(Complete Rock Stars, Surf and Second Chances #1-5)

by Michelle Mankin

  “Not implying anything. Stating fact.”

  “A fact as you see it.” I arched a brow.

  “I’m certainly willing to demonstrate.”

  “I’m sure you are.”

  “Willing and able.” His lean toward me deepened. The scents of plumeria, coconut, and sea salt washed over me, plus a great deal of his heat. “Sex machine ready to go, beautiful. Just say the word. I’ll make it my birthday present to you.”

  “Not going to happen, Hawaiian dude.” I whirled around and motioned for him to follow. “C’mon. I need to finish getting dressed.”

  The snap of the soles of his flip-flops told me he followed me inside. “Nice place you got here.”

  “Thanks.” I turned around to find him directly behind me.

  Diesel towered over me, his chest wide, his arms corded with muscle. His long legs were strong, and his dark brown eyes gleamed.

  Adrenaline flooded my body. My overactive imagination put a sharp spear in his hand rather than an innocuous set of car keys. If we were in an earlier time and he was accessorized differently, he could be an ancient Polynesian warrior stalking a virgin to sacrifice.

  Gulp.

  “Wait here.” I tried to sound authoritative as I gestured to the sectional, but my arm trembled slightly. Truthfully, my entire body vibrated with nervousness whenever he was around.

  I’d forgotten how Diesel affected me.

  Correction. Not forgotten, wanted to forget. An important distinction.

  “You said something about getting dressed.” He swept his gaze over me. “I can certainly help with that. The undressing part, that is.”

  “Um, no.” My brows rose. “Are you crazy?”

  “Like a chick in a robe.”

  “I remember.”

  “I bet you do. I certainly won’t ever forget.”

  “We’re not doing a repeat,” I said firmly, quaking inside.

  “Aw, c’mon, beautiful,” he purred, sending shivers throughout my body, just like he had back then. “Just a little tug on the bow at your waist so I can unwrap my present. Goes right along with the birthday theme.”

  “Birthday present for you. Not me.”

  “Naked presents are meant to share.” He shook his head at me, and several long glossy black curls escaped his low ponytail. Shadows passed through his wide-set, almond-shaped eyes, the overall color darker brown now. “You know as well as I do that there’s chemistry between us.”

  “I know no such thing.” Yet my heart raced.

  “Where there’s friction, there’s fire.”

  “There’s no fire.” Yet my lips tingled with warmth as his gaze dipped to my mouth.

  “There most certainly is.” His eyes flared, masculine interest sharpening features that were already honed as if by a master sculptor’s hand.

  “In your dreams, not in reality.”

  “Dirty dreams that I’ll make a reality better than anything you can imagine.” Diesel reached out his hand.

  I pulled in a breath and held it as he captured a loose lock of my hair, his skin a deep coppery contrast against the pale strawberry-blond strand. His eyes followed his hand’s movement as he traced the lock of hair from a spot just below my ear to the end.

  Tremors of fiery sensation licked the surface of my skin as he released it. The pads of his roughened fingertips skimmed across the creamy slope of my breast before he withdrew his hand completely. An intentional caress.

  “Nice.” Diesel’s lips lifted, carving crescents into both sides of his mouth. “Hair’s nice too.”

  “Stop being an ass.” Extricating myself from his dark gaze and darker intentions, I found my voice, albeit a tellingly breathless one.

  “Just giving you a little taste of how it could be,” he said low as I inched away from him. “Deny it all you want, but the signs are there.”

  “What signs are those?”

  “Your eyes get dark whenever I touch you. Your lips part because you need more air for your racing heart. Probably because you’re picturing me and you naked. One of these days, I’m going to give you what you want.”

  “Don’t—”

  “You want my tongue inside your mouth, and my cock inside you. I want the same thing. My dick gets hard whenever you’re near. It’s hard right now.”

  “You get off intimidating me.” I withdrew another step back, resisting the urge to glance down to see if what he’d claimed was true.

  “Wrong. I get off just looking at you.” He erased the space I’d gained, the fabric of his turquoise swim trunks molding to his muscular thighs and revealing the truth of his claim. “Tits, ass, hair, and attitude like yours, what guy wouldn’t.”

  “All I know is that you irritate me.” I avoided his gaze.

  “Liar. You enjoy sparring with me.” The tension between us was as sharp as the cut of his muscles beneath his black tank. “Admit you want to see as much as I do how hot we could be together.”

  “I admit nothing.”

  Diesel grinned.

  “I mean there’s nothing between us.” I stomped my foot, my movement jarring parts of me that had begun to tighten and throb as I imagined what he’d described.

  “You continue to deny it.” He crossed his arms over his chest, his gaze smoldering with challenge.

  “Knock it off.” I took several steps backward.

  “Retreat. Run away. If that’s the way you want it.” His eyes followed me, as sultry as the beat of my pulse. “I’ll have you eventually. It’s only a matter of when.”

  “When you stop being delusional. Which will be never!”

  My fingers curling inward like claws, I yanked the lapels of my robe together, trying and failing not to notice how his tongue swiping across his lips made them glisten like an overly ripe cherry.

  “You don’t want me to stop. You’d be disappointed if I did.”

  “Ugh!” I shouted. “You never quit, do you?”

  “No, my stamina is as legendary as a certain part of me. You should believe all the talk.” His grin flattened and the crescents disappeared as he glanced around. “Where’s your bodyguard? He still away?”

  I nodded, a sudden pain slicing me in half at the reminder.

  One good thing about Diesel. He’d made me forget about Max’s absence, if only for a little while.

  “You two seem pretty cozy.” Diesel watched me with a predator’s gaze, waiting and testing my reaction for weaknesses he could exploit to his advantage. “You don’t give him grief like you give me. Why’s that exactly?”

  “What would you know about it?”

  “Heard Fanny and Ash talking. Saw photos of the two of you online. Know he was supposed to bring you to the party, but now I am.” He shrugged like it didn’t matter one way or the other to him, and I lost my focus, watching how the bunching of his bicep animated the ink of his wave tattoo. “Not cool of him to take advantage of you.”

  “He didn’t take advantage.” My eyes flashed. If anyone had taken advantage, it had been me of him. Was that why Max had left so abruptly without really explaining?

  “Seems I hit a nerve.”

  I expelled a breath. “It’s none of your business what I do or don’t do.”

  “You’re not sleeping with him.”

  “Why do you care?”

  “Means I don’t have to kick his ass.”

  “I don’t understand you.” Exasperated, I shook my head.

  “I’ve laid it out. You know the score between me and you. What I want. What you need. But you’re gonna get your fragile little heart busted if you think there’s something more between you and the redneck hulk besides the obvious.”

  “Obvious meaning—”

  “He wants to fuck you, same as I do. Only he’s less honest about it than I am. Once he’s had his taste, he’ll be gone.”

  “I hate you, Diesel. God, I hate you.”

  I turned my back to him. Unwise, but I had to do something to hide my emotions. He’d hit a nerve. A sensitive on
e.

  Conceding this round to him, although at least I’d gotten the last word, I headed for the sanctuary of my bedroom. The silk of my robe fluttered around my upper thighs.

  “Hollie.” Diesel caught me. His long fingers circling my upper arm, he turned me around.

  “Leave me alone.” Unbalanced by the gentleness of his tone and the unexpected lightness of his grip, the tears I’d withheld spilled.

  “Hey.” Wedging a finger under my ducked chin, he carefully lifted it as I tried and failed to still the trembling of my bottom lip. “Fuck me. I made you cry.”

  “I’m not crying.”

  “Must’ve gotten something in your eye then. Just now. Rogue Santa Ana dust or something.” There was teasing in his tone, and also a softening in his expression that seemed to imply he regretted the hurt he’d caused.

  I nodded.

  “Okay. If that’s the way you wanna play it.” His scrutiny intense, he let his statement hang while searching my gaze. “You’re a shit actress, you know. Your emotion is all there in your eyes.”

  “Thanks for the compliment. Not.” I swallowed to loosen the stricture in my throat.

  “I am who I am. Don’t ever expect me to sugarcoat reality like the bodyguard probably does.”

  I narrowed my eyes at him. “How is it that you seem to notice everything about Max, but note nothing about the other events in my life?” I was far from needing a wakeup call to reality.

  “Like the flip of a switch. From boo-hoo to back to being mad at me.”

  Diesel released me, took a step back, and inclined his head toward my room.

  “Go get dressed so I can deliver you to your sister. I need to get my good deed for the day done.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  * * *

  I glanced at Diesel from the passenger seat. “Fanny said you went back home recently.”

  We were only halfway into the drive to Ocean Beach, but the silence between us had already gotten to me.

  “I did.” His gaze straight ahead, his grip on the Woodie’s steering wheel tightened.

  “You didn’t stay long.” I studied his profile, noting the tension in his jaw. “It seems like you went there and then turned right around and came back.”

  “You keeping tabs on me?” He gave me a quick side glance, his dark eyes narrowing as he refocused on the road. We had long ago left behind the more significant traffic snarls in LA, but the five lanes heading toward the SoCal beaches remained congested.

  “That’s a really long plane ride.”

  “Five hours.” He shrugged.

  “Isn’t your part on Ramon’s solo album already done?”

  “It is.”

  “You don’t usually hang around OB much unless it’s to work.”

  “I don’t.” He gave me another narrow-eyed side glance.

  “Are you going to give me more than two-word answers to my questions?”

  “Probably not.”

  His hands loosened on the wheel, his lips curled, and the crescents reappeared. Even in profile, the sight of his amusement made my stomach crest and flip over like the barrels he surfed on his cream-colored board.

  “It’s a long drive,” I said, “and it’ll go a lot faster if we talk. As in a back-and-forth conversation where actual interesting information is exchanged.” Amusement of my own in response to his played on my lips.

  Diesel’s heavy come-on routine was annoying but expected. That aside, he had a unique sense of humor that I found appealing. Plus, I was genuinely curious. No one seemed to know much about him, or maybe I’d been too circumspect in my questioning.

  “Not in the habit of conversing with chicks when one or two words get me what I need. Strip. Spread. That’s it. Come, baby. Come now. Thanks, baby. Gotta go.”

  My cheeks flamed as I imagined the scenario he described, as he’d fully intended that I do.

  The low timbre of his voice resonated inside the boat-like interior of my sister’s vintage automobile. It also resonated to deeper places inside me than I cared to admit, since there was nothing between Diesel and me, and there never would be. I had enough experience to know to steer clear of confirmed player types like him.

  I shook my head at him. “You’ve got no respect for women.”

  “Not known many worth respecting.”

  “Surely your mother—”

  “The woman that birthed me was married to someone else when she hooked up with my old man.” He spat the explanation at me as if extracting venom from a poisoned wound. “She gave me up as soon as she had me. Couldn’t move on to her next diversion fast enough.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, noticing his tightened grip on the steering wheel.

  “Don’t feel sorry for me. I didn’t know her. Don’t care to. It’s in the past. The past doesn’t affect me.”

  “Yet it feels like a rejection,” I whispered beneath my breath, thinking about my unknown biological father.

  “How do you figure that?”

  “It’s a lot like my story.”

  “In what way?” His gaze was as hard as the packed sand beneath the OB pier.

  Emotions that had long been dammed up inside me suddenly and unexpectedly spilled out.

  “Samuel’s not my real father. You probably know that. Everyone knows. It’s a relief that he isn’t, of course.” My hands twisted together in my lap. Knowing we weren’t related made all the times I’d failed to meet his expectations hurt less. Didn’t it? “The man who is my biological father and Fanny’s never attempted to contact us. Never cared to contact us. Obviously.”

  Those were the facts. It was also all in the past. But the emotions associated with that past hurt in the here and now.

  “Getting someone pregnant doesn’t make you a parent,” Diesel said.

  I lifted my gaze from my lap to find him watching me with a soft understanding in his eyes that I’d never seen before. Those dark pools of liquid empathy mesmerized me.

  “Your old man—both of them, Samuel and the other douche—and my old lady.” He exhaled dismissively. “Some people are just shit. It’s on them that they’re assholes, not you and me.” He flicked the blinker hard to take the next exit.

  I felt bad for Fanny’s Wagon. It was taking a beating from the bassist today. And I realized that there was a lot more to Diesel than I’d previously imagined.

  “So, your dad raised you?”

  Diesel nodded.

  “Alone? No siblings?” Getting details out of him was more difficult than extracting character motivations from a bare-bones script.

  “Yeah.”

  “What was that like?” I asked. “I imagine growing up in Hawaii is different than here.”

  His brow dipped. He was quiet for so long, I assumed he wasn’t going to answer.

  “It was pretty fuckin’ awesome, if you wanna know the truth.” He gave me a side glance, and I nodded, hoping he might elaborate. “I put up with a lot of shit on account of not having a mom. That kept me from appreciating it as much as I should have.”

  “Is your dad . . . gone?” I held my breath. He obviously cared for his father. And I knew how difficult it was to lose a parent.

  “Not gone. But diminished in a way that’s frustrating for him.”

  “How so?”

  “He can’t surf anymore.”

  “Oh. Well, that’s not so bad.”

  “Maybe to someone who doesn’t surf. But for a surfer, for one living in Hawaii, it’s like an entire part of your existence has died.”

  “Your dad’s Hawaiian?”

  “My mother is, my father’s Vietnamese. His father came to the island after fighting with the north in the Vietnam War. My mother’s dad and my dad were close. My grandfather taught my dad to surf, and my dad taught me. We used to surf every day. School. Work. Meals. Everything in our life was scheduled around the favorability of the forecast. If the waves were good, then we were out in the water together.”

  “That sounds really nice.” I felt
privileged that a man who was so prone to monosyllabic explanations had shared so much detail with me. So I shared too. “My mom and I watched films together. Went to plays. Discussed craft. Acting techniques.” We even shared the same musical tastes that were far different from Fanny’s.

  “Sounds like you had a lot in common,” he said softly.

  “Losing her was more than just losing a parent. I lost my best friend.” My brows drew together. “Why can’t your father surf anymore?”

  “Arthritis. It’s gotten so bad, I had to move him into one of those assisted-living places. He’s mad at me for putting him there. He doesn’t like it. That’s why I went back recently. To try to smooth things over with him.”

  “Did you?”

  “Not hardly. He’s not talking to me.” Which explained the brackets of tension around Diesel’s eyes that I hadn’t noticed before.

  “I’m sure it’s hard to give up something that’s such a big part of his life, and the life you and he had together.” Giving up acting would feel like I was giving up a part of my mom when I had so very little of her left to hold on to.

  “Yeah.” He turned his head, giving me a longer assessing look. “What about you?”

  “What about me?” I instantly tensed.

  “What was it like for Holliewood growing up?” His lips twitched. “Your turn to spill. Give me details. More than two words.”

  “The opposite of awesome.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  * * *

  Diesel scoffed. “Surely with a sister like Fanny and living in a big mansion with servants and shit, it wasn’t all bad.”

  “She and my mom were definite bright spots. I had plenty to eat and a roof over my head.” It was the day-to-day happenings that occurred underneath that roof that was mostly bad. Changing the subject, I said, “I’d rather not talk about it. Birthday prerogative and all,” I added when it seemed like he might press. “Hey, why are you turning here?”

  I needed to get Diesel’s mind off me as a subject. I’d said too much on the current topic, revealed too much about myself to a man who certainly didn’t really want to know deep, dark secrets about me.