Her man was wearing a charcoal gray suit with a crisp white shirt open-collared shirt. It was so unexpected, she almost dropped her laptop. Jay was a jeans and tee man. Off stage and on. Seeing him in a suit was like looking at a whole new person. GQ, you got owned.
“You look—” she couldn’t finish that thought because it struck her how on edge he was. A place between exhausted and wired. “I feel underdressed,” she said, looking down at her robe.
He shrugged the coat off. “I missed you,” he said, tossing it over a chair. “It’s been a long day and I’m.” He looked around as if checking for a way out. “I’m all talked out. Not going to be good company.”
“What if I use my mouth for something else?” They could pick up where they’d been interrupted. “You won’t have to say a word.”
He slipped off his shoes and started working on the buttons of his shirt. “I’ve got a better idea.”
With his shirt unbuttoned and freed from his pants, he scooped her up from the couch and carried her into the bedroom, tumbling them onto the bed and crawling over her. He pushed her robe from her shoulders, pushed her shoulders to the bed and then told her all about his stressful day and how wound up he was by kissing across her chest from nipple to nipple, and then down her center and into the secret places of her body that were made for pleasure.
He licked that pleasure out of her, rubbed and sucked and nipped and wasn’t satisfied until he’d made her sing a virtual aria. When she was drifting between the song lines, he fell asleep half-dressed and that was pleasure too, to have him snoring lightly beside her, the distress creasing his face smoothed away. She’d have kissed his lips then for the secret joy of it if she could’ve been sure it wouldn’t wake him, but his day was going to be hectic and started early with breakfast radio, and since she intended to wake beside him for forever, she was satisfied to fall asleep on that promise.
EIGHTEEN
Jay hadn’t seen Evie since early that morning, when she was a tousled head bundled under the quilt snoring lightly in his bed. He almost woke her. Almost put his nose to her wayward tresses and rolled her over to claim sleepy warm kisses.
It was way past time to be able to love her completely. But he’d had forty-five minutes to be in front of a breakfast radio mic and was already feeling the burn of anxiety with a day to go.
Between final sound checks and interviews and a fan meet and greet, the day leaked away. His usual pre-show tension was worse than usual, not better like he’d hoped because he had Evie to wake up next to. He was tense because he always got tense before a show and because this was the first show of a global tour, and it was home and the audience would be critical, so it mattered that the show was flawless. And he was tense because this was Evie’s first World’s End concert and he wanted things to be great for her.
Better than great.
She stood at the side of the stage, protective headphones on, watching her brothers killing their last rehearsal. She was so rapt, he was able to stand alongside her
and feel the energy coursing through her for a few minutes before she noticed him. And when she did, smiling so broadly, excitement lighting her eyes, making her seem to glow, every anxious thought he had fled from his brain cavity.
He wanted to spend the rest of his life with Evie. He’d known that in his blood and guts and the sugar of his soul the very first time they kissed. She was it for him. The one. The only. The owner of his dreams and intentions. No success he had mattered more than being with Evie. He’d gotten lucky enough to have a second chance to make that stick and he wasn’t going to blow it.
He put his fingertips to her hip, ready to slide her into his arms and ask permission to finally take her mouth when Oscar lurched into view, shouting, his guitar in two pieces, his feet tangled in sound cable. Oh shit.
Evie turned towards Oscar as techs and roadies descended. Jay’s fingers slipping from her body as she stepped away, taking his chance to land a kiss with her. Jesus, his timing was off. But over the final fractured chords of Lost Property’s last number, she faced back around, looked up at him and mouthed the words I love you.
He exhaled from the bottom of his lungs, feeling a rush of calm that slapped him hard enough to make him sway on his feet. Her lips around those words were the best kiss he could have gotten.
He might’ve levitated all the way to his position on stage for World’s End’s last sound check. And for all of five minutes forgot how gut-sick he was with nerves. Then he blanked on his stage patter and fucked up the opening bars of their first number, and fear and bile and tension flooded his system again. It took everything he had to lock it all down and focus, to get through the set, and when it was his turn to stumble off stage, he felt like he was broken in two and tripping on his own feet.
He was hot, sticky and edgy. He needed food, water, a massage and sleep. He needed to touch Evie, hear her voice. He had five thousand other things to do before any of that could happen and ten people jabbering at him.
“I need to borrow Jay.”
He heard Evie, but he couldn’t see her until the cluster of band members, management, and techs around him parted to let her through. She held her hand out. No one stopped him taking it or going with her to his dressing room. Amazing, the show didn’t fall down when he didn’t answer everyone’s questions in an instant. No one stopped her closing the door, locking the world out. Making a new one that was simply theirs.
“I thought you needed a time-out,” she said.
He took a bottle of water from the mini-fridge. “You always were full of good ideas.” Be a better one if she wasn’t all the way over the other side of this room from him.
“I have this idea that it’s past time we should come clean,” she said.
He sat his arse on the arm of a sofa. “Right when all my best ideas are dirty.” She grinned but didn’t come any closer. He uncapped the water and took a big slug. “Did my ears deceive me or did you say you loved me an hour ago?”
“I threw you off with that.” She looked at her booted feet. “My timing was bad.”
He inclined his head. “Timing has not ever been our strong point.”
“I’m worried it’s still bad. I don’t want to throw you off again.”
He needed to hurry this along. He needed this to take all day and mean everything. “You didn’t throw me off. I can be shit all by myself. If you’re about to kiss me, there’s no way it can be anything but the second-best day of my life.”