Ethan (Sand & Fog Series Book 4)

by Susan Ward

Hugh flushes, but he doesn’t back down from the challenge in my eyes. “Can’t be helped anymore. Eric’s the talent, but you’re the brains, Ethan. If you don’t get him back in line no one will. We’re all worried about him. Not just you. But let’s face reality. We need to finish the album and he needs to let us be a part of it. Taz and Linc have some great material. He won’t even listen to it. It’s like he’s purposely trying to self-destruct and taking all of us with him.”

  I roll my eyes at him, but his assessment is the very thing I’ve worried for months. “Eric does what Eric wants to do. No one’s going to change that. Not even me.”

  “Try, Ethan. That’s all we’re asking,” Taz replies. “We’ve got a good thing together. None of us want to see it end.”

  Oh fuck. It’s not just Hugh threatening to leave band. They all are.

  “Hey, we’re heading out,” Linc says. “Going to grab some grub and brews until it’s showtime. You should come with us, E. It’s been a long fucking afternoon. Or are you going to stick with your brother?”

  “What do you think?”

  Hugh’s jaw clenches as he shakes his head. “Staying with Eric. Like you always do.”

  He exhales in annoyance to make sure I know he thinks I shouldn’t. But, fuck, what else can I do? They’re my closest friends, but he’s my brother.

  Chapter Two

  An hour later, I’m sitting on the edge of the stage, legs hanging over the side, nursing a beer and still waiting for Eric. The arguing at the board ended—finally—I can tell by how they’re standing they’re only talking crap but I can I feel it in my gut nothing today is going to go smoothly.

  Not the afternoon.

  Not the show tonight.

  And not all the after-performance rigmarole.

  Just when I think it’s pointless to stay and watch over Eric, none other than the sexiest music blogger in the hemisphere appears.

  “You doing all right, Ethan?” she calls out as she crosses the stage. “You look like you could use some company.”

  Wrong. I’m in the mood to be alone—or rather I would be if it were anyone other than Avery Hart, aka Black Dawn’s resident social media influencer. She’s like our Marion, the heroine from the Indiana Jones movies, more kick-ass than the guys and I’m sure secretly in love with the hero. Just like in the flicks, except in our version there are two heroes—call me vain but, yes, I put me and Eric in lead billing—but for her I’m positive there’s only one hero: my brother.

  I turn my head as she moves toward me—a man would be a fool not to watch Avery walk—and for about the thousandth time in the six years she’s been part of the extended band, I visualize pulling out my imaginary gun and shooting myself in the head.

  True, I’d put her in the no-go zone the first time Eric met her, but that doesn’t make it any easier to be there with him. I’m a sucker for a girl with smarts and a killer smile, who can get me hot even dressed that way: worn Birkenstocks; loose, ragged jeans; long, holey sweater; nicely tight tank underneath, her voluptuous front hidden behind her wide cross-body tote strap and her unruly auburn curls that reach down to her curvy hips.

  I manage every day not to tell her how I feel about her, but even though it’s got to be done, it’s living agony. If I put her into available status Eric will make a play, and I’d rather not have her than have that.

  Eric had gotten that worked-up-ready-to-make-a-move expression two seconds after she’d walked into our rehearsal space asking for a job we weren’t even advertising for. One look at how they stared at each other and my protective instincts, as in protecting all women from my walking gland of a brother, put my mouth ahead of my brain and I’d classified her in the no-go zone, i.e. we both were hot for Avery so that meant neither of us could try to get anything going with her.

  A juvenile thing to do for a twenty-year-old guy, indisputable, but the rule started when we were thirteen, it’d worked well in high school, and Avery was the perfect reason to resurrect the classification in adulthood.

  It was the smart play.

  Besides, Avery works for us now, is great at her job, and it’d just be wrong to screw that up by hooking up with her. Even if she didn’t have the prettiest face with milk-chocolate brown eyes I’d ever seen, I couldn’t go there if I wanted to. The second the band voted to hire her made her no-can-do for all of us.

  We don’t fuck where we work. We’re probably the first rock band in history to make that a steadfast rule and do it. Especially being as Eric’s one of us.

  But, Christ, do I want to be the one who breaks that rule…

  Avery sinks down beside me, copying my posture. She lays her head on my shoulder, blasting me with a torturous tease of her scent, and widens those bedroom eyes until her glance lands in my groin with the instantly unchecked images of having her beneath me, staring up exactly that way. “Cheer up. It wasn’t that bad. Tonight’s going to go fine. Eric never screws up during a performance. He’s spot on every time, no matter what goes down before the show.”

  The mention of Eric’s blowup with Dad is good; it keeps my Avery insta-woody from fully inflating and helps me rein in my impulse to kiss her.

  Like a cold shower.

  Thank you, God.

  My face scrunches up in a grimace—part mention of Eric and part because she just put her hand atop my thigh near where I ache. “You saw?”

  “Was here the whole time. Over there.” She points to her pile of stuff stage left in a familiar arrangement: pillow to sit on, pillow for legs to use as a desk, laptop, jumbo-size sports bottle, and the second cross-body bag she lugs around with her that carries her backup everything.

  Damn it. “You didn’t blog about it, did you?”

  Her eyes go even wider, like that question is a no-brainer. “Yeah, I did. You know my rules. You get all of me 24/7 creating miraculous buzz for the band and you let me be embedded with you and uncensored.”

  Embedded and uncensored—oh, fuck my mind. Not now.

  I use pulling out the tie on my hair as an excuse to straighten up and, as I’d hoped, she eases off my body.

  Avery crinkles her nose. “Christ, you’re tense today. Your muscles feel rock hard.”

  If only she knew how hard…

  “You saw. You know why.”

  She attempts an air of no big deal as her gaze strays to Eric. “Not one of his better moments.”

  “Have there been any of those this tour?”

  Avery’s lower lip pushes out in a sexy pout. “Lots of them. Eric can be a really sweet guy when he’s not working his ass off to prove that he isn’t.”

  Interesting.

  How does she know that?

  Is Eric nice-Eric when they’re alone together?

  No, I don’t want to know. I don’t want to know anything about Avery’s relationship with my brother, especially that she knows his sweet side. That part of him only comes out these days when he’s trying to fuck a girl.

  It takes work, but I turn my thoughts back to the problem that came onto the stage with her. “So how bad is your blog post? How awful do we come off looking? Spoiled, foul-mouthed rich assholes unappreciative of their father coming out of retirement to save their fucked-up tour and career?”

  “Crap, you’re negative today. I don’t know what to think of this change. I do know I don’t like it. Snap back into happy, positive Ethan so I can continue to be your number one fan.”

  “Sorry, positive jumped ship an hour ago. The capacity to be delusional went with it. Even a spin doctor—which you’re not—couldn’t make the scene with Pop come off well in print.”

  She tosses me an annoyed look. “O ye of little faith. I told you, it wasn’t that bad. The post isn’t bad either. If anything, it will make Eric more swoon-worthy and loveable to your female fans. I’m a very good social media influencer. Have faith.”

  The latter part is proven and confirmed by her three million followers on her blog; the first part, no, I’m not buying it. Even a genius with words coul
dn’t massage what happened on stage into good hype for the band.

  I grab my cell from my pocket.

  “You’re not checking, are you?” She looks irritated.

  I shrug as I tap through the screens. “I’m a fan of your work. What can I say?”

  She rolls her eyes and crosses her arms. “Try ‘I’m sorry for not trusting you’ after you read today’s post. I don’t do cheap shots, Ethan, or shock talk. You know that.”

  I continue to scroll up the page. “Instead of an apology, I’ll buy you dinner. How’s that?”

  “We were already going to have dinner together.”

  “I’ll make it a good dinner. Not the usual joints we go to when we’re in LA.”

  And yes, we hang out together. No doubt it’s a stupid move, but it seemed stupider to be friends and avoid being alone with Avery just because I can’t stop myself from thinking about how epic it would be to go to bed with her.

  God, how many times have I had a sexual thought about Avery in the last four minutes? Seeing her walk. Looking at the pillows. Her head on my shoulder. Her hand on my thigh…too numerous to count. It’s not usually this bad.

  I sink my teeth into my upper lip, fighting to focus on the words on the screen since I’m a guy with a one-track mind all of a sudden.

  I start reading—oh Christ.

  “See,” she says, gloating and happy.

  “Is that really how you see my brother?”

  “Of course.”

  That disclosure—a relief, but unwelcome.

  “As a guy trying to break out from under the shadow of his father and struggling with how much he loves him?”

  “That’s exactly what’s going on with Eric.”

  I stare at her, disbelieving. “Precisely when did you reach that diagnosis of the fucked-up state of their relationship?”

  She lifts her chin. “The first time I met you two.”

  “In the rehearsal studio when you asked for a job?”

  “No.” She stares at me, eyes heavy with meaning. “The first first time.”

  That memory—always blocked—comes front and center. We were ten and her stepdad, an employee for the security company that works for us, came to my house to do an inspection, and my dad sent Avery to play with us.

  “It really bugs me you never remember the first first time.”

  I meet the challenge in her eyes. “The way you recall it isn’t flattering to me.”

  Her face takes on a pretty pert glow. “It wasn’t flattering to me. You hardly looked at me. Said hello and kept reading your book. It would have been completely unmemorable if not for Eric.”

  “I was ten. And you’re a girl,” I counter in my own defense. “What’d you expect, cartwheels that my dad brought some girl for us to hang out with?”

  “Well, something more than being ignored would have been nice,” she points out with exaggerated drama. “If not for Eric—”

  Crud, does she have to go there?

  “—maneuvering out of sight of the house to kiss me—”

  Yep, she did.

  “—I wouldn’t have remembered it either. It was my first kiss. Girls don’t forget things like that.”

  The tension bands in my body twist tighter as I’m never sure why she says it that way every time she recalls the story. “I imagine they don’t. Unlike guys, who forget everything the second it’s done.”

  Her lids shoot wide and inwardly I groan. Crap, what made me say that? I’m not even the one who kissed her that day and I can’t forget it. Childish beyond words, but I hate the thought that Eric kissed her once, even if he’d been only ten, almost as much as knowing he’s a first kiss she likes to remember.

  “You’re in a grumpy mood. Snap out of it, mister, or I won’t have dinner with you,” she admonishes, and even that comes out flirty.

  “Sorry. Long afternoon.”

  She nods and smiles. “There, we’re friends again. Though I wouldn’t have stayed angry at you long. I never do. You’re too loveable.”

  Avery ends that with a kiss on my cheek and one luscious breast pushing in on my arm.

  “And it’s a good thing Eric made that day one I’d never forget. I wouldn’t have had the nerve to crash unannounced at your open call for a drummer and ask for a job if I hadn’t figured a guy kissing me gave me the right to. We would have never connected again. The band wouldn’t have given me a job that I love. My blog wouldn’t have exploded. And we wouldn’t all be fabulous friends.”

  I nod in agreement because I can see Avery expects me to. But I prefer to think we would have reconnected a different way and ended up together.

  Chapter Three

  “Oh shit.”

  Avery looks up from her phone. “What?”

  I rapidly scan the rows of seats. “How the hell did my brother leave without me seeing it?”

  Her head tilts to the side with a pointed stare. “You were too busy trying to peek at what I’ve been texting to my sister. Emmy says hello, by the way.”

  My face flushes. Damn, busted again. I was obvious. And no, not so much about what she was texting but to whom. Not that it makes it better that I only wanted to know if it was a guy.

  She’s on that fucking phone 24/7. There’s gotta be a guy for Avery somewhere, even if I haven’t found evidence of that yet.

  I pull to my feet. “Shit, I’m supposed to sit on Eric until showtime.”

  She frowns. “Why?”

  I shake my head, annoyed with myself for having said that. “No reason.” And there honestly isn’t. It’s a position after the sound check that I self-appointed myself to. Call it instinct. Call it knowing my brother, but letting him out of sight today is a recipe for disaster. It’s only going to add to the list of possibilities of what might go wrong. A leap in logic, probably, but I don’t want to chance anything given how sound check went.

  Fuck, Ethan, a bit dramatic, are we?

  I shift my gaze to find Avery staring at me with curiosity. I hold out a hand to her. “Let’s get out of here. Have an early dinner or something?”

  She ignores my hand and springs to her feet. “Don’t you want to go find Eric?”

  That rubs me the wrong way. “Why? Do you?”

  Avery shrugs. “You’re buying dinner. That makes it your guest list. I don’t if you don’t. See, I’m easy.”

  There are enough mixed messages in that to make the sex show in my head play again, and my woody revives. I could take it as she wants to be alone with me but is too cool to show it. I could take it as she’s not interested in Eric. One way I can’t take it is that she’s easy.

  I gesture her ahead of me to go collect her stuff piled next to an amp without answering her because I never have a clue what to do with half the flirty things Avery says to me. From another girl, I’d take it literally and I wouldn’t need to be prodded a second time to make a move. But she’s the mixed-message queen of California. Ambiguous should be her middle name.

  Can’t tell if she’s into me.

  Can’t tell if she’s into Eric.

  Half the time I can’t tell if she’s into girls instead of guys. No, that last thought is messed up. It’s guys. I forgot about that loser she was dating when she started working for us. Frustration combined with horniness over a girl makes a guy think crazy things.

  But in my defense, she’s not like any other girl I’ve known and that makes her intriguing and sexy as fuck and terrific and…like adjectives much, Ethan.

  Fuck, I’m hung up on her.

  When a guy uses runaway adjectives in his head to describe a girl there’s no help for it. But it’s not totally my fault. There’s nothing about Avery not to want.

  I’ve met a lot of women the last six years on the road, and most of them tend to be easy-to-bag fame whores. Perfect for my brother, since he’s interested in only a limited relationship, limited offer type of thing. But anything but good for me. I’m turned on more by what a girl has in her head than in her panties and bra—my gaze strays
to the seductive sway of Avery’s ass—fine, so noted, not completely accurate, but brains have to be part of the package to catch my notice and keep it.

  As a rule, I don’t use the W word. It’s sexiest, not how I feel about women, and Avery would go apeshit knowing I ever thought it—even if only rarely.

  “I think I’m going to make tomorrow’s blog post about you. I don’t think you get enough exposure or recognition. I need to correct that, expose you more.” She says that casually with just enough hint of teasing that I can’t tell if she’s serious.

  I toss her a pained expression. “I wish you wouldn’t.”

  “What? Expose you?” She looks up with poorly concealed amusement. “Gosh, you’re edgy about everything today. As if I’m going to find out something about you in the next twenty-four hours that’s going to completely ruin my opinion of you.”

  She shakes her head, and her purring laugh strokes my nerve centers.

  “Let’s keep the PR only focused on Eric, shall we?”

  She waves off my comment. “My blog, my rules. Remember? I write what I want about the band, uncensored. Afraid I might ruin your game with the girls?”

  She can’t be serious. Game? What game? I don’t have one. Sure, I’ve had my share of girlfriends, but they never work out. Being in a band and having a relationship doesn’t fit well together. “That’s exactly it, Avery. If you tell people what you think of me I might never get laid again.”

  She frowns with a pout this time. “If I tell people what I think of you I’ll have to beat back the girls with a stick just to get a little Q & A material for my blog.”

  “I doubt that.”

  Her lower lip protrudes even more and I disappear from this conversation by squatting to scoop up her things.

  “Aren’t you curious what I’m gonna write?”

  “No…” I say that in a long, exaggerated way.

  “Well, you should be. Never trust a blogger. Isn’t that a motto somewhere?”

  “I trust you.”

  “Do you?” The way her voice lowers makes me glance over my shoulder to meet her lush brown stare.

  “Absolutely. We wouldn’t be friends otherwise.”