Strung Out (Needles and Pins #1) (23 page)

It might be the first time his dog had ever been his wingman. He stroked the rough fur and made sure their hands continued to touch as they both petted.

Her demeanor was beginning to worry him. She had never been a moody person despite the nutty life she’d been dealt. Only a few times had he seen this type of weird behavior from her.

“Want to talk about it?” he offered softly.

“No. I don’t think so.” She inched her head closer to his pillow, and he thought he felt a tremor buzz her hand for a split second.

His mind rocketed back to a barely-teen stepsister with braces on her teeth. She had been acting odd for days, coming home from school and closing herself in her room, instead of hanging out in the poolroom playing video games with her friends and making his friends crazy with her much older-looking body and long, ponytailed hair. One evening, he’d invaded her room since she wouldn’t come into their den, turned the TV on, and propped himself on her bed. His hope had been that their routine of popcorn and movies would kick back in. She’d ended up with her head on his shoulder, clinging to his hand. The heady buzz from her touch hadn’t been the first time he’d completely understood his friends’ obsession with her. In fact, looking back on that night, he’d shown superhuman restraint for a teen when, instead of rolling his horny body onto her, he’d asked, “Want to talk about it?” Back then, she’d replied, “No. I don’t think so.” Yet almost immediately, she had spilled her guts. The next day, acting on her confession, he had tracked down, but found himself unable to hit the shrimp-sized thirteen year old creep who had apparently thought it was funny to sneak up behind Scarlette, put his hands down her shirt, and grab her tits. So he had shoved him against the wall and threatened an ass stomping if he ever came near her again.

This time she echoed the answer of the past, but instead of spilling her guts, she stayed silent, and he couldn’t take it any longer.

“Did he do something?”
He’d kill him!
“What did the fucker do?” Despite the violent emotions shaking through him, his tone was gentle. “If Colt did something to make you feel like this—he cut the rest of his words off when there was a definite eye flinch and her hand moved from Rascal’s lucky head to rest on the sheets that covered her stomach. “He did, didn’t he?”

“Sort of.”

And with those two words slipping in a sad sigh from her lips, his fury flamed. “I’ll fuck him up… I swear to all that is…” Already, he was fumbling for his phone. The second the black screen was in his hands, he discarded it. He was in the motion of swinging out of bed, tromping directly to his Ducati, and teaching the fucker what ‘hands off my sister’ meant, when she stayed him with a hand on his back.

Bare skin to bare skin is what actually stopped him before he even heard her next words.

“What the hell! What’re you doing?”

“I told him not to touch you… Damn, I might kill him!”

“He didn’t!” She was closer now— on her knees behind him. “I told you last night. It isn’t that way between us.”

“It looked that way.” He propped his elbows to his knees and dropped his face to his hands. The image of them in the car macking hurt his head.

“I know what it looked like. But it was just one stupid kiss. Can we not talk about it? “

“Depends. Is that what’s eating you?” Because if it was that bothering her—one stupid kiss—his bandmate still had a fist ready to meet his face.

Her forehead landed on his shoulder like old times. But her being behind him, instead of beside him skipped his pulse in a wild new way. He wished he could always be in front of her like this―be her shield from all of her demons.

“No. I’ve got shit on my mind. It’s not anything about me and him.”

He lifted his head. Dust particles floated in the sunbeams coming in through the blinds. “Can I ask you something?”

“Maybe.”

“Why his house?” When she remained mute, he prompted, “Why Colt’s house when you left here?” Again, she refused to reply and he expelled a frustrated breath. “Why did you go there and not a hotel?”

“Hotels aren’t in my budget right now.”

The answer was so senseless, he wanted to laugh. Yet, hints had been there all along. Memories bubbled to the surface… Snatches of conversations here and there. Deep inside, he knew it was no laughing matter.

That night in the TV room, he hadn’t fully understood. He’d thought her mother’s expenditures had made money tight—not that she was completely broke.

He turned, taking in the flush of embarrassment in her cheeks. The tinge of humiliation in her eyes.

“That’s why you’re working your way through school? Is that why you didn’t fly stateside and go to the concert with Ivy?” Suddenly he wanted to punch someone again. “Why didn’t you tell someone?”

“I didn’t know until it was all gone. I was old enough to make sure the electricity wasn’t disconnected while she was passed out drunk or stoned. One of those days, was when I found out the checking account had my name on it. It took weeks of poking around before I figured out I even had an inheritance at one time.”

The image of a young girl making sure the utilities stayed on—taking care of herself and her useless parent—wrenched his gut into a knot. “You should have told someone!”

“Like who? The accountants who had already paid shrink bills, psychic bills, chin lifts and tummy tucks? Like fucking
who
?”

“Like me!” He’d been living like a king all these years while she’d worked in a
bar
for fuck’s sake. “Like fuckin’
m
e. I would have given you anything you needed. I would have taken care of you.”

I
stretched out on the sunning pad, bringing one knee slightly up, and lifting my arms above my head. I didn’t have to look toward the studio to know Gage was watching. His gaze was a pleasant tickle on my skin, and the sounds he cajoled from his guitar pulsated a pleasure point in the pit of my stomach. The combination caused a sweet, hot burn between my legs.

I was falling in love with him. Either I had been since my teen crush days and had right this second realized it, or I had fallen hard—yesterday morning with seven words.

I would have taken care of you
.

Did he have feelings for me? Or did he watch me with fire in his eyes and continuously make up excuses to touch me out of desire only?

Rock stars. Bad
.

I worked on my self-brainwashing technique.

Rock stars
. Trouble
.

But Gage was Gage. The boy who had taken care of me. The man who wanted to.

I finally turned to look. He was stretched out in a lounger, guitar in his lap. The amp was still in the house and my eyes followed the cord snaking across the wood from his chair by the pool to the room behind him.

What he was playing was amazing.

“Is that the new song?”

He answered without stopping his chords. “Hell, no. You’ve heard Fire Flight.”

“Yeah.” Most Fire Flight songs were in your face loud, angry. This tune was bluesy, haunting “I like this. A lot.”

“Thanks.”

“Seth said you were teaching him some techniques.”

“Colt and I’ve both taught him. He’s learning in stereo.” A quirk of the ‘engaging smile.’ “He’s going to be a monster.”

“No doubt,” I agreed. Gage had won awards and Colt had played in two top grossing bands before Fire Flight. Both had graced music and guitar magazine covers. “You think you could teach me?”

Now where the hell had that come from?
I panicked once the words were out. One moment I had been in a blissful haze, hypnotized by the music, his voice, and the contrast of the white cottony clouds against the blue of the sky. And the next I was asking for guitar lessons? I had no desire to learn!

“Yeah. Sure!” He sounded surprised, but eager.

There was no way it would happen. There was no time. That thought was slightly comforting. Less comforting was the thought of leaving.

A few more measures drifted over the pool and then dwindled to a pause. “You ever going to order the linguine?” he asked.

We had hashed over what we wanted for dinner and had decided on Pace, an Italian restaurant that delivered in the area.

“What are you going to do when I leave?” I grumbled about the chore and didn’t immediately leave my comfortable position to wade over to my phone.

Was my leaving getting to him too? His eyes seemed sad and distant for a moment before he recovered and retorted. “Same thing I did before you showed. Throw wild parties. Fill the pool with naked models who will order me food and bring me drinks.”

I laughed. But the sound seemed fake to my ears. The thought of nude women doing Gage’s every bidding was so not funny to me. But since he was being big brother taunting me, I served up sassy-little-sister-on-a-stick right back. “You sure you had all that going on? Pool looks empty to me. When I came I was
hoping
you’d have parties with hot rock stars hanging all day.”

One second later, he had vacated the chair and was in the water. Five seconds later, he’d reached my teak island and was hauling me off as I screeched.

“You need to cool off, little mermaid!”

“No, I don’t. I really don’t.”

His grip relaxed, allowing me to slide down his front until I was standing in the knee-deep water. When I shivered, it wasn’t because I’d cooled off! Quite the opposite.

“What would you do with these hot rock stars?” His challenge was a husky rumble near one of my ears.

My gaze glided from the hand underwater on my waist, up his arm, taking in the decorative ink—barbed wire music scores ran up the inside of his arm and beginning at the bend, spiraled up his biceps and triceps. “Hot rock star… Half naked in the pool…” I used his own images against him. “Hmm. I don’t know…”

In retaliation, he hooked an arm beneath my knees, prepared to unbalance me.

“Don’t… I don’t want to be all wet again…” I was laughing so hard at his antics, I didn’t immediately grasp what I’d said until his expression became even more animated.

“No? Are you sure?”

I’d hiked head-on into that one. His eyes were still alight with mischief. But they also glittered dark and dangerous. In the position he had maneuvered me into, he could drop me, and I’d fall backward, dunking under before I caught myself. Or he could hold me closer… and kiss me…

Either way, I’d end up wet.

“Very sure.” It took every ounce of willpower to force the two words out.

I could call Derrick as soon as my plane landed in Belize. Or I’d have a fling. What I wouldn’t do was cross what was becoming a very thin line—perhaps even a dotted one—between stepbrother and lover.

The plunge into the water startled me. I’d been so sure Gage wouldn’t drop me when I’d drifted for a few seconds into my thoughts. My elbows hit the smooth bottom, and I pushed above the water, sputtering and wiping the hair from my face.

“You ass!” I skimmed the surface with my hands, raining a series of splashes until he was deluged and dripping.

He didn’t even fight back, simply shot one of his smirks and hastened back to his chair and his ever-ringing phone.

As I stood on the edge of the pool drying, I watched his conversation. He was speaking and throwing glances my way.

He ended the call, and his expression was apologetic. “That was a friend I thought might be able to come up with Bradley Walker’s cell number. He doesn’t have it.

“Oh.” I swiped the towel one last time over my face and then looped it around my neck. “Thanks, anyway.”

“I’ll keep thinking. There’s bound to be some way to do this.”

“What if we just ring his bell?”

“Ring his bell?” His brows shot up, and that naughty gleam danced in his eyes again.

“Dammit! Are you twelve?”

“We will.” Gage seemed earnest. “We will ride up to his gate and buzz him if it comes to that.”

I narrowed my eyes, wondering if I was supposed to be catching some double entendre, but he only plopped back down into his seat with the guitar.

“Food’s here.” I stuck my head
into Gage’s studio.

“Not too hungry right now. Go ahead.” He spoke from the couch. His feet were propped on the back and his arm rested over his forehead. “I’ll get something later.”