Light My Fire (Rock Royalty Book 1) (27 page)

"Nice for her to have both you and your twin concerned for her."

Bing let out a short, dry laugh. "She and Brody are BFFs. She doesn't give me the time of day."

Interesting. There was something deeper going on there, Ren could tell, but he tamped down his curiosity. It's not as if he'd be around to see how the situation played itself out.

Cilla's brother seemed to have lost interest in grilling him, anyway, distracted by the lovely Alexa, so Ren used the moment to slide his phone from his pocket and check the time. Maybe he could announce the airline had notified him by text that the plane was leaving early...like when did that ever happen? Okay, how about a traffic tie-up? That would work. He could tell them all if he didn't leave immediately, he'd miss his flight. Everybody knew the 405 freeway was a bitch around the LAX exit 24/7.

He decided on a test run with Bing. "Well," he said, noting the other man didn't even glance his way. "It looks like I have to get going earlier than I thought."

"Yeah?" Bing didn't seem bothered by the announcement. As a matter of fact, he began descending the porch steps, his attention still on Alexa. "Have a good trip."

Ren saluted his receding back and had a hope that all the impending goodbyes would be so easy. Even Cilla shouldn't be difficult, as long as he avoided looking at that bandage, her body, her expressive eyes, her valentine mouth...

Oh, shit. Rubbing his chest, he sucked in a breath and ordered himself to get on with it. Turning toward the front door, its knob rotated before he could touch it. When the wood panel swung open, two figures stood framed by the jamb. Ned and Clark, his teenage half-siblings stared at him, shy smiles on their faces. "We came through the back door," the boy said.

His sister combed the ends of her hair with her fingers, a nervous gesture. "We wanted to say goodbye."

Ridiculous how he felt so...so touched that they'd made the effort. Suddenly he couldn't see himself hustling immediately out of the house. A few more minutes couldn't hurt, could they? "Did you see the food?" he asked. "Did someone direct you to the sodas?"

He glanced around as if expecting Cilla to appear out of thin air. She'd help make the youngsters more comfortable—she'd done it before. "We'll get you something to eat and drink and then we'll find a place to sit down and talk."

Yes, ridiculous, how he wanted just a bit more time with them. Still, there it was. "I need to give you my email address," he heard himself say. "We'll exchange cell phone numbers."

Wasn't that odd as hell? Because he was leaving for London in a few hours with every intention of never making contact with any of his relatives—or the rest of the rock royalty—ever again. Hadn't he been fine all those years alone? But maybe this last exchange would be how he made peace with it...and with them all.

"Um..." Nell slid a glance toward her brother. "There's something else."

Ren shook his head. "You won't find me on social media."

"There's
someone
else," Clark amended, "here to see you."

"What?" Ren's brows drew together. "Who?"

The teenagers shifted so that a person standing behind could step onto the porch. Ren froze, as his pipe dream of imminent peace evaporated.

His mother gave him a stiff half-smile. "Hello, Renford," she said.

Chapter 15

"You," Ren said to the woman who'd birthed him.
What the hell could she want?

"It's been a long time," she said, as Nell and Clark retreated into the house, the door shutting behind them. Her fingers toyed with the top button of the navy blue cardigan she wore over a matching sweater. "You look...good."

"Thanks."

Another half-smile curved her mouth. "Grown up."

He continued staring, as in his memory he heard his half-sister's throaty voice singing, her tone both sweet and sad.

Motherless children have a hard time
When their mother is gone

Shaking the words from his head, he shoved his hands in his pockets. His fingers closed around his phone, and he thought of that excuse he'd been concocting. Traffic on the freeway. A plane to catch.

Time to go.

It would be a way out of this conversation Alison Renford Holzman appeared to want to force on him.

The coward's way out.

Fuck it. Ren was no coward.

Withdrawing his hands from his pockets, he crossed his arms over his chest. "What brings you here?"

Her gaze moved off his face for a moment to scan the view. The sun was going down, and its dwindling light got caught in the long branches of the eucalyptus. "The compound hasn't changed much. The trees are bigger. You boys are bigger." Another of those strained, almost-smiles. "When I left, you and Beck were toddlers, Bing, Brody, and Walsh babies. Reed was just a tadpole in his mother's belly, Payne too. The girls had yet to be born."

Ren realized he'd never known exactly when she'd left him with Bean. And it surprised him that she'd mention the names of all the rest. "You know about the other Lemon kids?"

One of her thin shoulders lifted. "Gwen and I kept up a correspondence of sorts."

"Of sorts? What does that mean?"

"About five years ago I began writing to her. We exchanged letters regularly since then."

Ren frowned. "It's a thirty-minute drive."

Alison shrugged again. "We preferred keeping in touch that way." She paused. "Though she never shared she was sick, so I missed my chance to say goodbye."

He could hardly rebuke her for her ignorance, considering he
had
known and still not visited before Gwen's death. "She was a special woman," he said.

"Yes. And speaking of special..." She glanced down at her feet, shod in sensible-looking flats with understated gold buckles on the toes. "Thank you for your kindness to Nell and Clark. They enjoyed the chance to meet you...to know you."

And didn't that just give him a guilty pinch? It was his intention to never see them again, or even keep in long-distance contact, despite the noises he'd made about sharing email addresses and cell phone numbers. "I like them," he heard himself say.

It was true.

Alison looked up, her gaze meeting his. "They told me you met my father. That you visited him frequently."

"And I was told at the home where he lived that you never visited." See? He'd come by his talent for detachment naturally. "Not once."

The shot must have hit its mark, because the woman who'd given birth to him winced. "I had a...difficult relationship with my father."

Another thing they had in common.

"My father—your grandfather—was a professor at USC before retiring and returning to London. My mother was younger, American, but she died when I was entering my teens. Whether it was losing her, or whether it was just me...well, there came a time I was game for anything."

"And along came Bean," Ren said.

She smoothed a hand over her conservative bob of hair, not one of its locks out of place. "I was seventeen and went backstage at a concert at the Hollywood Bowl. A friend's older brother worked security—" She broke off and a wry little laugh escaped. "Like you, I suppose."

"My company doesn't let underage girls anywhere near the bands."

"Fake I.D.," she said.

"We're pretty good at spotting those," Ren replied.

"Anyway," Alison continued. "The rest...the rest was sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll."

"You don't have to tell me about that."

"No." She looked away again. "And I probably shouldn't."

"But you want to tell me something. Why you left me behind?" Ren guessed.

Color crept up her neck to her cheeks. "I thought it was a better situation for you, here at the compound. Your father was rich. You had a family of sorts in the other boys. When I left, I had no idea how I was going to support myself, let alone a child."

"And you knew Bean was going to be the kind of paternal figure any boy could want or need," Ren said drily.

She closed her eyes, clearly in more pain. "I was a twenty-year-old who hadn't finished high school. I didn't have any maternal skills myself."

"Nell and Clark prove differently."

Her shoulders relaxed at the mention of her two younger children. "I'd like to think some of who they are is testament to my parenting skills. It took me a long time to go from that young woman who abandoned her child to the person I am today. Their father—between undergrad and med school he worked at a tutoring center for people working toward passing the GED—believed in me even when I didn't. He loved me, even when I thought myself unlovable and undeserving. He didn't accept for a minute that I was unable to form a long-lasting bond."

A chill rolled down Ren's spine.
Unlovable. Undeserving. Unable to form a long-lasting bond.
Now it was his turn to look away. He stared out over the compound, seeing none of it. The descending dusk might as well be full dark.

He believed in me when I didn't. He loved me.

"But now I'm not so sure about the scope of my maternal influence," Alison said.

Ren glanced over. "Yeah? Why's that?"

"Because of who you are, Ren. I remember that twenty-year-old—the same age I was when I left behind a baby—who showed up on my doorstep."

He'd been bristling with attitude but still unprepared for rejection. "You gave me a box—the mementoes of my babyhood you'd kept. You gave them away."

Her flush deepened and she looked down at those gold buckles. "I thought...so much time had passed. I didn't know the correct thing to say, to do, and I didn't feel I had a right to hold onto anything that had to do with you."

"But you think you know the correct thing now?" He couldn't disguise the edge to his voice.

"No." She shook her head. "But even if you don't care about my opinion—and I can understand why you wouldn't—I'm going to say how happy I am you became the man my children met last week."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"You're not that twenty-year-old I met in Pasadena any longer."

He had to laugh. That kid had been big trouble and heading for more. Somehow he'd pulled himself back from the brink. "You're right."

"So, like me, you learned. You grew up. You didn't need a mother or a better father to become who you are."

"I—"

"To become someone who reaches out to others, like you did to your grandfather, like you did to Nell and Clark, like you're doing here, with the kids of the Velvet Lemons."

The ones he'd been about to leave behind forever. Suddenly agitated, Ren ran his hand through his hair. "Listen, I...I need to take a walk."

The woman who'd given birth to him put her hand on his arm. "You made it, Ren. That's what I came to tell you. I don't expect you ever to forgive me, but I couldn't forgive myself unless I said those words. It takes courage to create your own identity, to stop believing old stories about who you are or that limit who you can be."

Courage. Fuck it. Courage.

"Gwen said you and the other Lemon kids weren't very close as adults...but it looks like that's changing. She'd be so thrilled you were bringing them together. That you'd learned to treasure them."

That was it. Ren was done. He pulled free of the woman's hold and hurried down the porch steps, away from her, Gwen's house, everything that had happened.

Separating himself.

Darkness was descending. The sky was the pale purple of an old bruise. He felt like that all over. Aching.

His mind teeming with thoughts he didn't try to catch and his chest filled with jagged emotions that he tried over and over to dodge, he paced mindlessly about the compound, taking none of it in. Not any of the Lemon houses, not the tennis court, the pool, the pool house. When the automatic landscape lights flipped on, illuminating hibiscus bushes and wrapping the trees and the tennis court fencing in what looked to be fireflies, Ren squeezed his eyes shut against the new brightness.

Why the hell hadn't he left hours ago?

Why wasn't he leaving now?

With that in mind, he spun back. It didn't matter what was going on at Gwen's or who was still there. He'd slip in, slip out with his bag, run from them, run from all of it like a thief in the night.

As he strode in the direction of the cottage, a light came on in the tower of the Castle. Ren glanced up at the open window, a reflex, but the quick look became a stare. His feet stuttered to a halt.

A yellow glow behind her, Cilla was framed by more fairy lights. They lit up her face as she looked outward, her elbows braced on the sill. She couldn't see him where he stood in the shadows of a towering eucalyptus, but he was close enough to make out that new mark on her wrist—apparently she'd been given good advice about bandage removal—and the pensive expression on her face.

The matching tattoo on his skin began throbbing like it was just inked hours ago and that look on her face hurt too, as it mirrored the wretched state of his soul.

Because of what he'd done to her.

Ren remembered thinking she was too well-armored to let any man in. That she'd leave the man who fell in love with her dismayed and frustrated because he'd only get a shallow taste of Cilla's sweet and sexy essence.

But he'd been all wrong.

She'd let in Ren. For a short time, she'd opened herself and her heart to him.

Then he'd turned his back on her.

Like his mother, he'd considered himself undeserving, unlovable, unable to form a long-lasting bond. Despite what Cilla professed to feel for him, he'd rebuffed her.

Alison Renford Holzman's voice echoed in his head.

He believed in me when I didn't. He loved me.

Cilla had given him that same belief, that same love.

And he'd thrown them back in her face.

Curling his hands into fists, he cursed his emotional clumsiness. His ineptitude with what that beautiful woman had offered to him. What he'd predicted had come true. Thanks to him, thanks to his rejection of her love, he'd wrought his worst fear.

Thanks to him, Cilla Maddox, was made as inaccessible to love as if she were truly locked up in her Rapunzel tower for the rest of her life.