my lungs, as if days had gone by since I’d dropped her at the hotel instead of hours. My restless heart resumed a steadier rhythm, but she looked like hers did the opposite. Her uniquely shaped sultry eyes were bright umber.
She was excited, but there was something more than surprise in her expression. Unfortunately, she didn’t stay in my arms long enough for me to figure it out. Dropping her gaze, she twisted and freed herself from me.
Physically.
For now.
But this was so the fuck not over.
“What’s going on?” Saber watched both me and Lotus closely, his eyes narrowed with displeasure.
What I didn’t see was recognition. With the new shape of my jaw and nose, thanks to a bar fight and then plastic surgery, my longer hair, the tats, and a shit-ton of time that had changed more than just my eye color, should I really be surprised that I was unrecognizable to any of them?
When I left Ocean Beach all those years ago, I’d been a boy on the cusp of manhood. But now I was a man, a hard one. One who’d hurt a sweet woman who wore her tender heart on her sleeve, just like she’d done when I’d been her best friend.
I’d messed up with Lotus in LA, letting my curiosity and then my desire get the best of me, but I was here to fix the damage I’d done if I could. Maybe also to make amends with my brothers. Fuck if I really knew. I had an invitation from Ash to be here. But the deciding point for me was that I couldn’t stomach leaving things where I had with her.
Lotus was my best memory, and the most painful one.
Ash’s voice broke through the tension as he strode to the high-back leather chair at the head of the large oblong mahogany table. “I’ll explain what’s going down once everyone’s seated.”
His gaze locked and narrowed suspiciously on me, Saber rolled back a similar chair, taking a seat on Ash’s right. Shield moved into a protective position beside him. My younger brother was in lockstep with Saber. That put me on the outside once again, a familiar role for me.
Lotus glanced my brother’s way, then wrinkled her nose at Shield before she shuffled to take an empty seat on Ash’s left. I moved to her side of the table.
Of course I moved to her side. She was like the gravitational force of the moon, and I was the tide. Not a lot had changed there.
I knew exactly who she was when I saw her in LA, though she hadn’t known me. I should have kept my distance, but I couldn’t, and I hadn’t. So now there was more than just the gravity of the past drawing me toward her.
The scent of the ocean drifted from her hair, braided and wet, as I stepped behind her chair and rolled out the one beside her. She was in a different set of overalls than she’d been in when I dropped her off in LA. This pair was a chambray denim so worn it was almost white, and she’d paired them with a violet tube top.
With so much of her beautiful bronzed skin displayed and knowing how soft it was, how good her naked body felt against mine, my dick went instantly hard. No woman had ever overwhelmed my senses like she did.
After I sat, a glance at her confirmed as I suspected that she didn’t have similar thoughts to mine. Her expression was tight, her spine as straight as her surfboard.
Yeah, I was harsh with her, but did she give me a choice? She’d kept something significant from me.
“Okay, here’s the deal,” Ash said, and I shifted my attention to him. His eyes were on me, and they contained a speculative sparkle. “I’m making some executive personnel decisions regarding OB Hardy.”
Ash knew who I was. It was part of his pitch to me. He put a high value on family, but he didn’t know mine.
I’d almost dismissed him completely, though I thought it was cool and surprising that my brothers had formed a band. But why go backward when the same reasons I’d left in the first place remained? It had been such a struggle for me to leave, and then to get to a place where I had enough money in the bank that I could finally choose where I went, for how long, and with whom.
“Journey is here to try out for the position of guitarist in