Blackthorne: Heart of Fame, Book 8 (4 page)

A warm finger of joy shot through him at the notion. It had been a while since he’d performed. Synergy was taking some well-earned time out after their last North American tour. Jax was hard at work writing his next memoires, no doubt driving Natalie crazy while doing so. Noah and Pepper were overseeing the formation of their new foundation, a fund-raising group dedicated to the research of ADHD. Samuel had whisked Lily away to Paris in a heart-wrenching attempt to help her deal with her twin brother’s fatal overdose. And Levi was enjoying being a father, doting over his baby daughter as much as he doted over her mother, Sonny, and their partner, Corbin.

Josh was the only one who seemed restless, occasionally working on new material for Synergy’s next album, more often wasting time just fooling about being a rich celebrity. But maybe that was because Josh
was
only twenty-seven. A rich, famous twenty-seven-year-old, but still only twenty-seven.

Or maybe it was because he didn’t have someone…important to share his life with. Well, someone apart from Rhys.

He snorted, shaking his head and grinning at the thought of a life spent only with the wild pro-soccer player as his significant other.

“Now that,” he muttered, reaching the door marked
Private
without too many offers of wild sex whispered in his ear, or too many napkins scrawled with phone numbers shoved in his hands, “would be a messed-up, crazy existence.”

Depositing the napkins on the tall table beside the door, he shot a look over his shoulder at the bar he’d just left.

His guardian angel—he of the massive muscles, towering frame and gleaming head—gave him a single nod and then reached under the counter. There was a soft buzz, followed by a softer click and the door opened a crack.

Josh grinned back at the bartender, returned his nod and slipped into the dimly lit corridor on the other side of the threshold.

Cool air caressed his skin, left hot and sweaty from the nightclub’s heady atmosphere. He drew in a slow breath, appreciating the lack of alcohol, perspiration and cloying perfume and cologne on the air, and shut the door behind him.

Instantly, the throbbing beat of the DJ’s music faded.

Josh turned and cast the door’s metal surface an admiring look. “That’s some serious sound-proofing.”

His voice bounced around the concrete floor and stark, concrete brick walls. He pulled a face, for some reason suddenly nervous.

Nervous. Him. Josh Blackthorne.

Maybe he was as jetlagged as Rhys?

Giving his shoulders a shake and his neck a roll, he started walking down the corridor. The heels of his boots echoed through the space, each footfall a loud announcement he was there.

Each one taking the ridiculous nerves in his gut and twisting them tighter.

What the fuck was up with that?

Two closed doors later—one labeled
Staff Toilets
, the other labeled
Lose the Key For This Door and You’re Dead
—he stopped at another door. This one was also closed. Hanging from the knob of this door by a length of twine was a laminated sign saying
The Boss
.

The muted sound of some kind of music came from the other side, too soft and indistinct for Josh to make out. He stood there for a moment, straining to hear it. What a person listened to in their private space was, in his opinion, a good insight into their state of mind.

What was Caitlin Reynolds listening to now? After meeting him?

He closed his eyes, trying to make out something that would clue him in, a riff, a lyric, a voice maybe…

Whatever it was, it wasn’t like the frenzied music pumping through the speakers out in the nightclub. It was more…subdued? More—

“Can I help you?”

At the sound of Caitlin’s droll voice, Josh let out a yelp and staggered back a step. “Fuck, you scared the life out of me,” he burst out, staring at her where she stood in the now-open door. From her office, the sound of classical music wafted on the air. Beethoven’s “Symphony No. 7”. Powerful. Moody. Stirring. What did that say about her current thoughts and emotions?

Josh didn’t know.

A dark light glinted in her eyes and, for a split second, the corners of her lips twitched. A little. “Then my work here is done,” she declared, watching him. “You can’t bother me when you’re dead, can you?”

Recovering his composure, Josh shoved his hands into his back pockets and gave her a puzzled frown. “You really are hell-bent on being horrible to me, aren’t you?”

She waved her hand in a so-so motion. “Possibly. Or maybe I’m just this horrible to everyone?”

Josh shook his head, letting his own smile pull at his lips. Not his usual smirk, the one he used when being interviewed or photographed. The one that said he knew all the filthy ways to make a woman come and if a woman was lucky he’d demonstrate them to her. His real smile. The one he gave his sister when she asked him to play fairy tea parties with her. “See, I would have believed that after our footpath standoff, but now I know that’s not the case.”

She cocked an eyebrow, crossed her arms under her breasts and leaned her shoulder against the doorjamb. Josh couldn’t miss the fact the edges of her lips still danced. A little. Nor the fact she hadn’t closed the door in his face.

Progress. Go me!

“How so?” she asked, that enigmatic glint still in her eyes. He couldn’t decipher it. Was it mirth? Sarcasm? Or pre-garroting tolerance?

Risking his solar plexus, he rested his elbow to the doorframe just above her head and let his smile grow wider as he drew his head closer to hers. “I was threatened with physical violence by one of your staff. A horrible person doesn’t gain that kind of protective loyalty.”

She held his gaze, her face turned up to his, her chin titled. “Is that so? Perhaps I pay them well?”

Josh shook his head again. “Not well enough to risk threatening a celebrity.”

“Ahh, and there it is.” Her smile stretched wider, becoming sardonic and cutting. Her eyes grew flinty once more, filled with the same disdain he’d seen out on the street when she’d refused to believe he was who he said he was. “The arrogance of fame. I should have known I’d see it again. Ask me again why I’m being so horrible to you.”

Josh couldn’t help himself. He burst out laughing. “Wait a minute,” he said, levering from the doorframe. “You didn’t like me out on the street when you thought I was a hot-looking nobody pretending to be someone famous, and now you don’t like me because I
am
someone famous?” He tapped his index finger on the tip of her nose. She blinked, his unexpected contact obviously taking her completely unawares. “I think you’re prejudice against hot-looking guys whether they are famous or not.”

His jesting rebuke hung on the air between them, both playful and pointed.

He arched his own eyebrow in a show of quizzical patience. “Well?”

With a ragged sigh, Caitlin rolled her eyes and threw up her hands. “You got me. I’m only nice to ugly people. Which you, clearly, are not. So go away now.” She waved her fingers at him in a sweeping gesture. “Shoo.”

The tiny twitch of the corners of her lips gave her away. A warm rush of delight rushed through Josh. For that very brief moment, she was enjoying herself with him.

Yay. Now how did he capitalize on it?

“I tell you what,” he said, refusing to budge or release her gaze. “If I promise to whack my face against the wall a few times, maybe break my nose and bruise up my cheek, even give myself a swollen eye and a split lip, will you let me buy you dinner? Or a drink?”

She raised both her eyebrows up her forehead. Her lips danced some more.

Oh yeah, he was winning her over. Excellent.

“That wall?” she asked, leaning toward him a little as she pointed at the concrete-block wall beside her office door.

He nodded.

She grinned. A real one. He could see the laughter in it, and in her blue eyes. Fuck, it turned her from standoffishly beautiful to steal-his-breath stunning. “Go for it. Let’s see if you earn yourself just a drink or dinner as well.”

Josh returned her grin. “Deal.”

And then, with a laugh, he threw himself at the wall.

Chapter Three

Oh God, he did it.

Caitlin squealed, the shock of watching Josh Blackthorne—rock-god Josh Blackthorne, sexiest-man-she’d-ever-seen Josh Blackthorne, the-only-man-to-turn-her-on-in-eight-months Josh Blackthorne—propel himself face-first at the wall spurring her into action.

She slammed into his side, wrapping her arms around his body and stopping him hitting the wall.

They stumbled sideways, their legs and feet jumbling and knotting, their chests mushed together, their hips bumping and colliding as they went.

An insane part of her mind took great delight in noting how hard and firm and sculpted his body was, how warm and alive and right there he was. An insane part of
her
body reacted to that information, the pit of her tummy clenching, her sex contracting and her nipples pinching into tight points.

A moan slipped past her, low and soft but a moan all the same. She tried to hide it in a grunt, but something about the way Josh flattened his palms to her back as they regained balance told her he’d heard it.

Heard it and recognized it for what it was—sexual awareness.

Crap. She couldn’t be sexually aroused by Josh Blackthorne.

It took her a second to realize they were both standing motionless again. Her arms were around his hips, their bellies pressed together, their groins touching, before she heard him say with a throaty chuckle, “You saved me.”

She jerked her head up, tearing her stare from where it had stuck on the perfection of his lips. Wow, they were gorgeous lips. Defined and almost too pink for any man’s lips to be.

Storm-cloud-grey eyes regarded her, a humoured light shining in their depths. And a promise of something any woman with a pulse and a libido would be insane to say no to.

She wasn’t insane. She wasn’t. She just had insane…parts. Which meant Josh Blackthorne had to go. “I did,” she answered, disengaging herself from his arms. Well, trying to. He was doing a damn good job of holding her to his body. “I didn’t want blood staining my wall.”

He chuckled again. Incongruously, he somehow managed to pull her closer to his body. Why was she letting him do that?

Because you’re lonely, girl. And you can’t wait forever. You’ve already wasted eight—

“Maybe you just didn’t like the thought of me hurting myself?” His deep voice played with her senses. And her resolve to get away from him. Damn, no one had the right to have such a sexy voice. They didn’t.

He drew his head closer to hers. Close enough his warm breath tickled her lips. “Or maybe you’re not the horrible person you so want me to believe you are?”

“I
am
horrible,” she whispered, staring up at him.
Horrible because I want you to kiss me right now. Oh God, do I want you to kiss me right now. Kiss me and make love to me against this wall. It’s been so long. So long and you are so gorgeous and sexy and here…wanting me…
“And I couldn’t care less if you hurt yourself or—”

He kissed her silent. Stole the rest of her ridiculous statement with a soft brush of his lips over hers.

No tongue, not even enough pressure to really feel. Just a feathering of his skin against her skin, just a lingering melding of their breaths.

He held her, aligned their hips, pressed the steel pole of his erection to the soft curve of her sex and silenced her protest with a kiss softer than the caress of a butterfly wing.

For a perfect moment, Caitlin forgot the weird reality of her life and lost herself in that kiss.

For a perfect heartbeat-long moment.

And then it was over.

He drew his head away from hers, seeking out her eyes with his gaze. “Or maybe,” he whispered, his voice a little shaky, “you just wanted me to do that?”

Pressing her palms to his chest, Caitlin pushed him away. Heat filled her cheeks. “Boy, have you got an ego. I didn’t want you to do that.”

Liar
.

Josh seemed to agree with the traitorous little whisper inside her head. He let out a low laugh, an entirely devious sound her body reacted to with entirely too much need. “Ego or not, I think you did. And I think you liked it as much as I did.”

The pit of Caitlin’s belly tightened. Her pussy contracted again. Grinding her teeth, she leveled a glare his way. “Even if I
did
like it, and I’m not saying that’s the case, you can’t just come back here to my office and kiss me like that.”

He smirked. Already she both hated and loved the expression. Hated the way it said he knew how hot he was, loved the way it made his lips curl and his eyes fill with devilish conceit. “Why not?”

She opened her mouth. Behind her, wafting from the speakers of her iPod’s dock, Beethoven’s “7th Symphony” gave way to Bach’s “Toccota and Fugue in D Minor”. “Because you can’t,” she offered as an answer. As answers go, it was a lame one, but somewhere between opening her office door to discover him there and his lips brushing over hers in the most tender, sensitive kiss she’d ever experienced, she’d lost higher brain function.

The chuckle that slipped from Josh twisted the tension in Caitlin’s core to a heavy knot.

“Give me a reason.”

Caitlin stared at him. A reason. There was only one reason why he couldn’t kiss her. One reason. But that reason…well, it was pretty well messed up. And strange…

“I tell you what,” he said with an easy grin before she could put words to the pain and confusion wanting to spread through her at the thought. Could he see she was uncomfortable? Unsettled? “I won’t kiss you again if you promise to have a drink with me.”

“I can’t. I’m working.”

That’s your answer, girl? Not because you have a—

“When you finish work.”

She looked up at him. He still grinned at her, a boyish playfulness about him. If she didn’t know he was one of the world’s hottest rock stars, she could easily believe he was just a sexy guy trying to flirt with a girl. “I don’t finish work until the club closes,” she answered.

Before she could say another word, he nodded. “Done. I’ll see you then.”

He spun on his heel and wandered down the corridor, hands loose by his side, a very subtle limp in his relaxed step.

Caitlin stared after him, her cheeks on fire, her lips tingling. Why hadn’t she told him she wasn’t having a drink with him? Why hadn’t she given him the reason why she didn’t want him to kiss her?

Behind her, Bach’s epic piece turned into Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata”. The dark piano masterpiece caressed her senses, a brilliant mirror to her mood. And yet a part of her felt…different. Less grumpy. Less moody and alone. Which made no sense, given nothing had changed to make her feel that way.

Nothing except a kiss from the sexiest guy you’ve ever met.

Caitlin watched Josh Blackthorne twist the knob of the door leading back out to the nightclub floor, her breath shallow. She shouldn’t watch. She shouldn’t linger, waiting to see if he turned around.

He pulled the door open and stepped out into the thumping cacophony of dance music and partying patrons that drowned out Beethoven.

Caitlin’s chest grew tight. A disappointed weight settled in her stomach.

Why had she expected him to turn around? Why had she
wanted
him to turn around? To see if she was watching—

He turned.

Their stares met. Clashed. Melded.

He dropped her a wink, grinned as if loving that he’d caught her watching him, and then pulled the door closed behind him.

Leaving her alone in the corridor, Beethoven’s sonata competing with the wild beating of her heart.

Scrunching up her face, Caitlin bunched her fists. “Damn it.”

Busted for perving on him. There was no other word for what she’d been doing. She hadn’t needed to watch him go, hadn’t needed to check out the way he walked down the corridor with such innate grace and confidence, despite the slight limp from his old soccer-career-ending injury. She sure as hell hadn’t needed to take note of how hot his arse looked in his snug black pants. But she had. And he’d caught her.

Which meant he would now think he really
did
stand a chance of scoring another kiss when they went for drinks.

When
they went for drinks? Seriously?

Throwing up her hands, she stormed back into her office. “God, what are you thinking, Caitlin? You are
not
going for drinks with him.”

That would be insane. That would be lunacy. And above all else, what with what her friends and family and the Australian High Commissioner in Somalia believed, that would be…awkward.

A shard of guilt shot through her, so fierce and powerful she staggered to a halt, palm pressed to her chest. Damn it.

Sucking in a slow breath, her pulse crazy, her heart aching, she crossed to her desk and dropped herself into her chair.

“Damn it,” she whispered, staring at the spotless polished steel surface of her desk. “Damn it, Matt, why…”

No. She wasn’t going to think about this. She wasn’t.

What she
was
going to do was call her uncle and give the matchmaking bloody bastard a piece of her mind.

Snatching up her iPod dock’s remote, she pressed mute. Silence fell over her office like a suffocating shroud. Good. She wanted to be grumpy. With a grunt, she leaned forward, grabbed the hand piece of her work phone from its cradle and stabbed in her uncle’s Los Angeles home phone number.

He answered on the fifth ring. “G’day. Liev Reynolds here.”

“Do you realize what you’ve done,” she burst out, dispensing with any pleasantries. She’d already talked to the bastard once tonight and she’d been quite pleasant then. Sort of. Maybe…

“Made the most delicious bacon, banana and Vegemite toasted sandwich ever?” her uncle asked, laughter in his voice. “I do realize that. How did you know? Can you smell it all the way from Australia?”

“Giving Blackthorne my place of work,” she shot back, ignoring his joke. She never ignored Liev’s jokes. They always had the ability to make her smile and feel warm inside, even when she was feeling dead. In fact, she couldn’t recall the last time she’d been angry with her uncle. Maybe, when she was fourteen and he’d come out. She’d been angry with him for being so calm with her stubborn, bigoted father who’d refused to have anything to do with his brother again and expected Caitlin to do the same. “Now the guy thinks it’s totally okay to just swoop on into my office, disrupt my life, ask me for drinks and kiss—”

She stopped. Froze. Stared at the massive abstract painting on the far wall of her office.

Oh God, had she just said—

“Kiss you?” her uncle asked, disbelief etched with mirth in his voice.

“Err…” She squeezed her eyes shut, dropped her head to her fist and thumped her forehead a few times. She hadn’t planned to say that. Why had she said that?

Because you can’t stop thinking about it. Because you liked it. And you can’t stop feeling guilty about liking it.

“Am I right, kiddo?” Liev prompted on the other end of the connection. “Did Josh Blackthorne kiss you?”

She thumped her forehead with the side of her fist three more times and then nodded. “Yes.”

“Did you
like
it?”

“Uncle L!” She let out an exasperated
argh
. “That’s not the point. You told him to look me up, you told him I’d cook him dinner and now he’s here at my club disrupting my life and I want you to tell him to go away.”

“Why?”

Caitlin raised her eyebrows. “Why? Because he won’t listen to me.”

“No, I mean why do you want him to go away? I know Josh quite well, kiddo. And trust me, he’s a nice bloke. A really nice bloke. I wouldn’t have given him your number—”

“You gave him my
number
?”

“I wouldn’t have given him your number if he was a wanker, would I?”

“No. You wouldn’t. But I want him to go away because he kissed me.”

Liev’s laughter tickled her ear. “And that’s a problem because…?”

“Because I’m
engaged
,” she ground out.

“No,” her uncle’s deep voice rumbled in her ear. “You’re not.”

She let out a frustrated growl. “Okay.” She raked at her hair, the pain of her nails on her scalp almost too much. “But the rest of Australia doesn’t know that. Matt’s parents don’t know that, our friends don’t. You’re the only one who knows.”

A long sigh sounded through the connection. “Caitlin…” Frustration filled her uncle’s voice. Frustration and disappointment.

Caitlin closed her eyes, unable to look at the painting on the wall any longer. Matt had given it to her a month before he left. Looking at it now only made her ache more. A heavy lump filled her throat. A sick tension rolled in her tummy.

“Caitlin,” Liev repeated her name, this time with less frustration and disappointment and more patience. “I don’t want to sound horrible, you know that. And God knows, I love you more than breath itself, but it’s been over eight months, kiddo. Eight months. The Somali government has officially declared him dead. The Australian government is on the verge of doing the same. You can’t spend your life in a holding pattern waiting for him to come back when all evidence says he won’t, especially when you both decided you needed a break before he left.”

“There’s never been a body, Uncle L,” she whispered, words her uncle had heard from her before. A heavy weight wrapped her chest. The sick tension in her stomach churned. She opened her eyes and stared at her left ring finger, at the spot her engagement ring had been until the day before Matt had flown out of the country for Somalia. There was no evidence a sparkling diamond and gold symbol of commitment had ever encircled her finger. Not now.

“How can I truly end all this without a body? When the rest of the country thinks…when the Australian government still refers to me as an example of…to help focus on…”

“Kiddo,” Liev murmured, “you’re twenty-seven. You’re beautiful. You’re intelligent. You’re successful. And you’re lonely. I know you are. And it tears me apart knowing you’re shutting off a life of happiness and love and passion because you feel pressured into maintaining a relationship that was on hold anyway, just because he maybe…is most likely dead. You’re hurting yourself waiting—”