Softer Than Steel (A Love & Steel Novel) Read Online Free Page B

bloody year. He was just another checkbook, a token figurehead. Putting money where his mouth—or daresay where his heart—was not. He certainly didn’t deserve this honor that had fallen upon him right in the middle of his band’s tour, yanking him from the promise of the road and back to the crapshoot of reality.
    “Simone would be . . .”
    As he searched for the right words, the devil riding shotgun on the shoulder seam of his designer suit provided some choice ones.
    Simone would be here if it weren’t for you, you pompous, self-centered prick.
    His fists clenched, and he heard the crisp bite of stainless steel cutting through the satin. The orange bits fluttered to either side of him, and he stepped back, feeling faint. A collective gasp emanated from below and the president gaped uselessly, unread speech gripped in his hand. Isabelle was at the podium now, not a hair out of place and smiling as the crowd recovered and politely clapped.
    “I have to get out of here,” Rick hissed at the back of her perfumed neck, “or I’m going to lose it.”
    “Fine. Go. Take the service elevator,” she replied, mouth still frozen in her happy publicist’s smile. Isabelle was on the board of the Simone Banquet Memorial Foundation and was certainly equipped to provide the lip service for it. “There’s a car waiting downstairs to take you back to the airport.”
    She relieved him of the Goliath shears and planted what felt like the kiss of Judas on his cheek. Exposing him for what he really was. Why, why,
why
did he let her talk him into this?
    Rick bounded behind the pipe and drape toward the old part of the hospital, away from the Simone Banquet Memorial Cancer Center wing that he had just prematurely dedicated.
    Why had he even bothered to come? He was useless at these types of things. Beyond useless, actually, and tipping over into the hazardous category. God, he couldn’t get out of here fast enough. He should be safely on the other coast with the band in Los Angeles, not here. Anywhere but here. Fingers worked to loosen the tight knot at his throat as he proceeded down the hallway toward the service elevator, which was miraculously opening at that very moment to allow a worker off.
    “Hold the lift!” he barked as the doors began to close upon his approach. He saw no one inside move a finger in response. “Dammit!” Curse New York and its bloody New York minute, with everyone rushing and no one taking the time—
    A slim, tan leg shot through the gap in the doors, causing them to spring open again.
    Rick murmured his thanks as he wormed in, past the tiny sandal dangling from the foot holding the door at bay.
    “Crap. My flip-flop!”
    The owner of the leg shifted a huge paper sack of heavenly smelling baked goods in her arms, just in time to catch a glimpse of her shoe slipping neatly through the crack as the doors slid shut with a smug
ding
.
    “Son of a bitch!”
    The expletive hardly matched the wisp of a girl who had uttered it. She had the delicate features of a china doll and barely came up to Rick’s chest. Yet he and the other occupants of the elevator cowered as she swore like a trucker.
    “Sorry,” was all Rick could muster.
    “Me too.” The girl glared at him with eyes startlingly bright, banded in colors that reminded Rick of the tiger iron stone he used to bring back as gifts for his sons after tour stops in Australia. She mumbled something about good deeds unpunished and left it at that.
    As they rode in uncomfortable silence, Rick realized the elevator was going up, not down. He had been so intent on escaping, the thought hadn’t even occurred to him that it might not be going the way he wanted.
    Nothing was going the way he wanted these days.
    He sighed, his eyes drifting down. The girl was balanced like a stork, her bare foot nestled against the inner thigh of her opposite leg. How she was able to stand like that while the elevator took its time to stop at every other floor, Rick had