Fox shook his head, fingers playing with Molly’s ponytail, his arm along the back of the sofa. “We didn’t pack in those crowds for weeks—not until word spread. Most people would’ve let us go, but Doc had our back.”
David clinked his beer bottle to the club owner’s. “Which is why he’d better have instruments for us.”
Shawn whooped. “You gonna jam? Hell yeah, I have what you need!”
Chapter 34
Molly watched from the high aerie that was Shawn’s domain as the band brought down the house with a rocking set that had people screaming. “I don’t think I’ll ever get used to how amazing they are onstage,” she said to the club owner where he leaned on the railing next to her.
“Some musicians,” Shawn said, “they practice until they get good, others they have raw talent. Fox, Noah, Abe, and David, they always had the talent, but they had the drive too.” Leaving for a few seconds, he returned with a cocktail glass filled with decadent-looking chocolate mousse, complete with an enticing red cherry on top.
Molly groaned. “You’re going to kill me.” He’d already talked her into a frothy, creamy nonalcoholic cocktail.
“Try a spoonful for me.” He beamed at her shuddering moan when she gave in. “Good, yeah?”
“Divine.” She spooned up another tiny bite. “Fox is right—you’re dangerous around women.”
That got her another deep smile before he returned his attention to the band.
“You’re the first woman Fox’s brought into my club,” he said several minutes later. “Before, he might’ve picked up a woman here, taken her back to the hotel, but he’s never once brought anyone with him.”
Molly let the mousse melt on her tongue and tried not to think about those other women, but about the important part of Shawn’s statement. “That’s why you asked to be introduced.”
“Nope. That was because I plan to steal you away from Fox—I have an old pinup calendar in my office.” A low wolf whistle as he looked her up and down. “You’d fit right in.”
Smiling at the blatant sweet talk, Molly scooped up a touch more mousse as the band gave in to the urgings of the crowd and began another number. “If we’re going to be friends,” she said to Shawn, “you can’t tell me about the women Fox used to pick up and take back to his hotel.”
“You know he wasn’t a virgin when you met him, right?”
“Doesn’t mean I want an action replay.”
“Fair enough.” He hollered along with everyone else at Noah’s guitar solo.
Almost as if they’d timed it, Fox’s growl of a voice rolled out over the last riff and David slammed down on the drums. Abe’s keyboard joined in fifteen seconds later, Noah coming back in at the same time. “This is new!” she yelled to Shawn over the screams of the crowd. “Never before performed live!”
The big man’s eyes sheened wetly. “Goddamn punks,” he said, his pride clear.
Clapping and dancing along with the crowd as the band finished the song and walked offstage, she ran back to the door through which Fox emerged a few seconds later. “You were amazing!” Kissing the life out of him, she turned to the others. “That was incredible!”
“Do we get a kiss, too?” Noah drawled.
Jerking him forward by grabbing the front of his T-shirt, Molly smacked him on the lips. It was the first time she’d seen Noah thrown off balance. He recovered quickly. “Fox, sorry, man. I’m keeping her.”
Fox wrapped an arm around her waist, his face holding the exhilaration of performing. “Not even in your dreams.”
Then Shawn was there, hugging and backslapping his “punks.” They partied with the club owner till after four in the morning. “I’ve never been out this late,” Molly confessed to Fox as they danced to a slow song.
“You are such a good girl.” A quick, hot kiss, her br**sts crushed against his chest. “It turns me on like crazy—but what turns me on even more,” he whispered in her ear, “is watching you be dirty only for me.”
Drawing her aroused body off the dance floor when the house lights flickered, he took her back upstairs to say good-bye to Shawn. David had left much earlier, while Noah and Abe had both disappeared about an hour ago—Noah with a petite black woman and a pneumatic peroxide blonde, Abe with a statuesque, tattooed brunette, her skin pure cream.
“What’s the deal with Noah?” Molly asked softly once they were settled in the far back of the limo, Fox having instructed the driver to take them on a night tour of the city. Now, with the opaque privacy screen up between the front and the back, it was as if they were in an intimate cocoon. “I could’ve sworn he was looking at Kit as if he wanted a second chance, but then he picks up women left, right, and center.”
Fox shrugged. “Noah’s got his demons. Frankly, it’s better if Kit keeps her distance.”
Molly shifted on the seat to look at his face. “That bad?”
“I think of him as a brother,” Fox said, his voice quiet and his expression solemn, “but I also know he’s not good for a woman who wants an actual relationship. We might not have partied the past few nights, but Noah was f**king a groupie or some other woman—probably women—he picked up.” It was a nonjudgmental statement of fact. “I don’t know if anything or anyone is capable of fixing what’s broken inside him.”