Lead (3 page)

“You work for me! I pay your salary. You answer to me.” He jabbed himself in the chest with a finger to emphasize the point. “Remember?”

“Yes. But I will not get you a drink. Make all the threats you like.” My voice wavered but I didn’t back down. “That is never going to happen. Never.”

He growled.

“Jimmy, you need to calm down now.”

His jaw tightened and his nostrils flared.

“I don’t want to bring anyone else into this. But I’m reaching that point. So please calm down.”

“Fuck!” The war he waged to control himself played out over his perfect face. With hands on hips, he stared down at me. For a long moment he said nothing, his harsh breathing the only sound in the room. “Please, Lena.”

“No.” Shit, I did not sound convincing. I balled my hands up against my stomach, summoning up some strength. “NO.”

“Please,” he pleaded again, eyes rimmed red. “No one needs to find out. It’ll just be between you and me. I need something to take the edge off. Lori was … she was important to me.”

“I know and I’m sorry you lost her. But drinking isn’t going to help,” I said, scrambling to remember all the wise words I’d read on the Internet. But my blood pounded making it impossible to think straight. I might not be scared of him, but I was terrified for him. He couldn’t fail. I wouldn’t let him. “Drinking is a temporary fix that’ll only make things harder in the long run. You know that. You can get through today. You can.”

“We’re going to put her in the ground.” His voice cracked and he slumped back onto the chair. “She fed us, Lena. When there was nothing at home, she sat Davie and me down at her table and she fed us. Treated us like we were her own.”

“Oh, Jimmy …”

“I-I can’t do this.”

Apparently, neither could I. And to prove it, I stood there utterly useless, my heart breaking for him. I’d wondered what had happened to make him so hard. Of course I had. But I’d never imagined anything like this. “I’m so sorry,” I said, the words not even beginning to be enough.

Truth was, Jimmy needed a therapist or a counselor or someone. Anyone but me, because I didn’t have a fucking clue how to handle this. The man was cracking before my eyes and watching him come apart felt like torture. I’d been so careful the last few years, sticking to the fringes and keeping to myself. Now suddenly, his pain felt like my own, tearing up my insides, leaving me raw. The room swam blurrily in front of me.

What the hell was I still doing here?

When I took the job, my instructions had been scarily simple. Glue myself to his side and never, on pain of death, dismissal, and whatever else his lawyers could think to throw at me, let him consume a drop of alcohol or an ounce of drugs. Not a single pill could be popped. Given he’d been clean of his own volition for almost half a year, it hadn’t seemed such a hard task.

Until now.

“I’m going to go find your shirt,” I said, blinking like crazy, doing my best to pull my shit together. Qualified or not, I was all he had. “We need to finish getting you ready and then we’re going to go.”

He said nothing.

“We’ll get through this, Jimmy. We’ll get through today, then things will be better.” The words tasted sour. I just hoped they weren’t lies.

Still nothing.

“Okay?”

“Why did I say I’d talk at the funeral? What the fuck was I thinking?” He scowled. “The guys should have known this wouldn’t work out, not to put me in this position. I’m in no god damn condition to do anything. But Dave is all like ‘you say a few words, I’ll read some poetry. It’ll be fine’. What bullshit.”

“You can do this.”

“I can’t.” He scrubbed his face with his hands. “If I’m not going to fuck up the funeral of the best person I ever knew, then I need a drink. One drink, then I’ll stop again.”

“No.” I faced him down. “They asked you to speak because as much as they’d probably hate to admit it, they knew you’d do it best. You’re the front man. You don’t need a drink. Shining in the spotlight is what you do. It’s who you are.”

He gave me a long look. So long, it got harder and harder to meet his eyes.

“You can do this, Jimmy. I know you can. There isn’t a single doubt inside of me.”

Nothing. He didn’t even blink, just kept staring at me. The look wasn’t unkind, I’m not sure what it was, apart from too much. I rubbed my clammy hands against the sides of my pants.

“All right,” I said, needing to escape. “I’ll get your clothes.”

Strong arms suddenly wrapped around me, pulling me in. I stumbled forward, only to be stopped by the hot face pressing into my stomach. His grip was brutally tight as if he expected me to fight him, to reject him. But I just stood stunned. His whole body shook, the tremors passing through into me, rattling my bones. He didn’t make a sound, however. Something dampened the front of my shirt, making it cling.

It could have been sweat. I had the worst feeling it wasn’t.

“Hey.” None of the last two months had prepared me for this. He never needed me for shit. If anything, I inconvenienced him. We clashed. He tried to cut me down. I cracked a joke. The modus operandi had been long since been established.

The man clinging to me was a stranger.

My hands hovered over his bare shoulders, panic bubbling up inside. I was most definitely not allowed to touch him. Not even a little. The one-hundred-and-twelve-page employment contract had been quite specific on the subject. Prior to this, he’d gone out of his way to avoid any and all contact, but now his arms tightened, fingers digging in. I’m pretty sure I heard my rib cage creak. Damn, he was strong. Just as well I came from sturdy stock, otherwise, he might have squeezed the life out of me.

“Jimmy, I can’t breathe,” I wheezed.

The grip eased a little and I stood there panting, my lungs working overtime. Thick arms remained around me. Clearly, I wasn’t going anywhere.

“Maybe I should get Sam,” I said in a stroke of genius once I’d caught my breath. Their Head of Security most closely resembled a thug in a suit. But I bet he gave great hugs.

“No.”

Crap. “Or David. Do you want your brother to come back in?”

His face shifted against me, moving first left and then right. Another no. “You can’t tell them.”

“I won’t. I promise.”

Silence rung in my ears.

“I just need a minute,” he said.

I stood rigid in his embrace, useless, a mannequin would have been as effective. Shit, I had to do something. Slowly, ever so slowly, my hands descended. The overwhelming need to comfort him far outweighed any threat of litigation. Heat kissed the palms of my hands. He felt feverish, perspiration slickening the hard contours of his shoulders and the thick column of his neck. My hands glided over him, doing their best to soothe.

It was disturbingly nice, being needed by him, being this close to him.

“It’s okay.” My fingers threaded into his thick dark hair. So soft. No wonder they hadn’t wanted me touching him, now that I’d started, I couldn’t seem to stop. I should have been ashamed of myself, feeling the poor man up at such a time. But he’d been the one to initiate contact. He’d grabbed hold of me seeking comfort and apparently, when it came to him, I had a scary amount to give.

“What am I gonna say?” he asked, voice muffled against me. “How can I make a fucking speech?”

“You say what she meant to you. They’ll understand.”

He snorted.

“No, really. Just talk from your heart.”

He took a shuddering breath, resting his forehead against me. “To top it off, she called.”

“She?” I gave the top of his head a sharp look. Damn it, he had seemed okay. Certainly not delusional. “Who called you?”

“Mom.”

“Oh.” This couldn’t be good news. Better than him imagining phone calls from the recently deceased, but still. “What’d she want?”

“Same fucking thing she always wants. Money.” His voice was harsh and low. So low that I had to strain to hear him. “Warned her to stay away.”

“She’s in town?”

A nod. “Threatened to crash the funeral. Told her I’d have her fucking arrested if she did.”

Hell, the woman sounded like a nightmare.

“Davie doesn’t know,” he said. “That’s the way it stays.”

“All right.” I don’t know how wise that was, but it wasn’t my choice to make. “I won’t tell him.”

His shoulders hitched beneath my hands, his misery surrounding us like an impenetrable shell. Nothing else existed.

“You’re going to be okay.” I bowed my head and hunched over, sheltering him with my body. My heart ached and emotional detachment was a dream. The compulsion to give to him was too strong. He was usually such a maddening man, so thoughtless and rude. Anger, however, made my job easier. When he behaved like an ass I could remain indifferent for the most part. These dangerous new feelings running through me, however, were soft and sappy, warm and weepy. No way could I afford to care this much.

Crap.

What the hell was happening to me?

He gripped my rounded hips and turned his face up to me, unguarded for once. All of his usual sharp edges were dulled by pain and if anything it just made his beauty more obvious. I licked my suddenly dry lips. Fingers tensed and tightened against me and his forehead bunched as he scowled at the damp patch on the front of my blouse. “Sorry ’bout that.”

“Not a problem.”

He let go and my legs wobbled, weak at the loss.

Intimacy fled and awkwardness rushed right in like a tidal wave. I could almost feel his walls slamming back into place. Mine were slower, weaker, damn them. Someone, somewhere along the line, had swapped my titanium for tinfoil leaving me wide open and exposed. It was all his fault. For a moment he’d actually stepped down from his self-imposed pedestal. He’d been real with me, shown me his fears, and I’d just sort of mumbled some vaguely comforting shit. Honestly, I couldn’t even remember what anymore. Little wonder he’d closed up on me again.

Also, we were unnaturally close, positioned as we were. There were mere inches between us. Jimmy gave me a brief embarrassed look to enforce the fact, just in case I hadn’t noticed. Obviously he regretted this. I mean, he’d cried on the hired help, for Christ’s sake.

“I’ll get your clothes,” I said, grasping at the first useful idea to enter my head.

Blindly, I stumbled across the room. Thoughts and feelings were running rife through me, all of it a blur. I needed to talk to mom. Far as I knew, there was no history of heart ailments in the family. Leukemia took Uncle John. Grandma died due to smoking a pack a day. I think Great Aunt Valerie caught some strange fungal infection in her lungs, but don’t quote me on that. Mom would know for sure. Whatever my heart was doing, it couldn’t be good. I was only twenty-five, much too young to die. Probably about the right age to become a complete hypochondriac, however.

I grabbed a shirt and tie from out of his walk-in closet in the monster-sized main bedroom. My room, on the other side of the suite, wasn’t bad. This room, however, put the Ritz to shame. Sheets, blankets, and pillows were strewn across the gigantic bed. Not from any crazy sex antics because as far as I could tell, the man was either asexual, abstaining, or both. Still, he obviously hadn’t slept well. I could just picture him, tossing and turning, his big strong body thrashing about on that large, sturdy bed. Completely alone with all his bad memories. And I’d only been in the room across from him, also alone and not sleeping particularly well. Some nights my brain just wouldn’t shut up or shut down and last night had definitely been one of them.

I stood frozen, mesmerized by the tangle of sheets and blankets.

Again, my heart did something strange. Something totally out of context. What happened between my legs was best ignored. I’m certain something in the employment contract outlawed any and all wetness on my part, especially if it pertained to one James Dylan Ferris.

“Hey,” he said, appearing at my side, startling the crap out of me.

“Hi.” I hesitated, a bit breathless again for some reason. Perhaps I should have my lungs checked too just to be sure. “You need a quick clean-up. Come on.”

He followed behind me like an obedient child. The lights in the white bathroom were blindingly bright after all the emotional turmoil, dazzling me. Okay, what next? Bottles and tubes were spread out over the counter. Still my beleaguered brain offered up nothing.

“We have to hurry,” I muttered, mostly to myself.

I placed his shirt and tie on the counter, grabbed a facecloth and wet it. If I hadn’t already done my make-up I’d have splashed my face with the bitingly cold water, let it wake me up from all this weirdness. Meanwhile, Jimmy stared off into the distance, his mind obviously far away once again. When I held up the cloth he didn’t react at all. Forget it, we didn’t have time for this, I’d do the job myself. The cold damp cloth made contact and he reared back, nostrils flaring.

“Hold still,” I said, and embarked upon my first ever sponge bath. Basically, I scrubbed at him like a mad woman. I even washed behind his ears in my fervor.

“Christ,” he mumbled, ducking to try and escape me.

“Keep still.”

Next came his neck, then his shoulders. I wet the cloth again and moved onto his chest and back, rushing through the process. It was best not to think, just to see him as Jimmy, my boss. Better yet, the body beneath my hands was stone, not real in the least, despite the goose flesh erupting all over him. Base desires didn’t matter when a job was at stake, surging hormones and emotions both could take a back seat. I could do this.

“Okay. Shirt.” I picked up the thick rich cotton and held it open for him. He threaded his arms through, smooth skin brushing against the back of my fingers making tingles run up my arm. I fumbled my way through doing up the buttons. “We need cufflinks. And I don’t know how to do the tie.”

“I’ll do that.”

“Okay.” I passed him the neat strip of black silk. All good, I just needed some air, the colder the better.

Jimmy stepped around me, walking back into the bedroom. From the top of his dresser he collected a pair of silver cufflinks and secured them to the sleeves of his shirt. Actually, they were probably platinum, knowing him. I could see tattoos peeking out from beneath the cuffs of his shirt and above the collar of his neck. There could be no disguising him as anything other than the rock star he was. He hadn’t been made to hide or blend, the man was much too beautiful for that.