by Nalini Singh
Time passed both too quickly and with excruciating slowness. When Thea was with David, it raced by, their days together ending in a heartbeat. In contrast, the pace was glacial during their separations, each minute taking forever. Thea did what she’d always done to cope with emotionally intense situations: she worked. However, now it wasn’t so much drowning herself in it as using it to fill a void.
“Only a week to go until I can fly in and see him again,” she told herself after David messaged her from Washington.
Her phone rang before she could message back, the number that of the man who headed Schoolboy Choir’s legal team. “What’s up?” she asked, unworried. She was friendly with the entire team, and one or the other of them would often call her up to ask her if she wanted to join their weekly Friday lunch.
“We have a problem.”
She straightened in her chair at Bailey’s tone, stopped checking e-mail. “Talk to me.”
“An eighteen-year-old just walked into our Manhattan offices with her lawyer. She’s five months pregnant and she’s claiming David is the father.”
It was a punch to the diaphragm, her lungs screaming for air. “Any proof?” she asked on autopilot, somehow managing to sound normal. Not at all as if her world had just been smashed to pieces with an iron bar.
“According to my associate there, she’s got a pretty but inexpensive amethyst ring on her ring finger,” Bailey told her. “I remember David picking it up from the jeweler’s because I was with him that day. Girl says he promised to marry her.”
It was Thea’s worst nightmare come to life.
“They’re apparently from the same neighborhood.” Bailey’s voice was cool, professional, but she could tell the girl’s claim had caught him by surprise. “She says she met him while he was visiting his parents.” A harsh exhale. “If it wasn’t David, I’d say it sounded like he sweet-talked her to get sex, then walked out, but Jesus, it is David.”
Thea couldn’t go there, couldn’t think of this as being about David. Her David. She had to just think “client” or she’d shatter. “Is the girl threatening to go public?” she said, falling back on what she knew, on what she could handle.
“That’s the implication if we don’t settle and settle big.” Rustling sounds on Bailey’s end that indicated he was moving around. “Look, I have to call David, and then I have to fly to New York to handle this. I wanted to alert you in case her lawyer’s already leaked the news to the media. He’s a bit of a hotshot.”
“I’ll take care of it.” Thea might be numb from the inside out, her skin like ice, but she’d do her job.
“Thanks, Thea. I’d appreciate a call if you catch even a hint of anything related—I need to know exactly how dirty they intend to play.”
“Wait,” Thea said through the metallic flatness of her emotions. “The girl. What’s her name? I’ll need it to track the story.”
“Naomi Hughes. I’ll get Rebecca to e-mail you the rest of the details.”
Hanging up, Thea just sat there motionless and cold deep inside until the e-mail from Rebecca popped into her inbox. She forced herself to click on it, scrolled down to the photo of a scared-looking and very, very pretty girl.
Doe-eyed Naomi Hughes had long dark hair and a belly that wouldn’t have showed if she hadn’t pulled her pale pink shirt tight over it as she cradled her hands beneath the bump. Her features were fine, her luminous skin dusky brown, and her height a diminutive five-two according to Rebecca’s notes.
Taking it all in without thinking too hard about how the girl was nothing like her, Thea looked at the birth date Rebecca had listed. Oh God, Naomi Hughes had only turned eighteen last week. Which meant that at the time of the sexual encounter, she’d been seventeen, only a couple of years older than the girl Patrick ha—
Cutting off that thought before it could make her bleed, Thea scanned the rest of the information, then began doing broad-spectrum Internet searches using the data. Depending on the game plan devised by Naomi’s attorney, it could equal anything from a major exposé in a tabloid to the merest hint of trouble on social media, with no confirmed details.
Thea found nothing on her first pass, but she kept digging. All she unearthed was the usual: fan sites dedicated to David, photos of him shared by women who gushed about how hot he was, and videos and blogs by drummers who dissected his style in an effort to emulate it.
The Gentleman of Rock moniker, bestowed by a magazine article a number of years ago, was a recurring hit. There were also a couple of tell-alls Thea already knew about: two women he’d gone out with at the start of his career smiled coy smiles from old articles and spoke about how “hard-bodied” the Schoolboy Choir drummer was under his conservative clothes.
Both had shared intimate details of their night with a young rock star.
David had become better at picking more discreet lovers as he grew older and more experienced in this world—there were no more recent reports on his love life except for the fluff pieces made up by magazines looking to increase their circulation. Even of the latter, there weren’t many: David had succeeded in making himself of little interest to most paparazzi on a daily basis.
All of what she’d discovered, added to the fact she’d had not a single call asking her to confirm or deny Naomi Hughes’ claim, told her the girl’s lawyer was waiting to see which way the wind blew before making his next move. David was safe for now. She’d make sure the alerts she’d set—
A sharp, insistent tone pierced the air, the screen of her phone flashing with David’s name.
Chapter 13
David felt sick to his stomach. Sitting on the edge of the hotel bed, he held the phone to his ear and listened to it ring. “Come on, Thea,” he said, his gut a twisted mess. “Pick up, baby. Pick up.”
It rang once more, and then he heard Thea’s cool, calm voice. “David.”
“It’s not mine.” He knew Thea’s history would make it difficult for her to accept his word, but he wasn’t about to just roll over and give up the best thing in his life. “I picked up that ring for my kid brother, Zeke. He was going to give it to Naomi.” A simple favor because David had been in the city when the ring his brother had ordered had come in. “Zeke had a crush on her, but I know he never laid a finger on her and neither have I.”
“You know her?” Thea’s tone remained unreadable, distant.
Fuck. But at least she was talking to him. “Yeah.” Naomi had come to his parents’ home for dinner any number of times. “She’s my brother’s friend, and she’s a fucking kid. I never looked at her as anything else.” Bailey had told him the legal age of consent in New York was seventeen, so they didn’t have to worry about the authorities, but that didn’t change how David viewed Naomi. She was younger than Zeke, for fuck’s sake.
It had taken him a minute to even remember who she was; to him, Naomi had simply been part of Zeke’s group of friends from around the neighborhood. “She turned my brother down when he asked her out, but there were no hard feelings.” As far as David remembered, Zeke had ended up giving her the ring anyway, for a birthday present. “I don’t know why she’s doing this.”
“It hasn’t hit the media.”
“I don’t care. Thea, Jesus, talk to me.” It felt like his entire world had fallen apart, the ground crumbling under his feet. “Tell me you believe me—or if you can’t do that, tell me you’ll give me a chance to convince you.” The latter would hurt, would tear him to bloody pieces, but he could bear the pain because he knew how much Eric had wounded her.
He was willing to take the hit, give her the reassurance she needed.
“Let me do my job, David,” Thea said. “I need to do that right now.”
It took a lot to make David truly angry, but at that instant something snapped. His shocked disbelief at Naomi’s actions and his fear of losing Thea smoldered into anger so deep that he lost it. “That’s how much you trust me?” he said, seeing red. “Not even enough to give me a shot to explain? Fuck that, Thea! I
can’t spend my life trying to prove myself to you!”
“David—”
“You want to do your job? Go, do it. I can’t take this shit.” He threw the phone at the wall so hard the screen splintered, then he just sat there, trembling.
All this time, everything they’d become to one another, and she chose to believe a random stranger’s accusations over him. She’d made a judgment and found him guilty without so much as a single question about his guilt or innocence. That was what hurt the worst—Thea hadn’t even given him a chance, as if she’d been waiting for him to screw up, waiting for him to prove that she’d been right about musicians all along.
Maybe… maybe it was time he accepted that he could never convince Thea he was a man in whom she could put her faith. The thought tore out his heart. He loved her, would lay the world at her feet if she asked, and she couldn’t give him this much?
A cursory knock before Abe popped his head through the door David hadn’t bothered to lock. “Hey, man, I heard a noise. You okay?”
“No.” He told the other man about Naomi’s claim but didn’t mention Thea. He couldn’t say her name right now, couldn’t even think about her if he was to function. She’d stomped on his heart as if it were a worthless token.
“Shit.” He shoved both hands through his hair. “I have to call my folks.” This would devastate them—they’d opened their home to Naomi, and now the girl was about to smear their name, turning them into pariahs in the neighborhood they loved.
Abe folded his arms, the new piercing in his eyebrow catching the light. David and Fox had gone with him when he’d had it done a couple of days back. He’d pretended to whimper at the sight of the piercing needle while the two of them laughed and asked him if he needed his blankie.
That day seemed a lifetime ago now, David’s life having shifted brutally on its axis in the past minutes. It felt as if he was looking down a narrow, dark tunnel with no end.
“This girl’s looking to shake you down.” Abe’s heavy scowl grew darker. “Don’t buckle under the pressure. You know the suits are going to tell you to settle if it looks to drag on. Don’t do it.”
“I fucking won’t. I told them to tell Naomi that until we have the results of a paternity test, she’s getting exactly zero dollars.” David didn’t care if Naomi decided to badmouth him all over the media, not as long as the people who knew him believed the truth.
Except it appeared he’d already lost one person he’d thought would stick. Thea had been loyal to her bastard of an ex to the end, but clearly she’d never given David that part of herself. He’d been a love-blind idiot, fooling himself that the sexy, talented, beautiful girl who held his heart wanted him for keeps.
Teeth clenched, he went to pick up his phone. It refused to turn on. “Broken.” He dropped it on the bed when he’d much rather have thrown it at the wall again. “Can I borrow yours?” He didn’t trust the hotel lines, not with something so sensitive.
“Sure, yeah.” Abe passed it over. “You want me to tell the others?”
“Yeah, thanks.” They had to know in case this blew up into a tabloid shitstorm.
Getting up as the door closed behind Abe, David splashed cold water on his face, wiped it off with rough motions, then called his parents.
Six hours after his world had imploded, David went onstage and played out his rage and his anger on the drums. Fox, Abe, and Noah had banded around him in unspoken support, altering the set so he could bang out the hard rock pieces until his arms quivered and he could handle the ballads that required a gentler touch.
Despite their adamant belief in him, he was in no mood to be with anyone. Leaving straight after the concert rather than sticking around to sign autographs or grab a drink, he went to his hotel room intending to strip off and get into workout gear so he could go for a run. He was sweaty from the concert, his muscles aching, but his body burned with rage-fueled energy.
When someone knocked on the door just after he’d peeled off his sweat-soaked T-shirt and kicked off his boots, he wrenched it open, intending to tell whoever it was to fuck off… and found himself face-to-face with the last person he’d expected to see.
Eyes glittering and body clad in a white sheath dress, her hair in the elegant twist that drove him crazy, and cherry-red stilettos on her feet, Thea shoved past him into the room. He slammed the door shut and locked it for good measure. If they were going to have this out, they’d have it out here and now.
“What?” he snarled, more angry, more hurt than he’d ever been in his life. “Come to get my side of it in case you need to put out a statement as part of your job?”
Throwing her purse on one of the armchairs in the living area of the suite, she strode over and shoved at his chest. It didn’t move him even an inch—Thea might be tall, but she was also slender and nowhere near as strong as him. But the contact had a physical effect all right, the same effect she always had on him. As if she was meant to be his, as if she was his. Teeth grinding down as his jaw clenched, he fought the urge to touch her, waiting to hear what she had to say.
“How long have you known me?” she demanded, answering her own question before he could say anything—not that he was certain he was rational enough to answer. “Long enough to know I work things out by focusing on what needs to be done right then! You’ve seen me do—”
Grabbing her by the wrists, he hauled her against him. “So believing in me is something you need to work through?” He could hardly breathe. “I guess that answers my question about trust.”
“No, it doesn’t.” Her eyes were molten with fury. “I’d found out only minutes before your call, spent that time making sure the media didn’t have a hold of the allegations, that I didn’t need to spin into damage-control mode.”
“Damage control.” He bit off the words. “Nice to know you were so emotionally distraught.”
“I couldn’t let myself be Thea who’s in a relationship with you!” It came out a yell. “I had to be Thea, your publicist.” Cool, calm, rational, that was who she’d been at the instant he’d called, who she’d needed to be to protect him. “You couldn’t give me a minute to think, to switch gears?”
“Fuck it, Thea. You shouldn’t need to think!”
“Yeah? How would you react if you got a call telling you I’d walked into a hotel room hand-in-hand with Eric?”
He staggered as if he’d been kicked. “You’d do that to me over some bullshit claim?”
“No! I was making a point.” Chest heaving, Thea tried to hold on to her fury, but the stunned hurt in David’s eyes wounded her until it was difficult to remember the reason she’d said what she had. “But there for a second, you believed I would. Didn’t you?”
“No!” It was a growl of sound. “I just didn’t expect you to say something like that.”
“I didn’t expect to hear that a teenage girl was saying you’d made her pregnant!” Her breath came fast and shallow, her blood hot. “I shut down when I’m shocked or hurt,” she said. “That’s what I do, David. You know that, too!”
His fingers flexed on her wrists. “Why were you hurt?” he asked, his voice raw. “Why didn’t you just know it was bullshit?”
“I did, you idiot!” she said, kicking at him, she was so damn frustrated. “I just needed that minute to breathe, to think.” When she had, every cell in her body had rejected the idea that David would seduce a young girl, then abandon her. Neither possibility even remotely fit the man she’d come to know in the years since they’d met. He just wouldn’t do anything so dishonorable.
David maneuvered her so her back was pressed to the door, finally releasing her wrists to slap his hands palms-down on either side of her. “I don’t want you to need that minute.” Harsh words, his jaw a brutal line. “I don’t want you to have to think even that much. I want you to trust me so deep and true it’s in your blood.”
“Do you see where I am now, David?”
He frowned. “What?”
“I’m in your hotel r
oom, which happens to be in the wrong state from where I should be, getting ready to handle any media fallout. I cut myself off from the world for the hours it took to fly here.”
His eyebrows drew together. “You put us above work.”
Yes, she had. But that wasn’t the point. Shoving her hands into his hair, she held on tight, her gaze locked to his. “I came to you,” she whispered, her throat gritty and eyes hot. “Even though the rational, logical part of me said I should cut my losses, that you were only doing what musicians do, I came to you.”
She pulled his hair when he would’ve spoken, anger apparent in the flattening of his lips. “I came because I knew it was all a lie. I knew it so deep that none of the rational reasons mattered.” Emotion a knot in her throat, she swallowed. “So you damn well give me my minute until I don’t need it anymore, until the scars inside me are healed over completely!”
David’s entire body trembled as the fury and force of Thea’s words slammed through him. “How long?” It came out a rasp.
“Stubborn.”
“I can’t handle it, Thea,” he admitted, stripping himself bare. “Even that minute. I fucking love you too much.” His biceps clenched, his abdomen taut as he waited for her to take that minute that so wounded him, to think about what to say, how to respond.
“I fucking love you, too,” she said on the heels of his words and hauled his stunned face to hers for one hell of a kiss. “And could you please try to be a little more romantic next time?”
The fist that had gripped his heart, squeezing until it bled, eased its pitiless hold at her bad-tempered demand. “Say it again,” he whispered on a convulsive shudder. “I’ve been waiting forever.”
“I love you.” She punctuated each word with a kiss. “I’m also infuriated with you.” More kisses. “If you ever hang up on me again after yelling at me, I will—”
He swallowed her words in an openmouthed kiss that was pure sex, one hand thrust into her hair. The twist unraveled under his roughness, liquid silk over his hands. Thea loved him; she’d said it without hesitation, without even a split second’s delay after his own declaration.
