Sam

“Yo, Mark, my business trip has taken longer than expected,” Sam said between strikes.

The thump of flesh against flesh echoed into the phone and sent a grim sense of satisfaction through Sam’s boiling blood.

As did the moan of pain.

But it wasn’t enough.

The image of her porcelain skin marred with the purplish evidence of violence that she should’ve never even witnessed, let alone tasted. That would remain on her soul long after the bruises disappeared.

Sam knew that. Had seen it happen to his best friend. He watched her heal physically. Watched her bounce back with remarkable speed and come back to rock sold-out arenas, to smile as if she’d known nothing but love and light all her life. Or that’s what it was on the surface.

But the surface didn’t mean shit.

Not to Sam. That image crap was what kept him in flashy shit he didn’t need. He only truly needed the music. And the single characteristic of the music was its honesty. Its inability to be anything but surface. Even the worst song on the planet had to come from somewhere, somewhere beyond, somewhere beneath. The greats, they knew it; that’s why they were great, after all.

Kurt Cobain once said, “Thank you for the tragedy, I need it for my art.” And that fucker hit the nail right on the head. Ultimately the nail in his coffin, but that’s what music was. Someone’s tragedy, be it beautiful and extraordinary or ugly and pitch-black, that’s what was woven into the music. That’s what the music was born out of. Pockets of someone’s soul that they never let see the surface. Somehow it had gotten warped, twisted that the industry itself represented the exact opposite of what it was built on.

The image.

The surface.

But he saw through that shit. He lived through that shit. As did the rest of his family. Even Lexie, the most honest of them all. Especially Lexie. She shone the brightest, and therefore her shadows were the darkest. First in the four years that propelled them into the fame that was fueled, created, by her bone-shattering heartbreak. Her tragedy was the band’s success, the big bang for Unquiet Mind.

And then when her man came back to her, repaired what he’d broken so savagely without Sam breaking his face, even when everything fell into place, she was knocked again. Almost off the face of the earth. She saw the ugliest of humanity, and her skin saw the physical manifestations of violence. But when they disappeared, it was her soul that kept the scars.

Despite her having a man who would and had taken a bullet for her, who gave her the utter devotion that every great love song tried to capture, despite the light in her life that was now like a supernova, her shadows remained.

And Sam had the sinking feeling they always would.

He reared his fist back, barely noticing the pain in his hand as it smashed against bone.

His girl, the bruised one on that doorstop, would have those shadows. In eyes that didn’t deserve any.

Why the fuck was it always the ones who deserved the best life had to offer who always saw the worst of it?

“You don’t have business. That’s what I’m here for,” his manager informed him. Then paused. “Fuck, Sam, have you holed up with a girl again?” Mark snapped.

Which didn’t even make sense. Sam had never, not once, traveled in a plane and then a car for a girl. Granted, it was a private jet and a kick-ass car, but still, he hadn’t needed to exert effort before. But they’d finally gotten back from their world tour last week. When they’d been moving, amongst the chaos, Sam could deal. With the constant thoughts of her. He’d worn the memories of that night away to almost nothingness due to the amount of times he’d replayed them in his mind.

And it was when he got home, got back to the life he’d once considered so fucking epic, that he realized he couldn’t just have memories.

He needed her.

There was another thud against flesh and a cry of pain. He wasn’t as vocal now, closer to unconsciousness than he deserved. Putting his hand on a woman and a child? The fucker deserved to be chained up on Mount Olympus and have crows eat his liver for all eternity like that dude Prometheus.

“Are you calling me in the middle of sex, Sam?” Mark demanded. “We’ve spoken about this.” His brisk tone bordered on parental reproach, which Sam had never experienced with his actual parents. You had to care to scold. Mark’s concern might have been mostly toward his paycheck and Sam’s part in it, but it was something.

Sam jostled the phone as he dropped the prone body of the asshole onto the ground of his filthy apartment, disgusted that the coward barely stayed conscious for a beating a child could’ve taken.

Sam tasted bile with the thought that a child had taken a beating in this very stench-filled hovel.

He made a mental note to ensure the kid was with good people and would be set up with a college fund or whatever else people needed to bring up kids.

He barely registered his bleeding knuckles. “No, of course not, Mark,” he said, his voice light. “You know I’d never make you participate in a threesome over the phone. I’d invite you to one in person, like the gentleman I am.” His tone, easy and joking, came natural to him on most occasions, but now he had to work for it. Not because of the violence he’d just unleashed on a half-comatose man. No, he didn’t give two fucks about that. He’d smiled through the whole fucking thing. No, it was because he couldn’t get the image of Gina’s bruised skin from the front of his mind.

Couldn’t store it away with all the other fucked-up shit he pushed into the junk drawer of his mind for later inspection. Or never.

The replay of her speaking about what happened, her convincing him she wasn’t raped and that sheer look of animalistic fear that clutched her the moment she realized she could have been was playing in his mind. Eyes open or closed, it was there.

“Well, why the fuck are you telling me that you’re going to be away from LA longer than you’d planned?” Mark demanded. “And just to inform you, you didn’t plan on being gone at all. You stood up a prominent actress for dinner and texted me saying you were on a “quest of the loins” and left me to clean up the fallout with her fucking publicist. Who is going to put you on her permanent shit list for this,” he said.

Sam wiped the blood from his hands on his jeans, spitting on the body of the man splayed at his feet. Another stain on the discolored wife beater he was wearing, his beer gut sticking out of it like a hair-covered boil.

He laughed as he turned to escape the smell before it seeped into his favorite boots. “Not possible. I’m a media darling, she’s a media whore. I’ll never be on her shit list. I’ll never be on anyone’s. Haven’t you heard? I’m Sam fucking Kennedy.”

He shoved his sunglasses over his face at the glaring sun, smiling at the woman passing him, laden with grocery bags. She gaped at him, doing a double take.

She obviously recognized him—who didn’t these days? He didn’t exactly go to great lengths to make himself inconspicuous, nor did nearly shouting “I’m Sam fucking Kennedy” help. If fuckstick in there decided to press charges, then it wasn’t exactly brain surgery to figure out who did it.

But fuckstick wasn’t a brain surgeon, so Sam guessed he wouldn’t be going to the cops. He didn’t care either way. He was sure Jenna, his publicist, would have something to say about it, though she always had something to say about something.

Not that it would exactly damage his image, since he’d established himself as the bad boy of the group. But that was just an image. More surface.

“Jesus,” Mark muttered into the phone as Sam blew the woman a kiss and sauntered down the open-air walkway of the crappy two-story walk-up.

“No, Sam, remember? I just said that, Mark. Have you been checked for early onset Alzheimer’s? They say those with high-stress jobs are more at risk.”

“Well I’m speaking to the source of 90 percent of my job-related stress,” he snapped.

Sam descended the stairs. “And 90 percent of your gross annual income,” he countered. “So even if I do drive you nutty enough to need medical intervention, you’ll be able to afford the best. Silver linings, my friend.”

“Sam, for a second, can you be serious? We’ve got an album to record, appearances, photo shoots.” Mark listed them off as he was known to do.

“Boo,” Sam called into the phone as he got into his car. “I need a vacation. I’ve got shit to do. You’ll handle it, I’m sure. ’Cause that’s your job. Got things to do, people to wow with my fists. Toodles.”

“Sam, don’t you hang up—”

He hung up before Mark could finish his sentence.

The low hum of the car vibrated his balls slightly and gently reminded him how fucking blue they were.

That had been his first intention coming down here to bumfuck teen-pregnancy, Bud-Light country. To search for what Austin Powers had lost in The Spy Who Shagged Me—his mojo.

Since that fucking night at Lexie’s wedding. Since that night that might be classified as one of the best of his life, surpassing even when he played on the hallowed ground of The Fillmore in San Francisco. He was haunted by the stupid decision he’d made because he was a fucking coward.

Pushing her away because of his own fucked-up junk drawer that rattled when she was around. Because she didn’t hide anything. And the thing with people who didn’t hide anything about themselves, they promoted the same action from yourself when you were around them. And Sam didn’t need that. To feel that fucked-up yearning for slow mornings, slow sex, whispered nothings at 3:00 a.m. instead of partying it up at the latest club opening with the latest it girl on his arm.

There was a reason why he chose those girls. They were temporal. Always moving. Appearing. Disappearing. Empty enough so he saw nothing in them. So, more importantly, they didn’t see anything in him. Not that they tried; they were mostly leeches, sucking off his fame or status. The thing with Gina was she didn’t see the surface, didn’t take anything from him. She gave.

To the man who had it all, she gave everything.

And that scared the shit out of him.

So he did what he thought was the best: cut it off before it could grow. Like a weed, like a limb with gangrene. He was the limb and weed in this situation.

Because she wasn’t right for his life. She was quiet and honest and innocent. His world would eat her up. Destroy all that was good about her. And her world would do the same to him. But it would destroy all that was bad.

And he couldn’t take that.

Without the bad, he didn’t know what the fuck he was. And he didn’t want to know. Because he was a fucking coward.

So he was cruel and broke a girl who wasn’t meant to be broken.

And his dick had paid the price for his head’s fuck-up. He had been on a world fucking tour. Of the world. Which meant a girl—a thousand girls—literally in every port. Of every nationality. With every type of accent, piercing, tattoo, kink you could think of.

And nothing.

A Danish chick took him to a sex club in Amsterdam and it was like his johnson was watching Antiques Roadshow instead of a woman getting plowed while the Dane sucked on his neck. And tried to rouse a response between his legs.

Nothing.

He’d thought this was a myth. Cock fright. That’s what he had. In the face of something real, something actually fucking permanent, his cock had been scared off everything else. Ruined for it all.

He hadn’t gotten it with Killian and the rest of those motorcycle fuckers, the way they doted over their women, like no other bitch existed. Sure they were knockouts and seriously amazing babes, but the world had billions of women to choose from. Billions. Sam considered it to be bad manners and an insult the big guy upstairs to not sample at least half of them. Why chain yourself to one when you can have two chained up naked to your bed and fifty more on speed dial?

A beautiful girl with eyes almost violet who wore a pink dress and saw someone all the stage lights in the world couldn’t illuminate. That’s why.

She may have said that he couldn’t get everything he wanted, but in his life in the fast lane, that had proved to be untrue thus far. In the slower lane, her lane, it seemed she was right. Which meant he just had to get her to want him—or at least admit it.

And forgive him.

She couldn’t lie for shit, so he saw it behind her crudely designed mask. She wanted him.

The forgiveness thing was another story. He’d worry about that later.

First, he had to go all Batman on this shit.

He glanced down at his phone to dial another number.

“Yo, Keltan, what’s the ETA to get a commando down to Hampton Springs?”

Even Batman had to get some hired help. He was a busy man. Plus, he was rich; delegating was just good business. What else was Robin for?

* * *

Gina

“Dude, look out your fucking window, like yesterday,” Pria ordered into the phone as soon as I answered, not even saying hello.

“Is the Reynolds boy mowing the lawns in his boxer shorts again?” I asked. “You know that’s totally inappropriate, Pria. He’s a child,” I scolded, already making my way over to my little bay window jutting onto my front yard.

Not that the Reynolds boy held too much appeal to me now. Now I had the memory of Sam’s ripped and defined body imprinted onto my memory. Had the ghost of the hardness of his muscles on my fingertips and in… other places.

“He’s legal,” she hissed in protest. “But no, this is better than that. Like way better. Are they filming some kind of Thor movie on our street or something? I thought they were meant to, like, alert us if they were doing that. Though my outrage would be quelled slightly if Thor came in for… tea.”

I rolled my eyes. “Dude, you’re married.”

“I’m aware. Garth’s standing right here,” she replied. “Say hi, Garth.”

“Hi, Gina,” he called dutifully into the phone.

I couldn’t help the giggle that erupted from my throat, the first since that day. One that was silenced immediately when I got to the window and saw exactly what was going on in the street.

“Holy Hemsworth,” she exclaimed. “The hot guys are walking up your path. To your door.” She said this as if I couldn’t see this with my own two eyes. See two men carrying large hard-topped suitcases in their hands. They were both wearing jeans, tight tees, and dark sunglasses, looking like they were, in fact, filming a movie.

“What do you think is in the suitcases?” Pria whispered. “Are they assassins? Strippers? Why would you order strippers and not invite me?” she whined, in front of her husband, who I imagined to be smiling good-naturedly, as was his way.

Not much perturbed Garth. Pria definitely wore the pants in that relationship, and he gave them to her happily, like he’d give her the world if she so asked. She didn’t use her power over him for evil. Only at that time of the month when she needed the good donuts from two towns over.

I watched them travel up my front walk and shrank back slightly when a sunglassed head flickered in my direction.

“Um, because you’re married,” I reminded her, forgetting for a moment to correct her that I had not ordered strippers for just me. Even I wasn’t that pathetic.

“Um, I’m married, not dead,” she snapped. “So they are strippers”

“You’ve known me for two years, Pria,” I said. “I teach your kid. You know me. Therefore, you know they are not strippers.”

“So, that means they’re assassins,” she concluded.

I sighed and then jumped slightly as the door vibrated with the power of the knock.

“Yet again, Pria, you know me. My boring life. Therefore, you know I don’t do anything exciting enough to warrant assassins.”

“Wayne,” she offered, a small darkness seeping into her cheerful tone.

The small twinge in my ribs as I moved to the door reminded me of Wayne. Not that I forgot him. The bags under my eyes were not just bruises; they were delayed wounds from the beating. Living alone was all well and good until darkness came. And for someone who’d read thousands of books and had a considerable imagination, the darkness meant thousands of possibilities. Almost all of them bad. But they were fears that weren’t properly actualized and would contribute to only a few restless nights. Now that they were actualized, I’d all but abandoned the charade of sleeping, for every time I tucked myself into bed I heard a noise that made me certain he was coming back.

“Wayne’s not smart enough, connected enough or cashed up enough to hire assassins. Especially ones who look like that.”

“True. Who do you think hired them?” she asked, not willing to abandon her assassins theory. She was a housewife after all, with only a slightly more exciting life than mine. She needed to get her thrills from somewhere.

My hand was on the doorknob. “No one, considering no self-respecting assassin would perform a hit in broad daylight in the view of a nosy housewife,” I teased.

“Well maybe they’re assassins with no self-respect,” she quipped. “And I’m not a housewife. I’m more than just a patriarchal label. My job is by my own choice, namely I don’t like working.”

I couldn’t help but grin wide as I opened the door to two of the hottest men… well, ever. I would’ve had a more drastic reaction had I not been subjected to every single male in the Sons of Templar MC and all three male members of Unquiet Mind. One in particular had been on this doorstep yesterday, and I’d spent the last twenty-four hours trying not to think about that. Wonder why he was here, wonder if I had made a mistake scaring him off, taunting myself with it all.

Because of my practice with guys too hot to be human, I was able to greet them without gaping or drooling or anything.

Mental high five for Gina.

“Hi, um, I know it’s the height of rudeness to greet a caller while speaking on the phone,” I said, my iPhone still at my ear.

“Holy shit, you’re talking to the assassins! What do they smell like?” Pria demanded. “I bet they wear expensive cologne. The type that doesn’t even have a name, just a number, and costs $500 dollars a bottle.”

“Don’t ask her what they smell like,” I heard Garth demand in the background. “Tell her to do a bird call if she needs saving.”

“Gina doesn’t know a bird call,” she snapped. “Who knows a bird call? And it’s not like you could save her from two seasoned assassins,” Pria scoffed. “I love you to death honey, but… no.”

“I could totally take them on if my wife’s or my wife’s friends’ lives depended—”

Throughout this spat I was listening and looking. As were my visitors. At me.

Each of the men had looked the same as they’d come up the walk, but upon closer inspection they were incredibly different. Both were built like brick shithouses, but that’s where the similarities stopped. The one closest to me, the one who was grinning with the squarest jaw and whitest teeth I’d ever seen, was blond with Scandinavian-type features, the smile contrasting the hard edges of this face. His skin had a sun-kissed tan, and defined muscles strained out of his tee shirt.

The other was not smiling. His face was blank, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t striking. He had dark features. The same bulky muscle mass as the other, but a menace and a danger seemed to seep from his very skin.

He unnerved me, the quiet malice of him. Though the smile of the other one didn’t mean he wasn’t capable of something dangerous. Alligators smiled before they killed you, after all.

“Yes, sorry, terribly rude,” I continued, speaking to both the men after realizing I’d left them in a long silence while listening to my friends bicker over the phone. “I just have to reassure my friends, who happen to live right across the road.” I nodded and two sets of sunglasses glanced over to the small but well-maintained townhouse with the greenest grass on the street. It was Garth’s pride and joy.

The curtains in what I knew was their dining room moved quickly as I spoke.

“Don’t bring us down with you,” Pria hissed. “Now they know we’re witnesses. Say your goodbyes to the grass, honey,” she said to Garth.

I grinned and the sunglasses focused on me once more. “Anyway, these friends have decided you’re killers for hire or something, and I can’t hang up until they’ve been assured otherwise,” I explained.

There was a long pause and my cheeks flamed slightly at the attention of both men. Okay, my cheeks flamed a lot more than slightly, but I was proud that I hadn’t burst into some kind of inferno, which wouldn’t be an overreaction to the hotness in front of me.

The smiling one grinned wider. “No, not assassins, babe,” he said with a wink.

“Though that’s exactly what an assassin would say,” the other one grunted.

I couldn’t tell if it was a really dry joke or an observation of someone who had intimate knowledge of assassins’ protocol.

“Okaaay, well that sounds like a no,” I said. “So that’s going to sound like a goodbye for you, Pria. Go and do something. Anything. Finish the last episode of Game of Thrones. I’ll call you after the non-assassins leave. But no spoilers or I will cut you,” I warned.

I hung up before I could no doubt get a protest.

“Sorry,” I apologized once more with a still-flaming face.

“No problem,” the blond Viking said. “That was cute as all fuck.”

I frowned at him while still smiling. He can’t have meant me cute. “Umm, yeah,” I said uncertainly, deciding to abandon that little comment. “So, how can I help you? Are you lost?”

“Never get lost, babe. I’ve got an excellent sense of direction. It’s never steered me wrong before, and it doesn’t look to be doing that today either.”

My smile dimmed. Was this hotter-than-Hades guy flirting with me?

No, he couldn’t be.

Luckily his grim-faced friend injected. “We’re here to install your security system,” he told me.

“My security system?” I repeated.

He nodded once. “You move aside, let us in, we install it, we leave.”

“Or we could stay for a beer. Or go out for one. Or a milkshake. A taco?” the blond one interjected.

The grim one looked like he was about to step forward, which would give me no other choice but to let him into my house. Now, I wanted two hot guys in my house as much as the next girl. But not while I was sporting a nasty black eye, hadn’t slept in days, hadn’t washed my hair in days and didn’t have a lick of makeup on, let alone deodorant.

Plus I didn’t like letting people into my house. I avoided strangers coming in at all costs. Even when I actually needed people to come in and fix things, I either tried to fix it myself via YouTube or learned to adjust to the freezer beeping nonstop every time I opened it. At first I thought it might be a good deterrent to eating frozen Twix bars at 2:00 a.m.

It was not.

My house was my sanctuary, built and decorated over the years I’d lived here. Most of the walls in the living room were taken up by bookshelves, surrounding a huge comfy sofa covered in pillows of differing sizes and patterns, and snuggly throws for the times when I fell asleep reading.

Which I did often. Hence me splurging a lot on the sofa.

And since I wanted my house to be a sanctuary, I didn’t let many people in. Kind of the defeated the purpose of the whole sanctuary idea.

So I put my hand up to make sure Mr. Grim didn’t get any ideas.

“There’s been a mistake, I didn’t order a security system.”

“You Gina?” he asked.

I nodded, unnerved that he knew my name.

Strange men on your doorstep with large suitcases who knew your name were bad, no matter how hot they were.

Just because someone was physically attractive on the outside didn’t mean they weren’t warped and rotten on the inside.

I knew that well. Too well.

My stomach dipped with unease as my heart slammed painfully against my injured rib.

“Maybe you didn’t order security but someone did. On behalf of you.” His hand went to his pocket. I braced for a gun, but instead he presented me with a small square business card.

Greenstone Security was typed in sleek block letters with names, numbers and an intricate curved logo.

I pursed my lips. “I don’t need security,” I clipped shortly.

His eyes went to my bruised skin and they flickered slightly with anger. “That communicates something to the contrary.”

I swallowed. “This was an isolated incident that has been resolved,” I argued.

“Man comes to a woman’s home and assaults her, that’s not an isolated issue,” he replied. “In fact, it’s a precursor to a plethora of other issues. Especially since the asshole in question is out on bail.”

My blood ran cold.

Bail. I hadn’t been in contact with anyone from the sheriff’s office after my initial statement, which I’d selfishly been glad about because that meant I didn’t have to communicate with Simon. Even after two years, he still had the ability to affect me. Make me uncomfortable in my own skin. Make me question everything about myself. The way I walked, sipped my coffee, styled my hair. Stupid things, things you did without thinking.

Until someone you loved with all your heart said you were doing them wrong.

Then, of course, you obsess over doing it right. Being right.

I’d been enjoying feeling right in my own skin, no matter how bruised or jumpy it was at that moment. I’d just assumed the sheriff had remanded him, considering he was being investigated for child abuse and he drove over to a kindergarten teacher’s house, forcefully entered it and then beat the shit out of her. I thought that would be the “do not pass go, do not collect $200” situation.

It seemed not.

“You didn’t know,” he said—or more accurately accused.

I shook my head.

“Stupid fuckin’ hick towns and fuckin’ hick cops,” he muttered under his breath. Then he focused on me. “So yes, I would say the man who forcibly entered your home and assaulted you walking around, or limping around, gives you renewed motivation to let us install a security system that will hopefully stop him from entering your house and hurting you again. And if he doesn’t, it will make sure that he doesn’t have enough time to kill you before the cops get there if he’s smart or stupid enough to bypass one of the best security systems in the county.”

“Stupid,” I whispered, still dwelling on the “killing” portion of his casual statement and completely skipping over the “limping” part for the time being, “would be the correct answer in that hypothetical.” I snapped my head up, not moving to let them in the door. “And though it would take some doing—heavy drinking to kill an infinite amount of brain cells, for example—I’m not as stupid as Wayne Harken. Therefore, I’m not going to let two strange men into my home. Who are here to install a security company I didn’t order.”

I glanced down at the business card and read the LA part again, then snapped my head back up. “You guys are from LA.”

The Viking nodded. “Yes ma’am.”

“Long way from home,” I mused, my blood boiling as I connected the dots between yesterday’s visitor and today’s.

He nodded once again, that time not saying anything, but I saw the shadow of a grin begin at the edge of his attractive mouth.

“And what would two security professionals from a rather prominent firm in the City of Angels be doing in the town of alcoholic child beaters?” I asked through gritted teeth.

The stern one shrugged. “Got a call. Owed someone a favor. Here we are.”

“You’re here, a four-hour flight and another hour drive away from the city in which you reside as a favor to someone?” I clarified.

Another nod.

“And this person wouldn’t happen to be a drummer with too many tattoos, and an ego the size of the gosh-darned state we’re currently in?” I snapped.

Menacing guy grinned. Actually grinned. “Did you just say ‘gosh-darned’?” he teased.

I didn’t answer, mostly because the roar of an engine took my attention.

“Yes, she did just say ‘gosh-darned,’” Viking muttered.

The car’s engine echoed through our sleepy street like the throaty roar of a giant through a silent cave.

Our street was full of mostly middle-class families, rounding to the dead end where my house was the second to last before the forest spirited the road away.

I didn’t know all my neighbors because I was… well, me. The only reason I was good friends with Pria because she was, well, her. In other words, crazy.

In a good way, because she accepted my quiet nature and need for solitude.

Not many people got it.

Lexie.

Sam.

The Sam who was currently tearing through the silence and solitude I’d created, not only with the rumble of his engine but with his everything. I knew it was him because everyone on this street drove midrange SUVs or minivans. I had a convertible Beetle.

I knew engines. And the rumble of 500 HP. And the sound of the engine was familiar to what had roared off yesterday. It seemed he had kept his promise of “this” not being over.

I hated that it made a little part of me happy.

Luckily the rest of me was still hurt enough to be furious.

I crossed my arms and glared at the car’s tinted windows as it parked behind the sleek SUV belonging to the commandos.

“Sam is in for it,” Viking muttered, grinning.

Menace’s eyes went up and down my body in a glance that had my cheeks reddening with the sheer maleness of it.

“Yes he is,” he agreed. “Lucky fucker.”

I decided to ignore this weird behavior. Maybe the flight from LA had been longer than I thought if they considered me in my sweatpants, bruised, with greasy hair and at least an extra pound from all the stress eating as anything to direct such male gazes toward.

As if he didn’t have three—or most likely five, counting Pria’s and Garth’s—pairs of eyes on him, Sam lazily and leisurely folded himself out of his car, running his hand up on his head to fasten his hair into a sloppy bun.

Despite being spitting-tacks mad, I felt that gesture, most annoyingly, between my legs.

He grinned wickedly, as if, from across the lawn, he could sense my reaction.

I glared at him.

“Yeah, lucky fuckin’ Sam,” Viking muttered.

“Heath, how’s it hanging?” Sam slapped the menacing one on the shoulder before glancing between all the eyes on him. “Guys, I know, I’m famous and am an intoxicating presence, but don’t we have work to do?” He glanced to the suitcases the men were holding, then to me. “You know, other than chatting up my girl? I’m the only one who gets to do that. I mean, you could try, but then I’d have to punch you and I’d hate to cause a scene.” He paused. “Oh wait, I love causing a scene. Just not that sort of one.”

“I’m not your girl,” I snapped immediately, increasing my glare tenfold.

He put his hand to his Ray-Bans, lowering them enough so I could see him wink, then he turned his attention to Heath.

“We haven’t started because the lady of the house hasn’t let us in since she didn’t know anything about this security system,” Heath said dryly, but with a grin.

“Well of course she didn’t know. It was a surprise.” He turned to me once more and held his muscled arms skyward. “Surprise!” he yelled.

“No,” I said.

He frowned. “‘No’ is not an appropriate response to surprises. Girls usually scream, or cry, or at the very least smile. A kiss with a lot of tongue is my request. Don’t worry, PDA doesn’t bother me.”

“You think you’re cute but you’re not,” I gritted out.

He pouted. “Well thanks. That little insult is going to shatter my vulnerable self-esteem and it’ll take years with a therapist to build it back up,” he said, feigning hurt.

I gritted my teeth. “Well, go and begin your sessions. Now. And take your action men with you. I’m sure you’ll need protection from all your fans. You know, the ones who don’t live here,” I snapped.

“They’re not going anywhere. Except inside where they can set up the security system they traveled very far to install.” His tone was still light and joking but it was firmer.

I glared at him. “I didn’t ask them to travel. You did. I hope you reimburse them generously for the fuel and effort it took to get here and deal with you. And that you tip them handsomely because seriously, dealing with you is worth at least 40 percent. And that’s if you’re a stingy tipper.”

“I’m a great tipper, babe,” he assured me. “Look, here’s one. Step aside, let the guys in the house and let them install the system before things get ugly. Or fun. Or attractive.”

I stared at him. “They already have. Gotten ugly,” I clarified. “And no. I don’t need a security system. I need—”

I let out a strangled scream when he cut me off by stepping forward and effortlessly yet very carefully lifting me on my uninjured side. He pulled me out of the doorway, not stopping until we were on my front lawn.

“Put me down!” I yelled. Mostly because I was angry that he’d just moved me bodily to get his own way, and also because I was embarrassed about how heavy I no doubt was.

Sam wasn’t small. At all. He was all muscle.

But I wasn’t small either. And I was not all muscle. I was all Pop-Tarts. Or Twinkies.

“Do I have to?” he whined, sounding like a kid.

“Put me down. You’re hurting me,” I lied.

As I predicted, the statement had my feet immediately but softly placed on the slightly damp grass. Unfortunately, Sam’s hands remained lightly on my hips as his eyes ran over me in concern. “Fuck, I’m sorry, baby. I thought I was being gentle. Where are you hurt?” All trace of joking was gone from his voice, and it lingered with regret.

I almost felt guilty. Then I looked at the SUV on the curb.

“My ass,” I said.

He blinked in confusion.

“Because I have this huge pain in it by the name of Sam Kennedy, and he won’t seem to leave me the heck alone since he inexplicitly turned up on my doorstep after brutally dismissing me a year ago,” I snapped. “So, if you’re so concerned about my well-being, how about you rectify that pain by getting the heck off my lawn and out of my life?”

He rubbed at the small sprinkling of stubble on his jaw, eyes swimming with more regret the moment I’d mentioned him brutally dismissing me. But that was soon gone, replaced with light teasing.

“Well, of course I care about your ass’s well-being,” he said seriously, peering around so he could get a glimpse of the ass in question.

Every instinct told me to squirm away from the gaze but I held strong. Though I still flushed beetroot red.

He squinted. “It looks like perfection to the outsider’s gaze, but I’d be happy to get a closer look at the area, see what I can do about that pain. You’ll quickly see, once our clothes are off, that I don’t specialize in pain but pleasure.”

His words may have been teasing, but pure erotic promise coupled with pure erotic memory caused me to have a very serious reaction. But then I remembered what happened after that pure erotic memory.

“No, thanks. We tried that, remember? Sure, you’re fine at pleasure, but nothing a battery-operated device can’t reproduce. And it doesn’t come with all the fucking headaches.”

Sam grinned. “We can include this battery-operated device as well.”

I blew out an audible breath in exasperation.

“Bite me,” I hissed.

He grinned, and I hated how that exercise of facial muscles did things to me.

“I would, baby, because you look de-li-cious.” The way it rolled off his tongue drenched the air with sex. “Doesn’t mean you can’t bite me, though.” He started to cross the distance I’d put between us. “But,” he murmured when he came close enough for me to smell the unquiet mixture of his expensive cologne with the scent of him—the ocean and cigarettes. No matter that we were inland and it was preposterous for him to carry the scent of the ocean around with him. “My lawyer says I have to stop doing it. It’s getting expensive.” He winked, then trailed a hand up my jaw.

I found my feet in quicksand, unable to move from his touch even though it spelled disaster.

So I stayed there for a whisper of a moment. Until I found my sense. Or my pain.

Then I jumped back, stumbling slightly but catching myself before I could do anything embarrassing like fall on my ass. I glared at him in an attempt to mask my reaction to him. “Yeah, I’m sure it does get expensive, what with all the girls on rotation. You buy all your other groupies a brand-new security system too? That’s what I am, right? Your word, not mine.”

Sam flinched, all sense of humor gone from his face. “Thumbelina, I—”

“You nothing,” I cut him off despite being desperate to hear what he had to say. “I know you live in a different world now. I understand that, as much as a lowly commoner such as myself can, but that doesn’t mean you can saunter in and play with people’s lives like you play a fucking drum set. You turn up here, feigning outrage at my assault, running around buying me security systems, exacting violent retribution on my behalf?” I looked pointedly at his bruised knuckles, connecting the dots to the Viking’s earlier statement about Wayne limping. “That’s not how this works, Sam. Life. That’s not how life works. You don’t get to do that.”

He stared at me. “Is there a set way that life works?” he asked quietly. A blueprint?” He didn’t wait for my answer. “No, there isn’t. That’s the whole point of it. We’re all just making it up and fucking it up along the way. I’ll admit it, I fuck it up more than most. And I do it often. Never have I done it as bad as that morning in the hotel room. Middle of a fucking yard isn’t where I’m going to lay out the whys of it, babe.” His eyes flickered behind him to Pria and Garth’s house, as if he could sense the eyes behind the net curtain. “Especially with an audience. I’m at home in front of an audience usually, but not with this. Not with you. So for now, I’ll say the way life is working for me, at this current moment, is making my way up here to apologize. Explain. Grovel. I’m not going to lie and say my intentions were completely noble. I can’t get your pussy out of my fucking head. Either of them,” he muttered, the crude meaning of his words somehow not insulting me but making me feel hot and cold at the same time.

I cursed my responsive body that had never had this particular response. Ever. I failed to admit to myself that it was something special regarding Sam. I wouldn’t.

“But that’s not the half of it. And life happened, meaning when I come here, with an apology and a fuck of a lot of sex in mind, I’m presented with the evidence of someone hurting you. I couldn’t have prevented that. Or maybe I could have, if I hadn’t been such a flying prick a year ago. Life unfortunately doesn’t deal in what-ifs or do-overs. So instead I’ve been doing whatever it is in my considerable power to make you feel safe again. Can’t heal your body, babe. Much as I hate to admit it, I can’t heal your mind either. That’s on you. But I can take care of the rest. Me comin’ here? It’s not playing with you. It’s me trying to….”

I cursed myself for watching it fall like silk, letting it hypnotize me as Sam continued speaking.

“Fuck, I don’t know what I’m trying to do. Win you back? But that’s assuming I had you in the first place. And I know I’m an arrogant motherfucker, but even I’m not that deluded. I know I had the chance to get you. Had you in my grasp. So I guess I’m not trying to win you back. I’m trying for a second chance?” He structured the sentence as a question, his face naked with hope. With a lot of other things. With everything there was that morning right after he woke up. Right before he put on that mask of indifference.

If I hadn’t been well-versed in that mask, I might have relented. Melted. I was still tempted, of course, but once you’d seen someone’s ability to shut off, turn their face into someone else, be someone else, you knew it would always be there. That mask. And it would come back.

I knew that. Despite how convincing Sam was.

And he wasn’t done.

“I’m taking full responsibility for my actions here, babe. Honestly and completely apologizing.” He sighed in exasperation, ripping the elastic out of his hair so he could run his fingers through it, as if he could find the words he was searching for there. “It’s no secret that I’m not exactly monogamous,” he said sheepishly.

I snorted in answer.

He was never photographed with the same woman twice, except Lexie. Every issue of every trashy magazine displayed at the supermarket had another tanned, emaciated and well-dressed woman hanging off his tattooed arm.

“Yeah,” he agreed to my snort. “It’s not something I was ashamed of. I was a fuckin’ kid when we blew up, when all this shit started getting offered on a silver platter. Booze, money, women, drugs. I took everything on it, including the fucking platter, because I was wrapped up in it all. Because I was wrapped up in the music and what it gave me. And I had this warped idea that it was what I needed to do to keep up with the music. You ever met a rock star who stayed at home on his off nights, drank herbal tea and stayed loyal to his childhood sweetheart?” he asked. “No. They were rebels, outlaws of society who played out their lives on a stage, paid to do so like animals in a zoo. So we did what good animals and musicians do—we performed. And off the stage it didn’t stop. Only I wasn’t doing it for them, the masses. I was doing it for me. For the greats. So I could make the history books of rock ’n’ roll. You can only be heard in the roar if you roar the loudest. Stay ahead of the pack by living the fastest. And avoid getting fucked up entirely by avoiding the big L. And I don’t mean LSD. I loved that shit for a while.”

I must have shown it on my face, my shock, because he held up his hand.

“Full disclosure, I’m sober now.” He paused. “Mostly. If you don’t count hard liquor. I’m not perfect. I’m a rock star, not an angel.” He flashed me a grin. “And all that shit plays with my mind, babe. I like to let people think my head is empty and always has a dancing monkey playing drums on repeat running through it rather than anything of substance. And I liked it that way. I made sure everything around me was so loud that I didn’t hear the shit inside my head. And it’s fucked up and almost impossible, but that one night with you, I heard it all. Everything you said. And didn’t say. And, babe, I used to think the slow and quiet was the grave. But it was paradise all along.” He stepped forward. “And I woke up like that. Happy. In a way I couldn’t recognize. Didn’t want to recognize because it was connected to someone. You. And seeing you look at me and realizing what a fucking rigmarole it would all be, I took the easy way out. I was a coward, I’ll admit that, but I’m trying to make it up to you. Never tried harder. So why can’t you just give me a fucking chance?”

I stared at him. Long and hard. Digested his words. “Because this”—I waved my hands between us—“would never work. You’re the world-famous rock star who lives in the spotlight, thrives on it, on everyone knowing your name, knowing your life. I’m the plain and unremarkable kindergarten teacher whose own parents barely remember her name. I’m not made for the spotlight.”

He surged forward. “Bull-fucking-shit,” he hissed. “If I ever met someone more remarkable, it was in a dream or on an acid trip. You’re remarkable, babe. No fuckin’ way you’re forgettable. I wouldn't forget you. I can’t. It’s physiologically impossible. It’s why I’m fucking here. You’ve cast some sort of spell on me.”

I laughed. It was bitter. Ugly. And I didn’t like the way it hung in the air. “But I am,” I whispered. “And you did. Forget me, that is. You recognize me from high school, right?”

Something flickered in his eyes, finally. Far too late.

I laughed again. “Yeah, right,” I muttered. I sucked in a long, painful breath that had nothing to do with my cracked rib. “You’re right,” I said flatly. Hope started to bloom into happiness on Sam’s face. “Life doesn’t deal in what-ifs. And mine doesn’t deal in second chances.”

And then I turned on my heel, though not toward the house. I knew I didn’t have a chance of convincing three strong-willed males not to install a security system when I’d been the victim of an assault.

Victim.

I hated that that’s what I was.

But hating it didn’t change it. And despite the principle of the entire thing rubbing me like nails on a chalkboard, I wasn’t going to let my pride influence my physical safety.

I was looking out for my emotional safety when I crossed the road in the direction of Pria and Garth’s house.

And I pretended I didn’t feel Sam’s stare the entire time.

And I also pretended one solitary tear didn’t trickle out of my bruised eye and down my cheekbone.