But now, with the warm sun beating down on her back, she'd never felt colder.

It wasn't just the shock of knowing how deep her emotions for him ran that had Marcus reeling.

It was the fact that here he'd been going on about her needing to treat herself as more than a s.e.x kitten, when that's the way he'd been treating her all along. Like she was a piece of a.s.s that was good enough to f.u.c.k senseless...but when she actually turned that big brain on his life, to a.n.a.lyze the decisions he'd made, he'd lost it on her.

Throwing everything into the picnic bag, he moved quickly through the trees to find her waiting in his car. Her back was straight, her hands were on her lap, and she was staring straight ahead as he got in behind the wheel.

"I'm sorry."

He wanted to reach for her hand, but he knew how she'd react, that the last thing she wanted was for him to touch her. The irony wasn't lost on him that the very thing she didn't want was now what he needed most-to reconnect with her even in that one small way.

"I'm sorry, too."

Marcus was surprised to hear her say those words to him. He'd been planning to say so much more, needed to let her know how wrong he'd been to hurt her like that, that he hadn't realized what a sensitive topic his father's death was.

But when her eyes met his, flat and empty, he knew he was too late.

"I shouldn't have pressured you for these extra days together."

He thought he saw the shimmer of tears in her eyes, but when he looked again they were clear. And still so flat his gut clenched at the memory of the pa.s.sion, the joy, that had been there just minutes before.

"You were right to want to end things after that first night." Her mouth moved up at the corners, into something no one would ever call a smile. "Lesson learned. One-night stands should stick to the number in their name."

Marcus had always been the steady Sullivan, the one who knew what do in any situation. However, from the first moment with Nicola, he'd been completely out of his depth. More so now than ever before. But even though he'd known all along that their relationship was going to end in the very near future, he hated the thought of it ending this way.

"You've never been a pop star to me, Nicola. You've always just been you. A woman I wanted and liked from the start. If I've ever treated you like you were nothing more than a s.e.x kitten, I'm truly sorry."

She was silent for a several very long seconds. Finally, she said, "It's nice of you to say that."

He waited for more, waited for her to tell him she thought he was more than just some guy in a suit who knew how to make her scream with pleasure when she came, but she simply pulled her cell phone out of her bag and looked at the time.

"How long will it take to get to the Warfield?"

Suddenly, he felt like he was bending over backward to try to get her to listen to his apologies, but she wasn't willing to bend at all.

Hadn't he spent two straight years bending over for Jill, doing whatever he could to make her happy? Look how that had turned out. If he'd been too boring, too emotionless for Jill, then surely one day soon, even if he and Nicola found a way to patch things up today, she would surely end up bored with him, too...and eventually he'd have the extreme non-pleasure of walking in on her f.u.c.king some exciting guy with piercings and a goatee, knowing he'd been a fool one more time.

"About an hour."

"I hope there's no traffic. If you know any short cuts, I'd appreciate you taking them."

How had it come to this so quickly? From making love in the ocean to sitting in his car while Nicola spoke to him like he was a stranger?

But his pride wouldn't let him beg her again for forgiveness. He'd tried. She'd pushed him away.

They were done.

"Don't worry," he told her in a voice that was just as distant as hers had been, "I'll make sure you're there on time."

Chapter Eighteen.

Thank G.o.d she'd done a thousand shows like this one, Nicola thought as she went through the motions of sound checking and joking around with her band. She might have been smiling, laughing, but she felt hollow. Empty.

And really, really sad.

The things Marcus had said to her kept repeating over and over in her head, so loudly that she actually forgot the lyrics to one of her songs and had to stop in the middle, apologize to her band with a joke, pretend she didn't see the way they looked at her, at each other, with questions in their eyes.

One slip. She was only ever one slip away from people a.s.suming late nights and drugs and wild parties.

Of course, she wasn't exactly helping herself by playing into the wild image with her videos, the clothes she wore onstage, the fact that she let herself be photographed with people whose wild images were earned, not simply imagined.

It was as much as Marcus had said to her out on the beach, when they were angrily throwing words at each other.

She knew that was a large part of why she'd been so angry. Maybe if she could have taken one breath, and then another, she could have let herself admit to him-to both of them-that she was tired of the s.e.xy-girl image. That she'd been wondering more and more why she was bothering with it. And that she wanted to let her songs stand for themselves.

Just the power of her music, sink or swim, without the silent promise of s.e.x to sell them to the world.

But she hadn't taken that breath, had she?

Instead, she'd barreled headlong into the stupidest, most idiotic confession of her life.

She'd told him she was falling in love with him.

No.

She'd yelled it at him.

Of course, he'd said nothing about love. Not there on the beach...and not later in his car.

She sat in her dressing room, which her tour manager had set up per her usual specifications, making the s.p.a.ce comfortable and cozy for a few hours, and stared into the large mirror with the strip of lights shining down above it. They were way too bright, highlighting all the parts of her soul she didn't want to have to see.

To his credit, Marcus had come back to the car and immediately apologized. But she'd been too afraid to hear what he was sorry for, terrified that he was going to say, "I'm sorry you're in love with me, kitten. I never meant for that to happen."

She turned away from the mirror, unable to look herself in the eye any longer.

Heartbreak was supposed to be perfect for writing songs. She should be picking up her guitar and writing a masterpiece, channeling the Joni Mitch.e.l.l inside herself and singing about blue boys and bright red devils she couldn't live without.

But she couldn't do that. Not tonight, anyway. Not when it was all too raw. Not when she still felt so stupid, so painfully foolish to have lost her heart so quickly, so completely, to a man she had known from the start would never be a good match for her.

One night was all they ever should have shared.

But as she sat in her dressing room feeling sorry for herself, it was as if the guitar, the mirror, were both staring at her from opposite sides of the room and calling her coward.

They were right.

She was being a coward.

And she'd been one for too long.

Finally, Nicola took that breath she should have taken out on the beach. And then another and another until she felt strong enough to make the right decision.

Ignoring the skimpy, shiny outfits her stylist had laid out for her to wear onstage, clothes designed to dance in and provoke, she moved off her chair, picked up her guitar, and turned to face herself in the mirror.

The woman who stared back didn't look like a pop star in full makeup and shimmering skin-tight silk and Spandex. For the first time ever, Nico looked like Nicola, a young, pretty, twenty-something girl in a jean skirt and T-shirt who had written some songs she wanted to play for people.

Finally, Nicola was able to find a small smile.

Sink or swim, tonight was the night she'd take that first step toward her new future.

And even though she wouldn't have Marcus by her side, at least she'd always know she had him to thank for helping to give her a push in the right direction.

He didn't love her, but he'd always been clear about respecting her.

Tonight, she'd respect herself, too.

Holding her guitar to her body as if it were a lover-knowing it was the only lover she would have for a long time to come-Nicola stepped out into the hallway and went to find her band leader to discuss the change of plans.

Just hours ago, Marcus had told his sister that he couldn't come to Nicola's concert with her, that he had plans for the night that couldn't be broken. The last thing in the world he needed was to sit beside Lori watching Nicola on stage.

He'd planned on going back to his winery in Napa, back to his normal life where sweet, s.e.xy pop stars had nothing to do with his world unless they walked into his winery with an entourage and demanded a personal tour. He had just pa.s.sed the Welcome to Napa Valley sign that greeted visitors to the world-famous region, when he made an abrupt U-turn and drove the 100 miles back to the city as fast as Sat.u.r.day night traffic would let him.

He simply couldn't stay away. Couldn't possibly resist the chance to be in the same room as Nicola for a few more hours.

And so, not only had he flat-out lied to one of his siblings, but despite his story about being too busy to attend the concert, here he was standing outside the Warfield in San Francisco staring up at a sign that said, SPECIAL GUEST FOR ONE NIGHT ONLY: NICO!

In his car at the beach, his pride had told him he was better off without her, that he needed to end things before she could end them later and break his heart.

f.u.c.k his pride.

Because the memory of the way she'd gotten out of his car in front of the venue that afternoon had haunted him every second since.

"It was nice meeting you," was what she'd said.

What the h.e.l.l was he supposed to say to that? That it was nice to have met her, too, like they were nothing more than a couple of business colleagues?

Even though he should have been gentle with her, even though his only goal should have been to try to get her to listen to his apologies, he'd growled her name, instead.

Her eyes had flicked over him for a brief second, before she'd pulled out her cell phone and alerted her crew that she was out front. Moments later, she was disappearing through the doors, which were locked behind her to keep not only her fans from disturbing her before the show...but also the guy staring after her from behind the wheel of his car.

"Hey man, you want a ticket to the show? Nico usually plays much bigger places and this one sold out in twenty minutes. Not gonna get the chance to see her this close any time soon."

The scalper's words ripped at his already torn-apart gut as Marcus stared at the ticket. It was why he was here, wasn't it? To see Nicola one more time, to drink her in, even from a distance, because he already missed her like h.e.l.l.

He'd been close to her, so close. And he'd taken her completely for granted, had been looking toward Monday as an inevitable end.

Marcus bought the ticket and was surprised to find the crowd was made up of not just kids, but college students and more than a few people his own age who had obviously come not as chaperones to young fans, but because they wanted to see Nicola play.

As he sat down, he heard a couple of teenagers discussing her.

"I heard that guy she was dating totally scammed her. You know, got her high and then took a bunch of pictures and sold them."

"He totally looked like a creep, didn't he?"

"Totally. I wonder why she even dated him? If I was as awesome as Nico, I'd hold out for the best-looking guy in the world who worshipped me."

Their conversation moved on to the guys they had crushes on who didn't know they existed and Marcus sat back to process what he'd just learned.

Out on the beach, she'd alluded to being hurt and betrayed by a former lover. And she'd already told him that she'd made some bad decisions that had landed her with a wild party-girl image.

Marcus knew it would be so easy to pull up the Internet browser on his phone and find out the rest of the story, but he remembered how wary she'd been once he'd learned who she was, the way she'd a.s.sumed he'd done a Google search on her.

Whatever he learned about her past, he needed to learn from her directly.

That is, if she would ever talk to him again.

And why would she, he wondered as the lights dimmed and the crowd began to cheer. He might not be looking her up on the Internet, but he was sitting here in the dark like a creepy stalker, waiting to watch her perform without her knowledge.

Had her ex done any worse?

Marcus knew he needed to get up out of his seat and leave. But he'd never had any self-control where Nicola was concerned...and he still didn't.

For all that he'd tried to keep their relationship to just s.e.x, it hadn't been. Not even close. Her music was such a big part of who she was, and he needed to see it, needed to understand it, needed to know that part of her as well as he knew the contours of her beautiful body.

The stage lights went up slowly and everyone shot to their feet as Nicola walked onstage. Marcus's breath caught at how small she looked beneath the bright lights, but how she owned it-and everyone in the room-nonetheless.

He was surprised to see that she was still wearing her T-shirt and skirt. From the pictures he remembered seeing of her when he'd flipped past the music cable stations with his remote, he'd a.s.sumed she'd be wearing one of her skimpy costumes, the outfits that were part and parcel of the s.e.x-kitten image he'd ripped apart on the beach just hours before.

"Hi, everyone."

The two large screens on either side of the stage showed him her smile. She looked strong, but a little nervous at the same time. He thought he saw hints of sadness in her eyes, but there was excitement there, too.

What was she doing?

But then, suddenly, he knew, even before she said or did anything else: His beautiful girl was taking control.

"I'm so glad everyone could spend tonight with me. The Musicians for Literacy Foundation is really important to me."

A voice called out, "We love you, Nico!"