Fox snorted. “Bullshit. I’ve seen the stacks of fan mail.” Thigh pressing against Molly’s, he reached for the pats of butter beside her plate. “Mind?”
“Of course not.” Feeling playful and happy to see him, she closed her hand over the muscled strength of his thigh under the table, close to the zipper of his jeans.
It earned her a warning look that told her he’d get his revenge. Stomach tight, she stroked her hand lower down, leaving it there in an intimacy that coiled around her heart, and returned her attention to David. “So, someone recognized you?”
“Yep. The fuckwits decided they didn’t want a ‘pussy rock star’ in their fine establishment.” The insult was rife in his voice. “Like I was an airbrushed pop star, not a real goddamned musician.” Snarling at his toast, he bit off a hunk. “I had to defend my honor, didn’t I? Not my fucking fault the fucking bartender decided to call the cops just ’cause we broke a cheap-ass fucking table.”
Molly had never heard David swear before this morning, not even in interviews or going up against pushy paparazzi. “Hold on,” she said, wondering how much of that was leftover anger, and how much frustration at what this would do to his chances with Thea. “You were on your own, and you only came out with a black eye?”
David shrugged. “I was consistently the shortest guy in my grade until I hit seventeen. Shrimps get picked on—and my dad, he’s old school. Decided to teach me how to kick ass. No one ever picked on me a second time.”
His physicality something she would’ve never guessed at, Molly might have followed the conversational thread, but David fell to his breakfast with the concentration of a man who was done talking. She looked across the table to Justin. “Are you on call all the time?”
“That’s why I get paid the big bucks.” The lawyer’s teeth flashed bright. “Good thing David’s victims were too embarrassed to press charges—I mean, what hard man gets beat up by a pussy rock star?”
Giving him the finger, David stayed focused on his bacon and eggs.
Fox, his thigh continuing to press intimately against hers, jerked his head at Maxwell. “You feel good about tonight?”
“Setup’s tight,” the other man said, and the conversation drifted in another direction.
It was maybe ten minutes later, while Molly was having her second cup of coffee, that she ended up alone with David, the others having gone to pick up more food from the buffet. “You don’t seem like the kind of man who gets into bar fights.”
No response.
“You’re crazy in love with her, aren’t you?” she said softly, having grasped the depth of his feelings yesterday when he’d oh-so-casually asked her about Thea when they were backstage. The painful need in his eyes had resonated with the emotions growing inside her.
David paused with his fork against the plate, his eyes staring out into nothing. “Until I can’t think. I need to get over it.”
“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.” Fingers turning white on the metal, he said, “She cut me off so smoothly 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.”
Thea, Molly thought, was a smart woman who’d grown up cherished by two people who loved her and each other. The man Thea’s mother had married when Thea was two had always treated Thea as his eldest daughter, “and no damn ‘step’ about it,” as Thea had once quoted, love bright in her expression. Her two “baby” sisters, fourteen and fifteen respectively, saw her as their big sister and that was that—complete with teary phone calls about boys and complaints about being grounded.
Molly had met Thea’s family over video calls and thought they were wonderful.
However, Thea had also had the bad luck to fall into a long-term relationship with a man who hadn’t been able to handle her strength and growing success. Thea’s ex had cheated on her, then blamed her for it, saying she wasn’t woman enough to satisfy his needs.
Molly didn’t know if David was or wasn’t the right guy to help her sister get over that awful hurt, but any man sweet enough to be in love with her sister after such an icy rejection would at least treat her right, remind her that not all men were swine.
“Write a memo,” she said before any of the others returned to the table. “About all the reasons why you’d be perfect together, then e-mail it to her.”
David gave her a look that said he was questioning her sanity.
“Thea is surgically attached to her e-mail.” Molly had figured that out the third time she and Thea had coffee together. Her sister had been on her best behavior the first two times.
Molly had actually been happy to see Thea taking quick glances at her phone—it had felt like they were both relaxed enough to be themselves for the first time, bad habits and all. “She’ll read the memo because she can’t help herself,” Molly continued, “and if I know my sister”—which Molly thought she did, at least when it came to this aspect of Thea’s personality—“she’ll send you back a point-by-point rebuttal, so you’d better have your arguments ready.”
Having twisted to face her, David shook his head. “That is either the worst or the best advice ever.”
“Trust me.” Molly took another sip of coffee. “Thea likes brains and she likes determination.” Molly thought about it and decided to give him one other tiny piece of advice. “If you send her ‘I’m sorry I messed up’ flowers, steer clear of white roses.” When David raised an eyebrow, she gave him a succinct answer. “Ex.”
His jaw tightened. “Got it.”
Maxwell and Justin returned to the table then, Fox waylaid by staff and guests.
“Damn.” David put down his fork with a sigh as he too was spotted by a tableful of young men who, from their uniforms, looked like they were part of a high school sports team.
It wasn’t until twenty minutes later that they could both eat again. Justin and Maxwell left soon afterward to take care of other matters, but Molly stuck around, promising to meet Maxwell in the parking lot in a quarter of an hour.
“That’s why we mostly order room service,” David said after he’d cleared his plate.
Fox leaned back with a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice. “We tend to have suites next to one another, and since Noah’s always up before dawn, anyone else from the band who’s up for breakfast turns up at his suite. Maxwell and some of the other crew usually find their way there as well.”
“It’s like a family, isn’t it?” Molly snuck a strawberry from the bowl of fruit one of the men had brought back to the table.
“Depends on the people,” David said, “and how long we’ve worked together. Maxwell, he’s been with us since the first tour—most of the time, he treats us like his kids. Should piss us off, but he’s got some weird voodoo going on where none of us can get mad at him. Or if we do, we feel so ashamed we end up giving him a raise.”
Molly laughed when Fox nodded, his expression solemn. Then his cheeks creased and she had to dig her nails into her palms to resist the urge to kiss his smile right into her own mouth. “I better go.” She cleared her throat, her voice husky. “I have to grab my stuff and meet Maxwell.”
Fox squeezed her thigh under the table. “You’re mine after tonight.” It was a low murmur of sound that made David’s face fall.
Bending down to the drummer’s ear once she was on her feet, she said, “Memo,” and left, her heart slamming a rapid beat and her nape prickling in awareness of Fox’s gaze all the way to the door. She’d have to tell him to stop that or everyone would think he was hot after a roadie… but another part of her wanted to turn, to lock her eyes with his, tell the world he was hers.