Rock Wedding (Rock Kiss #4) - Nalini Singh Page 0,78
that I never called him on his behavior.” Yes, she’d gotten upset about his drugs, but not about how he’d left her behind to go on tour.
“If he ever again started to treat me the way he did back then,” she said slowly, “I’d not only call him on it, I’d probably throw a few things at his gorgeous head, then kick his ass. Hard.”
Lola laughed that big, honest laugh of hers, her blue eyes crinkling at the corners and her pale white skin flushed from exposure to the sunshine. Sarah’s friend wasn’t a natural redhead, but she burned like one if she wasn’t careful.
“The rock star know you’re not a wide-eyed ingénue anymore?” Lola asked after the laughter faded off into a smile, her gaze dead serious.
“I was never that.” Sarah thought of the book about the entrepreneur Abe had sent her, about how he’d asked after her business more than once. “He knows—and he seems more than okay with it.” She drank some lemonade. “I don’t know if I’m just imagining it… but I could swear he’s proud of what I’ve achieved.”
“He damn well should be,” Lola muttered. “You’ve made it in a town full of broken dreams and lost hopes.” Taking a sip of lemonade, too, Lola tilted up her chin in a questioning move. “I’m getting the feeling things are more serious than they were even a couple of days ago.”
Sarah told her best friend about the incident in the grocery store parking lot. “He was never so openly possessive of me before.”
Lola had been around the block. Twice. Both times with men who appeared wonderful on the surface but turned out to be rotten underneath. The then twenty-year-old father of her son had turned out to be a wanted bank robber who’d disappeared into the ether after discovering she was pregnant; the husband she’d married at twenty-five and divorced at twenty-eight, a serial cheater.
Lola’s view of men was slightly jaundiced as a result. When Sarah pointed out that Lola’s son was an amazing young male with a solid core of honor, Lola would respond with, “My kiddo is a rare unicorn and he’ll make some woman very happy one day. The rest of us have to deal with the toads.”
So Sarah wasn’t surprised when Lola raised a perfectly manicured eyebrow and said, “Easy for a man to be possessive and supportive when he wants a woman in bed. You should see what he’s like if he’s not getting any.”
Used to her friend’s acerbic ways and well aware Lola had a sweet and generous heart under her spiky battle armor, Sarah grinned. “That would be cutting off my nose to spite my face,” she said in a solemn tone. “I love being in bed with Abe.”
Lola rolled those eyes that could be as changeable as the clouds. “What am I going to do with you?” She poured them both a second glass of the crisp, cold lemonade. “Seriously though, while I admit your ex is panty-melting hot—”
Sarah almost choked on her lemonade. “Hey!”
“As I was saying,” Lola continued, her eyes dancing, “the man is delicious, but do you really believe he’s changed? Drug addicts aren’t the most reliable people.”
“I know.” Sarah had lived the nightmare, watched helplessly as the man she loved gave his life over to a destructive, seductive poison. “It feels different this time. Abe feels different.”
She paused, tried to find the right words, petting Flossie when the dog raised her head. “Before,” she said, Flossie’s fur soft under her palm, “he’d go into rehab when the others in the band forced him, but that was it. This time around he’s seeing a counselor trained in addiction.” He’d mentioned it in passing at the grocery store, after the counselor gave him a call to confirm a meeting later that week.
“He found the counselor himself, is committed to making every session.” That was the most crucial thing—Abe had taken cold, hard responsibility for his demons. “If he’s on the road, he says they do the session via a phone call.”
Lola gave a small nod. “Okay, yeah, that’s a big deal coming from a rock star used to making his own rules.”
The other woman sat back, her hair glowing in the sunlight that managed to pierce the wisteria canopy. “Look, I trust you to know your ex better than I ever will,” she said, “but as your friend, I’m duty bound to remind you that the bastard broke your heart the first time around, broke it