Hung Out: A Needles and Pins Rock Romance (66 page)

With a flourish, he settled his shades on his nose. “And so it begins.” Waggling his brows as if he were speaking of pre-show interviews and a full itinerary, he let himself out the door.

And so it begins. Another go at siblings only
. Because if that’s what it took to keep her in his life, then that was to become a way of life.

Chapter 31

“Shit.” Expelling the curse to an empty room, she stared at the closed door. She had already failed at resisting Gage in off-tour mode. And Gage in full-on-rock-star mode was ten times more dangerous to her libido.

Rock stars were supposed to be obnoxious. Full of themselves. Reckless party animals. Where was obnoxious, conceited, fucked up Gage?

“Shit, shit, shit!”

Grabbing her phone, she viciously jabbed out a text and then waited, frustrated when an answer didn’t come.
Where are you Ivy? You’re never around anymore when I need you
.

The next text she sent to Landon.

She’d already scoped out the food vendors. All of these festivals had menus catering to special diets, making her job a lot easier than it was on the bus.

The picture of the greasy burrito he sent did look delicious.

She’d just finished cleaning out her room when one of the crew came by. “Got everything you need?” When she nodded with a pat to her giant shoulder bag, he tossed the luggage into a golf cart. She’d even taken a quick peek through Gage’s things to make sure he hadn’t forgotten something he couldn’t do without.

The eight loose condoms in the bottom of his bag stuck in her mind. Was he hooking up, discreetly enough that she hadn’t noticed? She could count the minutes on one hand that she’d been in his dressing room. And in hotels, she’d never know.

She wandered the grounds, waded in the lake, and caught part of a show from the VIP stand. She met Gage and their tour manager for a bite to eat. She replied some inconsequential response when Ivy finally texted back, ignored a text from Henni, and sent a text to Logan with a picture attachment of a couple wearing frog leg boots.

And she drooled over Gage in all of his rock godliness when Rattler took the stage.

By that evening, she was lying in a hotel bed in Croatia, thinking about those damn condoms again. Gage was back in big brother mode. All day he’d been sweet and funny, but no longer flirty. His eyes hadn’t lingered when they’d sat across from each other in the ride to the airport. They’d boarded the train and he’d chosen a seat a few down from hers instead of coming up with crazy excuses to ensure they sat together.

Turning her head to the window, she took in the stretch of turquoise sea beyond the rooftops. Iron bars just outside the glass sectioned the view into six neat rectangles.

She texted Ivy, but was no longer surprised or upset when no text came right back. Wayne Ketchum had somehow obtained her email, and after reading his threat over her late payment, she saved it out of sight into a folder. Once she’d passed along the news of the DNA test to her mother, she’d honestly expected the slimy snake to disappear. She knew she needed to talk to her lawyers about the past extortions, but being on tour was like an alternate reality. With a last look at the clock, she texted her two clients.

To which Landon’s predictable response was ‘Just what are you offering, Bunny Pie?’ His reply was always suggestive, and she’d quit even humorously texting back ‘a chillaxing potion, Casanova’ or similar.

Gage, the un-obnoxious band member; Gage, the brother texted back: ‘I’m okay. Thanks, Sis.’

In a lethargic mode, she swung her legs from the bed and stripped off her jeans en route to the bathroom. She showered the traveling grime from her weary body and dawdled, thinking of Gage until her knees went weak, and she grabbed the showerhead for support. No hotel robe hung at the ready, so she wrapped in a towel and padded back into the main room. After turning off the lamp, she grabbed a couple of random mini-bottles from the fridge and stood in the darkness before the window. The sun had been replaced by city lights, the glow curving around the inky blackness of the sea and horizon.

Trying the clasp, she discovered the windowpanes drew open and the night air caressed her still-damp skin and hair. She plugged in her amp and settled with her guitar in the confines of the windowsill.

I mixed up a potion for my mixed up emotions

And sat by the sea drinking to my misery

Pausing, she glugged the liquor until only a sip or two remained.

If I mixed an elixir; if one sip would fix us

Would you sip by the sea with me?

Not bad? Maybe the key to great lyrics was to drink while composing.

The festival in Croatia
was followed up by a few shows over the next couple of weeks in smaller venues. They traveled by bus. A sleeper coach is what she heard it referred to. Instead of the bunks being in the middle of the long vehicle, the bus was a double decker and their pods were sectioned off on the top story. It was roomier and quieter, yet terrifying to her for the same inexplicable reason the folding festival rooms had been. She couldn’t shake the feeling the bus was top-heavy, and she had more than one nightmare of a bus wreck.

She was awakened from one of these dreams by her own hoarse yell. Drenched in sweat and shaking, she rubbed her hand to the crown of her head, realizing she must have come up from the bed enough to hit her skull.

The bus was moving. She blinked in the darkness. Was it morning, afternoon, or night? She struggled with her memories.

After last night’s show they’d adjourned to the connecting bar where the band had enjoyed being mobbed by their fans. Both Landon and Gage had joined the others drinking. Gage had echoed her own order of a margarita on the rocks. After two, he’d switched to pomegranate juice, which she’d noticed had become a virgin favorite of his since his first try at the ice bar in L.A. But Landon, despite her best efforts to keep him in check, had become shitfaced. While she was busy trying to do her job with the obnoxious drummer boy, she hadn’t been paying attention until it was too late to the gaggle of groupies all over Gage. The female attention was nothing new. It happened almost everywhere he went, even now when his hiatus from tabloid headlines had his recognition factor at an all-time low. But even if the gals were practically—and sometimes literally—straddling his lap, she’d always seen a distance in his demeanor. Not so last night.

Last night he’d seemed to enjoy the boobs below his face and long legs extending from short skirts tangled with his while dancing. He’d seemed to thrive on manicured nails playing in his hair, caressing his chest, and stiletto heels against his biker boots while loitering at the bar. A couple of times she’d looked up, finding him missing for too long.

Throwing back the curtain, she bolted from her bunk, running from her thoughts. After stopping at the bathroom, she descended the spiral staircase. The moment her socked feet hit the first level, Landon picked his head up from the tabletop.

“Scarlette, thank fuck.” His body remained hunched, his arms on the table, and he dropped his forehead to his forearms as he begged. “Help me, please.”

“I told you. Didn’t I try to help you last night?” She slammed ingredients on the galley countertop as she bitched. “It’s not my job to cure your hangover. It’s my job to keep you from getting one. Was it worth it? I hope so.”

“Shit bitch. Save the sermon for later. Or better yet, never.” He mumbled into the table.

Gage emerged from the stairway and had obviously heard the exchange. With a fistful of hair, he jerked the other man’s head up. “What the fuck did you just call her?”

“Leave him, Gage. He’s an idiot.” The phrase pertaining to the obnoxious drummer was becoming one of her more common admonishments. Jamming the top on the canister and holding it for good measure, she hit the blender button.

“I’m sorry, Scarlette… Fuck, fuck. Just stop! Fuck!”

She whirled around in time to see Gage release Landon’s head, and Landon rub his skull as she had hers earlier after bumping it on her bunk. As she drizzled the smoothie into a cup, she glared over the mixer at the two of them, but a smile twitched her lips. Even if Gage had fucked someone else, or two someone elses, or three the night before, it felt good to have him come to her defense like a knight in shining armor—or a brother.

The ‘B’ word deflated her contented satisfaction.

“Any chance I could get one of those?”

Landon had already grimaced and made a run for the bathroom, slamming himself inside. Through the door drifted sounds of his condition—the rummage and then slam of the storage cabinet where the barf bags were kept, and retching.

“Sure?” She arched her brows when the heaves didn’t slow.

“What did you do to it?” With sudden understanding, Gage peered into the mixture.

“Just helping him clean out his system faster.”

“You’re evil, Sis.”

Stop it with the ‘S’ word
!

She mixed a fruit smoothie, dumping an electrolyte juice into the concoction. After blending and serving him, she cleaned up the mess and joined him on the couch in front of the television.

The others gradually descended from the top level, blinking the sleep from their eyes. As it turned out, Landon was in the doghouse with even his longtime bandmates because tonight was a non-show night and a much anticipated hotel bed night. Because of Landon’s disappearance with a girl the night before and then his subsequent arrival at the bus in the early morning hours, they were still on the road instead of already checked into the hotel.

When at last they rolled into their town of respite, everyone began to gather their things. Once the bus stopped, no one wanted to be on it a moment longer.

Scarlette was cleaning out her bunk when she looked across to Gage’s bag yawning open atop his mattress. Practically an invitation to look.

Fighting her pathetic impulse to snoop, she zipped her guitar into its shoulder carrier and listened, attuning her ears to the stairway. Losing the battle with her conscience, she took advantage of this moment alone. She twisted in the narrow aisle, and stealthily bent, reaching inside his bag with both hands. Curving her fingers into crane-like scoops, she burrowed through the disorderly mass of clothing to the bottom of the bag.

One. Two. Three. Four. Five
. Damn it. A couple of the foil packets slipped through her fingers and she lost count.
One. Two. Three
. This time she collected them into one hand and searched with the other.
Four. Five. Six. Okay. There should be two more
. She tightly clutched the ones she’d found and frantically scraped around in the bag, praying to find the other two.

“What the hell are you doing?” Gage’s bellow may as well have been an air horn; she lurched so violently some of the condoms fell, each miraculously into the bag.

At the same time, she jerked her other hand clear of his belongings. “I… Um… I thought I might need…”
Holy fuck he was looking angrier by the second.
He remained frozen, his mouth agape as he eyed her hand full of neat foil squares while she stammered. “I was just going to borrow…” And quicker than she could blink, he’d stalked the distance between the two of them and towered over her.

In one rough swipe, he seized the rest of them from her clutch and lobbed them at the bag so hard a couple of them bounced out. “Like hell!” His dark gaze was a dangerous glitter and his nostrils flared. “You need condoms, Scar? You get ’em from somewhere else.
Anywhere
else. The fuck!”  

“Yeah. I’m sorry.” Her apology was a squeak. What the hell had she been thinking?
What a stupid, stupid lie
. On the one hand, seeing the pain in his face seemed justified given her agony of watching him with other women last night. On the other hand, she never wanted to hurt him. Ever. “I am. Really.” She reiterated her apology and since he was still a wall between her and her bunk, she took a step to the side. “Can I get by? Please?”

It was several long hard beats of her heart before he stepped aside, grabbed his bag without zipping it, left the fallen condoms on the floor, and departed. The rhythmic stomp of each stair stabbed at her ears. As the bus rolled to a stop, she took her time, checking her bunk for anything she might have overlooked, although she’d already cleaned it thoroughly, and at this point, she didn’t give a shit if she forgot anything.

When enough time ticked by that the bus was surely emptied of the band, she shouldered her bags and bumped down the narrow staircase.

“There you are.” Their tour manager offered to relieve her of her bags when she stepped into the hotel lobby. When she politely shook her head, he passed her a keycard. “Get some rest, sweetheart. You look beat.”