The Girl of Diamonds and Rust (The Half Shell Series Book 3) (25 page)

I lay my cheek back against him. “No.”

“That was definitely decisive. I don’t know if I like decisive Chrissie yet.”

I laugh weakly. I can tell by his voice he’s frowning and only half-joking.

We make the short walk from the elevator to the room. Somehow Neil manages to continue to hold me and get the door open.

He sets me on the bed, and moves around the room, undressing. My half-closed eyes stay glued on him. Naked, he returns to the bed, eases me over on my back and starts undressing me.

“I don’t want sex,” I whisper. “I want sleep.”

He settles on the bed close to me, kissing me everywhere, touching me everywhere, and the tingling starts and my muscles pulse
there
. He moves his body until he is hovering above me, arms on each side of me, his kisses roaming from my breast to my belly and then lower. I feel warm breath and then his lips there and the feel of him shoots through me.

My head starts to sway on the bed and my body without command pushes in to the play of his tongue and fingers. He nips on my thigh and lifts his head.

“Do you want me to let you sleep?” he whispers.

I stare down at him. “You better not.”

His mouth closes over me. I arch my back and melt into the expert flow of his tongue and fingers and breaths. I come apart quickly against his face, and I’m still pulsing and panting when he enters me. He moves in me, deep and hard and fast. He doesn’t hold back, he pounds until he comes, and he collapses against me.

“You are never too tired for sex if I kiss you there first. It works the same way with me, Chrissie. Maybe you should try it again someday.”

“Someday,” I promise softly.

He’s laughing as I fall asleep.

~~~

I swat at tickling on my cheek and open my eyes to a room filled with painful light.

Neil’s face closes in on me. He kisses my hair.

“I’m having breakfast with Ernie. I should be back in a couple hours.”

I try to focus my eyes on the clock. “Jeez, it’s only ten a.m. What kind of manager gets you out of bed this early the day after a concert?”

“A manager catching a plane to the east coast in three hours.” He kisses me on the lips this time. “I ordered you an omelet and some coffee. Eat. Dress. Pack. I want to take off as soon as I get back. I don’t want go to La Jolla with Nate. Think about where you want to go. I’m horny as hell. Take me away someplace where we can be alone and in bed for two days.”

“We could just stay here. Not move for three days. How does that sound?”

He makes a
maybe
kind of face. Then his expression changes, sweetly serious. “I want to do something you want to do. Figure out what you want and I’m all yours.”

Hmmm, possibilities. I snuggle deeper into the blankets. The door closes. I try to go back to sleep and I can’t.

I roll onto my back and stare at the ceiling.
Figure out what I want
. My mind is a blank. More travel doesn’t sound appealing. We could just drive to Santa Barbara early. That would be nice. Yep, I’d like that.

Reluctantly, I toss aside the blankets and get up. I take a fast shower, pull on a sundress, and am just putting on the finishing touches of my makeup when there is a knock on the door.

Breakfast. I hurry to unbolt and let in room service.

“Omelet and coffee?” the guy asks, reading off the ticket.

“Yep. Put it over there on the table by the window, please.”

He sets down my tray, lifts off the metal cover, and places the
LA Times
beside my plate. I smile as I sign the ticket and show him from the room.

I drop down into the chair, grab a fork and pick at my meal as I open the paper.
Thank you, Neil, for remembering the newspaper. I’ve almost got Michelle’s scrapbook complete.
The guys were incredible last night. There has got to be photos somewhere in the
Times
today. I start flipping through pages. Flip. Flip. Flip. Ah, Delmo. I study the photo for a while—what a ham. Why does he like to look so mean?—and then I scan the rest of the page.

Ah, us. Even better. The caption makes me smile. I go to my black case and pull out the small canvas zip bag with my scissors and paste. I neatly cut the photo from the paper, trim it, and then secure it on the last page. Done. Ten months on tour. History complete.

I finish my breakfast, and start packing up. Clothes. Check. Toiletries from bathroom. Check. Neil can deal with his junk here. I see the scrapbook on the table and put it back in the duffel. I grab my scissors and paste, and as I start to tuck them away, I note the edge of a news clipping saved from last week.

I still haven’t written about this in my journal. I couldn’t do it. Not when it happened. I take my notebook from the black bag and reach for a pen.

I pull out the news clipping from the canvas bag and stare at it. I still get misty-eyed when I read the story headline
Kurt Cobain Dead Twenty-Seven
. I print today’s date on the top of a page and start to write:

It is strange how someone’s life can touch your own from a distance. I didn’t know Kurt well. We crossed paths in Seattle, nothing more, but he was the subject of the silly bet Neil and I made the first night we met. It sure rattled the guys, in that way the sudden unexpected loss of someone like yourself can only stir.

I’ll never forget how Neil looked when he got back to the hotel after learning of Kurt’s death. Sad, confused, angry and overwhelmed.

We sat for a long time silent, and then Neil said, “I love you, Chrissie. More than you know. Sometimes you are all that gets me through. Don’t let me fuck up everything we have.”

There was something in his voice I’ll never forget. I don’t know what it was, but I’ve never heard Neil sound that way before.

I was alone when I opened the paper to find the write-up on Kurt’s death. Too many lockboxes inside me broke open at once. My brother. My mother. Then Alan.

I looked at the headline—twenty-seven—and my memories dragged me back to New York and Alan in the parking garage, and Alan’s voice whispered through my memory: “The great ones die at twenty-seven. Hendrix. Joplin. If we are both around after we’re twenty-seven, we’ll both know what we are.”

I reached for my mobile phone and Alan’s number on the card that I still carry for some reason. I stared at the phone for an hour. Something in me wanted to talk to Alan that day.

The news made me think of him. Our crazy spring. Us in the parking garage. And I felt ashamed about the way I spoke to him the last time we talked. The mean little girl in me, kicking him away because I was afraid. I regretted not talking to him. I regretted how I felt that day. I still wonder why he called, what he wanted.

I stared at the phone, wanting to call. We are connected. No matter how we ended, there are parts of me only Alan will understand. And there are parts of Alan only I will understand. But I didn’t call. Too much had happened. He hurt me. I hurt him. We both hurt each other too much the last time. It was better for us both that I didn’t call. It would have only unsealed old wounds.

But a part of me still regrets not calling Alan that day.

I hear a key against the lock, slap shut my journal and tuck it away in the bottom of my duffel. Nope, this journal is now a private journal. I don’t want Neil to see that last entry. It wouldn’t piss him off, he would want to talk to me and understand it, but I’m not ready to do that. Not yet. Someday.

Neil crosses the room, kisses me lightly on the cheek, and then sinks down to sit on the bed. His expression and posture says everything. He is not happy after his meeting with Ernie Levine.

“What’s wrong?” I ask.

Neil runs a hand through his hair. “We were going to take some time together, figure out what we’re doing, and Ernie booked me for a show taping next week in New York. A bunch of other bullshit publicity things for the next month that I don’t want to do. And when I’m done, studio.”

I make a pout. “No big deal. We’ve got a week to kick back and do nothing. I’m not angry. Why are you?”

He gives me the
stare
. “You agreed to discuss the possibility of getting married.”

I laugh. The way he says that makes me sound ridiculous. I make a face. “What? A week is not enough time to finish a discussion on the possibility?”

I give him a silly smile and reluctantly he laughs.

“No. With you, Chrissie, there is no such thing as enough time to discuss anything.”

My brows hitch up. “That was kind of mean.”

Smiling green eyes lock with mine. “Nope. Not mean. Accurate.” He sighs heavily. “Fuck, Chrissie, I want something in my life defined and certain. I want us to get married.”

“OK. Not mean. Frustrated.” I cross the room and sink down beside him on the bed. “So what do you want to do about being frustrated?”

He starts working his hand under my dress and I shove it away.

“I didn’t mean that kind of frustrated.”

He laughs, wraps me in his arms and pulls me with him until we’re lying on the bed. I don’t know why we’re laughing. But it feels good. Really, really good.

“Do you know where you want to take me?” he whispers. “We’ve still got a week. We’ll go where you want to. Let’s get the hell out of here. I don’t want to waste any of our alone time.”

I turn on my side facing him and fight back a smile. Jeez, he’s so sexy even when he’s aggravated and disappointed and fighting to be patient with me when he doesn’t want to be. I lean in and kiss him, and when I pull back, the color darkens in his eyes in that way that’s wonderful. Emotion and want join in lock-step in a jolt of clarity that rockets through me in an inescapable way.

“I know where I want us to go,” I say.

Neil shakes his head in that way that says he’s not buying it. “Staying here in West Hollywood doesn’t count as you making a decision, Chrissie. It’s a lack of decision.”

I choke on a laugh.
Damn, the guy does know me pretty well. Wrong this time. Logical assumption.

“I’ve never been to Vegas before. I want to go to Vegas,” I announce.

He’s looking at me like I’ve lost my mind.

“Really. I hate Vegas. And you hate the desert. Why the hell would you want to go there?”

I stare at him. “Because in Vegas we can get married today.”

~~~

We step out of the over-air-conditioned county clerk’s office into the overheated Vegas sun. Crap, it’s scorching today and it is only April.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Neil asks for about the hundredth time. “It’s only a three-day wait in California. We can get married in Santa Barbara. Have Jack and my family there.”

I peek up at Neil. He looks a little bemused that I’m actually insisting we elope.

“Nope. This is a limited-time offer. Today or never.”

Neil smiles and then his expression takes on a more serious edge. “You’re not having second thoughts, are you?”

The way he’s looking at me makes my heart overflow.
God, how can he think that? I dragged him here.

“Do you remember our A-through-C marriage agreement?”

He taps the side of his head with an index finger. “Burned into my memory forever. A:
You want to live in Santa Barbara. You want a house there and only there
. B:
If we have kids you won’t travel with me and I promise to never ask you to.
C:
You don’t want to wait to start a family
.”

I kiss his arm. “No second thoughts. You remembered the agreement.”

He frowns. “Let’s get married in Santa Barbara.”

“No. Today. That’s what I want.”

He shakes his head and stares down the street. “Supposedly we can get married anywhere. Pick a place. They all look the same. Awful.”

He’s right, they do.

I point. “Let’s just go there.”

I pick the Heart of Vegas Wedding Chapel, because it’s the nearest one and they all do look the same.

Neil pulls back the door and I enter first. I quickly inspect the room. Awful just converted to hideous. Pink. I’ve never seen so much pink anywhere before.

I look at Neil’s reaction to this and it takes every ounce of control not laugh.

A middle-aged woman, short and bouncy and over-tanned, comes from the back and pauses at the counter. “Can I help you?”

“We’d like to get married,” I say.

She smiles in that
duh hidden behind fake politeness
sort of way since that’s pretty much all they do here, but she still asks what we want.

We’re given more papers to fill out.

I watch as Neil labors over the forms.

“Why does everything take so much paperwork?” I ask.

He doesn’t answer. He’s concentrating. I stare into the glass case I’m leaning against. Shit, they think of everything here. Rings. They even sell rings here. Your one-stop marital shop. I note a sign on the wall. Crap, you can even get a divorce, too.

My gaze anxiously moves around the chapel. God, it’s tacky here. Maybe this is a mistake. Maybe I’m being lame and not spontaneous and romantic.

I lean into Neil and bring my lips close to his ear. “We don’t have rings.”

He shakes his head. He continues to write. “I don’t have a ring. You do.”

My eyes widen, and he smiles into my questioning gaze, hands the required papers and our licenses to the clerk and pays.

OK, why so secretive, Neil?

A registry of some kind is shoved under my face. The lady points at a line. “Sign here.”

After we finish signing, the clerk goes into the back for the justice of the peace.

“What do you mean I have a ring?” I ask.

Neil reaches into his pocket for his wallet. “You’re a size six ring finger, right?”

I nod, alertly watching as he rummages in his wallet for something.

“I’m glad I got it sized right. No chance to fix it now.”