Grinning, she added another line to “David’s” message: Anyone mentions this to my mother, I will find you.
The band’s fans all knew Mrs. Rivera, the mom who’d helped bring up David and his two younger brothers by cleaning business offices and rich people’s homes from five in the morning to two in the afternoon. His father was a construction worker who’d pulled fourteen-hour shifts after getting the kids off to school, with his mom always there when they returned home. Despite their hard work, the family had lived on fumes at times.
The poverty in his past was something David had never hidden. He had, however, made sure his younger brothers weren’t hounded by the media by scrupulously keeping them out of his public profile. His beaming mom, on the other hand, he’d brought as his date to the Grammys two years running.
Mrs. Rivera had charmed everyone who met her.
David’s dad wasn’t as comfortable in the spotlight, but his pride in his “boy” was clear in the rare interviews he’d granted. Thea knew for a fact that David returned to New York regularly to help his parents with anything they needed and that he was the first port of call for his brothers—both of whom were now at Ivy League universities, thanks to the educational trust funds David had set up.
Was it any wonder she found him so attractive?
“No,” she said the instant after that thought passed through her head. “No.”
David, she reminded herself for the gazillionth time, was a client. He was also a musician. Thea had been around too many who lived the rock-and-roll lifestyle to trust any of them. Maybe it wasn’t fair to tar all musicians with the same brush, but she’d had her heart stomped on once by a cheating, lying son of a bitch. No way was she ever again handing it over to any man she wasn’t dead certain would handle it with care.
Rock stars were just not a good bet.
Chapter 2
David was expecting to take some bullshit from the guys when he walked into the hotel’s breakfast room with Fox and the band’s local attorney. He was still dressed in the black pants and white shirt from last night, but despite the color, the shirt had survived miraculously unscathed under the hoodie he’d chucked into the trash. Splattered with more than a few liquid substances, including whiskey and blood, the hoodie had looked like it came from the costume department of a horror movie.
As it was, he had no trouble handling the ribbing from the males around the table. It was Thea’s sister, Molly, who moved the conversation to a dangerous emotional level. Though the two women shared a father, they looked nothing alike. Where Thea was tall and slender with hair that was silken black rain, Molly was small and curvy, her hair tending toward wild curls. But in one way, they were the same—Thea and Molly both knew how to cut right to the heart of a matter.
“You don’t seem like the kind of man who gets into bar fights,” she said after everyone else got up to grab more food from the buffet.
David didn’t answer, didn’t tell her he’d once been a fighter. Fast and slippery and fierce. A kid didn’t survive where he’d been born without learning to hold his own. He’d never liked the violence, but he’d done it because otherwise, his younger brothers—five and seven years behind him in age—would’ve become prey, too. All three of them had been short as kids, their bodies slight.
“You’re crazy in love with her, aren’t you?”
Molly’s gentle question hit him hard in the solar plexus. Staring out at the wall but seeing the warmth of Thea’s true smile, the way her eyes lit up when she was working on a big project, he realized he had no lies left in him. “Until I can’t think. I need to get over it.”
Molly’s big brown eyes were soft in sympathy. “Did you—”
“I asked her out. Had this whole argument worked out about how we’d be perfect together, but she never even gave me a shot.” Every time he thought of that day four months earlier when she’d rejected him with practiced courtesy, he wanted to haul her to him, make her react, give him anger even if she couldn’t give him anything else.
“She cut me off so smoothly,” he said, the memory acid on his heart, “it was like being sliced off at the knees. Professional smile, distant eyes, gentle hand on my arm as she ushered me out of her office.” He shook his head. “It was such a kick in the teeth that I just went.”
Molly was silent for a while. He didn’t really expect her to say anything, because what was there to say? He was in love with a woman who had no trouble turning him down flat. Nothing could change the fact Thea simply wasn’t attracted to him.