Rock Star Romance: Dan (Contemporary New Adult Rockstar Bad Boy Romance) (Hard Rock Star Series Book 4) (28 page)

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Brooke whistled to herself as she brushed her hair
into a glossy sheen. She had all the time in the world on her hands these days.
She had quit her job soon after returning to New York and was currently searching
for a new job. Handing her resignation letter to Collins just as he had been
about to whip out one of his famous pink slips had been sheer bliss.

She grinned anew just remembering his flummoxed
expression.

As she grabbed her handbag and headed towards the
front door, she adjusted the strap of her leather wristwatch. She opened the
door without looking up and promptly slammed into a brick wall.

All the air whooshed out of her lungs as a pair of
strong, masculine hands shot out to grab her and hold her steady.

Brooke looked up disbelievingly into a pair of
hooded grey eyes and watched in disbelief as his lips canted one of those slow
sexy smiles he did so well.

“What are you doing here?”

“We need to talk. Then you can toss me out on my
ass. Please.”

Longing warred with reluctance inside of her;
longing won and she angrily stepped back to allow him into the lobby.

“Yes?” she said aggressively the moment he sank
onto a sofa.

“First off, I’m sorry for the way things went
down. I never meant to hurt you and I swear on my life I did not seduce you for
any reason other than the fact that I could not help myself.”

Silence.

“Brooke you have no reason to believe anything I
say, but if you will believe nothing else, believe this: I went after you on my
own accord.”

“I don’t understand.”

“My family has an awful secret yes, but I was
never bothered about it. That was always my mother’s headache.”

“I see. And what’s this horrible secret?”

“My dad had an affair right after their marriage
and had me. She has always taken it as a personal kick in her teeth and seems
convinced that knowing he left the reins of the company to an ‘illegitimate’
son may affect the company’s stocks, especially since the family is associated
with strong family values and all.”

It all made sense now. Painful sense.

“I was never bothered by my roots. He loved me and
cared for me, but I think she sees me as a symbol of his infidelity and I don’t
blame her. I understand, which is why I barely go to Montana.”

It was so simple and yet so complicated.

She dropped her head, examining her hands. Then
deciding, she raised tear-brightened eyes to his and said, “I am originally
from Montana.”

She saw surprise flit across his features which he
quickly suppressed.

“I ran away from home when I was sixteen.”

“Why?”

She shrugged, “The usual; drunk mother, weird
step-father and step-brother. They never hurt me but I knew they could one day.
I broke my step-brother’s leg one night and ran away that night. I have not
looked back since.”

Bile rose in Tyler’s throat, “Did they hurt you?”

“No. I was just afraid they might.”

“Why did you tell me that?” he asked.

“You trusted me,” she said simply.

Their gazes clashed, held and no more words were
necessary as she crossed the room to sit on his lap.

“I never discussed seducing you with anyone. Max
might have suggested that at a family meeting, but my sights were already set
on you. From the first day I looked into your eyes, I was a goner.”

Brooke blushed prettily, ducking her head and
making him chuckle in amusement.

“So where do we go from here?”

“I want to get to know you better, Brooke. I am
already in love with you, but I would love to see what more it could be.”

Her heart melted as she gazed into his dark,
languorous eyes and said, “I love you too, Tyler.”

His grin was pure evil as he hauled her closer and
said, “In that case, you’re gonna have to stop wearing those damned pantyhose.”

“Huh?”

He stroked his thumb across her lips.

“You’re going to go insane replacing them because,
I promise you: I will destroy every pair that gets in my way.”

Laughter fled as he replaced his finger with his
lips, kissing her with enough tenderness and heat to make her toes curl.

THE END

“Flight One eighteen
now boarding first class passengers at gate three B; would first class
passengers on flight One eighteen to Puerto Vallarta please begin boarding at
gate three B now?”

Charlie was standing
next to the terminal’s enormous conveyor belt, staring blankly at one spot and
waiting for his vermillion duffle bag to float before his unfocused eyes. He
was distantly aware that he hadn’t moved in a full minute—maybe more—but he was
too absorbed in the task of trying to monitor every change in his environment
to care about how strange he looked. Evan wasn’t around yet to remind him to be
“normal,” so he was happy to keep twitching his ears toward the sound of
rapidly moving feet even though the tiny human bones in his ear canal weren’t
nearly as sensitive as the ones in beast form. He wanted to be alert, but his
eyes were fatigued from the flight, and it was starting to make him jumpy.

Captain Roberts,
please call gate seven; your co-pilot is holding. Captain Roberts, please head
to the nearest courtesy phone to speak with your co-pilot who is holding at
gate seven.

The announcements
were clashing with his train of thought more solidly than usual, and he knew
why; automatically, his right hand moved to the pocket of his jeans, where
Natalie’s letter was folded into a compact rectangle already worn from being
handled so much. He’d memorized its contents, but he kept pressing it to the
tip of his nose to try to drag a few more particles of her scent into his
lungs. Even months into her pregnancy, she still retained the same base scent:
warm honey and sharp, sweet smoke, a heady aroma that warned of an intensity he
knew could be fatal. She was the strongest person he knew, and the brightest;
she often taught him something in her missives or phone calls without even
meaning to, and never backed down when she knew she was right.

I got into a fight
with Ariel while she was helping me pack up the basement because she wouldn’t
believe that bears don’t really hibernate. My mother called and complimented me
on my all-fruit dressing; she usually hates avocados, I was so surprised. Did
you see that news story about all those diners that got sick—can you believe
that waiter thought salt in coffee was a harmless prank? Grade school mistake.

This time, however,
her letters had been cheery but sparse; they lacked the bubbly detail that usually
padded out the thick envelopes she sent weekly, and sometimes even twice a
week. Natalie no longer spoke of her chance meetings with old high school
friends, or whose wife was having a hard time dealing with loneliness; now it
was just pregnancy symptoms and a series of oddly detached retellings of
incidents around their neighborhood. Their last phone call—right before the
plane took off—had been the worst.

“Nat, I know
something isn’t right.” His hand was sweaty so the slim black cell phone kept
threatening to squirt from his grip. Evan was buckling into the seat next to
him and fixating on the threads at the hem of his shirt, but Charlie knew he
could hear every word. “I can hear it in your voice. I see it in your letters.
Evan says Ariel isn’t acting right, either.”

“Charlie, everything
is fine,” Natalie said soothingly for the fifth time in as many minutes. “A few
busted windows, some kids jumping other kids…you know it happens.” The gentle
rasp of her voice was carefully avoiding taking on heavy undertones, but
Charlie could almost see her anxiously winding her dark brown hair around one
finger as she paced around the living room. “We’ll start the move again when
you get here. It’ll be fine.”

“Why did you have to
stop the move in the first place?” Charlie asked. “I don’t understand that. The
boxes were all finished five months ago. You said someone damaged the truck?”
He remembered when he was younger having his property stolen or smashed when
people found out he was a shifter. It was illegal, but it never stopped them,
and the cops were often in on the games, since the shifter population
intersected with the inner cities so often.

“The axle is bent,”
Natalie answered, interrupting his reverie. “I want you to take a look at it
before I get it messed with first. You know I’m useless with that sort of
thing.”

Charlie closed his
eyes, trying to keep the panic from spilling into his voice. His broad chest
was tight with anxiety. “No, I don’t know that, Nat. Are you kidding me? I was
with you when you made our old mechanic cry.”

“And I never got to
know the new one!” Natalie retorted, her voice shrill. “I’m afraid of pissing
this one off, too. Charlie, I don’t get what the big deal is. You’ll be home
soon, and you’ll have all your answers then.” Her forced nonchalance snapped
something inside him, and suddenly he was shouting.

“The big deal is that
something crazy is happening and my wife is acting like it isn’t!”

A red-faced man
twisted around in his seat to look at Charlie after he finished, and Evan laid
a hand on his broad shoulder. The marine swallowed his anger with extreme
difficulty and lowered his voice.

“I’m sorry,” he
murmured into the phone. “But I’m scared. Evan is scared, because Ariel won’t
talk to him about their garage burning down— he had to hear it from Riley.
You’re not telling me what’s stopping us from moving, and I know it’s more than
the truck, because we have more than two friends with trucks and SUVs. And I’m
hearing about people—grown men and women, not just kids—getting beaten and left
in the streets. What’s going on, Natalie? And why won’t you tell me about it?”

The silence stretched
on for so long that Evan turned to look at Charlie, his brown face forming a
question when he didn’t hear Natalie speak. Charlie was about to ask if she’d
hung up on him when she drew a deep, shaky breath and slowly let it out.

“Charlie. I…just
trust me, okay? You’re right. You’re absolutely right, but I need to you trust
me. Okay?”

It was the raw
quality of her voice that finally broke the shell of tension around his heart
and allowed him to relax. “Okay,” he answered. “Okay. I trust you.” Even though
this is killing me.

“Thank you,” Natalie
said, and there were tears in her voice. He realized then that the weight of
holding this back from him was killing her, too. Whatever this is had better be
worth it.

His bag came crawling
by him on the carousel just as he snapped out of his memory, and he almost
didn’t catch it in time. Charlie thrust one long arm out and closed his fingers
around the bag’s thick strap just before it disappeared behind the curtain to
be spun around the carousel again.

“Nice catch, Flax,”
Evan said behind him. He’d already located his suitcase and was pulling it
behind his body as he strolled up to Charlie, his wiry frame far too relaxed
given their situation. “Got everything?”

“Yeah.” Charlie slung
the bag across his shoulders and playfully popped his friend on one of his
narrow shoulders. “How the hell are you so calm, Reynolds? You’re like a
wind-up toy whenever we’re on deployment, and you’re the one who told me about
all the attacks. Are you high?”

Evan grinned and fell
in step beside his taller friend as they headed for the exit. “Just on life,
Flax. Besides, we’re finally home. That means we can get to the bottom of
this.”

Charlie looked
sharply at Evan, whose dark chocolate face was mostly hidden behind a pair of
huge sunglasses, but he could still see the grim determination on his face.
“You sounded…very certain about that,” he said slowly, dragging his green eyes
up and down his best friend’s stoic expression. “Did you find out something
more when you called Ariel in the bathroom?”

Evan gave a single
curt nod that set Charlie’s heart racing.

“Well why didn’t you
say so!” Charlie yelped, and several people in the crowd ahead of them turned
toward his raised voice. He felt blood rush to his cheeks and he cursed himself
for losing control of his volume again.

A man caught his gaze
in the crowd, short and incredibly tanned, with dark blue eyes and a full mouth
pinched together in what seemed to be surprise. His sandy blonde hair was being
lovingly ruffled by a lovely copper-skinned woman with black curls who seemed
to be trying to style his wavy coif, but he was staring so intently at Charlie
that he was ignoring all of her muttered instructions. Charlie felt a curious
ripple of power pass between them, and it intensified as they got closer.
Eventually the charge was unbearable, and he broke their gaze and lowered his
head as they hurried past the couple. What was that about? Charlie thought, but
as soon as they were out of the doorway and under the blazing Southern
Californian sun, he grabbed Evan by his forearm and pulled him into the shade
of the parking garage to their right, the incident driven from his mind.

“Okay.” When they’d
stopped, Charlie pushed both of his hands through his short black hair
excitedly, willing his pulse to reign itself in. “Tell me. Tell me what you
know.” It’s the cops again, he thought. Trying to find a reason to stamp out
the shifters, like last time.

“It’s more stuff
about the abductions,” Evan said slowly, his voice cautious and deep. He slid
the sunglasses from his face, letting his brown eyes pierce Charlie’s as he
spoke. “And it does seem like they’re targeting younger people…but it’s not
just jumping, and it isn’t random.”

“What do you mean?”

Pain and anger
flashed across Evan’s dark brown eyes, and Charlie caught the scent of the
feline beast stirring beneath his skin. “The young men being attacked are
sometimes being taken, and they turn up weeks later across the country, or are
found with their memories gone, and part of a completely different pride. They
can only be identified by their fingerprints. And sometimes they’ve
been…mutilated.” Evan paused and swallowed hard.

Charlie shook his
head slowly, trying to understand his best friend’s implications. “Mutilated?”

“Like…eunuchs,” Evan
finished. “Only some of them, though. And the women…sometimes they’re raped,
and if not…they’re mutilated too.”

Charlie shuddered,
and the icy terror he’d banished from his blood only hours before came rushing
back to fill his veins and freeze his muscles in place. “So someone is trying
to wipe us out with a cull,” Charlie said vehemently. “It’s the lawmen again.
They hate us, Evan. They don’t under—“

“I don’t think it’s
the cops,” Evan cut in, and he dropped his eyes. “The targets don’t make
sense.”

“Evan, they’re
stopping us from reproducing,” Charlie spat. “They’re killing us. They tried
this a decade ago, and I always knew they’d try again. Their targets make
perfect sense. They’re targeting lions, and making sure they can’t ever breed
when they’re finished. Setting us up and killing us indiscriminately didn’t
work so well last time.” Rage was pounding in his ears, and the heat of the
afternoon was finally starting to weigh down his body. “Who else could it be?
Why would you think it could be anyone else?”

Evan looked deeply
unsettled by his thoughts; he even put his shades back on before he spoke
again. “Whoever this is seems to be targeting young lionesses to impregnate
them. Some of the girls are four months pregnant. And the ones they’re
mutilating are…Charlie, they’re already pregnant.”

“Already pregnant?”
Charlie echoed numbly. “They’re…already…?”

Evan nodded. Charlie
stared at him, listening to the blood rushing around his ears as he processed
what Evan was telling him. Someone was beating and raping lions, and taking
their young right from the womb. This was strategic. This was a genocide.

“It isn’t cops,”
Charlie whispered. He turned on his heel and stalked away through the parking
garage, leaving Evan to trot behind him toward their shuttle.

“I told you it wasn’t
cops,” Evan said, annoyed, but Charlie wasn’t listening; he was too busy
assembling the growing puzzle in his mind and trying to formulate a plan.