by Ally Blake
“These old things?”
Her gaze lifted, caught at his. Green, vibrant, stunning. Lit with desire and the fresh fragility he’d seen there the other night… Before she nudged her sunglasses back into place.
“You’re really not on your way somewhere?” she pressed.
Nothing had been planned, but the energy coursing through him in response to the woman standing on his driveway—as shiny, and dangerous, and tightly cocked as a new pistol—meant saying no to her wasn’t an option.
“How long till you have to get back to work?” he asked, taking a step her way.
She fiddled with her watch, hooked her bag higher on her shoulder, and said, “As soon as possible.” His disappointment was rich, thick, telling. Until she added, “Unless you’ve got a better offer than a staff meeting with a staffer on their third warning, a call to Thailand to complain about an incorrectly-dyed fabric, and about three hours’ worth of quarterly reports?”
“Come on,” he said, holding out a hand.
A moment, a breath, then she threw Barbarella back into the car, the beep beep of her remote lock echoing through the trees, and she came to him. Eyed his hand. And—with a frown and an outshot of breath—took it.
Her hand was cool in his, small. The palms soft against his work-roughened mitts. And stubborn as she was, it only made him laugh. Fill with laughter in fact. She might be frickin’ hard work, but it made the moments when she yielded all the sweeter.
When they reached his garage, he bent, wrapped his finger around the unlocked handle of the roller door and yanked. The door creaked from underuse. He grabbed the keys to the Bentley, the only car not under wraps, making a mental note to just sell the rest. He’d found his favorite, so why keep the rest?
Lori continued looking at him like she was waiting for the other shoe to drop even as she slid into the passenger seat. But even that couldn’t quell the odd sense of euphoria that had settled over him.
Dash jogged around the car and slid into the driver’s seat, the leather at his back cool and supple. The engine purred readily to life, but it was nothing compared to the sizzle that coursed through his veins as Lori dropped her bag to the floor, shuffled deeper in the seat, turned her head and shot him a smile.
“Where to?” she asked.
“Does it matter?”
He couldn’t see her eyes behind those big, black sunglasses, but the corner of her mouth kicked. “I had an errand I was going to run in Templeton later. We could go there now.”
“Done.”
The car shot out of the garage, bouncing over the ruts in the unkempt road. Jagger and Bowie came bounding out of the tree line, barking, before falling behind.
And with the wind rustling their hair Dash drove them out of his property and away.
Within twenty minutes they hit the small town of Templeton, a scenic little slice of Americana, with its quaint local shops around a perfect green square complete with a brilliant white gazebo.
A town rich with antique stores, cafés, and fresh food shops, they considered him a local and not a retired superstar. Dash never had to go any further afield to keep himself alive and kicking.
He pulled into a parking lot outside the hairdresser, smiling like some kind of fool as two little girls went skipping by with ropes. A pair of mothers followed behind, both heavily pregnant. A swallow swooped overhead before disappearing into a tree.
“I’m hungry,” he said, squinting up into the sunny sky as its warmth permeated his clothes, his skin, his everything, and he found himself glad to be out in the world.
“Are you ever not hungry?”
He turned to his passenger. She’d taken off her sunglasses, and stretched her arms overhead. The wind had whipped some blonde strands from her neat hair and added pink to her cheeks. Hungry? More like wild, limitless, indefatigable.
He leaned over and kissed her as if it was the most natural thing in the world. She met him half way. As kisses went it was a mere whisper of lips. And yet its quiet insistence, its longing restraint, its promise of things to come, seared him to the soles of his shoes.
When Lori pulled away it took a few moments before her eyes fluttered open, and the darkness in her eyes was the perfect flipside to the brightness of the day.
Her next blink was slow, languorous, sweet, and caught at him like a hook to the gut. It jerked, tugged at his insides, and hurt so good.
Once again he took her hand as he helped her from the car and they walked the town, physical hunger having fled as a new one took its place.
Her heel catching on a crack in the sidewalk, Lori grabbed his elbow. Once she’d steadied, Dash slipped her hand through the nook and held on tight. She let him and her long legs kept pace with his.
The owner of the hardware store came out as they passed, asked after Jagger and Bowie, grinning like he’d come out better in the deal.
The butcher tried to lure them inside with a beef strap.
The baker waved them down, gave them a bag of free croissants, and asked after Reg.
“Are they a thing?” Lori asked, licking away a flake of pastry after they’d moved on.
“Who?”
“Reg and the baker. The guy blushed when he asked about him.”
Dash blinked. Thought about it. “Every time Reg comes over he brings cream buns or apple pie. And here I was thinking he came all the way out here so often because of my sparkling personality.”
“Guy can’t be that hard up.”
“Says the woman who’s at my place three times a week.”
“For guitar lessons,” she shot back.
He stopped walking, and still attached to his elbow she stopped a half pace further. “I don’t see any guitars here.”
Throat working, she looked back toward his car a ways down the block. Then back at him. Her wide, green eyes flickered between his, lots going on behind them. Before, with a wry smile, she said, “The sleepovers have been a bonus.”
“I hear that.”
Her mouth twisted as she looked down at her boots. The toes of which nearly kissed his. The ‘nearly’ became academic when he moved his shoe a half inch and she did the same. Leather sliding along leather. The scrape of the sidewalk beneath their soles doing the same to his nerves until they screamed for relief. The kind of relief only touching this woman, holding her, kissing her, sinking into her while she opened up to him, could provide.
“Mr. Mills!”
Lori’s shoe flinched away before they both looked up to find a pair of twin high school-aged girls in pigtails and summer dresses shuffling from foot to foot, hands with bitten-down fingernails gripping notebooks and pink pens.
“Sorry to bother you, Mr. Mills,” said one, glancing from him to Lori while the other gaped at him, her mouth a perfect O, “but we were hoping we could have your autograph.”
Dash hesitated, knowing that six months before, three even, he’d have backed away making some excuse and holed himself up in his cave for another month in contrition. But as the girls grinned sweetly up at him, it seemed nothing could prick the sunshine of the day.
Their mother—the greengrocer who kept him in farm fresh ingredients—bundled up after them, apologizing profusely. “I’m so sorry, Dash. They’ve grown so wily this summer.”
“They’re teenage girls, it’s in the job description,” Lori said, getting a smile from the other woman.
But when Dash caught her eye, doubt flickered over her face before she crossed her arms and looked up the street. “Sign away; I’ll run my errand. Meet you back here in fifteen.”
Before he had the chance to make a counter-offer she was gone, bag hooked higher over her shoulder, hands smoothing out her hair, hips swinging in time with the loud clack of her heels that as much as said, Out of my way!
Falling into the habit like it was nothing, Dash asked the girls’ names and chatted to them about school and music as he wrote out their autographs, shooting their thankful mother a quick smile as she mouthed a thank you and her
ded them away, leaving Dash alone on the sidewalk with the town breathing and gleaming around him.
Clueless as to where Lori had gotten to, he meandered back to the car and sat on the hood to wait. Chatting to locals who stopped to admire his wheels, others who simply waved hello, and basking in the foreign feeling of fullness that had pervaded his life.
Words like lovely and special and sublime didn’t sit right on his tongue, or in his head for that matter, but as the heat of the day cut through with the shadow of the lines of oak trees dappling the footpaths, Lori’s touch, her warmth, her smile were felt in all the deep raw dusty places inside of him till the caverns and caves flickered with light.
And by the time she returned, he was so ready to take her home he merely opened the car door and took her there.
…
By the time they made it back to Dash’s place Lori was as restless as a gray cloud on a wedding day.
Exhausted by the drive up from San Francisco—as she’d spent the hundred miles freaking out about the reception she might get after making such a fool of herself at Dash’s gig—she’d been utterly flummoxed finding him waiting for her, all cleaned up like he’d stepped out of a Barney’s catalogue. And looking relaxed in a way she’d not seen him before—not in the lazy strides and late breakfasts kind of way, but in the way he breathed, the easy way he smiled, and the fact that he didn’t even try to hide how glad he was to see her.
Then there was the trip into Templeton. The hand holding. The baked goods. The quiet seductive beauty of the small town.
She’d never expected anything from Dash beyond the song, never hoped, not even to herself. But seeing a glimpse of how they might be without the song holding them together…
A delectable shiver slid through her as she opened the guitar case, having completely forgotten what she’d done to Barbarella until it was too late.
She tried to divert attention back to the shiny new cell phone she’d given Dash, her recompense for Barbarella. Her errand had been to pick it up earlier at the Templeton post office box she’d also had to acquire for him in order to fulfill the terms and conditions of the contract. But his instant obsession with the big boy’s toy didn’t extend so far as being able to ignore the eyesore in her arms.
“What on earth…?” Dash boomed.
“Hear me out,” she said, snapping shut the guitar case and hiding it behind her on the couch. “So we were at the wig shop the other night, buying wigs so that we could go to your gig in disguise and—”
“Back up. You weren’t wearing a wig,” he said, his melted chocolate gaze tripping over her braids. “Were you?”
“I wasn’t. The others were. It was Callie’s idea. Or Lita’s. I don’t remember.”
“Lita?”
Lori’s heart gave a little jolt. “Yes, Lita was there, off the clock for a night of cocktails and girliness.”
Dash nodded, apparently assuaged, and Lori’s heart went nearly back to normal.
“Callie still gets paparazzi jumping out of the bushes, so the girls wanted to do right by you by flying under the radar.”
“While spying on me at the same time.”
“Well, yes. Because nothing would have kept me away and they love me more than you.”
“Who wouldn’t?” Dash said, shifting closer.
Leaving that well enough alone, Lori pulled Barbarella from the case, better to deal with Dash’s ire than the warmth in his eyes. It worked. Dash very quickly came over unimpressed.
“So we were at the wig store,” she began again, “and there was a music shop next door with a big sign splashed across the window saying that the service guy was an Instrumental Make-Over Specialist. And since Mack was driving us around that night and Barbarella was in the trunk of the town car already—”
“You pimped my guitar.”
“My guitar,” she said, even as she winced at her kitsch new paint job with its aqua background and white and gray flower motif.
“It looks like sixties wallpaper threw up all over her.”
Lori settled Barbarella protectively on her lap. “Says the man who named her after a walking, talking sex toy.”
“Barbarella was a dedicated space warrior who happened to look very nice in boots. You, of all people, should appreciate that.”
Lori crossed her sassy black stiletto boots at the ankle, but Dash only shifted closer, sliding a hand along the back of the couch.
“Two weeks,” she reminded him, shifting away.
The other night had spooked her quite a bit—the fact that he’d not told her about the gig and the extent that it had mattered to her. She was determined to be on her guard lest any more soft feelings sneak beneath her defenses.
“In two short weeks it will be me on a stage, at a club, with people watching. I’d rather gnaw off my own foot than embarrass Callie and Jake.”
“Callie and Jake?”
“Let’s just say I heard some things the other night that made me wonder if maybe I’ve been a little hard on him.” And Callie. And, well, just about everyone probably. Better, safer, to focus those sentiments back on herself.
“Go the girls’ weekend.”
“They are a many splendored thing. Now, I don’t need to be Mark Knopfler or Richie Sambora, but I need to do Callie and the song justice.”
“Seems she isn’t a complete musical-troglodyte,” he muttered.
“Thanks so very much,” she shot back, then tried to concentrate on the notes. The give and hum of the strings, she began to play. And slowly she could feel him starting to smile.
“You’ve been practicing.”
“Thanks for noticing.”
“The improvement is miraculous.”
“Now if I only knew what the song I was meant to be playing actually sounded like—rather than guessing by way of Callie who tried singing it the other night after we got home, but it was about three in the morning and she’d nearly lost her voice… Unless of course it really is that awful—”
The twang of guitar strings that were not hers had her stopping mid strum to find Dash pulling a guitar from behind the couch.
This one had a more matte finish than Barbarella, the patina dulled where his elbow hooked over the body. It was fretless—wow, she’d actually learned something in her late night Googling—meaning no cheating the finger-positioning; he had to go by instinct alone.
“What’s her name?” Lori asked.
“What makes you think she has a name?”
Lori raised a pair of eyebrows in response.
“Fine. Lori, meet Buffy.”
“You’re pathological.”
“It’s a compliment; immortalizing the women who’ve inspired me the best way I know how.” With that he strummed, the sound like molasses; flowing, sweet and thick. “Now, are we going to do this or not?”
He nodded at the music, waited for her to attempt the first note, and as she stopped and started her way through the tune, he played with her, his effortless strumming giving her fitful attempt structure and heart, her messy chords a foundation from which to spring. And in the end, it didn’t sound half bad.
If she cut her part out altogether, it sounded heaven-sent.
“So, what do you reckon?” he asked as the echoes faded till the room was quiet once more. “Do I have a career in music?”
“After that I reckon I might have a career in music.”
“Take it easy, Santana.”
They went at it again, and again. With Dash’s smooth rhythms in mind she began to understand the cadence of the piece, the sweetness of the melody, the poignancy of the phrasing. Reminding her—along with the autograph hunters who’d sidled up to him so sweetly—exactly who she was dealing with.
Not simply Dash.
A man who made her feel and wonder and hope and melt and wish. But a man who was as famous for his talent as he was for turning his back on it and giving it all away.
Would that be how this ended? Swiftly, no good-byes? Would she look out into
the crowd the night of the song and see him sitting with Jake and in the next blink…not?
The thought of it stirred painful waves through her belly.
The specter of losing her business had felt close to catastrophic, but in the weeks since it had begun to fall apart she’d begun to remember that she was smart, focused, driven, and that the only thing stopping her from trying again would be her.
But in her thirty years on the planet she’d never met anyone who made her feel the riotous combination of emotions Dash made her feel.
Funny and strong. Frustrated and charmed. Soft and warm. Vulnerable, fragile, and achingly sweet. Like she didn’t have to try so hard to be on, to be right, to be ahead of the game.
As if time gentled when she was with him.
Down the rabbit hole she could forget about being the hard-working, hard-talking hard-ass and simply be who she felt like being in the slowly vanishing moments of the day.
Dash’s history proved he had it in him to hurt her. The more she grew to know him, to like him, to like who she was with him, the less she felt like she could do anything about it.
They hit the end of the song and the final note hummed in the air between them, heady and thick. And the feelings eddying inside of her coalesced into something too big for her to acknowledge. Much less deny.
“That’s it,” she said, “I’m done.” She threw Barbarella aside and slung a leg over Dash, straddling him as she nudged off her boots. “Now lose the broad.”
Not needing to be asked twice, Dash tossed Buffy onto the couch and gripped Lori’s hips, bunching up her houndstooth Chanel and leaning in to bite through the wool, growling as his teeth scraped over the rise of her breast.
Her head dropped back as desire swirled through her and the need to wrench back whatever control she could dissolved under the delicious possessiveness of his touch.
Lifting the dress higher till his thumbs pressed into her hipbones, his strong fingers massaged her lower back, slid over her backside before curling around her thighs. His warm breath fanned her center before his teeth found the edge of her panties.
