SLOW PLAY (7-Stud Club #4) - Christie Ridgway Page 0,80
plush carpet and took a leap of faith by tipping his long body forward. Finding firm mattress and feathery pillow, he instantly fell into sleep.
Hours later, Cilla came awake to the sound of birds tweeting and chirping their odes to another Southern California morning as they flitted through the shrubbery and tall eucalyptus trees that grew inside and outside the canyon compound where she’d grown up. Eyes closed, she breathed in the country-scented air, such a surprise when the famous Hollywood Boulevard and its twin in notoriety, the Sunset Strip, were less than a mile away. Flopping to her back, she stretched to her full five-feet, five inches. Then she pushed her arms overhead and swept them back down until her fingertips met—
Something solid. Warm. Alive.
On a gasp, her eyes flew open and her head whipped right. She yanked her hand from a man’s heavy shoulder to press it against her thrashing heart.
As it continued to beat wildly against her ribs, she stared at her bedmate. Though his body was plastered to the mattress belly-down, his face was turned toward hers and it only took another instant to realize he was no stranger. But recognition didn’t calm the overactive organ in her chest that continued sending blood sprinting through her body.
She blinked, just to make sure her eyes weren’t deceiving her. They apparently had told the truth, she decided. After years of adolescent fantasies, she was actually sharing a bed with him. With Renford Colson.
No mistake, it was her teenage fantasy man. His glossy black hair that tangled nearly to his shoulders. His days’-old stubble of beard that made his mouth look softer, fuller, more kissable if that was even possible. Those were his spiky lashes resting against his sharp-angled face.
Yet…was he really here? To make herself believe it, she mouthed his name. Ren.
As if he heard the silent syllable, his eyes flipped open.
She started, their distinctive color—a silvered green, just like eucalyptus leaves—jolting her to the marrow.
Dark brows met over his straight nose and she watched the drowsiness seep from him as his gaze sharpened. “Priss?”
She frowned. He was the only one to call her that nickname and it had annoyed her since she was old enough to understand it telegraphed something about the way he viewed her. “Excessively proper,” she remembered reading in the dictionary. “Prim.”
“Cilla.” Her voice sounded morning-husky as she made the correction.
One corner of his mouth kicked up. “Priscilla.”
Ugh. That was worse. To her mind, Priscilla was the name of some old-fashioned china doll that was deemed too nice to play with and so grew dusty on a high, forgotten closet shelf. As the youngest “princess” of rock royalty (an article in Rolling Stone had described the nine collective children of the Velvet Lemons in just such terms), she’d often been overlooked. Likely Ren hadn’t given her a single thought in the nine years since she’d last seen him.
“Why are you here?” she asked, sitting up.
His gaze dropped from her face to the size XL T-shirt she wore, an authentic Byrds concert souvenir, one of the several such clothing items she’d collected (read: purloined from her careless father) during her lifetime. “Priss,” Ren remarked with a note of mild surprise, “you’ve grown up.”
Grown-ups didn’t react to the red flush they could feel crawling over their skin. Grown-ups didn’t check out their chest to determine if it was a modest B-cup that led him to such a conclusion. So ignoring both compulsions, she repeated her question. “Why are you here?”
“Couple reasons.” Ren flipped over then jackknifed on the mattress to face her. Both palms rubbed over his eyes and down his cheeks, his beard making a scratchy sound. He’d fallen asleep in his worn jeans and wrinkled dress shirt. On the floor near him were a pair of battered boots and a leather bag, both as black as his hair. His hands went to the buttons marching down his chest.
She swallowed. “What are you doing?”
“I’ve been wearing this damn thing for—Christ, who knows?—it’s got to be a couple of days. However long it took me to get here from Russia with a fucking long layover in Paris.”
Her gaze didn’t leave his nimble fingers as they continued unbuttoning to reveal a stark white undershirt beneath. “You didn’t stop off in London?” That was where he was based. Ren had started as a roadie for the band, then moved into concert tour planning and security. When he’d left the employ of the Velvet Lemons, he’d set up shop