SLOW PLAY (7-Stud Club #4) - Christie Ridgway Page 0,81
across the pond and continued doing the same thing—just not for their fathers’ band.
Cilla couldn’t blame him for that. The three Lemons might as well have been named the Odd Ducks. They’d achieved superstardom in the 1970s and when they were nearing forty, somehow decided they wanted more than sex, riches, and scandalous reputations. Each had produced three kids before declaring their paternal urges satisfied. No mothers came attached to the children they’d fathered. They’d been bought off or wandered off and as long as Cilla could remember the nine rock progeny had spent their childhoods in the expansive Laurel Canyon compound that consisted of three separate houses and then this smaller cottage where she and Ren had chosen to sleep.
Inspecting the hand-tied quilt covering the bed, Cilla ran her fingers over the psychedelic-inspired design. “You know about Gwen?” she asked, referring to Guinevere Moon, an original Velvet Lemons groupie who’d been the closest to a mother figure the band’s offspring ever had. This had been her house.
“Of course,” Ren replied. “I couldn’t get here for the memorial service, but I came as soon as I was able to make arrangements for my replacement.”
As head fixer for some other band’s tour, Cilla supposed. “Her real name was Donna Carp,” she said, her heart squeezing to think that the spiral-curled, caftan-wearing gentle soul was now gone. “Gwen’s, that is.”
There was a short silence, then Ren laughed. “Baby, you didn’t think she really had Guinevere Moon on her birth certificate?”
Mortification spread heat over Cilla’s face once more. Okay, so she had. “Thanks for thinking I’m a fool,” she said, glancing up to glare at him.
The spit in her mouth dried.
Ren had tossed his shirt over the side of the bed and then stripped free of the undershirt he’d worn too. Beneath that…
He was cut. Ripped. His abs were perfectly defined above the waistband of his jeans. His pecs were slabs of thick muscle that drew the eye to broad shoulders that led to arms that were sinew, bone, and more muscle. Over his left pectoral began a primitive-yet-elegant tribal tattoo that swirled in black ink over the cap of his shoulder to reach as far as his elbow. Though most of his forearm was unmarked, on his wrist was a lone, stylized half-curve. She stared at it and then his long fingers, unwilling to let her gaze wander back to that beautiful chest.
She’d been fifteen when she’d last seen him. He’d been twenty-two. Then, she’d only dreamed of his kisses, chaste kisses at that, and hadn’t wondered about his body or his hands or what he could do to a woman with them.
It was what consumed her thoughts now.
That, and how they were sharing a bed.
Galvanized by that fact, she leaped from beneath the covers, her bare feet landing on the carpet. The overlarge shirt swung around her body, the hem tickling the top of her thighs. With Ren’s gaze on her, her attempt at escape seemed a foolhardy choice. Suddenly her legs felt too naked, and she was acutely aware of what was under her tee—just a scrap of lacey panties. In another not-so-suave move, she swiftly re-inserted herself under the quilt and between the warm sheets, pulling them high to conceal more of herself. “It’s, uh, cold out there,” she said, by way of explanation. Her breathless state made her voice sound reedy.
Ren’s expression had gone blank and his thoughts were impossible to interpret. Staring at her, he ran a palm along his stubbled jaw. “You cut your hair, Priss.”
Her fingers flew to the bobbed ends. She still wasn’t accustomed to how the dark blond stuff curled and waved now that eighteen inches of weight had been taken from its length.
“I thought you’d vowed never to take scissors to it,” he continued.
He remembered that? She shrugged. “Like you said, I’ve grown up.” The haircut hadn’t been her idea, though, and a wave of humiliation at the memory of it washed over her.
A lot was bothering her. Up to and including the fact that her old longing for Renford Colson was not dead, but just hibernating until the day his hot body arrived on the doorstep. Now her hormones were stirring and she felt oddly out-of-sorts and unfamiliarly ravenous. Not unlike the California black bears, she figured, that would emerge from their hollow trees and mountain caves in a few short weeks.
“It’s been a lousy month or so,” she said. He couldn’t