Off Her Rockers (Loving All Wrong #3.5) (7 page)

“I know, right?” Sadness crept into her eyes as she nervously worried her lips. “I really am hoping he’ll be okay once Jacob leaves…”

“It will all be okay, Kia.” My eyes flicked to the walk-in closet, knowing Xena was no doubt eavesdropping and Saskia was a super private person. Not wanting to risk Xena getting a hold of anything on Saskia, I murmured abrupt goodbyes and hung up.

Xena walked out of the closet a minute later, tucking a silk polka-dot blouse into her jeans. “Don’t get offended by this question, but…how do you do it? How do you manage to be away from your kid for so long?”

Because I’m a selfish wretch who thinks only of herself? Because I suck at being a mother? Because I was forced? Because I’m enjoying the freedom a little too much? Because I’m just an overall terrible human being?

Flat-out refusing to answer her question, I deflected, “So, Xavi said you wanted the deets? Where do I start?”

Xena’s frown deepened. “What are you talking about?”

Lazily sitting up, I leaned back against the headboard. “Xavi said you gave him strict instructions to bring me here. That you needed all the details to do your job?”

“Why would he tell you that?” she asked, her face now a mask of confusion. “He already sent me a freaking essay of an email last night on everything that happened from start to finish and ordered me to lay off you.”

My turn to frown. “So…let me get this straight, you
didn’t
tell Xavi to bring me here today?”

Hands going to her hips, she wagged her head. “If I’d told Xavi to do that, wouldn’t I have been
expecting
you to show up, and be caught anywhere
but
in Tex’s room?”

Sitting up straighter, I pensively tapped two fingers to my lower lip, wondering what the hell Xavier was playing at. “Wait, you said he chased after me last night and didn’t come back?”

“Yeah. Didn’t he sleep by you?”

My head shook no. “Xavi showed up at my apartment
this morning
.”

“So, where did he go?”

If Xavier followed me last night when I left, that meant he trailed me back to my apartment possibly to make sure I got there safe what with how hysterical I was. Maybe he’d planned on sleeping with me but turned back when he saw the paparazzi and Davian in the lobby.

Whatever the reason he followed me, he definitely spun back around because I didn’t see him until this morning. Ergo, my guess was that he came back to Beach Rock and…heard Xena and Tex…and slept downstairs or in one of the other buildings to make them none the wiser…then he brought me here so someone other than himself would catch them together.

Or
because he knew Xena would need a girlfriend to freak out to? I mean, he told me to tell
Tex
to be out in two minutes, not “the guys”. How did he know Leo or Mark weren’t there?

“Oh my God, Xena…”

My eyes shot to her and I could tell she had made her own calculations but came to the same conclusion as I did.

We both stared wide-eyed at each other and whispered in unison, “
He knows
.”

C
HAPTER
F
OUR

T
AP.
T
AP.
T
AP.
T
AP…

Running thin on patience, I sipped my coffee, propped back against Mel’s Range, which was parked outside the address Davian had messaged me the night before, requesting we meet up there at 10 am.

Our original plan had been to meet at Eye Spy at seven last night. Xavier, however, was not having it. Any kind of ‘meeting’ I was to have with Davian now or in the future, he’d made clear,
he
would be present.

Insisting that he
didn’t
rule my life, I’d yelled in his face and stormed out for Eye Spy. Xavier, well, he was dead serious. He practically chased me down and abducted me. Creating a massive scene in the middle of the street, he hauled me from my convertible, threw me in his jeep, and drove us back to my apartment like a madman.

While I raged, completely losing my shit, he, unfazed by my ire, proceeded to soothe me with his expert tongue and gave me the most somniferous orgasm ever received. Knocked me out clean.

I woke up this morning to a ton of missed calls from Davian, and a text message with a new time and location. Knowing Xavier would insist on coming along, I snuck out of bed and tiptoed around the apartment, got dressed, and left him snoring in my bed.

Truly, I understood all of Xavier’s concerns, but he had to get over his insecurities. I get it, he didn’t trust Davian, and he was right not to, but he needed to trust
me
.

Asking me to quit my job so he could keep an eye on me wouldn’t aid in strengthening our relationship. Demanding to be in the midst of every interaction with Davian was taking it a little too far, and would, in addition to that, only serve to
inflate
Davian’s ego, not get him to back off.

Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap.
My shoes tapped impatiently against the sun-hot pavement.

I checked my watch. 10:22 am.

Wondering idly if Davian planned to stand me up as some kind of sick payback for last night, I withdrew my cell phone from the back pocket of my jeans to find out where the hell he was. Just as I located his number in the recent calls list and hit the call button, Davian’s sports car screeched and dragged and rumbled, and parked butt-first in front of Mel’s Range.

Raising my coffee to take a sip, I simultaneously pressed off the call and stuffed my cell phone back in my pocket. Knocking my sunglasses from the top of my head so they fell over my eyes, I fixed my now hidden gaze on the direction of the sports car.

Davian slammed out of it, balancing a tray with two Starbucks cups. Totally chipper this morning, he skipped up on the sidewalk and elevated up onto his toes like Michael Jackson, grinning like a loon. All but dancing down the hot pavement toward me, he halted in front of me, shoved me aside, checked his hair in the tinted glass as he raked his fingers back through it, then he pouted like a model, turned to me, said, “Mornin’.”

His grin was so much wider than the ocean that it was hard to believe this was a man basically detested by everyone in Los Angeles right now. I couldn’t understand what had him so jaunty this morning.

This was an unwelcome image of the Davian I’d fallen madly in love with. The Davian I’d convinced myself I couldn’t live without. Fun, flirty, jocular, sexy, and irresistible. His mood spelled
free
. Was he happy because he was single again?

Although I was grinning my face off at his antics on the inside, on the outside, I scowled and snapped out, “You’re late.”

Blue eyes focused on the coffee cup in my hand, and a flicker of disappointment crossed his face as he replied through an exaggerated sigh, “Everyone hates me now, so I had a long ass wait in the line at Starbucks…but you got coffee already so…no first sip for me.” He tapped on the passenger window of the Range and Mel powered it down a second later. “Mornin’, balls of steel. You want a Cappuccino?”

Mel arched a brow at him, and he laughed. Removing one of the cups from the tray, he thrust the tray with the remaining coffee to her.

Accepting the tray, Mel powered the window back up without an acknowledgment.

Davian’s gaze came back to me as he took a sip of his coffee, and I thanked heavens I’d heeded the forethought of donning sunglasses because his stare
burned
.

His facial hair was groomed but not shaved, just cleaner, and his rock star haircut was growing out, the middle longer than the sides, which meant he was all dark-haired scruffy and uneven shagginess kinds of hot. A look I never would’ve imagined would work on him. But dear God, this rocker was
rocking
it. Add to that his thrown together attire of acid-washed jeans and a grungy sleeveless T-shirt.

“You look beautiful,” he told me.

Turning my face away from him, I sipped my own coffee again and stared up the street of the quiet neighborhood. I didn’t really understand what we were doing there. On the wealthier, family-oriented side of town, farther away from all the noise of the city. Lovely detached homes with manicured lawns and cute little mailboxes, birds chirping and flitting from tree to tree, butterflies fluttering around...

“Any minute now,” I murmured flatly, “you can start telling me why we’re here.”

Davian stepped up beside me, gaze trained in the same direction of the neighborhood, and we both raised our coffee cups to our lips and sipped. “House shopping.”

I almost snorted out my coffee. “Excuse me?”

“I spent yesterday looking at houses with a real estate agent. We narrowed it down to two. The one I’ll choose depends on your approval.” He swung his free hand around my waist and twisted me to face the gate of the home we were parked in front of. “Starting with this one.”

Low wooden gate, redbrick columns, shapely shrubs, and beyond was a gorgeous two-story colonial style house.

“Got the keys from the real estate agent before I came here.” His arm left my waist and he clasped my hand in his. “Come on.”

But I remained rooted, repeating, “
Excuse me
?”

In a long-suffering tone, he crooned, “What now, baby?”

I slipped my hand from his. “Firstly, please refrain from using any kind of inappropriate endearments where I’m concerned. Second, why the hell am
I
house-shopping with you? We’re supposed to be discussing moving our son here.”

He waved a hand at the house. “This is a part of the discussion. Do you think I wanna raise my son at that villa?” He seized my hand again. “I don’t want this life for him. He’s going to be a boring accountant or a brain surgeon or some shit. Dad never wanted this life for me either, but I’d been determined to ‘make him proud’, follow in his steps, so I kept pursuing…and look where that’s gotten me. I’ve lost the woman I love along with the life and family I’ve always wanted.”

My hand in his trembled a tad, but I did my best to keep it together, and for the second time that morning I thanked the heavens I wore my shades—even though Davian stared intensely, as though he could see right through the lenses. Who was I kidding? I never could hide with Davian. Sometimes he knew me better than I did myself.

“I’m not a real rock star, Ally.”

“I know.” I jerked my head at the house. “How many rooms?”

A grin brightened his face again as if the gambling ball had landed on his Russian roulette number, and he tugged me toward the house, enthused. “Three.”

I let him lead me inside the house and show me around, ebullience in each word as he told me what room would be Jacob’s and what he planned to put in it. Mostly I nodded and made sounds of agreement, as his excitement did not allow room for much else. He was completely dotty about a son he hadn’t even met yet, and I wasn’t quite sure how I was supposed to feel about that. I couldn’t recall ever seeing him this giddy—about anything at all—before.

I liked the house, it lacked nothing, and the bedrooms were massive, decent size yard space with a pool and gazebo…a nice little family home.

There was another place I had to see, he’d said, so we locked up and headed out.

“Ride with me,” he suggested as I started for the Range.

My contemplative gaze darted between his sports car and the Range. “I don’t think that’s a—”

“What has he done to you?”

“I’m sorry?”

“The Ally I used to know was fearless. ‘Ride my wave or drown in it’, that was your attitude. Now, you’re wound up so tight, shoulders all the way up to your ears, afraid to even smile at me lest your giant man burst through some imaginary door.”

“It isn’t—”

“You’re afraid of him.”

“I’m afraid of
losing
him. There’s a difference.”

He looked as if I’d slapped him, and I watched, in a matter of seconds, as all the carefree happiness he woke up with this morning drained right out of his eyes.

Holding his hands up, palms forward in surrender, he began moving backward. “Alright. Ride with Mel.”

Tapping on the window of the Range, he gave Mel the address when she powered it down. Mel responded with something I didn’t hear, and he shrugged and replied, “You’ve got to ask
her
that.”

As he moved off to his sports car, Mel reversed the Range to me with the window down and asked, “What’s the point of riding in two different vehicles if you’re both going the same place?”

Even though I
knew
Mel was one hundred percent Team Davi and she tried to shove us together every chance she got, I pretended that her question was a logical one and used it as the “okay” I needed to ride with Davian.