How You Remind Me (2 page)

He remembered the first time he’d shown up at Erica’s
offices to sign a contract and had come face to face with his dream woman. He’d
known after ten minutes that she either had no memory of their night together
or she was a first-rate liar. Countless times, he’d dropped hints, but she’d
never slipped, never given any indication that she’d seen him before, much less
had kissed him or dragged him into her bedroom.

Though admittedly, he hadn’t fought that hard. Not until
things got serious.

In the end, he had little to be ashamed of, but she probably
wouldn’t feel the same. So he’d held off in revealing the circumstances of
their real first meeting and instead, had spent the months since their
inauspicious first meeting into a much better second one. But she wasn’t
cooperating.

Until tonight?

A lingering stare wasn’t much of an indicator for anyone
else, but for Kate, it was practically an open invitation for hope.

He missed a string of background vocals, earning him a scowl
from his drummer. He turned his back to the audience, trying to keep his mind
on the music while he wondered if Kate had the guts to check out his ass.

The song ended. The audience applauded. He took a bow, then
returned to the main microphone to introduce his band and finally, present
Erica so that she could run through what he expected would be a very
comprehensive list of activities specifically planned for the entertainment and
enjoyment of the Class of 2002.

His band headed toward the bar. They had one more set to
play, but Shaw knelt down to secure his guitar to its stand when a soft hand
curled around his bicep.

He looked up. He expected to see one of the girls who’d
ignored him in high school, but who’d shamelessly undressed him with her eyes
during the set.

Instead, he saw Kate.

Felt Kate.

She was touching him. Hand to arm. Skin to cotton.

He’d prefer flesh to flesh, but he’d take what he could get.

He tore, “Hey, Katie-gate. Enjoying the show?” out of his
constricted throat.

She smiled.

Smiled?

At him?

“What’s wrong?” he asked, sliding across the corner of the
stage so he could stand beside her.

She jumped back, startled, and then pushed at the frames of
her glasses and straightened her shoulders. “Why would you assume something was
wrong?”

His gaze dropped to his arm where she’d made contact. “You
touched me.”

“I—,” she faltered. “I needed to get your attention.”

And she’d gotten more than she’d bargained for. That brief
moment of her skin against his had evoked a myriad of sensations that had
nearly knocked her off her feet. Or maybe it was just the swiftness with which
he moved or the strong, spiced scent of him, a heady mix of sweat and soap and
man.

He grinned again, taking a jab at the durability of her
knees.

“Katie-gate, not a moment goes by when you don’t have my
full and undivided attention.”

She narrowed her eyes, trying to spot a hint of
disingenuousness. She didn’t spot any, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t simply a
master of concealing his true intentions. She trusted that Shaw was, at his
core, a good guy. But he was also a musician and in her extensive experience,
they weren’t entirely trustworthy when it came to sex.

Though, if he went along with what she had in mind, he
wouldn’t need to be trustworthy. Just ready, willing and able to entertain a
brief affair during the off-hours of her very busy weekend.

But first she had to see if he was really interested and
hadn’t just fallen into a comfortable pattern of flirting with her with total
certainty that she would once again turn him down.

“Why do you do that?” she asked.

“Do what?”

“Flirt with me. All the time. You never stop.”

The lack of exasperation in her voice stunned her. She
wasn’t frustrated like usual…she was simply asking a question.

He gave a quick glance at Erica, as if checking to see if he
had time to pursue this conversation with her before his next performance. Kate,
of course, knew they had at least ten minutes. She’d written the speech
herself.

His hand shot toward her elbow, but out of instinct, she
sidestepped his touch.

Why did she keep doing that? What was she so afraid of?

It didn’t take a psychologist or even a close girlfriend to
figure it out. Shaw represented her past—her wild, reckless past—a lifestyle
that she was glad to have moved on from. Except that when she really opened her
eyes, he was more than that. He was good-looking and talented, but he was also a
long-time friend of Erica’s and a persistent flirt.

And if his flirtations were for real, she might have a shot
at having some fun for the first time in a long, long time.

He held out his hand. “Come with me for a second. Please?”

He gestured away to a spot behind the stage, out of sight of
the crowd and beyond the reach of the speakers. She didn’t take his hand, but
followed until they were semi-hidden behind a potted palm and Erica’s voice was
a muffled murmur of unintelligible words.

“I flirt with you because I want to get to know you better.”

“But why?”

His chin twitched as if he was clenching his teeth to keep
from laughing. She supposed the question was outrageous—and, to most of the
women in the crowd who might have tossed their panties on the stage if their
husbands hadn’t been standing a couple of feet away, crazy—but she needed to
know.

When she’d fallen into bed with musicians before, she’d
dressed and acted the part. As an attorney, she’d been laced and buttoned up
from the top of her slicked-back hair to the bottom of her prudish pumps during
the daylight hours. At night, she’d traded her suits for tight mini-skirts or
short-shorts, four-inch spiked sandals and bold, brassy make-up. Guys wanted to
sleep with her because she looked like an easy fuck, which for all intents and
purposes, she’d been.

But she didn’t put out that vibe anymore. She dressed for
herself, preferring vintage styles from the sexy forties and fifties, her hair
loose and her contacts flushed down the drain. She was comfortable in her
skin—but could she be comfortable with her skin pressed tight against his?

A split second later, she found out. He grabbed her by the
waist, pulled her close and spoke directly against the shell of her ear so that
the vibrations of his voice echoed against her skin.

“You fascinate me, Kate,” he confessed, his voice throaty
and thick. “You’re a mystery and a contradiction and a damned fine looking
woman. How could any man resist you?”

Blood rushed from her head to her feet. She felt her lips
thin and over the span of a heartbeat, fully expected to faint dead on the
floor. And yet, he had his hands so tight around her, she knew without a doubt
that he’d catch her if she fell.

“Okay,” she replied.

He pushed her back so he could look fully at her face, but
he didn’t let her go. “Okay? What does that mean, okay?”

She took off her glasses, folded them purposefully and
tucked them into her cleavage. She combed her hair with her fingers and watched
his nostrils flare as the scent of her shampoo teased the air.

He was being sincere. If she couldn’t tell by the dilation
of his pupils inside those heart-melting baby blues, she could tell by the
increasing hardness pressed against her stomach.

“It means,” she said, twisting out of his hold so that she
could remove her hotel key card from her pocket, “after we’re done here, why
don’t we move this conversation to my room?”

After about ten times of trying to unfold his guitar stand
and shove it into the insulated case designated for its storage, Shaw cursed as
if someone had just murdered his best friend. The band, none of whom had any
idea about the hotel key card burning a three by two inch patch of pain in his
pocket, kicked him off the stage and told him to go home.

Only he wasn’t going home…he was heading to paradise.

Seconds after Kate had given him the key to her room, Erica
had ended her speech. And Shaw? He’d stopped breathing. His eyes had locked
with Kate’s and in those hypnotic green depths, he saw something that he hadn’t
witnessed since the night someone had drugged her drink.

She wanted him.

Her need was unfurled and unmistakable…and this time, it was
without any pharmaceutical influence.

When Erica had summoned him back to the stage, he’d pulled
enough air into his lungs to finish the last set. He’d flubbed the lyrics on
two songs, but pulled himself together by the finale, a hard-rocking cover of
Nickelback’s “How You Remind Me.”

Which hammered home the question: when was he going to tell
her about the night she couldn’t recall? Before they made love or after?

He jogged to his room, showered, shaved, threw on a clean
pair of jeans and a t-shirt and still had no answer. He stepped into the
elevator, still trying to make a choice, when he realized he didn’t know what
floor to press.

But efficient as always, Kate had scrawled her room number
on the card with a Sharpie. He spent the time between floors trying to rub the
number off with his thumb, unable to make up his mind, but certain that if the
card got misplaced, he didn’t want anyone else having access to her room.

Or to her. She was his—finally—for the taking. But he had to
play this right. One wrong word when describing the night he’d taken her home
and resisted her drug-induced demands that he have sex with her and she’d never
talk to him again.

She had every reason to be angry, confused and humiliated. He
could assure her that he’d had nothing to do with the roofie, had rescued her
from some creep with control issues and that they hadn’t done anything she
should be ashamed of—but that didn’t mean she would believe him. For the past
year, he’d been trying to win her over, but his attempts at being funny and
charming and non-threatening had fallen on stubborn ears.

Now, suddenly, without warning, she’d changed her mind. It
was as if he’d signed up to play a gig at a Jazzfest and long after the sound
check, the organizers asked him to play Mozart. He could do it…but not easily
and probably not very well.

When he reached Kate’s door, he decided to play the night by
ear. Flying by the seat of his pants had served him well for twenty-eight
years. Why change now?

He knocked, thinking it weird to walk in even if he did have
a key. A full minute passed and she didn’t answer. Had she changed her mind? His
hand quaking with raw nerves, he slid the key into the lock, waited for the tiny
green light and then entered.

He hesitated just inside the door. The lights in her room
were off, but as his eyes adjusted, he saw her on the balcony, the pink-tinged
outdoor lights giving her an otherworldly glow. She was wearing a silky gown
that draped over her curves in ways that might have left little to the
imagination of a less imaginative man.

He exhaled, standing stock still until she tilted her face
so that he caught her sensual expression in profile. Her hair was lustrous. Her
lips were stained in a bold color that enhanced the creamy paleness of her
skin. He was mildly aware of a sultry tune playing somewhere in the background.
As a musician, he appreciated her theatricality. He suddenly felt as if he
should toss his fedora on the bed and mix a martini before he joined her
outside.

Luckily, he had neither fedora nor gin, so he had nothing to
slow him down.

Once he crossed over the threshold of the open sliding glass
door, the heat hit him from both the inside and the out.

“It’s warm tonight,” he said.

“Sweltering,” she agreed.

He had no idea what she was wearing, but the gown ought to
have been illegal. The neckline plunged. The fabric was so thin, the dark outline
of her areola shimmered through the silk. Her nipples weren’t yet peaked, but
he trusted that once he’d done what he’d come here to do, he’d be able to test
their texture, maybe even through the material, if it didn’t disintegrate from
the moisture of his tongue.

“Nice dress,” he said.

“It’s actually a night gown. I found it at a vintage shop,”
she said, treating him to a slow, sensual twirl that revealed the presence of
two thigh-high slits. “They don’t make clothes like this any more.”

Though his tongue had thickened in his parched mouth, he
managed to say, “A damned shame. You look beautiful, Kate.”

Her lashes fluttered down shyly, but Shaw wasn’t fooled. She’d
planned every aspect of this seduction from her costume to the soundtrack to
her coy demeanor. This was the advantage of falling for a woman who was a
little older and clearly, a hell of a lot wiser. Once she decided to go for
what she wanted, she knew precisely how to turn up the heat.

Kate didn’t want a run-of-the-mill hook-up. No matter what
might have happened to her over a year ago, she wasn’t the type to dream about nameless,
emotionless fucks. She wanted the fantasy, the romance, the seduction. She’d
told him so that night—that night he wasn’t about to mention now.

This was precisely what she’d pined for…sexy clothes,
haunting music and a willing lover with no other agenda but fulfilling her
every sensual need. With the same skill she used to plan parties, Kate had orchestrated
a perfect seduction and he was the scheduled entertainment.

Luckily for both of them, he couldn’t wait to start playing.

Kate led him back into the room. He didn’t need to know that
she owned a half-dozen of these type of nightgowns, courtesy of her obsession
with vintage lingerie. She’d tossed one into her suitcase for the weekend not
because she’d planned to seduce him, but because doing so was as ordinary as
packing her hairbrush.

But beyond that, nothing about tonight was normal. Even in
the old days when she used to go home with whatever hot musician or artist had
caught her eye for the night, she’d never turned the opportunity into a love
scene straight off a black and white movie screen.