Wild Child (Rock Royalty #6) (22 page)

And her goodbye to him.

At the final note, Cami closed her eyes. But when it finished ringing through the room, she opened them. Thank God Ren was waiting at her feet, and without another look toward the tables filled with the Unrulies, she leaped into his arms and let him usher her from the building. Cilla, the other Rock Royalty, and their loves followed.

“Damn,” Brody muttered. “Damn him.”

Perhaps the curse worked, because when the door closed behind them, Eamon Rooney raised his beer to his mouth, chugged it down, and then sent the bottle flying into the nearest wall.

Ashlynn flinched at the sound of shattering glass and started forward.

Brody held her back, reining in his own temper. “No, baby. Wait. It’s not safe.”

“Nothing is,” she murmured, but stayed in place as the dark stranger shot to his feet, threw a bunch of bills on the table, and stalked out of Satan’s.

Ash changed in those few moments it took Eamon Rooney to leave the roadhouse. Brody felt new tension enter her body, and when she looked up at him, the sparkle in her eyes had morphed to a brittle flash. A sense of desperation surrounded her, one he remembered from the night they’d met when she propositioned him with a bottle of booze under one arm and other men’s dollar bills stuffed in her boots.

Whirling, she broke free of his hold. Her arms flew up.

“Shots!” she yelled. “A round of shots on the house!”

And Brody knew, for the moment anyway, that he’d lost her.

Ashlynn moved about the roadhouse at a feverish pace. Not just because the crowd demanded it—though despite the unceasing rain, the patrons had swelled to a near record number for a usually quiet Sunday evening—but because it kept her busy. There were too many things she didn’t want to think about.

So she bused tables and doled out beers, all the while smiling and working hardest at feeling nothing inside. Brody had staked out the last stool at one end of the bar. Though aware of his gaze on her the entire time, she didn’t linger near him, nor did she ignore him altogether. That would make it seem as if he mattered to her too much.

She couldn’t let that happen.

A young woman that was a Satan’s regular waved her over to her table where she sat opposite a man bent over his cell phone.

Ash whipped out her order book and a pencil from her back pocket, eying the empty glass on the table. “Another margarita, Jean?”

“My God, what was that?” she asked, instead of answering. “I go to the ladies room and come back to find drama-rama in progress. Some chick singing like it was an audition for ‘American Heartbreak’! I almost cried.” She glanced across the table. “Kirk, too.”

The man snorted without looking up from his texting.

“She has a voice,” Ash agreed. “Now, something else? Food?”

“But what’s the story?” Jean insisted. “Kirk claims he hasn’t a clue because he didn’t notice what prompted it. He was taking a call.”

Ash shrugged. “I don’t know, really. You saw the same as I did.”

“I saw somebody serenading a table full of the Unruly MC.” Jean sent a sidelong look at the remaining members still eating and drinking across the room. “More particularly, serenading none other than
Eamon Rooney
.”

And Cami’s rendition of “I Can’t Make You Love Me” had struck a sore point, obviously. The man hadn’t been able to exit Satan’s fast enough.

But the song had been a wakeup call to Ashlynn, too. She’d been letting down her guard the last few days, cozying up to Brody, and worse, recasting what was sexual attraction as something more magical.

Bad mistake.

Much better to stay independent, to keep an emotional distance. Saratoga Ashlynn had been sawdust inside, but now that didn’t seem such a bad idea when the alternative was risking being shattered like Cami Colson.

Yes, Brody had sung to her, too.
Stay with me.

But she didn’t have the chops to keep a Brody Maddox, so it was so much safer not to want him.

“Eamon Rooney?”

Ash tuned back into the conversation at the table. Jean’s companion Kirk had looked up from his phone.

“I had my back turned,” he said now. “But you say she was singing to Eamon Rooney?”

Jean nodded. “You know him?”

“Yeah. From work.” His phone trilled, and he glanced at the screen then held up a finger. “Sorry, have to take this.”

He got up from the table, phone pressed to his ear as he headed for the door.

Jean watched after him, sighing a little. “He’s cute, but I think he’s already married—to his job…or maybe just that stupid phone.”

“What does he do?” Ash asked, unable to suppress her curiosity.

“Criminal defense attorney,” Jean said absently, her gaze still on her disappointing—and disappearing—escort.

The one who knew Eamon Rooney from the cryptic “work.” Had he been the criminal lawyer’s client? Then Cami was better off without him, Ashlynn decided, as the occupants of another table hailed her. She hurried their way, thinking she and Cami may have both dodged a bullet that night.

On her next trip to the bar, she poured a small measure of vodka and threw it back. When she slammed down the glass, her gaze caught Brody’s. His blue eyes transported her, back to that moment earlier in the evening when he sang to her.
Stay with me.

Her breath caught in her throat, and she turned away as she poured another swallow of liquor and tossed it back. He was a man experienced in this game, so she couldn’t allow herself to read too much into sexual chemistry and musical blandishments.

A couple slid onto empty stools nearby, and she hurried toward the two.

“Viv! Irv!” she called, thrilled to welcome the chatty pair. If anyone could take her mind off her problems, they could.

“Can I say again I loved the coffeecake? Best I’ve ever tasted.” Without bothering to ask, she popped the caps on two ice-cold bottles of their favorite beers. Then she set them on bar mats and topped off a basket of popcorn. “Can I order you any food from the kitchen?”

“Not yet, honey,” Irv said, lifting his beer to his mouth. “I need a few minutes to enjoy my beer. It’s been a long day.”

“Oh?” Leaning over, she propped her elbows on the bar top and grinned. “Detailing the Harleys?”

It was a joke between them. When she’d first arrived in Topanga they’d told her a funny story about their grown kids being unable to reach them in the middle of the day when they were known to be at home. Instead of explaining that a pair of long-married sixty-somethings were enjoying the empty nest and each other in bed, they’d told their worried sons and daughter they’d not heard the phone because they’d been busy washing and polishing their motorcycles.

Their worldly-wise progeny had swallowed the story hook, line, and sinker.

“Couple of different projects,” Irv said. “We spent a few hours at the Topanga Community House shoveling sand into bags.”

Ash grimaced. “Flooding problems there?”

“The center is fine,” Viv said. “The bags are for the community at large. Topanga Creek and all the others that feed it are rising. And if this rain doesn’t let up…”

Alarm tightened Ash’s belly. They’d all been happy to have a change in the weather. “What could happen?”

“The usual, though we’ve been in drought conditions for so long I think people have forgotten what trouble a sequence of big storms can cause in the canyon.” Irv swallowed more beer. “Potholes, sink holes, flooding of low-lying areas, flash floods, mudslides, and road wash-outs.”

“Yikes.” Ash straightened and glanced around the crowded room. “Should I close early and send everyone home?”

Viv shook her head. “We’re not at a crisis point yet. But once the ground gets saturated, that’s when the trouble begins.”

“Supposed to be letting up tonight and then a few days of sunshine so we can dry out a bit.” Irv glanced over at his wife, then he pulled a folded piece of paper from his front jacket pocket. “Which is why we thought later this week would be the perfect time for this.”

He put the sheet on the bar and slid it Ash’s way.

She stared at it, her instincts clamoring.

Rather than reaching for it, her hand found a clean glass. She turned away to pour another shot of vodka, and her gaze landed on Brody, looking big and solid and warm. How much she wanted to walk over to him, crawl into his lap and bury her face against his broad chest.

Forget everything in his arms, including how sure she was they’d never last.

Tightening her hand on the liquor bottle, she poured a large swallow and threw it back. With the alcohol burning a path down her throat, she forced herself to face Irv and Viv and their flyer again.

Another notice of a grief group?

With one fingertip, she drew it closer but couldn’t make herself unfold the thing. “Listen—”

“Gus thinks it’s a good idea, too,” Viv burst out, as if she couldn’t stop herself.

Ash frowned. “My manager, Gus?”

Sundays were his night off.

“We’ve been talking. He said you’d decided to stay open on Wednesday nights starting this week, and we thought this could be a good way to kick off your new schedule.”

More warning bells sounded in her head. “What could be a good way to kick off the new schedule?”

“We didn’t tell you about it because we didn’t want you to lift a finger,” Viv continued. “The arrangements are made, and dozens of old friends have committed to coming in to the roadhouse that night. It will be good, Ashlynn. Good for all of us.”

“You,” Irv added.

Her arm felt filled with lead, but she gathered the strength to lift her hand and open the folded page. “A Celebration of Life,” she read aloud in a dull voice.

“Because we didn’t do that yet,” Viv said. “Celebrate Chuck and Brae’s lives. We know that’s your birthday, too, but Gus said you planned to be at Satan’s anyway, and it actually seemed…fitting. Endings and new beginnings at the very same time.”

“You don’t have somewhere else to be, right?” Irv pressed.

“No.” Her body temperature had plunged, hovering somewhere between numb and frozen, and she crossed her arms to hug herself. “You…you say it’s all planned?”

“Everything is taken care of.”

Ash swallowed, trying to work up some kind of emotion. Another person might feel enraged by their presumption. At the very least annoyed. But Irv and Viv were good people, the very best, and truly missed her father and sister. So they could have this “celebration.”

And it wouldn’t bother her at all, because right now nothing could penetrate her icy outer shell.

And she’d prove it, she decided, as she reached for her glass and the bottle of booze, by having the time of her life.

“Someone turn up the speakers,” she yelled, then fished in the tip jar for quarters to feed the jukebox. “I feel like dancing.”

The next thirty minutes passed in a blur of willing partners, cowboy yee-haws, and a memorable—lucky—quasi-tap dance around the edge of a pool table. She wasn’t near to fading when the last fast song segued into another tune…this one slow. Too slow.

“Hey!” she protested, but then a pair of arms pulled her close, and her nose met the shirtfront and familiar scent of Brody Maddox.

“Settle down, wild one,” he said, as he began to sway her to the rhythm of Van Morrison’s “Into the Mystic.”

“Brody—”

“Shh,” he whispered against her ear, and it was all she could do to fight the shivers rolling over her skin. “Feel the music.”

But she didn’t want to feel! And then he sang in her ear, cruel man, his voice low and raspy and just for her.

When he’d never be hers.

Except her body didn’t get the message as they were pressed close together. Her hips swayed under his hands, her feet moved between his, and her head spun, sense flying right up to the rafters. So when he bent his head at the end of the song and kissed her, any objections she might have were circling by themselves high above. Ignoring the catcalls from all corners of the roadhouse, she twined her arms around Brody’s neck to keep him close.

He slid his tongue along her lips, and she opened her mouth, eager for his taste, a hotter kiss, whatever mindless pleasure he could bring to her.

What had she been doing, trying to escape through vodka and the best party songs by Jason Aldean and Brad Paisley? She should have yanked Brody right off the barstool and towed him to someplace private where he could take her to paradise in an entirely different way.

It was such a good idea that she sank her fingers into his hair to pull back his head. He stared down at her from blue eyes that looked hot enough to burn. His ragged breath puffed against her wet lips, and he quirked one brow.

“Yes?”

On tiptoe, she whispered into his ear. “I hear the storeroom is a fine place for a secret tryst.”

He laughed, low and sexy. “I think if we disappear after that kiss what we’re doing next won’t be so very secret.”

She grinned. “Okay then. We’ll go ahead and let everyone know.” Still enclosed in his arms, she threw back her head and pitched her voice over the noise of the crowd. “Hey Satan’s! I’m taking a break so my buddy Brody can take me in the back and fu—”

His palm slapped over her mouth. Then he nodded over her shoulder.

“Company,” he mouthed.

Frowning, Ashlynn turned, aware that Brody held her back to his front with a solid arm around her waist. Thank God, because her knees nearly collapsed as she took in the shocking sight of…

Her mother, Carol Lexington.

Oh, shit.

Ash pushed at the tendrils of hair that had fallen over her forehead, intensely aware of her half-drunk and very disheveled state in comparison to her mother’s perfect platinum bob, black-and-white sweater, black slacks, and ladylike black pumps.

“Mom.”

Behind her mother stood her husband, Phillip Lexington, in gray wool pants, matching turtleneck, and a black-and-gray houndstooth sports jacket. A perfect combination for the rich man to track down his wandering stepdaughter at the seedy roadhouse once owned by his wife’s ex-husband.

Ash looked from Phillip back to her mother and licked her lips. “Um, what a surprise. How, uh, how long have you been here?”