Hold on to My Heart (Maine Sullivans)

He should have known better than to think he could be that guy.

And he should have known better than to think that he could keep his hands off Ashley.

Because she wasn’t just a pretty girl. She was extraordinary. Not only beautiful, but also intelligent, and warm, and real.

Ashley was everything he couldn’t let himself have. Her life would turn into a media circus if they became an item, not only because of his celebrity, but also because of his arrest and prison record. He couldn’t do that to her or her son.

What’s more, Nash wasn’t a long-term-relationship guy. He’d never had the urge to settle down, to start a family. And even if that no longer felt quite true anymore, even if he’d begun to envy people on his staff with spouses and kids and houses with vegetable gardens, he had no idea what being part of a happy family actually looked like.

Growing up, there not only hadn’t been money, there also hadn’t been affection or love, dreams or hopes. There had only been, for both his mother and himself, an urge to escape. For his mom, via booze and drugs. For him, via the van he’d rebuilt.

Nash deliberately shook off thoughts of his past, silently reminding himself that he had everything now. Money. Any woman he wanted. Adoration of the masses.

What more could he possibly ask for?

He walked along the river until he found himself standing at the entrance to a huge amusement park that had been on Ashley’s spreadsheet. Prater.

He’d never gotten the chance to go to an amusement park when he was a kid, because they hadn’t had the spare money for it. Now, all he could think was what a good time he and Ashley would have on the rides. And her son too. This place was a kid’s dream, with roller coasters and arcade games as far as the eye could see.

Nash had plenty of money now. He could ride every roller coaster at every amusement park ten times in a row if he wanted. Hell, he could pay the management to shut the entire park down for him for the day, and the cost wouldn’t even be a blip in his bank account.

Instead, he turned and walked away from the amusement park. When people suddenly started running up to him to ask for autographs and pictures, it should have been a relief.

A relief to go back to what he knew. To the way his life had been for so many years. One where every day might be more of the same, but where the dreams he’d had as a kid had finally come true.

He should have been the happiest bastard alive, damn it. Because he had everything.

Everything but Ashley.

CHAPTER TEN

By the time Ashley got out of the shower, Nash was gone. Though his bags were still there, and likely would be until Brandon sent someone from the hotel to pick them up, it felt as though all of the life, and the joy, in the apartment had gone.

Her heart clenched, tight and aching, even though she knew it was for the best. One night was all they were ever going to get. She’d known all along that good-byes were coming in the morning.

Still, she wished it had ended differently, that there could have been smiles and hugs instead of harsh words.

Ashley had spent only twenty-four hours with Nash, but in that short period of time, she’d come to like him very much. Regardless of his brushes with the law, or if he’d done some things he shouldn’t have in his past, she believed that, at his core, he was a good man.

Her belief in his goodness only made Nash’s reaction to her brother’s accusations sadder. Nash had actually agreed with Brandon that he wasn’t good enough for her.

She wished Nash could see how wrong he was. The reason she could be with him for only one night wasn’t because he wasn’t good enough for her. It was simply because their lives were polar opposites. Ashley was a single mom with a normal job and a big family. She still lived in the town where she’d been born, whereas Nash didn’t call anywhere home, his life one long string of hotel rooms and tour buses. And he didn’t seem to have any family either.

She rubbed her hand over the ache in her chest as she thought about his childhood. At sixteen, he’d driven away from a mother he believed didn’t love him.

Ashley couldn’t imagine how that could possibly be true. She’d been drawn to him from the moment they’d started to talk with each other, and that had nothing to do with her fantasies about his music-star persona. He was indisputably sexy and charismatic, of course, but they’d become friends so quickly because he’d made her feel comfortable with being herself. She’d never had such an easy, open rapport with a man.