Rock Angel (Rock Angel Series Book 1) (15 page)

“Dan said he grew up in the San Fernando Valley. Do you come from that part of California, too?”

Quinn shrugged. “More or less.”

“Whereabouts?”

He stopped, shooting her an annoyed glance. “Why are you so inquisitive, all of a sudden?”

“Well, it’s just occurred to me that I don’t know all that much about you and that’s weird, don’t you think? Especially since we spend so much time together.”

“You know how I compose and how I play. What else matters?”

“But you know everything about me.” Well. Maybe not
everything
. “You know a lot about me now,” she amended. “A lot of stuff nobody else knows. It makes me feel like I’m on the observation end of a two-way mirror.”

He nodded slowly. “All right then, if it’ll help you chill out. Yes, I grew up in Southern California, like Dan.”

“Do your parents still live there?”

“My mother does, and my stepfather. My father is dead.”

They were near the end of Spring Street. The West Side Highway stretched before them and, beyond it, the waterfront docks. “I’m sorry,” she said. He didn’t respond. “How old were you when he died?”

“Nine.”

As they crossed under the highway, she said, “That must have been hard on you, Q. I thought I’d die myself when I lost my mom. Was it that way for you?”

He nodded again, silently.

“How about your mother?” she prompted after a while. “Are you close?”

“Hardly.” His face was reticent, a scowl materializing as they paused on a bridge connecting two mooring docks. The water below them was murky and dark, the sunlight not penetrating more than an inch below the surface. It smelled dank and fishy.

“Why not?”

Quinn swiveled his head to glare at her. “Christ, you’re nosy. All right. I might as well take this from the top. There’s an entertainment law firm based in LA. Marshall-Merrick. It’s fairly well known.”

“I think I’ve heard of them. They’re agents, right? And they handle Cyndi Lauper, don’t they?” She paused and eyes widened. “You mean you’re
that
Marshall?”

“No.
That
Marshall was my father. Now it’s my brother. And they’re not agents. They’re entertainment lawyers.”

“What’s the difference?”

“An agent books your gigs,” he explained. “An entertainment lawyer gets involved after the gigs are booked. They handle talent agreements. Synchronization rights. Intellectual property. Stuff like that.”

“Oh.” She had no idea what any of those things were. “So what’s the story?”

He looked down into the water. “Well, in my family, you grow up knowing you’re probably going to be a lawyer. There’s an expectation. I was even prelaw at Stanford for a while. Family alma mater, don’t you know.”

“You’d make a good lawyer,” she said. “It’s not easy to win an argument with you.”

“It was never my scene, though. I had this music thing going on, ever since I started piano lessons. I was about five and I can still remember how excited my teacher got the first time he realized I could harmonize melodies on piano. Nobody showed me. I could just hear it.” He smiled a little. “Mr. Huxtable, his name was. He started introducing me to other instruments, too, and he about went nuts when he saw how easily I learned to play them.”

“Your parents must have been proud,” Shan said.

“My dad was. He played piano, too, although it was just a hobby for him. After he died it became even more important to me. It made me feel like I was still connected to him, in a way.”

“I get that,” Shan said softly.

“Once I was a teenager and started playing in rock bands, that was it. I knew I’d found the thing that I was going to do for the rest of my life.”

“So how did you end up at Stanford?”

He shrugged. “I had no choice. My mother was paying the tuition and there was no way in hell she’d let me go to a music school. It was college or nothing.”

“Couldn’t you have gotten financial aid or something?”

He grinned at her. “I grew up in Bel Air, angel. My folks still live there, right down the street from Ronnie and Nancy Reagan. They don’t hand out a lot of financial aid in our neighborhood.”

“Oh.” She’d never thought that having too much money could be a problem. “I’m still surprised you wound up at Stanford, though, if you didn’t want to go.”

“Well, I had a plan. I needed to bide my time, so I figured I might as well be getting educated while I was waiting. And there were other factors. I couldn’t really move out on my own at that point.”

“Why not?”

“It just wouldn’t have worked.” He looked uncomfortable. “Anyway, I stuck it out until I turned twenty-one, then I came into an inheritance, a trust fund that my father set up for me. I applied to Berklee and got accepted, and when I told Mom, she went ballistic. Big fucking scene. Told me if I didn’t finish college, she was throwing me out without a cent.”

“And?” she prompted.

He scowled anew. “I told her to go to hell, grabbed my keyboard, and walked out of the house. That was four years ago.”

“You haven’t talked to her since?’

“No, and I won’t,” he declared. “She’s a domineering bitch who controls everyone around her. My stepfather and my brother are completely under her thumb.”

“Doesn’t she ever try to get in touch with you?”

“Not anymore. She’s given up on me, I think. I’m the black sheep of the Marshall clan. Too much wine, women, and song.”

She wanted to ask more questions, about his brother, his stepfather, but she could see that he was beginning to get annoyed, so instead she reached up and smoothed the hair out of his eyes. “Well, I think you’re pretty terrific, Q,” she assured him. “Wine, women, and all.”

“Thanks, angel.” He folded his arms on the railing, rested his chin on them, and smiled at her. “We
are
getting to be friends, aren’t we? How weird is that? Friendship’s not what I usually want out of a woman, you know.”

She had a snappy comeback on the tip of her tongue, but a sudden thought struck her and her words froze. Apparently her face did, too, because Quinn raised his chin off his arms. “Hey, I was kidding.”

“It’s the bridge,” she said and he looked around in confusion. “Not
this
bridge,” she clarified. “That’s what’s wrong with the song. The
bridge
. It needs to be in a different key. It needs to go to D minor.”

He nodded, light dawning in his eyes. “Not bad. It could make for a better transition into the verse. I told you it would come if you left it alone.” She rolled her eyes and he grabbed her hand. “Come on. We’ve still got the rest of the afternoon to work on it.”

“I’m sick of waiting for him,” Ty said. “Let’s order.”

“Yeah,” Dan seconded. “I’m starving.”

“It’s not like Quinn to be late,” Oda said. “He
did
say he’d meet us, didn’t he?”

Shan nodded. They were at the Cupping Room, a little bistro on West Broadway. The place served the best brunch in SoHo and had become a Sunday-morning tradition for the group. “I asked him last night, before he left with what’s-her-name. He said he’d be here at eleven, same as always.”

“Well, I’m ordering,” Denise said. “It’s almost noon. I’ll have the buckwheat pancakes,” she told the waitress.

Shan checked the door as the others rattled off their orders. Where
was
Quinn? His absence would screw up her routine. She could never decide between her two favorite items so she ordered the fruit-topped french toast and he got eggs Benedict, then they shared.

“I’ll have the french toast,” she told the waitress, still eyeing the door. Her face brightened when she spotted a familiar mop of blond hair. “And eggs Benedict,” Shan added. “One more coffee, too, and another orange juice,” she said as Quinn slid into the empty chair next to her. His hair was in disarray and his green T-shirt damp with perspiration.

“Morning,” he said to the table in general. He gave a tug to the curl over Shan’s eye, then snagged her orange juice and polished off half of it.

“Hey, quit that!” She retrieved her glass. “I ordered you one.”

“I’m thirsty,” he said. “I just ran five blocks.”

“What happened?” Dan asked. “She wear you out so much you overslept?”

“No, right at the crucial moment, she told me I’m the one she’s been waiting for.”

“So what happened next?” Ty said, leering.

“I went home.” Quinn snorted. “Just as well. She was costing me a fortune in drinks.”

Denise wrinkled her nose. “You’re
such
a pig.”

“Why? I leave them smiling. I’ve decided that’s my role in the master plan; to go around spurting happiness wherever I am. And I’m late,” he continued, over their hoots, “because I was booking us a gig tonight.”

A chorus of groans erupted. “Dude, this is the first time in a month we’ve had a Sunday off,” Dan said. “What about our Yankees tickets?”

“And I have a date.” Ty glared at him. “Why didn’t you check with the rest of us first?”

Shan remained silent, but eyed Quinn morosely. She’d been planning to spend the evening chilling with a good book and a mug of tea.

Quinn grinned and gave her hair another tug. “Don’t look so disappointed, angel. How’d you like to warm up for Jerry Garcia at Carnegie Hall?”

According to Quinn, Garcia’s agent had caught them at the Bitter End and been impressed, apparently enough that he remembered them when their scheduled opener canceled due to sudden illness. They suspected a bad batch of street drugs, Quinn imparted. Anyhow, it left a gap and he’d gotten a call that morning.

They wolfed down their food and spent the next several hours in a flurry of activity. They had to track down Bruce, their regular sound man, and talk him into bagging his own gig at Wetlands. He’d only do it if they found a replacement, so they had to find another engineer to cover. Then they had to be at Carnegie Hall for sound check at four o’clock. The PA wasn’t completely set up, so they had to wait for another hour and a half. When everything was finally situated and plugged in, they discovered a problem with the monitors. By the time they finished, it was six-thirty and they were scheduled to go on at eight. They had barely enough time to go home, change, and get back to Carnegie Hall for their spot.

On the way to the gig, Shan fretted over her attire. There’d been no time to even think about what to wear, so she’d opted for skinny jeans and a tie-dyed peasant top. She was hot and perspiring, though no one else seemed bothered by the temperature in the van.

When a cramp doubled her over, Quinn was suddenly attentive. “Are you okay?”

“It’s just all the excitement.” She was jonesing, she realized, because she was late for her fix. She always dosed right before they went out gigging, but the timing had been so tight this time that she’d decided to wait until they got there. She hadn’t had anything since eleven that morning, but she had a stash in her guitar case, in the embroidered bag that held her picks and extra strings.

By the time they arrived at Carnegie Hall, Shan was shivering although her forehead was shiny with perspiration. Her legs ached and she had to repeatedly wipe her eyes.

Quinn jumped out of the van, leaving Shan to climb down behind him. Her legs were shaky as she stepped out and he turned just as her knees began to buckle. “Hey!” he exclaimed, catching her around the waist.

Ty and Dan drifted around the side of the van and gaped at her face, which was flushed and wet. Her limbs shook, but she pushed Quinn away. “I’m okay.”

“You don’t look okay,” Dan said doubtfully. “Are you sure you can play?”

“Of course I can.” She fidgeted under their scrutiny. “Stop looking at me! I’ll be all right.”

Quinn was regarding her with trepidation and she knew they couldn’t possibly pull off a performance of this magnitude without her. It would take days of practice to restructure the arrangements so they could be played without a guitar. “I’m okay,” she said again.

Quinn frowned, but turned away when Ty jostled his elbow with the snare drum. Shan lingered, waiting for them to unload the guitars. As soon as they did, she grabbed her Fullerton and went inside the building.

Backstage was chaotic. There were people everywhere, musicians tuning up, roadies shoving equipment around, girls so scantily clad they could only be groupies. Clutching her guitar, she pressed through the crowd until she found a restroom.

It was marked
men
, but she didn’t care. She went inside, locked the door behind her, then sat down on the floor and opened up her guitar case. She looked for the blue bag, groping around behind her twelve-string. She couldn’t feel it, so she pulled the guitar out of the case to look beneath it. All she saw were a couple of loose picks, her string winder, and an old playlist. The guitar slipped out of her hand and she grabbed for it, her shaking fingers brushing the strings with a dissonant jangle.

Strings. She’d meant to change them before they left, but there hadn’t been time. She’d just taken a packet from the blue bag when Quinn banged on the bedroom door, yelling that they’d miss their spot if they didn’t go right away.

She’d shoved her guitar back into the case and rushed out of the apartment. If she closed her eyes, she could picture the blue bag with her emergency stash inside, lying on her pillow.

Twenty minutes later, Quinn inspected Shan as they stood onstage. “You look like hell,” he said. “Can you sing?”

“Don’t worry about it,” she said. Her eyes glittered like prisms in the stage lights and she was trembling visibly now.

He smoothed the curls off her shiny forehead. “It’s only a half-hour set. Can you hold it together that long?”

“
Yes, all right?
” She pulled away. “Now stop bugging me, Quinn!”

His face hardened and he turned away without another word as the stage manager held his hand up. The lights brightened and the curtain began to rise; Shan’s eyes drifted over the audience incredulously as they began “Big City Heat.” There was a hum in the air, a pervasive buzz that could only be created by vast numbers of people, and she suddenly felt very small and insubstantial under the scrutiny of three thousand pairs of eyes.

She snuck a surreptitious glance at the rest of the band. They seemed unaffected, Quinn in particular appearing calm and unruffled, singing and playing with his usual self-assurance.