“It genuinely doesn’t bother you that Adam just took your motorcycle?” Candy eyed Ren as his entire body twisted on the couch in harmony with the video game controller, as if the extra contortions would help in his battle with the aliens on the screen. Admittedly, Ren could buy a hundred shiny new Harleys if he wanted to, but he loved that bike. It was his baby.
Ren shrugged, but didn’t take his eyes away from the television. “He asked.”
“And yet you refuse to let me touch it.”
“That’s because I like the feel of you hanging onto me too much to give it up.” He did look up then, grinning wickedly—until a cry from the screen wrenched his attention back to the game with a muttered curse as his character died a gruesome death.
Knowing when she’d lost him to the video game, Candy retreated back to her office, but left the door open so she could hear the voices in the employee lounge when Adam finally returned. Shamelessly eavesdropping, she heard Ren’s groaned, “Ah crap. You had sex on it, didn’t you? Dude. Not cool. No one is allowed to get off on my bike but me.”
“And I’m sure your dates appreciate that.” Candy timed her entrance, strolling to the fridge to grab a soda before turning to Adam. “So you and Elena, huh?”
“She’s a client.”
“Not really.” But she was a woman who’d been burned more than once. It took a special man to get through to a woman with that many walls. Candy should know. “Good luck, champ. I have a feeling you’re going to need it.”
She returned to her office before Adam could reply, but kept her door open again, so she heard his muttered, “What the hell was that?”
And Pretty Boy’s reply. “That woman is a menace.”
Candy glared at her monitor, straining her ears. A menace? Really?
“I thought you two were…” Adam let the sentence trail off suggestively—and Pretty Boy jumped right in.
“Candy? No. No. No. Definitely not. She’s insane.”
Excuse me? Insane? Not that she’d wanted him to admit they were sleeping together every chance they got, but insane? What the hell?
If she’d been able to shoot lasers out of her eyes, her computer would have been toast. She was still fuming when Pretty Boy slipped into her office a few minutes later, shut the door behind him and had the gall to ask, “What’s wrong?”
“Insane?”
“He was asking about us. You’re the one who didn’t want anyone at work to know.”
“Did you have say it like that? You made me sound like I have a communicable disease.”
“Are you seriously going to bust my balls about this? I lied for you. Isn’t that what you wanted? Would you rather I run after Adam and tell him we’ve been screwing on every flat surface we can find off and on for the last few years? Would that make things better?”
“That isn’t the point.”
“Then what is the point? Because all I see is you flirting with me in front of them and then hoping no one guesses our big secret. God forbid anyone find out. Or are you ready to be open about this? About us?”
Fear streaked through her and Ren must have read it in her eyes because his smile twisted into a bitter grimace and he shook his head.
“I didn’t think so.”
* * * * *
Present day…
Ren missed his motorcycle. He never felt as free weaving through traffic in a car as he did leaning into the turns on his bike. Even with the windows down, the wind didn’t batter his face the same way. He always felt limited in a car, penned in and unable to maneuver—but on a motorcycle there were no boundaries.
Or maybe it was just a residual complex, a reaction to the way his parents had been boxed in when they were killed. Chased by the paparazzi until their only option had been careening off the road.
It had been a small pack—smaller than the mob that had chased Princess Diana—and his father had been under the influence, so instead of an international tragedy, it had just been another rock and roll fatality.
One that wouldn’t have happened if they’d had the right security. Or if they’d been on a motorcycle.
God, he missed his bike.
Ren yanked the rented Mercedes off onto a side street and jerked to a stop along the curb, throwing the car into park. He didn’t know where he was—some random little pocket of suburban bliss. He’d been driving without a heading, just trying to get away, though he wasn’t even sure what he was trying to outrun. Javi? Candy?
The truth?
Ren swore under his breath and scrubbed both hands down his face. Was his uncle stealing from the foundation?
Javi had never been the most famous brother. Lore was the front man of The Fifth Horseman. The voice. And the principal songwriter.
The talent.
Javi was decent on the guitar and reveled in the rock god lifestyle, relishing the attention on stage, but even though he had his fair share of groupies, he never had that X factor, that extra thing that made Lore a household name. He’d always been jealous of his little brother—Ren knew that, but he hadn’t realized that Javi was still as jealous of his brother’s memory as he had been of the man.
He still lived the sex, drugs, and rock and roll lifestyle. He toured with The Fifth Horseman, rotating through guest lead singers, but after Rolling Stone had called it “going to see Queen without Freddy,” ticket sales for the reunion tour had plummeted. Javi had tried to get Ren to fill in on lead, refusing to talk to him for three months after he said no.
He knew his uncle wanted to hold onto fame any way he could—the reality show was evidence enough of that—but he never would have suspected him of stealing from the foundation. Embezzling. Skimming. Whatever the hell he called it, the idea didn’t get any more palatable.
His parents had set up the foundation when he was two. After his father left The Fifth Horseman. When he was writing love songs and preaching giving back to those less fortunate. He’d said once in an interview that he wanted his legacy to be two things—Ren and that foundation. Leaving the world better than when he found it.
For Javi to steal from that…
Ren cursed and thumped his fist against the steering wheel. He’d given his uncle a lot of slack over the years. He was the only family Ren had left.
When his grandfather died of pancreatic cancer—the strong, vital, larger-than-life man wasting away so quickly after his diagnosis it had shocked them all—his grandmother had fallen apart. The tiny Dominican woman had always been a force to be reckoned with, but without her husband there, her anchor, she had drifted aimlessly, unable to function in her grief.
Ren had been a teenager, grieving himself, acting out in stupid ways. When he was caught with a motorcycle that wasn’t technically, legally his, his grandmother had realized she couldn’t manage him and sent him to live with his uncle for the summer.
He’d thought it would be a punishment—he’d barely known Javi then—but his uncle had offered him a beer within five minutes of his arrival. Ren had refused because he’d been convinced it was a trick. Only it hadn’t been. Javi never told him not to get into trouble. And he’d never had to go far to find it if he wanted. Javi’s LA mansion was the site of a never-ending party—it would amp up and cool off in cycles, but drugs, alcohol, and other recreational activities were always plentiful.
Ren was discovered at one of his uncle’s wilder parties. The female models petted him and pampered him like their personal mascot—and like any teenage boy, he would have done anything for them. So he became a male model.
His grandmother had woken up enough then to try to stop him. She’d wanted him back in school, not flying off to New York and Milan to pout into a camera. Javi had helped him get his GED and legally emancipate.
He’d been so grateful at the time for his uncle’s help. Javi hadn’t asked for anything then, telling Ren to live his dream and not look back. To grab onto life while he was young.
So he had.
His grandmother had been disappointed in him. On the rare times he called home, she would tsk and sigh and tell him that she’d taught him better. And he would blow her off. Reminding her that his father had lived his dream too. Trying to be a man by dismissing the woman who had raised him.
He was on a shoot in Thailand when she died.
Her heart just gave out one day in the grocery store.
He hadn’t seen her in two years.
Ren had taken it hard, walking off the set and losing his agent in the process. He’d called Javi to find the funeral already scheduled. Too soon for him to get back.
It had been an impulse decision to stay in Asia, backpacking to Buddhist temples, wandering without direction, living off what little he’d managed to save from his modeling spree. Eventually he’d found himself in Japan learning karate from a tiny, English-speaking sensei. He’d found his center in the discipline. Found himself.
He’d continued to travel through Asia for the next several years, but his singular focus had been learning more styles of martial arts. Perfecting his skills. And his discipline.
Though he’d also made a stop in Shanghai, seeking out his mother’s side of the family and discovering without a doubt that Javi was the only family he had left.
Javi, who might be stealing from his parents’ legacy.
Javi, who was his last living link to the life he could have had, if the paparazzi hadn’t run his parents off the road.
A woman peered at him as she passed on the sidewalk, walking her dog, and Ren smiled, trying to look innocuous. Don’t mind me. Just having a little existential crisis in your neighborhood.
He fished out his phone, thumbing through his contacts until he found Javi. Eight in the morning in California. He was probably asleep. Ren dialed anyway.
“Lo?”
“Javi? It’s Ren.”
His uncle’s groggy voice went instantly alert. “Junior! You changed your mind. I thought you would. I told that producer you just needed time—”
“I’m not calling about the show, tio. And I’m never going to do it, so you can tell the producer that.”
“Never say never, Junior. That’s a four-letter word to me.” He made a small, excited sound. “That sounds like a song, doesn’t it? Your dad was like that. We’d just be talking and, bam, he’d start writing a hit. Damn, I miss that asshole.” He chuckled, but there was something raw and aching in the sound. A grief that never quite went away.
And there it was. Ren didn’t even think it was conscious, but Javi always seemed to sense when Ren was about to draw a line in the sand. All he had to do was invoke Lore’s name and Ren’s throat closed off and the idea of cutting off his father’s brother, his bandmate and his best friend became unthinkable.
“I miss him too,” he admitted hoarsely.
“I’m a lucky bastard to have you, Junior. You’re so like him. He would have been so proud of you. So proud to see the man you’ve become.”
Javi wouldn’t steal from the foundation. He wouldn’t. There had to be a mistake. And even if there wasn’t… this was Javi.
“I’m lucky to have you too, tio.”
A police cruiser pulled into the neighborhood behind him and Ren cursed internally as blue lights flashed in his rearview. “Shit, I’ve gotta go, Javi. Something’s come up here. I’ll talk to you soon.”
Javi signed off and Ren tossed his phone on the passenger seat, placing both hands on the steering wheel where they would be in clear view of the officer unfolding himself from the cruiser. Ren had a fair amount of interaction with cops in California—Elite Protection prided itself on a good relationship with law enforcement—but this wasn’t Los Angeles. This was an uptight, white-bread part of Virginia and in retrospect that woman walking her dog had looked awfully suspicious of the brown man talking on his cell phone on her block.
Ren kept his hands in clear view and his expression steady and calm—two things his state patrol buddies had told him made them feel more at ease—as the officer approached.
Please don’t let this go to shit.