Crush Read online

  Lucas took the case to the sofa. He opened it, and with great care withdrew an onyx Fender electric bass, his favorite. He sat on the sofa and braced his right foot on the low white table before him, then settled the instrument across his lap. He picked out a few soft notes while Miranda sat on a tall stool at the bar, watching him. His head bowed over his instrument, his expression was serious, as though he were working on calculus problems rather than music. Her gaze was drawn to the movement of his lips as he softly sang part of a song. When he lifted his face and fixed his heavenly eyes on her, Miranda came the closest she ever had to an actual swoon.

  He smiled softly. “You’re looking at me strangely.”

  “It’s always amazed me how English people speak in perfectly incomprehensible accents, but then when you sing, you sound like you’re from Nebraska.”

  “First off, I’m Welsh, not English, woman, and second,” he set aside his bass, “get over here.”

  She joined him on the sofa, sitting thigh to thigh with him. “I shudder to think how many rock guys like you have spread their booty cooties all over this thing.”

  “Booty cooties?” He put an arm around her. “I was told that this dressing room is new. Everything, even the insulation in the walls, had to be replaced after Blind Rage played here last week.”

  “I heard about that,” Miranda said. “Bernie refused to cover their concert because of their lyrics bashing women, homosexuals, blacks, Hispanics, Asians, Jews, Catholics, Muslims—”

  “Blind Rage is about stirring up controversy, not making fit music. Good bands, authentic bands, are rare these days.”

  “You have to look outside the mainstream Top 40 charts to find good music,” Miranda observed. “My mother comes from Bahia, ‘The Land of the Drum.’ I grew up on samba. It’s rich and colorful music that makes you want to move. It makes you feel alive. You can’t beat Tito Puente, Chavela Vargas, Luiz Carlos da Vila…I can’t dance, but those guys make me wish I could.”

  “Perhaps you can’t dance because you haven’t found the right partner,” Lucas suggested.

  To avoid pursing that debate, Miranda asked, “Whose music do you like?”

  “U2, of course, and Outkast from your side of the pond.” He mentioned their names with reverence. “I really like Missy Elliot. She’s a visionary, a true artist.”

  “I would never have pegged you as an Outkast or Missy Elliot fan,” Miranda said.

  “You can’t see an old white guy like me down with Andre 3000 and Miss E., is that it?”

  “No…well…yes,” she confessed.

  “When I was a kid, I’d sit up listening to my dad play with some of the Motown studio musicians who’d come to London to record with English artists. My dad would be in heaven. You should have heard them. Until then, I never knew that my dad had soul, that he had rhythm! Up ‘til then, Tom Jones was the only Welshman allowed to have rhythm.”

  Miranda laughed. “I’m glad that he passed some of it on to you.”

  “That’s not all he passed on. My dad taught me that music doesn’t know race. It’s something you feel, something you share. It comes from under your skin.” He stroked his fingers along Miranda’s jaw. “You have such lovely skin.”

  “Branca-suja,” Miranda sighed.

  “What’s that?”

  “It means dirty white. My avó, my mother’s mother, used to call me that. She didn’t like how I was so much darker than my mother and my sister. I don’t know what she expected, seeing as how she used to call my father bailano.”

  “Ebony,” Lucas translated aloud.

  Miranda gave him an appreciative smile. “Impressive.”

  “Brazil is one of my favorite countries to visit,” Lucas said. “The people are so diverse.”

  “There’s been so much intermarriage over the centuries between the Spanish, French, the native Indians and Africans that people literally come in every color,” Miranda said. “When we used to go to Bahia, to visit my Avó Marie Estrella, no one ever asked me if I was mixed or if I was black or Hispanic. It didn’t matter, not with just about everybody being mixed with something else.”

  “What’s it like here?”

  “You generally have two colors in good ol’ Boston: white and not white. Co-existence is possible, but rarely seen.”

  “It’s been difficult for you?”

  Miranda dropped her eyes. “When I was a kid in Silver Springs, we lived in a predominantly black neighborhood. People thought my mother was white because she’s so fair-skinned. The kids used to think I was mixed. I suppose I am when you boil it down, because obviously there are some European genes in my family tree. But I consider myself African American and Afro-Hispanic. My father is black, my mother is Brazilian negro branca.”

  “There were only two black students in my school when I was young,” Lucas said. “One was from London and the other had come from Jamaica. Most of the black people I came into contact with were American musicians and singers who worked with my dad. My dad was the minority in those situations, but he never had any problems.”

  “I didn’t have any problems until I hit the Herald-Star newsroom,” Miranda remarked. “Most of the guys I work with were born and bred in Massachusetts. This tiny little state is their whole world, and sports is their religion. I flew into their world like some lost exotic bird. I think they resent that I’m a woman more than they resent my race. I don’t know…I guess some guys are threatened by a woman who knows the difference between Lou Holtz and Lou Piniella.”

  “Lou Holtz turned the University of South Carolina Gamecocks into a winning football program,” Lucas mentioned smoothly. “Lou Piniella was the coach of the Tampa Bay Devil Rays baseball team.”

  Miranda’s eyebrows arched in surprise. “You know your Lous?”

  “I’ve picked up a few things here and there.” Lucas brought his face closer to hers.

  He might have shown her a few more things he’d learned if someone hadn’t knocked on the door and announced, “You’re on in five, Mr. Fletcher.”

  “He must be new,” Lucas said. “Else he wouldn’t be calling me ‘Mr. Fletcher.’” He stood, taking Miranda’s hand and bringing her with him.

  “I could stay here,” she said, “and read until you’re done. If that’s okay.”

  He picked up his bass. “If you’d rather, sure. But if my preference means anything, I’d like you to come up with me. We musicians like showing off onstage for our girls.”

  “That’s just it. I’m not sure I’m up to being one of the girls.”

  “What are you talking about, Miranda?”

  “You didn’t see all those women out there? Each one of them had lots more hair, lots more makeup, tons more boobs and way less clothes than I do. You can’t tell me that you didn’t notice them.”

  “I can because I didn’t.” He took her shoulders firmly. “You would laugh your beautiful head off if you knew how long it’s been since I enjoyed the intimate company of a woman. For twenty years, women have been throwing themselves at me. I confess, there was a time when I caught as many as I could. For a long time, I’ve wanted more than what the women out there want to give me.” His body brushed against hers and she took the flaps of his motorcycle jacket. “I want a woman who will throw her mind and soul at me, not just her body. When I least expected it, our paths crossed. And since then, I haven’t been able to think of anything but you.”

  She didn’t smile, but dimples appeared at the corners of her mouth. “I’ll bet you say that to all the girls.”

  “We need you onstage, Lucas,” came a hurried voice from the other side of the door.

  “You’d better go,” Miranda said, though neither of them made a move to separate.

  “I only knew what I didn’t want before I met you, Miranda. Now I know exactly what I want.”

  Her heart thumped hard, echoing in her ears when she said, “I’m afraid to ask what that is.”

  “I want you,” he volunteered.

  “Fletch
!” Feast’s shriek was accompanied by a furious pounding on the door. “Get your arse out here! There are paying customers waiting to watch you beat your bass!”

  Lucas ignored his lead guitarist. “What makes you smile, Miranda? What’s your favorite book? What’s your worst fear? Do you like Thai food? When you kissed me on that airstrip in Wales, I knew that I wanted to know so much more about you.”

  Nothing he said was foreign to her, for she had wanted the exact same thing—to know him. Voicing the desire seemed to give it more power, and words meant to draw her in instead made her pull away. “Home runs, To Kill A Mockingbird, spiders, and yes. Don’t expect fireworks and shooting stars from me, Lucas. I’m just a regular person.”

  “If you were merely regular I wouldn’t be in this dressing room keeping my mates and thirty thousand fans waiting.”

  “Then you’d better go. I’ll wait for you here.”

  He reached into her coat pocket and took out her book. He read the title as he settled onto the sofa. “Rapturous Revenge.” With raised eyebrows, he opened it to Miranda’s page marker, leaned back, crossed his long legs at the ankle and began to read aloud. “‘Her lips parted in an expression of sheer bliss as his velvet tumescence artfully breached the moist petals of her throbbing womanhood.’” He chuckled. “Velvet tumescence?”

  Miranda lunged for the book. Lucas caught her around the waist and held her atop him. She grabbed at the paperback, which he easily held out of reach. “I never would have known you for a romance fan,” he said.

  “I’m still in the closet,” she grunted, snatching at the book.

  Lucas pitched the book across the room so he could use both arms to subdue her. “Don’t be embarrassed, Miranda.”

  “I’m not.” A raging blush belied her words.

  “Kitty Kincaid isn’t half bad, actually,” he said.

  To Lucas’s regret, she stopped writhing upon him. “You know her work?”

  “Her publisher once asked me to pose for one of her book covers.” He gently smoothed strands of Miranda’s tousled hair from her face. “It was called The Virgin Whore or The Sergeant’s Staff, or some such thing.”

  Miranda giggled. Lucas kissed the end of her nose, which made her giggle more.

  “Did you pose for it?” she asked.

  “No. I had a scheduling conflict. But I read the samples of her books they sent.”

  “Sure, you did,” she said skeptically.

  “I’ve been known to read ingredient lists on candy wrappers if that’s all that’s available to me,” he said. “The road can be dead boring.”

  “No one, not even Bernie, knows that I like to read romance novels,” Miranda said. “Promise me that you won’t tell anyone. Not your friend Feast, not your parents, not your pups, not anyone ever.”

  “Kiss me, and forever seal the Pact of the Velvet Tumescence.”

  Miranda happily obliged. She gently touched his lips, the chaste contact lighting fires beneath their skin. His hands went into her hair and under her coat. One of her legs slid between his and she pressed her hips into the hard ridge that had grown along his thigh. Her blood pulsated through her body, generating a heat that ignited every cell of her body. Her coat was in a pile on the carpeted floor and Lucas was kissing the bit of shoulder bared by her oversized shirt when she realized that the pulsating was coming from around her as well as within.

  “What’s that noise?” she asked, mildly alarmed.

  “I expect it’s the stomping of thirty-thousand fans.” Lucas ran his hands along her back and discovered that she wasn’t wearing a bra. “They do that, when the band is late taking the stage.”

  “You have to get up there.” She pulled her shirt back into place and tried to get off of him.

  Lucas held her tight. “Only if you come with me. You can come on stage and sing backup.”

  “I have a voice like a wooden bell. Lucas, I’d rather stay here with Kitty Kincaid.”

  “As would I, given the state you’ve worked me into. But I can’t disappoint the people who’ve been disappointed once already.”

  A muffled roar reached them in the dressing room. “The band must be taking the stage,” Lucas said.

  “Go!” Miranda urged. “There might be a riot if you don’t show.”

  “Boston Police are out there in force,” he told her. “The crowd will behave. Come up with me.”

  “What if the audience gets so excited, they create another crush?”

  “My security team reconfigured the first twenty rows of the Arena,” he said. “The first row is thirty feet from the stage. No one is getting crushed tonight.”

  A muted rift from an electric guitar reached their ears. “That’s ‘Snatched,’” Miranda said. “Is that Feast?”

  Lucas nodded. “There’s about forty-five seconds of his posturing and playing before I’m to come in on bass with vocals. Bloody shame Feast will have to take over. The poor git couldn’t carry a tune even if it were tattooed on the palm of his hand.”

  Miranda slithered out of his grasp and grabbed his hand. She dragged him onto his feet. “Come on!” She took his bass by the neck. The thing was heavier than it looked and she had to hold it with both hands to keep from banging it onto the tabletop.

  “Are you coming up with me?”

  “Yes,” she grumbled. She opened the door and pushed him through it, handing him his bass as he went. She dove into the corner, got her book, grabbed her coat and stuck the book in one of the pockets. “Just in case,” she said sheepishly.

  * * *

  Every time Lucas took the microphone, frenzied screaming drowned out the first few bars of his song. From her perch just inside the backstage area, Miranda plainly saw that every woman in the Arena wanted Lucas, and every man wanted to be him.

  Handsome athletes peopled Miranda’s everyday world, but she’d never seen a man as beautiful as Lucas. His beauty was ancient, borne of his Celtic ancestry, wild but not uncivilized. The warmth of his voice and the passion in his eyes tempered the intensity of his features. His was a face capable of brutal honesty, yet incapable of cruelty. His sort of beauty had only existed in the overblown romance novels she secretly read, yet there it was, singing and playing before her.

  She was surprised at how thrilling it was to watch him perform. It wasn’t overtly exciting, like watching a sudden death overtime in the Super Bowl. Lucas’s performance was…stimulating. His music was a sensuous, consuming accompaniment to the sight of him in his black leather pants and tight white T-shirt. The muscles of his arms and chest flexed and his long hair flew as his fingertips danced over the strings of his instrument. Miranda dared to imagine how it would feel to have those strong, agile fingers artfully dancing over her.

  She glanced at the audience and saw that she wasn’t the only woman with thoughts of artful dancing. Women pushed at sawhorses and security guards, hoping to get close enough to the stage to pitch bras and panties at Lucas. Most of the undergarments fell short and gathered at the base of the stage, but one inspired fan, a young black woman with a shaved head, managed to slingshot a red G-string high above security. To the cheers of the overexcited crowd, the thing landed on Lucas’s microphone stand and dangled there. He laughed mid-lyric, but didn’t miss a beat of his song.

  Miranda wondered what he would do with the G-string. Would he ignore it? Or would he use it to further play up a crowd that he already had in the palm of his hand?

  Lucas didn’t have to do anything with it. Len Feast sidled up to him and snagged the lacy undergarment with the end of his guitar. He took it to the other side of the stage, where he put it on over his tattered khaki cargo pants. The crowd went crazy as Feast, his twig and berries bulging from the tight confines of the ill-fitting G-string, strutted back over to Lucas. Not to be outdone, Lucas broke out of the song to say, “And this is why you should always put your name in your knickers. Glad to get those back, Feast?”

  Laughing, Feast curled two fingers toward Lucas in what Americans int
erpreted as the “V” for victory sign.

  “Lucas is so cool,” Miranda overheard one of her fellow backstage guests say.

  Miranda wasn’t a part of the core group of Karmic Echo wives and girlfriends who stood right inside the wings, bobbing and weaving to songs they must have heard ten million times. They all looked alike, as if they’d been engineered in the same genetics lab. They were all tall, thanks to five-inch-and-higher heels, and had massive volumes of hair crispy with styling spray. Their mouths were shellacked in lip gloss, and one woman had on so much eye makeup, her eyes looked like cigarette burns. The women were all built like pencils with marbles—big marbles—attached, and even though they wore clothes, they still managed to look naked. Their backstage credentials hung around their necks just as Miranda’s did, but Miranda was the only one who was repeatedly asked to show her pass.

  She didn’t care. How could she, when Lucas sought her gaze every time he looked into the wings? The other women might have been sexy and desirable with their shirts opened low and their skirts hiked high, but it was Miranda who caught Lucas’s notice each time he peeped into the wings.

  * * *

  The band and their significant, and insignificant, others gathered in Lucas’s dressing room after the concert. Some of the band had already opened the champagne and were lounging about the dressing room by the time Lucas and Miranda joined them. Lucas proudly introduced Miranda.

  “That’s Garrison Coe, the best drummer since Keith Moon,” he said. A tall, blue-eyed man with a goatee tipped his knit cap at Miranda. “And that lot is ‘Wet’ Willie Weingart, who plays second guitar and keyboards.”

  Wet Willie, a native of Glasgow, Scotland, said something that to Miranda sounded like, “Goona funna gow meedya.”

  “You, too,” Miranda said with pleasant uncertainty as she laid her coat on the stool beside Wet Willie.