“Right. It didn’t.” She pulled open the door and scrambled to grab her robe. He’d never seen a woman cover herself with terry cloth so quickly.
He didn’t move, didn’t know where he’d go if he moved. But the water was getting cooler by the second, so he probably should grab a towel and see himself out.
Which was precisely what he did because he was an asshole.
And what had happened?
Like she said, it never happened.
Chapter Four
Bax
Five Weeks Later
Hangingwith Knox sucked because Knox had a lot of opinions about how things should be and didn’t mind sharing those. But also did not suck, because they were on a beach.
The way things went down after Bax had fucked up in Courtney’s shower was straightforward.
He left, went to Hans, spilled the whole can of beans in Hans’s office because Hans would’ve figured it out anyway.
Then he did what Hans said to do—which was hop on a flight to Bermuda with Knox.
This was one of the few plans Hans had come up with that Bax did not hate. He understood Knox a helluva lot more than he understood Courtney. Understood why others didn’t get who Knox was. Why he wasn’t the favorite.
The guy had preferences.
Preferences and no problem telling the entire world what those were.
Which made him not the best guy to go on an extended vacation with, to go on a multi-country world tour with, or to even have dinner with.
Yet here they were in Bermuda.
Knox. Bax. And Courtney Lincoln in his brain.
Oh yeah, she took up permanent residence in Bax’s skull. Even the waves of the ocean couldn’t knock her, or that didn’t-happen-shower, out of his mind.
Hans had sent Knox to keep track of Bax and ensure he did nothing stupid—like sleep with another friend’s little sister. Knox didn’t know about the shower sex. He just wanted a trip to the islands and asked no questions when Hans said, “Go.”
“Know what the problem is with this beer?” Knox asked. One beach towel over, he tipped his Bermuda Triangle Stout so he could apparently read the label better.
“Bet you’re gonna tell me,” Bax said, closing his eyes.
“The problem is that it’s two swallows from being empty,” Knox said with a flash of white in his smile. “Need another.”
Bax didn’t reply, because he’d rather just wallow in his Courtney thoughts than think about Knox’s beer situation.
“Still thinking about her?” Knox asked, clearly oblivious to Bax’s plight and the stirring of brain matter around a particularly invasive species of brunette female.
Bax grunted. This time in a sort-of reply.
Here’s the way it worked with the band—Knox played keyboards and sang backup for Dimefront. Linx played bass—and every other instrument imaginable—and sang backup. Sometimes Linx took the front-man spot, but most of the time, he preferred to play bass versus sing vocals. Drummers came and went, none of them sticky enough to hang around long.
Bax was a vocals guy, he played nothing and sang front man. When Linx took lead, Bax sang backup.
He liked his job well enough, was good at it, and stuck with it because it was what everyone expected. What kind of a guy walked away from a career like this one?
Still, he’d been ready to give it up for a dose of normal with Em. Normal outside of rock ’n’ roll chaos. At least, he’d thought it was normal, real, perfect… at the time.
