There was also security. Quite a lot of it, from what I could see. Big dudes lined the driveway, standing watch, not being all that inconspicuous about it. A couple of them were greeting guests—or checking their identification, maybe. I didn’t watch that closely.
“So much security…” I mused, as Ashley steered me up the driveway, past the lineup of security guys, his hand on the small of my back. I supposed they recognized him, because they didn’t stop us.
I knew Dirty was famous, of course… but I’d never seen anything quite like this.
“They’ll want to make sure Dolly’s place is locked down,” Ash told me. “Jude takes this stuff pretty seriously. Lot of famous guests, plus, some of the regular security guys who’re tight with Brody and the band will be wedding guests, so they’ll need others to fill in.”
“That makes sense.”
“Also… a lot of Dirty’s personal security guys are Kings, and when there’s a bunch of Kings in one place doing something like attending a wedding, they have their own security. Last thing anyone needs is some rival bikers sniffing out that they’re here and starting shit.”
“Oh. Wow.”
I already knew Haz and some of the other security guys were bikers, members of the West Coast Kings MC, but it was still kind of a foreign concept to me. I’d had a certain preconception about bikers before meeting Haz, but in my limited experience, it didn’t quite add up to the reality. Like, I knew Haz was an “outlaw” in that other part of his life. But that was just too strange to wrap my head around. Haz was a sweetheart.
At least, he’d always been one to me.
Ashley drew me over to one of the giant dudes who stood at the top of the driveway, in front of the house. “Let me introduce you to Jude,” he said as we approached.
Dirty’s head of security greeted Ashley with a handshake, and he looked pretty much like I’d expected he would. Tall, muscular, scary. He was also exotically gorgeous, with deep, dark eyes, dark hair, and tattoos all down his arms… and some very lucky, very sexy woman with black hair and a black dress wrapped around his side.
“Jude, Roni… this is Danica,” Ashley introduced me.
“Well… hi,” Roni said. She looked me over and smiled as I shook her hand.
“Nice to meet you.”
Then I shook with Jude, who nodded at me but said nothing, just as Haz approached. He was with some big blond guy with a man-bun, who smiled at me. Another biker, maybe. They weren’t wearing their leather vests today, though they were all pretty much wearing black, in their own interpretations of rock-star-wedding casual.
Haz and Ash shook hands. They always did that, even though they were pretty close friends by now.
“Hey, Danica,” Haz said, and he gave me a quick kiss on the cheek.
“Hi, Hayden,” I said, because I preferred calling Haz by his actual name rather than his biker name. Maybe because it made him seem less scary, and reminded me that he was just a dude—a dude who put his neck on the line for my man, every time they went out in public together.
“This is Connor,” Ashley told me, after shaking hands with the blond. “Dylan’s bodyguard.”
Which meant Dylan was already here, maybe. I hadn’t met Dylan yet.
“Call me Con,” he said, shaking my hand and casually looking me over. He seemed particularly impressed with my boobs. “You need anything, I’m off-duty tonight. So.”
“Did you just hit on my date?” Ashley said, sounding more impressed with the audacity of it than offended.
“Hey, just wanted to let her know her options.”
“How about you don’t,” Jude said, and that seemed to shut Con up.
“Relax, boys,” Roni said, threading her arm through Jude’s. “There are enough girls and beers to go around.” Then she winked at me.
“On that note…” Ashley put his arm around my waist. “We need a drink.” Jude patted Ash on the shoulder, and he led me away, into the yard.
“Your friends are cute,” I told my boyfriend, and when he threw me a look, I grinned.
“Not that cute,” he said.
A caterer drifted by and Ashley plucked a couple of glasses of champagne from the tray for us. I took a sip; a few sips of booze were probably a good idea. You know, loosen up. I wasn’t all that nervous about this event, in general, but I was about to meet a lot of Ashley’s people all at once.
I’d met many of his friends by now, even a couple of the Penny Pushers—Coop and Janner. They’d probably be here today.
But this was the first time I’d be meeting the whole Dirty family.
Dylan’s family.
Apparently, the bride’s bachelorette party had been last night, but I wasn’t invited. Not that I’d expected to be. I hadn’t met the bride, Jessa, yet, or any of her close girlfriends.
Until now, I was still kind of an outsider. Still that girl who was dating Ashley, but no one in this group had met.
It was kinda strange, since he and I were so close. We saw each other every day. We slept together every night.
But honestly, even if most of them hadn’t been away on tour, I might not have seen these people much anyway. The last six weeks had been a beautiful blur of getting to know Ashley, and we’d done everything from road trips to hikes to rock shows, to long, long days in bed.
We’d spent a lot of time alone together, in and out of bed.
This wedding was as good an opportunity as any to meet the rest of his friends all at once.
“Who do you want to meet first, babe?” he asked me.
“How about… the bride and groom?”
“Right. Damn, you’re so civilized,” he said, and I laughed. He took me by the hand and steered me over to a man who was just jogging down the steps from the house.
“Hey, Brody. Want you to meet Danica.” He gave my hand a squeeze. “Babe, this is Brody.”
“Hey, Danica,” Brody said, extending his hand to me in welcome, and I shook it. “Nice to finally meet you.”
“You, too. Thank you so much for having me.”
He looked at Ashley and smiled, lifting an eyebrow, which I took to be a look of approval. Brody was impressed with me.
Honestly, I was impressed with him. He was handsome as hell, with short brown hair and deep blue eyes that were set off by the short-sleeve button-down shirt, navy blue, that clung nicely to his toned body. He had a small tattoo of runes on his neck and a few on his arms. He could’ve been a rock star, to look at him, except that he was so neat and tidy. Though maybe that was just the wedding?
“Have you met my bride yet?” he asked me.
“I haven’t.”
He glanced past me and called, “Jessa! Come over here and meet Ash’s woman.”
I turned, to find an absolutely gorgeous woman with long, supermodel hair making her way toward us. She was dressed in white linen pants and a sleeveless blouse, and she was holding a baby.
She wasn’t even wearing her bridal dress yet and she was stunning.
“That’s Jessa?” I said, nudging Ash, trying to keep the astonishment out of my voice. “Dirty’s songwriter?”
Brody chuckled.
“Yeah, she’s one of their songwriters,” Ashley said. “She’s also Jesse’s sister. You know, Jesse Mayes, Dirty’s lead guitarist.”
“Is that why she looks familiar?” I mused aloud. I thought maybe she just had that model look about her. But I’d seen Jesse Mayes, in pictures and videos and stuff. “She looks like her brother…”
“Yeah. She’s a model, too, so maybe you’ve seen pictures of her somewhere.”
“Oh…”
Jessa’s face brightened as she approached and her baby reached for his daddy. She didn’t hand him over, though, instead presenting him to Ashley. “Hey, Ash. Glad you could make it.”
“Wouldn’t miss it.” Ashley smoothed his fingers over the baby’s little tuft of hair. “This is Danica,” he told her. “Babe, this is Jessa and little Nick.”
A slow smile spread
across Jessa’s face when she looked at me. “Hi.”
“Nice to meet you,” I said, shaking her hand as she cradled the baby, who looked somewhere between six months and a year old? I didn’t exactly have a ton of experience with babies. He was crazy cute though. “He’s so cute,” I told her. “How old is he? You don’t look like you just had a baby.” Yes, that could’ve been interpreted as kissing butt. But in this woman’s case, it wasn’t a word of a lie.
“He’s nine months old,” she told me proudly. “And thank you. I still don’t fit into my pre-baby clothes, but you know, I’ll get there. How did you meet Ash…?”
“Well, he hired me to redecorate his condo a few months ago,” I told her. “But there’s this crazy story about him and my twin sister, if you want to hear it…”
“Do I?” she said, tossing Ashley a look.
“Definitely,” I said.
Then I leaned in and whispered in her ear.
She smiled and whispered back.
I flashed Ash a smile, hoping to reassure him that while girl talk was good and all, I’d just met this girl, and I wasn’t about to give up too many goodies about him and my sister.
He kind of rolled his eyes, but he flashed me a small smile too, so I figured he got the message. “So, how’s the little man doing?” he asked Brody.
“Crawling,” Brody said, as the baby fussed and kept trying to push out of his mommy’s arms. “Standing…” Jessa put him down on the lawn and he instantly popped up on his knees and started rocking back and forth, like he was powering up to crawl. And then off he went.
“Excuse me,” Jessa said, heading after him.
“Soon he’ll be running around, barking orders,” Brody said, watching them go. “The newborn phase goes fast, guys.” He looked kind of exhausted when he said that.
“He’s seriously so cute,” I said.
“Too cute. The kind that’ll manipulate you into forking over your spleen. It’s a goddamn superpower.”
“Good luck when he discovers girls,” Ash said.
Brody chuckled. “I think I can handle that. It’s the parents of the girls who really have to worry. I just hope we have more boys.”
“More?” Ash said.
“Not anytime soon. I just meant in the future.”
“I noticed you put a plural on that. Jessa down with giving birth to a soccer team for you?”
Brody grinned. “I’d be happy with three or four. I think she’s planning on capping it at one or two. We’ll see.”
“Huh,” Ashley said, and I could hear the genuine admiration in his voice. “That’s cool, Brody. We’re all happy for you guys, you know. The first Dirty baby.”
“Thanks.” He patted Ashley on the back. “I should circulate. Catch you two later?”
“For sure.”
Brody smiled at me, then headed over to talk to Jude.
When I met Ash’s eyes, he smirked a bit and pulled me to him. “Hey, Danica. What did you tell Jessa about me and your sister?”
“Only the most PG parts,” I assured him. “Drunken night in Alaska four years ago, mistaken identity in the street, and here we are. She was quite amused. Said our meeting sounded romantic and, what was it? ‘Meant to be.’”
“Hmm,” he said, sipping his drink.
“I’m glad I finally got to meet Brody. Your new manager,” I said, patting his chest. I was so proud of him.
“Me too.”
Then I glanced over at Jessa, who was talking with a few other women as the baby played at her feet.
“How is that fair…?” I mused.
“What?”
“I mean, how is it fair that some people get so many good genes? She’s a songwriter with a major band, and she looks like that?”
Ashley smirked, amused with me, apparently. “Well, it’s not like she rolls out of bed and just slogs around in a garbage bag. It takes some work to look like that. Definitely takes work to write like she does, too. So it’s not like she doesn’t put anything into it.”
“For sure,” I said. “I don’t doubt it. But let’s just admit, genes have something to do with it. Like I’m never gonna be five-ten and willowy.”
Ashley’s blue-eyed gaze moved slowly down my body. “You don’t have to be.”
I sipped my drink and tried not to glow too much when he said that. “Hey, Ashley. I like your friends.”
“Good. Pretty sure they like you, too.”
* * *
We made our way through the growing party, though we didn’t get very far very fast. Every few steps, Ashley stopped to say hello to someone. There were a lot of beautiful people at this thing, and every time one of them hugged my boyfriend, it was kind of… a turn-on.
Everything about being with Ash turned me on. Every time he brushed against me, or put his arm around me, or looked at me… And no matter how many people he stopped to talk to, he always held my hand or touched my back when he introduced me to them.
I’d never been so proud of a man at my side as I was of him.
I loved being his plus one.
He introduced me to Zane, Dirty’s lead singer, which was kind of a trip. I’d met several famous people through my boyfriend by now, but Zane Traynor was so famous that I’d seen his face, well, everywhere. He was even more gorgeous in person, though, with his blond hair and ice-blue eyes. His features were this striking mix of pretty boy and Viking, and even in a suit—well, dress pants and dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and a suede vest—he felt… dangerous.
He was nice enough, though, and clearly impressed that Ash had brought me to this wedding. I wasn’t sure if he was floored by me, or simply by the fact that Ash had brought a woman with him at all, but he slapped my boyfriend on the back and said, “Nice work,” with a grin on his face. Then he looked Ash over and said, “And take it easy. Give the other guys a chance.”
“No chance,” Ash said, and put his arm around me.
Zane laughed.
I met Zane’s lovely grandma, Dolly, who lived in the gorgeous house, though I’d heard that Zane actually owned it.
I met Seth, Dirty’s rhythm guitarist, and Elle, Dirty’s bassist. I knew the two of them had just had a baby together. Ashley had filled me in, long ago. They had the baby with them, sleeping in a bassinet. She wasn’t quite three months old yet.
And while Ash got talking with Seth, Elle introduced me to the baby, Emma. Elle was also so famous—more famous than Zane, maybe—that her face was everywhere, too. I’d seen her on magazine covers. She had her own line of lipstick, which Taylor swore by.
I could definitely see why Ash had wanted to be with her at one time. She was beautiful. And there was depth in her steely-gray eyes. She was very rock star, with her platinum-blonde hair, and very cool.
And she was incredibly nice to me.
Then I met Jesse, Dirty’s lead guitarist. And… yum. Everyone in this band was gorgeous. He had thick, dark hair, dark eyes and a bright, white smile. And he seemed quite nice. He introduced me to his wife, Katie, who was definitely nice. And pretty. Dark hair, big blue-green eyes and a sweet smile.
She was also six months pregnant, and already carrying around a fairly large baby belly on her curvy, petite frame. Despite that, she had a spring in her step and a definite pregnant glow about her. Or maybe she just always glowed like that?
She seemed genuinely excited to meet me, which was cute, since I was hardly as exciting as all these people she already knew.
After we’d chatted for a minute, she touched my arm and said, “Have you met Amber yet?”
“I haven’t,” I said. I glanced at Ashley, but he was busy talking to Jesse. So when Katie beckoned for me to come with her, I let her draw me over to Amber.
“Hey Amber, this is Danica,” Katie said, as Dylan’s girlfriend turned to us. “Ashley’s date. Um… girlfriend?” Katie looked at me with a question in her eyes.
“I am,” I said.
Amber stared at me. It seemed to take her a moment to recover
from that statement. “Danica?” she said.
“Yes.” I extended my hand. “It’s so nice to finally meet you.”
Amber smiled, slowly. She had pretty, light-green eyes and wavy light-brown hair to her shoulders, and for some reason, she wasn’t what I’d pictured. I’d seen a couple of photos of her by now, but that still hadn’t gotten the image across. She had very little makeup on, and a flowy, pale-green dress, and for someone who’d enthralled two hot rock stars, she just seemed so… down-to-Earth. Pretty, for sure, but very regular-girl.
Kind of like me, maybe. With less makeup, less cleavage, and definitely less jewelry.
She shook my hand. “I think… the pleasure’s all mine.” She looked me over quickly, like she couldn’t help it, and her gaze snagged on my chest. “I love your necklace.”
“Thank you. I made it, actually.”
Her eyes met mine. “You did not.”
I smiled. “I did.”
“You make jewelry?” Katie asked me.
“I do.”
“That’s so cool,” she said. “I’m a painter. And Amber’s a photographer.”
“I heard,” I said, nodding at Amber. “Ashley showed me some of your work, actually. It’s beautiful.”
“He did not,” Amber said.
I smiled again. “He did.”
Amber smiled back.
And that was about it. Ice broken.
We got talking, easily enough; it didn’t take all that much. I was myself, Katie was really sweet, and Amber was… interesting.
My first impression? She liked me, even if she was scoping me out a bit. Making sure I was a good thing for Ashley.
I knew I was good for Ashley, so what did I have to worry about?
Anyway, I just didn’t feel all that uncomfortable meeting Amber. Or Elle. I’d been nervous about it, a little, this morning.
But mostly, I was nervous about meeting Dylan.
For one thing, I wanted him to like me.
And two, he was the only one of Ashley’s past loves that I actually felt a little lingering jealousy toward. Maybe because on some level I knew there was just no way I could ever compete with him.
He was Ashley’s best friend. And besides that, he was a man.
Hot Mess: A Players Rockstar Romance (Players #1) Page 50
