Blackthorne: Heart of Fame, Book 8

by Lexxie Couper

  Josh tripped back a step. Just one. But it was enough to make the dead man laugh.

  “Hi, Josh,” Matt Corvin said, his voice far from dry and raspy and lifeless. “It’s nice to meet you.” He wrapped his fingers around Josh’s in a firm shake.

  Josh gaped down at the hand engulfing his. It was warm. Weren’t dead men meant to be cold?

  And inert?

  Blinking at the unexpected sensation of flesh against flesh, he lifted his stare to Corvin’s face. “Err…”

  The doctor laughed again, a good-natured sound no lifeless corpse was ever supposed to make. “I see Caitlin’s not the only one shocked by my appearance. If it helps, I don’t think the Australian press knows either.”

  Unable to find a word of response in the confused chaos of his brain, Josh stared at the dead man some more.

  What the fuck?

  “Matt’s been in a coma in a hospital in Kenya for eight months.” Caitlin’s soft declaration scraped at Josh, making him blink. He jerked his head towards the woman he loved, his chest constricting.

  She studied him, her expression unreadable.

  Fuck, what did she just say?

  Moving her gaze to the dead man standing so close to her, she rubbed at the tops of her thighs with her palms. “He came out of it five days ago. Until then, no one knew who he was,” she went on, the words at once making no sense to Josh and all the sense in the world. “The body they discovered wearing his I.D. wasn’t him. It was a med student who’d been working with him when the militants attacked. Matt gave him his Doctors Without Borders badge, hoping that would save his life. But it didn’t.”

  Josh stared at the guy whose photo hung on the wall in Caitlin’s living room. He swallowed, his gut a mass of churning knots. “And now you’re here.”

  Matt let out a wry chuckle, smoothing his hand over Caitlin’s back as he smiled at her. “And now I’m here. The only place I want to be. With Caity.”

  Pain punched into Josh. Slammed into his stomach. He stared at the two of them, a thick tension choking him. Making it impossible to breathe. The scars he could see on Corvin’s cheek, jaw and temple mocked the stunned grief radiating through him.

  Caitlin’s small smile for her fiancé ripped at his heart. As did the way Matt Corvin leaned closer to her and placed a gentle kiss on her forehead.

  No. No she’s mine! The thought roared through Josh’s head, furious and wild.

  He drove his hands into balled fists, staring at Caitlin and Matt both, hating the man in front of him. Hating someone who was meant to be dead. Who was meant to not be here, not in Caitlin’s office. Not holding her close. Hating him for being exactly where Josh had expected to be. Hating him for being alive.

  “Can I just say—” Matt turned to face Josh, his smile open and friendly and genuine as he tucked Caitlin into his side, “—what you’re doing tonight is amazing. I haven’t had a chance yet to talk to the representative for the MSF—I wanted to see Caity first—but wow, I can’t thank you enough for what you’ve done.”

  What I’ve done? Fallen in love with your fiancée? Given my heart and soul to her? Lost myself in her body so many times I can’t—

  “No thank yous needed,” Josh forced the words from his constricted throat. Forced a smile—no, a smirk—to his lips. He was Josh Blackthorne, after all. That’s what Josh Blackthorne, rock star, did. Smirk his way through life, never letting anything get under his skin. He rolled with the shit, rolled with the changes life threw at him and picked a new path to limp down. “It was my pleasure.”

  He stopped himself from looking at Caitlin when he said that. He had to. If he looked at her, if he saw any question, any doubt in her eyes, his smirk would crack and he’d become the biggest bastard in the world.

  If he looked into Caitlin’s eyes and saw what he wanted to be there more than anything else—love for him—it wouldn’t matter that Matt Corvin had come back from the dead to be with her. It wouldn’t matter that the Australian media would paint him as the most heinous fucking prick on the planet, he would tell Matt that Caitlin was his. He would take her from the good doctor and he would never, ever regret it.

  So he didn’t look at her.

  Instead, he drew a deep breath, let his smirk become more cocky, more arrogant, more…rock starrish, and gave Matt a nod. “I’ve gotta get back out there. Songs to be sung, women to seduce. A rock star’s life is never done.”

  He heard Caitlin’s soft gasp. He felt it as well. Like a knife to his soul. Like a bullet to his heart.

  Matt stuck his hand out again, gratitude shining in his face. “Sure, sure.” He grabbed Josh’s offered hand and pumped it with enthusiasm. “I appreciate all you’re doing. Hope you don’t mind if I keep Caitlin out here in her office though. It’s been too long since I…” He let out a shy chuckle and turned to her with a smile. “Since I was alive with her.”

  Hiding his inability to look at Caitlin in a showy display of laughing consideration, hands held up, eyes closed with braying guffaws, Josh spun away from them. “Understand completely,” he threw over his shoulder as he walked for Caitlin’s door. “It’s fucking good to know you’re not dead, mate. The country is going to go wild for your story.”

  “Josh?”

  He froze at Caitlin’s raised voice, his heart spearing into his throat at the hesitancy he heard in it.

  Don’t turn around, dude. Don’t turn—

  Unable to refuse her anything, even that which would tear him apart, Josh pivoted on his heel and looked at her. Met her gaze.

  She stared at him, her bottom lip caught between her teeth, her eyes… Confusion swam in their blue depths. Confusion, guilt, uncertainty. And something else, an emotion he refused to let himself see. Refused to let himself believe was there. For her sake, and for the doctor’s, an infinitely better human being than Josh could ever hope to be.

  Clenching his jaw, he chuckled. “Time’s up, Reynolds. I gotta get back to it. Tell your uncle he was right about the lasagna.”

  She studied him, her lips curling in a smile so beautiful, so…sad he would never forget it. “You liked it?”

  He dropped her a wink, a void of pain where his heart used to be. “It was the best.”

  And before he could do anything stupid, anything at all, he turned and left her office.

  He didn’t look back.

  His footfalls bounced off the walls of the narrow concrete corridor as he made his way back to the nightclub’s main area, the irregular rhythm of his limp emphasized in the silence. His heart punched at his breastbone like a cruel sledgehammer, a rising beat that flooded his head with deafening thumps, louder even than the muffled thud, thud, thud coming from the DJ’s speakers out in the nightclub proper.

  Reaching the door, he wrapped his fingers around the cold steel knob, closed his eyes and drew a long, slow breath.

  “It was the best,” he repeated on a low whisper, picturing Caitlin in his mind. He held on to that image. Made it a part of who he was, who he would always be now.

  “Never had better,” he finished before he yanked open the door, nodded at the two enormous security guys waiting for him either side of it and stepped out onto the club’s main floor.

  The crowd filling the Chaos Room erupted in a wave of adoration and idol worship.

  He saw the Doctors Without Borders representative in the ecstatic, writhing throng of people. He saw more than one celebrity reporter there as well, smiling at him, cheering for him. Watching him.

  Waiting for him.

  Hanging on his every moment.

  His every move.

  Hundreds of strangers beyond excited to see him, to exist with him, to breathe the same air as he did, if only for this one brief night.

  To love him.

  He didn’t want any of it. All he wanted…

  Driving his fingers into his palms, he stared at the excited crowd, thought about Caitlin back in her office, with Matt, the man this concert was all about…

  He threw h
is arms above his head, tossed back his head and let out a wild cry. “Time’s up,” he roared. “Let’s make some noise.”

  He ran to the stage, slapping offered hands as he went, his knee a hot ball of agony. He launched himself up the stairs, snatched up his guitar, perched himself on his stool and, without waiting for the cheers to die down, began to play.

  Losing himself to the music.

  He played until his fingers bled. Way beyond the set list he’d intended. Played every song recorded by Synergy, damn near every song recorded by his father.

  He gave himself over to the notes and the lyrics so he couldn’t give himself over to jealousy at the thought of Caitlin in her fiancé’s arms. And when he could play no more, when his fingers were so raw every note strummed and plucked was like torture, he played one more song.

  One more.

  A song he’d intended to play for Caitlin when the club was empty except for the two of them. A song he’d planned to sing as he lowered himself down on one knee before her, a question in his heart.

  The song his father had used to propose to his mother in front of a whole town.

  When the song finished, when the last of the lyrics slipped from his lips, he pushed himself from his stool, held up his guitar with one hand, bowed and then walked from the stage.

  Zach met him at the bottom of the stairs, the club’s second-in-charge making the hovering security guards look small in comparison.

  Zach. Not Caitlin. Not Caitlin and Matt.

  Just Zach.

  “That was out of the park, dude.” Zach slapped his palm against Josh’s, his smile wide. “Incredible.”

  Josh waved away the compliment. “Not bad for a wounded soccer player, I guess.”

  Zach laughed.

  “It’s been awesome, dude,” Josh said, leaning closer the guy. “But I gotta go.”

  Dark eyes studied him. “I figured you might say that.”

  Josh’s snort was wry. “Fate fucks with us all one way or another. Thank God, I can write songs about it or I’d be a resentful, bitter wanker. Take care, okay?”

  “What do you want me to tell the boss?”

  Chest tight, Josh gave Zach a slow smile. “Tell her…” He paused, clenched his jaw and let out a slow, steady breath. “Tell her not to just be alive, but to live. And to be happy.”

  And without another word, flanked by security guards, guitar in hand, he exited the Chaos Room.

  Flagging down a taxi didn’t take long at all. He climbed into the back of the cab when it arrived, nodded a thank you to his impromptu bodyguards and settled back into the seat.

  “Where to?” the driver’s question filled the quiet of the cab.

  “Home,” Josh answered.

  “Where’s that?”

  Josh closed his eyes. “Murriundah.”

  Like she had a lifetime ago, Caitlin watched Josh climb into the back of a taxi outside the club via the CCTV feed in her office. She watched him pull the door closed and watched the taxi drive away.

  For the twentieth time in the last hour, she pressed her finger against the rewind key and took the footage—now over a fortnight old—back to the point where Josh appeared at the bottom of the screen.

  Like it did every time she watched this particular one hundred and twenty seconds of recorded footage, her throat seized and her chest constricted.

  Watching Josh Blackthorne walk out of her life had become a drug of the most tormenting, addictive kind.

  Knowing it was the last captured footage of the rock star since his disappearance from the public eye fourteen days ago only made it worse.

  The lump in Caitlin’s throat grew thicker. Unable to stop herself, she gnawed on her bottom lip. Matt had commented only the day before she seemed determined to chew the damn thing off. She’d known then, as she did now, he’d wanted to place a gentle kiss on her lip, to soothe her obvious stress and agitation. The trouble was, every time he tried to draw her close to his body, her stomach clenched. Every time he tried to hold her, she stiffened.

  She pulled away, made an excuse, any excuse, to deflect his attention.

  At this point, she half suspected if she uttered the words, “The doctor said not to push yourself,” one more time, Matt would likely scream. If she said the words, “I need more time to think,” again, he’d probably do the same.

  So she spent long hours at the Chaos Room, overseeing every little detail of its running, days and nights double checking everything Zach did, everything her more-than-competent staff did. She turned the already precision-run workings of her club into a thing of perfection, every second assigned and controlled.

  They thought she’d gone mad. She’d heard more than one disgruntled complaint muttered behind her back about being slave driven by an Orwellian boss who’d forgotten the meaning of the word relax.

  She didn’t care. What she did care about, however, was what Matt was thinking. Because despite the fact the last fourteen days hadn’t exactly been the romantic happy ever after between them the Australian media seemed obsessed with portraying every chance they got, Caitlin hated hurting him.

  Hated it.

  And she was.

  She knew that.

  Which is why she left for work at dawn and didn’t return until the wee hours of the morning, long after Matt had fallen asleep on his side of the bed, his arm stretched onto her side as if reaching for her even in slumber.

  He wanted to hold her, to love her. And she wanted to let him. Like she used to before their relationship began to crumble. Before he’d gone to Somalia.

  But she couldn’t.

  She just couldn’t.

  Instead, she spent every night at work in her office, stealing moments behind her closed door to replay the last few seconds anyone had seen Josh before he’d withdrawn from public life. She watched him flag down a taxi in fuzzy black-and-white CCTV footage, hating herself even more, wishing she could be a better person. Wishing she could be the Caitlin Reynolds Matt knew, the one who lived to work, who despised wasting time and who rarely listened to rock ’n’ roll. The Caitlin Reynolds he’d first thought of after coming out of his coma.

  Wishing she could be that person again even as she wondered if that was ever possible.

  For the umpteenth time, she rewound the recorded footage and pressed play again.

  Josh walked toward the curb, his limp subtle, guitar in hand. He waved at an approaching cab, opened the back seat when the taxi pulled to a halt in front of him and climbed inside.

  She could see him move against the seat, but that was it. Nothing else before the car pulled away out of the Chaos Room’s security camera field of—

  A soft knock sounded on her office door.

  Heart slamming fast into her tight throat, guilt following it with equal speed, Caitlin killed the footage and fixed her stare on her open laptop and the spreadsheet on its screen. “Yes?”

  She heard the door open. Heard the faint, muffled throb of the dance music the celebrity guest DJ was playing in the club’s main arena, and then that was silenced by the sound of the door closing again.

  “Heya, honey.”

  Caitlin’s tummy fluttered at the low murmur of Matt’s voice.

  She raised her blank gaze from the laptop and offered him a smile. “Hi. What are you doing here? Isn’t it—?”

  “Almost nine p.m.,” he finished, making his way to her desk to lower himself into the bucket chair opposite it. “I figured since I haven’t seen you for more than a second since we did that interview for the Today program three days ago, I’d come by your work and ask you on a date.”

  Something dull and numb wrapped around Caitlin’s heart. “A date?”

  Matt smiled at her. “Maybe a movie? I hear in the eight months I was in a coma, another Martin Scorsese movie has been released. Thought we could maybe go see it? Together? Share some popcorn? There’s a nine-thirty session we could make if we leave now. And maybe after the movie we could grab a pizza with extra olives on the way h
ome and then…maybe we could…” He shifted his feet. Studied her. “Maybe you could let me convince you to say yes to my marriage proposal? Again?”

  Caitlin swallowed. Her head throbbed. A thrumming pressure pressed at her ears.

  Marriage proposal? Oh, no. No, no, no.

  “I don’t like olives, Matt,” she said, her voice a scratchy whisper. “I never have. Didn’t you notice I always pick them off?”

  Consternation pulled at Matt’s eyebrows. He let out a shaky breath, dragging his hands through his hair. “Wow. I guess I didn’t. Sorry about that.”

  A small smile tugged at the edges of Caitlin’s lips. She lifted her shoulder in a gentle shrug. “You were always too busy, I guess. We were always too—”

  Her office door swung open, Zach knocking on its metal surface as he half crossed the threshold. “Boss, you wanted to know when Josh Blackthorne’s whereabouts became—” He stopped, his gaze swinging to Matt. “Oh, hi, Matt. I didn’t know you were here.”

  A knot bunched in Matt’s jaw. For a second, his stare held Caitlin’s before he turned to Zach. “Mandy let me in. I was hoping to persuade the boss here to go to the movies with me, but I think she’s got other plans.”

  Zach’s dark eyes flicked to Caitlin. “She’s been working hard lately,” he said, tone ambiguous. “The Doctors Without Borders charity performance did a lot for the Chaos Room’s exposure. We’ve had a lot of A-list acts wanting to hold on their own special gig here since Josh did his thing.”

  At Josh’s name, a horde of butterflies stirred in Caitlin’s tummy. Or maybe it was the way Matt stiffened. “Speaking of Blackthorne,” Matt said, dropping his focus to his feet as he slipped his hands into his pockets. “You mentioned he’s surfaced again? After going AWOL since his show here?”

  Every fibre in Caitlin’s body tingled. Her throat grew thicker, tighter. What was Matt doing? Why was he asking Zach such a question? She chewed on her bottom lip, watching him.

  “Yeah,” Zach answered, his voice hesitant. “His friend, the guy that plays soccer for Australia, was interviewed by some U.K. reporter and dropped the fact Blackthorne is in Murriundah.”

  Caitlin sucked in a swift breath. Her heart smashed faster against her breastbone. The butterflies in her stomach turned in a flurry of tension.