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He leaned in and kissed my cheek. His lips against my skin sent my heart pounding inside my chest again. His mouth lingered a few seconds too long and then drifted over to my ear. A shiver ran down my spine as I felt a soft puff of air tickle the shell of my ear when he spoke against it. “Sorry, I’m late.”
My head turned to look at him. He was so close. He was even better looking up close. His expressive brown eyes held a glint of mischief that had me narrowing my eyes even as his obscenely long eyelashes and chiseled jawline had turned my insides to a liquified pool of mush. He was clean-shaven, but I kind of missed the masculine scruff. I could imagine the delicious feeling as it scraped against my inner thigh.
I blinked away the naughty image even as my cheeks heated. Was I panting? God, I had to get ahold of myself.
He was so close. Right next to me. I felt the heat emanating from his muscled thigh, teasing my own. I could smell the faint notes of his cologne mixed with his natural scent, and I liked it. It was a potent aphrodisiac. I wanted to bury my face in his neck and breathe him in.
I licked my lips, preparing to say something, but my mind went blank. I was struck mute. Dazed.
He crooked an eyebrow, waiting for me to speak.
“What are you doing here?” I choked out at last.
His lazy smile was devious. Cocky. It should have pissed me off.
But he had dimples. They were my utter undoing. I just stared at his beautiful face while he answered. But I had no idea what he said because I was too busy drowning in him.
Chapter 5
Knox
WhatwasIdoinghere?
I’d let Ghost talk me into this bloody dumb idea because I had nothing better to do. I’d been restless and bored ever since the tour ended, and attending some starlet’s Hollywood party with him sounded like everything I’d been avoiding. Besides the sex and drugs, those parties boiled down to mindless exchanges hoping to upgrade status and social standing and weird networking rituals designed to increase publicity by pretending to know the right people. Getting laid would have been a sure thing, but I’d rather do that with a fan than some shallow Hollywood princess, only to have the lurid details and photos of us splashed all over the entertainment media.
It was ironic that I was thinking of the emptiness of that scene as I walked into a restaurant to meet up with my fake girlfriend and her parents. Why did everything in my life seem fake? As much as I moaned about two of my bandmates finding their ‘forever girls’, the relationships they had were something I secretly envied when I admitted it to myself.
I craved a deeper connection with someone. I hardly ever saw my family in Scotland and I never got close to any women. Except for the guys in my band, I was floating around untethered.
It hadn’t always been that way. Once, I’d thought I’d had everything figured out. I had the girl. I had Aila, and I thought we were content with the life we had. We were surrounded by extended family and friendly neighbors. I’d gotten a job straight out of school; it was easy to find work in our industrial town if you weren’t afraid of long hours and working with your hands. My wages would be enough to afford us a small plot of land to raise a passel of kids on.
It would have been a simple life. One that I wanted with Aila. One that I thought she wanted as well. When I lost her, everything withered and died within me. It had taken me over five years and dozens upon dozens of meaningless hookups to work that betrayal and guilt out of my system.
I stopped walking for a moment as the revelation hit me. Was I really ready to move on? Bloody hell! Was I finally over it all? It had been brewing for a while, but it took this lass with the feisty mouth that looked like the American fantasy girl of my youth to realize that the simple life I imagined living with Aila was never my destiny. It wouldn’t have lasted even if she hadn’t died a few days before our wedding.
As the maitre d’ led me to the table, I spotted Hudson from Vector Security. The guy was massive but did a surprisingly good job of blending in with restaurant patrons.
Hudson had arranged everything. If he thought it was weird that I was eating dinner with a girl and her parents whose names I didn’t know, he kept it to himself. He’d given the maitre d’ my description of my bouncy bumpkin and her mother and had promised to take care of all my security needs discreetly. Tonight of all nights, I did not want to be hassled by fans. That’s probably why the maitre d’ was leading me to the worst table in the house, intimately shoehorned into the back corner next to a door marked ‘private’.
Lara greeted me vivaciously and Jim Meadows was quite cordial, but I couldn’t help but notice that my wee bumpkin was less than pleased to see me.
Meadows. At least I had a last name now. Of course, it was possible that Meadows wasn’t her last name. Jim could be a stepfather, but the physical resemblance was there. If only one of them would call her by her name, I’d be set.
After the introductions with her parents were finished, I sat down in the chair beside her. She was avoiding my gaze, but that just gave me time to soak her in. Once again, she took my breath away with how excruciatingly beautiful she was.
She was even more beautiful than memory had painted her. Her eyes were a vivid blue color with a darker blue ring around the edge of her iris and fringed with thick lashes. Her eyes were so mesmerizing that I had to force myself to take in the rest of her pretty face. Even the slight frown on her pouty lips couldn’t detract from her raw beauty.
I sat down next to her and leaned in to give her a peck on the cheek as an actual boyfriend would in greeting. My lips drifted toward her ear and whispered some apology about being late when actually I was busy inhaling her intoxicating scent. It wasn’t a floral or fruity scent that so many women wore, but something more sensual and rich.
Bloody hell, I wanted to bury my nose in her skin and trail my lips down the elegant column of her neck until I reached the creamy smooth skin at the top of her shoulders. The rounded swell of her breast was just visible above the fabric of her dress, and that was where my lips ached to wander. It was a good thing I was sitting down because just the thought of doing those things had my cock hardening visibly in my dress pants.
But instead of mauling her in front of her parents, I retreated to a respectable distance and flashed a smile. “You look beautiful.”
She didn’t answer or even acknowledge I had spoken. Her eyes were wide with shock, and her chest was heaving with shaky breaths. She was still processing the surprise of me showing up here, but I knew her feisty side could still reveal itself. At any moment, she could make a huge public scene and expose this whole charade.
Then her father started asking me about Scotland and the opportune moment for her to tell the truth passed. The conversation flowed easily between me and her parents as I attempted to charm them with stories about my homeland. Never once did my lass enter the conversation. I expected her to make clever or biting quips about bagpipes or man skirts, as she called them, but she remained quiet. Wanting to see that fiery spark in her eyes again, I tried to draw her into the conversation. But she remained silent, only reaching to refill her wineglass several times.
After we all ordered our meals, Jim turned to me and asked, “What do you do here in America?”
