She breathed an audible sigh of relief.

“Okay. Then…what? Do you need makeup, maybe?” But she was already shaking her head as her gaze roved over his features. One look was enough to tell her makeup was not his thing.

“No.”

“Ah, he talks.”

Zachary grinned.

“Look, mate. You realize you’re freaking me out a bit here, just staring at me… Oh, Lord, are you okay? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“Not a ghost, no.” Although Zachary was struck by a strange sense of déjà vu. Something about her seemed so…familiar.

“Then what?” She held her hands up in question. “Are you going to explain why you’re looking at me like that?”

“You reminded me of my grandmother, for a minute there.” An image of Edna, his grandmother, flittered through his mind.

She frowned. “I’m twenty-five and I remind you of your grandmother? That cannot be a good thing.”

The chuckle he emitted was belly deep. “You reminded me about something she taught me,” he amended.

“Your nan taught you to stare at women until they squirm awkwardly on the spot?”

“No. She taught me to always appreciate the beauty in the world around me. And right now, I’m pretty damn sure I’m looking at the most beautiful part of Australia.”

Her jaw dropped. “P-pardon?”

Her accent made the word sound like puh-din.

“I’m looking at you, thinking you are, without a doubt, the most stunning part of Australia.” He hesitated just a second, then caught her delicate arm in his hand, aware of how large his fingers looked as they wrapped around her wrist.

He pressed the two roses into her palm. “For you. Beautiful flowers for a beautiful woman. Consider it my way of expressing my appreciation.”


Before a startled Eve Andrews had time to react to the drummer’s presence and unexpected gift, Jonah Speed turned around and headed back in the direction he’d come. He’d stared at her through his startling green eyes, called her beautiful, given her the flowers, blown her world clear off its axis and then walked away.

Just walked away.

What the…?

Eve blinked through her surprise and stared dumbfounded at the roses. She didn’t see them. All she saw were those eyes, so incredibly green they didn’t seem real. So incredibly arousing, she suspected she’d seen the promise of fulfillment of a million carnal fantasies in them.

Her heart beat jaggedly. Just as well he hadn’t hung around to chat further. Breathlessness rendered her incapable of speech.

Jonah Speed had just called her beautiful.

Her. Of all people. The irony was enough to inspire hysterical laughter. It bubbled in her chest, but she bit it back.

Photographs and movie clips did Jonah little justice. On paper and onscreen he was criminally sexy. In real life, drop-dead gorgeous didn’t adequately describe him. Heart-stopping, breathtaking, toe-curling, goose-bump-inducing…

Nope. Even those words weren’t powerful enough. They didn’t capture the essence of his blistering appeal.

His aura still held her frozen to the spot. Frozen, but heating up with every second that passed. And it wasn’t just the fact that he was Jonah Speed.

Speed’s drummer, Jonah Speed. The man Rolling Stone Magazine had described as a rock legend, drummer extraordinaire and lethal lady magnet.

Hands-down the sexiest rock star in the world, Jonah Speed.

No, it wasn’t his superstardom that had her awed. It was just him. His very presence.

She raised her eyes to watch him walk away. He had his back to her, and his damp T-shirt stretched taut across shoulders broader than a football field. Even from behind, he oozed sex appeal. It radiated off him in waves.

Her stomach curled in around itself, capturing millions of tiny butterflies fluttering wildly about within.

The crewmembers milling backstage stopped to watch Jonah approach his brothers and their band manager. More than one audible intake of air echoed through her ears as he walked by, confirming they too were struck by his tangible sexuality.

Eve’s heart raced like a hummingbird’s wings.

For long seconds she held the roses, stunned. These flowers had been tossed to Jonah by his rabid fans. From her view in the wings backstage, she’d seen the face of one woman who’d thrown roses, seen the star-struck adoration in her expression, the desperation to be noticed.

Could one of these roses be from her?

Eve was pretty sure when the roses were first offered to Jonah, they’d been fresher than they were now. Although still striking, the petals had wilted, their edges turning black. When she raised the flowers to her nose to sniff their delicate fragrance, she found none.

Her gaze returned to Jonah. He stood with the band, listening to whatever Luke Struthers was telling them. At regular intervals one or other of the Speed brothers nodded, commented or looked in the direction Luke pointed.

Goose bumps erupted over her skin.

Even in work mode, Jonah stood out. His presence made Eve want to tug at her shirt—yank it over her shoulders and present herself naked to the enthralling sex god.

Stunned by her impulses, she ran a calming hand gently over the left side of her face, from her forehead down to her neck.

It calmed her not at all.

Her interaction with Jonah had lasted a minute, maybe two, yet it had left her with an unexpected hunger.

A desperate, greedy need for more.

Shaking off temptation and grounding herself firmly in reality—the same reality where she was just a regular person and she hadn’t been given half-dead roses by Jonah Speed—she turned back to the table behind her and finished packing her portable makeup box with trembling hands.

Over the years, Eve had assembled an inspiring collection of makeup. A collection that caused raptures in Delilah and Devine, Speed’s gorgeous yet surprisingly down-to-earth back-up singers. The two of them had contacted her three months ago, inviting her to join them for the six-month duration of the Speed worldwide concert tour.

Hard work, determination and a fierce belief in her ability had helped Eve to make a name for herself as a makeup artist in the Australian TV and film industry, but she’d had no idea her reputation had crossed oceans. The thought that she was now officially on tour with Speed still flabbergasted her.

Who would have thought the scarred, traumatized girl who grew up in Tamworth would be part of the entertainment event of the decade?

She popped the last eyeliner back in its slot and tucked a lipstick in a side pocket before snapping the box shut. Silently giving thanks to the inventor of the wheel, she pulled up the handle, propped the heavy, jam-packed case at an angle and set off, heading to the tunnel leading to the inside of the arena, pulling the case behind her.

She made sure not to leave the roses behind. Oh no, she had plans for the two secondhand, wilting blossoms Jonah Speed had given her.


The opportunity to put that plan into action presented itself not a minute later as the sound of deep male laughter echoed through the air behind her.

Hot chills ran up her spine, heating her skin and making her shiver at the same time. Stopping midstep, she turned around, forcing the two men and a woman walking behind her to either stop suddenly themselves or collide with her.

One man stopped dead, the other two effortlessly sidestepped her.

Eve caught a whiff of Jordan Speed’s aftershave as he walked by still chuckling, his arm slung casually around the woman’s shoulders. “See you on the other side,” he called to his brother, and they continued on their way.

She tried to still her insanely beating heart. Honestly she did. If she was going to spend the next six months on tour with the band, she couldn’t break out in fan-girl spasms every time one of the brothers came within a three-mile radius.

But Jordan Speed had just walked past her. Jordan Speed, for heaven’s sake!

How on earth could she still her crazy heart and shaking hands in the presence of Jordan and Jonah Speed?

Although Jordan and the woman were already gone, leaving her face-to-face, once again, with the middle Speed brother.

The laughter that had boomed from his chest seconds ago died, and the smile that had lit his face, temporarily blinding her with its brilliance, straightened as he regarded her with those smoldering green eyes.

God! This man screamed sex. Blatant, raw sex. The kind of sex that should be outlawed.

He fogged her ability to think rationally.

Eve’s shirt pulled tight across her breasts, irksome and uncomfortable. Again the urge to remove it—and her bra—skittered across her arms.

She rounded her shoulders, refusing to let his innate sensuality interfere with her plan. She didn’t care how famous—or gorgeous—Jonah was, her clothes would stay firmly in place.

“I’d hoped to run into you again tonight.” Wow, was that her voice? It sounded surprisingly steady, seeing as her lungs weren’t functioning at full capacity.

“Beautiful, you can run into me anytime, day or night.” His reply was spoken through luscious, full and tantalizing lips.

She didn’t want to run, she wanted to crash into him at full speed.

Pardon the pun.

“Look, while I’m hugely complimented that you’d want to give me flowers, and while I thank you for thinking I’m…beautiful—” She tripped over the word. It wasn’t one she associated with herself. It wasn’t one anyone associated with her. “I just can’t accept these.” She held the roses out to Jonah.

Surely it was both criminal and unjust for a man to look this good? Smell so good? Sound so good…

Jonah looked at her, baffled. “You’re giving them back to me?”

“I am.” She tried to ignore the fact that his voice was as intoxicating as the rest of him. It was deep and velvety, like a gentle vibration from a bass drum.

Instead of accepting the flowers, Jonah folded his arms across his chest.

The movement drew her gaze to that beautifully sculpted chest. And to the tanned arms and outrageously broad shoulders. His shirt was plastered to his skin, outlining the exquisite muscle definition beneath.

Eve struggled to draw breath. Since when had sweaty men turned her on?

Since never, that’s when, yet one look at Jonah’s shoulders, at the way that shirt hugged them, the way his damp hair curled around his face, and funny things happened in places she shouldn’t be thinking about now.

“Why?”

“Because as well-intentioned and as lovely as your gesture was, somehow secondhand roses fail to make me feel beautiful.”

“Secondhand?” Jonah looked startled, taken aback even, but then his confidence seemed to bounce right back into place. “You think I gave you used flowers?” The smile that lifted the corner of his mouth was slow in coming, but once it was there…boy, it stopped her lungs altogether for a good few seconds.

“Those flowers were tossed onstage for you. Not me.”

“Which made them my flowers. Is it a crime to give away something that belongs to me?”

“Not a crime. No. And as I said, your intentions were thoughtful and complimentary. But those roses…they were meant for you. They were given to you.”

His response perplexed her. First he raised an eyebrow in surprise, then he gave a confused shake of his head and finally he stuck out his hand, not to take the roses but in introduction. “We haven’t had the pleasure of meeting yet. I’m Jonah Speed.”

She eyed his palm warily as her fingers feathered once again over her left cheek, a nervous habit she wished she could break but knew she never would.

There was no way Jonah could know it, but a handshake was something Eve avoided whenever possible. Instinct, and a slight tingle in her palm, told her this shake would reveal more about Jonah than he’d be willing to share.

Besides, she didn’t want to shake Jonah’s hand, she wanted to clutch it and press it to her breast. And her ass. And her…

Behave.

“It’s nice to meet you, Jonah.” Instead of shaking his extended hand, she placed the roses into it, making good and sure she didn’t touch his skin in the process. She strongly suspected if her hand so much as grazed his she’d be forced to grab great big handfuls of the man, see whatever she was meant to see and never let go again.