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Two
They were involvedfor a year or so sometime before she was born, Mick and her mom. Practically a lifetime on the rock star/groupie circuit but not long in the grand scheme of things. And somehow, he became the standard by which everything else in Sheila’s life was judged. By whichLily’sbeen judged. As if a toddler, or an awkward adolescent or a high-school student can measure up to a myth and a legend. To the ghost of a relationship that wasn’t meant to last.
So, is it any wonder she wants to haunt Mick Lange like he’s haunted her family? Maybe she can sink under his skin and twist around his bones. Fill his blood. She has to settle for a cold beer from his fridge and an uneasy seat on a brown leather couch. The bottle sweats and drips onto her thighs. Lily probably should be wearing longer jeans. Or a dress. Something that doesn’t leave her quite so exposed and looking like she’s fifteen and on the way to summer camp. But she can’t be sorry for the way he keeps looking at her legs.
He leans against the wall, studying her with hooded dark blue eyes. It’s an album cover pose come to life. Brooding and full of promises he’ll never keep. They must teach it at rock star school along with how to trash a hotel room and how to cut a perfect line of cocaine. He’s long out of the beginner classes but he clearly remembers the lessons. He practically smolders at her.Talk,she wants to demand of him. Tell me what’s so goddamned special about you.Even as the answer thrums in her pulse and catches in her throat.Everything. It’s everything.Presence. Charisma. Star power. Good genes.
He’s got some silver in his hair now and in his beard stubble. But he’s still the Jersey bad boy with a dirty dare in the curve of his mouth. So much hotter in person than in those grainy, decades-old music videos on YouTube. Like she noticed before, his unbuttoned shirt displays a chest and belly that are still defined. Lightly hairy in shades of brown and gray. He’s narrow hipped, lazy and lanky. That casual lean pushing his left leg out like an invitation to ride it until she makes herself come.
Her cheeks go hot just thinking about it.God,she hasn’t even been here a half-hour. It’s already out of control, this thing inside her. Sure, she’s had late-night fantasies about him. The same way she would about a famous movie star or the hot bartender at her favorite wine bar. But she’s never considered herself susceptible to lust at first sight—even factoring in the Mick Lange mythology that’s threaded through her life. Maybe it’s the wrongness of this whole situation turning her crank right now. Visiting her mom’s “one that got away.” Seeing him up close and personal. This mysterious ex who just happens to be a famous rock musician up there with Jersey’s patron saint, Bruce Springsteen. And she’s here for what? Explanations? Closure? An exorcism? All of the above?Ugh.
He doesn’t ask how she found him. He doesn’t ask what she wants. Maybe he already knows—better than she does. “How long you sticking around?” he asks instead. Like it’s a foregone conclusion that she’s not leaving when her beer is done.
“I don’t know. For as long as it takes.”For as long as what takes?He doesn’t say it, but the question is there in how he’s studying her. She doesn’t have an answer. Not yet. But it probably involves their clothes coming off.
“Then I guess I better get started on dinner.” He pushes off the wall, and doesn’t look back. Just expects Lily to follow. And of course she does. Where else does she have to be?
The first floor is open plan for the most part. A sunken living room, a fireplace, bookshelves and flat-screen TVs lining the walls. The lack of taxidermy deer heads is a huge relief. Stairs lead up to a mezzanine with hallways splitting off from either side. Everything is logs or hardwood. But the kitchen at the back of the premises is tiled, with gleaming stainless steel fixtures and copper pots hanging from hooks on the ceiling. Like something out of a home and living magazine. She recognizes the aesthetic from the house she grew up in. The kitchen was a showplace that her parents rarely bothered to enter.
They relinquished the task of cooking to Mrs. Singh, the housekeeper they hired when Lily was nine. And to Lily’s grandmother, who came to live with them after Grandfather died. They relinquished care of Lily to the two older women, too. Gran and Mrs. S are probably why she’s not a total sociopathic narcissist. She learned what it is to be cared for without strings. But only so far as Sheila allowed.
“Mrs. Singh is paid to be here. You think she’d indulge you otherwise, Lily-bee?”
“Granny was never so permissive with me. She is just trying to make up for it with you.”
Never mind that her grandparents had to be pretty damn liberal to let their only child fuck off to parts unknown with Mick Lange. God forbid anyone like Lily for herself.
“How’d you find me anyway?” Mick’s voice pulls her from the bitter reverie.
He moves around, grabbing this and that from the various cabinets. Dry pasta, spices, and seasonings. “Who do I need to fire?” He clearly cooks for himself a lot. The cabin is huge, but there’s no on-site staff. None of it adds up to a man who likes being catered to and waited on, coddled or protected from public view. Despite his gruff threat of firing whoever sold him out.
“Everyone knows you go away to the mountains to work on new material. As for the specific address...” She mimes zipping her lips, locking them, and tossing the key.
Lily’s not about to hang her contact out to dry. Uncle Pike’s a former roadie turned record producer, and one of the few people Sheila didn’t ditch after she finished her rock groupie Rumspringa. Maybe because he comes from money, too—James Danforth Pike IV. He and her mom have their wild past in common...and there the resemblance ends. Because Uncle Pike is a nice person, generous to a fault, and has plenty of bridges in the music industry that he didn’t burn.
Mick lets her have the secret, rummaging around in the massive stainless steel fridge and emerging with tomatoes and fresh basil. He let her in. He gave her a beer. And now he’s making dinner for them both.Why?She repeats the query out loud. “You didn’t have to let me stay,” she points out. “You could’ve told me to go back home.”
He pauses mid-chop, setting aside the shiny chef’s blade that probably costs more than all her silverware put together. Tomato pulp clings to his skin. He meets her steady gaze with a penetrating look of his own. “Would you have left?”
Her answer is obvious and automatic. “No.”
“Well, there you go.” He chuckles dryly. “More efficient to just accept the inevitable.”
“Is it?” Lily glances back at his hands. His strong, capable, guitar-calloused fingers. She’s not a huge fan of tomatoes but she’d lick those fingers clean in a heartbeat. She’d fuck him in a heartbeat. Isn’t that inevitable, too?
The moment stretches between them. The kitchen suddenly feels small and stuffy and hot. He doesn’t answer her right away. He goes back to dicing, making a neat little pile in the upper corner of his cutting board. The knife slips in his fingers, his movements not as fluid as before. And then... “You think I don’t know what you’re here for, sweetheart?” His voice is a rasp, barely above a whisper. “You want to know just how memorable your mother’s lover is. See if I’ll get under your skin the same way.”
Yes. No. Maybe.“That’s where you’re wrong, Mick.” She shakes her head. “You’re already under my skin. Like a tattoo. You’ve been there for years.” Itching like brand-new ink with not enough Neosporin in the world to make it stop.
“It can’t happen.” The denial is swift. The knife flashes over the basil so fast she’s surprised he doesn’t take a fingertip off.
Can’t it? Won’t it?“You literally just said it’s easier to accept the inevitable.”
“Efficient,” he corrects. “But not one bit smart.”
