Softer Than Steel (A Love & Steel Novel) by Jessica Topper Read Free Book Online Page A

*
    “Hey, doll.”
    Speak of the devil. There was the old hound of hell himself, sitting on her stupid, single bar stool and restringing his guitar. He might as well have been sharpening his pitchfork.
    “Charlie.
What
are you doing here?” Sidra shrugged the strap of her yoga mat off her weary shoulder and dropped it along with her bag. Her asking for the apartment key back had obviously been a symbolic gesture in his mind. “How many freaking copies of my key did you make?”
    Her ex smiled his roguish smile that never failed to cause a pileup on Sidra’s heartbeat highway. His sexy, dark brows arched devilishly. Charlie Danahy was the devil, all right. If the devil had a panty-melting laugh, muttonchops, and a razor-thin goatee eked along his superb jawline.
    “Chill, girl.” His voice rolled lazily over her. “No law against hanging with my newest bandmate.”
    Sidra narrowed her eyes. As far as she knew, Evie was his newest bandmate. Unless the lineup had changed since he’d decided to mate with her.
    “Hi, Sid.” Seamus strolled out of the kitchen, shirtless. Her brother had a slice of bread smeared with peanut butter in one hand, folded over rather than cut. In the other, the quart of milk she had bought just yesterday.
    “
Seamus
is in your band now?” Sidra asked incredulously. Seamus chugged milk from the jug innocently, clearly unruffled about being in league with Satan. “Who quit? Or did you kick someone else out?”
    Lucifer’s lady-killer laugh struck again. “Relax, Sid Vicious. He’s not replacing anybody. He’s joined the road crew.” Sidra watched as her ex gingerly placed his newly strung guitar into its case with the same kind of care he used to lavish on her. How many songs had he played for her—hell,
written
for her on that old thing? Songs those new strings would probably never know, she realized, his fingers never quite falling on them in the same formation. The thought slammed Sidra’s emotions into protective lockdown, undoing hours of heart-opening yoga.
    “Seamus. On your road crew,” she echoed hollowly.
    “Yep. The Bold O’Danahys are hitting the road this summer. Someone’s gotta hawk the merch, and we’re gonna be too busy playing.”
    Idle hands were the devil’s workshop, yet Charlie was ever so busy forming and re-forming rock bands, using his father’s popular tavern on St. Mark’s as a base. His latest version was an Irish party band he called the Bold O’Danahys, a play on the old traditional folk song “The Bold O’Donahue.” Sidra would be the first to begrudgingly admit it: The band was good. But they weren’t good enough for her brother to waste his time on.
    Seamus may have lacked ambition these days, but he certainly didn’t lack musical prowess. Put any type of percussion in front of him and he could play the hell out of it. He had marched with the Boston Crusaders throughout his years at Harvard, effortlessly maintaining top grades while in the elite drum corps. Putting him behind the merch table instead of behind the kit was just another way for Charlie to keep Seamus under his thumb. And to sadistically push Sidra’s buttons.
    “We’re going all the way to the World Music Fest in Vancouver, Sid.” Seamus’s well-chiseled arm arced overhead, sandwich in hand. Sidra didn’t have the heart to call him out on his pathetic personal pronoun usage. She admired his sheer faith and love for the band, but not his illusions of being a real part of it. What was it Uncle Sully would always say?
You can put all your hopes and dreams into the stars, but that doesn’t make you a constellation.
    “You’ll be selling T-shirts, Seamus. And bumper stickers. What about your jobs here?”
And Dad,
she thought.
And me?
She couldn’t imagine getting through the summer without Seamus here.
    “I’m sure the Naked Bagel can find someone else to bike their bagels around.” Charlie ruffled Seamus’s blond locks. “And Mikey will be psyched to cut two less