Random Acts of Fantasy (22 page)

All the guys had shaved and cleaned up nicely, and I was completely flustered, a jumble of emotions that whirled and swirled inside as my two men ate up the floor between us and I found myself enveloped by them, the scent of aftershave and them consuming my senses.

So what do you say when you’re in that state?

“They waxed my hole.”

They waxed my hole?
Did I really just say that? My hand flew to my lips with a smack, as if spanking them for being so stupid.

Way to ruin the moment with my big mouth. Not that it was a change from the usual…

“Which one?” Trevor murmured, laughing. Joe just shook his head, eyes flitting about, suddenly a bit nervous, as if I’d broken some magic spell.

“You look great, Darla,” Sam said, giving me a hug. The dress was tight in all the right places, which meant I could barely move. Simone had said something about sacrifices we have to make to be beautiful, but I hadn’t realized that meant I’d have a hairless butthole that felt like I was walking around with my lip turned inside out in a blizzard.

Liam gave me a hug, too, and my God, that man had muscles. He was bigger now, I noticed, than Trevor—more filled out. Some lucky woman was going to sweep him off his feet, though from what Trevor and Joe said, this week he’d had more than his fair share, horizontal and all.

Trevor’s hand on the small of my back felt like a claiming. Joe did the same with my bare shoulder, the touch soothing and confirming.

“Shall we?” Joe said, gesturing to the grand dining hall.

A woman approached us, holding a notebook. “You’re Random Acts of Crazy?”

Liam stepped forward. He ate this up. “Yes. I’m Liam, the guitar—”

“Liam McCarthy!” she said in a clipped, knowing voice. And then she pointed. “Sam Hinton, Joe Ross, Trevor Connor, and you must be Darla.”

We all pulled back, a bit surprised. So far, we’d been pretty much unknown here, just doing our thing and getting ready for the performance. Most of my day had been nothing but detail work, making sure the guys were taken care of right. This was the first bit of fame for us.

“Yes!” Joe said, turning on the charm. Oh, and once he did, it was magnetic, so hard to step away from you almost needed a stronger magnet with a bigger pull to get away. “And you are…?”

“Noelle Davis. I’m a reporter,” she said. Blond. Curvy like me. Our features weren’t similar, but seeing Joe smile at her like he wanted to fuck her made something in me go tense.

“Reporter?” someone behind us murmured, practically running away.

“I’m covering the band and noticed,” she said, eyes on Trevor and Joe’s hands on me, “you three have an unusual arrangement. So the rumors are true?”

“Rumors?” Joe quickly withdrew his hand from my shoulder. It felt like a punishment.

“Oh,” she said, waving her hand. “It goes with the territory, doesn’t it?”

“What does?” Trevor said, tightening his hand on my waist.

Noelle ignored him for a few beats as she jotted something down on a small notebook. She was good. Knew how to be vague and direct at the same time. Nothing about this bothered me, except Joe’s reaction. And then she just sauntered off with a little wave, leaving a pool of confusion in her wake.

“I can’t have that reporter figure out that we’re in a threesome. It will be all over the news and…no way. My legal career, my family…fuck no!” Joe said in a tight, low voice. Liam touched Sam’s shoulder and jerked his head toward the dining hall. They left us alone, standing near a giant flower display. Irises, of course.

I gave Joe a steely look. “I hear you. Loud and clear. You might as well have a bullhorn pressed against the side of my head.” My heart rate shot up and fireworks blasted through me. “So what do you suggest we do?”

“How about we lure her into thinking you’re not with me? That you’re just with Trevor?”

“She’s long gone, and who cares?” I said, matching Joe’s tone.

“Someone already told her you’re with more than one guy,” Trevor said.

Joe’s face fell. “That’s right. Shit.” He frowned and thought for a bit, giving me a chance to really look at him. Lines formed in the skin around his eyes, indentations that weren’t there even last summer. He looked weary and a bit worn. His brow creased all the time with tension.

My Joe had always been a bit intense, but being this tense was different.

“I know!” His face lit up with a smile that made me return it. Ah! Now
this
was the Joe I wanted to see more of.

Eyes excited and hands animated, he said, “How about you hit on a few of the men here, in front of the reporter, so she’ll think you’re with a
bunch
of guys?”

Trevor looked at him like he’d just suggested we bomb North Korea.

“Say what?” I asked, not quite believing my ears.

His hands flew into the space about his head, fingers splayed in a grotesque version of jazz hands as I reacted to what I thought he’d just said. My stomach was like a cattle fence combined with sriracha sauce, all in a buzzing blender.

“It’s genius! You come on to a bunch of guys and make her think you’re a fun girl looking for a lot of action. Throws her off the scent. And then she won’t suspect we’re a threesome.”

Trevor cocked one eyebrow, pulled his hand off my body, and folded his arms over his chest. Eyes pinging between me and Joe.

Okay. So I had heard correctly. In my best Mr. Rogers voice, I responded with, “What I’m hearing you say is that I should pretend to be a whore so that reporter doesn’t think I’m actually in a permanent threesome with you as part of it.”

“Exactly!” he said, smiling and nodding, with the damn look I knew so well, the one that was so pompous and pleased with himself and pleased that his little project (that would be me) was coming along so nicely in her education.

Fucking Pygmalion my ass.

SLAP!

Don’t blame my hand. It couldn’t help it. Involuntary, like a sneeze, the smack I gave him across his face made his neck pull a full ninety-degree turn to the side, his mouth open and lips rippling from the impact. I could see it in slo-mo (and would, for the next hour or two, like a loop I couldn’t control, so intrusive it took over half my mind, and I would need that half, as you’ll see in a moment).

I stormed off, unable to even look at him, knowing what I’d see in those eyes.

Suzy had tried to fat shame me the other day, but Joe?

Joe was just plain old
shaming
me.

Trevor

“That went over about as well as trying to ride a lead balloon out of a tornado,” I said as we watched her leave.

“You sound like her,” Joe said.

“After a while, it’s hard not to.” My belt cut into my belly, which was now tight from tension, and blood roared through my ears. Being surprised by the reporter was one thing, but what Joe’d just said…

He deserved the growing red blotch on his cheek.

His hand came up to press it. “Damn.”

“What made you think it was acceptable to say that to her?” I demanded, increasingly pissed as the crowd filed into the dining hall. My appetite was gone. Our woman had stormed off down the hallway, hurt and righteously angry.

Rightfully so.

Joe’s face hardened. He looked like a piece of tanned marble with a pink overlay in the shape of a hand. “I was trying to do damage control.”

“You failed.” I turned and spun away, my pants crisp, with a razor-sharp crease in the front. The walk to my seat in the dining room wasn’t enough time to get my emotions in check.

I found Sam and Liam at a huge table that seated twelve. The room was enormous, with at least a hundred of these. Who knew there were so many guests?

And, thankfully, we were all clothed.

The faces swirled in my vision as I looked around. Men. Women. People of undetermined gender. Some obvious cross-dressers. A few not-so-obvious cross-dressers. Hell, there was one woman, a gorgeous Chinese lady who looked so porcelain smooth in a way that only laser treatments could achieve—which made me think she wasn’t born a she. Which was cool—live and let live.

Not that we had any room to judge.

I took my seat where a placard with my name, written in an antique font, rested. Sam and Liam were sprinkled about the table, and I saw Darla’s name on one of the cards.

A waiter took my drink order and within a minute I had a tequila shot in front of me. One drink before a performance was fine, and I had four hours to go. This would work. It had to work.

Joe wandered in about ten minutes later, looking hangdog and filled with regret. Shit. This was deteriorating fast, and we couldn’t take the stage acting like our puppy just got run over by a steamroller.

Liam was chatting up a very hot, older blond woman, and Sam just took in the room, an awed expression stretching his face. Scores of tuxedoed waiters milled about. I felt like I was at a pre-Oscars dinner.

As the first course was served, there was an empty spot across the table and Darla’s still free. I ate my food robotically, and Joe seemed agitated as they cleared the plates and brought the next course, a simple squash bisque. Soup and tuxes don’t exactly go together, but I ate, knowing I’d need the energy for our performance.

Joe came over to me and rested his hand on the back of my chair. I turned and he whispered, “I think I need to find her and apologize.”

“You think?
Now
you think that?” I checked my smartphone. “We have to finish here in twenty minutes and then go get ready to rock. No time.”

He frowned. “I guess I’ll see her at the stage, right? Maybe she’s just skipping dinner.”

When did Darla ever skip something like this, though? She wasn’t the type to hold grudges. Then again, until forty minutes ago, I’d have never guessed she was the type to slap a guy like that.

“Give her time to cool down,” I whispered. Sam’s eyes caught mine and he pointed to Darla’s empty spot near me. I shrugged. He mimicked me and continued gawking, taking in the gold-painted ceiling and the frescoes on the walls.

The room reminded me of a trip my parents had forced me to take with them when I was thirteen, a sprawling vacation throughout Italy. My autistic brother, Rick, had just been put in a new group home and Mom and Dad had needed the change of scenery. I understood that now, but back then I thought I was being tortured with this boring trip to some boring country.

Man, was I a spoiled little shit.

And that was how Joe had just acted toward Darla.

The soup dishes were cleared, a second tequila magically appeared, and I broke my own rule. Joe and Sam were tapping their feet so hard I could see their bodies vibrating, bouncing up and down. I expected it from Sam. Not from Joe.

Nerves. We were going to be destroyed by nerves if we didn’t get this shit under control. Everyone except Liam, who was now nuzzling the neck of the painted blonde, a woman who was the polar opposite of his old high school girlfriend, Charlotte. That wasn’t an accident.

Time crept by like the kind of unending ennui I remembered from high school, my inner self screaming inside, overcome by waves of needing to escape. Every second that Darla didn’t appear made my teeth ache.

Joe was rapidly coming unraveled before my eyes.

How could he say “I love you” and then a few days later treat her like she was some expendable piece of meat, good enough to fuck behind closed doors but not worth acknowledging in public?

Hypocrite
, my conscience whispered.

I closed my eyes just as a gorgeous plate of filet mignon, lobster, julienned vegetables, and artistically shaped root vegetables was put in front of me.

I wasn’t much better.

Much.

Chapter Twelve

Darla

Storming away, my hand stinging from hitting Joe’s cheekbone, I felt the tears in my throat first, thick and indignant, my brain a mush of rage and horror and disappointment.

How could he do that?

Who did he think he was?

Who did I think
I
was, stomping down a hallway like a mermaid with split legs on shiny high heels that would be better used for picking locks than to support my frame, walking down hallways where the carpet-cleaning fee alone was more than I made in a year, and in an atmosphere where, once again, it was clear that I was the fucking weirdo.

The outsider.

The outlier.

The out
cast
.

You know what it’s like to feel that way all the time? Every damn moment of your life? It’s like pressing your face against the cold glass of a big old department store window, or a fancy restaurant, and watching all the fun taking place so close, but so far and out of reach. Seeing the clothing you can’t wear. Watching other people take bites out of food you can’t taste. Separated by something as simple as a clear quarter of an inch, yet continents away, because you’re outside.