Love's Rhythm (11 page)

It was the farthest place she wanted to be.

He’d hurt her. He’d rejected her. He’d left her.

And she’d hurt him back. By denying him his son.

“Nick,” she began, watching him tuck himself back into his jeans.

The knock rapped on the door again. Just as quick. Just as expectant.

She turned away from him, unable to see the pain, the betrayal in his eyes anymore. Snatching up her pyjama shirt, she pulled it on and buttoned it with fingers that seemed to refuse her brain’s commands. Fingers that fumbled and shook. Damn it, where were her pyjama pants?

The knock came again. “Ms. Robbins?” a male voice called from the other side.

She looked for her pants. Where the hell were her pants?

Fuck it. You don’t need them. Your shirt’s long enough. Just answer the door, get rid of whoever is on the other side and then tell Nick you’re sorry. Tell him you still love him. Tell him you were wrong. Tell him everything.

She shot Nick a look over her shoulder. He stood a few steps behind her, half-dressed, his upper body naked and still slicked in a fine sheen of sweat, his chest rising and falling with each steadying breath he pulled, his lean muscles sculpted and defined with the exertion of their fucking. His fly was zipped, the top of the treble cleft tattooed on his lower abdomen peaking from above the low-slung waistline of his jeans. His thick black hair hung around his face, awry from her hands, brushing eyes that studied her with an unreadable intensity.

He looked like a sexual god.

He looked like a rock star.

Closing her eyes, she raked her fingers through her hair, took a deep breath and then turned back to the door and pulled it open.

White light exploded in her eyes. Soundless. Blinding. White light followed by Nick snarling, “You fucking prick, Holston.”

White light speared into her eyes again. A flash so bright she gasped.

“Having a good time, Blackthorne?” the man in front of her asked, although it wasn’t so much a question but a chuckling sneer. And she couldn’t see him. All she could see was painful yellow glare dancing on her retina, glaring yellow light making it impossible to see, just like the kind left over from a powerful camera flash.

Camera.

She blinked. She could see a man on her front step, and yet she couldn’t. He was hiding behind the dancing yellow burn from his camera’s flash.

“You guys need to get a life,” she heard Nick growl. And then he was pushing past her. White light exploded in front of her again as the man’s voice called out, telling her to smile, to give Nick a kiss, asking her how long they’d been together. White, rapid-fire flash bombs accompanied by the distinct click of a camera attacked her, capturing her stupor seconds before the sound of her door slamming shut smacked at her ears.

She stared at Nick, her pulse not only thumping in her neck but in her temples. She stared at him through the yellow brand on her retina as Holston continued to call out from the other side of her door, asking how long she and Nick had been lovers, if she always slept in Elmo pyjamas, if—

“I’m sorry.” Nick reached for her, his hands smoothing up her arms. “You didn’t need to experience that. Holston’s an unethical prick. I don’t know how he even knew I was Murriundah.”

Red anger smashed into her. Scalding hot in its clarity. It all came rushing back to her—the minutes spent with Nick in public, the screaming fans, the stalking photographers, the other women calling her names and sending her hate mail. All of it. And now here it was on her doorstep? No. She wasn’t standing for it. She jerked out of his gentle hold and stepped away from him. Her hip struck the hall console table, sharp pain shooting through her like an electrical jolt, but she ignored it.

“You ask why I didn’t tell you, Nick? You wonder why I don’t want you back in my life? Why I don’t want you in
Josh’s
life?” She pointed a finger at the closed door, Holston’s calls and shouts a muffled, grating noise on the other side. “
There’s
your answer. Now please, get the rest of your clothes and go. Leave me alone, get out of my life and take your goddamn paparazzo with you.”

He stood motionless, watching her. He didn’t move. Not a muscle twitched. He didn’t move and he didn’t take his stare from her face.

“Leave,” she ground out, hating the waver in her voice.
Hating
it, damn him. “Now.”

He stayed like a statue for another painful heartbeat before letting out a ragged sigh. “It’s not always like this, Lauren.”

She shook her head. “Don’t, Nick. I was there at the beginning, remember?”

He studied her, a long silent gaze that made her already tight chest squeeze tighter. He looked broken. Defeated. Nick Blackthorne, rock star, stripped away of all his arrogant, self-assured charm. He looked like the boy she’d first met waiting for the high school bus twenty-one years ago. The boy whose family had just moved to Murriundah from Sydney. The boy called a fag because he didn’t want to be on the school rugby team. The boy picked on by the older kids, the jocks, for taking a guitar to and from school. The boy whose voice was breaking, whose face was marked by acne and who would only a few years later be discovered one summer Sunday afternoon playing that same guitar in the Cricketer’s Arms by a US talent agent on a working vacation in the backwater towns of Australia. A US talent agent looking for the next big thing.

The next big thing who would take the world by storm and destroy her heart in the process.

“Please leave, Nick,” she asked again, the request no more than a whisper. “I won’t let your life destroy Josh’s.”

Wordlessly, he reached behind him and withdrew a phone from his back pocket. He slid his thumb over the screen a few times before lifting it to his ear without taking his gaze from her face. “Come get me, Aslin,” he said, voice steady. Composed.

Cold emptiness welled in Lauren’s stomach. She fought the need to close her eyes, to bite her lip and hug herself. Instead, she watched him gather up his shirt and pull it over his head. She watched him dress, unable to say a word, refusing to listen to the words she
wanted
to say—
stay, I’m sorry, love me
. She couldn’t listen to them. This was the way it had to be, no matter how irrevocably he owned her body, her soul. This is the way it had to be for her sanity.

How it had to be for her son’s wellbeing.

Are you sure you’re thinking of Josh here? Are you?

“Fuck off, Rhodes,” Holston suddenly shouted, his voice much more distant than before, and Lauren started, realising she hadn’t heard him for the duration of Nick’s dressing. She hadn’t heard anything but the thump thump of her stupid heart and the soft
shhh
of material sliding over skin. Nick’s skin.

She blinked, jerking her stare to the closed door. The paparazzo shouted something again, something that sounded like, “Go back to England, you Pommie bastard,” and someone else laughed, a short sharp chuckle filled with mirth followed by a sharp double knock on her door.

Nick let out a sigh. “That’s my bodyguard.”

When she didn’t say anything, he opened his mouth, closed it again, dragged his fingers through his hair and then turned to the door and opened it.

A massive man dressed in black jeans, black T-shirt and black leather jacket stepped across the threshold, his shoulders so broad he almost had to turn sideways to pass through the doorway. His direct blue gaze slid over everything with intense scrutiny, marking everything, missing nothing, before settling on Lauren. He studied her, took in her bare legs, her hastily buttoned pyjama shirt, her disheveled hair. If he thought anything of her state, he didn’t show it. “Ms. Robbins,” he said, a subtle British accent rolling through her name.

She stared back at him, his sheer presence turning her pulse to a rapid trip hammer. She’d seen images of the man in magazines and on the television, always shadowing Nick or clearing a path through a squealing, writhing crowd, but no photograph conveyed the absolute size of him. The latent menace that oozed from him in waves. The intimidating, controlled power.

Lord, he looked like he could snap a person in two with barely an effort.

Of course he could, Lauren. He’s Nick’s bodyguard. He’s got to be able to hold back every screaming fan, maniacal groupie or whacked-out psycho who thinks Nick is his best friend.

The thought made her scowl. As did the overwhelming worry for Nick’s safety that came with it. She didn’t want to be worried for Nick. She’d been there, done that and burnt the T-shirt. She wasn’t going to do it again.

She couldn’t.

“This is not how I planned anything, Lauren.”

She turned to Nick, her chest so tight she wondered if she would ever draw breath again. She looked at him, trying to see the rock star, seeing only the man she fell in love with oh so many years ago.

The man she could never let go. The man she would worry about until time ceased.

She wanted to tell him to stay. Wanted, but wouldn’t.

“All I wanted was to share a moment of reality with you,” he said. “A day of being just a guy taking the girl of his dreams somewhere wonderful and joyous.”

She caught her bottom lip with her teeth.

“We need to go, Nick,” Aslin’s voice rumbled, “preferably before Holston retrieves his camera from where I pegged it and comes back.”

Nick nodded once, never taking his gaze from hers. “There’s still more to say, Lauren,” he said. “More to say and more to hear.”

He turned away from her then. Half a second before the door flung open and Josh came charging through it.

“Mum!” he shouted, “There’s a helicopter parked on the—” He ran slap-bam in Aslin.

“What the fuck?” he yelped, staggering backward.

“Josh!” Lauren snapped. God, what was he doing home? Now?

But it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter because her son was staring open-mouthed at Nick. Open-mouthed and wide-eyed and rooted to the spot. He swung his head, only his head, and gaped at her, and she bit back a groan of dismay at the excited disbelief on his face, a face so like his father it made her stomach knot.

“Mum?” he croaked. “Why is Nick Blackthorne standing in our house?”

Chapter Seven

Nick stared at the tall, lanky boy standing but a few feet away from him. No, he didn’t just stare at him, he devoured him. His son. Jesus, he was looking at his son. Sound ceased to exist. The world became nothing but one boy, one teenage kid with scruffy black hair, freckles and wide grey eyes wearing a dirt-smeared soccer uniform and a shell-shocked expression. One boy staring back at him.

He sucked in a breath, unable to blink. He was numb. No, he was thrumming with so much energy he was going to burn up. No, he was…he was… Jesus, he was looking at his son.

His son who had no idea who he was.

The thought punched Nick in the gut. Hard. And the world rushed back at him.

“Mum?” Josh was saying. “Why is Nick Blackthorne standing in our house?” Nick listened to every vowel and consonant and syllable, noting the timbre and rhythm in his son’s speech. Josh’s voice must have only recently broken. It was deep, with just the slightest hint of a crack on the odd note. But there was a music to it as well, a strength. It rolled over Nick like a warm wave, making his gut clench and his chest squeeze.

“Mum?” Josh repeated, and Nick started, jerking his attention to Lauren.

She stood as still as he did, her lips parted, her stare jumping between him and her son—
their
son—her cheeks growing pale even as a warm flush painted her throat.

She didn’t say a word.

Tell him. Tell him now. Fuck a duck, Nick, every family member you’ve ever had has been ripped from your life, taken from you, and now here’s your son, standing right here, asking why you’re here. Tell him. Tell him who you are.

His heart smashed faster. He licked his lips, sensing Aslin move behind him. But it was only a distant recognition. His focus was on his son. And the woman he’d stupidly left behind way too many years ago.

Tell him.

Josh gaped at his mother, at him, back to his mother again. “Is anyone going to say somethin’?”

Nick looked at Lauren. Saw the conflict tearing at her. Saw it swimming in her eyes. Saw it. Felt it.

He stepped forward, extending his hand as he did. “Hi, Josh.” He wrapped his fingers around his son’s hand, giving it a firm shake. A fissure of something elemental, something beyond his ability to understand shot through him at the palm-to-palm contact with the teenager, and he hid his intake of breath on a low chuckle. “Your mum and I knew each other a long time ago. I just thought I’d pop in and say hello.”

He heard Lauren make a little noise and flicked her another quick look. She was watching him, her face an ambiguous mask, her body tense. But on her lips was a smile, a small smile that filled him with such an overwhelming urge to take her hand and pull her into his embrace that for a surreal moment he almost reached for her.

“You did?” Josh turned to Lauren, staring at her with open awe, and Nick’s chest squeezed. “That’s epic.”

Nick laughed, dropping Josh’s hand. He didn’t want to. He didn’t know what he wanted to do, but breaking contact wasn’t it. What if he never got the chance again? What if his son was ripped away from him before he even got the chance to hold him?

“I’ve downloaded all your albums,” Josh said, his face alight. Nick could almost see the excitement sparking through him. “Legally, of course. And I just started teaching myself how to play ‘Gotta Run’ on my guitar. It’s a hard fucker to get the chords—”

“Josh,” Lauren’s voice drew out the boy’s name, turning it to a firm warning.

Josh ducked his head, cheeks turning redder. “Sorry, Mum.” He grinned at Nick from under the shaggy strands of his thick dark hair. Hair that drove the girls crazy with distraction, Nick suspected. “I mean, it’s a hard song to get right.”

Nick chuckled. “You’re telling me. In fact, I think I said something very similar to your mum when I was writing it.”

Josh gaped at Lauren, and Nick couldn’t help but smile as her cheeks filled with a faint pink tinge. He’d written the entire song, his very first Australian number one, in bed with her one lazy summer weekend. Neither of them had been dressed. Her lips had travelled his chest, his stomach, his cock as he’d scrawled the words and notes down on loose sheets of paper. His temperature had risen with each caress, his heart thumping as she played his body like an instrument. She’d brought him to the brink of orgasm over and over again, teasing him with fulfillment when he finished each chorus, only giving it to him when the song was done and his cock so hard, so fucking hard he shot his load the second she slid down his length. He shifted his feet at the memory of that weekend, his groin tightening. And by the look of Lauren’s flushed face, the way her breath grew quicker, she remembered it too.