Blackthorne: Heart of Fame, Book 8

by Lexxie Couper

  The chuckle that slipped from Josh twisted the tension in Caitlin’s core to a heavy knot.

  “Give me a reason.”

  Caitlin stared at him. A reason. There was only one reason why he couldn’t kiss her. One reason. But that reason…well, it was pretty well messed up. And strange…

  “I tell you what,” he said with an easy grin before she could put words to the pain and confusion wanting to spread through her at the thought. Could he see she was uncomfortable? Unsettled? “I won’t kiss you again if you promise to have a drink with me.”

  “I can’t. I’m working.”

  That’s your answer, girl? Not because you have a—

  “When you finish work.”

  She looked up at him. He still grinned at her, a boyish playfulness about him. If she didn’t know he was one of the world’s hottest rock stars, she could easily believe he was just a sexy guy trying to flirt with a girl. “I don’t finish work until the club closes,” she answered.

  Before she could say another word, he nodded. “Done. I’ll see you then.”

  He spun on his heel and wandered down the corridor, hands loose by his side, a very subtle limp in his relaxed step.

  Caitlin stared after him, her cheeks on fire, her lips tingling. Why hadn’t she told him she wasn’t having a drink with him? Why hadn’t she given him the reason why she didn’t want him to kiss her?

  Behind her, Bach’s epic piece turned into Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata”. The dark piano masterpiece caressed her senses, a brilliant mirror to her mood. And yet a part of her felt…different. Less grumpy. Less moody and alone. Which made no sense, given nothing had changed to make her feel that way.

  Nothing except a kiss from the sexiest guy you’ve ever met.

  Caitlin watched Josh Blackthorne twist the knob of the door leading back out to the nightclub floor, her breath shallow. She shouldn’t watch. She shouldn’t linger, waiting to see if he turned around.

  He pulled the door open and stepped out into the thumping cacophony of dance music and partying patrons that drowned out Beethoven.

  Caitlin’s chest grew tight. A disappointed weight settled in her stomach.

  Why had she expected him to turn around? Why had she wanted him to turn around? To see if she was watching—

  He turned.

  Their stares met. Clashed. Melded.

  He dropped her a wink, grinned as if loving that he’d caught her watching him, and then pulled the door closed behind him.

  Leaving her alone in the corridor, Beethoven’s sonata competing with the wild beating of her heart.

  Scrunching up her face, Caitlin bunched her fists. “Damn it.”

  Busted for perving on him. There was no other word for what she’d been doing. She hadn’t needed to watch him go, hadn’t needed to check out the way he walked down the corridor with such innate grace and confidence, despite the slight limp from his old soccer-career-ending injury. She sure as hell hadn’t needed to take note of how hot his arse looked in his snug black pants. But she had. And he’d caught her.

  Which meant he would now think he really did stand a chance of scoring another kiss when they went for drinks.

  When they went for drinks? Seriously?

  Throwing up her hands, she stormed back into her office. “God, what are you thinking, Caitlin? You are not going for drinks with him.”

  That would be insane. That would be lunacy. And above all else, what with what her friends and family and the Australian High Commissioner in Somalia believed, that would be…awkward.

  A shard of guilt shot through her, so fierce and powerful she staggered to a halt, palm pressed to her chest. Damn it.

  Sucking in a slow breath, her pulse crazy, her heart aching, she crossed to her desk and dropped herself into her chair.

  “Damn it,” she whispered, staring at the spotless polished steel surface of her desk. “Damn it, Matt, why…”

  No. She wasn’t going to think about this. She wasn’t.

  What she was going to do was call her uncle and give the matchmaking bloody bastard a piece of her mind.

  Snatching up her iPod dock’s remote, she pressed mute. Silence fell over her office like a suffocating shroud. Good. She wanted to be grumpy. With a grunt, she leaned forward, grabbed the hand piece of her work phone from its cradle and stabbed in her uncle’s Los Angeles home phone number.

  He answered on the fifth ring. “G’day. Liev Reynolds here.”

  “Do you realize what you’ve done,” she burst out, dispensing with any pleasantries. She’d already talked to the bastard once tonight and she’d been quite pleasant then. Sort of. Maybe…

  “Made the most delicious bacon, banana and Vegemite toasted sandwich ever?” her uncle asked, laughter in his voice. “I do realize that. How did you know? Can you smell it all the way from Australia?”

  “Giving Blackthorne my place of work,” she shot back, ignoring his joke. She never ignored Liev’s jokes. They always had the ability to make her smile and feel warm inside, even when she was feeling dead. In fact, she couldn’t recall the last time she’d been angry with her uncle. Maybe, when she was fourteen and he’d come out. She’d been angry with him for being so calm with her stubborn, bigoted father who’d refused to have anything to do with his brother again and expected Caitlin to do the same. “Now the guy thinks it’s totally okay to just swoop on into my office, disrupt my life, ask me for drinks and kiss—”

  She stopped. Froze. Stared at the massive abstract painting on the far wall of her office.

  Oh God, had she just said—

  “Kiss you?” her uncle asked, disbelief etched with mirth in his voice.

  “Err…” She squeezed her eyes shut, dropped her head to her fist and thumped her forehead a few times. She hadn’t planned to say that. Why had she said that?

  Because you can’t stop thinking about it. Because you liked it. And you can’t stop feeling guilty about liking it.

  “Am I right, kiddo?” Liev prompted on the other end of the connection. “Did Josh Blackthorne kiss you?”

  She thumped her forehead with the side of her fist three more times and then nodded. “Yes.”

  “Did you like it?”

  “Uncle L!” She let out an exasperated argh. “That’s not the point. You told him to look me up, you told him I’d cook him dinner and now he’s here at my club disrupting my life and I want you to tell him to go away.”

  “Why?”

  Caitlin raised her eyebrows. “Why? Because he won’t listen to me.”

  “No, I mean why do you want him to go away? I know Josh quite well, kiddo. And trust me, he’s a nice bloke. A really nice bloke. I wouldn’t have given him your number—”

  “You gave him my number?”

  “I wouldn’t have given him your number if he was a wanker, would I?”

  “No. You wouldn’t. But I want him to go away because he kissed me.”

  Liev’s laughter tickled her ear. “And that’s a problem because…?”

  “Because I’m engaged,” she ground out.

  “No,” her uncle’s deep voice rumbled in her ear. “You’re not.”

  She let out a frustrated growl. “Okay.” She raked at her hair, the pain of her nails on her scalp almost too much. “But the rest of Australia doesn’t know that. Matt’s parents don’t know that, our friends don’t. You’re the only one who knows.”

  A long sigh sounded through the connection. “Caitlin…” Frustration filled her uncle’s voice. Frustration and disappointment.

  Caitlin closed her eyes, unable to look at the painting on the wall any longer. Matt had given it to her a month before he left. Looking at it now only made her ache more. A heavy lump filled her throat. A sick tension rolled in her tummy.

  “Caitlin,” Liev repeated her name, this time with less frustration and disappointment and more patience. “I don’t want to sound horrible, you know that. And God knows, I love you more than breath itself, but it’s been over eight months, ki
ddo. Eight months. The Somali government has officially declared him dead. The Australian government is on the verge of doing the same. You can’t spend your life in a holding pattern waiting for him to come back when all evidence says he won’t, especially when you both decided you needed a break before he left.”

  “There’s never been a body, Uncle L,” she whispered, words her uncle had heard from her before. A heavy weight wrapped her chest. The sick tension in her stomach churned. She opened her eyes and stared at her left ring finger, at the spot her engagement ring had been until the day before Matt had flown out of the country for Somalia. There was no evidence a sparkling diamond and gold symbol of commitment had ever encircled her finger. Not now.

  “How can I truly end all this without a body? When the rest of the country thinks…when the Australian government still refers to me as an example of…to help focus on…”

  “Kiddo,” Liev murmured, “you’re twenty-seven. You’re beautiful. You’re intelligent. You’re successful. And you’re lonely. I know you are. And it tears me apart knowing you’re shutting off a life of happiness and love and passion because you feel pressured into maintaining a relationship that was on hold anyway, just because he maybe…is most likely dead. You’re hurting yourself waiting—”

  “For Matt to come home?’ Caitlin cut him off. “How can I let his parents know we were over before he left without looking like a callous bitch?”

  It was a ridiculous question of course. Caitlin knew that.

  Seven months and twenty-nine days ago, her fiancé of six months, her boyfriend of two years had told her he was heading to Somalia to work with Doctors Without Borders. She hadn’t been surprised. Matt was born to be a doctor and he’d always put others above himself. Nor had she been surprised when he suggested they take a break while he was there.

  She’d been the first to admit they’d grown apart since their wild, university-days romance when everything had been safe and real life hadn’t impacted them. Since graduating and absorbing themselves in their chosen professions, they’d become a walking cliché—two people who had fallen in love before reality could demonstrate they really never should have been together.

  She’d agreed to the split, her heart aching even as she’d known it was the right move. When he’d asked if they could wait until he returned from his three months in Somalia before announcing it to their family and friends, she’d agreed to that as well. She did love him, dammit, and hadn’t wanted to make the horribly right decision more…horrible. After all, his parents would be heartbroken and she was in no rush to cause them that pain.

  That pain—the pain of their son and his fiancée going their separate ways—was nothing, however, compared to the pain of learning he was possibly dead.

  He hadn’t been seen or heard from since his Doctors Without Borders’ camp in Somalia had been raided by Al-Shabaab militants a week after he’d arrived. The chances of him being alive were, according to the representative of the Australian government assigned to Matt’s disappearance, slim.

  Caitlin knew it was unlikely he was coming back. But knowing it was time to move on and actually doing so were two very different things, especially when everyone, from his parents and sister to the Australian Prime Minister still believed her to be his grieving fiancée.

  She hadn’t been able to bring herself to tell them she and Matt had ended it. Matt’s parents had clung to her for support at the news of his disappearance. And the Australian Federal Government…the government had elevated her to poster-child status, a shining, heartbroken example of the dedication and determination Australians had in the face of tragedy.

  The only person Caitlin had confided in was her uncle, a man she loved and trusted damn near more than her own father. As much as she hated to admit it, she’d needed support for the emotional burden she’d placed upon herself.

  “It’s time to think of you, kiddo,” Uncle L chided gently through the phone. Love filled his calm voice. Love and concern. It was an emotion she was familiar with, especially from her family and closest friends. She’d heard it for eight months now. “I’m not telling you to jump into bed with Josh—”

  “Uncle L!”

  “I’m just saying maybe going out for a drink with him might be what you need to do to start thinking of you. If nothing else, cook him dinner one night. I did tell him how delicious your lasagna is, after all. Do you really think the rest of the country will care? Is it any of their business anyway?”

  The lump in Caitlin’s throat grew thicker at the thought of uber-famous Josh Blackthorne in her apartment. She pictured him sitting at her small dining table, the one she’d bought at a garage sale, with its stick-figure fairies etched in the wood with pink pen by the previous owners’ artistic daughter.

  She pictured him relaxing on her sofa after the meal, the first male in her home that wasn’t a family member, friend or tradesperson in eight months.

  She pictured the smile Josh had given her, the one that didn’t look mastered by countless photo shoots. The one that looked natural, not the smile of a rock star known for his seductive flirtation, but a guy who was enjoying sharing a moment of joy.

  She thought of the photo of Matt hanging on her wall, staring down at Josh. The one she hadn’t been able to put into storage with the rest of his belongings.

  “I don’t…” she began, her stomach churning.

  “Do you remember what you said to me a lifetime ago, kiddo?” her uncle asked. “When you were seventeen and I was messed up over my feelings for Chris? Do you remember? You told me to think with my mind, listen to my heart and be true to myself.”

  A thick lump filled Caitlin’s throat. She remembered that night, those words of advice she’d given her uncle when he’d doubted if he and Chris had a future together.

  “You also told me the worst thing a person could do is reject themselves in fear someone else will. Aren’t you doing that now? In a roundabout kind of way?”

  Raising her head, she stared at the painting Matt had given to her months ago, a breaking-up present, as it was. “I was a precocious teenager, wasn’t I?”

  Liev laughed. “Hell, yeah. And an intelligent one and a stubborn one, just like you are now—smart and stubborn. But it’s time to stop being stubborn and start being a realist.”

  “I feel guilty, Uncle L,” she whispered.

  “Guilty?”

  Her stomach rolled. “When I find myself laughing, when I find myself forgetting him, forgetting what I’m meant to be to him…I feel guilty. And even though we weren’t still together, I hate myself for forgetting him.”

  “Oh, kiddo.” Concern and sympathy cut her uncle’s words. “God, I wish I was there right now. I’d hug you silly.”

  A wet chuckle slipped from Caitlin. Hot tears prickled the back of her eyes. She swiped at her nose, sniffling. “I think I’d take that hug, even if you are trying to set me up with a rock star.”

  Liev returned her chuckle. “A nice-guy rock star. Do this for me, eh? The uncle you love and cherish and miss like crazy.” He paused. “And who used to collect you from night clubs and take you home when you were underage so your dad wouldn’t know what you were doing and ground you for months.”

  Caitlin laughed again, a little stronger this time. “Way to ramp up the guilt, Uncle L.”

  He sniggered. She had no difficulty seeing him do so, his blue eyes—so like her own—twinkling with mirth. She really did miss him. “This kind of guilt is healthy. Good for you in fact. Productive,” he said. “And I’m not opposed to using guilt on a family member when it’s for the right reason.”

  “And me cooking dinner for Josh Blackthorne is one of those reasons?”

  “No kiddo,” her uncle spoke, his voice steady. “You living again is the right reason.”

  Caitlin closed her eyes. “I love you, Uncle L.”

  “The feeling is entirely mutual. Now get off the bloody phone. I expect a full report within twenty-four hours, including how well Blackthorne kiss
es.”

  Razing heat flooded Caitlin’s cheeks even as a smile pulled at her lips and an unsettling flutter filled her tummy. “You’re depraved.”

  “Your dad’s been saying that for years, kiddo. Now go have some fun.”

  And with that, her uncle ended the conversation.

  Returning her phone to its cradle, Caitlin sat in her office and stared at the painting on the far wall. Silence surrounded her. Oppressive and suffocating. She grabbed the remote for her iPod dock and hit mute again. Bach emanated from the room’s speakers, a piano concerto that normally made her feel at peace.

  She and Matt had met thanks to classical music. She’d been looking in the music department of Target for a Christmas present for her dad and Matt had been looking for something to listen to as he studied for his final med-school exams. They’d bumped shoulders as they both reached for the same CD on the store’s display rack. The almost clichéd collision had resulted in Caitlin dropping the chopping board she’d bought only a few minutes earlier for her mum, which had promptly landed on Matt’s flip-flop-shod foot.

  He’d let out a yelp, she’d gushed out an apology, and an hour later they were sharing sushi and swapping life-stories. A fairytale HEA was in their future—the soon-to-be-doctor and the soon-to-be-business major had fallen in love at first sight.

  She’d never listened to classical music before Matt had entered her life. Now she played it to remind herself of him, to remember the relationship they’d had, the one everyone thought they still had. The one a part of her wished they still had.

  It was she had to admit, a guilty, messed-up situation.

  So why was the sound of Bach filling her office making her feel so…so…irritated now?

  She snatched up her iPod dock’s remote control and killed the music.

  The faint sound of the music playing in her nightclub filled the silence. Rock music. Not hip-hop or dance music. Rock music.

  She narrowed her eyes, listening to the almost inaudible bass throb. It was familiar.