Hung Out: A Needles and Pins Rock Romance (53 page)

When Derrick had hinted about spending fall break in L.A., she had considered the idea for a week before finally agreeing. Now she studied him with a slant of her eyes behind shades while keeping her face to the ocean. Could she go through with this? She hadn’t been with anyone sexually since that day with Gage in a barn.

Derrick chattered about acquaintances they had in Belize. He had her laughing with some of the funnier stories. They walked the beach, and it seemed natural when he grabbed her hand. It felt good. But she casually pulled away and tried not to be obvious when looking uneasily around for phones pointed at her or paparazzi snouts.

They were sitting in the sand and the sun was beginning a steady sink into the ocean when her phone buzzed. Pulling it from her pocket, she read the text, and then stretched as she got to her feet.

“Ready?”

“Whenever.” He shrugged his agreement.

“I’ve got a paper due when break is over. A guy I know is bringing me by some notes. He had the class last semester.”

“What made you decide not to go to Bastyr?”

Now she was the one to shrug. It had been near impossible to seek admission at the last minute, although she’d been told she could talk directly to the dean and speed things up. With things already going bad between her and Gage, she’d considered going back to Belize. In the end, she had stayed here, in the first place she’d ever felt at home.

In the grand scheme of things, she had decided she wanted to apply her allopathic studies to chemical detoxification in a private rehab setting. Looking through the materials from Shady Oasis had made up her mind.

Chemical detoxification had an eighty percent relapse rate. But, facilities like the one Gage was in, which used allopathic means to rid the impurities stored in fatty tissues, such as the method I’d already used on Gage, had only a thirty percent relapse rate.

 “I’m not sure.” Looking up she saw he hadn’t taken her shrug for an answer. “A lot of things, I guess.”

“A relationship?”

They had come to her car and she jolted to a stop, looking over the top of it as he rounded to the passenger side. “You mean…? No. Logan’s a friend. Only. Believe me.” She unlocked the door and they both settled in.

“You sound almost hostile about that.”

Checking her mirror, she pulled into traffic and then took a second to look over his teasing grin. “He’s Gage's' P.A.”

“Oh.” Derrick clamped his lips closed and his brows drew together. “Enough said.”

She couldn’t help but giggle, and he ran the tips of his fingers over the evening shadow on his jaw. “What happened with him, Scarla? Were you two…?”

He knew about the sex clip. Even before she had mentioned it to him, word had gotten around in their circles. In the course of several conversations, a lot of what had happened since she’d arrived in L.A. had come out. But she’d always just grazed the subject of Gage.

“Yeah.” Turning on her blinker, she eased into the exit nearest her home. “We were. I thought I loved him. But he’s a damn rock star. And he lives the life.” Was that fair to say now that he was out of rehab and onto a better tack? Maybe not. Only time would tell. But it was what was easiest to believe. Different worlds didn’t smack so much of rejection.

They grew quiet while he D.J.’d from her playlist. She made the left from the boulevard into her subdivision, and another left onto her road. Here she groaned as she took her foot from the brake and let the car coast.

He looked up from the songs in queue, silently questioning the outburst. She pointed to the white Accord she was very aware of these days. While she explained, he frowned.

“Why does he seem familiar? Who is that?”

“He’s nobody. A paps who won’t leave me alone for some reason.” She flipped her visor down when the paps guy straightened his squatty frame from his slouch against his car and pointed a camera at the windshield.

From the digging Mike’s investigator had done, she’d learned the man’s name. Wayne Ketchum. According to the PI, he was a new addition to paparazzi faces, and he was more focused on her than other celebrities.

“Don’t look at him.” Reaching over, she flipped the passenger visor down, and remembering the moon roof, she pressed the button, gliding it closed. She knew the late evening sun shining through the top of the car illuminated them even through the dark tint.

“He just looks like… very familiar.”

The gate slid closed behind the bumper, and she eased into her place in the garage. She breathed easier when the heavy door rolled down, cutting them off from the public world.

“Are these people dangerous?”

“Paparazzi?” They continued to sit in the car while she texted the downstairs neighbor who had been formally introduced as security detail shortly after she’d figured it out. “No. Just a nuisance. The ones like him are. But my bodyguard will get rid of him.” She felt her mouth twitch into a grin when his eyes widened.

“You have a bodyguard? That’s who you were texting just now?”

Nodding, she enjoyed the shock factor now when her anger had ebbed.

“Damn, Scarla. This shit is crazy.”

“I know. But the perks are good.” She popped open her door, and he followed suit. “Not slaving at a bar between classes for scratch. Not sweating my tuition, rent, and bills month to month…”

“I have to say,” Derrick ran a hand over the hood of the Camry as he rounded it. “I’m disappointed in you. Any car your heart desires, and you passed on a Beamer or a Maserati, or…” He let the possibilities trail.

“A Tesla.” She supplied, having already thought it out. “I’ll get a fun car soon. It’s just until this Tyler Conterra stuff dies down some, it’s easier to have something that doesn’t stand out.”

“I can see that,” he agreed. Reaching her side, he let his hand rest on the small of her back as they walked. Through a back walkway and garden as the evening shadows fell. Into the back entryway, and up the stairs. Unlocking the apartment, she flipped on the light. The moment the door closed behind them, his arm encircled her waist and he hunched enough to lean his forehead to hers.

“I missed you, Scarla.”

“I missed you too.” And she had. He was easy. And easy didn’t hurt.

She met his kiss, and when it went from a tender reacquainting of tongues to a wild and sweet mating, she pressed closer. The buzzing in the pocket of her jeans took a few seconds to infiltrate the heady moment. “Damn,” she whispered against his lips. “I should get that. He was on his way over.”

“I’ll fix us a drink. What do you want?”

“There’s a wine fridge on the counter next to the fridge.” She swiped open the text screen as he eased away and suddenly felt a prickle of dread when she comprehended the message.

Which meant… Yep. The blinds were still open because it had been daylight when she’d left. With the inside light on, the embrace she’d just shared with Derrick had been clear to anyone right outside in the dusk.

She buzzed him inside the property and strode over to snap the blinds closed. A quick assessment of the road as she did so assured her the paps had disappeared and only Logan had been out there.

Logan stayed for a glass of wine. His astute gaze continually strayed between Scarlette and Derrick. It didn’t surprise her when he subtly tried to learn all he could about Derrick as the three of them talked. She had a feeling the information would go straight to Gage. She tried to tell herself it didn’t matter. Both She and Gage obviously had to move on. But as of yet, she hadn’t been slapped in the face with any of his women in any way. It bothered her that she hadn’t been more careful when knowing Logan was on his way over.

“Thank you for the notes.” She walked him to the door, and then stepped into the hallway. “Listen. About Derrick. I’m hoping you won’t say anything.”

His gray eyes honed in on her face. “You mean to Gage.”

“Of course Gage.”

To give him credit, he looked conflicted and hooked his thumbs into his belt loops. Down the balustrade and back up, his attention wandered before meeting her face again. “I can’t promise that. He asks about you all the time.”

“He does? You mean he’s got you spying on me!”

“No, no, no. Damn no. He asks stuff like if I’ve seen the white car around your house. And if you’re having any problems at school now that Mike’s not going to your classes with you.”

“Oh.” She couldn’t decide if his answer made her feel better or worse. “I just don’t want to hurt him. He’s not hurting me.” If he was dating, he was subtle enough not to have the news splashed all over the rags.

“He’ll be happy that you’re happy. I promise you that, Scarlette.”

“Is
he
happy?”

“Yeah. He is. He’s keeping busy with some new hobbies.”

“New hobbies?” His tone hadn’t given any reason for this sense of dread. But she felt it. Bleeding through her like black ink. “Like what?”

“He went bungee jumping a few weeks ago. Then I guess that wasn’t sick enough. Skydiving was next. He’s done that a few times now.”

“What about his music?” In all the time she and Logan spent together on and off campus, she had refrained from bringing up Gage. Now with the subject open, she couldn’t seem to stop.

“He’s been in the studio a lot with phenomenal stuff. I think Jax wants to sign him onto Jewelstone when all the legal mumbo jumbo with Fire Flight expires. But that’s between you and me. It’s not even close to being official. They’ve just been in contact a lot.”

“Good.” She gnawed at the inside of her lip. She knew enough from her studies that fear was a form of getting high. It stimulated the same hormones. So extreme sports were often a substitution for drugs to a rehabilitated addict. “They’ll sign him. They’re not stupid.”

Logan gave her a squeeze and bolted down the stairs, declaring he was late for a date. She returned inside to find Derrick stretched on the couch with a bag of chips and a bowl of her homemade salsa.

“Damn, I missed this.” He crunched. “Good stuff. No one makes it like you.” Moving his legs by propping his socked feet on the back of the couch, he patted the cushion beside him in invitation. “Look what’s on!”

The flat screen was alive with swimming sharks. “Shark week? In the fall?”

“Rerun marathon.”

Dropping to the cushion, she refilled her wineglass and curled her feet up, leaning her head against the back of the couch and his legs. Flashing the info button on the remote, she grinned at him as she returned it to the table. “So I guess you’ll be up all night watching sharks.”

Lifting one leg, he lowered it in front of her, pinning her in. “Not watching sharks…”

Pinching the crystal stem, she enjoyed the intimate fire flickering in his eyes and the affectionate smile quirking his lips. His attention turned back to a shark battering a caged diver. She emptied the glass a sip at a time and slid it onto the sofa table. When she repositioned with her head on his chest, he combed his fingers through her hair.

He’ll be happy that you’re happy. I promise you that, Scarlette.

Is he happy?

Yeah. He is.

Twisting, she put her lips to his. She halfway expected things to feel awkward and weird, but just like the kiss they’d shared when walking into the apartment, they fell into the natural routine they’d once had.

It wasn’t Gage’s tongue against hers, or Gage’s callused fingers gliding over her skin, but her deprived body hummed with the attention. The sharks were forgotten. The narration of the program dimmed, and the only important sounds were the rustle of clothing and the husky sounds slipping from his lips.

When they separated the kiss long enough for her to shrug from her shirt, she took in the bemusement twinkling along the embers in his gaze. Dropping her chin, she looked at herself, wondering if she was wearing the faded pink bra she’d mended with a safety pin, but no, her cleavage was spilling sexily from her black strappy, mesh Fredericks.

“What?”

“Nothin’. C’mere…” Hooking a forefinger to her chin, he drew her mouth back to his. The kiss raged wild and sweet, pulling a simultaneous groan from each of them. “
That
. That’s what.”

“Hmm?”

“That’s new. I like it.” His lips brushed hers as he spoke.

Realizing he was speaking of kissing techniques she’d picked up from Gage, and that he’d been reciprocating them, she froze. When she couldn’t shake the damn rock star from her mind, she eased a leg to the floor and stood. “Shower or bed?”

“Either. As long as I get to undress you.” Coming up off the couch as he answered, he moved in and pushed the straps of her bra down each shoulder.

“Y
ou truly don’t have anything to drink?” The young woman pursed her lips in a pout as she pranced around the suite.

Since it was around the third time she’d asked the question in one way or another, Gage abandoned the smooth tanned skin he’d been tasting to look up. “You need a drink to suck me?”

“Maybe.” She batted her long fake lashes and simpered with glossy lips.