So much for her booty call. Disappointment pinged, but his laptop was on the bed, a little green light flashing like it was still on. Had he been writing? Would reading be an invasion of privacy or a welcome assist from the muse?
Unable to resist, she touched the keyboard, and the computer flickered to life, the now-familiar double-spaced paragraphs of Nick’s book flashing on the screen. She’d checked the word count and realized he’d already knocked out another twenty-five pages.
She tapped the keys to get back to the last chapter she’d read and within a minute, she was lost in a war in the Middle East, deep inside the head and heart of a lonely lieutenant. It was almost as good as being inside the head and heart of Nick Hershey. Especially when she reached the last part he’d written, a quiet, intimate scene with Gannon and Christina. On these pages, the journalist used her talent for getting people to reveal their most personal information and got the Navy SEAL to talk about his childhood.
Not a memoir, huh? As she read about “Gannon’s” parents, she fought a smile at how thinly disguised this autobiography really was. So he had decided to be honest. Like Nick’s, his character’s parents lived together in a loveless marriage. But the fictional Nick didn’t brush that off as though it didn’t affect him. On the contrary, Nick’s alter ego on the page revealed how deep that pain ran in his heart.
She’d love to talk to him about that. She’d love to have this same conversation that Gannon and Christina had, but…he wasn’t here. So she satisfied herself by re-reading the scene five times until she’d practically memorized it.
* * *
Donny Zatarain put his hand on Nick’s back and nudged him toward the lobby after they finished an incredible meal at the Ritz-Carlton’s five-star restaurant. The little bit of guilt he’d felt for dining with Willow’s parents behind her back had mellowed with the wine, along with his curiosity about what this world-famous couple was like.
They were funny, relaxed, and crazy in love with each other. They wore their wealth and fame with the ease of aristocracy, and kept the conversation light and comfortable. It wasn’t until dessert and coffee that Misty explained that Nick thought he should tell Willow about Ona’s planned surprise.
Ona said simply that she didn’t want that to happen, and the dinner ended shortly after that.
“Can we talk privately?” Donny asked softly.
“Of course.”
“On the patio.” He led Nick down the wide lobby hall, past darkened shops closed for the night. For a moment, Nick tried to grab hold of the knowledge that he was side by side with his rock hero. He glanced at Donny, still surprised to see a mellowness in his idol’s demeanor that was nothing like the videos and concerts. He seemed…old. And wise. Much wiser than Nick would have ever imagined from this burned-out rock star.
Outside, most of the tables and sitting areas were empty now, with only a few guests lingering on the wide veranda, the only light from flickering candles and up-lit potted plants.
“Over here.” Donny guided him away from the only other group of people chatting around a table in high-backed rattan chairs. When they reached the edge of the patio, the older man put his hands on the balustrade railing and looked out at the blackness of the Gulf of Mexico.
“There are two things in the world that matter to me,” Donny said, surprising Nick when he pulled out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. “Well, three.” He added a sly smile and narrowed his eyes as the flame flickered. “Do you mind me smoking?”
“No, sir.”
“Don’t call me that. And if you tell Ona I smoked, I’ll kill you. And if you tell anyone I love to golf, I will have your balls removed.”
Nick laughed. “Your secrets are safe. What are the two things that matter to you?”
“No, who are the two things,” he corrected. “One is that woman in there.” He pointed in the general direction of the restaurant. “And one I suspect is in here.” He pointed in the general direction of Nick’s heart.
Oh, boy. Was he about to get the “if you touch my daughter” speech? Because, shit, it was too late.
“What did I say to give you that impression?” Nick asked.
Donny chuckled. “‘It’s not the words that spill your secret, the trick is in your eyes.’”
Nick recognized the lyric immediately. “‘Don’t expect me not to keep it, it’s lies that I despise.’” Nick finished the line from one of his favorite songs without blinking. “Secrets and Lies is one of your best works, Mr. Zatarain.”
“Donny. And, meh.” He shrugged. “That whole album was weak.”
“Zero Hour is a fantastic album,” Nick argued, tamping down the excitement that he was actually discussing Z-Train’s music with Donny Z himself. “I mean, it’s not Zenith or Zephyr Blows, but most of the tracks are amazing.”
Donny nodded, looking ahead. “I didn’t bring you out here to evaluate my body of work, Nick. I know you’re a fan from what you said at dinner.”
He swallowed, a little chastised. “You want to talk about your daughter?”
“I always want to talk about Willie, but not about your…”
“Relationship?”
He looked at Nick. “Do you have one?”
Shit. What was he supposed to tell her father? I’m relieving your daughter of her virginity. The whole idea of it was preposterous on every level. “We’ve been spending a lot of time together, and she’s helping me on the book I mentioned.”
“Has she talked about us?” he asked, the vaguest hint of hope and fear in his voice.
Yep. “A little. Well, obviously, I’m interested in you, and…”
“What about her mother?”
Oh, she really hates her mother. “Very little about, uh, Mrs. Zatarain.”
Donny inhaled slowly, making his nostrils quiver as he let out a long tendril of acrid smoke. “I want to make something very clear to you, and I need you to assure me that you understand.”
A reply seemed unnecessary.
“This scheme of my wife’s can’t fail. It matters more to her than her next breath, and it can’t fail.”
“But what if Willow isn’t receptive to a reunion or reconciliation?” Nick asked. “I mean, part of what will make it succeed is out of your control, isn’t it?”
“Willie’s always been out of my control,” he said wistfully. “And she sure hasn’t been controlled by her mother.”
“Then what makes you think this time will be different?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted, his voice rich with honesty. “But I do know this. We only have a shot with the element of surprise in our favor. If Willie knows this is happening, she will leave.”
“Maybe not,” Nick said. “She works at the resort, so she can hardly disappear, and I think she’ll give you a chance.” But even as he made the statement, he knew it wasn’t true.
“She’d give me a chance,” Donny said with a soft snort. “She won’t give her mother the time of day. And I can’t really blame her.”
Wow, it must have been brutal in that household growing up. “Do you want me to talk to her?”
“No.” He turned, his eyes sharp. “I want you to do the opposite. Do not tell her we’re coming. Do not tell her Ona wants a reconciliation. Do not ruin this.”
But if he didn’t tell her, what would he ruin? Anything they have. Any chance of something more. Their relationship would be up in smoke like the cigarette in Willow’s father’s mouth.
So would a decision not to tell her be yet another selfish one?
“She’s a grown woman,” Nick said, “and has a right to prepare for whatever your wife has in mind.”
“Oh, she’ll prepare, all right. She’ll pack and haul ass to some ‘conference’ or a wedding or something that will sound perfectly acceptable and real, but will, in fact, be Willie’s form of running away from home.” He balled his fists, giving the air a little frustrated punch.
Nick didn’t reply, waiting in the heavy silence for more honest
y from his rock ’n’ roll hero. Who was, it appeared, just another husband and father with family issues.
“You have to understand how important this is,” Donny finally said, crushing his cigarette butt under his shoe. “Please, please, don’t say anything to her. I want this family whole again. I want…” He worked to swallow as if something were strangling him. “I want my wife to be happy and my daughter, too. Neither one of them will ever be whole without a…a healing of this wound. Sorry if I sound like some new-age shrink, but it’s true.”
“I understand,” Nick said, knowing he sounded like he didn’t.
“But your loyalty is to my daughter.”
“I don’t know her that well,” he said. “I’m trying to,” he amended quickly. “I’m hoping to…”
“What are you hoping to do?” Donny asked.
Nick wasn’t at all sure how to respond.
“Maybe I don’t want to know,” Donny said quickly.
“I really like her and—”
“Well, I really love her,” the other man shot back. “So who has more at stake? A young man trying to get laid with the least amount of white water before he ships off to his next assignment, and has nothing but a memory of a nice month on the beach, or a family that desperately needs and wants old heartaches to disappear?”
How the hell could he answer that? Because, shit, Donny Z was right. Absolutely dead-on-the-money right. Wasn’t he?
“The chance to make up her past treatment of Willie is the only reason I still have Ona. The only reason she came back.”
“I heard, at dinner.”
“No, you heard Ona’s side of the story,” he said. “You heard about how she lost consciousness and saw ‘the light.’” He used air quotes and looked skyward. “Whatever the hell that means, I don’t know. What I do know is this: She was dead. Flat-out, no heartbeat, no breath, no pulse, no life.” He whipped that last word at Nick. “And then, she was back. Alive. And different. With new priorities, and an entirely different outlook on her life. I want Willie to know this Ona.” He grabbed Nick’s arm. “I am convinced, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that they will love each other like I love them.”
That love was so powerful that Nick could swear he felt it, and saw it in the steel-blue eyes so much like his daughter’s. Donny’s changed color when he grew passionate, too.
“You cannot, in good conscience, get in the way of that. Not if you care for my daughter.” Donny squeezed a little tighter. “You do care for her, right? I’m not misreading that?”
“I do,” he admitted.
“Enough to help her get over the darkest part of her past?”
Surely he owed her that, when she was helping him to do the same thing? “Enough for that,” he agreed. “More than enough.”
Donny’s face relaxed in relief. “Thank you. Now, how about next time I got the Train together, you come and jam with us?”
The question threw him, so far out of left field he didn’t know how to respond.
“Didn’t you say you play the drums, Nick?”
“A little, I…” Was he trying to bribe Nick into silence? “Not well enough to play with your band, Donny.”
“Pfft.” He flicked his hand to the door. “We’re so old, it’s painful to listen to us now. Thank God for all that technology and smoke and mirrors on stage. I’d love to, you know, thank you for being so understanding with a chance to jam with your favorite band.”
In other words, Donny Z was buying his silence. “That’s not necessary, sir.”
“Call me sir again, and I rescind the offer.” He laughed, giving Nick a nudge. “Come on, young lieutenant. Say good night to my beloved wife.”
Chapter Twenty-three
“Hey, Sleeping Beauty.” The deep male voice pulled Willow from her dream, the warmth of lips on her cheek making her eyelids flutter but not quite open. “What a nice surprise to find you in my bed.”
Nick. She practically purred when he kissed her jaw and throat, his weight pressing down on the mattress and making her dip a little closer into his body as he settled next to her.
“On,” she murmured. “Not in.”
“A technicality.” More kisses, lingering right under her ear. “Did my writing put you to sleep?”
She liked that he didn’t get all bent out of shape that she’d let herself in and taken the liberty of reading his work. And she liked…that. Right when he kissed her…there.
“No.” She moaned a little as he turned her on her back and worked his way to her mouth for a kiss. “The rehearsal dinner wiped me out. Where were…mmmm.” The question faded into his mouth, the kiss sending a roll of thunder in her chest as her heart went to work warming her blood and sending it off to dormant, sleepy places.
Like her arms that already felt heavy with the need to wrap around him and her breasts that tingled with the desire for him to touch her and the taut ripple of need right between her legs where the first sparks started to ignite a fire.
She was wide-awake now.
“Did you read what I wrote?” he asked in between peppering kisses over her breastbone, his hands gripping her ribs and waist so tight it was almost as if he didn’t trust where they’d go if he relaxed.
“Every word. Some five times.”
He stopped kissing her, leaning up to look into her eyes. “Seriously?”
“Oh, why do I tell you things that make you think about something other than this?” She pulled his head back to her, getting his mouth right back on hers where she wanted it.
He obliged with a long, wet, sensuous kiss that melted her and did the absolute opposite to him. As his erection grew against her, Willow couldn’t stop herself from reaching down, dying, aching to touch him.
She closed her hand over the tent in his pants, pressing hard against the ridge, both of them sucking in loud and simultaneous inhales of surprise and pleasure.
“Willow…” Her name was ragged on his lips.
“Shhh,” she whispered. “If you say you haven’t written enough for this to happen, I will push that laptop off the bed, break it, and tell you how wrong you are.”
He chuckled into the next kiss, but that faded into a groan as she stroked the length of him again, vaguely aware that the fabric of his pants felt nicer than his usual worn camo shorts.
“Why are you all dressed up?” she asked.
This time, he responded with a long kiss and put his hand over hers, adding pressure on his hard-on. “I went…oh, God, Willow.”
“Out to dinner?”
“Mmmm. Yes.” With an effort so strong she could actually feel him fighting his desires, he pulled away from the kiss and lifted her hand off him. “We’re going too fast.”
Frustration zinged. “I hate to be old school, but isn’t the girl supposed to say that?”
“You know why.” He settled into a position that separated their hips, but kept one hand on her face to talk to her. “I didn’t write enough for us to go to the next step.”
She rolled her eyes.
“Hey, we had a deal.”
“I think what you wrote must have taken a lot of effort, so it counts as more pages.”
He studied her for a minute, then asked, “You read the Gannon Tells All scene?”
She nodded. “It was powerful, Nick.”
He didn’t answer, but she could read the truth in his eyes.
“Did—does—it bother you that your parents had such a crappy marriage?” she asked.
He blew out a breath, puffing his cheeks and falling back on the pillow. “About as much as it does Gannon.”
Which was a lot. “Gannon says it made him determined not to fall into the same ‘pit of despair.’”
This time he rolled his eyes. “Maybe that phrase was too melodramatic.”
“No maybe about it, but it was telling.”
“What does it tell?”
“That you hide a lot of pain.”
He shrugged. “Everybody hides pain, Willow. You do and I do. I t
ry not to let it own me.”
But did he succeed? She wanted to know more, but with Nick, it was always easier to talk about the character than the real man behind that character. “So Christina takes that to mean he won’t settle for anything less than a perfect, fairy-tale, impossible-to-achieve marriage. Is she right?”
“No. I think what he’s trying to tell her is that the key word there is impossible.”
She sat up a little, surprised at how much that admission bothered her. “What makes you think a happy marriage is impossible? I saw one every day of my life.”
His eyes shuttered closed for a second, as if that hurt or bothered him.
“Don’t be jealous. You know there were other problems,” she added.
“You could fix those,” he said.
She gave a soft snort. “That would require giving my mother a lobotomy and personality transplant. Never going to happen. I’ve learned to deal quite well with my childhood issues, but it doesn’t seem like you have. Surely you’re not going to give up on the idea of marriage because of your parents?”
He turned away, denying her the chance to read the truth in his eyes. “Your mother’s getting older, and people change. Why don’t you give her a chance?”
It was so obvious why he was changing the subject. This was too painful for him to talk about. “Because nobody changes that much, and I gave her a chance for twenty-six years,” she said. “She’s out of chances.” She reached for his chin, turning his face to force him to look at her. “So which is it, Gannon? You won’t settle for less than perfection or you won’t try on the chance you’ll miss?”
“I’m not Gannon,” he mumbled.
“I’m not going to dignify that with a response. Answer my question.”
But he didn’t, holding her gaze. “I don’t think you really have learned to deal with your own childhood issues.”
“That wasn’t my question,” she fired back, burning for a different reason now. “Leave my damn stupid mother out of this conversation. In fact, leave her out of any and every conversation we ever have. Why are you being so evasive?”