Love's Rhythm (16 page)

Lauren was still, her face etched in shocked pain. She stared at him, wordless, her heat seeping into the sudden cold wanting to claim his heart.

“So the family that wasn’t really mine was taken away from me, and the family I never knew I had was denied me. Kinda fucks you up a little. Well, it did me. I lost the music in my soul and it took two special people to help me find it again. But when I finally got my shit together I realised what I wanted more than anything else was to see you.”

He swallowed, the tale done. There were more details, but he didn’t want to share them now. Not now. Now he wanted to curl his arms around Lauren’s waist, burying his face in the curve of her neck, breathe in the delicate fragrance of her scent, take
her
into his soul and just be. Be with the family he’d only just found, the family he wanted more than he could express.

He brushed her hair from her face, traced her lips with the pad of his thumb and gazed into her eyes. “I’m a man of words, babe, you know that. But there are no words for how much I want you in my life, want Josh in my life. No words. Just a pain in my heart that will know no relief until I hear your answer.” He paused, traced her lips again before lowering his hand to his chest. “Whatever it may be.”

Her gaze devoured his face. Her teeth caught her bottom lip. She shifted her position, enough that his spent cock, finally flaccid, slipped from her sex. The loss of such a physical, intimate connection rocked him, but he didn’t move to halt her. As much as he wanted to, he didn’t.

She shifted her hips, her legs over his, her palms coming to rest on his chest. Over his heart. Closing her eyes, she drew a slow breath, her eyebrows dipping as if she fought a battle he couldn’t see.

“I can’t say yes, Nick.”

Her answer was a whisper. A whisper that sheared through him like a molten blade.

“I can’t,” she went on, her voice still barely a breath. “Not yet. But I can say maybe.”

He whooped. A fair dinkum whoop. Bursting out laughing, he wrapped his arms around her and rolled her on to her back, smiling down at her as waves of glee flowed over him. Maybe. Maybe.

She laughed, a nervous chuckle that made his heart beat faster. “You did hear me correctly, didn’t you?” She cupped her hand to the side of his face, a confused frown creasing her forehead. “I didn’t say yes. I said maybe. I need a few days, a few weeks. I need to think. I need to—”

He grinned and stole a quick kiss before laughing once again. “A maybe isn’t a no, babe, and it sure isn’t a ‘fuck off, Blackthorne’.”

He claimed her mouth, unable not to. He kissed her, smiling as he did so, and at some stage his hands found her hips, her breasts. At some stage her thighs straddled his hips and she was impaled on his length again, moving up and down his dick, his eager, hungry, rigid dick, and even the word yes meant nothing compared to the sensation of being inside her.

And when they both came, long moments later, their skin slicked with perspiration, their breaths shallow, their fingers entwined, he swore the
yes
that tore from her lips in a raw cry over and over again was the most magical word he’d ever heard.

But not as magical as the words, “Mum, we’re home!”

Those three magical words, hollered by Josh moments after their climax, had the power to send both he and Lauren scrambling out of bed in a wild thrashing of arms and legs.

“It was so freaking awesome,” Josh called, somewhere in the house. “Rhys almost threw up and—”

She stumbled backward, frantically searching her room. “Clothes,” she hissed. “Where the hell are my—oh God, your jeans are still in the shower.”

He tried not to laugh. He truly did. But the laugh left him anyway, deep chuckles that vibrated low in his chest. Right before Lauren threw a pillow at him.

“—Aslin buzzed Mr. McGimmon’s house—” Josh’s voice wafted down the hallway, louder this time, “—who was on his back porch making out with Mrs. Bailey and we fucking—I mean freaking
flew
all the way to freaking Newcastle and back and—”

“Get dressed,” Lauren mouthed at him, tugging her legs into a pair of faded jeans she pulled from the top of a neatly folded stack of clothes on a chair beside the bed.

“In what?” he mouthed back.

“Aslin says he’ll take us on another ride tomorrow if that’s okay with you,” Josh’s voice was close enough now Nick could hear the faint cracking on the higher inflections.

“Here,” Lauren snatched something black from the same stack of clothes, “they’re Josh’s. They might fit—”

“Mum? Where are you?” Josh called. Nick’s heart leapt into his throat. His son was no longer recounting his helicopter ride from the foyer or front of the house. He was almost at the bedroom. Close. “Are you—”

“Nick?” Aslin’s thunderous rumble had Lauren glaring at him, a second before she yanked a T-shirt from the stack and pulled it over her head. An image of Optimus Prime stretched over her glorious, unrestrained breasts, her nipples poking at Nick through the T-shirt’s soft black cotton.

“Miss Robbins?” a new voice called, a voice cracking far more than Josh’s and far higher in pitch.

“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me.” Lauren groaned. “Rhys?”

Nick felt his eyebrows shoot up his forehead. “Rhys?”

Lauren glared at him some more, sprinted from the room only to return a second later with the shirt he’d discarded in the bathroom. “Why the hell aren’t you dressed yet?”

“Mum?”

“Miss Robbins?”

Nick flapped out the sweat pants Lauren had flung at him and shoved his left leg in. They were too short, but only a little.

“Hurry,” Lauren mouthed, raking her fingers through her hair. It was an exercise in futility in Nick’s opinion. The moment she’d exited the shower he’d been on her like white on rice, and now her hair looked like a fabulous, wild tumble of untamed curls and waves. Bed hair in its truest definition.

“Mum?” Josh called again.

Closer. So close Nick swore he smelt his son’s deodorant.

With one last desperate rake at her hair, Lauren hurried across her bedroom and stepped out into the hallway. “I called back to you, Josh,” Nick heard her say. “Are you deaf? Didn’t you wear headphones? I was packing away the ironing.”

There was a pause, followed by Josh saying, “Oh. All right. Where’s Nick?”

“In the loo,” Lauren answered and Nick had to bite his tongue to stop laughing. “What? Rock stars aren’t allowed to pee like the rest of us?”

“Gross, Mum.”

“Yeah, that’s pretty filthy, Miss Robbins.”

“Yeah, yeah, you’d know, Rhys. Does your mum know you’re here?”

Nick heard Josh’s best friend mumble something and then their footfalls echoed down the hallway, away from Lauren’s bedroom.

He stood still for a long second, listening. For what, he wasn’t sure. Whatever it was, he didn’t want Josh to find him in Lauren’s room. Now, where the hell was the loo? And if he flushed it, would Josh hear it wherever in the house Lauren had led the boys?

“Coast is clear.”

It was Aslin’s voice Nick heard just outside the doorway, a decidedly laughing note to his British accent.

“And the toilet is across the hall, door next to the bathroom. Just in case you’re quizzed.”

Nick stepped out of Lauren’s bedroom, giving his bodyguard a wide grin.

Aslin cocked an eyebrow back. “Nice trousers.”

Nick chuckled, beginning to walk down the hallway. “How was the ride?”

Aslin cast him a sidewards glance. “Josh is a great kid. Smart. Funny.” He stopped walking and put his hand on Nick’s arm. It was an uncommon move. Aslin was the closest thing to an uncle that Nick had, but he rarely touched Nick unless it was to protect him, or shield him from some over-zealous fan. Nick frowned up at him, something about the man’s serious expression making his chest tight.

“Don’t fuck it up, Nick. You can’t walk away from this one. If you do, you’ll destroy three lives, not just your own.”

“I’m not going to, mate. I love her. I never stopped. It just took me too fucking long to realise it.”

“And now you do?”

Nick smiled. “I’m going to be a dad. And if she lets me, a husband.”

He turned away from Aslin’s stunned face, incapable of stopping the spring in his step. Rounding the entry way into the kitchen, he grinned at Josh and dropped into the empty seat beside the teenager.

“Holy shit, Josh!” the boy—Rhys—burst out, his eyes wide, his stare jerking backward and forward between Nick and Josh. “I always said you looked like Nick Blackthorne, but now you’re in the same room together… Fuck, he could be your dad.”

Chapter Ten

Lauren’s stomach dropped. Her heart smacked into her throat. She stared at her son, her cheeks burning. Oh God, why did she have to blush? Why did her stupid face have to turn so red?

Words scrambled in her mind. Responses, deflections, all tumbling over one another.

“Dude,” Rhys laughed, “Nick Blackthorne is wearing your tracky dacks.”

Josh frowned, jerking his stare to Nick’s legs, to Nick’s face and then back to hers. “Mum, why is Nick wearing my tracksuit pants?”

She opened her mouth and heard Rhys say, “How long ago did you say your mum knew him?” Her son’s best friend, a boy she’d watched grow up, a nice kid who always had a slightly skewed view of subtlety, laughed again. “I mean, seriously, check you both out.”

Fire razed through Lauren’s face. Josh slid his stare to Nick again, his jaw bunching, his throat working. His eyebrows pulled into a deeper frown and then he was looking at her once more, his eyes, so like his father’s, unreadable.

“Rhys,” she blurted, “I don’t think—”

“How long ago
did
you know Nick, Mum?” Josh asked, his voice steady.

She swallowed. Flicked Nick another look. The room roared. Or maybe that was the blood in her ears? Her lips prickled. “Josh—” his name was a just a croak, “—this is…I-I…you need to…”

“Holy shit, dude,” Rhys whispered. The awe-struck exclamation speared into Lauren’s sanity like a blade of ice. “Nick Blackthorne is your
dad?
”

Josh shook his head, never taking his stare from Lauren. “No. Mum would have told me if that was the case, right, Mum?” He sucked in a breath, something in his face cutting into Lauren’s soul. Something she never ever wanted to see in her son’s eyes—accusation? Mistrust? Her heart tore.

“Josh…” she began.

He shook his head, stopping her. “If I was Nick Blackthorne’s son you would have told me, right?”

She couldn’t answer him. She couldn’t. Lord, what did she say?

He jerked his stare, now wide-eyed, to Nick. “I mean, if I were your son…if you were my dad…she would have said something, would have told me, right?
Right
?”

Nick licked his lips, his jaw as tight as his son’s. “Josh, we need to talk. Your mother…I…”

It was Nick’s failure to deny it all that destroyed her son. Lauren could see that. She watched his shock, his pain and then his anger eat him up, his young face crumple under the revelation. Watched him shake his head, watched him stagger back a step. “This is bullshit. Bullshit.”

Lauren’s stomach rolled. She stepped toward him, reached for him. “Josh, please listen.”

But he jerked away from her, his glare jumping from her to Nick and back to her again. And it was a glare, a dark, angry, baleful glare. “What? Wasn’t I good enough to be Nick Blackthorne’s kid? Is that it? Did he pay you off? Did he pay you to shut up about me?”

“Dude,” Rhys whispered, shocked disbelief turning the word to a groan.

“Josh.” Nick made a move toward him but Josh hurried back another step, his hip colliding with the kitchen counter, his stare fixed on Lauren.

“And why’s he here now then? Why the
fuck
is he standing in my home wearing my
fucking
tracksuit pants if
he’s not my fucking father?
”

“Enough, Josh,” Lauren snapped. Her gut rolled. Her breath tried to choke her. Oh Lord, this was her fault. All her fault.

“No, it’s not enough, Mum.” He stomped his foot on the floor. That baleful hurt still etched his face, turning it into a twisted mask. “How many times did I ask you who my dad was? How many? You never once thought you could tell me? I thought he was a prick, or that he hit you, or he was in prison. Shit, I thought he must be married to someone else. I grew up thinking all that kind of shit. Do you know how fucking hard it was going to school the week before Father’s Day when I was little? When all the teachers had us kids make were Father’s Day cards and presents? Do you know how fucking hard it was going to soccer and seeing everyone else’s dads there?” He clenched his fists, pressed them to his face, his body shaking. “Jesus, Mum, do you know how fucking hard it was not having a dad to talk to when I had my first fucking wet dream? When I had to talk to you about it? Do you? And all this time I had a dad. I had a dad and you kept that from me?”

“Josh,” Rhys said, shuffling a step forward, “dude, you’re going to bust a valve.”

Josh’s face contorted. He turned away from them all, thumped his fist against the counter. “Do you know how many times I lay awake at night pretending I had a dad? That he would walk in the door one day. And when he finally does, he’s Nick fucking Blackthorne and he doesn’t let on who he is at all.”

Lauren’s heart tore open. Josh’s anguish cut into her. God, she’d done this to her son. “I’m sorry, Josh,” she whispered. Tears stung her eyes. Turned him into a blur of distorted colour. She blinked, swiping at her face. “I never meant this…any of this. I was only…” She paused, bit her lips. “I was only thinking of you.”

Josh turned back to her, slowly, his eyes red, his cheeks wet. “No, Mum. You were thinking of you.”

“Josh.” Nick’s voice was low. Steady but cut with a strength Lauren didn’t miss. “That’s not fair. You don’t know why she didn’t tell you. But you’re right about one thing. I
was
a prick, a selfish, thoughtless prick and because of that she did what she thought was the best for you.”

Josh scrubbed a balled fist at his cheeks. He didn’t look at any of them. “I’ve had enough of this shit,” he muttered. “I’m outta here.”