High Strung (Power Station Book 1) (3 page)

Sydney had been fun. Lexi had hooked up the date with her friend-assistant so I wouldn’t have to brave a family wedding, stag. I knew she wasn’t a hundred per cent cool with it, thinking I would be a total ass-wipe and try and hump her friend’s leg or something, but I promised I’d keep my dick in my pants. Family celebrations when you are a thirty-three-year-old single dude were down right dangerous. Sure they accused me of acting like a teenager, but getting older didn’t mean I had to change. It’s who I was. They didn’t care I was livin’ large and didn’t want to be saddled down with one girl. It was like talking to a fucking wall. So going solo into the lion’s den with as many meddling aunts as I have would have been catastrophic. Fuck! They would have sent out the bat signal in the hopes of finding me a wife. Luckily with Syd on my arm, radiating professionalism and that cute English accent, they’d been appeased enough to stay off my ass. We both actually had a really good time, which was unexpected bonus. So when I took her home and she paused before stepping out of the car, I knew I had an in. She gave me this speech about it being one time and shit, and neither of us wanted anything more so what the hell. It had been good, real good, and I was all up for perhaps working her into a constant rotation but she hadn’t been down with it. Giving me some bogus line about me being a bad investment. I didn’t get it. Was I supposed to be showing her my investment portfolio? My 401K? I would have thought the only thing she would have been interested in was my ability to make her toes curl—which I did, no less than three times—not whether or not I had a retirement plan.

“Please tell me the redhead wasn’t your attempt to make Sydney jealous? Lexi will have your balls if you’re messing with her applicant pool.” Stone continued to run his mouth as we pulled into Manhattan traffic. We weren’t going anywhere, anytime soon. NYC in the afternoon was solid gridlock.

“Oh no, she was just some random groupie I was having fun with. Way too uptight but I thought I’d give her something to tell her friends about. You know me, always thinking about the fans.” I omitted telling him she’d obviously had a thing for him. Despite the bastard being married and a walking advert for Babies-R-Us with all his diaper bags and shit, broads were still throwing themselves at him. I really needed to work on either him or James letting me borrow a kid for a few hours. Girls just seemed to eat that up

“She didn’t look like a groupie. What she looked was a lot pissed off.” He raised his eyebrow and gave me his usual cocky grin.

“Listen, brother, not to be an ass, but you’re out of the game now so you don’t know how it works. Trust me, I got this. Fifty bucks says as soon as she’s done with her interview she is going to find the nearest bathroom and rub it out.” I stretched out my legs hoping to ease some of the tightness in my crotch. Imagining Ashlyn scratching that itch had me thinking I was going to have to do the same. That tight little body, those fiery green eyes, those cute little freckles on the bridge of her nose. That’s putting aside the fact I have a thing for redheads. It looked natural too; wonder if she had any hair down there? Yeah, a stroke was definitely on the cards.

Stone popped me in the arm, crashing through my triple-x fantasy just as it was starting to get good. “Dude, my daughter is in the car.”

“She can’t talk yet, so she has no idea what I’m saying.” I turned around and checked on Grace who was oblivious to anything I was talking about. Her tired little eyes were fighting the rock of the Escalade that was bound to send her to sleep. Her lips curled into a precious little smile as her eyelids finally gave up the fight. “But if some piece of shit ever speaks to her that way, you need to call me and we’re putting that asshole in the ground.”

“Don’t even go there, I’m already contemplating buying a gun.” Stone gave me a sideways glance and I knew he wasn’t kidding

“Fuck the gun, she looks like her mother. You’re going to need a motherfucking arsenal, brother.”

Too depressed to go
back to the apartment I would probably be evicted from in the next few days, I took a bus to Megan’s loft. Although we had only met about a year and a half ago, we had become incredibly tight in a remarkably short time. She was my best friend. We had both started working at Garro’s around the same time, with me working behind the bar and Megan as a waitress. Her warm smile and easy personality were a welcome change from the cold world of the brokerage firm I had come from. The sports bar was meant to be a temporary job for both of us until we gained more meaningful employment.

Megan Winters had studied psychology at Georgetown and after completing her psych degree she had decided to take a year off before going into practice. She was a five-foot-four powerhouse with long blonde hair, bright turquoise eyes, and an obscene IQ. Her dad was a highly respected cardiothoracic surgeon and her mother a pediatrician, so it had been assumed she’d follow in their footsteps and go into the medical field. Megs had said that going into psychology was as rebellious as she dared to be. Her parents were both lovely people who, despite their high-geared careers, were supportive of their daughter slumming it for a year. In fact, they had encouraged her, as they considered it to be character building, and were proud they had raised a daughter who, despite her privileged life, wasn’t afraid to get her hands dirty. My hiatus from the business sector hadn’t been by choice. The forced redundancy and a slow economy sealed my fate. Eventually Megs’s time at the bar came to an end and she was now a clinical psychologist at Mount Sinai while I, unfortunately, was still fending off drunkards and popping caps off pilsners.

“How did it go, Ash?” She welcomed me with a hug as I walked through her doorway. Her Greenwich Village pad, flooded by the midday sun, was as warm as her beautiful smile. Her surrounds reinforced she had money. It wasn’t flaunted, but it stirred my desire to have nice things too.

“Terrible,” I mumbled returning her hug. “Not only did I probably not get the job but I made a complete ass of myself in front of Power Station’s drummer.” I had officially hit a new low.

“You got to meet Troy Harris?” Megs’s eyes opened wide with excitement. I must be the only person in the five boroughs who wasn’t a fan. “Ash, he’s all kinds of hot. Those hazel eyes, the Mohawk, that body. Wow, just wow.”

“Hazel eyes? Mohawk? No, I met Dan Evans. Dark messy hair, dark brown eyes, bad attitude. Isn’t he the drummer?” I collapsed onto her sofa not needing an invitation. The beautiful plush cushion that wrapped around me allowed my muscles to ease. Mismatched thought waves continued to turn in my head despite the meeting being over. While I really didn’t want to relive my meeting with Dan, I needed to somehow expunge him from my mind and figured a debrief with Megs was the best way to do it.

“Ashlyn, seriously? Dan Evans is the bass player. I saw him at a nightclub once; he’s really cute. Troy Harris is the drummer.” The iPad that was never far from her grasp was commandeered for my education and thrust into my hands. The band was the background wallpaper. There he was, his smug sexy smile, taunting me from behind the glass.

“Well hopefully if there is a god, I will never see Dan again, so it doesn’t matter which instrument he plays.” I handed the iPad back to Megs and let my head fall back against the cushion of the sofa, closing my eyes in an effort to ward off the headache threatening to take up residence in my frontal lobe.

“Why? What happened?” The couch cushion beside me compressed as Megs obviously joined me on the two-seater.

“He caught me gawking at Alex Stone like I wanted to eat him.” I cringed, squeezing my eyes tightly, stupidly believing that would shut out the embarrassment of my earlier activities.

“Alex Stone was there, too?” Megs’s voice rose in excitement, taking my arm and shaking it vigorously.

“Yes, and he is every bit as impressive up close. I’m pretty sure my tongue was polishing the floor.” I opened my eyes to Megs’s beaming face.

“I just want you to know I hate you right now. It’s not fair you got to meet Alex and Dan and you aren’t even a fan.” Megs folded her arms across her chest and pouted. “So…were they nice?”

“Trust me, I would have rather it had been you. No matter how cute Dan is, he is also an obnoxious pig.” I can’t believe I just called Dan Evans cute. Why couldn’t I focus on the fact he was offensive rather than the fact he was attractive? When was the last time I had eaten? Maybe my blood sugar was low.

“Aw, you think Dan is cute?” Megs smiled, unfortunately not willing to let the tiny word that had unconsciously slipped from my mouth, go. “Wow. Your libido is still intact. I was sure it had taken a flight to Boca. When was the last time you went on a date?”

“There is nothing wrong with my libido. I’m just choosey about who I date. I don’t see the point wasting time with someone who obviously doesn’t have the potential for my long-term goal. I told you, I have criteria.”

Sure, there had been guys that had caught my attention and I had dated sporadically in college, but I hadn’t met anyone I’d really wanted to hold on to. I could count the number of guys I had slept with on one hand and still have a finger or two spare. It’s not that I was saving myself or I had an aversion to sex, I just had found it a little underwhelming, usually having to take things into my own hands—literally—to climax.

“Ash, you know you are allowed to date just for fun right? You don’t have to see every guy for his
long-term potential
. Maybe just go out and let your hair down. Screw your criteria.”

“No. I refuse to be a woman who settles. I worked my ass off to get into a decent college, and even though things are tough right now, I’ll eventually make it back onto Wall Street. I want to find a guy who’s going be a good husband with a decent earning capacity. I’m not trying to sound conceited, but my parents have both been slaving away at that bar their whole lives. They’ll be working till the day they die. I’m the first one of my family to go to college. I love them, but I don’t want that life for me. If my future husband and I are smart, we can build up a sizeable nest egg and let our money work for us. I need someone who is disciplined and like-minded in order to do that.”

“What about being in love, Ashlyn? It can’t just be about money and security. Don’t you want a guy who will give you butterflies? Someone who is more than just a financial partner but who will also love you back?” Megs was ever the romantic. Her ideas of love were twirled around a wonderful fantasy, tied with a fancy red bow, and while my heart craved it, it was luxury I would admire from a distance.

I winced, realizing how contrived it all sounded. “Well of course I have to like the guy, it’s not like I’m going to marry someone I don’t like. I’m not that shallow.”
Is that how I came across?
Shallow? Conceited? Vocalized, the clinical plan for my future sounded so much worse than it was. I envied the freedom Megs had, to live without the fear of being broke. With that freedom, love stood a chance. How did the conversation turn from the interview from hell to my dating life?

“Okay. Here is what is going to happen.” Megs’s eyes gleamed with excitement. “The interview is done and we have no way of controlling the outcome. Right?”

“Sadly, you’re right.” I nodded. There was really nothing I could do. While I had answered Lexi Reed’s questions competently, I could tell she wasn’t convinced. She saw through my bullshit and knew it was a Hail-Mary move, an effort to reenter the corporate world in the hopes of getting something more suitable in the future.

“So why don’t you take a night off from your grand plan and get crazy with me?”

“Um, no. My plans for this evening include being online, job hunting, while drowning my sorrow in three-cheese pie from Carmine’s Pizzeria.” The promise of cheesy goodness was guaranteed to make my night suck slightly less than my day had.

“Ashlyn, you can take one night off from being responsible. One night, come out with me. Get drunk. Act like a regular twenty-seven-year-old. Who knows, maybe find some totally inappropriate guy and make out with him on the dance floor.” Megs lifted herself off the sofa; the conversation was far from over.

“Megs, you know that isn’t me. Besides, I can’t afford it and I have nothing to wear.”

“So borrow something of mine. I have a whole closet full of clothes; pick anything you like. And it’s my treat so you can’t use money as an excuse.”

“What do you think one night is going to achieve?” I couldn’t see the point in her expedition, other than delaying the inevitable mind-numbing search through pages of dead-end employment opportunities. And possibly sparing myself an increase of calories that was probably going to land straight on my ass.