David had come so as not to be rude, but he wasn't in a party frame of mind.
Glancing at his watch for the thousandth time, he caught Abe giving him the side eye. "I have to pick someone up at the airport," he said, cutting off the questions before they began. "Where's Noah?"
"I saw him with that Ethiopian model. The one in the perfume ad where she's half-naked with a tiger. You seen it?"
"Yeah." David was both surprised and not by the news. Noah went through women like some men went through beer, but David had thought he'd picked up an increasingly intense vibe between Noah and Kit, the talented actress who'd been friends with the members of Schoolboy Choir since the start of both her and their careers.
Still, it was probably better for Kit if she didn't get involved with Noah. David loved the other man like a brother, but Noah's loyalty to a woman lasted hours at most. Soon as the sex was over, he was gone.
It was something David had never understood about Noah, because in every other way, the guitarist was reliable and blood loyal. He never fucked around when it came to the music, never made things difficult for his bandmates, had once driven an hour in a snowstorm at four in the morning to pick David up when his car broke down.
And the thing was, all those women? They didn't seem to make Noah happy.
David had brought up the subject once, worried Noah was in a bad place. The guitarist had held his gaze, then tipped his beer in David's direction, saying, "I'm just a bastard, David. It's genetic."
That's all David had gotten out of him, but two days later, Noah had written a song titled "Broken" that had fucking torn out David's heart and become a number-one single around the world. David didn't know how to fix what was broken in his friend, and neither did Abe or Fox. All they could do was be there for Noah should he ever decide to talk.
If he did, David had a feeling it would be to Fox. Schoolboy Choir's lead singer had never divulged what he knew about Noah's problems, but David had woken some days on tour to find Fox had stayed up till dawn with Noah. As if he understood the demons were howling for blood and Noah needed the backup.
"You heard from Thea lately?" Abe's casual question had David's attention snapping back to Schoolboy Choir's keyboard player.
He narrowed his eyes. "Why?"
"Just wondering." A shrug. "Did you see the way she handled that dustup in London?" The other man whistled. "I could almost hear the paps whimpering. I pity the poor sucker who wants to breach her defenses."
"Her strength is part of her and it makes her amazing," David said through gritted teeth.
"I totally agree. I fucking love Thea." Abe shrugged, muscles rippling under the black T-shirt all but painted to his body. "She's got serious thorns though--man will have to be determined as hell if he wants to get through."
David realized he'd been expertly played by his friend into betraying far too much. "Yeah," he said and left it at that, damn sure Abe had figured out exactly who David was picking up at the airport.
He and Abe had been friends since the eighth day after David entered the private boarding school as a thirteen-year-old scholarship student who didn't have designer anything and didn't go to Aspen or St. Moritz on his vacations. Abe, by contrast, came from a seriously wealthy and influential family, one that had made its money in real estate but that also had a Supreme Court judge and a senator in its midst, not to mention a tenured professor and several high-powered attorneys.
The two of them should've had nothing in common. By rights, Abe should've been the kind of rich, entitled brat who tried to beat up on David. Instead, they'd managed to blow up something in chem lab the first time they'd been paired together in class--after making a mutual decision to "improve" the experiment--and had ended up in detention. Where they'd both groaned and said, "My mom's going to kill me."
That had been that. Despite their differences, the two of them had found they not only had strong family ties in common, but music too. David already knew he loved the rhythm and beat of the drums, while Abe had been playing classical piano since he was three, was gifted on the keys. Then had come the fateful meeting with Noah and Fox.
"What's the grin for?" Abe asked, dark eyes curious.
"I was thinking about the choir tryout." All four of them had sung flat and off-key on purpose that day, horrified at the idea of being in a choir. "Remember how Noah kept insisting he was a born singer before butchering the entire piece he was assigned?"
Abe scowled. "Fucker was smarter than I was."
"Yeah." David laughed; Noah's apparent arrogance had so annoyed the choir teacher that she hadn't even let him finish the assigned piece before declaring him "an insult to music." "You almost got yourself busted."
"Give me a little credit--I'd never tried to sing off-key before. At least I didn't pull the 'I come from a deprived neighborhood and don't know what a choir is' routine."
"I'd have felt bad about that," David said, "if the teacher hadn't tried to speak very slowly to me in Spanish." He'd been one of only two Hispanic kids in the entire school, a fact that could've been isolating as hell if he hadn't had Abe, Fox, and Noah as his family away from family.
"You got your own back."
David grinned at Abe's reminder. Making an appearance of wide-eyed innocence, he'd asked to sing a Spanish song for his tryout--then dug out the rudest of the many ditties he'd heard on construction sites when he'd tagged along with his father. "Best part was the way she actually clutched at her pearls when she realized what I was singing."
"No, man--best part was Fox having that coughing fit because he couldn't stop laughing, and Noah 'helpfully' translating for the other kids. That's when I knew we'd all be friends."
"Me, too." Afterward, they'd learned that Noah had picked up Spanish from his nanny as a child and taught Fox. Unlike David and Abe, the two other boys had been at boarding school since they were seven and were already best friends--but from that day on, two had become four, their friendship rock solid.
No matter what happened, they had one another's backs.
It was Noah who'd ended up in detention with David the next time around--after the guitarist jumped in with fists flying against a group of assholes from one of the senior classes who'd thought to pick on the scholarship kid. Turned out the scholarship kid could fight better than the trust-fund babies--and the trust-fund baby David had on his side was a berserker when one of his friends was threatened.
Three weeks later, it was Abe in the principal's office with Fox, the two of them being grilled about a stunt involving a dead fish hidden in the staffroom. That stroke of genius had landed them the punishment of having to clean out the entire room inch by inch.
"Winning the scholarship was the best thing that ever happened to me," David said. It had brought him not only to his friends, but to Thea. "Worth all the extra homework I did to take the tests for it." A teacher had told him he had the brains to ace the tests, and his parents had made sure he had the peace and quiet to study.
"You still funding stuff for your old school?"
"Yeah." So smart, poor kids wouldn't have to leave their neighborhood, leave their families, to get an education equal to that of the wealthy.
Funny thing was, it was only when he'd landed in a school with those rich kids that he'd realized how many of them would trade their wealth for a family like his. For a dad who'd once driven for days just so his eldest son wouldn't have to spend his first birthday away from home, alone. For a mom who religiously sent care packages filled with homemade treats.
Abe went to say something else, but one of their hosts came over right then. David liked Gerald, but he wasn't in the mood for the other man's meandering brand of conversation tonight. Catching David's twitchiness and proving he was a true friend, Abe drew Gerald away with some bullshit story about wanting Gerald's advice on a possible investment.
David used the opportunity to sneak out without attracting any further attention.
No way in hell was he going to be late to pick up Thea.
Finally, they were about to have their first face-to-face date. It should've happened when she returned to New Zealand after her trip to Bali, but her sisters had begged her to stay longer. Since, with the band on vacation, the timing couldn't have been better, Thea had extended her trip.
Impatient as he was to see her, David also understood the bonds of family--so he'd sucked it up and ramped up his memo-writing and the phone calls, ready to meet her at LAX when she flew back home. Except she'd never made it to L.A., going directly from Bali to London to deal with a messy situation for another one of her clients. Because while Schoolboy Choir was Thea's main focus, she'd never dropped the people who'd first given her a shot.
That situation had dragged on far longer than Thea had expected.
Then, a massive storm front had disrupted flights across Europe, leaving Thea stuck in London for almost a week longer than she'd intended.
That was the point where many a man would've given up, believing the universe was against their relationship. David saw it another way--the universe was testing him to see how committed he was, how much he wanted this. The answer was simple: Thea was the woman for him. No ifs, buts, or questions.
He knew.
Now... now he would find out if she could see him the same way when they were physically together. She responded to his words, his voice, but would she respond to the whole man? His hands shook as he put them on the steering wheel of his car... because tonight, Thea could break his heart all over again. And this time, the wound would be permanent.
Trying not to think of that possibility, he started the engine. With all the celebrities in attendance at the party tonight, he didn't think he'd be followed--he was way too boring in tabloid terms, and that was exactly how he liked it. Still, he'd left via the kitchens, having parked the car a block over.
The drive to the airport was relatively smooth for New York. No yellow cabs made suicidal dashes in front of him, and the flow of traffic was steady. Once there, he zipped a gray hoodie over his shirt, flipping up the hood before he walked inside to wait for Thea's flight. It landed five minutes after he arrived. His blood turned into a roar under his skin, his heart thumping.
The wait for her to emerge was excruciating.
And then there she was. Hair down in a glossy sheet of black that reached partway down her back, she wasn't wearing one of the neat, professional dresses that skimmed her body. Instead, she had on black jeans that hugged her incredible legs, a simple top in a rich, dark green fabric that looked as if it'd be liquid soft to the touch, and a black belt that buckled over her hips. A sleek black leather jacket and stilettos of glossy black with a red underside completed the look.
The heels on those shoes were ridiculous and ridiculously sexy.
Straightening from the wall to head to her, he went to raise his hand to catch her attention when she looked straight at him and smiled. A real smile, one that lit up her eyes. It hit him like a body blow.
Sucking in a breath, he met her halfway and couldn't help sliding his hand around her waist to lie on her lower back, his need to touch her voracious. "Hey."
Thea had intended to be tough, to not fall into David's arms like a ripe peach, but God, that smile. Sexy and a little shy and eating her up like she was the most gorgeous woman he'd ever seen. "Hey, yourself." She surrendered her small roll-on case and attached carry-on to him.
Neither one of them said anything further. Thea was a whiz with words, but today her throat was dry, her tongue tied up. You'd think after the explicit nature of their memos and phone calls they'd be over nerves, but oh no. It was a whole different ball game now that she was bare inches away from the man who'd given her erotic dreams so hot she'd woken quivering with arousal.
Leading her to a sleek European sports car, the body a glossy black and the windows tinted, he opened the passenger door for her before loading her luggage in the trunk and getting in himself. He smelled so good that her mouth actually watered. What would he taste like? What would he feel like if they did the things they'd written--spoken--about?
Having waited until after they'd passed the cashier of the parking lot and were stopped at a traffic light, David unzipped and removed his hoodie. Running a hand through his hair as he threw the gray fabric into the backseat, he gave her another smile that twisted up her insides.
She couldn't bear it if he never smiled at her that way again. The months when he'd distanced himself from her, she'd missed him so much. It'd be even worse now, after she knew so many pieces of him, after he'd sent her flowers with thorns included. In the fear, she found her voice. "What are we doing David?" The butterflies grew silent inside her, their wings heavy with worry.
Smile fading, David's hands clenched on the steering wheel. "Have you changed your mind about seeing where this leads?"
Thea half-turned in her seat. "If we screw this up, it won't affect only the two of us. It'll ripple through every one of the people closest to us." But that wasn't her biggest fear. "We could lose our friendship forever."
"Could you stop?" Quiet, intense, his tone demanded attention. "Walk away and go back to how we were?"
Thea thought of the memos she'd saved in a private folder, of the thorn-laden red flower she'd pressed in the pages of her day planner, of the smile that made her breath catch and her stomach flutter, and knew there was only one answer. "No."
"Then I guess we better not screw it up." David reached over to touch his fingers to her jaw before turning his attention back to the road, the fleeting contact a sizzling brand against her skin. "You want to do anything special tonight? If you want to catch up with everyone, I bet they're in one of the hotel suites, eating real food."
Thea laughed through the renewed crackle of nerves, the butterflies taking flight with a vengeance. "Gerald and A.J. serve their pretty but inedible canapes again?" The older couple was flamboyant and hopelessly addicted to the spotlight, but they were also mad for one another.
"I tried one of these bread things with little orange balls on it because it looked the most normal." He shuddered. "After I nearly gagged, Abe told me they were some kind of special fish eggs. I say fish should be allowed to keep their eggs."
Her shoulders shook; David was so not a canapes kind of a guy. "You're hungry?"
"Yeah. You?"
"I could eat." But she didn't want to meet up with the others. Not tonight. This, what was happening between her and David, it was new and fragile and private. "Did you book a suite? Let's go there." She hadn't made a hotel booking, having realized that there were only two possible outcomes once she stepped off the plane.
One: she and David came face-to-face and decided they were making a huge mistake. In which case, she'd have caught the next flight to L.A.
Two: they decided to continue on, in which case it would be pointless to have a room of her own, because if they were together, there would be sex. Weeks of delicious, long-distance foreplay had left her a frustrated wreck. If David was feeling anywhere near the same, they'd spend most of their time together, naked.
Chapter 7
"I have a place here, remember?" David said, breaking into her thoughts.
"I forgot." Probably because her brains were scrambled with a mix of nerves, lust, anticipation, and breathless hope. "How are your parents?"
"I was thinking of going to see them tomorrow." A glance from those golden-brown eyes that kept tangling her up. "Want to come? We don't have to say anything about us--you know my folks like you."
Thea had met Mr. and Mrs. Rivera enough times to realize they were good people who loved their son. "I don't know." She ran a hand through her hair before folding her arms and slumping in her seat. "I don't want to lie to your parents."
"My mother has maternal ESP." It was said with open affection. "I'm sure she'll figure out every tiny detail even if we don't say a word."
"My mother calls you my 'young man,'" Thea said morosely. "Next thing you know, she'll be inviting you to Bali for dinner and asking you if you intend to get a real
job."
David's chuckle was a warm caress over her skin. "Have passport, will travel."
"Don't joke." She scowled at him. "This is serious."
David didn't respond until he'd brought the car to a halt in the underground parking garage of the building in the Bronx where he owned an apartment. Turning in his seat after undoing his seat belt, he placed his arm along the back of her seat. "Your parents were hurt by the breakup with Eric?"
Thea wanted to say yes, wanted to make this simple. But David deserved the truth. "They were hurt for me." Eric hadn't made much of an effort to get to know her family, had insisted on staying in a hotel rather than with them the one time he and Thea had flown to Bali together.
Back then, he'd still been a decent man in every other way and she'd excused his demand as discomfort with a busy familial environment when he'd grown up an only child. She'd figured she'd ease him into it, but the visit had never been repeated. "I don't want either my parents or yours being put into that position. Especially since we'll all inevitably come into contact again because of my work with Schoolboy Choir."
"I don't intend to mess this up." David tucked a wing of her hair behind her ear. "Do you?"
"Intentions don't always matter."
"And starting out believing we're going to fail doesn't give us a fair shot."
He was right; she knew he was right. That didn't make it any easier to jump off the precipice and trust he'd catch her. That he wouldn't watch her fall and bleed.
When you suffer such a big hurt, the longer you permit it to live in you, the bigger it grows, until it seeks to devour your soul.
Her mother's words rang in Thea's mind, wise and smart and a reminder that if she didn't step forward, she'd be stuck forever in the past. "I'll go with you to your folks," she said, her chest painful with a raw surge of emotion. "If your mom or your dad figure it out, then they figure it out. But this time, I'll go as your friend."
Holding his gaze, she said, "Next time... next time I'll walk in as your lover. Okay?" Unspoken was her hope that there would be a next time.
"Okay," David said, his expression tender and his presence so stable that it made the entire world stop spinning so she could catch a breath.