by Ally Blake
Saffron had been such a one.
Skin prickling with sweat at the mere whisper of that name, Dash rocked to his feet, catching his stool before it fell. “I’m going to check on Jagger.”
As Dash whistled for Bowie to follow, Reg opened his mouth—probably to point out that Jagger was a nut ball who could be anywhere—but in the end let him go.
With Bowie a warm comfort at his heels, Dash headed outside where, as usual, the never-ending woods clarified things, simplified, and slowed the world right down. Reminded him as clearly as anything could that those days were long gone. That unlike the world beyond his driveway, he didn’t live by calendars or clocks anymore. Corn flakes at three in the morning, beer as the sun rose—so long as nobody was getting caught up in his shit, and vice versa, what did it matter?
In the middle of nowhere, making sure things remained that way took very little effort on his part. Less effort than he deserved to expend.
Saffron rose back into his mind’s eye. And Lori Hanover right along with her.
Dash kicked a rock, the pain reverberating through his toes not enough to dislodge either woman’s image.
They didn’t even look alike.
The former had been petite and dark, a PR rep for the record company. The other was all legs and old-time movie-star platinum glamour. But the hauteur, the entitlement, the dagger heels?
They were of a type.
His type, apparently.
Which was why Saffron had been one of several warm willing bodies he’d spent time with on the European tour. She’d known he wasn’t exclusive. The kinds of girls who cared about such things had never been for him.
Lucky, because he’d been on the road since he was in his teens, and had realized that women tended to pin him in a crowd even before that.
And yet, in those first blurry days after his life had imploded, Dash’d thought she hadn’t given him the news about his Uncle Pete’s collapse back in Sausalito because hurt feelings had led her to ‘forget.’ Or to hurt him back. Making it his fault.
But removed from the haze of shock, through his lengthy legal dissociation from the band, and the record company’s insistence on deniability, the truth had come to light.
The Rift had been days out from rocking Wembley Stadium for the first time, and when Saffron had taken the hospital’s call she’d been well aware Dash’s first instinct would have been to leave the landmark tour to be with his uncle. It had been more important to Saffron’s own career that he stay. So she’d made the unilateral decision to keep him in the dark. To allow his uncle to die alone. Not giving him the chance to say thank you. To say good-bye.
Dash came to with Bowie licking his fingers, and rainwater—or more likely sweat—dripping chillingly down the back of his shirt. He ran a hand over Bowie’s reassuring fur, and headed back to civilization, or his version thereof.
The view of his house settled him. Especially the shed. His Uncle Pete’s shed, moved to this place piece by piece. It had been Dash’s penance, having to look at it every day. Until it had become his salvation.
Jagger bolted out of nowhere to nudge against Dash’s legs hard enough to nearly topple him. Bowie twitched his nose in consternation.
Dash often wondered which of the pair was really the smarter. Bowie, the thinker, or Jagger who had not a care in the world except food and sleep. Surely that’s all a guy could ever need.
Nearly all, Dash thought, as Lori Hanover and her spiky heels stepped over the cracks in his mind.
In particular, that moment in the kitchen when he leaned over her to get Callie’s envelope. What had started with the intention of getting her the hell out of his house had ended with her lifting, sighing, sinking against him, lips parted, eyelashes lowered, hand reaching for chest.
He could still catch her scent on the air. Hot. Spicy. Satisfaction.
Rearranging the resultant bulge in his pants, Dash had to admit that was a need, too. One he’d reduced fantastically as part of his efforts at self-flagellation. One he wouldn’t be able to kybosh forever, as recent events would attest. He’d have to take care of that. As it’d be a cold day in hell before he let himself get mixed up with the likes of Lori Hanover.
He headed back to the shed, ready to work.
He could worry about the secret later. The song. The tempting blonde tangling it altogether.
Talk about penance…
Chapter Three
“We’re here, Miss Hanover.”
Lori came to from the dismal fog inside her head to find Mack frowning at her from the front seat of the town car like he’d called her name a dozen times.
“Thanks, Mack,” she said, massaging the tension headache that had ridden over her since she’d walked out of her last meeting.
A small but prestigious magazine Calliope Shoes had advertised in for years had informed her that their publication was ‘going in a different direction,’ so fearful were they of being besmirched with her poisonous press they’d actually refused to be paid.
It had been her teenage years in Fairbanks all over again, what with the sly glances and loud whispers like pinpricks attacking her skin. That’s Lori Hanover—she lives in the beat-up part of the Shady Maple trailer park. Works in the canning factory in Edgemont and the truck stop on the I-5. She’s the one who gave Janice Bickerson the black eye for calling her sister a mouse…
The injustice sliced through her belly when she’d walked through the foyer after the disastrous meeting to find every coffee table covered in magazines, half of them with Callie, or Jake, or Callie and Jake spewed sensationally across the covers.
Lori’s right thumb swished restlessly over the face of her phone and her focus shifted to take in the house in the woods. The morning might have been a mighty fail, but this—this project, this song—would make the difference. Retailers followed money. Money favored panache. Love was always in style.
If Dash Mills was the songwriter Callie believed him to be, this song would be their saving grace. It had to be.
She could only hope that he’d remember their appointment, that he’d live up to his end of the bargain and be home.
It wasn’t raining anymore, but the ground was sludgy from days of misty downpour. Vowing to her glittery, taupe stilettos that she’d not let them perish like the ruffled wonders had, she shimmied out of the car, and with a renewed sense of purpose hiked up her skirt and hot-footed it to Dash Mills’s front door.
Last time she’d made the rookie mistake of turning up in enemy territory unarmed. Since then she’d Googled, simmering the story of Dash Mills’ life down to a few salient points.
He and Jake had been friends since they were thirteen years old. They’d started The Rift together in Jake’s mom’s garage—Jake singing and playing occasional bass. Apparently multi-talented Dash took on guitar, bass, piano, whatever the songs needed. He’d also written the music back then until Cesar ‘Rocky’ Cardano, the drummer, joined when he’d moved to Sausalito from New York. There were conflicting stories on how lead guitarist Lazlo Stone joined the band—mostly from his own lips.
And four years earlier, in the middle of their biggest tour to date, Dash had shocked the world—and the band—by simply walking away.
Lori didn’t find it so astonishing. Men did that kind of thing all the time. Her father, for one. One day he’d been there, the next day gone, leaving their bank accounts depleted and debts across town. Lori, then sixteen, had been left to raise Callie, working three jobs to feed, educate, and shelter her sweet little sister, when their devastated mother could barely drag herself out of bed.
If she was feeling kind, she could say her father’s exodus had taught her strength, perseverance, tenacity, and that when it came down to it she and Callie couldn’t fully count on anyone but each other.
Google had taught her that Dash Mills had the same capacity to blithely walk away. Meaning she’d have to be on top of him with this project—figuratively, of course—every inch of the way.
; About to knock, Lori heard the unmistakable sound of claws scrambling against wood. She’d forgotten the dogs, but, alas, around the corner of the porch they bolted; great tongues lolling, ears back, eyes bright, on a mission.
“No, no, no!” Too late. One pulled up so fast it landed on its backside, but still managed to trail a wet nose down her bare calf. The other had more finesse, slowing gracefully to sink its nose into her crotch and leaving a slimy smear down the front of her black pencil skirt.
“Jagger. Bowie!” A familiar deep voice called from the side of the house. He was home. A strange mix of relief and anticipation collided uncomfortably in her belly.
Like a Road Runner cartoon, the dogs fought for traction on the deck before bolting. Wiping a moist palm over her hip, Lori followed.
She found the dogs with one sitting at the bottom of the side steps, the other running off into the woods chasing something she couldn’t see.
She also found Dash.
Long legs in blue jeans, big feet in heavy work boots, a sweat-drenched white T-shirt clinging to the kind of meaty muscle she’d never seen outside of Pinterest. His hair was a shaggy mess, his stubble wild, and the tatty strings slid up and down his big wrist as muscles worked ten to the dozen.
And—while she’d have bet money the most he exerted himself was to make a coffee—the man, the huntsman, was chopping wood.
Lift, swing, chop, lift, swing, chop echoed through the forest. Watching him simply being capable was as diametrically opposed to the dozen assholes she’s left at her last meeting as it was possible to be; simpering cowards who probably paid people to do everything from washing their BMWs to shining their shoes.
It was…appealing. Appealing? Really? It was beyond raunchy.
Rolling her shoulders, Lori waited for the next upswing and cleared her throat.
The axe hovered overhead, his T-shirt lifting, the tendons in his neck straining, Thor incarnate. He slowly lowered the weapon till the hilt rested on the stump on which he’d been splitting the wood.
Lori held her breath as his deep brown gaze found hers. She only breathed again when that gaze dropped to where she’d raised her skirt. She tugged it back into place. Then tapped her watch.
Dash took his time tucking the axe into a woodshed against the side of the house and then threw a tarp over the piles of wood. Picking up a blue checked shirt from atop a stump, he slipped his arms through the holes and ambled her way.
She’d convinced herself that her memory of the man had been exaggerated, a response to the fact that she hadn’t been expecting…well, a man-mountain. But his moves were still so unhurried they made her toe tap against the wood as nervous energy filled her up.
His damp white tee sculpted enough muscle to build a house, lift a car, and father a hundred babies. And his eyes, good God those eyes, looked over her like she was dressed in nothing but cling-wrap.
She frowned down at her skirt, flicking frantic fingers at the smears of slobber. “Those dogs of yours are brats.”
“Nah,” he drawled. “They’re adorable. Ask ’em.”
“Jagger and Bowie, though, seriously?” she said, walking backward along the porch in the hopes he’d hurry up.
“You’ve got something against my mates Mick and Dave?” he asked, his long slow strides still catching up quick enough.
“You actually know them?” Okay, so she didn’t get time to listen to music nowadays unless Mack played some song in the car his daughters liked, but come on, the Stones? Paint It Black had practically been her theme song in high school.
“Never met ’em.” His smile started in his eyes and ended in her toes.
Hating the fact that her cheeks warmed at having fallen for his pretense, she said, “Then why not Sonny and Cher? The Captain and Tennille? Kenny and Dolly?”
“The dogs are both male for one thing,” he said, then shut her up with a press of his hands at her waist as he spun her about and gave her a little shove toward the front door, leaving palm-shaped burns through the diaphanous layers of her frilly top when he let her go.
Once inside, she teetered on the floor mat, watching Dash nudge off his boots. Even though she’d been brisk, her shoes had collected mud, water, and plant matter, meaning she ought to take them off, too.
Subtle was not the first word she’d use to describe the man, making her very aware of the way her skirt rode up her thighs as she pulled off each heel, how the front of her top dipped as she bent, how her hair tickled her skin as the loosened strands fell from her chignon and over her face like a curtain.
When she stood up straight, her face pink from the blood rush to the head, her hair no longer so tidy, her pale feet and black toenails stark against the wooden floor, she braced herself for whatever comment he might impart.
Something dense and warm beat between them, before he said, “Hungry?” and walked off, the vibrations of his heavy steps rumbling through the wood. Once again waiting for her to follow, like she was one of his damn dogs.
Set to tell him to stop doing that, her mind became otherwise engaged by the homey scents of basil and tomato as she reached the kitchen.
“You cook?” she asked, incredulous at finding him leaning over a bubbling pan filled with pasta sauce.
A knowing smile kicked at the corner of his mouth. “That or starve.”
Of course. The man was sexy as sin, an honest to goodness lumberjack, beloved by animals…and now she practically drooled at the scents of garlic and zucchini still scattered about on his cutting board.
Not to forget once upon a time he’d been one of the world’s biggest rock stars. Though the man could turn on a smile that would make a thousand girls drop their panties and fling them stage-ward, she found herself struggling with that last one.
Jake was exactly what one would expect a rock god to be—long hair, world-weary eyes, covered in tats, permanently wearing at least one item of leather. Like a force of nature, that man sucked the energy from the room and made it his own.
Dash seemed too…self-contained. All unruffled indolence. If he had any energy it was trapped way deep down inside. Yet it still made her…itch.
“Want some?” he asked.
Want being a somewhat weak word for the need swirling in her belly at the sight of Thor cooking, she feigned boredom, flicking at the hammock only to find it was actually an enormous Australian flag.
“How about we get on with it?” She had a lot of ‘red’ phone calls left in her day.
“First time a woman’s ever said those words to me.”
“If you don’t get a move on it won’t be the last,” she shot back, several varieties of frustration fluxing and fusing inside her.
He stilled a moment, the room quiet bar the scratch of a tree branch against a window somewhere. Then Lori felt his energy, pulsing beneath the silence. Waves of it chafed against hers, rubbing her the wrong way till she could practically see the sparks.
“Guitar,” she barked, fighting it. “Lessons.”
With a flicker of an eyebrow, he lifted a big arm and pointed to the hall to her right. She waved, encouraging him to go first. Whenever he walked behind her, all she could think about was where his gaze might be.
When he still didn’t move she finally snapped. Taking a step toward him rather than away, she clicked her fingers in front of his face. “Chop chop! Honestly!”
A flash of heat shot through his widened eyes, his nostrils flared and he seemed to grow a size bigger. She wondered if she’d awakened a sleeping beast. If she’d finally pushed him too far.
Until his jaw ticked, his fingers crunched into fists at his sides, and he appeared to literally absorb every ounce of the energy crackling between them. Then, without another word, he spun on his heel and headed down the hall.
Heart racing and extremities tingling from the shot of adrenaline still zinging through her, Lori jogged to keep up. And, because it was the only way she knew how to be, she pushed some more. “So, I’ve created a spreadsheet detailing how we
’ll run each hour’s lesson. First a warm up. I’ve been Googling and found RSI can be a prob—”
Dash stopped, so unexpectedly that she barreled into him. He caught her by the upper arms.
“One rule,” he said, his voice so deep, awakened-beast deep, it made her toes scrunch into the cool floor.
“And what might that be?”
His grip tightened, his long fingers nearly circling her arms whole. “Every time you walk in my door and it feels like…like something’s about to snap. I don’t like it. Out there, in the big wide world, you might be a high-powered…whatever you are. But here? In my home? No plans, no calendars, no organizing me, or telling me what to do. I don’t enjoy being micro-managed, Lori, and one of the perks of living the life I live is that it simply never happens.”
His thumbs made small circles against her arms as if it might make her more amenable to listening. Ha! “Was that one rule? Seemed like more.”
His mouth kicked up at one corner but no humor hit his eyes. “If we are going to do this, Lori, from the second you step over that threshold…chill.”
The deep echo of his voice dragged against her insides and his scent curled around her tongue; warm, woodsy, and oh so male. He loomed over her blocking out the skylight so that his face was in shadow, his enormous form wrapped in a golden man-shaped aura. And he wanted her to chill?
“What if I’m not a chilled kind of gal?”
He tugged her an inch closer, so that she scooted up onto her toes and felt the heat of him rolling down her front. And his voice was little more than a rumble behind her ribs as he said, “Then we’ll have to find out what it’ll take to make it so. Honestly.”
Callie owed her so big for this escapade she was going to need more than a fabulous shoe. Lori wanted a diamond. Or a yacht.
“Now,” Dash said, his forehead creasing a fraction as he let her sink back to the floor, his hands sliding down her arms then away. “Let’s start over.”
