He’s a lost cause, she told herself. But now that he was walking away, she didn’t want to give him up.
“I have some rules,” Nell said, as Eamonn came back into the main area of the cottage, slicking back hair damp from the shower. She saw that he’d put on his other jeans — and presumably underwear — and his hoodie as well as a shirt.
“You have what, now?” he asked, cocking his head at her.
“Rules. For if you…” She paused, steeling herself with a deep breath. It wasn’t easy to back down, or to expose her own complicated feelings on the matter. “If you wanted to salvage that shipwrecked chance, you know?” Well, that got his attention. He froze, his eyes widening, and she could feel the heat rising in her face as he stared at her. She forced herself to shrug like it didn’t mean much.
“Fuck me. Nell, are you saying—”
“I don’t know what I’m saying,” she admitted. “Just… maybe sometimes things aren’t as clear-cut and binary as I’d like them to be. Good and bad, right and wrong… I don’t believe in excuses, but I want to think there’s a way forward from this, if you’re serious about making amends for what you did.”
He sighed. “You have no idea.”
She crossed her arms and fixed him with a hard look. “You’re going to have to apologize, you know.”
“A hundred times, yes. Babe, I am more sorry than you can—”
“No. To him, your addict friend. He’s the one you hurt.”
Eamonn scrubbed a hand through his damp hair. “I can’t. Angel kicked me out, right? Told me not to call or write, told me I wouldn’t be welcome again. I wasn’t even given a chance to say goodbye to anyone, especially not Blade. So, no, I don’t think I’ll be apologizing.”
Nell shook her head at the hard look on his face. Putting up walls. Time to change the subject, for now. “Look, we need to eat something,” she said. “Let’s find some food, and you can tell me how you ended up playing, what, seven instruments?”
That made him smile. “We’ve got all we need right here. Will strawberry crêpes do? There was a stack of crêpes in François’s fridge. They just need microwaving. And strawberries in syrup — I got two containers out of the freezer but only used one for the margaritas last night — and a can of whipped cream.”
She didn’t usually like sweet things for breakfast, but he seemed so pleased that she nodded. “All right.”
When she moved toward the fridge in the kitchenette area, he waved her away. “Go sit by the fire,” he said. “I’ve got this.”
“I can get my own breakfast,” she told him, tensing. I’m not helpless. I can feed myself.
He nodded. “I know. But I want to do this for you, since I wrecked everything last night.”
You didn’t wreck everything, she wanted to say. But deep conversation wasn’t what they needed right now. “Okay, then, get my breakfast for me. That would be nice.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said with a grin, a bit of his confidence resurfacing.
“Hold on.” She stopped him as he turned toward the kitchen. “Bow properly, please. Feet together, hands at your sides.” As though he were one of her students, being corrected for proper protocol on the training floor.
He stopped and stared at her for a moment, slightly shocked but with a flash of something unexpected in his eyes. Arousal? What the hell? She’d been kidding, but he slowly made a deep bow. “Yes, ma’am. Like this?” She could see his throat move as he swallowed, then his chest rose and fell as he took a deep breath. Weird.
“Like that. Yeah.”
He moved into the kitchen, started setting out plates and microwaving the crêpes. “You asked why I play so many instruments,” he said casually, as though nothing intense had just happened.
“Right. Seven, is it?”
“Eight if you count harmonica, more if you count percussion stuff — tambourines and shit. I basically grew up on the road with whatever bands Mom was following, right? Other groupies were my aunties, roadies were my babysitters. Piano was Mom’s thing, so she taught me that, probably as soon as I could sit upright at the keyboard, I don’t really remember. Then I picked up whatever anyone wanted to teach me, did any job I was given, played whatever they threw at me. I was fourteen the first time I got shoved in front of a crowd, hat and sunglasses to hide my age, to fill in for a support band guitarist who was too drunk to go onstage.”
“Didn’t you go to school?”
“Oh, sure, two dozen different schools. Mom would stop and rent an apartment somewhere and teach piano, I’d go to school for a term, then she’d fall head over heels for another band and we’d move on.”
Nell suppressed a shudder. “I don’t think I could handle living like that.”
“It was all right,” Eamonn said, bringing her a plate of warm crêpes rolled up around strawberry filling, syrupy red sweetness oozing from the ends. He had a can of whipped cream in his other hand. “You want cream?”
“I don’t know.” She looked at the confection in front of her, shaking her head. “Protein shakes are usually more my speed.”
He held out the can with a tempting lift of one eyebrow. When she hesitated, he gave the cream a shake, holding the tip down toward her plate. “You’re on vacation. Splurge a little.” He glanced down at the can in his hand and then toward her chest, his voice deepening as he added, “If I don’t get to lick this off you, at least let me watch you eat it.”
Damn. Her breath left her in a rush. “You, uh…” She couldn’t articulate the thought, held tight to the plate on her lap so it wouldn’t slide to the floor. He knelt
