Part 13 (1/2)

Marco was grateful he'd been holding strong and wasn't abusing his body like that anywhere. Being on the road was hard enough. He didn't need to add a bottle of vodka a day to that kind of strain. All these guys were old before their time.

”Hey,” he said, sliding up behind Allison and lifting her hair off the back of her neck so he could kiss the hollow in her skin there.

She jumped, the back of her head cracking him in the nose. ”What the h.e.l.l are you doing?” She put her hand on her chest. ”Jesus, you scared me.”

”And you injured me.” Marco rubbed his nose, his eyes watering. ”f.u.c.k, you have a hard head.”

”Ask everyone who has ever met me and they'll agree with you. But h.e.l.lo, you deserve it for being a creeper.”

That was his Allison. Definitely not a groupie.

Gold Daddy laughed. ”Hey, Marco, how's it going?”

”Good, thanks. Or it was until Allison a.s.saulted me.”

”Don't be a baby,” she scoffed. She turned to him. ”Let me see it.”

”No.” His nose felt swollen. He kept his hand there, not wanting to look anything less than his best for her.

”Let me look at it.” She reached up and pried his hand off his face. Briefly, she studied his nose, then shrugged. ”You're fine.”

Nice. ”Thanks. Your sympathy is overwhelming.” The reception wasn't what he had wanted. This whole night wasn't what he had wanted.

So he did what a rock star would do. ”Let's get out of here.”

”What?” she asked blankly. ”You're having a party. We can't leave.”

”I'm not having a party. Aidan is having a party. I'm having a-”

”Temper tantrum.” But she took the edge off her words by giving him a smile. ”But you're very cute when you're doing it.” She cupped his cheeks and kissed him.

He figured he'd lost about a thousand points on the man scale, but he was mollified. ”We've have this conversation before. I'm not cute.”

”To me you are.”

G Daddy coughed. ”Hey, uh, catch you both later. I've become the awkward third wheel to this conversation.”

”Sorry, G.” Marco clapped him on the shoulder. ”Good seeing you again.”

”Yeah, yeah.” The producer grinned and rolled his eyes. He wandered off, most likely to find someone more normal than Marco was at the moment.

”What was that all about?” Allison asked him, one eyebrow arched. ”Were you jealous?”

Yes. ”No. Come on.” He tugged her hand. ”We're going over the wall behind these bushes.”

”Excuse me?”

Allison was in shorts and a billowy white s.h.i.+rt. He wanted to put his hand under there and tease her nipple until she made that sound in the back of her throat that he loved.

”I'm wearing sandals,” she added, when he didn't say anything.

”I'm going to hoist you up, then just ease yourself over the top. There's a hill on the other side where we can sit. It's only four feet. You're way taller than this wall.”

It was to keep out intruders, he guessed, but it was a ridiculously easy wall to scale. Maybe it was actually designed to keep his pool from sliding off the hill, h.e.l.l, he didn't know. But at the moment he was glad it was there, because it was a good boundary between him and the party. Someone screamed and there was a splash. The point in the evening had arrived where girls were being thrown in the pool. Not a good sign.

”Is that peer pressure?” she asked.

”Yep.”

”At least you're honest.”

”I want what I want. And I want to be alone with you,” he told her, his voice low.

Her eyes widened. ”Well, h.e.l.l, I can't say no to that. Give me a hand. Apparently I'm going over a wall.”

Marco bent down and cupped his hands for her to step into. Allison was extremely graceful. She was straddling the wall in one jump. Then she disappeared. He put his foot against the wall and leaped up onto it. He looked down on the other side so he wouldn't land on her head. That would not be good. But she was smart enough to s.h.i.+ft to the right. She was sitting on the ground, her back against the retaining wall. He jumped down with a soft thump and slid into place beside her. He was wearing jeans and he tugged them up to give himself more room. Resting his hands on his knees, he took in the view of Los Angeles down below them.

”This is better. I can hear myself think.”

”You're a country boy at heart, aren't you?” she asked. ”You like New York in small doses. And maybe even people in small doses.”

”I'm not sure what I am,” he said truthfully. ”I like performing a lot. It gives me a total rush. But I don't like the constant press of people afterwards. And parties like this?” He jerked his thumb back toward his house. ”I still enjoy them ninety percent of the time. But I guess when I want to be alone, I want to be alone.” He laughed. ”Then when I'm alone, I get lonely.”

”Are you my twin?”

”d.a.m.n, I hope not, since I've f.u.c.ked you, like, four times.” He nudged her knee with his.

Allison laughed. ”Haha. No, you just sound like me. I constantly change moods and expect everyone else to keep up with me. It's not particularly fair to everyone around me.”

”But I find your moods very easy to interpret. I don't think you're exactly a mystery.”

”You've shattered the whole image I've been cultivating for a decade. I should be mysterious.”

She smiled, and he knew she was joking. ”You're too honest to be mysterious.”

”Honest with everyone but myself.” Allison started to play with the hole that he had in the knee of his jeans. She flipped the frayed edge, her finger brus.h.i.+ng across his skin, tickling him. He wasn't sure if she even knew she was doing it. ”But all this has been good for me, Marco. I'm actually, in a super-weird way, looking forward to hitting the reset b.u.t.ton on my life, you know?”

”I think that's awesome. I did that a year ago. But sometimes I wonder if it was enough.” Then he immediately regretted turning her statement into a thought about himself. ”Sorry. This isn't about me. I have a lot of nerve sounding like I'm complaining.”

”Hey, it's okay. We're sharing.” She stilled her hand, but kept it resting on his knee. Turning to study him, she said, ”I think what you're saying is you want to continue to grow as a person. That's not complaining. That's a desire to improve who you are, and I admire that.”

Marco put his hand over hers and pulled it up to his lips. He kissed her smooth, silken skin. ”I don't want your admiration.”

Her head tilted a little and she eyed him with naked curiosity. ”What do you want from me?”

That was the million-dollar question. He didn't know the answer. But what he did know was that he couldn't just let her go back to New York and never see her again. ”Stay here in LA with me. I can introduce you to people, get you a job in the fas.h.i.+on industry as a stylist.”

She gave a soft laugh. ”Thank you, but no thank you. My life is in New York. And that didn't answer the question, by the way.”

She was right.