Melissa James – Celebrity Wedding of the Year (страница 5)

With that, she lost it. “Oh, shove it. Forget everything I said—especially about you being decent. You’re too busy punishing me for the past to take me seriously. I’m not a child anymore, in case you haven’t noticed. Thanks for your time. I’m sure Dad and Nicole will appreciate the cleverness of your sarcasm and your patronizing attitude in their time of need.”

She stalked out of the kitchen, heading for the front door.

As she fumbled to open the lock she felt a touch on her arm. “Mia.”

“What?” she yelled, biting back tears. “This is my father’s life, and all you want is to have fun at my expense.”

“I’m sorry. You’re right. It’s about Billy, not you and me. I’ll do it.”

She didn’t hear him. “I’ve barely seen you in years. I was a kid when you joined End Game and just out of my teens when you left. So if I offended you by the way I looked at you sometimes, get over it!”

The grip on her arm grew tighter, just enough to stop her jerking the door open. “Mia, I said I’ll do it.”

“I spent years dodging slimy passes from half the men in Dad’s world from the time I was fifteen, and you think a no-sex contract is an insult?” she panted, trying to get the door to work one-handed.

“What?” Suddenly she’d been swung around and was facing him. His eyes were blazing in front of her face. “What did you just say?”

CHAPTER THREE

C.J. SAW Mia’s hackles fall as fast as they’d risen. She shrugged one shoulder, her gaze on her thumbs, which were flicking in and out of half-curled fists. “You heard me.”

But her words didn’t have the tight edge that grated against his tired nerves—and suddenly she wasn’t a girl looking down at him from a lofty intellectual and emotional height, but small, vulnerable, defenseless … and he was the world’s biggest jerk.

“Not—not the guys in the band?” he demanded, with a protective fury roaring through him. If he’d seen it, just once—

She shrugged again. “Of course not them. They’re like my uncles. You know the ones I mean—the hangers-on.”

He wanted to punch something—preferably someone. How the hell could they? She’d been barely fifteen when Billy had swooped on her at her mother’s funeral! She’d been grieving, for God’s sake. And from that time she’d wandered the world with the band, learning by correspondence, watching Billy’s diet and stopping his drinking and drugs—

Looking back now, he could see how hard the life must have been for a teenager. She’d rarely met friends her own age, or had normal teenage fun. Always curled up in a strange room watching TV, reading, looking after everyone, or scribbling in those journals she loved.

Having joined End Game six months after she’d joined the entourage, C.J. had always taken care to act around her as if she was his sister, no matter that her bouts of teenage sarcasm, her superior taunts and occasional practise sessions of budding womanhood on him had driven him half-crazy at times. Poor kid had had to learn to grow up on someone, and she’d chosen him as either the safest bet or, at twenty, the closest in age.

It seemed other guys in the industry hadn’t shared his scruples. All they’d seen was another pretty girl hanging around. They’d probably treated her as fair game when Billy was off pleasure-seeking, or away the three times he went to rehab after she came to live with him.

It had to have been one hell of a childhood, between a bitter, abandoned mother and a loving but basically self-absorbed and addicted father, dragging her from one place to another, from one new “mother” to another.

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