Her Last Temptation. Leslie Kelly

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      DYLAN SPENCER HAD FALLEN madly in love twice in his life.

      The first time had been at age seven when he’d been introduced to his ultimate destiny: the greatest form of music ever created. He’d been visiting his grandparents’ house in New England for the holidays and one of his older cousins had gotten a Van Halen album for Christmas. It had been love at first riff.

      The year had been 1985 and the record had been 1984 and Dylan had decided then and there that bass player Michael Anthony had been touched by God.

      Dylan had been completely enthralled. His parents—who never listened to anything that didn’t feature fat Italian opera singers—had not been. Particularly when they’d caught Dylan entertaining all the neighborhood kids with a rousing, nearly R-rated rendition of “Hot For Teacher.”

      Thinking they could steer his love for music, and encourage his rather amazing natural musical abilities, they’d signed him up for piano lessons.

      He’d been kicked out when he’d broken into Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” during an end-of-the-year recital.

      By ten he was air guitaring his way through life. By twelve, after five years of relentless begging, he had his own real bass guitar and it had been practically glued to his hands ever since.

      Yeah. Rock and roll had been his first experience with instant obsession.

      Cat Sheehan had been his second.

      Throughout the evening, while he stayed perfectly in sync with his bandmates, putting his all into the music, he kept at least part of his attention on her. The woman who’d taken his breath away from the moment he’d first laid eyes on her.

      Cat wasn’t hard to keep track of—she definitely stood out. From here, behind the glare of the small spotlights, her long golden hair looked almost silver. Occasionally, she’d smooth it back off her cheek with one graceful lift of her finger, so that it framed her perfect face.

      He wasn’t close enough to focus on the deep, ocean-green of her eyes. But he definitely watched the graceful movements of her slim body, clad in tight-as-sin jeans and a sleeveless white tank top. Also tight. Also sinful.

      Working the bar as if she’d been born behind it, Cat didn’t even have to look at the labels of the bottles from which she poured. Her hand never faltered as she made any drink ordered. She moved with a dancer’s grace, able to pull a draft of beer off the tap, circle around and set it down in front of a customer in one long, fluid movement a ballerina would envy.

      Chatting easily with everyone, she smiled often—that dazzling smile taking his breath away from all the way across the room. At one point, he even thought he heard her throaty laugh over all the other noise in the place. The sound was distinct because of the reaction it caused in him—instant awareness. Instant hunger. Instant heat.

      She affected him like the music affected him.

      Deeply. Intimately. Physically.

      But it wasn’t just that. He liked hearing the laugh and seeing the smile because they countered the weariness in her brow and the slight slump of her shoulders, which he’d noticed as soon as they’d started talking earlier. He didn’t know what was troubling Cat. But he planned to find out.

      “This place is wild,” Josh Garrity yelled from the other side of the small stage. The crowd was roaring its approval at the end of their second set. If the walls weren’t still shaking from the Aerosmith song they’d just finished, they were from the applause. “You think they’ll let us take a real break this time, Spence?”

      Dylan nodded as he carefully put his beloved Fender back into its case and turned off his Voodoo amp. Josh played guitar and sang lead most of the time; Dylan was on bass, doing some of the vocalizations, as well. But it seemed as if all the songs the crowd had been yelling for were Dylan’s and his throat was now almost raw. “If they don’t, neither one of us is going to have any voice left at all.”

      Nodding, Josh waved at the audience, which had swelled in size over the past few hours until every table was taken. “Stay, drink, be patient. We’ll be back in twenty,” he shouted into the microphone, trying to be heard over the applause and whistles.

      The audience cheered a bit more, but since the band members were already putting their instruments down, they gradually quieted. The typical mad race for the restrooms and fresh rounds quickly got underway. As did the pickup conversations going on between the hopeful single guys and their prospects.

      “The place isn’t the only thing that’s wild,” their drummer Jeremy said as he lowered his drumsticks and rose from his stool. “The brunette in the jean miniskirt who was sitting at the table closest to the stage wasn’t wearing any underwear.” He shook his head. “It was like she wanted me to see…everything.”

      Seeing the shock on Jeremy’s face, Dylan hid a jaded grin. Jeremy, Josh’s younger brother, was their newest member, a baby-faced nineteen-year-old. Jeremy hadn’t yet realized that rock-and-roll groupies didn’t always limit their adulation to the famous groups who were household names. Sometimes local bands—like theirs—had their own fan bases. The familiar faces in tonight’s crowd certainly bore that out.

      That was one of the drawbacks to the business, as far as Dylan was concerned. He played for his own pleasure, his own release. He had never been interested in the fans or the lifestyle or any of the garbage that went along with it. He just liked to head-bang on occasion. Which was probably why he’d never gone any further with his music than to small places like this, in small Texas towns.

      “So, you gonna go over and talk to her or just keep staring at her like some lovesick mutt?”

      Dylan jerked his attention toward Billy Banks, the final member of their four-man group, who wailed like a madman on the keyboard. Banks was grinning that sardonic grin of his, brown eyes sparkling behind the wire-framed glasses he wore to give himself the appearance of an intellectual rock and roller. He liked to think of himself as the Lennon of their group.

      The women seemed to like it, too. Between Banks’s brainy persona and deep-rooted mischievous streak, Jeremy’s fresh-faced innocence, Josh’s breezy surfer style and Dylan’s own long-haired rebel thing, they had a regular stream of females ready to keep them company whenever they desired it.

      Dylan hadn’t desired it. Not in a long time.

      But Banks sure had, which wasn’t surprising. Ever since they’d met at freshman orientation in college, where they’d been the two youngest people in the room, Billy Banks had proved himself to be two things: woman-crazy and the best, most loyal friend Dylan had ever had.

      “Well? You going over? You’ve been eyeing her all night.”

      “You’re seeing things,” Dylan mumbled, choosing to pretend he didn’t know what the guy was talking about.

      “Oh, come on, man, I thought you were gonna short out the sound system because the mike was getting so wet with your drool every time you looked at СКАЧАТЬ