Wishful Sinful (Rock Royalty Book 5) (3 page)

Oh, God.
Just the way he spoke the request made her ache to say yes. His voice was low and beguiling, and she imagined hearing it with the counterpoint of waves crashing on a moonlit beach. That would cause her so much trouble.

“I can’t,” she managed to croak out.

“Why not?”

Swallowing, she attempted to gather her sensible thoughts and her rational arguments. But they dissolved like sugar in hot water with the man standing so close. She could smell his delicious scents and sense his powerful masculinity. “Because…”

Her voice trailed off as she felt his touch. One of his long fingers caught a lock of her hair, and as he tucked it behind her ear the pad stroked along the arch.

Goose bumps raced down her neck.

“Because…?” he prompted.

She reminded herself of what she’d wanted to prove to him when she’d arrived at work this morning. That she was a calm, collected assistant. A reliable admin who could be counted on to manage things in his absence. That flustered person he’d glimpsed on Friday was an aberration, and she had very lucid, logical reasons for wanting to be left behind.

“Honey,” he said again, and his breath stirred her hair. “What’s going on? Why don’t you want to go?”

When she couldn’t make her dry mouth form an answer, he touched her again, pulling more of her hair away from her face. He leaned closer until they were almost cheek-to-cheek. Her body trembled and her brain short-circuited.

“Why don’t you want to go?” he asked again.

Prompting the most flighty, most female response from her she could ever have imagined. “Because I don’t have anything to wear!”

It might make him sound like a dog to admit it, but since he was seventeen, Walsh had never spent time on deciphering a woman or her words. Honey had not even given him a chance at it in the supplies closet. She’d made her final declaration, then pushed past him. By the time he’d followed, the business day had begun. The offices were humming. Staff bustled about, walking through the halls, calling greetings, and answering ringing phones. With his employees enmeshed in their daily tasks, he could only do the same.

Unfortunately, after less than an hour, Walsh realized he couldn’t remain as focused as the people who worked for him. So he shut his office door—unusual—and snuck in a call to Cilla Maddox. Though Cilla was the youngest of the Velvet Lemons kids, she was also the acknowledged mother hen. They all figured she channeled Gwendolyn Moon, the infamous groupie who had lived at the band’s compound when they were growing up. She’d been the strongest, steadiest maternal influence they’d had, and it was her death from cancer that had brought Ren and Cilla back to Laurel Canyon which in turn had caused the Rock Royalty to begin bonding together as adults.

Cilla picked up his call, her voice happy and bright. No matter his own inner turmoil, it made him smile. Her romance with Ren had brought a new chapter to the lives of all those who had grown up as the progeny of the Velvet Lemons. Each son and daughter had hit eighteen years old and left the Laurel Canyon compound and everything that was wrong there. But when Ren and Cilla got together and with their fathers out on an open-ended global tour, the nine adult children of Mad Dog Maddox, String Bean Colson, and Hop Hopkins had decided to reclaim the place where they’d been kids—and they’d decided to claim each other as family as well.

It seemed to suit all of them.

“What’s up?” Cilla said now.

He found himself talking. “I’ve always been driven to take things apart to learn how they work before putting them back together.”

“Okay.” She sounded encouraging, though unsure of where he was going.

“It makes me itch if I wonder about something and it’s a mystery.” When he wanted to understand a piece of equipment, he was driven to strip it down.

You could strip
her
down
, a voice in his head suggested.

Strip down Honey?

Good God. What was he thinking?
Honey?

Okay, okay perhaps he should leave well enough alone. Leave his admin at home without any poking, prodding, or, for fuck’s sake, stripping.

“Walsh?” Cilla prompted.

“Uh…” Then he shook his head. Letting this drop wouldn’t afford him any peace. Even thousands of miles from her, his mind would be on the cipher that was Honey Brooks when it should be on the new alliances he wanted to forge.

Yeah. He’d better figure this out.

“I don’t understand why Honey’s averse to this upcoming business trip,” he said. “It makes no sense that she’d be reluctant to accompany me.”

“That’s why she tried to resign on Friday?”

“I guess.” He shoved his free hand through his hair. “I told her we were going to a resort in Mexico, and that’s when the quitting talk began—though she did come back this morning.”

When he’d caught sight of her, a tight knot in his shoulders he’d been unaware of had loosened. “But she still hasn’t agreed to go with me.”

Cilla seemed to absorb that. “What reason does she give?”

“It’s about clothes.” The idea baffled him. “She said she has nothing to wear.”

After a long pause, the noise that came across the phone sounded suspiciously like a muffled laugh.

“All right,” he ground out. “What am I missing?”

“I’m reminding myself you have no sisters and your interactions with women appear to be on the most superficial of levels.”

“If you’re saying I’m only into them for sex,” he said impatiently, “I probably won’t deny it.”

This time she didn’t muffle her laugh. “I’m saying that I doubt you’ve put your big brain to the task of figuring out the female one.”

“Fine. I’ll admit that. Why do you think I phoned you? And what the hell does any of this have to do with what Honey’s going to
wear
?”

“Oh, hey, I’ve got another call coming in that I have to take.”

“Cilla, please.” If he sounded as if he was begging, so be it. “You can’t leave me hanging like this.”

“Okay, okay.” She began talking faster. “I can tell you one thing for sure. If she’s worried about her clothes, that means the person who’s going to see her in them is very important to her.”

Huh.

The person who’s going to see her in them is very important to her.

That rattled around in his head until it was time for the Monday afternoon meeting with his engineering team. Honey always sat in, and today was no different. She took her usual seat at the other end of the oblong table from him―a notepad, a pen, and her tablet in front of her.

Walsh sat in his own chair and indicated to the assembled group that the reports should begin. As the first man launched into the status of his current project, Walsh found himself tuning out the engineer’s voice and tuning in to Honey. Without those glasses perched on her nose, a person could really notice her thick lashes. They were a few shades darker than her hair and made her deep blue eyes stand out that much more.

Unaware of Walsh’s regard, she was doodling with her pen on her notepad. Then the man seated beside her—Tim, one of the newest hires—poured a glass of ice water from the pitcher standing nearby and passed it to Honey. He smiled at her grateful look and then slid her paper his way as she sipped the liquid.

Walsh frowned. The lanky kid—he couldn’t be more than twenty-five—was drawing something on Honey’s pad instead of paying attention to what his supervisor, Arne, was saying.

Though Christ, Walsh could hardly blame him for that. Arne had a tendency to lecture in a droning voice that he made up for in brilliance, and the short emails he’d send after the meeting that would highlight the salient points of his oral report.

Still, it irked Walsh to see the little smile that tipped up the corners of Honey’s mouth when Tim slid the notepad back. When she once again picked up her pen, his eyes narrowed. Were they going to spend the meeting passing notes like schoolkids?

Maybe she didn’t want a long weekend with Walsh because she had a standing date with another work colleague!

At the thought, he shoved his chair back and rose to his feet.

Gazes around the table swiveled to him, and Arne’s drone cut off.

Walsh felt like an ass.

“Sorry,” he said, and stalked along the carpet. “Keep going. I just need some water.”

Honey leaned forward to reach for the pitcher. “Let me—”

“I can do it.” Standing between her chair and Tim’s, he filled a glass while letting his gaze casually drop to the notepad sitting between the two.

The other man had drawn a cartoonish figure on the page that looked to be made of boxes and dials. A thought bubble hovered over its head which read, “What do you call a robot you buy? A robought.”

It was cringe-inducing, right? But Walsh was glad to note it wasn’t particularly intimate or potentially harassing. Honey, however, might consider it cute, and for some reason that ignited a slow burn in his gut that didn’t abate when he retook his seat. The fire smoldered there for the rest of the meeting, adding yet another mystery for his mind to mull over. What the hell was he fuming about?

But when he saw Tim trail Honey out of the conference room at the end of the hour, and that burn flamed higher, he had to wonder.

Was he…was he jealous?

Of that dweeby youngster? No way!

Still, he remained unsettled and moody, and when his phone’s calendar app pinged an hour later he glanced at it with impatience. Oh. Oh, yeah. He had a date that night.

Glancing out the door that adjoined his office to Honey’s, he didn’t see her. Why wasn’t she there when he needed her? Frowning, he went on the hunt, only to find her in the lunchroom—with Tim.

Walsh’s back teeth ground together.

She looked over as he paused in the doorway. Walsh had only meant to ask the name of the farm-to-table restaurant she’d told him about last week. Now…

“I need you to make me reservations. Dinner for two, tonight.”

Her eyes widened. He never asked her to do things like that. “Okay.”

“Six-thirty at that place you told me a vegan would like. What’s the name?”

“Legumes.”

“That’s it.”

“Lydia again.” Honey said it like a declaration instead of a question.

No surprise she knew, actually, because he didn’t separate his business from his personal appointments on his calendar and, as his assistant, she shared it with him. “Is that a problem?”

Her small shrug might have been characterized as disdainful. “Not at all. What would you like me to have ready for you to give her? Candy? A small spray of roses?”

“Uh…”

“It’s date two, after all.”

Shit.
Had she pegged his strategy? He didn’t know what made him more uncomfortable—that Honey was aware of it or that he was so predictable.

Walsh rubbed the back of his neck. He didn’t go to bed with women on the first date. It was a rule he had, one that ensured he could look at himself in the mirror the next morning and tell his reflection he’d distanced himself from the debauched activities of his youth. But second dates were fair game, and he’d found leading off with a little present made his chances of getting laid just that much better.

First date, second date. Okay, that distinction seemed really trifling now.

And hell, he
did
have Honey order the small gifts for him on occasion. He
was
a dog.

“I can take care of it myself,” he grumbled, rubbing once again at the back of his neck. There was no reason to feel so annoyed…or weird about the conversation. It’s not as if the flowers or candy worked every time—and it’s not as if whether it did or didn’t was any of her business.

“No, no,” she said airily, striding past him. “I’ll get right on it.”

He returned to his desk and tried putting his discomfort and Honey out of his mind. But as he shuffled papers, he was always aware of her. The efficient click of her fingers on the keys of her computer, the crisp tone of her voice when she laid a new report on his desk, the sweep of her gaze that didn’t quite land on his face as they spoke.

It didn’t seem a good time to broach the upcoming trip.

Instead, he brooded. The rest of the afternoon he stared unseeing at his computer screen, preoccupied with deep blue eyes and cartoon robots and then the small, gold-wrapped package of truffles Honey dropped at his elbow at about the time she should be gathering her things to go home.

He frowned at her straight spine as she marched back to her desk, then frowned at the chocolates, then berated himself for God-knew-what when he opened his bottom drawer and dumped the inoffensive gift on top of the extra shirt and tie he stored there.

As soon as his admin left for the day he’d pull it back out, he told himself, and have it waiting for Lydia when she arrived. They’d agreed to rendezvous here at his headquarters before heading to the restaurant.

As minutes ticked by, however, Honey stayed where she was, the cute ass he now had burned in his brain firmly planted on her desk chair.

Surly, he called out to her when it was well past five o’clock. “Quitting time came and went, you know.”

Instead of turning his way, she flipped her hair over her shoulder. He caught a mumbled something about catching a nearby spin class.

Splashes of bright color on toned legs. Lycra cupping sweet curves. The fire in Honey’s eyes when she’d thrown her glasses on the ground and glared at him.

He shifted in his seat, desperate for a distraction from that disturbing memory.

It arrived a few minutes later in the form of tall, svelte Lydia Cox. He’d forgotten that the MadSci receptionist would have locked the outer doors when she left, and he was so lost in his thoughts that he hadn’t even heard her knock. But Honey’s focus was sharper than his own, apparently, because it was she who ushered the other woman into his office.

Behind Lydia’s back, his admin’s smile was overly sweet. “I’m on my way, Boss,” she said.

She
never
called him “Boss.”

“I hope your evening’s everything you’re expecting,” she added.

The words were right, but underneath the honeyed—hah!—tone, Walsh thought he detected something else entirely.