Shameless (8 page)

She’d smiled at her and then kept her gaze forward.

It wasn’t so much what she was running from, but what she was running toward.

More specifically, she needed completion on this entire matter before she went postal. And the only thing capable of keeping her mind off Kevin and Gauge was a good visit to the gym.

So she’d gone to the gym on her dinner break, trying to ban her conversation with Kevin at the bar last night and the day full of unanswered questions from her mind.

This was driving her nuts.

Especially since both Gauge and Kevin were now openly going out of their way to avoid her at every turn.

In the beginning they’d been a little subtler about it.

Now, when she entered their sections of the store, they made a beeline for another area, or approached a customer, or took some other sort of evasive action that sent her straight back to the café.

Judging that she’d cooled down enough, she grabbed her towel from the handle and shut down the treadmill, wiping the sweat from her face. She’d had much more alcohol to drink than she’d planned at the bar and now she shook her water bottle to find it empty. She filled it at the water fountain before she headed for the showers, drinking as she went.

It was after nine and the place had pretty much emptied out while she ran. She liked it like that. She wouldn’t be required to make conversation with anyone and thus wouldn’t be at risk of blurting out her current dilemma.

She inwardly groaned and she took another deep drink from her water bottle and then began stripping out of her shorts and T-shirt as soon as the locker-room door closed behind her.

She could just imagine the small town’s reaction to the news that she secretly fantasized about sleeping with her two business partners, and that the other night they’d redefined the meaning of “best” friends. BMC would go out of business overnight. And something similar to the letter
S
would be stamped across the front window, labeling them all as sinners.

But they weren’t really sinners, were they? Okay, so she didn’t know which man she’d slept with, but they were all three friends and she knew it was one or the other of them. There was nothing wrong with sleeping with one of your friends, was there?

Another twenty minutes later she was back at her place, showered and sitting at her kitchen table eating a bowl of granola even as Ernie crunched on his food nearby. But her mind wasn’t on the food or her cat. Instead, she was thinking about the shop’s parking lot and the fact that Kevin’s car was gone while Gauge’s car still there.

Her chewing slowed. Was that music she heard?

Her apartment sat over the music center, Gauge’s area of the shop. And while it wasn’t unusual to hear strains of whatever new CD he’d gotten in, she seemed especially tuned in to the sounds now.

Only it wasn’t a CD, was it? Rather, she heard only a guitar. His guitar, she suspected.

She shivered and tossed the remainder of her cereal then stared down at Ernie who had finished eating and sat staring up at her.

“What?” she whispered. “I’m not thinking of doing anything stupid.”

He flicked his tail as if to say, “Yeah, right,” and then left the room, probably to find a safe spot that wouldn’t result in him being locked in the kitchen again.

He knew that Sasha’s interest in taking guitar lessons had as much to do with him as with any true interest in music. She’d been sitting at the front tables sipping soda when he played at Henry’s lately. And she’d dropped a fortune on CDs in the past couple of months, finding some reason to speak to him about this band or that. He’d sucked up the attention, much as he did with every interested, beautiful woman that crossed his path.

Then, earlier today she’d asked him what he thought her mother might like for her birthday since he was around the same age and any amorous moves he might have made on her flew right out the door with her when she finally left. Especially when he realized that he knew her mother and he’d thought himself at least a decade younger than her.

And perhaps he was. But that didn’t change the fact that Sasha, however innocently, had put him in the same category as her mother.

“Don’t shy away from it, Sasha,” he said quietly as she barely made a C-note.

He put his own guitar down and moved to stand behind her, stretching his left arm the length of hers. It was a move he’d made at least a thousand time during lessons. But now he was overly aware of how close he was to his student.

He left his right hand at his side and pressed his fingers against the tops of hers, forcing the pads of her fingers against the strings.

“Ow,” she said, but didn’t jerk away from him.

Damn, but she smelled good. “Only practice and time will help you develop the calluses you need so it won’t hurt,” he told her. “See mine?”

He held his left hand in front of her. She leaned the guitar against her chest and used both her hands to examine his one. The way she poked and probed his skin made him think of a palm reader. But he didn’t think she was interested in how long his lifeline was.

The quietness of the shop amplified the sound of footsteps in the apartment above the shop. Nina’s apartment, indicating she’d probably returned home from somewhere.

Gauge grimaced and withdrew his hand.

“I think that’s enough for today, Sasha. Why don’t you go on home and practice.”

“But I still have fifteen minutes to go in the lesson.”

“Yes, well, we got a late start. And, anyway, until you learn how to play the simple chords I gave you three lessons ago, we don’t have anywhere else to go.”

It wasn’t like him to be short with a customer. But, damn it, Nina and this whole situation was driving him to distraction.

And having nineteen-year-old flirty beauties who used to make up the bulk of his mainstay mention their mothers’ names in the same sentence with his might be a little to blame for throwing him off his game.

He returned to the cashier’s station and made a notation in the appointment book.

“I’ll discount today’s lesson, how’s that?” he asked Sasha as she shrugged into her coat and then hoisted up her guitar case even though she’d been the one who was almost an hour late.

He followed her to the door, idly watching the way her jeans fitted as he let her out the front door.

“Thanks, Gauge. Same time on Thursday?”

“See you then.”

He closed the door and locked it and then turned around and leaned against the cold glass, considering the quiet store around him.

Kevin had had hockey practice tonight and a dinner with his late mother’s friends after that, having left the shop a good three hours ago.

He knew he should probably follow suit, maybe head down to the bar where someone else was sitting in with the band tonight, but instead he found his feet leading him back to the music center. He put away the music he’d opened on the stand, repositioned the screen for privacy and then slid a Stevie Ray Vaughan CD into the player, turning the volume to low before taking his chair behind the screen. He positioned the guitar in his hands and closed his eyes, feeling at once at peace with the instrument.

And then he began playing.

There was a time not so long ago when he’d imagined music playing the starring role in his life. Traveling. Playing in bands. Perhaps in search of that elusive lucrative contract that would net him countless acres of prime real estate in Southern California.

What he hadn’t factored into that vision was a small town called Fantasy and two important people he called friends.

Friends.

His right hand strummed the strings with more force.

Growing up, he hadn’t had much of an opportunity to explore the meaning of words like
friend
or
home
or
family.
Oh, he’d had his father. At least until he’d essentially drunk himself to death when Gauge was sixteen, his life ending in one of the countless ratty motel rooms they’d stayed in across the country, one no different from the rest. They’d been on the outskirts of St. Louis and it was there that Gauge had buried his father in a small church plot. He and an aging waitress his father had spent the night with before he died attended the burial service.

Then Gauge had moved on. Leading the only life he’d known how to live, driving the beat-up pickup truck—the only thing his father had left him aside from a battered old suitcase of clothes and a guitar—from place to place, town to town, picking up money from playing in bars either as a solo act or part of an already established band. And taking loving anywhere he could get it, leaving the women behind when it was time to move on.

“What’s that?”

The words behind him caused his hands to slow but not stop. He hadn’t expected Nina to come downstairs. But at the sound of her soft voice, he realized he’d been hoping she would.

“Stevie Ray Vaughan,” he said, sitting with his back to her.

Silence. And then, “I like it.”

Gauge continued playing, sensitively aware of her standing behind him.

Until he heard her move….

It was gratifying to have the mystery finally solved. To know the identity of the man who had brought her so much pleasure. Who had opened her closed eyes to a world of sensations she hadn’t known existed.

She moved slowly forward, surprisingly shy without the blindfold. But not so shy that she hadn’t come down in only her white silk robe. Her feet were bare against the wood floor and she half wished he’d been sitting in the main store where the fireplace could have been lit.

Then again, in the main bookstore, they would have been visible from the outside.

Here…

The music center was protected by prying eyes by the CD posters that plastered the front windows to ward off direct sunlight. Gauge called it ambience.

Right now it afforded privacy.

Nina drew even with Gauge, finding his eyes closed, his hands sliding knowingly over the guitar strings with beautiful precision. He was a poet, music maker and lover in one. She’d watched him pull songs out of thin air as if he were doing little more than catching a firefly. Witnessed his trancelike state when he was playing…much like the one he was in now.

She kept moving until she stood a few feet in front of him, waiting for him to notice her.

She’d been in this section of the store countless times. This is where they hosted author signings, where Gauge taught guitar lessons, and where Saturday afternoon story sessions were held.

But now, at night, with the lights down low, and with no one around, it seemed completely different. Foreign. Comfortable. It was set up to resemble someone’s study with a long leather couch and matching chairs, a low-lying coffee table holding CDs and books and coupons for the café.

The guitar playing stopped. Nina blinked to find that Gauge had finally opened his eyes and sat looking at the front of her robe as if he’d seen a ghost.

She smiled. “I couldn’t sleep.”

He swallowed thickly.

She noticed that he didn’t bother to deny that he’d been her mysterious lover.

She ran her fingertips along the inside flap of her robe, then reached down and untied the belt, allowing the sleek silk to fall open and reveal that she wore nothing underneath.

“Nina….”

“Shhh,” she said, stepping closer to him, watching as his pupils dilated, the black nearly taking over the gray of his eyes. “No words. Please.”

She reached for his guitar and easily put it in its stand and then moved into the V of his knees, putting her breasts directly in front of his face.

He groaned and slid his hands inside her robe, grasping her hips even as he pressed his mouth against the skin between her breasts.

Nina caught her breath, the feel of his hands and his mouth robbing her of air.

Ever since that night she’d dreamed of this moment when she might reclaim what had been freely given and then taken from her again. She’d thought about all the things they’d done, and those that they hadn’t, planning to rectify that the next go around.

And now the next time stretched wickedly in front of her.

She threaded her fingers through his hair even as he nudged the flap of her robe until it fell on the other side of her breast, baring her nipple. A nipple he claimed in his mouth, drawing deeply.

A hot, liquid heat pooled in her belly.

She didn’t know where they would go from there. If, indeed, they would go anywhere. All she knew was that she wanted this, wanted this one moment, even if it was to be only one moment.

She knew Gauge wasn’t a man given to commitment. But in their time together he’d given her something no one else had. Introduced her to different levels of sensation that she’d never experienced. And so long as he agreed to indulge her, she intended to take advantage of his attentions. Explore the new emotions and pursue them to their natural end, common sense be damned.

He switched his attention to her other breast and she moved her torso closer until she leaned her bare womanhood against the cotton of his T-shirt. Despite the cool air, she felt hot. Unbearably hot.

And he emerged the one man capable of fanning and then dousing the flames that licked over her skin.

His hands slid from her hips, curving back over her bottom and down until he firmly gripped her. Nina gasped when he pressed her even more fully against him, causing her pulse to throb between her legs.

Oh, yes….