed. Her eyes darted up to mine and she bit her lip.
Something palpable zinged between us. I saw it in her eyes. I felt it in the tension of our bodies, like we couldn’t decide if we wanted to surge forward and rip each other’s clothes off or run screaming in the other direction.
She didn’t say anything. She didn’t ask to me to stay. She didn’t ask me to leave. I went with the safer route and decided leaving was best. I didn’t want her chasing me or anything; I was fucked up, but not that badly. I just wanted whatever happened between us to be on her schedule. The ball was in her court.
I gave her a nod and walked back to my room.
Once in there, I reached for my phone and decided Chaos was probably due an update.
As the call rang, I fell back onto the bed and tried chasing images of gorgeous red heads from my mind.
“Kit Grayson,” he finally answered.
“Ryder Andrews,” I said, mimicking his suave business tone.
“Rollie. How are things?”
“Better than yours, I’ll bet. Too busy even to check your caller ID?”
“I’m waiting for a call from Falkner while trying to juggle Jefferson.”
“He, he. You’re welcome,” I laughed.
Chaos hated dealing with Falkner and had been trying to palm him off to me before my reassignment. He’d almost made it, too.
“Fuck you,” was Chaos’ response.
“Why doesn’t Tank have him?”
“Jefferson?”
“Yup. I thought he was taking a bunch of my clients while I was gone?”
“He was. Is. Jefferson’s complaining he’s too intimidating. He wants to know when you’ll be back.”
“We’ve got…” I counted the days up in my head. “Two weeks of the tour left before they head back to the States.” I sat up suddenly.
“I do know your schedule,” he muttered.
But I wasn’t listening. “I’m not going international, am I?”
“You don’t get an Austin Powers moment, no.”
“I was thinking Bond.”
“Doesn’t make it true.”
“So, I suppose you think you’re Bond?”
“What I am is a single guy with a beautiful woman waiting for him at home and too much work to do.”
“Oh, please,” I snorted. “Bert’s fallen asleep on
her laptop again.”
I could hear the smile in Chaos’ voice. “Yeah, she probably has.”
Bert was doing her PhD and every spare moment she had she was working on it. I mean, I went into the military to avoid proper university. Why Bert had voluntarily signed up for at least eight was beyond me. And that was only if she finished her dissertation by the end of the four-year guideline.
Chaos sighed heavily. “I think it’s time, mate.”
“What? You’re retiring?”
Chaos barked a rough laugh. “No. I meant expanding.”
“Look,” I said. “I know we talked about us going interstate, but I’m happy in Adelaide. We’ve made a home. And we’re not quite run off our feet.”
“Firstly, we are totally run off our feet. Secondly, I was floating the idea of hiring new blood, not sending you lot off to new lands in search of more gold.”
“New blood?” I asked, perking up. “Like…add to the team?”
“I know it’s a novel idea,” Chaos laughed. “But it would help spread the load a little. Especially when we keep having these bigger jobs that pull us away from our usual routine. First Nico, then Tank and you…”
“You think we’ll get more jobs like this?” I asked him.
“Not unless we get some new blood in. We just won’t have time or opportunities.”
“Who’s gonna train them?”
“Well, it’s not going to be you. Last thing I need is two of you.”
I laughed. “The world could do with more me.”
“No. It couldn’t. I suppose it would have to be Tank. But I’ve got to talk to Hawk about it anyway.”
“Well, for what it’s worth, I think it’s a…decent idea.”
“Is that your unusually polite way of saying it’s shit?”
“I didn’t say that,” I said with a smile.
“Not specifically, no.”
“Nah, man. Go for it.”
“You just want to piss Tank off with a new trainee.”
Damn Chaos, knowing me so well.
“Maybe. It’d be fun to see if he had a threshold. Please say we can do a scholarship program and get proper greenies in?”
“We’re definitely not doing that. Nico would blow us all up for sure long before we found out if Tank had a threshold.”
“But we could have a whole class. The Grace Grayson Academy. Training up elite security guards from all over the nation!”
“Let’s see how one new recruit goes before we go all Police Academy on this, yeah?”
I snorted. “Sure, bossman.”
The conversation lulled for a moment, me picturing the glory and prestige of Grace Grayson Academy and Chaos probably thinking about the six thousand ways it could go wrong.
“I’m guessing there’s not much of anything to report, by the way?” he said.
“Not really. There was an incident on our first night here. A picture in her dressing room that Zach totally assures me could have been a Firebird reference. Other than that, it’s still all online. I’m guessing Nico’s keeping you updated on all of that?”
“He’s monitoring and coordinating with Miss Fern about legitimacy of what he finds. We’ll pass on anything that we deem an immediate threat.”
I nodded, even if he couldn’t see me. “Cool. Okay. Well keep me posted and don’t miss me too much.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it.”
I grinned, blew him a kiss and hung up.
I might have made a tit of myself in front of Nora, but I’d always have my team to go home to. I couldn’t very well risk them living boring lives now, could I?
11
Nora
I’d seen a little bit inside the mask and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want more.
I’d thought his cheeky green eyes and cocky smirk were intriguing enough before? Now I’d glimpsed a little taste of the man behind them, I was even more interested in discovering his every little trait, his every thought, his whole life. I wanted to get to know him.
We were all in the green room on our third to last stop of the whole tour. Five more concerts and we were done. We headed home. That was it.
Nate and Ryder were laughing about something over in the corner and I couldn’t help but like the way Ryder seemed to fit in with the band so well. Even Brax, who took to absolutely nobody in the twenty or more years I’d known him, had been seen to crack a smile in the presence of Ryder Andrews’ hilarity. The band liked him.
Nate had even stopped teasing about me liking him and I was sure that had more to do with how Nate felt about Ryder than it was a commentary on how he felt about me. I didn’t know exactly what they’d bonded over – aside from their similar senses of humour – but it was obviously quite strong. Nate hadn’t even had time to have a stupid argument with Brax for at least a week.
Ryder looked over to me – as always, checking where I was and making sure I was safe and secure – and smiled.
I felt my answering smile blossom involuntarily. Not that I wouldn’t have smiled back, it was just quicker happening than I expected. It was an instant knee-jerk reaction I didn’t even think about.
Worse was the fact I didn’t just smile back at him, but I also dropped my eyes as I looked at him like I was playing coy. Also not a conscious action! Here I was, bassist to a world famous rockband and I was flirting with my security guard like we were on the middle school playground.
I told myself to ignore him and pretend he wasn’t there. That was always my go-to for crushes on the playground. Of course, crushes on the playground had never liked me back and I had certainly never already slept with them.
I did a reasonable job of ignoring him until he crouched down next to my chair.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Fine.”
“Can I get you anything?”
“No.”
“Are you ignoring me?”
“Trying.”
He cracked a laugh. “Why?”
I put down my tablet and looked at him. “I’m reading a very important book.”
“Really? What is it?”
I looked around the room, but the only people in it were Zach, who was asleep with a book on his face, and Nate, who had his headphones on and was practicing with his drum pad.
“It’s ‘How to avoid shagging your security’,” I told him.
“Oh, so you’re in such danger of letting it happen – again – that you need professional advice?” he chuckled.
“Well, I wouldn’t call it professional,” I said, faux-dubiously. “I think she might give in.”
“Oh, really?” he asked, interest firmly piqued.
“Really. But you know. She really shouldn’t.”
“Has she considered just how very good it was?” he asked.
“She has, but is that really a good reason to sleep with someone?”
Ryder scrubbed a hand over his chin. “Are you just turning all my preconceived notions on their head? Not sleeping with someone when it’s amazingly good? Novel idea.”
I smirked despite the mock-serious stance I was attempting to take. “This is serious business, Ryder. What’s she supposed to do?”
“Well, I, personally, am all for the pursuit of pleasure.”
“Even if it leads to things it shouldn’t lead to?” I asked.
He hauled himself to standing with a grunt.
“I’m impressed you lasted down there as long as you did,” I told him.
He winked. “It’s all in the thighs.” Then he got back to the task at hand. “Now, I would say – and this is new for me – I would say that wherever pleasure led maybe…just maybe it was supposed to lead there.”
“That’s a very philosophical view.”
He shrugged and smiled. “I’m trying this new thing.”
“Oh, yeah?” I asked. “What sort of thing?”
“The kind where I let go a little.”
“Is that a message?” I asked, my eyebrow rising in question.
He smirked. “Not at all. You want to let go? You let go. You don’t? Well, you don’t have to.”
I got what he was saying. On both levels.
On the first, very simple level, he was saying that we made our own choices about our actions and no one else could make them for us.
On the second, and also quite simple, level, he was saying that whether we slept together again was up to me. He was up for it, but no worries if I wasn’t.
“What do you do when you’re not on tour with rockstars?” I asked him.
He looked genuinely surprised by that question.
“Uh,” he chuckled. “I mostly stand around looking intimidating for men who wouldn’t scare a church mouse if they didn’t spend so much money pretending they could.”
“So, you do security for a bunch of dodgy blokes?”
His eyes were alight with humour. “Dodgy is relative. Nothing illegal. That’s not the Grace Grayson style.”
“What is the Grace Grayson style?”
“If you ask the boss, it’s finesse, loyalty, focus and professionalism.”
“But I asked you.”
“Then I’d say finesse, loyalty, focus and professionalism.” He couldn’t even finish the sentence without laughing. “No. Definitely loyalty. Lotta focus. We’re professionals. But all that finesse stuff isn’t me.”
“What is you, then?”
He sighed. “That’s a bloody good question. And you’ve had a lot of them,” he said with a wry grin. “Do I get to ask any?”
I shrugged. “I don’t see why not?”
“Who is Nora Curry really?”
“Woah, not pulling any punches, I see.”
“Ask Tank. I don’t pull punches.”
“Who is Nora Curry?” I pondered, wondering what I’d tell him. “She’s just a girl who learnt how to play bass guitar so she could hang out with her brother.”
It wasn’t a lie, but neither was it the full truth.
I’d learnt as a child that the world didn’t care for who I was. So, I decided, if I couldn’t be myself, I’d be outrageous and free to do what I wanted when I wanted. Only, it hadn’t really been what I wanted. It had been what people wanted me to want; money, fame, guys.
Rollie & the Rocker (Grace Grayson Security Book 4) Page 7
