Love on the Rocks (Love on Tour #1) (2 page)

This was certainly his longest speech in the twenty minutes I’d been sitting here, and I was disconcerted by how the sound of his voice made him seem so much less frightening.

“So you were ditching everyone else? Even the girls?”

“Sometimes they get irritating,” Henry said.

“Like when they aren’t naked?” I asked, like the true feminist I am.

Henry grinned. “Well, it’s like this, Dani. I think women are the most amazing creatures on the planet. Only some of them don’t have a clue. They wield power through sex. Now don’t get me wrong, sex is without a doubt a great weapon all women have at their disposal, and there is nothing wrong with them using it. It’s just that some women don’t realize that it’s not the only tool they have. They have no idea what they could be. I respect women who know that they can do anything, and still embrace their sexy side.”

“So a genius in the board room, but open legs at night?” I asked sarcastically.

“Not exactly what I meant, but sure,” he grinned.

“And I take it your groupies don’t fit that bill.”

“Not even close,” he muttered. “You, on the other hand…”

“Don’t even think about. You are not getting into my pants Henry Tolk.”

Henry turned to look at Sean. “I think I’m in love.”

“Who’s Mike?” I asked, referring to Sean’s list of people on board bus one. “Your bodyguard?”

I said it to be a smartass. I couldn’t imagine these two men needing a bodyguard. And I certainly couldn’t imagine how large
he
would have to be. They both chuckled.

“He’s our man about the place,” Henry said. “He does whatever we need doing.”

“Like a personal assistant,” I suggested.

“Yeah,” Henry agreed, clearly liking that idea. “He’s our personal assistant.”

“He’s not ‘our’ anything,” Sean said. “He works for me.”

“Whatever,” Henry said. “He’s a good guy. He’s great at his job and he’s not annoying.”

“What about the bus driver, Tony?”

“Tony drives. And when he’s not driving he sleeps.”

“He’s a hell of a driver though,” Sean interjected.

“That he is,” Henry agreed.

Sean leaned toward me. “So what are you doing here, Dani?”

“I’m taking a road trip with my time between gigs. I want to see the parks of southern Arizona and New Mexico. Spring is the perfect time to check them out. The wild flowers will be blooming soon.”

“Okay, so you stopped along the way?”

“Yeah. Kind of. I hitched a ride out of Vegas that sort of went… badly.”

“What do you mean by that?” Sean looked intensely at me and leaned over the table. I leaned back.

“Well, I don’t have a car right now, so I got a bus out of Jackson and eventually ended up in Vegas. There was a bus out of Vegas to Phoenix tomorrow afternoon, but when I got to Vegas all I wanted to do was leave. So I hitched a ride with a trucker who was headed down to Bullhead City. But he started to get weird.”

“Weird how?” Sean looked positively evil now.

“He kept talking about how we should pull over and sleep somewhere. So when he stopped here for gas I ran into the restaurant.”

Henry looked around the room. “Is he still here?”

“No. He came in looking for me, but I was in here talking to the cook and the waitress, so he left. I found out there’s a bus that comes through here at six in the morning and goes to Flagstaff. From there I can get a bus to Phoenix.”

“No more hitch-hiking,” Sean grunted.

“No. My lesson is learned. Hitch-hiking in Yellowstone usually results in getting picked up by a family or a bunch of granola hippies. I was naïve. I’ll take the bus to Phoenix and buy a car there. That was my plan anyway.”

Both men had cleaned their plates and they both sat back in their chairs in almost identical poses. They stared at each other for a long moment.

“Better idea,” Henry said finally. “Why don’t you ride with us to Phoenix.”

I was momentarily stunned by this offer, so I didn’t speak. Neither did they. The moment drew out and the waitress brought the check, refilled our coffee cups and left again, before I finally found my voice.

“How exactly is that safer?” I asked.

“Are you kidding?” Henry said. “We’re two stand-up guys. We’re totally safe.”

I did believe this, though I didn’t have any reason to. And obviously, my judgment of late was in question after the ill-fated truck ride. But I believed that I was in fact safe with these two men. Despite Henry’s assertions to the contrary, I was certain that neither of them was attracted to me. They had a busload of groupies and I was a skinny, awkward park ranger with flat brown hair and no sense of style. And despite his terrifying appearance, I was pretty sure that Sean was the protector-type. He loomed like a brick wall between me and trouble. Was riding in their fancy bus any worse than riding on a dirty Greyhound with god-knows-who at the crack of dawn?

But I wasn’t going to give in easily. I leaned back in my chair, mimicking their casual pose. “How do I know you won’t kidnap me and make me your slave? Perhaps you need a maid to pick up after you on the bus?”

Instead of laughing as I thought he would, Henry rolled his eyes.

“Why would you want a tagalong anyway?” I pressed.

“You’re entertaining,” Henry said with a grin.

I looked over at Sean. He was studying me. I raised a brow at him in a questioning gesture.

He shrugged. “You’re pretty damn cute, too.”

Sure, cute like a teddy bear.

I pointed my finger at Henry. “Okay, but just so we’re clear, you are
not
getting into my pants.”

Henry did laugh at this. “I can’t promise I won’t try to change your mind,” he said, as he grabbed the bill and rose from his seat.

2

The bus was really more of a giant motor home than an actual bus. I walked up three metal steps and came face to face with the driver, Tony. He sat in a little alcove in the front. He was a large man, with an even larger, cushy-looking seat. Everything he might need on a long journey was piled within his reach on the dash board or the floor beside him – cigarettes and an overflowing ashtray, a cup holder with three slots, all filled with extra large thermal mugs, a pair of bright blue sunglasses, maps, guidebooks, and a GPS system the size of an iPad.

After I was introduced to Tony, I found myself standing at the head of a long aisle that went down the middle of the bus. To my left was a booth with two fluffy bench seats facing each other with a long, thin table that ran between them. Behind that was a kitchenette with a sink, microwave, and cupboards. To my right was a pale green sofa that faced the booth across the aisle.

Across from the kitchenette was another fluffy sofa, this one dark red. An acoustic guitar rested beside it on a metal stand that was bolted to the wall. All along the sides, above the furniture, were large, heavily tinted windows.

Henry pointed out the bathroom in the back of the bus. It sat opposite what appeared to be a closet. Behind that, the very back of the bus was completely windowless and was shrouded in a privacy curtain.

We sat down at the booth, and as we did, a man emerged from behind the curtain in the back. That’s when it became clear to me that there was a bed back there.

The man looked very much like he’d just been sleeping. Younger and better dressed than the others, he was boyishly handsome with short, well-kept hair. His eyes were an amazing shade of bright blue. He was shorter than Henry and Sean, like most people, and his muscles, while present, were not nearly the behemoths they sported.

“Mike, we have a guest,” Henry announced jovially.

“Coffee first,” Mike groaned.

“Get us some while you’re up,” Henry said.

Mike groaned again in response and walked to the kitchenette. He prepared four cups of coffee and brought them, two at time, to the table along with a bottle of creamer and a handful of sugar packets. Then he dropped down into the seat beside Henry.

The bus moved fluidly onto the highway. I realized that this choice I had made was suddenly real. I was hitching a ride in a tour bus with rock stars.

I was still contemplating how the hell this had happened when Mike finally spoke to me. “Hi. I’m Mike,” He held his hand out to me over the table.

“Dani,” I said, shaking it.

“Nice to meet you, Dani.”

Mike studied me. I was sure that he was trying to figure out exactly how a skinny, grubby-looking girl with not a stitch of make-up on made it onto bus one.

“She’s a park ranger,” Henry announced, “headed to Phoenix with us.”

“Good. It’ll be nice to have some company other than these two for a change.”

“What about me?” Tony chimed in from his seat.

“Yeah, you’re great company, Tony. First time you’ve spoken since we left L.A.,” Mike grumbled.

“He likes the ladies,” Henry said, grinning. “What are we playing?” He produced a deck of cards from absolutely nowhere.

They all looked at me.

“I don’t know many card games,” I admitted. “Poker?”

“Perfect.” Henry started to shuffle. “What should we play for, Dani? Clothes?” He wiggled his eyebrows at me.

“No way. I am not playing strip poker with you, Henry.”

“She calls you Henry?” Mike asked.

“Apparently,” Henry shrugged.

I couldn’t possibly explain that it had all started because I needed to create a fantasy in my head in order to make myself comfortable in the presence of rock stars. But since Henry didn’t seem to mind, I decided to just go with the flow.

“We have chips,” Sean announced. He riffled through a cupboard that opened at the side of the bench he and I were sitting on and produced a round-about full of multi-colored poker chips.

“Are you sure you don’t want to play for clothes?” Henry asked me again, leaning over the table.

“Knock it off, Henry,” I said, pointing my finger at him. “You are not getting in my pants.”

Mike laughed.

“See, she’s great, right?” Henry leaned back in the booth and eyed me.

We played a hand, which I won, then Henry tossed me the deck. “Your turn to deal, Baby.”

“Baby?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Sure. If you get to call me Henry, then I get to call you by a nickname.”

“Baby?”

“Yeah, you know like in that 80’s movie.”

“It’s a good nickname for you,” Mike noted.

I gaped at them.

“I agree.” Sean said.

“Damn right,” Henry said, as if the entire discussion was over and settled.

I dealt the cards, feeling like I was about to be punked.

We played for hours. I laughed my ass off, mostly at Henry, who was like a wind-up toy. It might have been the five cups of coffee he drank, or the six packets of sugar he put in each one, but he was a ball of energy, never missing a chance to make a joke.

“Sean, what does this poker game remind me of?”

Sean rolled his eyes.

“It reminds me of that time I was getting a blow job from a hot blonde and you were outside with Tony changing a tire. Because I am getting all the goods tonight!” He raked in a stack of chips, laughing.

Sean was, without a doubt, his straight man. He grumped and harrumphed. “Hank, you are a pain the ass.”

Mike was the every man. He sat in the middle of this comedy duo like a fellow audience member. He would grin at me or give me funny looks whenever Henry said something off-the-wall that elicited a grumpy response from Sean.

By six a.m. the games had fallen to the wayside. Mike was sending e-mails on his laptop, sitting on the couch across the aisle. Henry was on the phone in the back, which left Sean and I sitting side-by-side in the booth.

Over the last three hours I’d either grown accustomed to him or he had simply become less scary. I leaned back in the seat and put my feet on the booth across from me, where Henry had been sitting.

“So, Sean, where are you from?”

Sean crossed his arms over his chest and regarded me. At first I wasn’t sure he was going to answer. His pause dragged out. I considered recovering by asking to get out and go the bathroom.

But he finally spoke. “Kalamazoo, you ever hear of it?”

“Isn’t there an old song about Kalamazoo?”

“Yes.” He paused again, looking at me in a way that made me feel like I was being examined. “It’s a little college town in western Michigan. Not exactly a cultural Mecca, but not a bad place to grow up.”

I had this thing where I liked to guess where people were in birth order. “Oldest child I bet, or only child.”

He nodded. “Oldest, I have a younger sister and a baby brother.”

“What do they do?”

“My sister is an actress. She’s in an off-Broadway show right now. My brother’s in law school.”

“And you were the one who hung out in your room and played with the guitar,” I guessed.

He smiled. “The basement. I loved that basement.”

“Cool parents?”

“Very cool. They come to my shows when I’m nearby. Hank says I can’t be a real rock n’ roller because I had a posh childhood.”

I laughed at that.

“Hank’s the real thing though. He had the alcoholic mother, didn’t know who his dad was, grew up in the bad part of L.A., the whole bit. He sure doesn’t mind staying at my parents’ house and eating my mom’s apple pie, though.”

I had so many questions, and I had a famous musician sitting right in front me willing to answer them.

“How did you get into… this?” I asked.

He chuckled at me. “What are you a reporter?”

“No just a Psychology major turned park ranger.”

“I was in a garage band in high school. We played basic hard rock covers, and a few poorly written originals. Then I went off to Julliard.”

“Julliard?” I asked, with probably too much shock.

“Yeah, I studied classical guitar. In my free time I played in a few back-up bands for your people.”

“My people?”

“Yeah, your classic rock, the old guys, from Motown hangers-on to the Haight Asbury veterans.”

“Okay, now I’m impressed,” I admitted.

He laughed. “That’s all it took?”

I nodded and looked at him expectantly, hoping he would get the hint to continue.

“I got introduced to a few record execs. One asked me to play for him and I played some of the hard rock hits from my teenage years. He liked it and set me up with a band. We started recording. The music got heavier and heavier and then it started selling.”

“Do you miss classic rock?”

He shrugged. “Not on stage. I like what I do on stage. I play the classics at home and sometimes at the studio. I have a whole album of covers I made, but never released.”

“You gotta play me something,” I begged. That voice singing a Rolling Stones song was all I could think about.

“Maybe. But you’ve just made me say more words consecutively than I usually do over the course of a day, so it’s your turn. What’s your story, Baby?”

I ignored the nickname and launched into my autobiography. “I grew up in San Francisco. We lived in a nice house on the hill. My dad is an investment banker. I, too, had a posh childhood.”

He grinned at me.

“But just before I started high school my dad hooked up with his secretary. I know it’s super cliché, but…” I shrugged.

“I bet that pissed your mom off.”

“You have no idea. She was already kind of a tough lady. That put her over the edge. She took him for the full half of his assets and moved me and my siblings to the East Bay.”

“How many?”

“Two. Older sister, younger brother. I’m the middle child.”

“I could have guessed.”

I smiled.

“What’s the deal with your sister and brother?”

“My little brother is a successful tech guy. He’s only 25 and he’s already started and sold three companies.”

“Living the San Francisco dream.”

“Exactly, the smart little punk. My sister is divorced, bitter, and basically a depressing person to be around. She’s a college professor, successful but unhappy, you know. The whole thing is just… I love her, though.”

“And you?”

“Into attention, adventure, and indecision. I’m definitely the black sheep.”

Henry moved back up the aisle and plopped down in the booth across from us.

“Not a word, Hank,” Sean warned. “Baby’s telling me a story.”

Henry just grinned. So I continued. “I went to college right after graduation because my dad told me I had to. And he was paying for it, of course. But I had no idea what I wanted to do. I ended up with like five different majors over the four years. Eventually, I got a Psychology degree with no idea what I was going to do with it.”

“So you became a park ranger?”

“I kind of fell into it. I… this is embarrassing.”

They both sat up straighter. “Yeah?”

“I was with a guy. We were living together and I was going to follow him. He was about to have his PhD, and he was trying to get a job. Anyway, it was stupid. And we broke up just before graduation. So there I was, no guy to follow and no plans. A friend of mine was going to spend the summer as a park ranger. It was too late for me to get on with the Park Service, so I went with her and worked at a hotel. The next season I got a ranger gig. I really liked it, and I’ve just kind of been doing it ever since.”

I didn’t know what else to say, so we sat in silence. They didn’t bombard me with questions or tell me what they thought of my story. They both just looked at me. I stared out the window.

“And then you hitched a ride out of Vegas and ended up here with us,” Sean concluded.

I looked back at him and smiled. “That’s right.”

We played a few more rounds of cards and finally pulled into Phoenix late in the morning. Despite all the coffee I’d consumed, I could feel the exhaustion pulling at me.

Sean and Henry got up and stretched, while Mike ran out of the bus and into a swanky hotel. I retrieved my bag from under the couch across the aisle and hefted it onto my shoulder. The damn thing was heavier than I remembered.

“Thanks for the ride guys. I really appreciate it.”

“Whoa, whoa, where do you think you’re going?” Henry asked, blocking my way out of the bus.

“I told you, I’m going to buy a car. Actually, I think I’m going to get a hotel room first and take a nap,” I admitted.

“Mike will get you a room,” Sean said.

“No. Thank you, but I don’t think I can afford this place. I’m just gonna head down the road and see if I can find a motel or something.”

Henry did not move out of my way.