Diva (Ironclad Bodyguards Book 2) (7 page)

“You going to eat those in bed?” he asked. “Cracker crumbs in your sheets will make it even harder to sleep.”

“I never sleep on the bus.” She pulled out a sleeve of crackers, tore it open, and started popping them in her mouth. “I mean, I try buh I’ff nefer—”

He held up a hand as she spewed cracker crumbs. “Swallow first. Then talk.”

She finished what was in her mouth and twisted open the water bottle. “I try, but I’ve never been able to drift off without…” She grimaced. “Pharmaceutical help.”

He shook his head when she offered him some crackers, and tried to tune his anti-drug message to her wavelength. “Pharmaceuticals can help in the moment,” he said, “but long term, they can really mess you up.”

“I know, Mr. Life Coach. Do you think I don’t know that?”

He nodded at her guitar before she could work herself into another sass attack. “What came first?” he asked. “The sound console or the guitar?”

She studied him as she pounded a couple more crackers, then scooted sideways and gestured to the bed. “If we’re going to talk and shit, it would be more comfortable if you weren’t towering over me.”

“We can sit in the other room.”

“I never sit in there. The couches suck.”

He agreed that the couches sucked, but it would be unprofessional to lounge on her bed with her. Then again, he didn’t want to rebuff her when she was finally acting friendly.

When she scooted over a little more, he gave in and sat next to her, keeping his feet on the floor. That way he wasn’t officially in bed with her, right?
Even though you’d love to be in bed with her.

Damn. He was still waiting for familiarity to blunt the attraction he felt for this pink-haired slice of trouble. One night with a real woman and he’d be over Lola’s allure, but he wasn’t dating anyone, and even if he was, he was in the middle of a European bus tour. He rubbed his eyes. It was late, but his body felt wide awake.

“Want me to play something for you?” she asked through a mouthful of crackers.

“Don’t choke on those.”

She grinned and took a sip of water. “What kind of music do you like, Ransom?”

“Classic rock. Grunge. Anything with a good melody.”

Her grin turned into a laugh. “Grunge has good melodies?”

He gave her the bodyguard glower. “You’re going to judge what I like? The only melody in that music you make is
loud
or
louder
.
Fast
or
faster
. Louder and faster is pretty much the apex of what you do.”

If she wasn’t in a teasing mood, he wouldn’t have poked her. But seriously, judging his musical tastes when she made electronic noise for a living?

“I can play melodies,” she said. She handed him the sleeve of crackers, which she’d mostly demolished, and brushed her fingers against her pajama pants. Such a child. Such a mess. She curled around the guitar like she was hugging it rather than playing it, and began to strum some aimless chords.

Ransom listened. His first impulse was always to scoff at her, to belittle her because she was such a brat, but the music she played was…beautiful. It wasn’t a song he knew, but it was intricate and soothing, a simple melody constructed in a plaintive key. Now and again, she hummed along, or sang words he couldn’t decipher. When she finished and looked at him, he had no choice but to compliment her.

“That was cool. Did you write that?”

Even as he asked, he knew she had. She played it like someone would play their own song, with that attentive kind of love.

“I write a lot of songs,” she said. She started on another, a more upbeat number, but stopped halfway through. “My father was a musician in Memphis. A blues guitarist. He couldn’t read a note of music but he could play anything.” She laughed softly to herself. “He made me take music lessons, but the joke was that I never got as good as him.” She sobered. “He died of a heart attack when I was fifteen. It majorly sucked.”

Ransom noted the tender emotion flitting across her features. “I’m sorry. I imagine that was hard.”

“It was, because my mom was already gone and my father was…” She got a little choked up. “He was my whole world, you know? Beale Street and his clubs and music, and his friends. His laughter. He had a huge laugh. You could hear it over everything, even the music. He really lived life. My mom had died, you know, from cancer. I hardly remember her, I was just a little kid.”

You’re still a little kid
, he thought. Maybe this was why she acted so crazy sometimes. It had to be tough to lose both parents by the age of fifteen. He’d read all this in her background file, but to hear her tell it in her sad, self-conscious way ripped at his heart. “I’m sorry,” he said again. “There should be a rule that parents can’t die until you’re grown.”

“Are your parents alive?”

“Yes.” And he didn’t appreciate them, because they drove him crazy. His mom smothered him with selfless love, while his father obsessed about
family
,
legacy
, and
honor
. Every time he visited, they asked when he would come back to church and marry a nice girl, and give them some grandkids. Jesus, like they didn’t already have enough. He sighed. “My parents and I haven’t always seen eye to eye. There were a lot of years I wasn’t a model son.”

“Were they high pressure parents? You could never be good enough?” She eyed him. “That would explain a lot.”

This pink-haired hot mess was going to play therapist? “It’s not that they were high pressure,” he said. “I just didn’t live up to their ideals. I took some wrong turns in my twenties.”

“What kind of wrong turns?”

“The kind of wrong turns that twenty year olds make. I listened to the wrong people and made some destructive choices.” He arched a brow. “Kind of like someone else I know.”

She ignored that dig and started playing a song that was so pretty and complex he lost the thread of their conversation. He was content to listen as her fingers danced over the strings. “My dad could jam like this forever,” she said when she finished. “He came up with songs all day long. Not just the blues. Any melody that sounded interesting. I wish I had half his talent.”

“I don’t know. You’re pretty good. Probably almost as good as him.”

She gave a laugh that wasn’t quite a laugh. “I’m good at selling myself. Playing a role. I’m good at making people dance, but he was a better musician than I’ll ever be. He really felt the music.”

“You feel the music.” Ransom waved his arms in a reenactment of that evening’s performance. “I’ve seen you dance during your sets. You’re feeling something.”

“I mean, I feel it. It’s hard not to feel it when it’s beating you over the head, like rave music does. But there’s really only one emotion in EDM, you know?” She plucked a lonely note. “There’s only happy. I mean, that’s what it’s all about. Get happy, get high, lose your mind like everyone else is doing. You never see sad people at raves. If there was someone crying in the audience, what would everyone think?”

She looked past him, at nothing, still plucking random notes on her guitar.
You were crying
, he wanted to say.
You’re sad. What would everyone think?

“Do you know how to play?” she asked.

“No, I don’t play anything. I didn’t have the patience for music as a kid, although I killed on the soccer field.”

She laughed again. She had the brightest, easiest laugh for someone with so much secret pain. “Soccer, huh?”

“I wanted to be an international superstar, but it turned out you had to be pretty good for that. I got too big, too gangly.”

“Poor Ransom. So you went into security instead, and now here you are, looking after a crazy EDM artist.”

There’d been another life between soccer and security, but he wasn’t going into that. “I still dream about getting the call one day. You know, European leagues or something.”

She smiled, and her gaze slid over his shoulders and chest. He supposed she was imagining him as an athlete, perhaps admiring his muscles. He didn’t go out of his way to flaunt his physique, but it pleased him that she noticed.

He should have done more push-ups. He should have stayed out in the other room. This was too close, and she was too sleepy and sexy and complicated and talented.

“Do you want to try?” she asked.

Try what? Try sex? Try putting my cock in your pussy? Yes. No. Help me, God.
He realized she was talking about the guitar, holding it out to him.

“Um. No. Probably not. I don’t know anything about music.”

“It’s not hard.”

Next thing he knew, she was on her knees next to him, smiling and shoving the guitar into his lap. She lifted his left hand, showing him how to press his fingers against the strings.

“If you learn a few chords, you can play almost anything. All those classic rock songs people love? They’re made up of, like, three or four chords. Anyone can play them.”

“I don’t—”

“No, look. This is E minor. Two fingers, and they use it in tons of songs. Try it.”

She was kneeling against his back, her arms around his, forcing him to play even though he could think of nothing besides the warmth and feel of her body.

“No, these fingers,” she said, snaking an arm around him to correct his fingering. “Okay, now strum.”

She put her hand over his and guided his fingers across the strings. It made a nice, full sound. He knew nothing about guitars, but this one seemed very similar to its owner: glossy and curvy, and full of life. Maybe it just felt that way because her fingers were on his, little twenty-year-old fingers over his big, rough, older-bodyguard fingers. He wanted to take those fingers and twist them behind her back, and bend her over, and…

No. He couldn’t let his mind go there. He was so unsettled by his flagging self-control that he allowed her to teach him another chord.

“See?” she said, like he was already mastering them. He’d forget them by tomorrow. The shock of her body against his? He’d remember that his entire life. “Okay, now put them together and you’re making music.”

She was so enthusiastic he had to laugh, even though none of this was funny. He let her coach him through the progressions. “E minor, C, C, E minor. Strum! Now, guess what, you can play
Eleanor Rigby
with only those two chords.”

“Bullshit.”

He turned his head when she laughed, saw pink hair and pink pajamas and everything that could ruin him if he wasn’t careful.

“I’ll show you how to do it,” she said. “It’s possible for real.”

With her fingers guiding his, they played an iffy, halting rendition of the Beatles’
Eleanor Rigby
. He thought it was pretty amazing. He thought it was probably the most fun anyone could have in a tiny bedroom on a tour bus in Europe in the middle of the night.

Well, almost the most fun.

“You did great,” she said when they finished. “You’re a quick learner.”

He acknowledged her compliment with a nod as she finally slid away from him. “All part of the job. I have to think fast.” He handed over her guitar and stood. As enjoyable as this interlude was, it was his responsibility to bring it to a close. “It’s getting late, kid. You might as well sleep the rest of the way to Amsterdam. We can check into the hotel when we get there.”

She turned away from him, laying the guitar in a worn black case. “I told you, I never sleep on the bus, not without drugs or…” She paused as she closed the lid and flicked the latches shut. “Well. Marty used to hold me. Sometimes when he held me, with the road noise and the vibration, I was able to drift off.”

Ransom was already shaking his head. No. Slope. Slippery. Full of prickly bushes and pointy rocks. “I can’t lie in bed and hold you,” he said, because that was the plain truth. “It’s not part of my job.”

Two bright dots of color bloomed on her cheeks. “Yeah, I know.”

“Not that I don’t want to help you. It’s just—”

“I know.”

“Not professional.”

“Can we let it drop?” Her blush deepened. “I was just telling you that Marty used to do it, and it used to work for me. But he’s gone now, so…”

Ransom waited for the rest of it, some flailing stab at seducing him, or some vitriol about his part in firing Marty, but nothing else came.
Time for you to leave, sport. This awkward silence? That’s your cue.

“Well, good night,” he said. “Even if you don’t sleep.”

“Good night.”

He went sideways through the door and heard it close behind him with a thump. Catastrophe averted. In some horrible way, it was tempting to curl up next to her, but in some other, more rational way, he knew that would lead to all kinds of fucked up shit. She was a client and he was a professional. He was old enough to know better.

He just needed one night with a real woman. That would put all this inappropriate attraction to rest.

Breathe

T
hey had four
days in Amsterdam before the festival, and by the end of the second day, Lola was losing her shit.

No sex. No partying. No wandering around and getting into trouble with the local club folk. Nothing. No fun.

Oh, he’d take her wherever she wanted to go, but once she was there, he was on her tail like a fucking deer tick, and nothing could pull him away. She’d been sure she could score some ecstasy from the team of EDM producers she met with on Thursday, but no. An entire day in the studio, and he was at her elbow the whole time. The producers loved his suit and red tie, and thought he was cool because he never talked. They dubbed him Random Ransom, and needled him to give opinions on the tracks they laid down.

She wanted to scream at him to go away.

As long as she agreed to walk with him during the day—ugh, those walks—he let her go out to the clubs at night, but by the third night she gave up and stayed in, because nothing fun could permeate his iron barricade of control.

It was hard to hit on potential sex partners when a man in a suit was standing beside you scowling at them. And of course, he did everything he could to look like a fucking DEA agent in his fucking business suits, so no one carrying drugs would even look her way.