Rock Kiss 01.5 Rock Courtship(44)

Taking it all in without thinking too hard about how the girl was nothing like her, Thea looked at the birth date Rebecca had listed. Oh God, Naomi Hughes had only turned eighteen last week. Which meant that at the time of the sexual encounter, she’d been seventeen, only a couple of years older than the girl Patrick ha—

Cutting off that thought before it could make her bleed, Thea scanned the rest of the information, then began doing broad-spectrum Internet searches using the data. Depending on the game plan devised by Naomi’s attorney, it could equal anything from a major exposé in a tabloid to the merest hint of trouble on social media, with no confirmed details.

Thea found nothing on her first pass, but she kept digging. All she unearthed was the usual: fan sites dedicated to David, photos of him shared by women who gushed about how hot he was, and videos and blogs by drummers who dissected his style in an effort to emulate it.

The Gentleman of Rock moniker, bestowed by a magazine article a number of years ago, was a recurring hit. There were also a couple of tell-alls Thea already knew about: two women he’d gone out with at the start of his career smiled coy smiles from old articles and spoke about how “hard-bodied” the Schoolboy Choir drummer was under his conservative clothes.

Both had shared intimate details of their night with a young rock star.

David had become better at picking more discreet lovers as he grew older and more experienced in this world—there were no more recent reports on his love life except for the fluff pieces made up by magazines looking to increase their circulation. Even of the latter, there weren’t many: David had succeeded in making himself of little interest to most paparazzi on a daily basis.

All of what she’d discovered, added to the fact she’d had not a single call asking her to confirm or deny Naomi Hughes’ claim, told her the girl’s lawyer was waiting to see which way the wind blew before making his next move. David was safe for now. She’d make sure the alerts she’d set—

A sharp, insistent tone pierced the air, the screen of her phone flashing with David’s name.





Chapter 13


David felt sick to his stomach. Sitting on the edge of the hotel bed, he held the phone to his ear and listened to it ring. “Come on, Thea,” he said, his gut a twisted mess. “Pick up, baby. Pick up.”

It rang once more, and then he heard Thea’s cool, calm voice. “David.”

“It’s not mine.” He knew Thea’s history would make it difficult for her to accept his word, but he wasn’t about to just roll over and give up the best thing in his life. “I picked up that ring for my kid brother, Zeke. He was going to give it to Naomi.” A simple favor because David had been in the city when the ring his brother had ordered had come in. “Zeke had a crush on her, but I know he never laid a finger on her and neither have I.”

“You know her?” Thea’s tone remained unreadable, distant.

Fuck. But at least she was talking to him. “Yeah.” Naomi had come to his parents’ home for dinner any number of times. “She’s my brother’s friend, and she’s a fucking kid. I never looked at her as anything else.” Bailey had told him the legal age of consent in New York was seventeen, so they didn’t have to worry about the authorities, but that didn’t change how David viewed Naomi. She was younger than Zeke, for fuck’s sake.

It had taken him a minute to even remember who she was; to him, Naomi had simply been part of Zeke’s group of friends from around the neighborhood. “She turned my brother down when he asked her out, but there were no hard feelings.” As far as David remembered, Zeke had ended up giving her the ring anyway, for a birthday present. “I don’t know why she’s doing this.”

“It hasn’t hit the media.”

“I don’t care. Thea, Jesus, talk to me.” It felt like his entire world had fallen apart, the ground crumbling under his feet. “Tell me you believe me—or if you can’t do that, tell me you’ll give me a chance to convince you.” The latter would hurt, would tear him to bloody pieces, but he could bear the pain because he knew how much Eric had wounded her.

He was willing to take the hit, give her the reassurance she needed.

“Let me do my job, David,” Thea said. “I need to do that right now.”

It took a lot to make David truly angry, but at that instant something snapped. His shocked disbelief at Naomi’s actions and his fear of losing Thea smoldered into anger so deep that he lost it. “That’s how much you trust me?” he said, seeing red. “Not even enough to give me a shot to explain? Fuck that, Thea! I can’t spend my life trying to prove myself to you!”