Over the Line (3 page)

She was always dry after a concert. Dry and ready for some time to wind down alone. But the show was never officially over until the after-concert party wound down. Fans with backstage passes shoved concert programs under her nose and the noses of her band members and backup singers, then flushed red when they scored a much-coveted autograph.

As usual, her drummer, Derek McCoy, was eating it up with a spoon and making his usual and tiresome post-concert play for her.

"You were hot tonight, babe." Slinging his arm over her shoulders and pulling her close, Derek made a big show of nuzzling her neck like it was something he had a right to do—which he sure as hell didn't. If you believed the tabloids, however, Derek was her on-again, off-again love interest. Derek would like nothing more than to make those stories true.

Wasn't going to happen.

He smelled like booze and smoke and the expensive leather of the black vest he wore over his bare chest. Twin nipple rings peeked out with winking diamonds whenever he moved. From the corner of her eye, Janey caught a glimpse of Chris Ramsey's video recorder catching all the action. Janey gritted her teeth, not for the first time wishing she'd never let Max talk her into letting the freelance videographer tape the tour for an MTV documentary. The last image she wanted preserved for posterity was one of her and Derek in a clinch.

"What do you say we put a cap on the night in my room?" Derek continued, not taking Janey's hint when she pushed against his side. "We can make the night even hotter."

Janey squirmed out from under Derek's imprisoning arm. For the sake of the gathered crowd, she forced a smile rather than snarl at him. "Okay, we've gone over this before, but for clarity's sake, what part of 'when hell freezes over' isn't registering with you?" she asked sweetly so only Derek could hear.

How a man with such a swaggering ego could affect the look of a pouty little brat she'd never know.

"You know, one of these days, I'm going to quit askin'," Derek warned through a smile that held more venom than regret.

She waggled her almost empty bottle of water at him. "This is me—living for the day you keep that promise."

She was beyond caring that she'd dealt his massive ego another blow. Derek was becoming a pest—one she really didn't have time to deal with.

'"Fraid you can't handle my brand of action?" he taunted with a sneer.

She couldn't help it. She laughed. Derek considered himself God's gift, and it royally pissed him off that she wasn't interested in unwrapping his "package". "If that's what you want to think, you just run with it."

She turned to walk away, but he grabbed her arm, jerked her up tight against him, and pressed his mouth to her ear. "You're a cock tease, you know that? Sometimes I wonder why I even bother. But there's one thing I do know. One of these days, you're going to be sorry for stringing me along. Very, very sorry."

Janey dealt with the little shot of unease that zipped through her blood by turning it into outrage. She glared from his hand where it wrapped in a bruising grip around her upper arm to the ugly anger in his eyes. "You are very close to crossing a line here, Derek. Get your hand off my arm and walk away and I'll chalk up your little tirade to the booze and a bad day....

"Now," she ordered when several seconds passed and he still hadn't let go of her.

"Fuck it," he swore, and released her with a flourish. "No skin off my ass." And finally, he walked away.

After a deep breath, Janey finished her water and grabbed another bottle, her attention suddenly riveted on a clean-cut, all-American-boy type approaching her.

Just what the doctor ordered. A diversion from that nasty little scene with Derek. And what a diversion. He was not the prototype of her usual fan, who preferred grunge to gleam. This boy practically shined.

His hair—a sun-bleached brown—was buzz-cut, his black T-shirt and jeans pin-neat and free of holes. Not a scrap of leather, a piercing, or a soul patch in sight. His complexion was apple-pie and wholesome. She'd guess him at about five nine, five ten. And while it was obvious he'd spent hours pumping weights and bulking up the impressive muscles that strained the seams of his black T-shirt, she'd bet tonight's gate receipts that those baby blues hadn't witnessed half the things most rocker fans his age had seen.

Innocence. Something about him flat-out shouted it.

She couldn't resist smiling at him as he came within a yard of her. And when he actually blushed, she felt a curious surge of protective instinct. All that naiveté was refreshing. And kind of cute. So was he—in a baby-face, beach-boy-with-a-body kind of way.

For the first time ever, she considered the merits of a one-night stand.
That's
how hot he was.

And that's how deprived you are,
she told herself with a self-effacing smile.
Ah, the downside of celibacy.

Oh well. A little harmless flirting couldn't hurt.

"Hi, sweetie." She was still jazzed on the residual adrenaline that always gave her a buzz during and after a solid performance. Plus, she was a little revved up from her face-off with Derek. "You a member of the fan club? And does your momma know you're out this late?" she added with a teasing grin.

He smiled then. All slow and amused and lazy. And something amazing happened to his face. It transitioned from Babe in Toyland to just plain babe. Twin dimples dented his clean-shaven cheeks. The Michael Douglas cleft in his chin widened. And though he couldn't have been much more than seventeen, he suddenly looked a whole lot older—and just a little more naughty than he might be nice.

The fleeting notion of groping a groupie raised its ugly head again. Especially when she got a whiff of him. Clean. Mostly he just smelled clean. It was a turn-on of epic proportions.

She gave herself a mental head slap while a hundred conversations from the gathered crowd buzzed around them.
Can we say statutory rape?

"Actually," he said, in a voice that was gruff and gravelly and way outdistanced the youthful picture he made, "I'm on the payroll."

She brushed a fall of damp hair behind her ear, ran the cool water bottle over her forehead. "Yeah?"

"Yeah. Yours."

She did a double take. Looked him up and down.

"Jason Wilson, ma'am." He offered his hand. "I'm your new securities specialist."

Janey blinked. Then blinked again as a wave of disbelief rose inside her like a helium balloon. She pushed out a laugh.

"That's a joke, right?"

He tilted his head, shrugged. "No, ma'am. No joke."

"Oh, for the love of... Max!" she yelled, and, grabbing Jason's hand, tugged him across the room in her manager's direction.

"Yo, what's up?" Max Coogan turned, cigarette in one hand, gin in the other, still smiling over something a local sponsor had said. He sobered abruptly when he saw her face. "What? What's wrong?"

"By any chance, have you met my new
bodyguard
?"

Max's brows rose as he glanced from Janey to the "bodyguard" in question. He managed an uneasy smile. "Problem?"

"
Problem
?"
She couldn't believe this. "Yeah, there's a problem. While he plays bodyguard for
me
...
who's gonna babysit
him
?"

Janey
rode the hotel elevator in silence, tuning out Max and her new "bodyguard's" conversation as they ascended to the Breakers' penthouse suite.

She mentally shook her head and thought back to the conversation that had landed her in this position in the first place. It had been Monday night, after the third and last Miami concert.

"Things are getting out of control, snooks," Max had said, slumping in the backseat beside her as the limo crept away from the back entrance of the concert hall. He'd tugged at his ripped jacket sleeve, then given up on setting it right, with a disgusted grunt.

As usual after a concert these days, hundreds of fans had crowded next to the stretch, screaming her name, some of them crying, some of them stoned, all of them hoping for a glimpse of their rock idol behind the bulletproof smoked-glass windows.

"And I'm getting too old for this shit," he'd added wearily.

"
I'm
getting too old for it." The adrenaline rush that always followed a performance had started to let her down.

"Seriously, Janey. I can't take care of you like I used to. Sweet Baby Jane is no longer one among a pack of rockers with a broadening fan base. You're a megastar. A supernova. You've evolved into a monster machine. If I'm with you, then I'm letting the business end slide. You can't afford for me to do that. Not with the numbers you're racking up."

As she had that night in the back of the stretch, she really looked at her manager. Max's dark brown hair was tied back at his nape with a leather thong and was relatively free of gray. His face was only slightly lined by years of wheeling and dealing for the record industry's hottest properties until he'd dropped them all and signed on exclusively as her full-time manager.

From that day six years ago, Max Cogan had been at her side whenever she was out in public and often when she was in private. He was her rock. Her anchor. Her sounding board. She might act tough and unshakable for the public, but she couldn't imagine facing these kinds of mobs without him. Neither could she imagine facing those hours when she was alone.

Especially not lately. The past few days she'd been experiencing an extreme and almost paranoid feeling that she was being watched.

But she didn't need a bodyguard. She'd told Max as much that hot Miami night. "If you need help with the business, then hire someone on that end."

Max had shaken his head, looked sad. "I need help on
this
end, sweetie. Someone we can trust. Someone who can handle your day-to-day needs."

That's when the light had dawned. "You're talking more security."

Looking guilty, he'd nodded. "Yeah. I'm talking more security."

"
Not
the old twenty-four-seven-bodyguard discussion," she'd said with a groan.

"Yep. That old discussion."

Janey had sagged back against the seat. "Just up the number of rent-a-thugs so you don't have to run all the interference yourself."

Then as now, she couldn't wait to take a shower. Her own sweat plus cigarette smoke from the after-concert party clung to her clothes and hair, making her half-sick.

"We can do that, yeah, but it still won't be enough. I want around-the-clock protection for you—and I don't want to see a new face in every city and have to wonder if I can count on the guy."

"Now wait before you shoot me down," Max had interjected when she'd geared up to protest in earnest. "I know you don't want a personal bodyguard. I know that. But what you don't seem to realize is that you've run out of room. We can't dodge this particular bullet any longer. Between the press and the crazies out there, I'm wearing out, snooks. I can't deal with these mobs anymore. I need to turn the reins over to someone who can actually protect you if you need protecting. Someone who can oversee your security issues as well as be there for you to count on."

Like Max had always been there for her to count on during her six-year "overnight" rise to success. That's what this had really come down to. If Janey caved on the bodyguard issue, she gave in to the idea that she'd lose Max. Lose that constant, steady smile, that quick wit and warm shoulder.

She glanced at him now as the elevator hit the Breakers' penthouse level. The strain and fatigue on his face was telling. At first glance, in his faded designer jeans and silk designer jacket, Max didn't look a day over fifty. That was if you didn't look at his eyes. His eyes were tired, which meant he was tired, and that gave Janey a twinge of guilt.