The afternoon passed in a fever dream of writing, strumming, rewriting, scrapping the whole thing, and starting again. Somehow Willow was both depleted and elated. Even though the song was still a mess—a jumble of lyrics that so far worked best as scattered verses rather than a cohesive song—she couldn’t remember the last time writing had felt like this. She couldn’t remember the last time it had been…fun.
Notthat Ash Murphy was fun. He was…he was Mayhem from the Allstate commercials, leaving scandals and broken hearts in his wake, and Willow would not be foolish enough to get sucked into that kind of orbit again, not when she knew better.
She stood in the kitchen, nibbling on one of her shortbread cookies, when she heard singing coming from the bedroom. Correction…the bathroom. But Ash hadn’t bothered to close the bedroom door.
After the pair decided to call it a day, Ash had disappeared into their shared showering space to clean up. He still hadn’t told her what happened earlier that day, and Willow hadn’t asked again. Whatevertrouble he’d been up to was his business, not hers. She didn’t care who split his lip or where he went when he wasn’t in the guesthouse. Hell, she didn’t care about anything pertaining to Ashton Murphy unless it concerned the song they were writing.
Which they weren’t right now. So why, if Willow couldn’t care less about her roommate’s whereabouts or actions, did she find herself moving toward her bedroom? Why was she suddenly slipping through the door he’d left ajar, tiptoeing so she could hear better. So she could identify the song.
Her breath caught in her throat when the bathroom acoustics carried a familiar lyric out to where she stood.
“‘This time I’ll pick myself up when I fall…’” Ash crooned, his deep rasp of a voice adding a new layer of aching regret to the line.Herline. “‘This time I’ll block your number before you call. This time I’ll hold the needle and thread. Jagged stitches ’cross my heart…cold sheets on your side of the bed.’”
Before her brain registered what she was doing, Willow stormed into the steam-filled bathroom and threw open the shower door.
She was greeted by a really great ass and sculpted back, but she would not let that get in the way of her fury.
It took a second for Ash to react to the gust ofcold air that must have rushed in to greet him, which meant a second more of him staining her song…hersong…with his uninvited—albeit gorgeous—voice.
He finally flinched at the change in air temperature and spun to face her, but when he saw Willow standing there, he actually had the audacity to grin.
“You afraid I’m using all the hot water?” he teased. “Or do you want to join me that badly?”
He was lathered in body wash, but that did nothing to hide what he had going on between his legs. If any of the online tabloids wanted to know if Ash Murphy was a shower or a grower, Willow could probably make a pretty penny with her intel. But there was no way in hell she was going to boost his ego by publicizing that he somehow—and impressively—both.
“What gives you the right?” she cried over the sound of the shower’s spray.
He blinked as water hit him in the side of the face and trickled down over his eyes.
“What?” he asked. “What did I do now? Wait. This is ridiculous.” He slammed his palm against the shower knob, effectively turning the water off despite the fact that he was still full of suds. He crossed his arms over his bare chest.
Willow’s mouth fell open. “What are you doing?”
“Freezing my ass off,” he told her. “So I don’t have to shout over the water to defend myself for…” Heshrugged. “Whatever I fucked up between leaving the living room and now.”
Her palms clenched into fists at her sides. “You were singing,” she said coolly, though there was nothing cool about her heart hammering against her ribs.
Ash laughed. “Yeah. I know. I sing in the shower. So what?”
“So what? Sowhat? So…so you were singingmysong.”
He laughed again. “Yeah. I know,” he replied, parroting his own words. “It’s a good song,” he added matter-of-factly.
Willow’s eyes widened, and she glanced left and right, then back at Ash as if suddenly realizing where she was and wondering how she got there. The argument in her head seemed so logical when it first took root, but now she knew her accusation was so way off base that it wasn’t even on the field anymore.
“That’s why we make music, isn’t it?” he asked, his voice gentler this time. “So other people will sing it?”
She opened and closed her mouth to respond her fight-or-flight retreating because it knew she couldn’t just up and admit why the incident had her stomach tied in knots.
Willow blew out a breath, her shoulders relaxing. “It caught me off guard,” she told him, whichtechnically was the truth. It just wasn’t the whole truth. “It was never released as a single, so it kind of freaked me out that you knew it well enough to just…sing it.”
“Hello?” a male voice called fromoutsidethe bedroom. “Anyone home?”
“Are you a ventriloquist?” Willow whisper-shouted to Ash. “Or do I need to grab another vase?”
“Just getting out of the shower!” Ash called, then returned his attention to Willow. “It’s just Boone. My brother. Keep him company until I rinse off? I’ll be two minutes.”
Willow grumbled something under her breath though was secretly grateful for whatever divine intervention was getting her out of the whole yelling-at-a-very-naked-Ash-in-the-shower situation.
