Wicked Flower (11 page)

 
“Damn, less than twenty-four
fricking
hours I’ve been home,” he muttered to himself as
his engine purred to life and he turned the wipers to full blast. “And it
ain’t
even over. Not by a long shot.” He couldn’t help but
think things would have been better had he stayed gone.

Chapter Eight

Dani pulled into the Walton’s
Drug Store parking lot which had begun to feel like her home away from home
after today. The lot was lit. The store was open twenty-four hours. And the
best part … it was quiet.
And Stefan-free.

Just a peaceful
rain breaking through the night sky at the moment.
A crackle of
lightning sparked every now and then in the distant mountains.

With the windows up, she let the
fan run while the engine idled, hoping the air wouldn’t become stagnant as soon
as she turned off the car. Five minutes later and that’s exactly what happened.
Her stomach also chose to gurgle, sounding even more dramatic out in the quiet
night.

“Let’s see if we can find you
something good for a change, little one.”

Dani touched her window, tracing
a stream of raindrops and grabbed her coat. Obviously, this was all being done
as a distraction to the scene she’d just left behind. She bundled herself up
and then rubbed at her belly. She made her way inside to the small refrigerated
section of the drug store and pulled out a small jug of whole milk and a
package of string cheese. She started to make her way to the front of the store
to the checkout area but decided she had some time to kill since she was in no
way heading back to Mrs. C’s anytime soon. Two weeks he’d be there, she
reminded herself. But really, she had no idea how she’d stay gone that long. She
loved Gina like a mom. She’d call Daisy in the morning to see about shacking up
for now and figure the rest out later. Yeah, her pain and humiliation was that
bad.

“Congratulations May 25th. You
won. Now please leave me alone,” she grumbled out. An employee straightening
shelves hiked his eyebrows at her.

Dani twisted her mouth, ignored
him, and found the magazines. She never bought any of this stuff because let’s
face
it,
she didn’t have money to waste, especially
after the self-imposed pay cut she’d just given herself. But her browsing
always began at hairstyles, then fashion and without fail, ended on the manly
fitness magazines with the buffed-out, cut-steel physiques of male body
builders. But tucked behind the
Glazmo
issues, she spied the heading for
Guitar Freak
s and the unmistakable jagged
heart of the Sin Pointe logo. She grabbed it out of pure curiosity.

Stefan Calderon’s deep, dark
honey gaze, made all the more intense rimmed by smudged black liner, tormented
her like the silly magazine cover had magical powers. In his hands, he held of
all things, a white guitar. A bass, she supposed, since that’s what the article
title said. The thumb and pointer finger of his right hand rested over two of
the lower strings while his left cupped it at the top near the neck by a pearly
butterfly logo. Clearly, he loved his instrument by the way he gazed down at
his hands on it.

She knew the feeling of those
hands. That gaze. Those rough fingertips.

Dani nearly dropped the magazine
and went to put it back down but couldn’t. This was a part of him she didn’t
know anything about. She read the cover headline again. It said there was an
interview with “A rare breed, the bass playing lead singer.”

Eager to find out more, she
thumbed to Stefan’s article where a few of his statements had been set apart
from the rest of the text. Her eyes went to those first.

“
The trick is to sing melodies that are in rhythm with the bass. Once
you figure that out, it’s not too hard to sing and play. Nah, that’s a lie.
It’s still hard as shit but it’s my thing so I practice.
A
lot.”

He was a hard worker and cared
about something. She could have guessed at that.

“No
idea where that one got started. There are plenty of better places I can think
of to do that than on a bean bag.”

Oh, she was going to have to read
this entire article and find out what that snippet was about. But before she
folded it closed, she saw this last one.

“I
guess I am famous for saying that. Shit, we all have regrets, right?”

 
The glossy magazine cost as much as her
milk but this was going to be her distraction for the next few hours. And even
though she knew that man, intimately in a way, she didn’t recognize him at all.
Dressed head to toe in tight white clothing that showed every contour of every
muscle on his long body, his dark waves she knew to be soft to the touch looked
more like wild barbed wire. This Stefan Calderon seemed unreal. But his words,
those were unmistakably human.

Dani left her money on the
counter and then paid for her snacks and distractions.
Paid
for them dearly.
The baby needed the milk yet she was lactose
intolerant. Her mind needed a clean break from men, yet she couldn’t wait to
sit down in her car and stare into those wicked, absorbing eyes. She was also Stefan
Calderon
intolerant, that
much was for damn sure. Maybe
when she asked for a calcium supplement at her OB check-up, she’d see if there
was anything they could give her to combat her Superman problem.

Dodging raindrops that had picked
up in size and intensity during her shopping excursion, she quickly climbed
into the Buick, turned on the engine and let the wipers clear her windshield. Turning
sideways in her seat and tucking her legs as best she could, she pulled the
interview out of the bag and found Stefan’s pages. It was too dark to read easily
but she squinted and found a spot illuminated just enough by one of the parking
lot lights. She should at least call Daisy but the drive over would be total crap
right now. It would have to wait until morning. She hunkered down in her front
seat.

She read a few lines then glanced
at the close-up of his black-rimmed, chocolate eyes.

Then a few more and the zoomed in
shot of his white bass, a
Fodera
,
which she
mistook for the word Fedora at first, strung at hip level and his fingers
falling naturally against the wiry strings.

Headlights nearly blinded her
through the front window and she lost her place.

If she didn’t know any better,
she’d swear a white Mercedes was pulling forward. The Tennessee plates
confirmed that. It stopped beside her.

Her muscles tightened and it took
all she had not to start sobbing.

“You won, I said you won,” she
whimpered, leaving the magazine on the seat.

****

What was this one’s game?

Once he figured that out, he’d be
okay. Did she want him? Did she hate him? Was it both? What did every person
who’d ever played a game want to know?

The rules?

Sure, those would be nice but not
necessary. He wanted to know the end result.

Was this winnable? No hearts, no
strings. Just the peace of the moment they could have together. No hurt
feelings.

Dani sat where he preferred her
for the moment, safely inside her car. Stefan’s confidence leaped.
Because she wasn’t on the outside, affecting him and saying no to
him, tormenting him.
She couldn’t walk away from him in there. She’d
already tested his very last limit. Was he a fool to think the thin glass was
really going to keep him safe from her? Wait, who needed safe-keeping?

With her there, he was in
control. He was the one who could call the shots and act like this was simply a
game of attraction. So what if that was complete bullshit? Stefan wished his
band brothers were there with him now. He could really use a well meant kick in
the ass and the reminder that life could be very real.

Will would
tell him love
is the one thing you don’t keep hidden in the dark.

The band’s brilliant webmaster, Benny,
and his patience that Stefan was so fucking jealous of, would remind him to
ease up and play it cool.
 

Good ole Marion would take him
out for a beer and some pool. Problem solved.

Jaxon.
Man, Jaxon who
had survived so much crap the last twenty years they’d been in the band
together. Tragic shit. The Aussie still battled his demons but he smiled most every
day now. Stefan knew Jaxon’s wife and daughter, his girls, did that for him.

Was Stefan ready to listen? Way
back, like all the way back in his mind, he wondered if maybe it was time to
consider quitting the game. There was something about seeing her in there,
protecting what was hers.

One thing he couldn’t do was
stand out here all night. Rain soaked through his hair and began to do the same
to his shirt.

He stepped up to her car, leaned
in and tapped on her passenger side window but she clearly mouthed the word
No
.

Fine, he could be creative when
he wanted something and felt bad for how he’d already treated her. He leaned
closer and then wrote through the raindrops on the window with his finger,
TALK.

Nothing.

He tried again. PLEASE.

Zilch.

His head dipped and he tried once
more. If she didn’t go for this one, he was done. This didn’t mean anything to
her and it shouldn’t mean anything to him.

Instead of using his finger to
write, he leaned down, and then pressed a kiss to the glass. The rain felt nice
on his dry lips. He probably looked foolish but luckily he didn’t care right
now. He took a step back and waited. It took a few seconds, but the lock
sounded with a pop. He tried the handle.

She’d let him in.

Exhilaration at the clear win
spiked his pulse for a moment until he realized something.

They had to talk and he doubted
Dani was going to like anything he had to say.

****

Stefan Calderon could do her a
favor and let this day end.
Like it should have a few hours
ago.
Why couldn’t he have let her do her nightly puking and then gone to
hide up in her bedroom? Why did he have to look at her the way he did? And the
way he teased her, it was like he was the sour green apples and the damn
delicious pie they turned into all within a moment’s notice.
 
 

He was being cruel and adorable
which she had learned the past twelve hours had to be the man’s nature. It was
hard to believe he was Gina’s son. The finger writing reminded her how wet it
was outside. Each time he stroked his finger to make a new letter on the glass,
she had nowhere to go but crawling back to images of them in the bathroom stall
and his magic hands.
His warm, strong chest.
The soft
black curls topping his wicked angel’s head. No, he was no angel.

She wasn’t opening the door.

He should go home.

Back to his mom
who rarely got excited but had smiled more than usual this past week.
Then he leaned
in and all she could see were his puckered lips, pressed against the glass.

Soft yet hard,
cinnamon.
Wet.
Hungry lips.
Alive and male,
not just a photo in a magazine.

What did he want? To pick up
where they’d left off?

He’d proven enough and made her
feel incredibly sexy in those split seconds of their kiss and play, she’d
decided that much. With recent events, that would have to be enough. Now she
was left with the daunting reminder that he paid her paycheck. She couldn’t get
that out of her head no matter how hard she tried. She glanced down at the rock
star on the page and then back up at the man standing out in the rain.

Which was he?
Boss,
friend, forbidden?
Those waters were so murky, her head spun.

But this kiss print he’d left on
her window meant something. She wasn’t sure what or why. Lucky for him, Dani’s
heart wasn’t in the business of hurting others, no matter how battered and
bruised it was right now. In other words, she was a sucker for this man.

He wiped at his face as rain fell
from his sleek black waves, made straighter from the water. God, his brooding
brand of sexy killed her.

She pushed the unlock button and
the doors popped open.

He quickly hopped inside and sat
on her magazine before she could remove it. Maybe he hadn’t seen it and she’d
be spared the embarrassment. He dried his hands on the thighs of his jeans
while she cringed, mentally crossing fingers he couldn’t feel it under his ass.

“Thank you,” he said.

She just nodded.

“Would it kill you to say you’re
welcome?” he asked.

She would have under different
circumstances.

“So this lot.
It’s nice. If I
was
gonna
be a stubborn pain in the ass, I’d have
picked it too,” he said, not giving up.