Love's Rhythm by Lexxie Couper Read Free Book Online Page B

clothes, his stare holding her motionless for a moment before she tore her gaze away. Damn it, what did he have to feel all tormented about? She was the one who’d had her heart ripped out. She was the one who’d spent the last fifteen years of her life aching for a future long denied her. Not Nick. Nick was the one who’d up and left. The one who’d chosen the life of a rock star over her.
    She clutched her clothes to her churning stomach. She needed to be away from him. Now. It was too difficult to think clearly with him near her.
    “Josh,” she said, interrupting her teenage son’s obviously well-considered argument for why he could go to his best friend’s house—an argument that consisted mainly of Mrs. McDowell’s awesome cooking, no homework, Rhys’ Wii and Josh’s burning desire to reach professional level on Rock Band. “I won’t be long. I’ve just got to get some trouble out of the road and then I’ll be home. I’ll grab some fish and chips on the way, okay?”
    “Then can I head over to Rhys’?”
    She should have been angry at Josh’s persistence. Instead, she was angry over Nick’s presence and the moronic effect it was having on her intelligence.
    “I’ll be home soon, hon,” she said, refusing to answer her son’s question. It wasn’t that she didn’t want Josh to go to Rhys’, but did he have to play Rock Band? Did he have to be so good at it? Did he have to sound so much like his father when he sang?
    The last question sliced at her tenuous calm and, squeezing her eyes shut, she disconnected the call and pressed the smartphone’s screen to her forehead. The glass was cool on her flushed skin, highlighting just how flustered she was.
    Huh. Don’t you think standing in nothing but your undies while Nick waits behind you highlights it enough? Or how ’bout the fact that, despite how insane you know the situation is, you want nothing more than for him to close the distance between you both, slide his arms around your waist and begin to seduce you all over again? Like he used to way back when?
    “Lauren?”
    She didn’t open her eyes at his voice. Nor did she turn.
    “Lauren, I think you need to tell me who Josh is.”
    “No, I don’t.”
    “Yes, you do. If he’s your husband, I need to know. If he’s your boyfriend…I need to know how serious you are.”
    Lauren laughed. She couldn’t help herself. Shaking her head, she opened her eyes and did up her bra, forgoing the usual readjustment of breasts in favour of shoving her arms into her shirtsleeves and covering up her bare torso as quickly as possible. “How serious I am?” she shot over her shoulder. “About Josh? Very serious. About you leaving ASAP? Even more so.”
    “Lauren, I didn’t mean—”
    She saw red. The second those words left Nick’s lips she saw red. Saw it. Felt it. She spun to face him, fists clenched, jaw bunched. “Yes, you did, Nick.” She glared at him, a dull throb in her temple. “As always, it didn’t matter what anyone else wanted, you got what you wanted. Well, bravo for you, Mr. Blackthorne. You just proved that you still have an effect on my body. Aren’t you clever? But you also proved you haven’t changed a bit since you left me fifteen years ago. The arrogant, self-centred rock star is still in existence, though why I thought it would be any different is beyond me. So here’s a newsflash for you, Nicky. I don’t want you touching me again. I don’t want you touching me, I don’t want you near me and I don’t want you talking to me. Please go away and be famous and fawned over elsewhere.”
    The tirade finished as abruptly as it started, but it left her spent. She closed her eyes against the sight of Nick, standing but a few feet away from her, his face as indelible on her existence as a brand on her soul. For all her postulating and carrying on about how she was over him, all it had taken was one kiss—one kiss—and she was his again. To do with what he wanted.
    She hated