Rhythm of My Heart s-3 Read online

  Could one of these roses be from her?

  Eve was pretty sure when the roses were first offered to Jonah, they’d been fresher than they were now. Although still striking, the petals had wilted, their edges turning black. When she raised the flowers to her nose to sniff their delicate fragrance, she found none.

  Her gaze returned to Jonah. He stood with the band, listening to whatever Luke Struthers was telling them. At regular intervals one or other of the Speed brothers nodded, commented or looked in the direction Luke pointed.

  Goose bumps erupted over her skin.

  Even in work mode, Jonah stood out. His presence made Eve want to tug at her shirt—yank it over her shoulders and present herself naked to the enthralling sex god.

  Stunned by her impulses, she ran a calming hand gently over the left side of her face, from her forehead down to her neck.

  It calmed her not at all.

  Her interaction with Jonah had lasted a minute, maybe two, yet it had left her with an unexpected hunger.

  A desperate, greedy need for more.

  Shaking off temptation and grounding herself firmly in reality—the same reality where she was just a regular person and she hadn’t been given half-dead roses by Jonah Speed—she turned back to the table behind her and finished packing her portable makeup box with trembling hands.

  Over the years, Eve had assembled an inspiring collection of makeup. A collection that caused raptures in Delilah and Devine, Speed’s gorgeous yet surprisingly down-to-earth back-up singers. The two of them had contacted her three months ago, inviting her to join them for the six-month duration of the Speed worldwide concert tour.

  Hard work, determination and a fierce belief in her ability had helped Eve to make a name for herself as a makeup artist in the Australian TV and film industry, but she’d had no idea her reputation had crossed oceans. The thought that she was now officially on tour with Speed still flabbergasted her.

  Who would have thought the scarred, traumatized girl who grew up in Tamworth would be part of the entertainment event of the decade?

  She popped the last eyeliner back in its slot and tucked a lipstick in a side pocket before snapping the box shut. Silently giving thanks to the inventor of the wheel, she pulled up the handle, propped the heavy, jam-packed case at an angle and set off, heading to the tunnel leading to the inside of the arena, pulling the case behind her.

  She made sure not to leave the roses behind. Oh no, she had plans for the two secondhand, wilting blossoms Jonah Speed had given her.

  The opportunity to put that plan into action presented itself not a minute later as the sound of deep male laughter echoed through the air behind her.

  Hot chills ran up her spine, heating her skin and making her shiver at the same time. Stopping midstep, she turned around, forcing the two men and a woman walking behind her to either stop suddenly themselves or collide with her.

  One man stopped dead, the other two effortlessly sidestepped her.

  Eve caught a whiff of Jordan Speed’s aftershave as he walked by still chuckling, his arm slung casually around the woman’s shoulders. “See you on the other side,” he called to his brother, and they continued on their way.

  She tried to still her insanely beating heart. Honestly she did. If she was going to spend the next six months on tour with the band, she couldn’t break out in fan-girl spasms every time one of the brothers came within a three-mile radius.

  But Jordan Speed had just walked past her. Jordan Speed, for heaven’s sake!

  How on earth could she still her crazy heart and shaking hands in the presence of Jordan and Jonah Speed?

  Although Jordan and the woman were already gone, leaving her face-to-face, once again, with the middle Speed brother.

  The laughter that had boomed from his chest seconds ago died, and the smile that had lit his face, temporarily blinding her with its brilliance, straightened as he regarded her with those smoldering green eyes.

  God! This man screamed sex. Blatant, raw sex. The kind of sex that should be outlawed.

  He fogged her ability to think rationally.

  Eve’s shirt pulled tight across her breasts, irksome and uncomfortable. Again the urge to remove it—and her bra—skittered across her arms.

  She rounded her shoulders, refusing to let his innate sensuality interfere with her plan. She didn’t care how famous—or gorgeous—Jonah was, her clothes would stay firmly in place.

  “I’d hoped to run into you again tonight.” Wow, was that her voice? It sounded surprisingly steady, seeing as her lungs weren’t functioning at full capacity.

  “Beautiful, you can run into me anytime, day or night.” His reply was spoken through luscious, full and tantalizing lips.

  She didn’t want to run, she wanted to crash into him at full speed.

  Pardon the pun.

  “Look, while I’m hugely complimented that you’d want to give me flowers, and while I thank you for thinking I’m…beautiful—” She tripped over the word. It wasn’t one she associated with herself. It wasn’t one anyone associated with her. “I just can’t accept these.” She held the roses out to Jonah.

  Surely it was both criminal and unjust for a man to look this good? Smell so good? Sound so good…

  Jonah looked at her, baffled. “You’re giving them back to me?”

  “I am.” She tried to ignore the fact that his voice was as intoxicating as the rest of him. It was deep and velvety, like a gentle vibration from a bass drum.

  Instead of accepting the flowers, Jonah folded his arms across his chest.

  The movement drew her gaze to that beautifully sculpted chest. And to the tanned arms and outrageously broad shoulders. His shirt was plastered to his skin, outlining the exquisite muscle definition beneath.

  Eve struggled to draw breath. Since when had sweaty men turned her on?

  Since never, that’s when, yet one look at Jonah’s shoulders, at the way that shirt hugged them, the way his damp hair curled around his face, and funny things happened in places she shouldn’t be thinking about now.

  “Why?”

  “Because as well-intentioned and as lovely as your gesture was, somehow secondhand roses fail to make me feel beautiful.”

  “Secondhand?” Jonah looked startled, taken aback even, but then his confidence seemed to bounce right back into place. “You think I gave you used flowers?” The smile that lifted the corner of his mouth was slow in coming, but once it was there…boy, it stopped her lungs altogether for a good few seconds.

  “Those flowers were tossed onstage for you. Not me.”

  “Which made them my flowers. Is it a crime to give away something that belongs to me?”

  “Not a crime. No. And as I said, your intentions were thoughtful and complimentary. But those roses…they were meant for you. They were given to you.”

  His response perplexed her. First he raised an eyebrow in surprise, then he gave a confused shake of his head and finally he stuck out his hand, not to take the roses but in introduction. “We haven’t had the pleasure of meeting yet. I’m Jonah Speed.”

  She eyed his palm warily as her fingers feathered once again over her left cheek, a nervous habit she wished she could break but knew she never would.

  There was no way Jonah could know it, but a handshake was something Eve avoided whenever possible. Instinct, and a slight tingle in her palm, told her this shake would reveal more about Jonah than he’d be willing to share.

  Besides, she didn’t want to shake Jonah’s hand, she wanted to clutch it and press it to her breast. And her ass. And her…

  Behave.

  “It’s nice to meet you, Jonah.” Instead of shaking his extended hand, she placed the roses into it, making good and sure she didn’t touch his skin in the process. She strongly suspected if her hand so much as grazed his she’d be forced to grab great big handfuls of the man, see whatever she was meant to see and never let go again.

  His fingers wrapped around the stems and he looked at them curiousl
y, as though not sure how to respond. Then he dipped his head in acceptance and pulled his arm back. “You’re right. It never occurred to me that you’d view these flowers as secondhand, or that I was giving away something meant expressly for me. My apologies. It must seem incredibly rude.”

  He sounded both surprised and sincere, making Eve wonder if anyone had ever rejected a gift from Jonah Speed before her.

  Her smile was as gentle and forgiving as her tone. “No apologies necessary. It was a lovely gesture.” She tried. God help her, she tried, but she just couldn’t help herself. Eve had to touch him. She grazed her hand gently over his biceps, just below the edge of his sleeve, so she met bare skin. Sparks shot through her hand straight up her arm.

  With that, and before she did something stupid—like rip off that irksome top of hers and jump him—she turned back around and, tugging her makeup case behind her, continued down the tunnel until she entered the arena and dressing rooms.

  She felt Jonah’s gaze on her back the entire way. It drilled into her like a million sharp darts of awareness.

  Eve was only too relieved to shut herself in Delilah and Devine’s change room. Her heart pounded, a million beats a minute for sure. Jonah’s drums probably couldn’t hammer louder.

  Never had anyone affected her so. Never had she desperately wanted to shove herself in a man’s embrace like she did with Jonah. Put herself at his mercy and beg him to do anything and everything to her body. He’d handed her half-dead, used roses, and all she could think now was how damn much she wanted to sleep with him.

  No. Not sleep. Fuck him—all the way through the night and long into the next morning.

  But then, who didn’t want to fuck him? He was Jonah Speed—rock legend, drummer extraordinaire and lethal to women.

  Eve breathed deeply, calming herself while she waited for Delilah and Devine to shower before she fixed their hair and makeup, preparing them for the after party.

  It was well past midnight by the time the crew arrived back at the hotel. Too tired to even contemplate a party—the third one in less than a week—no matter how much the back-up singers insisted she join them, and perhaps too scared to contemplate coming face to face with Jonah again, she ignored the party suite—jam-packed and writhing with people—and made her way to her own room.

  The first thing that caught her eye as she opened the door was a massive bouquet of stunning blood-red roses, centered on the small table beneath the window. There must have been fifty long-stemmed flowers in the glass vase, each one fresher and more dazzling than the next. Their fragrance filled the room, making Eve dizzy.

  She threw her key card and bag on the bed, set her makeup kit against the wall and trudged over to read the card attached.

  Not secondhand, I promise.

  These are meant only for you.

  J

  Chapter Two

  With his customary bottle of beer in hand, Zachary slipped through the crowded suite, searching for Luke. He had to thank the guy for cutting short the interview he’d just been subjected to. Although the TV anchorwoman had behaved like the ultimate professional, her cameraman had openly propositioned him, painting an explicit picture of what Zachary could do to him and the interviewer, given the opportunity.

  He shuddered. His days of sex for the sake of sex were over.

  Been there, done that, got the T-shirt.

  T-shirts, he amended silently. Zachary had collected a sickening number of them, each one representative of his various degrees of debauchery. If it was doable, he’d done it, and the memories did not always make him proud.

  Zachary never found Luke. Instead he was waylaid by a group of teenage girls. With their long hair, skinny jeans, skimpy shirts and impossibly high heels, they all looked the same. Zachary had long since stopped trying to differentiate one face from another. He’d become too accustomed to the clusters of females who swarmed him.

  Not groupies. No, groupies were another kettle of fish. A kettle that shared most of his been-there-done-that T-shirts.

  These were fans. Adoring girls who’d be content with a smile or an autograph or a high-five.

  At first, when fame had struck so fast, he’d tried to talk to them all, tried to offer them each a real smile and a heartfelt word. But that had soon become impossible. When hundreds, sometimes thousands, of fans flocked to him, it was unfeasible to give each of them his individual attention.

  He’d since mastered the art of singling out one admirer while tackling some of the hundreds of questions that were tossed his way.

  Zachary smiled patiently and handled the girls. As he spoke, he eyed the quietest one, a plain redhead. Yeah, so sue him. He had a soft spot for redheads. Especially redheads with green eyes. This one was shyer than the rest of her friends and not trying to get his attention. Instead she seemed content to stand aside while her companions flirted shamelessly.

  He grinned at her and almost laughed at her responding look of bewilderment. As a black marker was handed to him and he signed his name to someone’s shirt, he winked at the redhead.

  Her eyes widened and her cheeks turned pink. She smiled back.

  Zachary answered questions as he always did—mostly with non-answers or by deflecting the questions back to the girls.

  “Do you have a girlfriend, Jonah?”

  “A pretty girl like you asking me that?” Said with a winning smile. “I bet you’re trying to make your boyfriend jealous.”

  “What’s your star sign, Jonah?”

  “Well, now, I’m guessing you must be a Libra.” Libra. The first star sign he could think of. “It’s funny, you know. Libras ask that question a lot.”

  And so the conversation went, with Zachary charming the young women and signing his name at least five more times. The girls grew bolder, and by the time he penned his last autograph, it was to bare flesh, just above firm breasts.

  He refused to sign the bare breasts themselves. The girls were just too young for that to sit comfortably with him.

  He would have stayed with them longer had an impulse to raise his gaze and look across the room not caught him by surprise.

  Bam.

  Desire hit him like a punch in the gut.

  There she was, leaning against the wall, chatting to Delilah but watching him speculatively. Again that sense of familiarity wafted through his mind. He’d never met her before this tour, but something about her yanked at a string in his memory.

  He answered his last question and held his palm out to the shy redhead. When she tentatively gave him her hand, he lifted it to his mouth and kissed her fingers, leaving the girl flushed and her friends oohing and aahing.

  With a final smile in her direction, he extricated himself from the group and walked directly to the woman whose gaze still followed his movements. In her hand she held a single rose in full bloom. Delilah no longer stood with her.

  She was an enigma, for sure.

  Apart from his mother, Zachary hadn’t given anyone flowers in a long time. Yet tonight, when instinct had dictated he offer this woman roses, she’d rejected them. Rejected him, cold. Hadn’t even bothered to tell him her name.

  Eve Andrews.

  Zachary couldn’t remember the last time he’d been rejected. Hell, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d made the first move. Continually surrounded by groupies and fans, anything more than a meaningful look or raised eyebrow had become obsolete.

  He handed his half-empty beer bottle to a waiter, neatly sidestepped a woman who eyed him lecherously, smiled for a press photographer and finally reached his destination.

  She leaned quietly against the wall, her arms crossed over her chest, the single rose resting across her breasts. Breasts that looked pert and appealing beneath the tight, black T-shirt she wore. The shirt ended just above her hips, an inch or two short of her white jeans, offering Zachary an enticing view of pale female flesh.

  Unlike him, she hadn’t changed since the concert. But even at this hour—well past one in the morning—
she looked fresh and vital, as though she’d just stepped out of the shower.

  He wondered how she’d react if he buried his nose in the crook of her neck and breathed deeply of her scent.

  Probably not too kindly.

  Zachary had a sudden, overwhelming urge to impress her. To say something that would blow her mind and replace the caution in her eyes with undimmed interest. He waited a heartbeat for the right words to come and then smiled at her.

  “Hey.”

  Hey? Seriously?

  “Hey.” She bit her lower lip.

  “How are you?”

  Really, Zachary? That’s the best you’ve got?

  “Good. You?”

  “Good. Enjoying the party?”

  Ah, fuck. Shoot me now. Could he say anything more mundane? If Luke and his brothers had heard him, they’d be doubled over with laughter.

  She raised a dainty shoulder. “It’s all right.”

  “Just all right?” Her answer made him smile. He knew the lengths people went to in order to get an invitation to these parties, yet Eve was totally blasé about it.

  “I hadn’t intended to come. I was just going to go to sleep.”

  Zachary angled himself in front of her, intentionally giving the rest of the world his back. Right now he was interested in no one but the beguiling woman before him. “What changed your mind?”

  And could he just add, silently, that he was mighty glad she had changed her mind?

  She raised the rose, offering it to him. “This did.”

  He made a mental note to thank Luke. Who else could organize a delivery of fresh flowers—while coordinating the usual post-concert chaos—in a strange city, at midnight?

  Zachary lifted it to his nose and inhaled. Sweet, but not nearly as sweet as Eve. “You’re giving me a used rose?”

  “Ah, I’m not giving it to you. As soon as I leave, I’m taking it back. I just thought you might want to see what I’m thanking you for.” She ran a hand over her left cheek. “The flowers are beautiful. Every one of them. Thank you.”