Wishful Sinful (Rock Royalty Book 5) (23 page)

“Walsh…”

Her placating tone goaded him.

“You want to know? You want to know the details?” Without waiting for her to answer, he continued. “I was seventeen. Which sounds young, but in Velvet Lemons years, I was more than a man. I’d been fucking for ages and watching people fuck for longer than that. I’d been around groupies and wannabes and mommies who left at the drop of a hat or a dollar my entire life. I thought Freddie was none of those.”

“Freddie?”

“Frederica. Her boyfriend brought her to the compound one afternoon. She was nineteen and he was older, a partier. She steered clear of that stuff and a couple of Sundays just hung out at the pool. It was on those days that Cami and Cilla swam there, and Gwen—Gwendolyn Moon, our mother figure of sorts—”

“You’ve mentioned her.”

“On Sundays she insisted that swimsuits stayed on, and she banned booze from the pool deck. I would hang out there, play cards with Gwen, and keep an eye on the little girls with her. Freddie began joining us. And I fell for her, all the way.”

“She was nineteen.”

“And I was seventeen going on cynical-as-hell. I knew the score.” Or had he? Walsh shook his head. “Anyway, she still managed to play me. Boo-hoo, her boyfriend was a big old meanie. Boo-hoo, he’d made her give him the money her dead grandma had left her. Boo-hoo, he’d used that money to buy a Lamborghini with all the bells and whistles. And finally…”

Honey cleared her throat. “Finally?”

“Boo-hoo, she was living with this son of a bitch when she was really in love with me.” He directed his gaze out the window, but didn’t see the lights of D.C. Instead he saw the stupid kid he’d been, taken in by an earnest attitude and cherry lip gloss.

“Then she stopped crying and told me about this idea she had. If something would happen to that sports car, which the meanie had registered in her name because of his many DUIs, then she’d get the insurance money and could escape him.”

“There had to be other ways—”

“Of course there were other ways. But I was a guy with a penchant for blowing things up, so I had my own idea about how I could help her make a great escape.”

He heard Honey swallow and could imagine her blue eyes had gone round. “You blew up the Lamborghini?”

“I blew up the Lamborghini. The next time she and the boyfriend came to a Velvet Lemons party, I snuck down to the gravel parking area and lit up that sucker.”

Honey gasped.

“I ran back to the house where I expected to meet Freddie so we could be each other’s alibis. But I didn’t find her where we’d agreed… When I did locater her I learned she wasn’t what I’d thought. I discovered her in the butler’s pantry screwing Hop.”

“Your
father
?”

“That’s right. She’d been banging my dad and she’d been banging me, and then there was the big bang of that car explosion. Unfortunately, I still had a few things to learn in that department. The burning car caught Gwen’s house on fire—the house where the little girls were sleeping that night.”

“Oh, my God,” Honey said. “But of course they were all right…”

He thought of seeing the flames through a window and how he’d raced back to the little house, slamming through the front door to wake Gwen and Cilla and Cami. The whole time he’d been cursing Hop and Freddie—and himself for being such a sucker.

“Yeah,” he said, trying to sound offhand, even as he remembered the smoke and the terror and the guilt. “In the end the Lemons paid off the fire marshal, just like they’d been paying off the police for years and years.”

Honey was quiet a long moment. “Still…what a frightening and fiery end to your romance.”

His laugh sounded harsh. “Taught me that love meant getting led around by my dick. I won’t be anyone’s puppet ever again.”

She was silent for an even longer moment. “Why’d you finally tell me this?”

“So you’ll refrain from asking me to put a bomb beneath your next boyfriend’s car?”

“Really,” Honey insisted. “Why?”

“You asked.”

“I didn’t.”

“We were arguing. I lost my head.”

“Or you wanted to be sure I knew exactly what’s going on inside of yours,” she murmured.

“What does that mean?” He was weary now, sick of D.C. and long meetings and thinking about the ugly past.

“I’ve got to go,” she said. “Goodnight, Walsh.”

Wait! She’d hung up? How could she have left him like this? Honey was supposed to make him feel better.

But the call had definitely ended, leaving him with nothing but himself and the anonymous hotel room—and the realization that for the very first time, talking to his capable and efficient admin had only made him feel worse.

Honey let herself into Walsh’s penthouse condo. Late afternoon sun flooded through the windows and it smelled like furniture polish and bleach, which meant the cleaning service had dusted, mopped, and vacuumed per their usual schedule. Good. One of the items on her mental To Do slate was ensuring that they’d been by.

Of course, it didn’t get past her irony-meter that she had a list of her own. But she’d filled it with admin assistant-type tasks, and she was getting through her days by focusing on scratching them off one at a time. That was proving to be a somewhat effective distraction from obsessing about her siblings’ clashes with their parents—which seemed to be escalating—and obsessing about her still-absent boss.

The kitchen was her first stop. She set down her purse, noting with approval the gleaming countertops and sink. But the refrigerator deserved a look as well, to make sure something hadn’t spoiled inside. Walsh hadn’t intended to be gone this long. Sure enough, some roast beef slices appeared slimy and a container of potato salad sported a green fur hat. She dumped them in a plastic bag and reminded herself to take the thing with her on her way out.

As she left the area, she paused to look back at the space. For a moment she could see herself and Walsh, the ghosts of their former selves before they’d jeopardized their platonic relationship, laptops open and papers spread before them on the granite bar, soup bowls and sandwich plates pushed aside. Working Saturdays had never felt like a chore.

Probably because she’d been falling in love with him at the same time.

Sighing, she continued on toward the bedroom, taking a quick glance at the expansive living area. The piano sat in the corner, dark, sleek, and secretive, just like its owner had been until their last conversation.

She now understood his determination to find a wife in such a premeditated manner. Passion had betrayed him once, and he wouldn’t trust it again. She’d been listening too when he referred to “mommies who left at the drop of a hat or a dollar.”

While she had Lucy and Jeb to love and who loved her back, he’d grown up without anyone gifting him with that unselfish emotion.

It tempted her to tell him her true feelings for him, but she’d also figured out why he’d finally related the story about Freddie, his father, and the burning Lamborghini. It was a warning after the long weekend they’d spent in Mexico―
Don’t love me because I’ll never offer that back.

In his bedroom, she halted again, taking it in. It was a space new to her—she’d never had occasion to get a peek until now, when she was tasked with packing up more clothes for him in D.C. The king-size bed crisply covered by a dark cotton duvet didn’t surprise her, nor did the glimpse she could see of an attached bathroom done in gray and black granite. But the wall filled with framed pieces of sheet music made her eyes widen, especially when she recognized the hand that had penned the notes.

Walsh wrote music.

Could she be wrong?

She drew closer to study them and confirmed her guess. It was definitely his handwriting and definitely his name scrawled at the bottom of each page. He’d titled the piece “Canyon Fire,” and the crowded notes that jumped up and down the staff gave the impression to this layperson it had been written by someone full of rampant emotion and unrestrained impatience…qualities that didn’t seem to fit the Walsh she thought she knew so well.

Had he extinguished this impassioned self when the flames of the car fire went out? Or was all this still somewhere beneath his tailored suits and elegant ties?

The sound of the front locks turning made her stomach jump. No real intruder, a guard in the lobby checked IDs against a list of approved guests, but who—

“Honey?”

She blinked and headed toward the entry. “Brody?”

He shut the door behind him, a big box under his arm. “The security guy downstairs told me you were up here.”

“Walsh needs some more clothes in D.C. I’m going to overnight them.” When he headed for the bar in the living area, she followed. “What about you?”

“We share a beer-of-the-month club subscription. It’s delivered to the construction company office.” He hefted the box onto the surface above the beverage cooler. “I figured he might like to have some new brews chilling when he gets back.”

“That’s nice.”

Brody paused in placing the bottles in the racks in the refrigerator.

“It’s more of a peace offering,” he said, with a wry smile. “We didn’t end our last talk on great terms.”

Although everyone considered this man the “good” twin, again he surprised her. It was such a thoughtful gesture. “You Rock Royalty guys are all hard to figure out, did you know that?”

“No way.” Brody smiled over his shoulder again. “Let me clear it up for you. Ren is the bad ass. My twin, Bing, is the unrepentant bad boy. Reed is the resident brooding recluse, Payne our daredevil, and Beck the adventurer. Walsh is our only true still waters…though lately his surface has seemed more than a little stirred up.”

“He told me about the bombing of the Lamborghini,” she blurted.

Brody straightened, his blue eyes narrowing. “That was a long time ago.”

“Not to him, I don’t think.” She thought of the music on his wall. “The fire didn’t reach the girls and Gwen though, right?”

“No. Didn’t touch them. Walsh was the one who ended up in the hospital.”

“
What?
”

“He didn’t tell you he ran inside and got them out?”

She shook her head. “How…bad was it?”

“Like you said, Cilla, Cami, and Gwen came out just fine. Walsh spent a few days in the hospital suffering from smoke inhalation.”

Her chest tightened. “That part he kept to himself.”

“Still waters,” Brody repeated.

Honey glanced at the piano in the corner, then gestured to it. “Does he play?”

Brody hesitated.

“I always assumed the previous owner left it here or something.”

“It’s Walsh’s instrument for sure,” Brody acknowledged. “Beck found it somewhere in Europe and shipped it to him for his twenty-fifth birthday.”

“That’s quite a gift.” Crossing to it, she dusted a fingertip over the keys.

He tilted his head. “Have you met Beck?”

“No. Our paths didn’t cross before he left the country.”

“It will be interesting to see what he makes of the changes in the Rock Royalty when he finally gets back. At the time that he took off on his latest adventure—before Ren returned to Laurel Canyon and Cilla bowled him over—everyone was not only single, but pretty distant from each other, too.”

Brody made quick work of flattening the cardboard box. Then he crossed the floor space to stand beside Honey, just behind the piano bench tucked beneath the instrument.

“I wonder if he keeps it in tune?”

Under Honey’s astonished gaze, he bent to run both hands over the keys, performing a complex set of chord progressions. The sounds were still ringing in the room when he lifted his fingers.

“In perfect pitch if you ask me.”

She stared at him. “You’re a musician, too?”

“I wouldn’t say that. It’s just…” He shrugged. “If the Lemons were lumberjacks, we’d probably all be proficient with axes and saws.” A laugh rumbled from his chest. “Lumberjacks…our childhoods probably would have been a hell of a lot safer that way.”

Honey watched his hands roam over the keys again.

Then Brody stepped away from the instrument. “About your boss…”

“Yes?”

“I haven’t heard him play a note since he left the compound.”

Still waters, Honey thought, then followed Brody toward the front door.

“See you,” he said, with a two-fingered salute. He began to turn the knob.

“Wait.” Honey put her hand on his arm.

Pausing, his brows rose over his arresting blue eyes. “Is something wrong?”

“What about you?”

“Me?”

“Those things you said about the guys—the other princes of the Rock Royalty. The adventurer, the recluse, the daredevil. The bad boy and the bad ass. Still waters.”

“Yes?”

“What are you?” Something told her he’d reject the label of the good twin.

His mouth curved, but the smile struck her as achingly sad. “I guess that remains to be seen,” he said, then pulled on the knob.

The door swung toward him with great force, as if someone was at that moment opening it from the other side. Then a big unshaven man loomed in the gap, wearing rumpled clothes and a dangerous expression. His narrowed dark eyes were hot and shifted from Brody to Honey, then back to Brody again.

“I’m going to kill you,” he said in a scary voice.

“Oh, for goodness sake.” Honey bustled between the two men. “What are you talking about? And what are you doing here?”

Walsh put his hands on her shoulders and put her to the side, his gaze not moving from Brody. “That’s the question I have for
him
.”

The other man grinned, appearing delighted. “It’s great having you back.” And before Walsh could get out another word, he’d slipped around him and into the hallway. Jogging quickly toward the elevators he called over his shoulder, “Phone when you’re in a better mood—and call me, Honey, if you need anything.”

The man left behind in the condo didn’t look like her well-dressed boss and wasn’t acting in his usual urbane manner, either. But Honey trailed him anyway as he moved into the living area, where he dumped his bags. She glanced at them, then back at him.

“I was here to pack up more clothes for you.”

He grunted and prowled to the bar where he pulled a bottle of sparkling water from the cooler. Half of it went down before he spoke. “York’s private jet flew us to L.A. We’ll iron out the last details at the MadSci offices tomorrow. Both of us were sick of D.C.”