Rock Dirty (Rock Candy #2) (7 page)

I was in the most romantic city in the world. I could do better than this.

* * *

I went back to my hotel room, changed, then headed out. I walked for hours. Finally, I headed toward Notre Dame.

I wasn’t religious. I mean, yeah, I’d been raised Christian and still celebrated Christmas with my family but that was more about connecting with loved ones and, let’s face it, the presents. Still, Notre Dame wasn’t too far from my hotel, so after changing I headed over there. It still had tourists milling around it. I looked up and was amazed by how large it was. I’d seen it on TV and in movies, but seeing it on a screen wasn’t enough to prepare me for the way the spires towered over me or the fact even the front doors were taller than me twice over.

Out front stood a crowd of girls. Maybe they were on a class trip or, hell, maybe they were sorority sisters who were enjoying a vacation on their parents. I tried to slip past them. Usually pulling down a ball cap helped keep fans from mobbing me if I wasn’t in the mood.

This was not one of those cases.

A tall drink of water with legs that went on for days and a high blond ponytail squealed first and pointed to me. That was it. It was like some kind of call, like when you see birds in nature specials screeching out over the rain forest.

“It’s Tucker Benning,” she screamed, and all the girls echoed her reaction with high pitched shrieks.

I just barely stopped myself from wincing and smiled. I played the gracious rock star I always had. Hell, even if Liam eventually got his head out of his ass, we were going to need all the goodwill we could get because a hiatus for three months or a year in this industry? Everything moved so fast that we might as well be starting over from fucking scratch.

After I posed for a ton of pictures, the tall blonde was still standing with me. Her sisters or friends or whatever had entered into the church proper to light candles, but she clearly had another mission in mind and with the way she was licking her lips, it would probably be something she’d have to confess afterward. Normally, the way she was working her bottom lip with her teeth, the soft heat of her breath on my neck?
All
of that would have led me to invite her back to my place. But right now I wasn’t even half-hard.

What the hell is wrong with me? Nikki’s just a girl; there’s a hundred others like her in this city
.

That’s what I tried telling myself. But I knew it wasn’t true. I had yet to meet someone as wild and as enticing as Nikki Lorenz. So even with this other girl practically mounting me right here and asking if I wanted to grab a drink, I couldn’t say yes. God help me, but I wanted that fiery redhead, and even if Nikki had more issues than I realized and, possibly, a boyfriend or lover in that grey-haired guy, she was worth fighting for.

I was going to go back to her apartment, hash shit out and make her mine.

Squeezing the blonde’s hands, I shook my head and offered her all the truth I could. “I’m sorry, but I can’t. I’m seeing someone.”

It didn’t take too long to arrive at Nikki’s apartment. I wasn’t sure what I was going to find when I knocked on that door. Hell, was grey-haired guy the friend—Claude, she’d said—who owned this place? Looked that way. Because after I knocked on the door, there he was: the massive brick wall-come-protector who’d stepped in and helped Nikki while I’d been standing there with my jaw hanging open after she’d slapped that photographer. Narrowing my eyes, I stood up to my full height. It meant the behemoth still had four inches on me, which I hated.

“Can I help you?” he asked in English. His words were accented, but it wasn’t French, and I wasn’t sure where he was from.

“I’m looking for Nikki.”

When he just stared at me, I snorted. “Dude, you know me. I mean you don’t know me-know me, but you know I was at the opening. I talked to her in front of you. You know that I’m a friend of hers.”

“Yes, ‘friend’ being an operative word,” he said. “I’m Hermes.”

“Great.” Like I gave a flying fuck. “Is she here?”

“Dominique,” he said, enunciating her name with slow care, “is busy having a late dinner with Divine. I’m sorry but she’s too busy for the likes of you.”

“Yeah,” I said, shoving my hands in my jeans pockets. Looked like Nikki’s opening had been a success, after all. She’d wanted support from a celebrity designer and she’d obviously gotten it.

And it was just as obvious that
Hermes
here was a friend who’d been invited to wait for her return. I’d only known Nikki less than twenty-four hours, so I wasn’t sure why the thought of the things she and Hermes would do together once she got back hurt so damn much.

It’s my fucking pride, is all, I told myself. And regret that I’d passed on what that blonde had been offering me in front of Notre Dame. Granted, I could go back. See if she was still there.

But doing so seemed like too much effort.

On the other hand, it was no effort at all to head back to my hotel and drown my sorrows at the hotel’s bar. I think I chugged down my tenth shot of Vodka before I passed out.

CHAPTER SIX

Nikki

Last night was such a wash.

Despite the drama, I schmoozed with my benefactors, played nice with the models, and charmed Divine into taking me to dinner. The headlines and fashion blogs were mostly focusing on the triumph of my designs but almost all of them offered a parting shot about me slapping the photographer.

The nicer ones swept it under the rug or mentioned it as an aside.

Some of the more vindictive tabloid outlets were much worse. The photog hadn’t had permission to be there; security had asked for a permit after her comments and found nothing valid, but only one outlet pointed that out. And she’d obviously bated me with that crack about my ex-lover dumping me for my mom.

Yet I was the bad girl.

Maybe I always would be, and it was all my own fault.

My mother had called. I’d seen her name on my cell phone caller I.D. There were at least five voice messages I knew would be dripping with her usual disdain and censure. It was the last thing I wanted to hear, especially when I had a show coming up and my reputation was already in tatters.

I couldn’t help but remember how freeing it had felt the day before, standing on the apartment balcony, feeling that rush of adrenaline and danger as I hesitated on the edge.

And God help me—I wanted to do it again.

But even more than that, I wanted Tucker.

Jesus, Tucker.

I’d been distracted by the photographer yesterday, and, even before then, I’d been on edge. He’d been so nice. He’d complimented me. Again. And again, I had blown his compliments off. It wasn’t that I didn’t appreciate them but I had years and years of my mother’s criticism ringing in my ears. It was easy to convince myself that I was worthless or a disappointment, the source of all shame for my family. After all, I’d heard that very message on a loop for years. It was something that stayed with you, no matter how hard you fought to find your self-confidence. It was crazy, but it was almost as if the nicer things Tucker said about me, the more convinced I became he was playing me and going to betray me in a way I wouldn’t be able to recover from. But that wasn’t why I’d blown him off at the opening last night.

No, I’d done that because Hermes had recognized Tucker and told me what a bad idea it was to allow myself to be distracted by a
rock star
. He’d said my mother was already going to hear about me slapping the photographer, so why make it worse? Part of me had wanted to tell him to fuck off, but the truth was, I had already been embarrassed by my behavior with the photographer and seriously concerned by my balancing act on the balcony earlier. Never mind my mom being pissed that I was hanging around with a rock star. I was more concerned that I was going to drag said rock star down in flames with me, and the truth was, he was too nice a guy to do that.

I was a mess, one that Tucker didn’t need when he was trying to figure things out with his band. I’d realized that around the time Tucker had kissed my cheek when he’d greeted me at the opening, and everything that had happened afterward had merely cemented that belief.

Only today, by myself, having had a chance to breathe and calm down, I missed him. I wanted him. Enough to call him even as I ignored the blinking light on my phone that was teasing me about my mother’s (sure to be) vitriolic messages.

“Yeah,” Tucker’s voice sounded over the phone.

“Hey,” I said, my voice startled but also edged with joy that he’d actually picked up. Yes, it took him four rings before he actually did it, but he could have sent me straight to voicemail so it had to mean something that he hadn’t. Didn’t it?

His voice was hesitant on the other end, and I could discern the suspicion in it. “Hi Nikki. What’s up? Because I was just on my way out—”

“Tucker, I’m sorry about blowing you off last night.”

Silence.

“The event and the photographer…all of it set me off. I treated you like shit.”

More silence.

“Tucker, will you let me make it up to you?”

He exhaled quietly, but the sound screamed his frustration…and his disdain? Panic made my heart beat pick up. Was he going to turn me down? Tell me to take my apology and shove it?

“Please, Tucker,” I said. “Let me make it up to you.”

“You don’t have anything to make up to me, Nikki.”

“Of course I do. I owe you so much. You came to support me at my opening and you didn’t have to, and your reward was me being a neurotic bitch.” When he didn’t argue with me, I winced, then bit my lip. “Look, meet me out at the Pont Neuf. Have you heard of it?”

“No, but…”

I held my breath. Please. Please don’t let him blow me off. Please let him give me another chance.

“But I can Google or, when in doubt, ask Siri,” he finally said. “I’ll figure it out.”

I let out a shaky sigh of relief. “Good. I’ll see you there. And thank you, Tucker.”

* * *

“It’s beautiful, don’t you think?” I asked, looking out over the expanse of the Pont Neuf.

It was the oldest bridge still up in Paris and looked like something out of a castle. It had rounded pillars and was made of cobblestone, resembling something out of a fairy tale. I’d been to Paris more times than I could count. When I’d been younger, Mom had dragged me here almost as often as her Louis Vuitton luggage. Part of me had grown inured to the beauty of the City of Lights. It was where I worked, where I needed to make the
right
impression. Still, watching the water slip under the bridge and seeing the sights behind me, even the famous tower not too far behind us, I was taken aback again by the beauty of the city. I had a feeling based on his wide eyes and the look of awe on his face that Tucker was taking it all in as well.

“It’s really something. I bet it’d be even better if we’d come out here at night, seen the city all lit up.”

I took his hand in mine, grateful when he let me. “I think we can put that on our itinerary. I have to prepare for my show but I’ll try and be accessible. I just have so many last minute decisions to make and I’m terrified. There’s even more pressure than before because my store opening didn’t exactly go off without a hitch.”

“You could say that again,” he added, pulling his hand away and hunching his shoulders. Staring out to the water, Tucker focused his attention there as if he were searching for a lifeline.

It felt harder to breathe, as if something were squeezing my chest hard. Sitting down on the railing, I was seized again by that crazy urge, just like on my balcony yesterday. If I cheated death again, then anything that came after, even explaining myself to Tucker, couldn’t be any harder. Failing that, I’d fall into the Seine, and even if I didn’t make it out alive would that really be that bad…?

But that was crazy talk.

I couldn’t very well climb onto the railing in front of Tucker. I couldn’t become addicted to what was clearly a dangerous habit. And I couldn’t allow thoughts of death and dying to become an iota more alluring.

I just needed to channel my energy in a healthy way. I had a show coming up. I had to focus. I’d accomplished so much with my designs. The ticker tape and the finish line were looming, and I wasn’t going to just throw myself into the Seine out of desperation.

Maybe if my show bombed, I could revisit that idea.

“Sometimes, when I’m scared, I act a little crazy. And I’m scared, Tucker,” I admitted, my voice as small and quiet as it had been as a teenager. It was the meek tone I used under my mother’s interrogations, the voice that was mostly about surrendering. It was all about the weak side of myself that I despised.

His eyes met mine and his expression softened significantly. “Of failing?”

“Of you. Of how good, how grounded, you make me feel. How much you make me want to believe the wonderful compliments you give me. I know I shouldn’t. You’re a guy who wants in my pants. And you’re so young…”

“I’m not a child.”

“No, but you’re still a few years younger than I am. I usually date men fifteen or more years older, established guys…men you can settle down with.”