Daisy (Pushing Daisies Book 1)

by Heather Young-Nichols

  “Of course.”

  Now, normally, when she was done, she’d leave to do whatever else she needed to get done. But this time she didn’t. She stayed put and kept looking at me without blinking. Like she was trying to figure me out. I didn’t like it.

  “What?” I snapped.

  “Nothing.”

  “Not nothing. You’re staring at me.”

  She had her long, brown hair pulled up into a messy bun. It had taken me a while to convince Barrett that most of the time we didn’t need to dress formally. She’d pointed out that I always wore dress pants and a button-down shirt. But that was just what I preferred.

  “You’re a good-looking guy,” she told me. “Maybe I just like lookin’ at ya.”

  I shook my head as I chuckled and folded my arms over my chest. “I highly doubt that.”

  “What?” She cocked her head to the side as if she had no idea what I was talking about. “That you’re good-looking or that I like looking?”

  “Both. But more the latter.”

  Her loud laugh took me by surprise. “OK, fine,” she said. “It was nice hanging out with Daisy yesterday.”

  I narrowed my eyes on her as she bit her lips together. Things didn’t make me nervous, but this I wanted to play carefully. Clearly, Barrett knew something. Something she was dying to tell me, but if I guessed too much, I could feed her information Daisy didn’t want known yet.

  “What’d Dixon tell you?”

  Her eyebrows scrunched together and her lips parted in confusion. “What would he tell me?”

  So, he hadn’t mentioned it to her. All right. “Then what’re you talking about?”

  “Wait.” She sat up straighter. “What does Dixon know? He hasn’t said a word to me. I was talking to Daisy yesterday.”

  “About?”

  “Are you really going to play dumb right now?” That statement could’ve been taken many ways, but Barrett spoke with upturned lips and her tone was nothing but playful. “She told me about the two of you.”

  Instinctively, I glanced out the open door to see if anyone else was around to hear her. The hallways looked empty as I sat back in my chair.

  “She told you that?”

  Barrett rolled her eyes at me. “Are you seriously still trying to act like I don’t know what I know? She told me you’re together. She told me about the other night on the bus.”

  My jaw tightened.

  “Calm down, cowboy. She gave you excellent marks.”

  Fucking hell. I hadn’t even thought about the women sharing details about sex, but it made sense. I’d always heard that sometimes women were worse than men when it came to locker room talk.

  “I wasn’t worried.”

  She laughed. “Of course not.”

  “Did she happen to mention when she’d tell her brothers so we could stop sneaking around?”

  “She did not. But she did mention having to finesse them.”

  A groan rumbled in my chest. “I’m beginning to hate that fucking word.”

  “Oh, please. It’s been a few days. Not forever.”

  “Hey, I—” Daisy’s sweet voice interrupted. When I glanced up at her she was standing in the doorway in the same clothes she’d worn when she’d left my room this morning. Only now her hair was pulled up into a bun like Barrett’s. “Didn’t mean to interrupt.”

  “You’re not,” Barrett said before I could. “We’re finished.” She pushed up from her chair and slid around Daisy. “He seems like he’s in a mood today,” she told Daisy. Then she was gone.

  “Hey,” Daisy said, looking up at me through her eyelashes, almost as if she were shy all of a sudden.

  “Hey.” I stood up and walked over to her.

  “Are you in a mood?” she asked.

  “I am not.” Then I pulled her inside and shut the door.

  After I moved her over to the table, I lifted her up until her ass hit the top. I brought my hands up to the sides of her neck and let my thumbs caress over her jaw before leaning in to claim her lips again.

  It’d only been hours since I’d last kissed her and as far as I was concerned, it’d been too long.

  Daisy’s tongue darted into my mouth as I pushed even closer to her. The feel of her skin against mine… The tickle of her tongue on my lips… I couldn’t get enough.

  When I pulled back she gave me a great smile, her chest rising and lowering rapidly. I’d stolen her breath with my kisses.

  “Did you need something?” I asked her, surprising myself with how breathlessly she’d kissed me.

  “Just that,” she told me, so I kissed her again. “I probably should go. Soundcheck.”

  I sighed. “Yeah. Oh.” Snapping my fingers, I leaned over to find her phone inside my bag. Once I got it, I held it up in front of her. “You left this in my room.”

  “Oops.” She said it but didn’t really mean it. She took the phone then skootched off the table. “Thanks. But why did Barrett think you might be in a mood?”

  I shook my head. “She told me she knows about us. That you told her.”

  Daisy raised her eyebrows. “Is that bad?”

  “Not at all,” I responded. “I’d like more people to know.”

  She looked up at me with a tinge of guilt in her eyes. “I know. I’ll talk to them. I promise.”

  “Good.” I gave her another quick kids. “I’ll see you later.”

  “Yeah, you will.”

  Her giggle stayed with me a lot longer than she did. But only seconds later, her brothers were all right outside my door.

  Fuck. My stomach dropped. Had they seen her leave? Part of me hoped they had.

  “Can we talk to you for a second?” Mack asked.

  I glanced around this closet of a room. “Not in here.” I pushed passed them and waved for the whole bunch to follow me.

  Every room we passed had people in it until we got to the meet and greet room. We weren’t using it today, so it was empty.

  “What’s up?” I asked once the five of us were all inside.

  It was actually somewhat comical to see how big these guys were compared to Daisy. Mack was the biggest, both in height and girth. His shoulders were almost as wide as mine. The twins were tall and muscular but lean muscle. Daltry was somewhere in between. The five of us took up a lot of space in this room.

  Daltry cleared his throat and asked, “Have you or the guys noticed anything weird about Daisy?”

  My fucking heart took off, tapping away a mayday signal in Morse code. Fuck. There were four of them. If they wanted to kick my ass for fucking their sister, the odds were in their favor. I’d had my share of fights, but not in years.

  I willed my face not to react, but I wanted to know what the hell they were talking about. “No. Why?”

  “She’s acting different,” Bonham said. “Maybe this stalker is bothering her more than she’s letting on.”

  Mack nodded. “Since she’s been on your bus a few nights, we thought she might’ve said something to you.”

  “She sure as hell isn’t talking to us,” Van told me. “She can be so secretive when she wants to be. She isn’t usually, but remember”—he glanced over at his brothers—“last time she had a boyfriend, it was six months before any of us knew.”

  Well, shit. That piqued my interest big time. How in the hell could I get more information out of this group of guys? The answer was, I couldn’t. Not without them wanting to know why and I was trying to do what Daisy asked by not saying anything to them about us. But I was concerned about her. No way in hell was she waiting six months to tell them about us, though.

  “I’ll keep my ear out,” I told them instead.

  “You know,” Mack said, more to his brothers than me. “It’s fucking awful having a sister a bunch of bastards want. I’d kill any one of them if they got close to her, but fuck. It’d be easier if she was less attractive.”

  “No shit,” Daltry agreed.

  “No one’s good enough for her,” Van argued. “We never sho
uld’ve brought her on board. She’d be in college happily playing her violin.”

  Bonham snorted. “You think frat guys are easier to deal with?”

  “Only then she wouldn’t have us to protect her,” Mack added.

  They’d clearly left me out of this conversation, but listening to them, I could see where Daisy was coming from about telling her brothers in her own way. Not that I liked it. I’d rather hit this thing head on, but at least now I had firsthand glimpse of why she wanted to tell them we were together herself.

  “Better get to soundcheck.” Mack pointed at the door.

  “Oh, hey,” I said before they all got out of the room. I looked only at Mack and continued. “Can I talk to you for a second?”

  “Sure.” Back to his brothers, he said, “Go grab Daisy.”

  The three of the brothers in the band chattered on their way out.

  “What’s up?”

  “Cross wrote this song for the last album that didn’t make it. Just wasn’t working,” I told him. “But our producer thought it’d be better as a duet. The guys thought of Daisy. Think she’d be interested in recording it?”

  “Depends on the song, of course,” he said. “But yeah. She’d sing with Ransom?” I nodded. “I’ll run it by her, but yeah. I think she’d be down for that.”

  “Cool. Thanks, Mack. Let me know.”

  He left, but I stood there alone for a few minutes.

  Daisy’s brothers were worried about her. Fuck, I was worried about her with this guy out there taking chances like sneaking onto a bus. But they thought she was hiding something and she was.

  Me.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Daisy

  “We good?” I asked into the microphone at soundcheck. Everything sounded good to me, but I knew the tech guys had to make sure their shit was together.

  Forever passed in those moments before the guy at the sound board gave us a thumbs-up.

  “Fucking finally,” Van muttered nowhere near his mic, so I was the only one to hear him.

  We shuffled back to the dressing room. The guys were talking about some baseball game they’d apparently watched on their day off yesterday. We chatted a little about what I’d done with the girls.

  “Sweet. You’re all here.” Mack took up all the space in the door. He came inside and shut it behind him.

  “Where else would we be?” Van asked.

  “No idea.” He moved over closer to me. “I talked to Lawson earlier.”

  My spine snapped straight and my heart took off. If I hadn’t known better, I’d say that little beads of sweat dotted my upper lip. I tried to look nonchalant as I wiped it away with the back of my hand.

  “About what?” I asked.

  “About you doing a song with Courting Chaos.”

  Holy shit. Not at all where I’d thought this conversation had been headed. “What?”

  “Yeah, apparently, there’s a song that wasn’t working out. Anyway, they want to try it as a duet and thought you’d be perfect.” A huge grin covered his face. “Wanna do it?”

  This bubble of excitement burst through my chest. Did I want to do a song with Courting Chaos? Hell yes, I did. This meant we were not only good, which I knew, but that they had faith we’d be sticking around in this career.

  I wanted to do a cartwheel and scream fuck yes. Instead, I shrugged as if this kind of thing happened every day and said, “If the song doesn’t suck.”

  The low laughter brought a smile to my face.

  “I don’t think Cross Rhodes has ever written a shitty song,” Bonham told me.

  “Bet that’s not true,” I countered. “They can’t all be gems.”

  “You want me to tell Lawson you’ll do it?”

  “Yeah, absolutely.” So many questions spun around in my head. “But how will we record it? We’re on tour.”

  “We can record anywhere.”

  “Oh, right. Duh,” I said. It was like I wasn’t thinking clearly right now and who could blame me? Secret boyfriend, stalker fan, not to mention the hugeness of this tour. It was overwhelming.

  “Yeah, I’ll work the details out with Lawson, but you’ll have to get with Ransom.”

  I gave him a thumbs-up. “I can do that.”

  “This is going to be huge,” Bonham said, which we were all thinking. I’d lived with my brothers long enough to be able to read them.

  “Yeah,” Van interjected. “Don’t fuck it up.”

  I snorted. “Out of all of us, I don’t think I’m the one who fucks things up.”

  “Harsh.”

  Daltry chuckled. “But true.”

  This right here was what I loved about being in a band with my brothers. We laughed a lot. Yeah, they got on my nerves sometimes. Acted as overprotective bears other times. But we were family and always had each other’s backs.

  “I’m going to run out to the bus to grab my charger,” I told them. My phone had lain on the floor in Lawson’s room all night and the battery was in the red.

  “I’ll go with you,” they all said at the same time, which was as irritating as it was sweet.

  “Guys.” I sighed out all that frustration. “I’m just running out to the bus. The minute I step out the door, Cal is going to follow me. You don’t all need to go. I’ll be right back.”

  I slipped out the door before any of them could argue and just as I’d predicted, Cal followed me to the bus, where I snagged my charger, then I headed back to the venue. It was like he was just out there waiting for me to take a step out the door. Probably was if Lawson had any say in it.

  I was slipping the end of my charger into my phone on the way back to the dressing room when I slammed right into a hard brick wall of muscle.

  “Fuck,” I said with a gasp as I began to fall backward. Before my ass hit the floor, large, strong hands clasped onto my arms and pulled me back up to my feet.

  “You weren’t watching where you were going,” Lawson told me with a frustration I didn’t understand. “You have to be aware of your surroundings.”

  “I’m inside. Cal follows me everywhere,” I told him. “I wasn’t expecting a tree to be planted in the middle of the hallway.”

  He cocked his head and fought a smile. “A tree?”

  “Yeah. Big. Tall. Hard. A fucking tree.”

  Now that got a snort out of him. “I’m hard, all right.”

  Loving the double entendre, I let out a laugh. I hadn’t even meant it that way. I’d been talking about his muscles.

  “What’s up?” I asked.

  He leaned in close and quietly said, “I need to talk to you. Come on.”

  Lawson turned on his heel and began walking away, which I took to mean I was to follow. I didn’t hate the view, but I wondered what could’ve changed between now and when I’d last seen him. Before, he couldn’t kiss me enough. Now he held himself differently. Tense. Straight. There was purpose to his movements.

  When we got to Courting Chaos’ dressing room, Lawson held the door open and motioned for me to go first. I was surprised to find Ransom and Dixon inside, having assumed it would be empty, given this was where Lawson had brought me.

  “Hey, Daisy,” they both said at the same time as they stood up. They were both in jeans and T-shirts. Mundane clothing that always looked fantastic on them. Guys had it so easy.

  “Hey,” I said back. “Oh, Mack talked to me about doing the song with you guys.” This must’ve been why Lawson had brought me here. “I told him I’m in. I don’t know if he let you all know that yet.” I glanced from Ransom to Lawson. It’d only been minutes since I’d talked to my brother, so I doubted Mack had.

  “He hasn’t, but that’s fantastic,” Ransom said. “We’ll have to get together and start working on it.”

  “We have a travel day coming up,” Dixon added. “Indie and Bellamy will be here then. Maybe we’ll get together on a single bus and work it out.”

  That was a lot of people on a bus, but I’d do whatever it took.

  “If y
ou’re allowed,” Ransom mumbled out of the side of his mouth, as if he didn’t want someone else to hear it yet we all could.

  I flicked my gaze over to Lawson, who was standing there with his arms across his chest and a tense jaw. He looked kind of angry and I wasn’t the only one noticing.

  “Can you two give us a minute?” Lawson asked the guys.

  “Yeah. Sure.” Ransom moved toward the door first.

  “We’ll act as lookouts,” Dixon added. “If you hear a bird call, someone is coming.”

  Lawson shook his head. “You don’t need to do that.”

  “We insist. Give you two sometime alone.”

  Once the two of them had left the room, I turned to Lawson and asked, “What’s up with them?”

  He shook his head again. “No idea.”

  I took a deep breath. Something about the way he was holding himself, the way he was looking at me… hard, intimidating—not that he intimidated me—had my palms sweating.

  “OK. Then what’s up?” I asked.

  Finally, tree man Lawson loosened his muscles a bit. “I had a visit with your brothers today.”

  “All of them?”

  “All of them.” He took my hands in his and pulled me a bit farther away from the door. Where we were, if someone came in, they wouldn’t see us right away. “They’re concerned, so I’m concerned.” He hadn’t let go of my hands. “You said this guy was freaking you out more than you thought, but how much more?”

  “No. That’s not it,” I told him. “They think I’m acting weird because of the fan, but Mack gave me the third degree this morning. Said I looked flushed. That’s your fault.”

  He pulled back but still didn’t break our connection. “My fault?”

  “He saw me after you kissed me goodbye this morning.”

  Understanding crossed his face and he even smiled a little. “You need to tell them.”

  “I—”

  “No. You need to tell them.” Lawson brought his hands up to my shoulders, his thumbs running along each side of my jaw.

  “I will,” I told him with as much emphasis as I could. “But they get all superprotective when I have a boyfriend and they’re already super protective because of this fan.”