You Really Got Me (Rock Star Romance #1) (9 page)

The way Slater looked at her made everything in her clench. Need burned in her veins. She wasn’t ready to leave him.

“Could you?” When Slater studied her with that intensity, the whole world disappeared. It was just the two of them. Emotion rushed her so hard and fast it brought a fluttering sensation to her chest.

She looked away. What was the matter with her? “No.” Slater wasn’t attracted to
her
. A female body, sure. But not her. Besides, even if he was attracted to her, he didn’t do relationships. And she wasn’t about to have a meaningless hookup with her brother’s best friend.

She had to stop investing so much . . . want in him. “I was lucky to get the six-week leave of absence. No way would Irwin tolerate longer.”

“Describe your perfect man,” Tiana said, breaking the mood.

“I’m going to work out.” Derek looked to the others. “You want to come?”

Ben and Cooper shook their heads no, and Pete said, “Yeah, sure.”

When Slater opened his mouth to speak, she stepped in and said, “You’re not going anywhere. You’re hurt.”

Everyone looked at her and burst out laughing. “House mom,” Pete said. He and Derek left the room. “Don’t leave us, Em,” Pete called from the hallway.

“Okay, Pete,” she called back.

“Seriously, Em,” Cooper said. “You can stay here as long as you want.”

Her heart filled. “Thank you.” That was a lovely thing to hear.

“So,” Tiana said, “dream date. Go.”

Emmie wrapped both hands around her mug, letting the heat infuse her. “Well, I like them clean-cut, you know, the all-American boy next door.”

Tiana’s gaze shifted to Slater. “Close your ears,
GQ
, she’s not talking about you.”

He smirked. “Pretty sure no one’s gonna mistake me for a dream date.”

“I wasn’t finished,” Emmie said. “Quiet, thoughtful. Creative, kind, generous. Funny.”

“Likes to spend quiet nights around a fire reading poetry.” Cooper fluttered his eyelashes and then burst out laughing.

“Loves dogs and long walks around the lake,” Ben said.

“Hey,” Emmie said. “I don’t know where you guys get these crazy ideas about me. I hate poetry.” She enjoyed their laughter. They looked like little boys when they cracked up like this.

Tiana looked to Ben with an incredulous expression, then back to Emmie. “You just described my brother.”

“She’s not going out with your brother,” Slater said.

“Why not?” Tiana popped off Ben’s lap and grabbed a bagel off a platter on the counter. “He’s exactly what she described. He graduated from UT in 2004 with a degree in math. He’s an actuary.”

Slater made a rude sound.

“What’s wrong with an actuary?” Tiana said. “He makes a good living. He’s a provider.”

“She said thoughtful, creative, funny. Is he all that?”

“Why are you being so nasty about my brother? You’ve never met him.”

“I met him.”

“He came to one of our shows,” Ben said. “He and Slater talked for a while.”

“And he wasn’t funny.”

“Is he cute?” Emmie said.

“Totally. Want to see his picture?” Tiana pulled her smartphone out of the pocket of her scrubs and started fiddling with it.

“You don’t need a blind date.”

She cut Slater a look. “I’m a little isolated out here, and if it’s her brother, it’s not exactly blind. It’s just a little blurry.”

He leaned over and whispered into her ear, “He’s boring.”

“Here,” Tiana said. “Hector.”

Emmie leaned over Tiana’s shoulder. Totally clean-cut, the guy had twin dimples bracketing his mouth and very warm dark-brown eyes. A guy she could trust. “I’m in.”

*   *   *

The bus should’ve come seventeen minutes ago. Perspiration trickled down her back as she waited on a bench under the blazing sun. A familiar tune blasted out of car speakers, and Emmie turned to see the dark-blue Land Cruiser ease over two lanes to pull alongside the curb. The Stevie Ray Vaughan song cut off and a shockingly good-looking singer leaned across the passenger seat.

“Where you headed?”

Oh, God. She would not—could not—tell him. “I’m just going shopping.” She said it smoothly.

“Cool. Get in. I’ll take you.”

He hadn’t slept at the house in three nights. She looked away, mortification burning through her.

He’d told her not to sleep in his bed, but she hadn’t listened. And now things were weird between them. So weird he hadn’t slept at home since.

“No, thanks. Bus’ll be here any minute.” Her attraction to him was getting out of hand.
I mean, God, you rubbed the guy’s tattoo.
Given the location, contact with it was meant for girls he was having sex with. Girls he wanted.

“It’s on my way.”

She rolled her eyes. “You don’t even know where I’m going.” And she sure wouldn’t tell him.

He held up a hot pink Post-it. “It’s 869 South—”

“Slater!” She shot off the bench, lunging through the window for the paper, but he whipped it out of her reach.

“What?” He grinned wickedly.

Reluctantly, she got into the car. Could she be any more humiliated? Of all the roommates to come across her note, did it have to be this one? She belted herself in. “Where did you find it?” Please, please, let the Post-it have fallen off her checklist.
Please.

“Your pocket.”

“What were you doing looking through my pockets?”

“Laundry. I needed a few more things to make a full load.”

She sighed. “Take me home.”

“Oh, no. No way. We’re doing this.” He paused. “I’ve always wanted to go to Pillow Talk.”

She closed her eyes, wanting to dig her fingernails into her thighs until she drew blood. “No. We’re not.”

“We absolutely are.” He drove on. “There’s nothing to be ashamed of. We’re adults. We like sex.” She could feel his gaze on her and hated the way his voice dropped a few bars. “Right?”

She closed her eyes. “I wasn’t lucky enough that you found the Post-it all by itself, was I?” Please, God, spare her. Please let this man suffer a serious brain injury in the next five minutes to wipe out any memory of what he’d seen.

He dug into his pocket and pulled out . . . What else? Her list. “My Body Electric.”

“I hate you.”

“Well, I feel very differently about you. In fact, I like you.”

“So that explains Sunday morning.”

His cheeks turned pink. “That was morning wood.”

“Oh, believe me. No confusion there. I know it had nothing to do with me. You’d have had it if you’d woken up next to Mary.” She wondered if he’d bring up the tattoo, the way she’d touched it, come in so close to inspect it.

Please don’t.

Ever
.

He got on the freeway. “Mary?”

“Your neighbor? The mom with the mullet?”

“I have a neighbor with a mullet?” He shook his head, as if to shake the image out of his head. “So. Body Electric?”

She groaned. “It’s a Walt Whitman poem. “I Sing the Body Electric.” It means—”

“Oh, I have a good idea what it means.”

“Slater . . .”
Don’t torture me.

“Who’s Alex?”

She sighed in utter resignation. “My ex.”

“When did you break up?”

“Six months ago.” She looked out the window, watching the strip malls whiz by.

“Why?”

“Excuse me?” She couldn’t believe he would ask such a question.

“Why’d you break up with him?”

“He cheated on me.” She shot him a look that said,
Are you happy now?

His brows shot up. “Really? He cheated on
you
?”

Why did he emphasize the
you
? Like he couldn’t believe someone would cheat on her? “Uh-huh.”

“The rat bastard.”

“Did you ever listen to that Piper Lee CD?” She pushed the Eject button, and Stevie Ray Vaughan popped out. She slid the CD back into the case but didn’t see the Piper Lee one anywhere. “Hey, what did you do with that CD? I need it.”

“How’d you find out?”

The look she gave him begged him to drop it. She couldn’t bear telling the sex god her sad story. On the other hand, she had a date with a great guy this weekend, so her sad story would soon end, and she’d lead a healthy, fulfilling life, satisfying in all ways. Besides, everyone had a sad story. At least she was fixing hers.

Fine
. Where to begin? “He’s the bass player for Frontierland. They went on tour.” She shrugged. Need she say more?

“He went on tour . . . ?”

She exhaled loudly enough to send the message she didn’t want to talk about it.

“If I ask you a third time, there will be a consequence.”

“Really. A consequence?”

“I live with four guys. I’m just saying.” One side of his mouth hitched up in an adorable grin as he held up her list. “This could wind up on the refrigerator with one of those cowboy magnets you bought.”

She growled. “Why do you care?”

“Trying to figure out why a woman like you would bother with a checklist like this. Only reason I can see is if you had some pussy boyfriend who made you feel like something was wrong with you instead of owning his own shit.”

Every bone in her body softened. Her blood slowed, her muscles relaxed, and she sank into the upholstered seat. That might have been the nicest thing he’d ever said to her. “He said I wasn’t wild enough. He said I
serviced
him, and he needed more.” She could not believe she’d said those words out loud. To
Slater
. “You may have noticed. I’m very efficient and organized.”

“So, how’d you find out?”

“First, it was Facebook.”

“Pictures? Someone tagged him?”

She guessed he was looking to see if Alex had been careful about his behavior. And, yes, he had. “No. I read his messages.”

“How did you see his Facebook messages?” he asked with a scowl.

“Whenever we were at each other’s apartment, we shared a computer. If he left his email or Facebook account open, I could see what he was up to.” She flicked a piece of lint off her shorts. “I snooped, okay?”

“You didn’t trust him.” He made an impatient gesture with his hand to get her back to the story.

“He’d gotten friendly with several girls. They were very grateful to him for spending such
quality
time with them.”

She closed her eyes, remembering the icy sensation coursing through her when she’d read those messages. Four of them. She could still see the girls’ profile pictures—so slutty. So unlike Emmie.

And then she felt the warmth of Slater’s hand over hers. The unexpected gesture made her feel . . . better. Because it was a reminder. She was here now. What happened with Alex was in the past.

“And the second way?”

Must she, really? “I surprised him on tour. Yeah, that was fun. They were playing in Chicago. We’d done nothing but fight because I kept accusing him of cheating and he kept denying it, and it was just so exhausting. It’s not like I didn’t know he was cheating. Come on, I read the messages. I guess I just wanted to believe him. I’d known him most of my life, you know?”

“Are we getting to the good part yet?”

“Fine. So, Irwin and I were headed to LA for some party—one of our artist’s songs was used in a movie, and we were invited to the premiere—but at the airport,
after
we’d gone through security, he decided to go to London instead because his mom was going to have a garage sale, and he was worried she’d sell his record collection. So, I thought about how Alex said I wasn’t spontaneous or passionate enough, and I switched my ticket to Chicago. To surprise him.”

“Is there any naughty sex in this story at all?”

“Literally in the next sentence. So, I get to the venue, and I’m asking around for him, but no one knows where he is, so I go to the tour bus and hear these sounds . . . I mean, right out of a porn movie . . . and I find him upstairs in the hallway . . . with two naked women.” She paused. “Twins.”

“That’s so fucking hot.”

“It was horrifying. I don’t know why he didn’t just tell me and break up with me.”

He looked disappointed. “So what did you do? And this better be good. I want some hair pulling, a nice right hook. Actually, you’re a lefty, so make that a left hook. Better yet, how about when you picked up his guitar to brain him, the twins came at you like spider monkeys and ripped off your clothing so then there were three naked women?”

“I ran out. He followed me. I told him I couldn’t believe he’d betray me like that. We’d talked about our relationship right before the tour. I
know
the temptations. But he insisted we were solid. I think he just wanted to make sure I kept paying his bills and watering his plants.”

“There’s no more naughty sex, is there?”

“Nope.” She flexed her hands, then curled them into fists and dug her fingernails into her palm. “There never was.”

“You never had naughty sex with him?”

“You mean like threesomes and spankings?” She stuttered out a laugh. “Uh, no. But it’s not like we didn’t do fun stuff.”

“
Fun
stuff?” He snorted.

“What?”

“So he got the wild stuff, the
passion
that was missing from your relationship, on the road. From other girls.”

“Obviously.”

“Man, did he do a number on you.” He shook his head, frowning. “You really think that was passion, what he got from groupies?”

He was confusing her. “Of course. He wanted wild.”

“Wild and passionate are two different things.”

“You know what? Bottom line? He didn’t need me anymore. That’s all it boils down to.” And there it was all over again. All the negative, horrible feelings rising, churning in her gut. “It was great when I could help him with his career. But once he got signed, his needs changed.” He no longer needed a woman to help him with his career. He needed a woman who went wild for him. And to think Alex had told her
she’d
drifted once the band had signed with Bob. Please. “I wasn’t enough for him.” And, God, she had no idea why she couldn’t let herself go when it came to sex. Just lose herself in the moment.

“Chicks.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Em.
He
wasn’t enough for
you
.”