Night with Sole Regret

TELL ME VIII

His brow furrowed with confusion. “You want me to ride with her?”

“No, baby,” she said. “I want you to play your rock star card and get someone to do it for you.”

“Oh.” He grinned, and she melted beneath the warmth of his smile. “Now that, I can do.”

“Well, hurry up about it. My lips are lonely.”

He gave her a sample of the company his lips could provide hers, climbed from the beige club chair, and handed her his beer. “I’ll be right back.”

She shifted into a more comfortable spot in the chair and took a swig off his beer. “Maybe there are still some knights in shining armor left in the world,” she said, and tipped the neck of the bottle toward him in a silent toast to his heroics.

While waiting for Gabe to return—she owed him big time for handling Nikki for her—Melanie scanned the room, feeling as out of place as she had the first time she’d been backstage with the band. She couldn’t help but notice people were staring at her with curiosity. Was it because she had just bossed Gabe around or because her attire was unlike anything else in the room? She really liked Gabe, but this scene was a rude reminder that they came from entirely different worlds. She didn’t fit in his reality and he didn’t fit in hers. So why did she feel that they fit together so well? Maybe she should try a little harder to blend in with his crowd. She lifted the beer bottle to her lips and took another swig. It was going to take a lot more than half a beer to help her with that.

As Shade gave his big-boobed companion a parting hug, his gaze landed on Melanie over the woman’s shoulder. He was wearing the sunglasses that had obviously been welded to his face at birth, but Melanie could feel his eyes on her, his gaze was that intense. It took an actual effort to turn her head and not stare at him. She couldn’t stand the guy. Or, more specifically, she couldn’t stand the way he treated women, Nikki in particular. But she also couldn’t deny that there was something mesmerizing about him.

Out of the corner of her eye, she could see him crossing the room in her direction. The man didn’t walk, he prowled. And that pissed her off for some reason. Melanie’s body stiffened involuntarily and she reminded herself to be civil to him if he approached her. If she wanted to be with Gabe—and she very much wanted to be with Gabe—she was going to have to learn to tolerate this man. She didn’t have to like him though.

Shade perched himself on the arm of her chair, and she glanced up, as if surprised to see him.

“I get the feeling that you don’t like me much,” he said.

“I wouldn’t say that,” she said, turning toward the door in hopes of spotting a tall, lean drummer with a red and black mohawk headed in her direction.

No such luck.

“Okay, then I get the feeling that you don’t like me at all,” he said.

She stared up at him thinking he was incredibly perceptive, and he did something that completely threw her off guard. He removed his sunglasses and hung them from the neckband of his T-shirt. He had the bluest eyes she’d ever seen. Not a pale blue but a startling cerulean, with dark rims around the irises that made the color appear even more astonishingly bright. Why in the world would anyone hide those gorgeous eyes behind sunglasses?

“I get why you’re defensive of your friend,” he said, “but I spent a lot of time in her company last weekend and I learned quite a bit about her. She’s a manipulator.”

Nikki wasn’t a manipulator. Melanie opened her mouth to defend her, but then snapped it closed. Okay, she was, but Shade had no right to talk bad about her. He had slept with her—um, had s*x with her—several times and hadn’t even bothered to call her the next day. Assholes had no right to judge anyone. Especially not people Melanie cared about.

Shade lifted a hand to stop her from interrupting, and she could see the concern in his pretty blue eyes. What exactly did he have to be concerned about?

“It probably pisses you off to hear it from me.”

“Yeah,” she spat.

“But you know it’s true.”

“She’s just misunderstood.”

He grinned crookedly. “How did she manipulate you into believing that?”

Melanie glared at him. She didn’t care if he had beautiful expressive eyes or that she almost thought of him as a human being when he didn’t wear the sunglasses that hid them—she was not going to sit there and let him bad-mouth Nikki when Nikki wasn’t present to defend herself.

“I’ve known Nikki for a long time,” Melanie said. “I obviously know her better than you do.”

“I don’t deny that. That’s probably why you don’t see what she’s doing to you.”

“I know exactly what she’s doing to me,” Melanie admitted, but she sure didn’t want Shade to know that she was a slave to Nikki’s crazy whims. Unfortunately there was no way around it, because he’d find out as soon as Gabe returned. “That’s why I asked Gabe to kick her the f**k out of the stadium, because I knew she’d manipulate me into letting her stay.”

Shade’s eyes widened, and then he burst into raucous laughter.

“What are you laughing about?”

“You surprise the hell out of me, little woman,” he said.

She hadn’t thought that the man could possibly raise her ire any higher, but apparently she’d underestimated his talent for pissing her off. “Little woman?”

“Big woman?”

“Big woman!”

“I’ll just shut up now. I came to offer a truce, and it seems I set off a couple of loose cannons instead. Maybe one day we’ll get off on the right foot.”

“I doubt it.” She polished off the last swallow of Gabe’s beer.

“If you weren’t dating the man I respect more than any other, I’d kiss the sass right out of you.”

“And it would earn you a fat lip.”

He chuckled. “I’m sure it would be worth it.”

Her eyes narrowed. “If you really respected Gabe, you wouldn’t speak to me with such disrespect.”

“I didn’t mean to be disrespectful. Usually when a beautiful woman talks to me the way you do, it’s to get my attention so I’ll f**k her senseless. But I think you genuinely hate my guts. I’m not sure how to handle you.”

He was not helping his cause here. “You don’t need to handle me. You don’t even need to talk to me. What you need to do is apologize to Nikki, but I doubt you have the class.”

A commotion at the entrance announced the arrival of the rest of the band and a few women Melanie didn’t recognize. She did spot a familiar mohawk above the crowd that was headed in her direction, however. When Gabe appeared at Shade’s shoulder, the exasperating vocalist looked glad to see him.

“Does she bust your balls like this?” Shade asked.

“She’s more likely to lick them than bust them, but I’m not as stupid as you are.”

Melanie saw the flash of hurt cross Shade’s face before he snatched his sunglasses from his neckband and crammed them back onto his face. “Yeah, well, we can’t all be f*****g geniuses.” He was gone before Gabe could catch his arm.

“I didn’t mean it that way,” Gabe called after him.

Shade lifted his hand over his head and directed a pronounced middle finger in his direction.

Gabe sighed and took his beer bottle from Melanie’s hand, pressing it to his lips and tipping his head back and back until he realized it was empty. He shook the bottle at her, a brow arched in question.

“Sorry,” she said. “I was thirsty.” She rose from the chair. “I’ll get you another.”

“Are you tired of me playing my rock star card already?” he asked. “Jordan!”

He extended his arm, holding the empty bottle out and waited and waited and waited some more. Melanie drew her lips further and further into her mouth with each passing moment to prevent herself from laughing. Eventually Gabe turned toward the bar and sighed at the young man talking to a very pretty and very pregnant woman.