Blame It on the Bachelor (19 page)

“Dev, how did you end up becoming a rock star?”

He laughed. The term sounded so cheesy. “I never was a star.”

“You were—still are—pretty well-known, though.”

“Only around here. We played at clubs and charity events and some weddings and bar mitzvahs. Kylie, we started in my garage, for Christ’s sake. I went on to study music, and I eventually hooked up with some guys who were better than my high school buddies, but it’s not like I was Tommy Lee or Jon Bon Jovi or anything. We never had a national following.”

“Did you record any albums?”

“Yeah. We had three different CDs out. But again, without a big label behind you, you’re not going to make much of a splash. We had some articles done on us in the Miami papers, and even as far north as Orlando, but…” He shrugged.

“You have to play one of the CDs for me,” she said. “I want to hear you.”

“Okay. Later.”

“So when did you decide to walk away from it and open Bikini?”

Dev’s chest tightened, and he felt the familiar dark weight of guilt and depression settle around his heart. He felt tired and gray whenever he thought about Wilbo. “We lost a guy,” he said. It sounded stupid to his own ears. As if they’d misplaced him. “A good friend. My oldest friend.”

Across the table, Kylie swallowed and put down her fork. “Lost him?”

“He died of an overdose,” Dev said shortly. “Right in front of me. Yeah, I know—how clichéd can you get? A rock musician ODs. It’s such an old story that it creaks when you tell it.”

“It’s not a cliché when it’s a dear friend of yours,” Kylie said. She touched her fingers to his. “I’m so sorry.”

“Thanks.” Dev put another forkful of brisket into his mouth, but it could have been a tofurkey for all he cared.

“What was his name?”

“Will. We used to call him Wilbo. He played bass guitar. We went to grade school together.” Wilbo, with his big ears and pointy chin…he’d looked like a demented little elf. Of course, Dev had looked like a giraffe in those days.

“We learned the multiplication tables right next to each other, and long division, too. In Mrs. Clark’s class.” His mouth twisted. “We read all the Encyclopedia Brown books, the Lloyd Alexander books and then the C. S. Lewis ones. We’d pretend we were the characters in them.” A lump grew in his throat, and he tried to ignore it.

“We learned how to play guitar together. Started a garage band. He loved Rush and Talking Heads and—” He broke off before he broke down.

“You miss him.” She said it as a statement, not a question.

Dev pushed his plate away. “Yeah. I miss him.”

She continued to look at him, her gaze unwavering, a question in them.

“I wish that instead of partying right along with him, I’d dragged his ass to rehab. I wish I hadn’t made him play the night he died, but I did. I wanted this record producer to notice us.” Dev cracked his neck, and then his knuckles, right at the table—even though it was guaranteed not to impress Kylie. “He might be alive today if I hadn’t pushed him on stage that night to perform.”

She squeezed his fingers, and he looked down, vaguely surprised.

“You can’t blame yourself for what happened, Dev.”

“Why not? His parents do. To this day, they won’t even speak to me. I’m the one who brought him into the band. I’m the one who got the gigs, created the lifestyle that killed him.”

“That’s not fair. You’re not responsible for what he chose to put into his body.”

Dev broke the contact and scrubbed at his face with both hands. “Maybe, maybe not. I put a lot of bad stuff into my body, too. Why am I alive, and he’s not? Why was I able to walk away from it, and he wasn’t?”

Kylie shook her head. “Only God knows the answers to questions like that.”

Dev decided that it was time to steer the conversation away from this morbid topic. It made him want to drink. A lot. It made him want to smoke. And he didn’t need to do either of those things. When he did, he ended up doing dumb things that hurt people.

“So,” he said with determined cheer. “What would you like for dessert?”

Kylie looked as if she wanted to say more; wanted to keep him talking about this. But she didn’t push the issue, and Dev was grateful.

He didn’t talk about Will to anybody but his buddy Pete, and even that was rare.

“I don’t need dessert, Dev,” Kylie said.

He put the past behind him again and winked at her. “Oh, yes, sweetheart, you do. You absolutely do.”

18

THEY SHARED A chocolate confection and then left for Dev’s apartment. Aside from her feet hurting in the stilettos, Kylie felt loose, happy and more at ease than she’d ever remembered feeling. Dev brought out a side of her that she wasn’t used to sharing. He didn’t allow her to be careful, to hold back. She wasn’t sure what it was about him—maybe his charm, maybe his sheer outrageousness, the way he made her laugh like a loon. Or maybe it was because Dev withheld judgment. He admitted his own foibles and past—so he was unlikely to hold hers against her.

While she and Jack had been used to each other, she’d always felt a mild, unspoken tension with him. As if there was something she should say to fill the air. Or she’d look up to find him watching her and feel lacking somehow, a little uncomfortable. She realized now that he’d probably been comparing her in his mind to one of his airbrushed beauties.

With Dev, what she saw seemed to be truly what she got. He was shameless, but the more she thought about it, the more his speech about the guy in the golf shirt made sense. Jack hadn’t been in love with her. He’d simply seen her as the perfect wife, an accessory to his life.

As she and Dev sped through the streets of Miami in the Corvette, a question rose in her mind. “Remember your speech about the guy in the golf shirt and how he only saw me in relation to him? As fitting the bill, or something. Well, how do
you
see me?”

A slow smile spread across Dev’s face, and he took his time answering. In fact, he pulled into the parking lot of his complex and cut the car’s engine before he did.

He turned to her and traced the outline of her lips with his index finger. “I see something wild, underneath a smooth, calm, lovely exterior. I see a troubled woman who’s been hurt and taken advantage of, and who wants to choreograph and control her next relationship. She wants to be on top, in more ways than one. And that’s okay. She glories in her sexuality but is afraid of it at the same time. She sees it as a weakness when it’s really a strength.”

Kylie could barely breathe as he continued. “I see humor, intelligence, kindness, beauty, grace and quiet ambition.” Dev dropped his finger and kissed her. His lips were light, but they lingered. His touch went straight to her tummy, releasing hundreds of butterflies.

“Bottom line,” said Dev, “I see you as a gift. For as long as you choose to remain in my life. And it is, very much, your choice.”

A lump the size of a Volkswagen rose in her throat. Then she impaled herself on the gearshift while trying to reach him.

“Whoa,” he said, laughing. “I guess that was a good answer.”

“It was a
great
answer.” She climbed into his lap—not that it was easy—and settled her mouth over his.

Dev was hard already. She pressed her body against him and he groaned. His hands tightened around her waist and then moved down to her hips. He moved his own urgently.

“I think it’s time we got out of this car and went into my place,” he said into her ear. “C’mon.”

When she nodded, he opened the door, picked her up and set her on the pavement outside. Then he got out and they walked hand in hand into his building.

HIS PLACE WAS on the twenty-first floor, with a stunning view of the bay. Dev unlocked the door, ushered her inside and immediately went to put on some music. Something soft and low-key. Some Ella Fitzgerald should do the trick. “You like old jazz?” he asked.

“Love it.” She took in the view, and then his spare, modern furniture in caramel leather. He didn’t have much on the walls—a few black-and-white photographs in light wood frames.

“Nice place,” she murmured. “Mind if I use the bathroom?”

“Take your pick. There’s one in there and one back through here. I’ll get you some wine. Red or white?”

“White, please. Thanks.” Kylie moved in the direction of the guest bath.

The kitchen sparkled, if he did say so himself. He got a wineglass out of a cabinet. He had to rinse it because it had been so long since it’d been used. In fact, it was probably the only clean dish he—

“Oh,
shit.
Oh, no, no,
no,
” Dev said out loud. But there was nothing he could do at this point, except brain himself with the corkscrew.

Kylie’s heels clicked across the floor as he opened the wine and poured. “Dev?”

He winced before she even said anything. “Uh-huh?”

“Do you always wash your dishes in the bathtub?” The expression on her face was half horror, half amusement.

He set down the bottle. “I can explain that.”

“You
can?
”

“Yes. Really.”

“I’ll bet this is going to be interesting.” She accepted her glass with a nod of thanks.

And so, while Ella Fitzgerald sang about makin’ whoopee, Dev told her about his MIA cleaning person and his broken dishwasher. “Everything sort of piled up,” he finished lamely. “It all needed to soak, and I was running out of time, so I threw it all in the tub and used about half a bottle of Palmolive. Then I forgot about it.”

“See, here’s the thing,” Kylie said, as she lounged against his kitchen counter. “If you’d pulled the shower curtain, I’d have never known.”

“Yeah. Bummer on that. So…does this mean I get domestic demerits or something like that?”

She laughed. “You cleaned up this entire place for me, didn’t you?”

“Kind of,” he admitted.

“Well, I think that’s sweet. And at least the dirty dishes weren’t stuffed in the oven. They were in actual water, with soap.”

“Right!” he said. “That’s a definite bonus.”

She winked at him, while Ella began to sing about how her heart belonged to daddy.

“Would you like to go out on the balcony?” Dev suggested, moving toward the sliding glass doors.

“Sure, as long as you don’t have all your dirty laundry stashed out there.” But she followed him.

“Not even a sock,” he said with all the dignity he could muster.

At this time of night, the water was mostly dark, lit here and there by boats and far-off cruise ships. The humidity had dropped a little with the sun, and while it had to compete with the stiff breeze out on the balcony, it still enveloped them in its wet warmth.

Condensation appeared immediately on Kylie’s glass. Dev wasn’t a big white-wine fan, so he’d grabbed a bottle of beer. He lit a candle protected by glass and brought that outside, where he set it on a small table between two cushioned lounge chairs.

Then he moved to the railing, where she stood looking out at the water, and slipped an arm around her. As his skin met hers, he felt a slow burn ignite inside him. The breeze blew her hair against his cheek, and he inhaled the scent of her shampoo, which smelled like peaches. She wore a light floral perfume that drew his mouth to her neck, wanting to taste it. And once he’d nibbled there, he moved to her lips, which tasted sweetly of chocolate and wine.

He didn’t think he’d ever get enough of her mouth, the secretive, feminine curves of it that promised so much and yet hid much more than they revealed.

He delved into it, trying to solve the puzzle that was her, seeking out all the nooks and crannies and mysterious little islands. She explored him as well, winding both arms around his neck and threading her fingers through his hair. She kissed him like a woman on a mission, not one submitting to a seduction.

Dev stroked the smooth, hot skin of her back, a wide swath of flesh revealed by her halter dress. He moved his fingers down each vertebra of her spine and lingered in the hollows between them. He caressed her nape.