Resisting the Musician (a Head Over Heels Novel) (Entangled Indulgence) (3 page)

She’d only gotten Callie on the train by pretending they were extras in
Some Like It Hot
. She’d built one of San Francisco’s fastest growing businesses because she
never
laid down.

But play the
guitar
when she had not the slightest inclination or ability?

Lori had already nibbled a ragged spot into her thumbnail before she even realized it was between her teeth. “One problem, I’m not musical. I don’t even sing in the shower. I have no hope in hell of playing a guitar.”

A loaded beat went by before he said, “I’ll teach you.”

Lori reared back. “
You
?”

“If Callie wants this to stay hush hush, and I won’t be a part of it unless you pay the piper, I don’t see any other way.”

She opened her mouth to nip
the whole
ridiculous
idea in the bud but nothing came out but a slightly awkward squeak. Which the man of the hour seemed to thoroughly enjoy.

“So, Lori Hanover, sister of Callie, resister of early morning hops, troubler of honorable men, are we doing this thing or not?”

Lori swallowed. Pictured what her life would be like if she was forced to start over. Or worse, go back. The mountains of Montana, the lakes, and big sky might be some of the most beautifully rugged country on the continent but to Lori it had been the very edges of hell.

“Fine,” she said, between gritted teeth.

He cupped a hand to his ear. “I missed that.”

“You write it, I’ll play it.” Lori glared at the big, pink envelope covered in Callie’s curly hopeful print. “The lyrics are in there.”

With a flash of a smile that didn’t touch his eyes, he flicked a finger at the opening. “Have you read them?”

“Good Lord, no,” she mumbled. Adding belatedly, “Not mine to read.”

The rumble of laughter told Lori she hadn’t been adept at hiding the real reason she hadn’t dived straight into the thing. That Callie’s adoration for Jake would be even harder to stomach on paper.

Dash slid the envelope down the back of his jeans, pressing his impressive abs in her direction as he did so. “See you soon, Lori Hanover.”

She pulled out her phone, opening her calendar with its red entries for dire meetings, orange for regular meetings, green for yoga, manicures, healthy stuff, and the rare blue social encounter. Clueless as to what color she’d make her lessons with Dash Mills, she said, “Of course I’ll have to shuffle my schedule to fit it in—”

“Whenever. I’ll be here.”

“Here?” she asked, blinking into the gloomy surrounds. “Any chance we could do this in town?”

“Not a chance in the world.”

“Of course not. How about Wednesday… No, Thursday? Ahh, early afternoon?”

Dash shrugged, as if to say it didn’t matter to him. Restive with the need to pin it down, Lori knew she’d already pushed her luck, so she took her leave.

And as she walked away—her shoes once more slipping on the rocks—she surprised herself by laughing. Which turned into a smile, bigger than she’d smiled in days. She even gave a little fist pump.

“All done, miss?” asked Mack as she slid into the back seat.

“For now,” she said with a sigh of relief.

This was what hope felt like and it had been some months since she’d felt even a glimmer. It would take work (learning to play a stupid guitar) and sacrifice (spending time with her guitar teacher who seemed to have taken as little shine to her as she had to him). But she wasn’t afraid of either.

She glanced out the window as Mack turned the car around and saw the two dogs bound past the car and up the front steps to where Dash bent down to rough them up.

And then he stood, watching her drive away.

…

Dash scratched at the tattoo high up on his bicep as his dogs bounded up the stairs, tongues lolling out of their gray and white muzzles. “Boys, do I really need to explain that the only reason I took you on was to eat people like her?”

Jagger saw something shiny in the woods and ran off. Bowie’s ears pricked a second before Dash heard the rumble of a hog echoing through the hills.

Reg’s motorbike flickered through the trees before bumping over the new ruts in the mud, tracking a familiar course through the rocks and sliding to a halt in its usual spot by the edge of the porch.

Reg peeled off his helmet, freeing his long, red, frazzled beard that, along with his faded leathers and round middle, made him look like a ZZ Top groupie.

“Was that an actual visitor I just passed?” Reg asked as he carefully lifted his dodgy leg over the bike, grabbing his usual brown paper bag filled with something sweet and bready.

“Bagman.”

“Gung ho, taking on your driveway.”

“Mmm.” Dash pulled the pink envelope from the back of his jeans and motioned with it. A scent wafted past his nose—spicy and hot, like satisfaction. It had Lori Hanover all over it.

Rolling it up, he shoved it unceremoniously under his arm, grabbed his steel-capped work boots from inside the house and yanked them on. He waited for Reg to limp his way before they headed around the side of the house, a single canine companion at their heels.

With a yank of a handle that threatened to dislocate his shoulder, the roller door lifted and they were inside the shed. The solitary beam of mottled sunlight shining through the one dirty window collected dust motes on its way to landing on Dash’s projects, many begun, nearly as many let go. And as he set foot in the dark, cool space, the tension that had risen in his shoulders the moment he’d spied the invader on his porch began to ease away.

Bowie curled himself into a comfy position on the doggie bed in the near corner. Reg groaned in relief as he pulled up a stool and began to warm up the miniature coffee machine while Dash tossed the envelope onto a bench, straddled a stool, grabbed a palm-sized slice of sandpaper, and set to finding his zen by making mincemeat of a random hunk of wood.

He should have known Reg wouldn’t let it lie.

“So, that was a pretty sweet ride back there. Late model. Vanity plates. Chauffeured, by the looks of it. With a serious blonde in the rear.”

Dash sanded harder; the dust floating feverishly up into the beam of light, hitting the backs of his nostrils, making grit in the corners of his eyes. “Imagine my surprise when I found her at my front door when I was expecting you.”

Reg grinned, a glint of sunlight flickering off a gold tooth. “Looker?”

Skin like cream. Soft lips. Wicked eyes.
“Legs up to here,” Dash admitted, motioning under his arms.

And then there were those shoes. Not that Dash usually noticed such things, but these had been something else. Black, witchy, with heels like silver daggers. The things had made his balls shrink as the heels’d clacked sharply against his floor.

That had nothing to do with the shoes
, his subconscious shot back.

His subconscious was dead right.

For Lori Hanover, with her bluster, her self-righteousness and her va va voom, could have stepped right out of the ugly blur of his last days with the band and right into his very nightmares.

“What was she selling?”

Dash jerked back to the present. “Trouble.”

“Ahh. Why do I get the feeling that you paid up?”

Dash gave up sanding, instead gripping the sand paper wrapped around the sharp edges of the wood. His gaze kicked to the pale pink envelope uncurling inch by inch atop a pile of filthy rags. Inside it sat a secret, a song.

The urge to hold his confidences close to his chest was a powerful one. His right to live a life unaffected by the whims of others was his bedrock. But this was Reg. He could trust the man with his life.

Already had.

He’d been wild there for a while. If not for Reg yanking him back, he’d be living a very different kind of life. If any at all.

He turned an inch on the stool, searched for the words that would have felt impossible an hour before, and said, “What would you say to my writing again?”

Reg’s eyes widened before a grin broke out across his face, adding creases to the creases. “Do you really have to ask?” Then he glanced out the door. “For her?”

Dash nodded.

Reg whistled long and low between his teeth, then shoved the entire contents of the paper bag from the local bakery toward Dash. “It’s a hell of a lot to take on just to get a date.”

Dash laughed. “Lucky, then, that I have no intention of asking her on one.”

“Why the hell not? Did she have an Adam’s apple I missed? I bat for the other side, but even I could tell she was lovely.”

“Reg—”

“What? It’s not a silly question.”

“You know I can’t go there.”

“Can’t is a long time,” said Reg, shifting on his chair and giving Dash his armchair-psychologist face. “Firstly, you can. At one time I remember the women used to go rather ape-shit for your rugged good looks and that you enjoyed it plenty. And secondly, it’s about time you should. It’s what we are put on this planet for.”

“And yet, I remain unmoved.”

It had taken Dash four arduous years to get to a point where it felt like the life he had was one he deserved. It was a life of quiet, of time, of simple pleasures.

His hounding days were done.

Thrown out with the career that had made those ways as easy as pie. Getting mixed up with a woman of Lori Hanover’s ilk? He might as well give it all away right now.

Plowing on, he filled Reg in on the bare bones of the deal, knowing he could trust it wouldn’t go an inch further.

“Do you even want to do this?” asked Reg.

Hell no.
“It’s for Jake. It felt…like I should.”

“But if it wasn’t for Jake?”

Even being for Jake, the idea of stepping just a toe into that world again made his stomach turn. But he owed the man much more than a song.

As for Callie, she’d seemed a sweet kid, and Dash had no trouble believing the tabloids would be delighting in giving her a hard time. It was the nature of the game—attracting the kinds of people who loved you exactly as much as they hated you. Like human leeches, they stuck by you so long as they could get something out of you. And if you decided to stop playing the game…?

Like it had been inevitable since the moment he’d seen her standing on his porch, in her thousand dollar dress, and two hundred dollar haircut, and those brutal shoes—the kind that could pierce a man’s sternum with a well-timed kick—Dash found himself dragged back into the eddying memories of a part of his life he’d long since thought left in his dust.

For Lori Hanover was the epitome of the particular breed of woman who’d been favored by The Rift’s record company during his last heady days with the band. They’d handled everything from liaising with hotels, to press control, to inviting girls back to the band’s rooms. Impressive women, stunning to a one, ambitious, and bulletproof.

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.