Authors: Cherrie Lynn
Ross 02 Rock Me (31 page)
“As far as seeing a face, or a license plate number, no. But it was a black SUV with a sticker on the back windshield, right where his Baylor sticker is.”
“Son of a bitch.” Then he winced, glancing at Candace. “Sorry, I know that’s your brother.”
Rock Me
“You don’t have to apologize.”
“I need to call Evan.” He turned and headed for the phone, but stopped dead in his tracks when Candace placed a hand on his arm.
“I need to ask you something, Brian. I understand you’re angry. And I have no idea if this will work or not, but I thought we should approach you first. If Jameson would agree to drop his charges against you and pay you for all of the damages, would you not press charges against him?” For a second, disbelief filled his expression, and she rushed on before she could lose him. “It would do nothing but help our situation. You’d both get out of trouble, you’d get compensated, and…it might help relations between us and my family.”
His brows dipped low over his eyes. “Yeah, and what about that? Are you saying I’m out of the picture if I don’t go along?”
She swallowed and shook her head. “No, I’m not. I’ll understand if you need to do this. It’ll hurt watching you tear each other apart, because the fact remains they’re a major part of my life, but so are you. I can’t turn my back on either of you. I need you to all coexist without driving me to drinking, and this is the only way to make that a possibility. Like I said, I haven’t talked to Jameson and I don’t even know if he’d be susceptible. But if he’s confronted and told his ass is about to go down, I think he’d do just about anything to get out of it. He’s scared to death.”
“Good,” Brian grumbled. “But you don’t seem to realize how hard it’s going to be for me to let this go. I’ve been through hell these past three weeks, Candace. We’re all still exhausted from getting the place open again. Accepting payment for my troubles and turning my back…it’s going to feel like he’s buying us off, when what he needs is to suffer like we have. It’s not just me. It’s all of them out there too.”
“I understand,” she said quietly, thinking that she loved him more at that moment than she ever had before. He was so sincere and devoted to them. There was no question in her mind he would be that way with her, too, if she would let him. “I’m not trying to push you. I was just throwing an idea out there.”
“I’ll do whatever you need me to,” Macy said to him. “I feel awful about this.”
Brian frowned at her. “Wait a second. What were you doing here?”
“Can I plead the Fifth on that? For now, at least? I wasn’t vandalizing anything, honest.”
Candace grinned. “Yeah, except maybe for Gh—
Ow
!”
He couldn’t believe she was here. Any second now, he expected to wake up with his face smashed to his keyboard, having finally succumbed to exhaustion. But so far it hadn’t happened. She was here and she’d just told him news he’d been waiting to hear for weeks.
And she was asking him not to do anything with it.
He couldn’t make a decision about that now, because it wasn’t only his to make. As he’d told her, it was about all his artists who’d busted their asses for weeks helping him get this place cleaned up, who
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hadn’t deserted him to find other jobs. It was even about his brother, who’d argued cases all day long and then shown up here in the evenings, taking time away from his wife and son to roll up his sleeves and get dirty with them. It was about Kara and Marco, whose equipment he was still using for the time being. There hadn’t been time to get his own yet, but he would be taking care of that in the next few days. But on the flip side, it was also about Candace, whom he’d realized he loved more than his own soul. It was about giving her what she needed to be happy and stable and to balance the scales in her life. Macy had left them alone. Candace sat in the extra chair in the office while he perched on the corner of his desk, letting his gaze roam over her. Shimmering blond hair, catching the overhead light in every strand. Downturned blue eyes, as if she was too shy to meet his gaze now that they were alone with their intimate memories of each other.
He cataloged every detail of her, from the slightly accelerated rise and fall of her shoulders as she breathed to the pulse jumping so, so faintly in her throat. He wanted to put his mouth there, feel it throb against his tongue. Feel it race as he touched her.
Without a conscious thought to do so, he went down on his knees in front of her, grasping both her hands. If she wouldn’t look up at him, she could look down at him. Her tiny, surprised intake of breath caught in the air between them. He lifted her knuckles to his lips, aching so hard to touch some part of her. “Being away from you has been…hell. I could wax poetic and tell you it’s been like being torn away from my own soul, or missing a shard of my heart, but in the end it’s been absolute torment. I’m missing all those things if I’m not with you.”
“I love you so much,” she whispered. “So many times I’ve wanted to break down and run to you, but I’ve been doing well. I’m afraid…afraid to—”
“I realize it’s important to you to try to make your own way. I’m so sorry if I jeopardized that and scared you off. That was never my intent. You tried to tell me, but I kept on bullying you, telling you it would be okay, when you weren’t okay. I know you’ve never felt this way before, and I shouldn’t have pushed for so much so fast. I should’ve given you plenty of time to get used to me. I’m fully aware I can be an unendurable bastard sometimes. People make sure to remind me of it pretty much on a daily basis.”
“You’re a good guy, Brian. The people who know you best know that.”
“Not good enough for you. But I’ve pretty much made peace with that fact.”
“Well, that’s good. Too much angst gets tiresome after a while.”
“I’ll try to remember that,” he said, wanting to laugh but unable to force the sound out. Her face held him mesmerized, he was so intent upon reading her emotions. And again, he didn’t want to push. He needed an answer from her, something concrete, or hell, even a
hint
of what the future she foresaw might hold. If she wasn’t ready to give it, he was simply screwed.
“I just don’t know right now.”
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What don’t you know? Tell me and I can make it right.
Those were the words that crowded up in his throat, but if he spoke them, she would only bolt, grab her friend, and leave him again. This was requiring a delicate touch he didn’t have. Naturally, he only wanted to break something. She went on, her voice high and cracking with emotion. “I can’t be the reason you’re punching people out and my brother is running around committing felonies. I can’t go on hurting people because this
wildness
you make me feel is so irresistible that I would forsake them all to be with you. I can’t be in the middle of this anymore. I don’t want to be the cause of all this strife. I won’t be.”
There was such fierceness in her eyes that he knew trying to persuade her to give him another chance would be a lost cause. She was broken, but she was determined.
“Please don’t look at me like that,” she said.
“How am I looking?”
“Like your heart is breaking.”
“It is, sunshine.”
“Brian, don’t!” Her face dropped into her hands, and she took a long breath. He reached over and pushed the door closed in case anyone ventured back their way, then simply sat, watching her and stroking her knee. Afraid if he opened his mouth, he might shatter the fragile mood. Suddenly, she pitched herself forward, wrapping her arms around his neck as amazement swept through him. He held her, breathing in her scent as if it were the antidote to a poison in his veins. Her lips trailed gently over his cheek, seeking his own, finding them, melting into them. Warm, whisper-soft and searching. So fucking sweet. Every sense he possessed exploded, the surge of arousal practically supernatural as he resisted every urge to throw her down and get inside her. Her hands sank into his hair, her body slid forward to join him on the floor.
“Oh my God,” he rasped, trying to catch his breath around her hungry, fevered kisses. She whimpered and shuddered against him, pulling him closer as if she was trying to crawl through him. Her tongue teased its way past his teeth, her mysterious, delicate flavor flooding his mouth. He plundered hers in return, desperate for more of it. He didn’t think this thirst for her would ever be quenched, but he was damn sure dying to attempt it.
That’s why it took every atom of his self-control to reach up and seize her wrists and push her back. She stared at him as if he’d just left a blade stuck in her heart, wounded astonishment churning in her blue eyes.
“No,” he whispered. “Not with all this uncertainty between us.” That delectable bottom lip trembled.
“Trust me, it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my entire life. But for your sake, for ours, I’m going to do what you asked me to do. I’ll lie here on the floor and hold you all night, if you need me to. But if I touch you any more than that, I’ll lose my mind.”
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She blinked at him, a sort of wounded bravado filling her expression. What the hell did he do now?
He’d never felt so completely and pathetically helpless before, not even when he’d pulled up to see his place of business trashed to hell. As Evan had told him then, the only thing to do was wait. Wait on her to figure things out. There were scant few virtues God had seen fit to bless him with, and patience was probably the least of them.
What alternative was there to waiting? Turning his back? Not likely. Not on her. Anyone else and he might’ve shown her the door and breathed a sigh of relief once she’d used it. But the thought that he might bide his time only to have her decide in the end she couldn’t be with him…that thought made his heart seize up in a tight, burning knot.
“I could have you, Candace. I could come barging back into your life and you wouldn’t try to stop me. Even if you did, I could break down your defenses. I could’ve taken you right here on the floor, and you wouldn’t have said no. I could push and seduce and boss my way in. What kills me is that if I did that, you’d be mine. Every natural impulse I possess is screaming at me to do all those things, just to have you. So I’ve got my instincts in a chokehold right now, trying to keep from acting on them because it would only put us back in the same situation we were in before, and you don’t want that.”
She looked at him, her cheek resting on her drawn-up knee. It was another image that would haunt him until he had to exorcise it through his art or explode. He went on. “I don’t know what better way to tell you I love you and I’m serious, other than explaining how out of character you’ve got me acting. You can ask my brother about that. I’m sure he’d be glad to give you an earful. All I can talk about is you, even to him. To all of them out there. They don’t know what to do with me. No one wants me around anymore. The portrait I drew of you is still over my bed, I can’t stand to look at it, but I can’t make myself take it down. I’m a mess over you.”
“You always sound like you’re coping pretty well on the phone.”
“Don’t be fooled. I have to maintain at least some shred of dignity. It’s all a front for you.”
A pained expression flickered over her features, and she crossed her arms over her knees, turning her face into the safe haven they made. “I’m a mess too. I need and want you to barge back in just as much as it’s in your nature to do that. And you’re right, I wouldn’t stop you, if only because I don’t have that much strength now, but we would only end up right back here. So the fact that you’re holding back means more to me than you could possibly realize. Thank you, Brian.”
He’d poured his fucking heart out and she’d thanked him. Sweet baby Jesus, this only kept getting worse.
He rested his head back against the desk behind them, staring straight up into the overhead lighting until he went half blind. “I should get back out there,” he said quietly. “I’ll leave with you in a heartbeat if you ask me to, but otherwise—”
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Candace scrambled up as if she’d been waiting for a chance, any chance, to flee. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to keep you from work.”
“It’s fine. I’m glad you came by.”
“Will you let me know what you decide about my brother?”
He got to his feet beside her, unable to resist reaching out and framing her face with his hands. Her gaze had followed him all the way up, and they were standing so close together her head tilted back as she looked at him. Her eyes were tinged red, her dark lashes spiky, her lips still swollen from the pressure of his kiss. The silk of her hair and the warm satin of her skin mingled underneath his hands. This wasn’t right. She was
his
, dammit. She’d filled in all the missing pieces in his life. If she jerked them out now, he would collapse, parts of him scattered so far and wide he might never gather them back together again.
“I will,” he said, struggling to push the words past the lump in his throat. Past the need to throw her over his shoulder and run out the back door, hold her captive at his place until she finally cracked and swore to be his for the rest of their lives.
Her hands slid over his own and pulled them away, holding briefly before letting go. The loss of her warmth sucked the air from his lungs. “No matter what happens,” she said, “I love you. Just know that if I can’t be with you, it was because I loved you so much I couldn’t burden you with my issues.”
“Baby, they’re not that big of a deal,” he insisted. “When it comes to how I feel about you, they’re nothing. They don’t even play in.”
“Like they didn’t play in three weeks ago?”
“We’ve got him nailed. He won’t strike at me again. None of them will.”
She emitted a humorless laugh. “You don’t know them very well.”
No, he didn’t, he thought with a sigh. As he walked her out to the front so she could get her friend and leave, his mind raced desperately, trying to zero in on a plan. He had to do
something
, for God’s sake. He’d gotten through most of his life sitting on his ass, letting wounds fester, not giving a damn. But he couldn’t do that now. Not this time.