Free Wild Child (Rock Royalty #6) by Christie Ridgway Page B

compulsion warred with an equal need to heed the protective instinct clamoring inside him that advocated gently wrapping her in softness and then whisking her away to someplace trouble-free.
    Fuck, she was so bad for him, the man who knew that peace and salvation lay in moderation.
    The way she fueled his passions—across the spectrum—was the last thing Mad Dog Maddox’s son needed. Wished for his life.
    He knew to what ugly and tragic ends such appetites could lead.
    Not that he was any good for Ashlynn, either. That stupid jealousy. The obvious way he put up her hackles. The fact that the last orgasm he’d given her had made her cry.
    He scrubbed his face with his hands. What to do?
    “Alexa,” he said out loud.
    “Is that another one of your girlfriends?”
    If she meant it to come out sharp, she failed. The barb was as dull as her voice.
    He couldn’t stop himself from stepping closer to cup her cheek in his palm. Her skin was cold, and she trembled at his touch.
    “We need to warm you up.”
    “I’m fine.”
    Stripping out of his jacket he draped it over her shoulders. Then he brushed her hair off her forehead.
    “Alexa’s my brother’s fiancée. I’ll take you to her. She’ll rustle up some clothes, we’ll figure out a place for you to stay—”
    “I have clothes. I have a place to stay.”
    “You’re not spending the night here,” he said, firm on that.
    “A different place. My…house. Where I grew up.”
    Brody narrowed his eyes.
    “I’m serious,” she said, annoyance giving a little life to her. “It’s not far.”
    “Show me,” he said.
    Her put-upon sigh but lack of further argument told him she recognized she couldn’t move him on this. So after they locked up the trailer as best they could, he trailed her back to the roadhouse’s parking lot. There, in the darkest corner, she had a sweet little silver Mercedes coupe. He watched her slip inside and then he had to hoof it to his SUV in order to follow her onto the narrow road that led back to Topanga Canyon Boulevard. But she took a turn not far from the roadhouse, bouncing over a skinny rut-and-gravel lane that led through lush, overgrown foliage.
    She slowed as she came to a small clearing, and her car’s headlights illuminated a structure that looked like something he and Bing would have dreamed up when they were boys building fanciful forts in the canyon’s fissures behind the compound. He’d bet his business’s framed first dollar that the three-story whimsical residence was constructed of scavenged timber and architectural salvage. The trunk of a tree thrust through the second story deck. Many of the windows were stained glass. The siding was weathered and the front door painted a deep turquoise. As he climbed from his car, he realized that it was surrounded, almost like a moat, by forked arms of a burbling creek. Over one, a footbridge crossed the chattering water and led to the front entry.
    If Brody had ever wanted to fall in love, it would be with this house.
    Ash, using the beam from her cell, bounded over the bridge. Then she had the door open, and light came to life all around the house. Fairy ones twinkled in the trees, and warm washes of it illuminated the house from the ground level upward. A stained-glass lantern by the entry spilled fractured color over Ash, standing on the threshold.
    Transfixed, Brody approached the magical dwelling. The rain had stopped, and water dripped from the surrounding trees and the deep eaves.
    “See?” Ash said, retreating inside, handing him his coat and then shedding her own. “I’ll be fine.”
    She continued down a short hallway, flipping switches as she went. Brody took in everything…and the fact that this quirky house was in serious need of repair. Its windows were worse than the roadhouse’s, judging by the pots and pans set below them to capture drips. Water must be leaking in around their frames. He shuddered to think of the state of the roof.
    In a kitchen with