Savage Rhythm (3 page)

Good thing she didn’t have much stuff, and neither had her mother. After her mom died, Molly had wondered if eventually the trailer would start to feel like it was really hers, and she’d hated the thought. Feared it. She just wanted out of that place, and now she was gratified, in some small way, that she’d managed to stay emotionally detached, if still a little bit obsessed with making sure everything went the way she had planned. It made leaving easier. She’d packed up for eight weeks in no time.

The only thing she was really attached to was far, far away, anyway.

Molly stared into the eerie blue glow of her laptop and hit refresh. Really, this was kind of pathetic. Facebook stalking your own sister? Yes, that was definitely somewhere on the sadness scale, with possibly a creepy factor thrown in. But this was the only contact she had with Lydia, at least until Molly could make enough money to offer her a decent place to live, away from this horrible trailer park where the Ward girls would always be fair game. And away from their father, who Lydia lived with now.

But Lydia would be eighteen soon. The only thing she needed was somewhere to go.

Molly tried to pretend it didn’t worry her that Lydia hadn’t answered her last message. Or that she hadn’t posted anything in…four days. Socially active teenagers had things to do besides chat with their sisters, especially when they had to do it behind their dad’s back. She shouldn’t freak out.

It was probably nothing.

But of course Molly had spent all afternoon obsessing about that scene at the dock and why she’d let those frat bros get to her, so much so that she had started off her association with Declan Donovan by
fighting
with him—really, what the fuck?—and the answer, once she thought about it, was Lydia. Of course it was.

Molly hadn’t been humiliated like that in front of someone who mattered to her since Robbie and his boys had detailed all the reasons that she was a slut for her baby sister. She hadn’t felt that weak, or that powerless, or that out of control in a long time, possibly because she hadn’t let many things matter to her in a long time. And because she knew she had to always be in control.

But this job? Getting this right? This mattered. Which meant that Declan mattered. And she felt like she had zero control with him. Molly’d given herself a year to make something of herself writing before she had to go get a real job, something that would provide a steady paycheck for her and Lydia, and the Savage Heart gig alone might cover her last credits at night school
and
provide enough cash to get a real apartment big enough for both her and Lydia.

Except, of course, that she’d just fucked it up.

Probably.

Honestly, she couldn’t tell. Declan Donovan obviously wanted to do her, but that wasn’t what she was going for. Or at least that wasn’t what she was going for right now. And she’d been kind of a bitch. She couldn’t get that old cliché Robbie used to say out of her mind: “You never get a second chance to make a first impression,” blah blah blah. She hated that Robbie still had any real estate in her head, but she had to admit, as clichés went, that one had some truth to it.

Didn’t help that Savage Heart had been one of Robbie’s favorite bands and Declan Donovan one of his idols. Molly really needed to get some new mental associations. She couldn’t afford to have flashbacks to her dickhead ex and traumatic past while interviewing Declan.

Somehow, though, she didn’t think that would be much of a problem. She was much more worried about keeping enough blood in her brain to be able to form words.

That man…

She swore she could still feel his touch on her hip. Like he’d branded her. Every time she thought about it, about Declan standing tall over her, about Declan touching her, about Declan ordering her to be quiet, she got more turned on, until she felt practically incandescent. And now she was supposed to spend eight weeks on a cramped tour bus right next to him while keeping it together enough to write a book.

Molly shuddered.

She needed to
focus
.

Then her phone buzzed in her pocket with a new text message, and the likelihood that she’d be able to focus on anything other than Declan Donovan got vanishingly small.

DECL.A.N: “Volare in Venice. 10 pm.”

What the shit?

Molly’s leg bounced up and down uncontrollably while she stared at her phone. He was summoning her to
Club Volare?

To do what?

Ok, well, no way was she waiting until ten. She needed to talk to Adra,
stat
.

~ * ~ * ~

Molly pulled her beat-up old LeBaron up to the Volare compound gates and gave the security guy a sheepish look. She fully expected to have to plead her case and make embarrassing phone calls in order to get in or to be told flat out that they didn’t want her car anywhere where actual people could see it, but the big guy just said something into a headset and opened the gate for her.

Weirdly, this made Molly more nervous. Inside was the hottest place in L.A. Even the public area of Club Volare was difficult to get into, and the private area? No one knew what went on. The whole place was exclusive, but not necessarily in the normal way. Rumor was that the guy who ran it, Chance Dalton, had no patience for people he deemed “dicks.” There were plenty on the A-list who couldn’t get in, and it burned them all.

At least that’s what the gossip rags said.

And here she was, driving her LeBaron wreck into the very limited private parking area, where Adra—oh, bless her—was already waiting for her.

And grinning ear to ear.

“What did you hear?” Molly asked warily, giving the car door the final hip bump it needed to close properly.

“Nothing. It’s what I
know
,” Adra said.

Molly smiled. Adra was infuriating, but amazing. They’d clicked immediately, had spent the entire four-hour job interview becoming fast friends, and had been in constant contact since. It had been such a relief to feel like there was someone who wanted to take her under their wing that it made Molly realize how much she missed that sense of being looked out for. She’d had to remind herself not to read too much into it, but she was grateful as all hell for Adra.

“And what do you know, oh sage?” she asked as Adra linked their arms.

“I know that you’re here because Declan asked you to be here. So I know that you must have impressed the hell out of him, because tonight is invite only, and he has control of the guest list.”

Molly could only imagine.

“You let him have control of a guest list?” she said in mock horror.

“Don’t change the subject.”

“Well, ok, I won’t. But can you please tell me what is going on? Why am I here?”

Adra grabbed her by the arm and pulled her under a covered path, the canopy woven with tiny little lights, that led to a large, modern looking building. “Well, the bigger question of why, I can’t answer. But tonight is the first surprise performance of the reconstituted Savage Heart.”

Molly froze. “Are you serious?”

“Yup.”

Molly immediately looked down, wishing she’d spent more time on her appearance. She’d stubbornly decided that she wouldn’t do anything, really, besides pull on her favorite cut offs and tank top and run some sea spray through her hair. Anything more would be suggestive, and she was definitely not trying to suggest anything to Declan.

“You look great, Mol,” Adra said. “Actually, you look so good it’s kind of annoying. Do me a favor and
don’t
tell me how long you spent getting that tousled surfer girl look down, ok? Declan’s going to freak when he sees you.”

That did it.

“Oh God, Adra, I don’t know what to do,” Molly said, collapsing into a pile on the bench. “I am so, so, so determined not to fuck this up, and I think I may already
have
fucked it up.”

Adra stared at her. “How could you have done that in all of five minutes?”

“I yelled at him?” Molly said, running an anxious hand through her hair. “Which, whatever, but there’s also just this…chemistry. I don’t know, I can’t explain it. He basically announced that we’re going to have sex.”

She could tell Adra was trying not to smile. To Adra’s credit, she did a pretty good job.

“And what did you say?”

“I said that we were not, in fact, going to have sex. I said that, instead, he was going to tell me all his deepest, darkest secrets, and then I was going to write a book about it.”

“So, an impasse.”

“Adra, I’m just afraid that he’s not going to take me seriously. I mean, I can’t sleep with him, not just because I want to be professional, but…” She trailed off. Molly had decided that the only way to make sure her past didn’t become her future was to refuse to relive it constantly. There was no reason to go into the whole thing.

“I just can’t,” she went on. “And now it’s there. Between us. And you knew I was completely inexperienced when you hired me, and believe me, I am feeling that right now.”

“Overwhelmed.”

“Totally.”

“You think you can’t get a good interview out of him with all this sexual whatever floating in the air? Which, by the way, five minutes and there’s already enough sexual tension to make you crazy? That’s got to be a record.”

“Tell me about it.”

“So sleep with him.”

Molly stopped short. “What?”

Laughing, Adra detoured over to a bench just at the edge of the light coming from the path they’d been following, the sort of thing you wouldn’t be able to see if you didn’t know it was there. Molly could hear the party now, a pulsing rhythm coming from inside the building, like a heartbeat. They were alone outside, except for a sense of vastness. Maybe it was the dark, maybe it was the privacy, but it felt…safe.

“I’m saying, Mol, that if you think the tension is going to mess up your professional performance, get it out of the way.”

Molly was suddenly glad for the poor visibility. She could feel Adra studying her. And even though they’d only known each other for a short time, they had an instant rapport, the kind where Molly wouldn’t be able to hide how disturbed she was. Not at the idea of sex with Declan—God, no, that had been practically all she’d thought about since she’d met him in the flesh—but the fact that Adra’s argument made sense, in a way.

Which meant that it wasn’t solely her professional concerns that made her so anxious.

If she were being truly honest with herself, she’d have to admit she was a little intimidated by the idea of a sexual relationship with anyone, let alone Declan Donovan. Or not even a relationship; just sex. Granted, the last guy she’d had sex with was Robbie. And that had ended about as badly as a sexual relationship could.

But it had been four years. Four
years
.

“I think there’s something wrong with me,” Molly said quietly.

“Everyone has something wrong with them,” Adra said. “You spend most of your adult life fixing stuff. Sometimes you get to find people to fix it with.”

Molly looked at her sideways. “Was that…innuendo?”

“Maybe.” Adra smiled. “Look, honest truth? Declan is not one of those guys who loses respect for the women he sleeps with. Those groupies he’s famous for banging aren’t, like, Nobel laureates, but he respects them as people…”

“Ugh.”

“He’s just not one of those guys. We wouldn’t have anything to do with him if he was. And if you feel uncomfortable and genuinely don’t want any of that, he’ll know, and he’ll back off. And if you
tell
him to back off, he’ll back off. He’s a good guy and is actually pretty paranoid about consent because of the whole fame thing. Only… Look, did I ever tell you about the cookie competition?”

For a moment Molly thought she must have misheard, but nope: cookies. She laughed. “The
what
?”

“Yeah. So Declan is like, super competitive and driven. If you took frigging Genghis Khan and then made him a rock god, you’d get Declan. Weirdest combination. So I decided to have some fun with him, right? I challenged him to a bake off.”

“You didn’t.”

Adra cackled. “I
did
. And he lost. No, he didn’t just lose—I destroyed him. Completely. Like, made him my little cookie bitch.”

Molly clapped her hands with glee. Somehow the image of Declan wearing an apron and a frown, getting his baking ass handed to him, was delightful. And made him seem a whole lot less intimidating.

“What’d he do?” she asked.

Adra shook her head. “That’s the thing. He
kept
baking cookies. Multiple times per day, every day. The Volare kitchen smelled terrible. It was like a cookie war crime in there for at least a week. And then…he got really, really good at it.”

Molly thought about this for a second. She couldn’t deny she was attracted to driven men, but she also knew exactly what happened if you got in the way of a driven man’s plans: you got run the fuck over. She still had tire tracks on her back from Robbie’s getaway. But that didn’t seem to be the most pertinent part of the cookie story.

“So he’s persistent,” Molly mused. She imagined all the things he might be persistent about and squirmed a little.

“Yeeeeaaah,” Adra said. “It’s a big part of who he is. And so is his sexuality. If you want to get to know him, you could probably do worse than to give in to an attraction that’s already driving you nuts. On the other hand, you know what’s best for you. But you are probably gonna have to talk to him about it all.”

Adra looked at Molly’s face and laughed.

“C’mon, creampuff, toughen up. I hired you because you’re a fantastic writer
and
a baby badass. Go in there and show him the badass part.”

chapter
4

Declan sat in his makeshift dressing room and brooded over his phone. The rest of the world might as well not exist until he got this text. Same as every night, except this time he had a show. First time in six months. And this time, there was the image of Molly Ward, teasing at the edge of his thoughts.