by Nalini Singh
“You do or say anything that’ll hit the media, you call me. Day or night. I hate surprises—so don’t you dare surprise me.”
Thea had given that order to all four of them when she’d agreed to act as their publicist. Her up-front nature and dedication to her job was part of the reason they’d hired her; Thea was the best and she didn’t take any shit from her clients. He wasn’t doing himself any favors by not calling her.
Right then, David couldn’t find it in himself to care. It wasn’t as if she could hurt him any more than she already had. And Jesus, how long was he going to carry this torch that was burning him alive? “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he said aloud, banging the back of his head against the wall.
Thea was on her third cup of coffee when the phone rang. Seeing Fox’s name on the screen, she frowned. She was awake at this hour because she wanted to finalize a few things before she headed off on vacation later today—after handling the band’s scheduled media interviews. Fox, however, was with Molly, so if he was wasting time calling her, it had to mean trouble. “Fox, what’s happened?”
“David’s in jail.”
Thea collapsed onto a sofa, her mind spinning. “David? Don’t you mean Abe or Noah?”
“David,” Fox repeated. “He got in a bar fight, did enough damage that—”
Heart thumping, she broke into his words. “Is he all right?”
“Black eye, bruised ribs, but he came out better than the other guys. I’m on my way to pick him up from the station, but the media’s probably already gotten hold of the story.”
Eyes narrowing, Thea sat up. “When was this bar fight?”
“Last night. And yeah, I know he should’ve called you then, but he didn’t. Can you handle it?”
“Of course I can handle it.” Taking down the details he had, including the name of the bar, she disconnected and began to do her job, which in this case meant damage control. A rock star misbehaving wasn’t a big deal generally, but it all depended on how the media decided to report it—and it could get nasty if they pitched it as an arrogant international musician throwing his weight around against locals.
First, she rang up the bar and spoke to the owner.
“Mr. Rivera apologizes for the damage,” she said, putting words in David’s mouth. “We’d be happy to cover the bill for any repairs. Please send it straight to me.”
The bar owner guffawed, loud and long. “Naw, don’t worry. I’m making the dipshits pay for it, the ones who started it. Your guy was just having a beer and watching the rugby until Bruiser decided to prove his dick was bigger. Picked the wrong mark this time.”
David had gone up against someone named Bruiser? Not only that, he’d come out of the altercation better off? And both Fox’s use of the word “guys” and the bar owner’s of “dipshits” meant Bruiser hadn’t been David’s only opponent.
Thea was having difficulty comprehending any of this. Of all the men in the band, David was the most stable. He was the one who made the band a family—and she wasn’t sure any of the four men even realized it. David was the calm center in the midst of the storm, rooted and so sure of who he was that nothing could shake him.
He did not get into bar fights.
He did not put Thea in the position of having to clean up after him.
He did not end up in jail with a black eye and bruised ribs.
Except he’d done exactly that. “Here are my contact details just in case,” she said to the bar owner, not about to allow her frustration and shock to stop her from doing her job. “You’ll probably get some media attention—”
“Already spoke to a few reporters,” the man replied cheerfully. “Phone’s been ringing off the hook.”
Thea slapped a hand silently over her forehead and bit back a groan. She was seriously going to strangle David. “Well,” she said, trying to salvage what she could of the situation, “if you need any assistance dealing with them—”
The bar owner interrupted her again. “Naw, I can handle it. I told them the drummer guy beat the crap out of the bozos who were hassling him. That boy learned his moves somewhere where they don’t fight pretty, that’s for sure.”
Thea released a relieved breath, the publicist in her immediately seeing the positive angle. Yes, the Gentleman of Rock had been in a bar fight against locals, but he hadn’t started it and he’d come out of it the victor against multiple opponents. Everyone liked the underdog who’d beaten the bullies. Especially when the underdog was a sexy, straight-arrow rock star who generally stayed out of the media spotlight.
So she played that angle, laughed good-naturedly with reporters as she gently nudged things in the direction she wanted them to go. Then, logging into David’s main social-media account—which he usually only used to answer fan questions—she pretended to be him and began to type out a message.
He could yell at her later. Not that David ever yelled. But he’d made it clear she was only ever to touch his account if he was held up somewhere and fans were waiting for a concert, or something else equally important. As far as Thea was concerned, this qualified.
“Damn it,” she muttered, erasing what she’d already written to start all over again. A laughing, smirking admission wouldn’t work, wouldn’t sound like David. But she couldn’t allow him to maintain radio silence, not this time. The print and online media could still spin the story the wrong way if she didn’t give them another angle bolstered by fan support.
That boy learned his moves somewhere where they don’t fight pretty, that’s for sure.
The memory of the bar owner’s admiring statement made her mind click. Fingers to the keyboard of the lightweight laptop that acted as her virtual office, she wrote: I guess no one told them I was born and raised in the South Bronx.
There, she thought, that was David. No explanations, just a proud shout-out to his old neighborhood, a neighborhood his parents and siblings continued to call home. Of course, his folks and younger brothers were no longer in a shoebox apartment in a tenement building, but on the top floor of a spacious new five-story complex. Because David was a man who respected the meaning of family—the one he’d created with the band and the one into which he’d been born.
She knew he’d offered to move his family to a more gentrified area of New York and an even nicer place, but the Riveras liked their part of the Bronx and didn’t want to “sit on their asses all day, mooching off their son.” David had said that to her, paraphrasing his parents, when he’d told her his folks had no intention of retiring; the admiration and affection in his tone had made her want to kiss him.
In quiet respect for their pride, he’d bought the complex, then convinced Vicente and Alicia Rivera that he needed them as live-in managers. They were meant to oversee the small staff that took care of any physical maintenance, but his father apparently couldn’t help himself at times, and neither could his mother. Their building not only had a thriving rooftop garden but was so spick-and-span that there was a waiting list of potential tenants.
Grinning, she added another line to “David’s” message: Anyone mentions this to my mother, I will find you.
The band’s fans all knew Mrs. Rivera, the mom who’d helped bring up David and his two younger brothers by cleaning business offices and rich people’s homes from five in the morning to two in the afternoon. His father was a construction worker who’d pulled fourteen-hour shifts after getting the kids off to school, with his mom always there when they returned home. Despite their hard work, the family had lived on fumes at times.
The poverty in his past was something David had never hidden. He had, however, made sure his younger brothers weren’t hounded by the media by scrupulously keeping them out of his public profile. His beaming mom, on the other hand, he’d brought as his date to the Grammys two years running.
Mrs. Rivera had charmed everyone who met her.
David’s dad wasn’t as comfortable in the spotlight, but his pride in his “boy” was clear in the rare interviews he’d granted. Thea kn
ew for a fact that David returned to New York regularly to help his parents with anything they needed and that he was the first port of call for his brothers—both of whom were now at Ivy League universities, thanks to the educational trust funds David had set up.
Was it any wonder she found him so attractive?
“No,” she said the instant after that thought passed through her head. “No.”
David, she reminded herself for the gazillionth time, was a client. He was also a musician. Thea had been around too many who lived the rock-and-roll lifestyle to trust any of them. Maybe it wasn’t fair to tar all musicians with the same brush, but she’d had her heart stomped on once by a cheating, lying son of a bitch. No way was she ever again handing it over to any man she wasn’t dead certain would handle it with care.
Rock stars were just not a good bet.
Chapter 2
David was expecting to take some bullshit from the guys when he walked into the hotel’s breakfast room with Fox and the band’s local attorney. He was still dressed in the black pants and white shirt from last night, but despite the color, the shirt had survived miraculously unscathed under the hoodie he’d chucked into the trash. Splattered with more than a few liquid substances, including whiskey and blood, the hoodie had looked like it came from the costume department of a horror movie.
As it was, he had no trouble handling the ribbing from the males around the table. It was Thea’s sister, Molly, who moved the conversation to a dangerous emotional level. Though the two women shared a father, they looked nothing alike. Where Thea was tall and slender with hair that was silken black rain, Molly was small and curvy, her hair tending toward wild curls. But in one way, they were the same—Thea and Molly both knew how to cut right to the heart of a matter.
“You don’t seem like the kind of man who gets into bar fights,” she said after everyone else got up to grab more food from the buffet.
David didn’t answer, didn’t tell her he’d once been a fighter. Fast and slippery and fierce. A kid didn’t survive where he’d been born without learning to hold his own. He’d never liked the violence, but he’d done it because otherwise, his younger brothers—five and seven years behind him in age—would’ve become prey, too. All three of them had been short as kids, their bodies slight.
“You’re crazy in love with her, aren’t you?”
Molly’s gentle question hit him hard in the solar plexus. Staring out at the wall but seeing the warmth of Thea’s true smile, the way her eyes lit up when she was working on a big project, he realized he had no lies left in him. “Until I can’t think. I need to get over it.”
Molly’s big brown eyes were soft in sympathy. “Did you—”
“I asked her out. Had this whole argument worked out about how we’d be perfect together, but she never even gave me a shot.” Every time he thought of that day four months earlier when she’d rejected him with practiced courtesy, he wanted to haul her to him, make her react, give him anger even if she couldn’t give him anything else.
“She cut me off so smoothly,” he said, the memory acid on his heart, “it was like being sliced off at the knees. Professional smile, distant eyes, gentle hand on my arm as she ushered me out of her office.” He shook his head. “It was such a kick in the teeth that I just went.”
Molly was silent for a while. He didn’t really expect her to say anything, because what was there to say? He was in love with a woman who had no trouble turning him down flat. Nothing could change the fact Thea simply wasn’t attracted to him.
But then Molly did speak, and her words were so startling that he could only stare at her.
“Write a memo,” she said, tone quiet but firm. “About all the reasons why you’d be perfect together, then e-mail it to her.”
Not sure where she was going with this, he held his silence.
“Thea is surgically attached to her e-mail,” Molly continued.
David couldn’t argue with that statement. A large majority of his memories of Thea involved her with her phone in hand, sending or receiving messages, connecting with media, making notes, probably taking over the world. He’d never met anyone who could multitask at Thea’s level. She was flat-out incredible.
“She’ll read the memo because she can’t help herself,” Molly said, the two of them still alone at the table, “and if I know my sister, she’ll send you back a point-by-point rebuttal”—an affectionate smile—“so you’d better have your arguments ready.”
“That is either the worst or the best advice ever.” And the fact he was considering it would’ve told him exactly how far gone he was if he hadn’t already been fully aware of his feelings for Thea.
“Trust me.” Molly sipped her coffee before adding, “Thea likes brains and she likes determination.”
David’s fingers clenched on his fork. He knew he had a brain—it was why he’d won that scholarship at thirteen. As for the determination, yeah, he had that, too. Without it, he’d never have made it past all the rejections and setbacks the band had suffered back at the start. Only reason he hadn’t turned that determination on Thea was that he didn’t want to have her because he’d worn her down.
He wanted her with him because she wanted to be with him.
Molly leaned in close when the others started back. “If you send her ‘I’m sorry I messed up’ flowers, steer clear of white roses.”
When he raised an eyebrow in question, she said, “Ex.”
Jaw tightening, he nodded. “Got it.”
David went up to his room after breakfast. The crew, headed by Maxwell, had gone on to the concert location to finish the setup, but the band didn’t have to be there until much closer to the time of the show. Technically, other than doing the quick interviews Thea had lined up—to give the charity the concert was supporting a little more visibility—the four of them were supposed to rest, but each member of Schoolboy Choir had his own routine for getting his head in the right space.
David usually spent the time working on new songs or hanging out with Abe. His bandmate had conquered the drugs that had threatened to drag him under, and it looked like he was finally recovering from his nightmare of a divorce, but David had been friends with the other man a long time. He knew Abe had a way of holding things inside until they exploded.
Today, however, David was in bad shape himself. The cot in the jail cell had hardly been comfortable, and he’d spent most of the night awake, his thoughts always circling back to one woman: Thea.
He wasn’t fit company for anyone.
Striding into the shower after stripping off his wrinkled clothes, he stood there and let the hot water pound over him. The cut on his lip stung, his eye watered, but that was nothing compared to some of the injuries he’d taken as a kid.
Once he’d stepped out and dried off, he wrapped the towel around his hips and checked out the spreading bruise on his ribs. It looked far worse than it felt. Yeah okay, that was a load of shit. He’d pay for his loss of control tonight when he played the skins. The vibrations would hurt like a bitch. As for his eye—“Ah, fuck.” He hadn’t put ice on it, even when the bar owner offered him an ice pack, because he’d figured it couldn’t get much worse. He’d been wrong.
Taking a handful of ice out of the bucket that had been sitting outside his door when he came up—probably courtesy of one of the hotel staff who’d either caught the reports of the bar fight or seen him in the breakfast room—he wrapped the cubes in one of his T-shirts and held it to his eye as he lay down naked in bed. He had to catch at least a couple of hours sleep or he’d be useless at the concert, and he wasn’t about to let the band or its fans down.
Or Thea.
Her name was the last thought he had before exhaustion pulled him under and the first thing on his mind when he opened his eyes five hours later. The makeshift ice pack had long ago slipped off his face and melted onto the bed, leaving a great big wet spot, but his eye was no longer swollen. It’d be black and blue and probably purple, but his vision was fine.
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Pulling on a pair of jeans, he drank three glasses of water, then sat in the armchair that got the most sun through the huge sliding doors that opened out onto a private terrace. He’d rather be outside, but he’d bet his left nut that the terrace was the focus of multiple long-lens paparazzi cameras right now. At least with the angle of the sun, the vultures wouldn’t be able to get a clear shot through the glass, meaning he could sit here and drink in the sun, have it burn away the last of the cobwebs.
Since he’d sacked out for so long, he didn’t have much time before he had to head to a downstairs conference room for the interviews. He’d steeled himself for the inevitability of coming face-to-face with Thea, but the sight of her still threatened to gut him.
Scowling, she strode over on sky-high red heels worn with a sleeveless and tailored black dress that ended just above her knees. “Did you put ice on that eye?”
He made himself speak, act normal—he’d become pretty good at that after the length of time he’d loved her. “Yeah, past few hours.”
“What about last night?”
He shrugged.
Her glare could’ve cut steel.
Thankfully, the first reporter arrived a second later, and David spent the rest of the time making light of his new and hopefully short-lived notoriety. Interviews complete, he slipped away while Thea was talking to Abe, and once in his room, used his phone to do some research.
He had no idea how to write a memo, and if he was going to do this, he had to do it properly. The only question was, was he going to do this? Putting down the phone, he got up and, going to the living area of the suite, got down on the floor and began to do push-ups. It was an easy motion for him regardless of his bruised ribs. Like most working drummers, he had to stay highly fit or he’d never last an entire concert.
He usually put in gym time every day, often went running with Noah or Fox, or did weights with Abe. Today, the familiar, repetitive motion of the push-ups cleared his mind, helped him think.
