Who Do You Love (Rock Royalty Book 7) (27 page)

You’re worth bleeding for
, he mouthed.

Her gaze narrowed, and he wondered if she’d read the sentence off his lips, but then she began singing.

And instead of a revenge song or an eff-you song or a song about the next guy being so much better than the last jackass in her life, she sang Eddie Vedder’s “Longing to Belong.”

Her gaze was pinned to him when she sang the final words…“to you.”

His head felt as if it was lifting off his shoulders.

This was no public declaration of liberation.

It was a public declaration of love.

Devotion.

As the last note died away, he heard Payne say with disgust, “What the hell was that? I thought we were here to watch her knee him in the ’nads.”

The rest of the audience remained silent, and as she passed off her guitar and stepped even closer to Eamon, he knew all gazes had gone to him. To them. She stopped just inches short of his knees.

He swallowed. “I didn’t expect…” His hand speared through his hair, and he started again. “You are the bravest person I know.”

“I refuse to let a little pride stand in the way of what I want.” She gave a shrug. “You already know I’m in love with you, anyway. It was no secret.”

“I don’t want you to love me.”
Lie.

She lifted her hands, let them fall.

“I still don’t understand—”

“Loyalty,” she said. “I’m proving mine. Nothing can shake my steadfastness, Eamon. Not your trepidations, not my fears of being rejected. Not even if you walk away from me again.”

He closed his eyes. “Cami…”

“I’ll still be loving you, wanting you, wanting to belong to you.”

Family. Connections. Ties that bind. She was offering him that, all the things he’d felt for her from the first, when he’d created for them the little world during those dark nights. During those dark nights when the mortal had captured the fairy and held her until dawn, until that hour when everyone knew all fairies were free to fly again.

Now she was offering him more than evenings. More than mornings and afternoons. A lifetime. A mortal’s forever.

“I don’t deserve you,” he whispered.

“Then earn me,” she said, with a challenging gleam in her eye.

He laughed a little, looking around at their avid audience. “Do I have to take on your brothers? Or Deuce, who’s already started issuing threats?”

Irish caught his eye. “Don’t blow this, son. Don’t lose her.”

Like his father had lost his mother…because
she
had walked away.

Cami cleared her throat. Eamon’s gaze shot to her. She’d said she wasn’t going anywhere.
Nothing can shake my steadfastness.

“You need to rescue me,” she told him now.

His body tensed. He’d asked that of her at his house the day before.
One time, could you let me take the risk and rescue you?

“Rescue me from loneliness,” Cami elaborated. “Rescue me from heartache, from that feeling I have of always standing on the outside. We can be our own circle, Eamon. Me and you.”

God, she was so good at that. Tapping into the emotional crux of the matter. Because he wanted to rescue her from those things, just as he wanted her to rescue him from them in return.

“Please, Eamon.” Her voice lowered. “I’m longing to belong.”

His resolve broke. Selfish bastard that he was, he couldn’t turn from all she offered, even if it meant forever worrying about her and forever wondering if he could keep her within the net of safety he cast.

Reaching out, he grabbed her arms and jerked her to him. She tumbled into his lap with a gasp, but he didn’t let her catch her breath before he was kissing her, kissing her, promising everything in his power to give. Thunder sounded—a storm?—and then he realized it was the room’s reaction to the happy ending.

Their happy ending.

He promised that too, in the very next kiss.

Later, they found a private corner at the roadhouse. They were going home soon, to her place, because Coda the kitten needed attention, but so many congratulatory drinks had been bought for them that they needed sobering time with mugs of coffee and a cheese platter.

Cami held to his mouth a wedge of swiss on a rye cracker.

Instead of taking the bite, he used his forefinger to trace the vine on her arm. She shivered a little, and he pressed a kiss to her hair.

“Eamon…” There was yearning in her voice.

“We’ll get to that,” he promised. “But first…this new little bird has been bothering me—imprisoned by those sharp thorns.”

She slid the cracker back to the plate. “I finally figured it out myself. It was the old me, locked behind doors at the compound and later, still feeling like things stood between me and everyone else. My performances are like that too, right? Me, up on the stage distant and alone. But then you came along and saw me and—”

“Had my way with you on the desk in the salvage yard office.”

She grinned. “And had your way with me on the desk in the salvage yard office. Because of you, with you, I find that I’m ready to soar.” She tucked her hands under her arms, and with an adorable smile, wiggled her elbows. “Flap, flap, flap.”

This woman. Gutsy. Sassy. Classy. So able to express herself…and so his. Still, he frowned. “If something happens, those thorns—“

Her kiss cut him off. Then she lifted her head and cupped his face in her small hands and stared into his eyes. “What’s a little risk? You’re worth bleeding for, too.”

# # #

Dear Reader:

Thanks for reading! Cami didn’t give up on her mysterious stranger and Eamon is now dedicated to giving her the happy-ever-after she deserves. This is the seventh book in the Rock Royalty series and I continue to revel in writing these emotional and sexy stories.

Interested in sharing your thoughts with other readers? I hope you leave a review for the book
here
.

The Rock Royalty rock on in the next in the series, Love Me Two Times. Adventurer Beck Hopkins suffered a head injury and lost a chunk of time… Could he have forgotten a woman who found her way into his heart?

Currently available in the series:

Light My Fire
(Rock Royalty Book 1)

Love Her Madly
(Rock Royalty Book 2)

Break on Through
(Rock Royalty Book 3)

Touch Me
(Rock Royalty Book 4)

Wishful Sinful
(Rock Royalty Book 5)

Wild Child
(Rock Royalty Book 6)

Who Do You Love
(Rock Royalty Book 7)

Love Me Two Times (Rock Royalty Book 8),
Coming soon!

Rock Royalty Boxed Set – Books 1-3

Read on for an excerpt from
TAKE ME TENDER
, the first book in my Billionaire’s Beach series.

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Enjoy!

Christie Ridgway

Excerpt – TAKE ME TENDER

Billionaire’s Beach Book 1

© Copyright 2015 Christie Ridgway

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Sabrina fair

Listen where thou art sitting

Under the glassie, cool, translucent wave,

In twisted braids of Lillies knitting

The loose train of thy amber-dropping hair…

—JOHN MILTON, COMUS: A MASQUE

One

A good cook is like a sorceress who dispenses happiness.

—ELSA SCHIAPARELLI, FASHION DESIGNER

Slowly threading through the tables of the darkened restaurant, Nikki Carmichael refused to let a single tear fall. No, she wasn’t going to cry, though the night’s last entree had been plated and served two hours before and the last patron escorted out the door thirty minutes ago. For the final time, she’d heard the clear-bell clink of the wineglasses greeting their partners as they were slid into their nightly resting place in the rack over the bar. The kitchen’s enormous stock-pots that had simmered broth all through the dinner service were now clean, their steam no longer able to corkscrew the baby hairs that escaped her braids.

Pausing beside a table, she tweaked a white linen napkin already folded in the signature Fleming’s twist, ready for the next day’s dinner rush.

The dinner rush Nikki wouldn’t be here to see, sweat over, or even swear about, as from now on a different sous-chef was responsible for the production of the restaurant’s elegant meals.

Still, she wasn’t going to cry.

After all, she’d been the one to turn in her resignation. And she’d had plenty of time to accustom herself to the idea of leaving the place where she’d worked since cooking school.

Not to mention that she never cried—not since she was fourteen and her father told her at her mother’s funeral that crying was something big girls didn’t do.
Don’t let anyone think you’re weak.

At the locked door of the employee break room, with nothing left to do but gather her things and head home, she keyed in the pass code and then pushed it open.

“Surprise!”

Startled, Nikki took an instinctive step back and felt that familiar, dangerous doughiness in her right knee. Her leg almost gave way, but she gritted her teeth and fought for balance. The small crowd in the room didn’t seem to notice, and then she was being dragged inside.

Colleen, the youngest member of Fleming’s full-time waitstaff, grinned at her. “You didn’t think we were going to let you go quietly, did you?”

Nikki had really hoped so. She didn’t know how much longer she could remain upright on her listing leg.

But slices of the pastry chef’s celebrated Chocolate Can’t Kill You cake were already set on a rolling cart beside champagne glasses filled with bubbly. The dishwashers, grizzled Joe and his baby-faced sidekick, Carlos, passed out forks. Colleen danced around with the champagne.

“To Nikki!” she finally said.

And everyone there, from the bartender, to the waitstaff, to her favorite prep cook who must have made a return trip just for the occasion, echoed the words, their glasses held high. The enthusiastic goodwill surprised Nikki all over again. She’d inherited her keep-your-distance DNA from her dad, so she didn’t get too friendly with people, not even coworkers.

In the convivial atmosphere, though, Nikki did okay through the next few minutes, sipping at the champagne she hoped would work like ibuprofen. Then Colleen asked her about her future plans.

“Do you have your next chef job lined up? You said you had prospects.”

It took a moment for Nikki to clear her throat of her latest swallow and her sudden awkwardness. “Not, um, yet. I’m still, uh, sifting through those prospects.”

“I have a friend—”

“What about—”

“Why not—”

The room filled with suggestions. Wearing a polite smile, Nikki listened to each of them. Her excuse for leaving Fleming’s was creative burnout, so their ideas ran the gamut from Japanese to Egyptian to a place that touted a Swiss-Argentinean fusion cuisine.

That last gave her pause. Swiss-Argentinean fusion cuisine. What would that be, exactly? Reuben sandwiches?

After the cake and champagne were consumed, the well-wishers walked her out to her car. She was forced to smooth her gait as she headed across the blacktop, pretending for the crowd she had two completely functional legs. She’d never wanted pity, or worse, the inevitable questions: Why not see a surgeon? Surely some doctor could…? There were reasons that wasn’t going to happen.

Once home, in the smallest rented condo Santa Monica had to offer, she called out, “Fish, I’m back,” then limped about to gather a 32-ounce bag of frozen baby peas and a week’s worth of unopened mail. With a sigh of relief, she perched on the recliner in the living room, setting the envelopes on the small table bearing a lamp, her answering machine, and the goldfish bowl.

Nikki switched on the light to cheer the early A.M. gloom, then tapped the aquarium with her fingertip. “How you doing, Fish?”

In seconds, she’d popped off her cooking clogs and shimmied out of her black-and-white baggy chef’s pants. Sucking in a breath, she stared at her knee. Swollen to the circumference of a summer melon, it throbbed with each one of her heartbeats. She slapped the bag of frozen peas on it, then pushed back on the chair to elevate the aching joint.

“I’ll take the anti-inflammatories before bed, Fish,” she said, glancing over at her finned roommate. Her eye caught on the top envelope in the pile of mail. Her name was written in a beautiful hand and the return address was Malibu, California, the famous seaside enclave just over the Santa Monica Mountains.

Curious, she picked it up. Leaving the hectic, ever-active restaurant business had become a necessity, thanks to her injury, but doing something else besides cooking—well, she wasn’t trained for anything else besides cooking. With a wonky knee and a decidedly private personality, she’d hit on the idea of working in a home kitchen where her work space and her contact with others would be limited.

So she’d advertised in L.A.-area neighborhoods where households might be interested in a private chef.

Bel-Air.

Beverly Hills.

Malibu.

Nothing had come of it…until now? Her pulse quickened as she tore open the seal—and then it slid back to a slow thud.

This piece of mail wasn’t what she needed. It was an advertisement—granted, a beautiful advertisement—for a yarn shop, address on the Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu.

Join us each Tuesday for

Knitters’ Night at Malibu & Ewe!

Make a Connection!

Make something beautiful…friends, too.

An enclosed brochure showed the exterior of a cottage-styled shop overlooking a golden beach and an endless ocean. Other photos captured the displays of yarn and a cozy, comfortable-looking seating area filled with women chatting and knitting. There was an open spot on a particularly inviting sofa.