Seven Nights of Sin - Lacey Alexander [45]
He nuzzled closer. “Me, too.”
When her gaze fell on the cross at his throat, she reached out to gently slide her fingertip down the smooth silver. “Is this special? I never noticed you wearing it before last night, but you’ve had it on ever since.”
“I wear it all the time. Just ends up under my T-shirts most days.”
“So it is special.”
He gave a light nod against his pillow. “My grandmother gave it to me on my confirmation, when I was twelve. She brought it with her from Greece as a young girl.”
“Wow.” His reply surprised her on many levels. It amazed her to find out the cross was so old. And that Damon Andros was the sort of guy who treasured his grandmother. And that Damon Andros had a religious side. “I hadn’t guessed you for a good Catholic boy.”
He cast a sideways glance. “Catholic, yeah. Not necessarily good.”
She smiled in reply. “Is your grandma…still alive?”
His expression transformed into one of warmth—maybe a sort of comfort—she hadn’t seen there before. “Eighty-five and still going strong. She’s back in Brooklyn with the rest of my family.”
“Wow,” she said again. She’d just never thought about Damon even having a family. “I bet they’re proud of you.”
He let out a short, cynical laugh. “Yeah, it’s every parent’s dream to have a son accused of sexual misconduct on national TV.”
She winced. “Sorry—I wasn’t thinking about that. I was thinking about your job.”
“They love me and accept what I do—but it wasn’t exactly their first choice.”
“What was?”
He sighed. “Until his retirement a few months ago, my father sold insurance out of the same little office on the same Brooklyn street since before I was born. I have three older sisters, but my parents kept on trying until they got a boy so there’d be somebody to take over the family business.”
“Oh.” She couldn’t imagine the pressure that would put on a kid. “And one of your sisters didn’t qualify?”
He grinned. “They’re very traditional. And proud, too—proud as hell that my grandfather started the business fresh off the boat and that my dad kept it going. So I was groomed from an early age to be the next Andros Insurance guy.
“Problem was, I liked music a whole lot more than insurance. I got into a band in high school, but when I figured out I wasn’t much of a musician, I got a job at CBGB instead. So by the time I was eighteen, I was working in the insurance office by day and the bar at night.”
Brenna was duly impressed—she knew the small Manhattan underground club had been the place to launch punk and alternative bands in the seventies. Groups like Blondie, the Ramones, and the Talking Heads had made their way to fame from CBGB’s stage. “That must have been fabulous.”
“It was un-fucking-believable,” he said. “I was there in the early nineties and worked my way up from busboy to sound mixer to events coordinator. I got to see bands like Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, and Smashing Pumpkins before anyone knew who they were.
“In fact,” he said, casting her a this-will-surprise-you look, “I first met Jenkins there.”
She drew her chin back. “No way.”
“Yep. Blue Night was brand-new then, and he was doing his own scouting in those days. We started talking music, and he thought I had a good handle on it. We got to know each other and he offered me a job.”
“Was it hard to pack up and move to L.A.? Tell your dad you were leaving the insurance biz?” Before a few minutes ago, she couldn’t have imagined anything being difficult for Damon Andros, but hearing about his family, picturing him as a young boy in Brooklyn, changed that.
“Yes and no,” he said, his voice softening. “I didn’t like letting them down, but I was suffocating there. Leaving to pursue what I really wanted to do was very…freeing. In more ways than one.”
“What do you mean?”
His gaze