ONE
Shock made Mena lose her breath, take a step back and collide with the heavy wooden door as it closed. It boosted her forward, forcing her to take an awkward little jump. She wobbled as her stiletto-clad ankle rolled and everything she’d been balancing on the flat of her laptop went flying: phone, notepad, pen, business-card holder.
Thank Joseph Pilates she didn’t land on her arse, legs over her head, date-ready Agent Provocateur underwear on show.
But it was a close thing.
Ow, her ankle hurt. Wow, this could not be happening. She wasn’t supposed to walk into a new client briefing in the boardroom and meet her number one score.
She especially wasn’t supposed to find that the past fifteen years had been enormously kind to him, and he was sexier than ever. Still had a smile that could power a concert venue and make her insides turn to goo. And it was total bullshit that seeing him again had made her knees go weak, her mouth fall open and her body flash hot.
He could still rock her, and he hadn’t done anything but glance up and smile as she’d staggered in.
“Mena, oh no. Are you okay?” Caroline wrenched her eight months and nine days pregnant self out of her chair to help Mena and the two of them bumped, grabbing onto each other to steady themselves.
“I’m fine. Goodness.” Hell. No, she was not fine. She was regretting every good decision she’d made since leaving his bed all those years ago. “Please sit down, Caroline.” If he recognized her, everything she’d worked for after her retirement as a good-time girl, the partnership offer she expected to receive, the security she’d earned, the amazing life she’d built herself could come to a crashing halt.
Swire & Yallop did not promote former groupies who’d slept their way around every concert venue in Australia to seriously fabulous, life-changing salaries.
“Mark Grippen, this is Mena Grady,” Caroline said with a smile towards their guest as she eased into her seat. “She’ll be taking over my clients while I’m on maternity leave.”
Caroline had said they were meeting a new client, MG Holdings, and the last thing Mena thought MG would stand for was Mark Grippen, the drummer from Lost Property.
Grip had been at the top of her list of drummers—always and only drummers—to sleep with when she’d been young and reckless and lost.
He was talented, athletic, and magnetic on stage, and so aspirational that she’d promised to quit the groupie lifestyle and make something of herself if she could bag him.
And bag him she did. One glorious night that morphed unexpectedly into seven days of tour bus riding, backstage privileges, incendiary, soul-scoring sex in cheap hotels and falling inconveniently in love.
A good groupie never overstayed her welcome and never expected more than her lust object offered. Grip had a plane to catch and another stage to conquer and Mena had a finance degree to finish and a shot at becoming her own rock star.
More than a decade later, she was one successfully managed maternity leave support stint away from achieving her goal and she wasn’t about to jeopardize that because of the inconvenient reflex action of regret and damp underwear.
She put her laptop on the boardroom table and scooped to collect her notepad and cardholder, her pen wasn’t in sight and her phone was, heck, where was it—uh, under the table.
“Excuse me,” she said to the room at large, not yet prepared to look at Grip. She went to her knees, only to find herself crawling toward him as he was on his, reaching for her phone from his side of the table.
“I’ve got you,” he said, laughing sea-green eyes meeting hers, cheekbones showing off, big hand grasping her phone and disappearing it in his enormous palm.
Oh, he so did have her.
He’d had her in that week all the ways it was possible to have a person you’d plucked from a lineup of random hopefuls, and it had been glorious. There was a good reason Grip had been her Mount Everest. That light-a-fire smile. Those massive hands, the deep chest and muscled arms, the ripped abs and thick quads. The way he played those wicked licks, effortlessly, as if he lived in the beat and it returned the favor by gracing him with the superpower of extreme musical talent, explosive energy and raw sexual attraction.
She could not get her tongue to work. He could probably see right down her top to the lace of her bra from this position.
“It’s all good,” he said, looking directly at her face, making everything below the waistband of her pencil skirt pull tight.
She got the words lucky and carpet out of her mouth, but he’d already moved and all she could see of him was his shins in denim and his no doubt wildly expensive collector’s edition trainers.
Lucky carpet. Dear heaven. Her brain was on stall. She had to give this man solid investment advice and she couldn’t manage her legs and forgot what words were when she looked at him.
Pull it together, Philomena Elizabeth Grady. It was one week, a million years ago, and you were a different person with a different name. He’s probably slept with a hundred million women. He is not going to remember you. Plus you have a date tonight with a very eligible lawyer.
She got to her feet and smiled at Caroline. She could rescue this with a witty quip and scream into her pillow about cosmic injustice later. S
he’d focus on the business at hand and once they got into the facts and figures it would all be suitable for work and she could sit back and enjoy the not so suitable for work secrets she had exclusive knowledge to.
The fact that she knew where Mr. MG Holdings liked to be touched, what he sounded like when he came, how he liked to fuck long and hard, what his tattoos meant and exactly how much fun you could have with his cock piercing.
She cleared the lust fog from her throat. “Despite that memorable entrance, clumsy is not the brand of my investment advice. I promise I’ll only ever offer you elegant solutions. Shall we get down to it?”
He flashed that gotta-love-me smile and a brow jumped on the words get down to it.
She winced and tried to hide it pulling out a chair, sitting, rolling it toward the table and opening her laptop, because getting down to it did sound like an invitation to something not appropriate for a boardroom.
Performance appraisal D-minus. At least her heart had stopped trying to make a hussy out of her by beating hard enough to open the buttons of her silk shirt, and her mouth appeared to be in rough working order.
She risked looking at her new client and her brain superimposed an image of Grip shirtless, drenched in sweat, arms flying over his rims, on top of the one of him leaning back in his chair, one sleeve-tattooed arm lying on the table, wearing a plain dark blue T-shirt that made his eyes pop and a bemused expression that made her suck in a deep breath before he slid her phone across the table to her.
As she reached for it, their hands grazed and she felt color flood her face. “Thank you.”
“My pleasure.”
Goddamn, he shouldn’t be allowed to say that word.
She focused on her laptop keyboard and pulled on her professional reserves to say, “Why don’t you tell us what your priorities are, er, Mark?” only just catching herself from calling him Grip like his fans did.
She was no longer a fan in any real sense. She didn’t go to gigs, didn’t read everything ever written about him and his band, didn’t follow him on social media or burn brain cells plotting how she might meet him, sleep with him, end up friends with him. They’d parted like adults who’d known their good thing was also a temporary thing so continuing to track him would’ve been stalkerish. Would’ve taken up time she didn’t have for frivolous activities. She’d put all that aside along with dying her hair black, flashing her boobs, drinking till she didn’t care what anyone thought of her and wearing the most revealing borrowed clothing she could get away with and still have all her vital parts covered, most of the time.
That’s not to say she hadn’t been aware of his rise to stardom from the drummer in a scrappy but promising pub band to global success. She’d have had to be dead not to have known Lost Property had hit the big time.
She’d always known he was the bomb. The best of the best and that’s why he’d been at the top of her drummers-to-fuck list and why she’d retired after their time together. It wasn’t ever going to get any better than bedding Mark Grippen.