A Seductive Melody (The Kelly Brothers Book 5)

by Crista McHugh

  She clicked on the picture to enlarge it. A knot twisted her stomach, and the hair on her arms rose. A few clicks later, she’d loaded the picture into an editing program and removed his hair. Her breath hitched when she saw the man scowling back at her on the screen.

  Shit!

  No wonder Gary had asked her to be Ethan’s sponsor.

  He was Ethan Kelly.

  ***

  Becca hurried down the crowded sidewalk, the butterflies still fluttering in her stomach hours later. It was one thing to know she’d been asked to sponsor a man who needed help. It was another thing when the man was a rock god she’d worshipped since she was a teenager.

  Please don’t let me turn into a blathering idiot around him.

  It wasn’t like she hadn’t rubbed shoulders with celebrities before. She’d grown up surrounded by actors, designers, models, and musicians. But with a few exceptions, they were mostly her parents’ friends, not hers. And even during her party days, she’d never actually met someone she completely idolized.

  Get over it, Becca. You’re not a teenager anymore. Besides, if you fawn all over him like some crazed fan, he’ll run away and relapse.

  That stopped her in her tracks. More than anything, she needed to watch what she said and how she acted around him. He’d been so closed off about himself. If he even caught a whiff that she knew who he was, he’d be gone before she could stop him. And if he ended up like his band mate…

  Guilt quieted her giddiness and sobered her to the reality of the situation. She’d been in his shoes. She knew what it was like to want to disappear from the press long enough to get herself together. And she would support his decision to do the same.

  She resumed the quick pace of her fellow New Yorkers, focusing instead on ways to reassure Ethan his secret was safe with her without bringing it up. When she got to the church where the meetings were held, she turned to go inside without paying any attention to the streets around her.

  “Hey, Bec,” a man called from the curb.

  She spun around to find Ethan still straddling his motorcycle, even though the engine was off. He pulled off his helmet and approached her. “I was waiting for you.”

  “Y–you were?” she stuttered, and a wave of heat rose along the back of her neck. She locked her knees to keep from swooning like some silly fan-girl. Geez, Becca, snap out of it.

  The smile he gave her did little to slow the frantic beating of her heart. He’d always seemed dangerous. A little rough around the edges. But that one rare flash of his pearly whites turned her insides to goo. “I don’t dare go in there alone.”

  “Oh, yeah.” He was just interested in her as a support system, not as anything more. After the disappointment ebbed, she realized that was probably a good thing. Knowing the boundaries that were in place would keep her from crossing the lines.

  But as she got a full view of the way his jeans molded his ass, her thoughts went from responsible sponsor to lust-filled woman. Even if he weren’t a bad-boy rock star, she’d still love to get him out of those jeans. Still, she needed to put that aside. If she could get over heroin, she could certainly keep her desire for Ethan Kelly in check.

  “Nice parking spot,” she quipped in an attempt to keep the mood light.

  “Lucked out,” he replied without turning back.

  And they were back to the minimal responses. Perhaps it was for the best.

  The meeting was shorter than usual tonight since Gary had brought in a speaker. Not that she was paying much attention. Ethan was proving to be too much of a distraction. She’d been around some of the sexiest men alive like Ari’s brother, Gabe, but none of them left her on edge like Ethan did.

  She sat straighter in her chair, trying to keep her attention on the speaker instead of the man sitting next to her. It’s all because he’s someone you’ve admired for years, and you haven’t gotten laid in four months. Just a bad combination of a crush and a dry spell. Nothing more.

  Then she made the mistake of glancing at him out of the corner of her eye. He was watching her with that intense, brooding gaze that made her nipples harden.

  But damn, what a fantasy that would be to spend the night with him.

  She turned away with an exasperated sigh and did her best to ignore him for the rest of the meeting. By the time Gary got back on the podium to thank the speaker, she’d almost forgotten about Ethan.

  Of course, that would be the moment he chose to rush out of the room.

  Damn it! She offered an apologetic smile to Gary and chased after Ethan.

  He was already on his bike and strapping on his helmet by the time she caught up to him.

  “What’s the rush?” she asked.

  “I don’t do prayer.” He revved up the engine in an angry growl that added emphasis to the angst underlying his reply.

  This she could handle. She’d spent most of the week preparing to handle the angry Ethan, and putting her plan into action was just what she needed to clear out the haze of desire. “Fair enough.”

  He released the throttle and tilted his head to the side. “What? No questions? No trying to get me to reveal why?”

  She shook her head. Last week had taught her that he’d only volunteer information when he was ready. Questions only made things worse. But now she understood why.

  He sat back on his bike, his brows drawing together like she’d just stumped him.

  Thirty seconds of uneasy silence passed between them before she proceeded to the next step in her plan. “I’m going to get some cake and coffee. You’re welcome to join me.”

  She turned to go toward Gitta’s café when a gloved hand grabbed her wrist.

  “I can give you a ride,” he offered. “That is, if you’re not too scared.”

  She chuckled. “What makes you think that?”

  “I like to go fast.” Behind his challenge lay a hint of flirtation.

  A delicious tingle rippled up her spine. “So do I.”

  “Prove it.” He reached behind him for the spare helmet and shoved it in her hands.

  She chewed her bottom lip while she ran her hands over the smooth fiberglass. Could she keep it together while they whipped through the streets of Manhattan, her arms wrapped around his waist, her thighs gripping his? Talk about the ultimate foreplay, even if it was only for a few blocks.

  But on the other hand, if she could get him to join her at the café, then maybe she could also make some headway on his recovery. She slipped the helmet on. “You’re on.”

  A minute later, she had secured her messenger bag across her chest and climbed onto the seat behind him. Even through the thick leather of his jacket, she could feel his lean, hard muscles.

  “Hold on,” he shouted a split second before pulling out into traffic.

  The speed awakened the long-dormant sense of exhilaration she’d buried years ago when she’d given up her wild lifestyle. She resisted the urge to raise her arms in the air and shout with joy. Instead, she kept her arms wrapped tightly around his waist, leaning her body from side to side as they weaved through the lanes. The cool autumn air cut through her clothes as they sped along the street, and she nuzzled closer to him, drawing in the warm scents of cologne and leather. The ride would be over before she wanted it to end, but for those few precious moments, she savored the freedom he offered her.

  ***

  Ethan’s groin throbbed by the time he pulled into a parking spot near the café. What the fuck had he been thinking, inviting Becca for a ride? It was bad enough that she kept ambushing his thoughts as he lay in bed every night. But to feel her body pressed against his, to witness the fearless way she accepted his challenge and rode with him, to hear the excited hitch of her breath with every turn—it all made him harder than a high school kid discovering porn for the first time.

  She hopped off his bike and removed her helmet. The ride had tousled her hair so she looked more like a sex kitten, and another jolt of desire shot straight to his dick.

  “That was fun,”
she said with a grin and handed the spare helmet back to him, “but next time, I’ll drive and you can ride bitch.”

  “Like hell you will.” He strapped the spare to the back of his bike, thankful for the few seconds the mindless task gave him to allow the ache in his crotch to lessen. By the time he was done, he could climb off his bike without wincing.

  He found Becca drooling in front of the dessert case again when he entered the café. “So many yummy choices,” she murmured.

  “But I see they don’t have your Sacher-torte tonight.”

  “Doesn’t matter. There’s still plenty to choose from.” She pointed to a tray full of little pink square cakes. “Punschkrapfen.” Then to a cherry strudel. “Weichselstrudel.”

  Her obvious love for desserts lifted the dark mood that had seized control of him during the meeting, and he caught himself laughing. “Why do I feel like I need to say gesundheit after each of those things?”

  She elbowed him and gave him a wry smile before turning her attention back to the dessert case. “I think I’ll go with the Dobostorte tonight.”

  “Very good,” Gitta said from behind the counter. “And anything for you?”

  “Just a coffee.”

  He joined Becca at a corner table that was hidden from most of the café, noting the way she craned her neck to check out the rest of the room behind him. “Have your whereabouts been discovered?” he teased.

  “No, I was more worried about y—” Her mouth snapped shut, but not before he figured out the last word.

  The muscles along his back locked. “And why would you be worried about me?”

  She bit her lip and combed her fingers through her hair, never meeting his gaze. “You seem pretty protective of your privacy, that’s all. And I want to make sure you can enjoy a cup of coffee without being disturbed.”

  The tension rounded his shoulder and spread to his gut. “Is there something I need to know?”

  The tone of his voice turned accusing, but if someone had told her who he was, he was done with this NA bullshit.

  She finally looked at him with guileless blue-green eyes and slowly shook her head. “You know who I am, and you know how hard I guard my privacy. I just want to do the same for you.”

  His stomach unknotted, but he still couldn’t completely relax. Something had changed from last week, and for a moment, he was tempted to ask her if she wanted to get back on his bike and ride until the sun came up. Even with the blue balls it threatened to give him, he preferred that over what hung in the air between them.

  Gitta brought their order to their table, and Becca dove into her cake. “You didn’t get anything to eat?”

  “I’m not much of a sweets person.”

  “I could tell that, but I figured you might be game for the sour cherry strudel.”

  “Sour cherry?”

  “Um-hmm,” she said before she swallowed a mouth full of her cake. “You seem like the sour type.”

  So they were back with the teasing. “Do I? You, on the other hand, are definitely all about the sweet.”

  “As you can tell by my ass.”

  He leaned over to study the shape of her thighs and how they vanished into a very squeezable ass. “Nothing wrong with it as far as I can tell.”

  She choked on her whipped cream–topped hot chocolate. Her face reddened as she struggled to catch her breath. “Are you flirting with me?”

  “Are you bothered by it?”

  She didn’t answer, but he caught a hint of a smile before she covered her mouth with her coffee mug. “How was your week?”

  “It sucked.” He expected her to ask him to elaborate or maybe try to tease out some details why it sucked, but she continued to watch him with the expectant arch of her eyebrows without saying a word.

  When the silence stretched into a minute, the heat climbing along the base of his spine forced him to shift in his seat. He turned away before she saw how uneasy he’d become from such a simple question.

  Sucked didn’t begin to describe his week. Between struggling to find the music without giving in to his muse and dealing with the constant phone calls from his mother and older brother Adam, he could feel the cracks forming in his thin shell of sobriety. He couldn’t sleep, not without waking up in a cold sweat and wishing he had a bag of Sweet Dreams. Instead, he was left with visions of finding his best friend wide-eyed in death with a needle still in his arm and a craving to make it all go away.

  He ran his hand over the tattoo on his left arm and repeated, “It sucked.”

  “You’re nearing the one-month mark, right?” After he nodded, she continued, “It’s like a New Year’s resolution, staying clean. Some people succeed, but most of us hit that first speed bump around the one-month mark. You go through the Super Flu and swear you will never touch the stuff that makes you feel so rotten ever again. You come out feeling renewed by this vow and empowered by whatever drove you to come clean. But little by little, the day-to-day pressure of reality begins to wear on you, and your resolve starts to crumble. The void you once filled with heroin becomes larger and larger until it consumes you. And around the one-month mark, you’re faced with the choice of do I give in and get high, or do I find something else to fill the void?”

  She had no idea how fucking accurate she was.

  “All of us started using to fill that void, and it’s different for each of us. But once you identify it, then you can come up with ways to fill it without getting high.”

  “I doubt sweets will do it for me.”

  She gave him a soft laugh that deflected the pessimistic sting of his words. “They don’t do it for me, either.”

  “Then what does?”

  She set her mug down and stared at the plate. Like last week, she engaged in the repetitive motions of stabbing, smashing, and scraping the cake crumbs with her fork. “For me, it was finding some sort of purpose for my life. I wanted to be more than a spoiled, airhead heiress.”

  “And are you now?”

  “Depends.” She looked across the table at him, the silent plea in her eyes echoing louder in his mind than any words she’d spoken.

  Part of him wanted to bolt from the table, but the rest of him took some small comfort in knowing she understood what he was going through. No one else did. Not his friends. Not his family. Not his agent or producers. The only other person he’d reached out to was his younger brother’s assistant, Sarah, and that was only because she knew the best places to go for detox.

  But Becca had been there. She’d gone through this hell and seemed to have her shit together now.

  Unlike him.

  A bead of sweat rolled down the side of his face, and he leaned forward on the table, his eyes lowered. “Where do I start?”

  “At the beginning.”

  A single note of bitter laughter rose from his throat. “I started using because my best friend did, and I looked up to him.”

  He waited for her to mock him for being a lemming, but instead, she said in a choked voice, “And did he inspire you to come clean, too?”

  “Yeah.” Finding Ty dead was the cruelest form of wake-up call he’d ever experienced.

  He glanced at her to gauge her reaction and found the same patient plea for him to continue.

  They say confession is good for the soul….

  He took a deep breath and opened his up to her. “I’d always been more of a dabbler, getting high here and there as needed. My best friend was more of a King Kong user, mixing his daily heroin with something else to achieve different highs. Sometimes it was as simple as smoking it with marijuana. Sometimes it was harder stuff like crack or PCP. Whatever was available at the moment. But until the last few weeks of his life, he still functioned. He showed up to work, and he never, ever bailed on me.”

  His voice caught as he added, “That is, until the one morning when he didn’t show up.”

  He wasn’t used to a woman with nothing to say, but Becca’s silence rattled him to the core. No questions. No sounds of accepta
nce or judgment. No movement to or away from him. He had no clue how she was reacting to his story, and he refused to look up from the table to read her face. The frustration mounted inside until it finally erupted with a bang of his fist on the table.

  “I was so fuckin’ angry at him,” he admitted. “He’d thrown his life away. Wasted the talent he’d been given. Destroyed everything we’d worked so hard for. At first, all I could feel was rage. Then this ache followed, like he’d taken some part of me with him. And God, it hurt.”

  He pressed his hand against the center of his chest where the emptiness still lingered. “Once I experienced that pain, that anger, that sense of abandonment…”

  He shook his head as though it would clear the dark emotions swirling inside. Visions of his mother and brothers going through the same hell filled his head like they had in the days following Ty’s death. “I never wanted anyone I cared about to go through that.”

  “So you found a reason to get clean,” she said at last.

  It wasn’t a question, but he still nodded.

  “Then keep holding on to that.” She reached into her purse to pull out some bills before rising from her chair.

  He reached out to stop her. The second their hands touched, something changed in the air between them. Or maybe it was just him. He’d been trying so hard to push her away that now that she was leaving, he wanted her to stay. But when he looked up at her, he noticed subtle surprise playing out across her features, from the widening of her eyes to the parting of her lips.

  She sank back into her chair, her attention never wavering from him.

  And more important, she didn’t try to pry his hand away.

  He wasn’t ready to admit he needed her or anyone else, but somehow, confessing everything that had been bottled up inside for the last month eased the burden of guilt that had been weighing him down. Just knowing someone who’d been there was willing to listen and not call him weak or stupid or a lost cause made the darkness seem a little less impenetrable. And that gave him hope that he might succeed.

  Yet his tongue refused to form the words to express his gratitude. Instead, what came out was, “I can pay.”