California Dream (6 page)

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On Lee’s advice, Roddy parked his Maserati back in the ramp at their hotel and they took a cab to the bar on Lake Street. He sat admiring Lee in the backseat all the way there. She was a lot of fun for a librarian. He could tell that under her practical, Minnesota girl exterior lurked a woman who wasn’t afraid to experience life to the fullest, no matter what that entailed. He actually admired the way she tried to suppress that part of herself, though. Too many women he knew thought experiencing life to the fullest meant grabbing everything in reach without discretion, but Lee had once again proven she was different.

He also admired the way she looked in her new dress. It hugged her body and stopped several inches above her knees. Even if she hadn’t told him, he would have guessed she didn’t usually wear such revealing clothes. The fact that she wasn’t afraid to impressed him. She wore the sexy dress with style and grace, not fidgeting or tugging on the hemline.

He was already in love with her hair. He could get lost in it. It was thick and lustrous, and tumbled in disarray down her back when she was still, softly swung when she walked, and he was able to think about little else but the way it had whipped around her head in abandon when they were in bed. He remembered the way her hair had brushed across his chest to softly stroke his skin with her every movement. Then he recalled the glimpse he had caught of her face through the blonde curtain. Her skin had been flushed, covered with a light sheen of perspiration, and little tendrils of hair had stuck to her in a very provocative way.

Their cab pulled up in front of a little hole-in-the-wall bar on a busy, four-lane street, and Roddy smiled. It didn’t look like a rough joint, in his opinion, and he doubted Lee would even know where to find such a place. The neighborhood it was in was not upscale, but it was also far from the ghetto. Still, Lee reached for his hand when they alighted from the cab, and Roddy pulled her close. He would enjoy being her protector.

Was there anything about her that he didn’t enjoy?

She stayed by his side as they walked inside and up to the bar, but she ordered for herself instead of turning sea-green eyes to him and asking him to order for her. She sipped her drink and preceded Roddy to a corner table, scanning the bar with her eyes on the way. She seemed relaxed, and ignored the other men there, who all appeared to be dressed in a uniform of jeans, western shirts, and some sort of boots. None of them seemed overly fond of regular bathing, and Roddy wondered how Lee had come to be familiar with the establishment.

While she ignored the bar’s other patrons, they all took avid notice of her. Roddy scowled at several other men who looked her over on their way to the table, and when he asked her to dance with him on the tiny patch of floor, he was sure every eye in the place was on them.

The music that night was not to Roddy’s taste, and guessed it wasn’t Lee’s, either. It was twangy country-western with topics that centered around drinking, pick-up trucks, and exes, and he amused himself mingling some of the concepts with his own music in his head.

“You look like you’re having fun,” Lee told him when she caught him smiling.

“I’m with you, aren’t I?” he asked, spinning her in a fast circle before she could respond, and then giving her a quick dip before pulling her up against his chest.

He couldn’t read the look in her eyes when they met his. Her face was flushed and her lips slightly parted, body molded casually against his while he turned her around the floor. He found himself wordlessly staring at her while they swayed to the music.

He moved in just a little closer. “I actually believe you, Lee. Most women just say things like that because they think they should, but I get the feeling you don’t say things you don’t mean.”

Her body responded instantaneously to his husky words, and something in the way she held herself against him became more intimate. “I could never be dishonest with you. I feel like I can really be myself with you, in a way I’ve never been able to be with anyone else.”

Roddy noticed that only their hips seemed to be moving against each other by that time. Their feet barely shuffled along, movement more of a suggestion than an actual thing. He felt an urge to grasp her by the nape of the neck and kiss her right then and there, but he controlled himself and murmured in her ear that they should sit back down and have another drink.

He led her to the lopsided table in the corner and stroked her bare thigh while they waited for a waitress to saunter over. He was glad nobody in the little bar seemed to recognize him, but he supposed that would stand to reason since it was a country joint, and he wondered if Lee had chosen it for that reason. The unusual anonymity made him feel reckless and free.

He noted that they were being eyed by another customer from across the room. The man’s eyes lit on Lee with appreciation and then slid over Roddy, sizing him up. Roddy was sure the guy was thinking he was just some punk out trying to impress his pretty girlfriend. He wasn’t exactly huge at just under six feet, and he wasn’t bulky at all. Some reporters had even called him skinny. The other guy probably thought he was an easy mark, and proved the theory when he lurched out of his chair and headed their way.

Roddy’s eyes widened. He hadn’t expected such a reaction from Lee, but supposed he should have known she wouldn’t behave like a simpering, helpless female just because he was there. She was obviously used to taking care of herself.

Lee didn’t deign to answer. Her eyes looked like frozen chips of emerald, and her posture was ramrod stiff. She looked ready to strike.

“Go away,” Roddy said to the man in a low, conversational tone.

The drunk turned his attention away from Lee to look Roddy up and down. Only the fact that Lee wasn’t used to his rowdy lifestyle had stopped him from punching the guy already.

The drunk turned on him. “Did you say something to me?”

Roddy stood and his chair crashed into the wall. “I said go away. She’s with me, and she doesn’t want you bothering her anymore. Get lost before I hurt you.”

The drunk staggered and laughed heartily at that. “Hurt me? A wimp like you?”

Roddy lost his temper and saw red. His arm went back, fist prepared to smash into the other man’s jaw, when Lee suddenly popped up between them.

Her fingers curled over his fist and she leaned into him to murmur in his ear. “You don’t need this kind of publicity right now,” she reminded him, meeting his eyes.

He didn’t give a damn about the publicity. What he wanted was to enjoy a nice, peaceful evening with Lee, without any drunken fools getting in the way, but he knew it wasn’t going to happen if he got into a fight. Only for that reason did he subside.

“That’s more like it,” the obnoxious oaf sneered when Roddy relaxed.

Lee suddenly turned on him and stomped on his toe with the heel of a new strappy sandal. “Get lost!” she roared in his face.

The bartender finally chose that moment to realize there was a problem in his establishment, and reacted in typical fashion: he blamed Lee.

“Hey, buster,” he yelled at Roddy, startling the reeling drunk, who whipped his head around to stare. “Get her out of here. I don’t need nobody starting fights in here.”

Roddy merely grinned at the bartender and took Lee’s arm to lead her away. He never stopped smiling the whole time, until he and Lee were back out on the sidewalk. Then, he burst out laughing.

Lee appeared shocked by his behavior. “What’s so funny about what just happened?”

“You,” was all he could say for several seconds. “I’ve been kicked out of lots of bars for starting fights, but I’ve never had that problem with a date.”

“Ruined it? Honey, you
made
it. I’ve probably been kicked out of more bars than you’ve been in. Like I told you before…”

“You’re not a nice boy,” she finished with a wicked grin.

Roddy couldn’t help it. He grabbed her and kissed her, right there in front of the Saturday night Lake Street traffic and party time revelers. He actually heard a few cheers before he finally pulled back and suggested they get a cab and find another place to go.

They asked the cab driver for a few suggestions, and Roddy picked out a couple of places they passed on the way, so they had been in several more bars before they finally returned to the hotel. Since the incident in the country bar, Lee seemed more relaxed with him, more willing to let go and be her secret, uncontained self. She danced with him and for him, and wriggled her way further under his skin with every moment he spent with her.

“What do you do when you’re not on tour?” she asked him some time later when they lay sated in each other’s arms. “I mean, when you’re not taking road trips to visit me.”

“It’s nicer than a hell of a lot of apartments I’ve lived in,” he told her, trailing a fingertip over her ribs. “And yours is nice and clean. And you have books.”

It was odd, Roddy mused, that he and Lee actually knew so little about each other, since it was so comfortable to be together. They had lots of innocuous questions to ask one another.

Or at least they would if they were going to have a relationship.

It felt so good, so right with her, Roddy couldn’t stop his mind from wondering what was going to become of them. He wasn’t ready to deal with that, though, so he pushed those thoughts away.

The following day, they spent most of their time in Roddy’s hotel room, making love on the king size bed, and once, in his huge, sunken bathtub. It was Sunday, the final day of their idyll. Both were painfully aware of their limits, though they had carefully not discussed them. Obviously, Roddy had better things to do than wait around for Lee to finish work at the library every day, so he couldn’t stay in Minneapolis, but Lee’s life was there. There was really no place for a library clerk in his lifestyle of creating multi-million dollar recordings and going on world tours with his famous band. There was nowhere for their relationship to go, and neither wanted to face it.

They discussed everything else that came to mind, though.

“What ever made a girl like you decide to work in a stuffy old library?” Roddy wondered as they lay naked on his tangled sheets.

Lee smiled and let a hand wander freely over his skin. “I like books, and I’ve actually learned a lot working there. I don’t have a college degree, and it’s hard to find a good job without one. Plus, I’m not talented like you, and I had to work somewhere. It suits me, really.”

When it was over, Roddy found himself unable to keep reality at bay. He knew he should leave Minneapolis in the morning. He had a lot of things to do back in LA, and he had made only the briefest stop at his house before jumping in his car and roaring off for Minneapolis. His housekeeper probably thought he was dead. The only problem was, he didn’t want to leave Lee behind. It would be impossible to go without hurting her. He wasn’t such a cad he couldn’t see she had feelings for him.

And since when did he care about a woman’s feelings? Quite frankly, it was something new. Just like it was unusual for him to not want to leave. Three days in any other woman’s company would have sent him running for the door, and instead he found himself only reluctantly dragging his feet toward it.

For the first time in a long time, Roddy simply did not know what to do. He decided he would figure that out in the morning when he packed Lee off to work, and for now, he would simply enjoy being with her.

He had to tear his mouth away from Lee’s when the phone suddenly, loudly jangled on the bedstand. He was tempted not to answer it, but reached out to snatch the receiver nonetheless.