Love's Rhythm (7 page)

She tore her lips from his, turning her head away. She had to stop this, fight it.

Nick’s fingers found her chin, returning her face to his, at once determined and refusing argument. His mouth captured hers again, his tongue and lips growing fierce. Arrogant.

Fresh pleasure crashed through Lauren. How was she to resist this? No one had ever kissed her like Nick, with such single-minded purpose and hunger. With a hunger that made her feel worshipped and sensual and wanton and desired beyond reason.

No one else had ever made her ache for more like Nick. No one had ever made her very soul sing.

Oh Lord, she was still in love with him. Still in love with the man who’d broken her heart and
killed
the song in her soul.

A chill razed through the heady pleasure trying to consume her. She stiffened, her stupid, foolish heart leaping into her throat, her intoxicated brain finally catching up with her sanity. She couldn’t do this. She couldn’t do this again. It was no good for her. No good for Josh. No good for anyone.

She flattened her palms on Nick’s chest and shoved. Hard. Hard enough to force him back a stumbling step. He stared at her, chest heaving, eyes smoldering. He looked gorgeous and sexual and dangerous. Oh fuck, if he reached for her again…

“No,” she croaked, shaking her head. “I can’t.”

“I bet Josh doesn’t kiss you like that, Lauren,” he said, his voice as strained as her own. He pulled a ragged breath, his eyes half-lidded, his pupils dilated. “Tell me he does and I’ll walk away right now, but I’ll know if you’re lying. I always did. I don’t want to compete for you, babe, but I will. I will show you what this Josh can’t give you, I will reawaken the pleasure I gave you all those years ago until you can’t think of anyone else but me. Until you forget all about Josh and let me make you mine again.”

Hot, tight tension speared into Lauren’s core at Nick’s statement. Her sex contracted, grew wet. Her breath caught at the naked desire in his eyes.

Her chest squeezed at the arrogant conceit of his words. Nick the rock star. The man used to getting exactly what he wanted. Damn him.

She clenched her jaw, tilting her chin to fix him with an unwavering glare. “I will never forget about Josh, Nick Blackthorne. I’ll forget about you the minute you walk away from me—again—like I did fifteen years ago, but I will never forget about Josh. Ever. And you’ll never, ever compete with him.”

Nick’s eyes flared grey fire. “I beg to differ. And by the smell of your pleasure on the air, so does your body.”

Lauren balled her hands into fists. “You will never
compete
with him.”

“And why not?”

“Because he’s my son. Now leave me the fuck alone.”

A calm stillness fell over Nick. His nostrils flared again. His Adam’s apple slid up and down his throat. “You
do
have children.”

His voice registered his shock. Lauren nodded, wishing she was anywhere else but here. “One. A son. I’m thirty-four, Nick. My life continued after you left. What? Did you think I’d still be pining away for you after all these years?”

He didn’t say anything. He didn’t even blink. She let out a disgusted snort. If only he knew the truth of that last question. The pain of it. “That changes everything, doesn’t it, Nick? Making me ‘yours’ again isn’t so simple when there’s a kid on the scene. Kinda brings along a whole lot of extra baggage, doesn’t it?”

Still, he didn’t say anything. But his eyes never left her face.

“Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go. Dinner time and all.”

“Where’s his dad?”

Lauren forced a dismissive laugh from her throat. “Is that any real concern of yours?”

“It is. He’s been inside you. I hate him.”

A deep, hot pain slowly sank into Lauren’s soul. “I hate him too, Nick,” she said, unable to keep the torment from her voice. “And I’m one-hundred percent certain you’ve been inside more than one woman since me, so you don’t really have any grounds for being so incensed, do you?”

“Who
is
the father?”

Lauren’s chest squeezed. She drove her nails into her palms, her mouth dry. “Someone I knew once.”

“Where is he? Here? In Murriundah?”

“I don’t have to tell you that.”

“So he is then?”

Lauren swallowed. “I didn’t say that.”

“You didn’t have to.”

She let out a ragged sigh. She wasn’t up to this. Not now. It was too much. “Can you just go please, Nick? I need to go home and give my son his dinner, make sure he’s done his homework and mark some schoolwork. That’s my life now. You need to go jet off somewhere, sing on a stage, sign some autographs, sleep with a supermodel. That’s
your
life. You may be able to make me melt with your kisses—and you
do
, Nick, I can’t deny that—but my heart doesn’t belong to you anymore. You can’t touch it. The guy who
once
could do that with his songs and his kisses left me a long time ago. Now it belongs to a different boy, one who is waiting at home for fish and chips, who rarely gives me a kiss and will most likely pick a DVD about robot trucks to watch on the telly tonight. And you know what? I don’t want it any other way.”

Nick stood motionless. His gaze held her just as still. She wanted him to say something. She wanted him to say, “Okay, Lauren. I’m going.” She wanted him to say sorry.

“How old is he? Your son?”

Lauren swallowed, her pulse thumping so hard in her throat it was painful. It was the question she hadn’t wanted Nick to ask. “He’s a teenager,” she answered, fighting to keep her voice level. “A hungry teenager. Teenagers are always hungry. Must be the hormones. Now, as I said, I have to go home and feed him. Can’t stay around and chat anymore. Sorry.”

Nick’s Adam’s apple jerked in his throat.

She drove her nails harder into her palms. “It was nice to see you again, but if you’re not leaving, I will. Just lock the door on your way out, okay? Murriundah isn’t quite the same town it was when we were growing up.”

“How old is your son, Lauren?”

The question was level. Steady. Nick didn’t move. Just stood before her, smolderingly sexy, achingly gorgeous and ridiculously famous. Oh God, she didn’t want to answer him. She didn’t.

But you have to. You know that, right? He won’t leave until you do.

“He’s a teenager,” Nick said, his gaze pinning her to the spot, his expression unreadable, “so what? Thirteen? Fourteen? Can’t be older than that.”

Lauren swallowed. Her breath caught in her throat. She stared at him, wanting to flee from the room, wanting to run as far away as she could. Unable to take a step. Unable to stop Nick’s train of thought.

Oh no. No.

“Can’t be fifteen,” he went on, “’cause that would make him…” His voice faded away. His eyes widened.

Her stomach rolled.

“How old is Josh, Lauren? You hate his father. His father’s not on the scene. The only piece to the puzzle I don’t have is Josh’s age.”

“There’s no puzzle,” she said, but even to her ears the words sounded hollow. “He’s a teenager, Nick. Stop looking for something that isn’t there.”

His nostrils flared. “Isn’t it?”

A sour taste filled the back of Lauren’s throat. “Jesus, you and your ego. Don’t you think if you were the father I would have tapped your sizeable income by now? Let the world know
the
Nick Blackthorne has a son? Raising him would be a whole lot easier with a billionaire father, that’s for certain.” She shook her head. “And if he
was
yours, you gave up the right to anything in my life the night you walked away from it.”

Her stomach churned again. She felt sick. Sick and sorry and so goddamn lost.

“That’s not fair, Lauren.”

“Neither is throwing what we had aside for a horde of groupies.” She closed her eyes, letting out a trembling breath. What happened to a quick drink with Jennifer this evening, followed by a weekend relaxing with Josh? How had she found herself skirting such a gaping, surreal chasm so quickly? How had she gone from laughing through
Wombat Stew
without a care in the world to being on the edge of a mental breakdown in one afternoon? How had this happened? And whose fault was it?

Yours? For not telling Nick fifteen years ago what he deserved to know?

She opened her eyes and gave Nick a level look. “I’m going. Please don’t follow me.” She snatched up her trousers from where they had fallen to the floor during their last kiss and shoved her legs into them, refusing to look at him as she did so. “I’m sure if you leave now you’ll get back to Sydney before midnight. Drive safely.”

“Lauren,” he began, but she ignored him. She had to. As hard as it was, she ignored him. She strode from Jennifer’s bedroom, through her best friend’s home, out the front door. The winter night air wrapped around her instantly, turning her flesh to goosebumps and her nipples to aching points of flesh. And even as her traitorous mind reminded her how wonderful Nick’s lips felt wrapped around those nipples, she walked on, leaving Nick standing on Jennifer’s front porch, his stare on her retreating back like a caress she longed to succumb to. She walked to her car, climbed in and drove away. He didn’t follow, just as she’d asked.

And it wasn’t until she was unlocking her front door, a bag of hot fish and chips from Murriundah’s only take-away café hanging from her fingers that she allowed herself the weakness to think of him again, and even then, it was only to wonder how he’d found her in Murriundah to begin with.

“Doesn’t matter,” she grumbled. “As long as he’s not here when the sun comes up.”

“Finally!” Josh yelled from the living room, his voice a deep baritone as smooth as silk. “I’m starving!”

She heard his feet—already an enormous size eleven—thump on the floor and then Josh was in the kitchen with her, complaining about how hungry he was as he tore open the bag of food and stuffed a hot chip into his mouth, his grin just like his father’s, his eyes even more so.

Lauren’s chest squeezed tight. Damn it. How was she to ignore Nick Blackthorne in her life when all she had to do was look at her fifteen-year old son to see him?

Chapter Five

Nick watched the night swallow Lauren’s beat-up old Honda Civic, the taillights fading to two dull red spots in the darkness before disappearing completely. He dragged his hands through his hair, ignoring the chilling winter air turning his flesh to goosebumps. He didn’t know what surprised him the most—that Lauren still drove the same car she had fifteen years ago, or that he wasn’t going after her.

He wasn’t going after her. Shit, was he actually going to let her drive away? After dropping a bombshell like that? A son? A teenage son?

He swallowed, scraping his nails through his hair again. A dull weight sat on his chest. His breath puffed from him in balls of white mist and his gut felt like it was one big, knotted mess. Added to that, an angry pain throbbed where Lauren had smacked his head with her satchel, making each blink an exercise in self-torture.

Huh. Self-torture is trying to do the maths on an equation you don’t have all the numbers for, Nick.

“Well, that didn’t go the way I thought it would.”

Nick started at Jennifer’s voice. Dull pain stabbed through his temple at the abrupt jerk, making him wince. He gingerly turned his gaze to his left and watched her climb the stairs to her front porch. “And what way was that?” he asked.

She gave him a wide grin, reached out and pulled his right eye open a little with confident fingers before he could move. “I kinda expected you both to be lip-locked on my bed, to be honest. That’s why I stepped outside,” she answered, studying his eye with a contemplative gaze. “How’s your head, by the way? Splotches in your vision? Giddy? Flashing lights?”

He chuckled. “No. Does that mean my doc gives me permission to go after Lauren?”

She moved her fingers to his other eye, widening it with a gentle tug. “I’ve seen that expression on her face before. You go after Lauren tonight and she’s going to knee-cap you.”

He chuckled again, staying still as the vet who looked like an exotic princess inspected his eyeball. “Not part of my plan either.”

“So what
was
your plan, Mr. Rock Star, if you don’t mind me asking?” She released his eye and took a step back, her expression changing. Gone was the detached medical practitioner, and in her stead stood a woman wearing an undeniably curious air. But a wary one as well. “Until this afternoon, Lauren had said all of about ten words about you.”

Nick’s heart did a rapid little thud at the idea of Lauren talking about him. “What were those ten words?”

“‘I went out with Nick Blackthorne once. Stupidest thing I’ve ever done.’”

Dull disappointment dropped into his gut. “That’s twelve words.”

Jennifer cocked a dark, straight eyebrow. “So it is. Now give. Apart from kissing her in my bedroom, what were you hoping to achieve by turning up here?”

The protective tone in her voice didn’t escape him. “In all honesty, until I saw her in the playground, it was just to ask her to a wedding. Now…” He let out a ragged sigh. “Now I’m not leaving Murriundah without her.”

“Whoa. That’s a big statement to make.”

Nick shrugged. “What can I say? I aim big.”

Jennifer narrowed her eyes. “And are used to getting what you want.”

“And am used to getting what I want,” he agreed, shoving his hands into his jeans pockets. The cold was seeping into his bones. His breath grew whiter on the night. But he didn’t want to go inside. He wanted to stand here on the porch in case Lauren came back.

Oh, man, you really are the romantic, aren’t you? This isn’t a song, Nick. This is real life. She’s gone and she’s not coming back tonight. Not for you, at least.

He licked his lips, his stare fixed on the last place he’d seen Lauren’s taillights. “Can I ask a question?”

“Shoot.”

“Is Josh’s father around?”

Jennifer snorted. “If he is, I don’t know it. She’s never told me who he is.”

“Have you asked?”

“Quite a few times.”

“What about Josh? Does he know?”