“It’s the price of privilege,” he explained to the girl. “You get the incredible property, but you have to share it from the high-tide line to where the surf breaks. There’s a public path to the water two hundred and fifty feet down that way.”
Leggy with Braids frowned at him. “Mr. Buchanan, I said I came here to see you.”
He hadn’t missed that, not really, he thought, rubbing his hand over his bare chest. But as his mother always said, Jay was a hoper, and he’d been hoping to get back to sleep. Yet he should have known better, because nothing was ever simple when there was a woman involved. Why did they always have to complicate everything? Leggy with Braids even looked like a complication. A man just couldn’t ignore that sweet, full mouth and she had an interesting sprinkle of freckles across her nose that—
Crap. There he went again, heading off into muddy and probably mined female territory. “What, then?” he demanded, sounding surly even though he was mostly mad at himself. “What is it you want?”
To wring his neck, if her expression was anything to go by. But she gave him a tight little smile, not a slice of teeth showing. “I want to talk to you about the private chef position. Remember, you called me yesterday? I’m Nikki.”
“Oh.” He let his gaze run down Leggy with Braids. Nikki. Nikki of the cute freckles, the slim body, that pretty, earth-and-sunlight-colored hair. “Sorry, you won’t do.”
Without a whiff of remorse, he shut the door again.
Again, it bounced off a rubber toe.
Jay sighed. This was what was wrong with them. Women. They were tenacious and stubborn in the most troublesome ways. You tried to let them down easy, but they would never take the hint. Why couldn’t they appreciate fun and games? Why couldn’t they accept when the fun and games were over? But no, they’d always come back—
“Mr. Buchanan,” her low-pitched voice was forced to find its way through the narrow crack in the door, yet still he could hear it over the rumble of the traffic on the highway and the surf’s crash-and-shush at his back. The goose made another march down his spine. “You called me. Remember?”
Right. There was that. With a sigh, he pulled back on the knob to gaze on her again, girly as all get-out. “Look,” he said, “it’s nothing personal. It’s just that I’ve sworn off women.”
His last chef had worked out great. Sandy was businesslike, quiet, and a lesbian to boot. When she’d recommended her friend Nikki, Jay had assumed—which reminded him of one of his grandfather’s favorite old saws, “Assume makes an ass out of u and me”—that she’d be of the same sexual persuasion.
But after studying the woman on his doorstep…well, to put it bluntly, this leggy darling was no dyke.
“Mr. Buchanan—”
He held up his hand, once again wishing like hell he’d had a cup of coffee waiting for him when he rose, which was just another reason to regret this pretty chef person wasn’t an ardent fan of The L Word. “I’ve got enough trouble right now, okay? Believe me, I’ve sworn off women.”
Those eyebrows slammed over her nose again. “Then we’re even, because I don’t like men.”
Jay stared in surprise. Could it be? Could his lack of caffeine have impaired his usually impeccable, spot-on radar? “You…” He shook his head, because now he noticed something even more remarkable about her. Pretty chef person, Leggy with Braids, Nikki-who-said-she didn’t-like-men had the most amazing eyes. One was blue, and one was green. Like a mermaid, like a witch, like a…?
Could it really be? He frowned. “You don’t like men?”
She took a breath.
He leaned forward so as not to miss her answer.
Another female’s voice found him first. From the vicinity of his back door floated a light, sugary voice that he was painfully familiar with. “Jay? Jay, darling. I can’t go another minute without seeing you.”
Tension tightened a strangling hand around his neck. He closed his eyes, opened them, and was distracted for a second from the sticky problem coming up behind him by Nikki’s pretty, pretty face and those witchy, witchy eyes.
Hmm. Was she or wasn’t she?
“Jay?”
Uh-oh. The sticky problem was getting closer.
“Jay, honey, where are you?”
Nikki’s bi-colored eyes were big and full of questions.
Jay had one of his own, of course. Did she really dislike men or didn’t she? But there wasn’t time to speculate, not with the minty breath of his worst double-X chromosome mistake bearing down on him.
And then, bam, it hit him. Call it an impulse, call it a brilliant idea, call it both. He kicked aside the unsettling warning that not all his impulses or even his brilliant ideas had panned out to be oh-so-successful.
Like Mom said, Jay was a hoper.
And now he hoped to kill two birds with one stone. A single, simple move—and oh, how he liked things simple—could clear up one little question as well as one big problem.
As high heels clacked on the tile behind him, he grabbed Nikki-who-might-not-like-men, yanked her across the threshold, then pulled her close for a kiss.
Take Me Tender (Billionaire’s Beach Book 1)
Take Me Forever (Billionaire’s Beach Book 2)
Take Me Home (Billionaire’s Beach Book 3)
The Scandal (Billionaire’s Beach Book 4)
The Seduction (Billionaire’s Beach Book 5)
The Secret (Billionaire’s Beach Book 6)
Excerpt – LIGHT MY FIRE
Excerpt – LIGHT MY FIRE
Rock Royalty Book 1
© Copyright 2014 Christie Ridgway
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Chapter One
The children of America’s premier rock band learned early to sleep through anything. Late night jam sessions, liquor (and worse) -fueled arguments, raucous parties raging from dark to dawn that were peppered with wild laughter, breaking glass, and the squishy thud of fists against skin. At twenty-four, Cilla Maddox had not lost that skill, though she’d recently come to view it as something less than a gift.
Still, she didn’t stir from her curled position on the edge of the king-sized bed when a tall, broad figure entered the room in the middle of the night. No streetlights disturbed the darkness this deep in Laurel Canyon and the newcomer found the bed only by deduction. When, at his sixth cautious step, his shin met an immoveable object, he dropped the motorcycle boots and duffel bag he carried to the plush carpet and took a leap of faith by tipping his long body forward. Finding firm mattress and feathery pillow, he instantly fell into sleep.
Hours later, Cilla came awake to the sound of birds tweeting and chirping their odes to another Southern California morning as they flitted through the shrubbery and tall eucalyptus trees that grew inside and outside the canyon compound where she’d grown up. Eyes closed, she breathed in the country-scented air, such a surprise when the famous Hollywood Boulevard and its twin in notoriety, the Sunset Strip, were less than a mile away. Flopping to her back, she stretched to her full five-feet, five inches. Then she pushed her arms overhead and swept them back down until her fingertips met—
Something solid. Warm. Alive.
On a gasp, her eyes flew open and her head whipped right. She yanked her hand from a man’s heavy shoulder to press it against her thrashing heart.
As it continued to beat wildly against her ribs, she stared at her bedmate. Though his body was plastered to the mattress belly-down, his face was turned toward hers and it only took another instant to realize he was no stranger. But recognition didn’t calm the overactive organ in her chest that continued sending blood sprinting through her body.
She blinked, just to make sure her eyes weren’t deceiving her. They apparently had told the truth, she decided. After years of adolescent fantasies, she was actually sharing a bed with him. With Renford Colson.
No mistake, it was her teenage fantasy man. His glossy black hair that tangled nearly to his shoulders. His days’-old stubble of beard that made his mouth look
softer, fuller, more kissable if that was even possible. Those were his spiky lashes resting against his sharp-angled face.
Yet…was he really here? To make herself believe it, she mouthed his name. Ren.
As if he heard the silent syllable, his eyes flipped open.
She started, their distinctive color—a silvered green, just like eucalyptus leaves—jolting her to the marrow.
Dark brows met over his straight nose and she watched the drowsiness seep from him as his gaze sharpened. “Priss?”
She frowned. He was the only one to call her that nickname and it had annoyed her since she was old enough to understand it telegraphed something about the way he viewed her. “Excessively proper,” she remembered reading in the dictionary. “Prim.”
“Cilla.” Her voice sounded morning-husky as she made the correction.
One corner of his mouth kicked up. “Priscilla.”
Ugh. That was worse. To her mind, Priscilla was the name of some old-fashioned china doll that was deemed too nice to play with and so grew dusty on a high, forgotten closet shelf. As the youngest “princess” of rock royalty (an article in Rolling Stone had described the nine collective children of the Velvet Lemons in just such terms), she’d often been overlooked. Likely Ren hadn’t given her a single thought in the nine years since she’d last seen him.
“Why are you here?” she asked, sitting up.
His gaze dropped from her face to the size XL T-shirt she wore, an authentic Byrds concert souvenir, one of the several such clothing items she’d collected (read: purloined from her careless father) during her lifetime. “Priss,” Ren remarked with a note of mild surprise, “you’ve grown up.”
Grown-ups didn’t react to the red flush they could feel crawling over their skin. Grown-ups didn’t check out their chest to determine if it was a modest B-cup that led him to such a conclusion. So ignoring both compulsions, she repeated her question. “Why are you here?”
“Couple reasons.” Ren flipped over then jackknifed on the mattress to face her. Both palms rubbed over his eyes and down his cheeks, his beard making a scratchy sound. He’d fallen asleep in his worn jeans and wrinkled dress shirt. On the floor near him were a pair of battered boots and a leather bag, both as black as his hair. His hands went to the buttons marching down his chest.
She swallowed. “What are you doing?”
“I’ve been wearing this damn thing for—Christ, who knows?—it’s got to be a couple of days. However long it took me to get here from Russia with a fucking long layover in Paris.”
Her gaze didn’t leave his nimble fingers as they continued unbuttoning to reveal a stark white undershirt beneath. “You didn’t stop off in London?” That was where he was based. Ren had started as a roadie for the band, then moved into concert tour planning and security. When he’d left the employ of the Velvet Lemons, he’d set up shop across the pond and continued doing the same thing—just not for their fathers’ band.
Cilla couldn’t blame him for that. The three Lemons might as well have been named the Odd Ducks. They’d achieved superstardom in the 1970s and when they were nearing forty, somehow decided they wanted more than sex, riches, and scandalous reputations. Each had produced three kids before declaring their paternal urges satisfied. No mothers came attached to the children they’d fathered. They’d been bought off or wandered off and as long as Cilla could remember the nine rock progeny had spent their childhoods in the expansive Laurel Canyon compound that consisted of three separate houses and then this smaller cottage where she and Ren had chosen to sleep.
Inspecting the hand-tied quilt covering the bed, Cilla ran her fingers over the psychedelic-inspired design. “You know about Gwen?” she asked, referring to Guinevere Moon, an original Velvet Lemons groupie who’d been the closest to a mother figure the band’s offspring ever had. This had been her house.
“Of course,” Ren replied. “I couldn’t get here for the memorial service, but I came as soon as I was able to make arrangements for my replacement.”
As head fixer for some other band’s tour, Cilla supposed. “Her real name was Donna Carp,” she said, her heart squeezing to think that the spiral-curled, caftan-wearing gentle soul was now gone. “Gwen’s, that is.”
There was a short silence, then Ren laughed. “Baby, you didn’t think she really had Guinevere Moon on her birth certificate?”
Mortification spread heat over Cilla’s face once more. Okay, so she had. “Thanks for thinking I’m a fool,” she said, glancing up to glare at him.
The spit in her mouth dried.
Ren had tossed his shirt over the side of the bed and then stripped free of the undershirt he’d worn too. Beneath that…
He was cut. Ripped. His abs were perfectly defined above the waistband of his jeans. His pecs were slabs of thick muscle that drew the eye to broad shoulders that led to arms that were sinew, bone, and more muscle. Over his left pectoral began a primitive-yet-elegant tribal tattoo that swirled in black ink over the cap of his shoulder to reach as far as his elbow. Though most of his forearm was unmarked, on his wrist was a lone, stylized half-curve. She stared at it and then his long fingers, unwilling to let her gaze wander back to that beautiful chest.
She’d been fifteen when she’d last seen him. He’d been twenty-two. Then, she’d only dreamed of his kisses, chaste kisses at that, and hadn’t wondered about his body or his hands or what he could do to a woman with them.
It was what consumed her thoughts now.
That, and how they were sharing a bed.
Galvanized by that fact, she leaped from beneath the covers, her bare feet landing on the carpet. The overlarge shirt swung around her body, the hem tickling the top of her thighs. With Ren’s gaze on her, her attempt at escape seemed a foolhardy choice. Suddenly her legs felt too naked, and she was acutely aware of what was under her tee—just a scrap of lacey panties. In another not-so-suave move, she swiftly re-inserted herself under the quilt and between the warm sheets, pulling them high to conceal more of herself. “It’s, uh, cold out there,” she said, by way of explanation. Her breathless state made her voice sound reedy.
Ren’s expression had gone blank and his thoughts were impossible to interpret. Staring at her, he ran a palm along his stubbled jaw. “You cut your hair, Priss.”
Her fingers flew to the bobbed ends. She still wasn’t accustomed to how the dark blond stuff curled and waved now that eighteen inches of weight had been taken from its length.
“I thought you’d vowed never to take scissors to it,” he continued.
He remembered that? She shrugged. “Like you said, I’ve grown up.” The haircut hadn’t been her idea, though, and a wave of humiliation at the memory of it washed over her.
Ren’s gaze narrowed. “Priss…”
“Cilla.”
“Cilla, then. Something wrong? Something bothering you?”
A lot was bothering her. Up to and including the fact that her old longing for Renford Colson was not dead, but just hibernating until the day his hot body arrived on the doorstep. Now her hormones were stirring and she felt oddly out-of-sorts and unfamiliarly ravenous. Not unlike the California black bears, she figured, that would emerge from their hollow trees and mountain caves in a few short weeks.
“It’s been a lousy month or so,” she said. He couldn’t doubt that. “Gwen’s passing, the wild circus the Lemons made of her memorial service before they rushed back out on tour, and then there’s the Beck situation.”
“Beck?” Ren frowned. “What about Beck?”
The Velvet Lemons’ drummer had named his three kids, Beck, Walsh, and Reed—all boys—after musicians he admired: Jeff Beck, Joe Walsh, and Lou Reed. Ren’s father had given all three of his progeny, two boys and a girl—Renford, Payne, and Campbell— the surnames of their long-gone mothers. Cilla never got a straight answer from her own dad. She figured he didn’t remember why he’d picked out Priscilla, or why he’d chosen Brody and Bing for her twin older brothers.
She took in a
breath, stalling. Beck was the oldest of the nine and Ren was the next closest in age. How would he take the news? “He’s missing. Nobody told you that?”
Ren went still. “I don’t have regular communication with anyone.”
The princes and princesses of rock royalty had scattered as each came of age, but she hadn’t realized how out of touch Ren had been. “You don’t talk to Payne or Campbell?”
Ren was shaking his head. “Not very often.”
“Beck hasn’t been in steady contact with Walsh or Reed either. That’s why we don’t really know exactly how long he’s been missing.”
“Missing,” Ren repeated.
“He took a freelance assignment to do a long piece on the Nile for one of the nature magazines. About nine months ago. No one has heard from him since.”
“Hell.”
“His dad and the magazine put feelers out, though it’s not clear whether Beck is actually lost or merely following the story. It just seems weird that he’s been silent for so long.”
Ren relaxed, and ran his hand through his hair, giving Cilla another glimpse of that interesting, incomplete-looking tattoo on his wrist. “I’m sure Beck’s fine.”
Cilla wished she had his certainty. “I hope you’re right.”
“I am.” He half-turned to punch the pillows behind him then settled back, crossing his arms over that magnificent chest. His biceps bulged.
Gathering the covers closer, Cilla pretended she didn’t notice them. “So…you’re just, uh, passing through on your way back to London?”
“Moscow to London via Paris and L.A.? I know we had shitty upbringings, Pri—Cilla, but our schooling wasn’t so bad. Pretty sure you’d see there’s no logic in that.”
There wasn’t logic in anything at the moment. Particularly how she was absolutely electrified by the presence of Ren who was gazing on her like she was a ditzy puzzle and not a desirable woman.
ANTE UP (7-Stud Club Book 3) Page 22
