She doesn’t want you, some little voice in the back of my mind tried to remind me. And shitty thing was, I knew it was true.
So why was I still thinking about her?
“Who wants a shot?” Roni shouted over the music, pulling out a bottle of sambuca.
“I do!” Amber said, coming up for air.
“I don’t,” I said.
“Wrong answer, sweetheart.” Summer put a shot glass in my hand.
“Where’s the bourbon?” Jesse asked, and Amber started crawling around, trying to find it for him. Summer passed out the shot glasses and Roni started pouring.
As we rolled through downtown, I tried to look out the windows, keeping at least one eye peeled for yellow boots and red roses in the rain.
Really wasn’t so easy to do, what with all the shots.
Chapter Two
Danica
I woke from a dream about Ashley Player.
Not that kind of dream. My imagination wasn’t that good to me.
Nope, I was backstage at a rock concert, and he was standing next to me. And apparently, we were both members of Metallica.
He had black wristbands on and he was holding one of those white guitars James Hetfield always played, and I had a bass guitar. At least I was pretty sure it was a bass. We were about to go onstage in front of about a billion screaming fans, in seconds, and I had no idea how to play “Master of Puppets.”
I was supposed to know.
But I didn’t.
Total panic dream.
Weird, because I’d never known how to play any musical instrument.
I rubbed my eyes as I shook off the dream, sighing as I realized that Taylor was playing “Master of Puppets” next door—too loudly. It was her wake-up alarm, and it wasn’t doing its job very well.
Woke me up before it woke her up.
Almost every morning.
I reached over and banged on the wall, half-heartedly. Fifty-percent chance she didn’t even hear me. Unfortunately, it was Sunday morning. I didn’t have to work today. Apparently, she did.
But there was really no going back to sleep with Metallica throbbing through the wall.
I was about to drag myself up to make my morning tea when I heard a sound coming from my kitchen. Something like a small raccoon helping itself to snacks from my cupboards. This was the problem with a studio apartment: no privacy. Even when, in theory, you lived alone.
“I didn’t even hear you come in,” I said, stretching and kicking off the covers. When I didn’t receive an immediate response, for a split second I wondered if I actually had a raccoon.
“I was trying not to wake you,” came the voice, muffled by crunching.
I sat up, and there was my twin sister, Daniella, with her hand in a box of granola.
“No, you weren’t.” I swung my legs over the side of the bed and grabbed a sweatshirt and pajama shorts from the lounge chair by the bed. I was a naked sleeper, one of the many reasons I preferred to live alone. “You’re worse than a raccoon.” I yawned and pulled on the clothes.
“Don’t you have anything for bagels?” my sister asked. “Cream cheese? Light?”
“Don’t you have a home?”
“Yes, but I don’t have bagels.”
“The grocery store does. The one right on your block?”
“You know I don’t keep food at my place,” was her response.
I wandered into the kitchen and put on some water to boil. Dani gave up on the granola and sliced into a bagel. She was dressed for work, I presumed. Cute little fawn-colored blazer with the sleeves rolled up, pretty ivory cami and a short, frayed denim skirt. Self-tanner and wedge heels showcased her slender, shapely legs. Her long, dark-blonde hair, the exact same as mine, was swept back into a loose, sexy braid, and she’d accessorized with some of my jewelry. A coin necklace and a delicate gold bracelet with opals, which I’d given her for Christmas.
My sister always looked put-together and fashionable. Her job as a fashion stylist and her ego both demanded it.
“So, what’s on the agenda?” I asked her, because her workdays were far more interesting and varied than mine. “You have a shoot today?”
My workdays were invariably spent in one of three ways: in my office, running around town purchasing decor, or in my clients’ homes.
If Dani was on set, she’d be spending her day dressing up famous people—models, actors, athletes, politicians, CEOs; whomever was the star of the shoot. And she could be doing it anywhere. Last week, she’d spent two days in the pool room of some mansion. Today she could be on a yacht or a mountaintop. It just depended what amazing photo shoot or video she was booked for.
“Yes, I have a shoot,” she said, popping the bagel into my toaster. “Are you ever gonna tell me where to find those earrings? Or are you waiting for me to say please?”
“It wouldn’t hurt.”
She rolled her eyes. “Please. You’re the best sister ever.”
“I know. There are three different cream cheeses at the back of the fridge. Including light, for you.”
She dove into the fridge and dug them out, throwing me a butt-kissing smile. “Did I mention you’re the best sister ever?”
“Which earrings are we talking about?”
“The ones I called you about and texted you about like fifteen times last night.”
“Oh.” I knew she’d called. And there were still a bunch of unopened messages on my phone. “I had a client thing that went late.”
“What client?”
“Alyssa. Her spa opening, remember?”
Daniella rolled her eyes. “Jolie’s friend? You can answer the phone. It’s not like you guys were redecorating the Oval Office.”
“It was a big job and it’s important to Jolie. And Madeleine. Just because the client is Jolie’s friend, that doesn’t make it any less important.”
My cousin Jolie and I both worked at our aunt Madeleine’s interior design firm, Voilà Interiors. Madeleine was an interior designer; I was an interior decorator and Jolie, who was currently our receptionist and was still part-time in college, was training to become one.
“What if it was an emergency?” Dani said.
“You texted me that it was a ‘fashion emergency.’ I figured there was some wiggle room on response time.”
“You figured wrong. I have to be at my shoot in fifty minutes. Cough up the earrings.”
“You still haven’t told me which earrings we’re talking about.”
“Those fabulous ones you made, with all the chains.”
“That could describe about a dozen pairs,” I said. “Look under the bed in the rolling drawer things. Earrings are in there now.”
“God. Why are you always reorganizing? Last time they were in the hall closet.” Daniella strode over to the bedroom side of the apartment, cringing as “Master of Puppets” kicked in again. “For real. When does she ever get up?” She shoved up the half-open window and leaned out, shouting in that general direction, “1985 called! They want their song back!!”
When she popped back inside, I told her, “I’m pretty sure that album came out in 1986.”
“Who cares. Seriously. Does she realize any other song exists?”
“It’s her alarm.”
“It’s not working.”
“I noticed.”
“You’re way too nice,” Dani informed me. “I would’ve called the cops on her, like ages ago.”
“You want me to call the cops on my best friend? Because her alarm comes through the paper-thin walls in this place?”
“I would. Teach her a lesson. Oh, don’t look at me like that. With Taylor’s luck, the cops would be hot.”
“Hate to break it to you,” I said, “but the police have more urgent things to worry about in this neighborhood than a girl with a Metallica fetish whose only crime is not being a morning person.”
“Just one more reason to move,” Dani muttered as she rooted around in the drawers under my bed, searching for the ea
rrings she wanted. “A-ha! You little shits.” She’d found them, apparently.
Then she started digging through the antique wardrobe next to my bed, sifting through my clothes.
I kind of shook my head at her, but smiled a little as I poured boiling water over my favorite chai tea. I really couldn’t start the day without one. A little caffeine, yummy spices. Dani’s bagel had popped, so I tossed it on a plate. I slathered some blueberry cream cheese—full fat—on one half and dug in.
Next time I looked over at my sister, she was bent over in her panties, her skirt around her ankles.
“You realize you don’t actually live here, right?” I said as she kicked her skirt aside.
“This is so perfect…” She wiggled into one of my skirts, ivory lace and slim-fitting. “Oh, good. It’s stretchy.” She smoothed the skirt over her hips—which were slimmer than mine—and her perfect butt—which was smaller than mine.
I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, it’s a real blessing the fashion industry invented stretchy clothes. So all you waif-like twins, who are a half-size smaller than your identical sisters, don’t have to slog around in the gargantuan potato sacks we call clothes when you raid our closets.”
“I’m a full size smaller,” she informed me. “And you have nothing to complain about. You got the voluptuous rack.”
Right.
I wasn’t sure voluptuous was the right word. I had, at best, the conservative end of a C-cup—except for when I gained stress weight. Unlike my sister, I was a stress eater. For example, the summer Stevie Eldridge broke up with me and I went a little too crazy on the barbecue chips with ranch dip.
The only enjoyable thing I got out of that painful situation was a temporary increase in cup size.
It was true, though, that my twin sister couldn’t have filled my bra cups if she’d eaten all the barbecue chips on the northwest coast. She just didn’t keep weight like I did.
Though maybe that was due to her ability to resist binge eating every time life kicked her in the crotch?
Or maybe it was because she didn’t let life kick her in the crotch…?
Just a couple more of the many differences between us.
I watched her putting on my mascara, bent over as she studied herself in the mirror over my antique vanity/desk. I had no idea what had happened to her mascara, but like so many things over the years, she seemed to have decided that mine equalled hers.
“You know, voluptuous racks are overrated,” I informed her. I meant it, in her case. Though she was, genetically, my identical twin, Daniella was probably the prettiest girl I’d ever met. When I looked at her, it wasn’t like looking in a mirror. I didn’t see me or a reflection of me.
I saw what I aspired to.
My sister just exuded a certain brand of confidence that I’d never had. I wasn’t exactly unconfident, but I hadn’t been born with the same unshakable self-assurance. It was in the set of her slim shoulders, the lithe ease with which she carried herself.
In my eyes, it had always made us look like two very different people.
No wonder she’d caught the eye of Ashley Player… An edgy, gorgeous rock star who could have any girl he wanted.
“Nice try,” she said, just as the front door opened and Taylor stumbled in. “You ask any dude whether he’d rather have the skinny girl or the girl with the massive rack, I guarantee you he’d take the tits.”
“True story,” my best friend said, pointing a finger in Dani’s direction. Her eyes were half-open as she staggered through my kitchen in a whirlwind of unfairly sexy bed hair and baggy sweats, grabbing the bag of bagels and the dill cream cheese—her favorite.
It was only then that I realized “Master of Puppets” had finally stopped.
Taylor whirled right back out again, waving at me over her shoulder from the door. “Love you!! I’ll bring booze later.” And she was gone.
“You just let her waltz in and eat your food?” My sister threw me a disapproving look.
“Uh, kinda like you do?”
“I’m blood related.”
“Uh-huh. Some skinny girls have large breasts,” I informed her, continuing our conversation. “And anyway, I’m not sure you’re right. Not all guys favor big tits.”
“I’m right about everything.”
“I know you believe that…”
Daniella drew back and checked herself out in the mirror one last time. “Speaking of dudes who like big tits. Carter came by.” She almost managed to say his name without making a gag face.
“Nice segue.” It was true; my ex-boyfriend did, apparently, like big tits. I just hadn’t discovered that in the nicest way, and didn’t care to be reminded. “When?”
“When I was here looting the place last night, trying to find those earrings.”
“Last night?” I said, confused—and more than a little disturbed.
“Yeah. Late last night,” my sister said.
Ugh. Really?
Carter came over to my place, unannounced, on a Saturday night? After his hot date?
“He left a message for you,” she informed me.
“What message?” I looked around, but I didn’t see a note.
“I believe it went something like this. ‘Tell her the roses went over well,’” she drawled, putting on the most arrogant sounding man-voice in history. “‘Tell her I said thank you and I’ll make it up to her. Tell her to give me a call.’”
I wrinkled my nose. “Why didn’t he just call?”
“He said you didn’t answer your phone.”
“Oh.”
“So?” she prompted.
“So what?”
“Are you gonna call him?”
“Maybe.”
“Danica. Seriously. When are you gonna kick his ass to the curb?”
“He’s been kicked. We’re just friends.”
“Sure you are. In your mind. In his mind, you’re that amazing girl he regrets screwing over and now wants to screw.”
“It’s really not like that.” I avoided her eyes as I slathered cream cheese on her half of the bagel. “Your bagel’s ready. I used the low-fat.”
She sighed. “Are you actually happy for him?”
“If he’s met someone he’s happy with, then yes.”
“God, you are so mature.”
I smirked. “Who would’ve thought being born forty-two minutes earlier would make such a difference, huh?”
“Huge difference,” my sister acknowledged.
I wasn’t sure the timestamps on our births accounted for it, but something had. Nature? Nurture? Both?
Who knew.
As twins, we’d met a lot of other twins over the years. Some who were very alike, others who were extremely different.
None more different than the two of us.
“One for the road?” I offered, holding up the teapot.
“Sure.”
I pulled out a travel mug for her, because of course, she hadn’t brought one. Why would she, when she could just use mine/hers? I filled it with tea for her as she bit into her bagel.
“You seriously have no problem with it whatsoever,” she asked me, “when he asks you to pick out roses for his new girlfriend?”
I shrugged. “He had no time and he was all in a fluster. He practically begged for my help.”
“And you helped, even though you had no time, which couldn’t have been fun for you. As is your way. And as is his way, the roses and this other woman—who may or may not actually exist, by the way—are all part of his Master Plan to manipulate you back into his bed.”
I sipped my tea. “You and your Master Plans. Carter isn’t some evil genius, Dani.”
“No, he’s a dude on a mission, piloted by the whims of his dick.”
“I broke up with him. What more do you want?”
“I want you to set clear boundaries,” she informed me. “And clearly, he wants you back.”
“Boundaries. Right. Said the woman who let herself in to loot my place last night, and t
o loot my fridge this morning.”
“With love,” she said, blinking her blue eyes at me. But Daniella Vola couldn’t pull off innocent if her life depended on it.
“Carter’s not after me,” I insisted.
“You are so naive,” she said.
“You are so cynical.”
“It’s not cynical to understand that when a man keeps coming around, even after you cut him loose, he wants your pussy.”
“Do you really have to be this crude before the caffeine kicks in?”
“Face it,” she said. “That man got a taste of the sweet Vola lady-magic, and he wants more.”
“Then he really shouldn’t have gotten a phone number from that chick with the triple D’s at the bar.”
“Exactly,” my sister said. “Don’t forget it.”
“Trust me, I won’t. But we’re still friends.”
“That man is not your friend, Dani.”
“We can be friendly,” I said. “I don’t hold grudges. People make mistakes.”
My sister’s eyes locked with mine. And for just a moment, something… dark… passed between us.
I swallowed a sigh. Still there, after all these years.
“Hmm,” she said, just barely, and turned away. She tucked the earrings she was borrowing into her purse. “I’ll bring these back unharmed. And thank you in advance. These are gonna knock the whole thing out of the park.”
“You’re welcome.”
“Expect requests for these.”
“I will.”
As annoying as it sometimes was when my sister looted my jewelry for her shoots at the last minute, she did always find me new clients. I’d been making jewelry for myself for years, but it was Dani who’d convinced me to sell some of my pieces, too. And I wouldn’t have sold a tenth of what I had if it weren’t for her.
A saleswoman I was not.
She picked up her purse and the travel mug I’d fixed for her. “And thanks for all this.” She took another bite of her bagel as she headed for the door. “Have a good one, okay? And don’t take any shit from your ex-douche.”
“Uh-huh. Have a good shoot. Hey… Dani?”
As my sister opened the door, she glanced back at me. Her eyes met mine again—and a nasty wave of guilt swept through me.
Hot Mess: A Players Rockstar Romance (Players #1) Page 3
