“You know I had a good time man! How about you?”
Damn I felt like a slime even as I said it. I felt like I needed to tell Blake that it had been a decade and we were fooling ourselves if we thought we could still treat girls the way we did back then. Not that he would probably understand if I did say something.
And of course I already knew how his night went. Jake told me all about that. He gave Mia’s friend the full groupie treatment and probably showed her the door shortly after. Him turning that Kayla girl loose was probably a big part of the reason why Mia wasn’t here right now. If her friend wasn’t around then maybe she would’ve stuck around.
Then again maybe my reputation would’ve been enough to send her running whether or not her friend was around to be jilted by Blake. Maybe I was getting what I deserved. My karmic retribution for all the crap I’d pulled before the band broke up the first time.
“You know I gave it to her then showed her the door man,” Blake said. “Some things never change. Am I right?”
He held his hand out to slap mine again. I grinned and laughed as we slapped skin even as I wondered how that Kayla girl felt about being loved and left the night before. She’d seemed a hell of a lot more into the band than Mia was. She should know what to expect.
That a long time fan should “know what to expect” and not be surprised about getting shown the door after a night with one of the single guys in the band was enough to send a fresh wave of guilt running through me.
“Yeah, some things definitely never change.”
“So what’s the plan for today? Want to go out and see what there is to see before we head off to the next city?” Blake asked.
I leaned back in my chair and closed my eyes. I hoped he would take it for me leaning back and trying to chase away some of the bright light that was threatening to break through my eyelids and set off the mild hangover that was threatening. It wouldn’t be the first time I’d had to sit back and pause the conversation because my substance abuse from the night before was threatening to catch up with me.
Only this wasn’t the substance abuse that was catching up with me the next day. This was a lifetime of bad choices threatening to catch up to me. This was something special I’d felt with a girl, something more real than anything I’d ever imagined, being thrown down the pisser because of my reputation. Because I had a reputation that was almost as bad as Blake’s. Though I wasn’t sure Mia would even know about that reputation if she wasn’t a huge fan of the band.
Then again if she’d left with her friend who’d been jilted by Blake then she probably knew about the reputation now. I wanted to reach across the room and punch Blake. I wanted to reach into the past and punch myself. More than anything I wanted Mia here. I wanted Jake to pop in and say he’d figured out where to find her.
As though on cue there was another knock at the door. I popped up and walked over, getting a curious look from Blake in the process. Whatever. He could be curious. When I opened the door Jake was standing there with a huge grin on his face.
“Tell me you have good news man,” I said.
“Boy do I have good news,” he said. “Turns out your girl was a contest winner, or her friend was at least. From there it was simple enough to get their information from the radio station and figure out where she works and everything!”
I shook my head and reached out to slap Jake on the back. Holy fucking shit! That was better than I ever could’ve hoped for, and it was fucking fast. When I first asked him to try and track that info down I figured it was crazy. I figured there wasn’t a chance he was actually going to find anything. I’d never been happier to be proved wrong before in my life.
“You’re amazing, Jake. Tell your buddy to throw on another couple thousand to his invoice and then add a couple for you too.”
I could afford it, after all. One of the perks of being a millionaire many times over from traveling the world making music and then turning around and putting that money in a responsible investment portfolio was the ability to throw that money around from time to time. I figured if I was going to make it rain then the least I could do was make sure it was pouring on people who were doing me a solid.
“What’s he talking about man?” Blake asked from behind me.
lake had turned his chair around and he was regarding Jake and me with half curiosity and half surprise. Not that I should be surprised that he was surprised. In his world the fun was over when the girl was shown the door. He probably couldn’t conceive trying to chase down a girl.
“I had Jake track down the girl from the night before,” I said. “She left with her friend in the middle of the night.”
Blake shook his head. “I’m sorry man. If I’d known you wanted to hang onto that one for a little morning fun I would’ve kept her friend occupied. God knows she was worth it!”
“Yeah, you know it man,” I said. “She was so good that I just have to have round two!”
I don’t know why I was saying that. It was more out of habit than anything else. This is how I’d talked with Blake, how we’d acted around each other, for so damn long that I had a hard time thinking of acting any other way. It was like I was watching myself in an out of body experience, disgusted at what I was saying even as I was powerless to stop it because it was such a deeply ingrained habit.
Jake handed me a slip of paper and I glanced down at it. It was an address.
“What’s this?”
“Address of the place where she works. At least I’m pretty sure it’s the place where she works,” Jake said. “It’s actually a pretty short walk from here, but it’ll be up to you to use your rock star charm to actually get a foot in the door.”
He grinned. As though there was ever any doubt I’d be able to find a way to track her down once I was in the building. All it would take was a lady receptionist somewhere who was between twenty and thirty-five and I’d be in like Flynn, to use a somewhat outdated phrase that still checked out as far as I was concerned.
“So are you going to go track that down? Get another crack at it?” Blake asked.
“Something like that,” I said.
If everything went as planned then I hoped to do a hell of a lot more than “get another crack” at Mia, as Blake had so crudely put it. There was just something about that girl that captivated my imagination. Something about her that left me wanting more whenever I was around her. There was something about the way she was never impressed by the fact that I was who I was that piqued my curiosity and made me want to know more about her.
No, how I felt about Mia went so far beyond the love’em and leave’em approach Blake was so fond of. It went so far beyond a single night’s pleasure. When I thought of Mia I found myself thinking of silly things like buying a house together. I started wondering about the names of our kids, and that was something that had never occurred to me with any girl. Ever.
“So should I tell the guys that they can expect to be delayed?” Blake asked. “I can totally cover for you if you want.”
I smiled despite myself. I might get annoyed by Blake sometimes, but he could also be a good friend. And it wasn’t entirely fair to get annoyed with him anyways considering he was just keeping on the same as we had back in the day. I’d never actually told him how much this stuff annoyed me when he pulled it, and I wasn’t going to bring it up now either. There wasn’t enough time to go into it anyways.
I needed to get out there and find Mia, and figure out exactly why she’d left in the middle of the night. More than anything I prayed that I’d be able to convince her to give me another chance.
“I have to get going man. Lock up after me?” I asked.
“Sure thing. Good luck with your piece of tail!”
I winced as I walked out of the bus. Mia was so much more than just another piece of tail, but that’s just the way Blake looked at the world. If you’re a hammer then everything you see is a nail. If you’re Blake then every girl you see at a concert is a potential groupie to be wine
d, dined, banged, and tossed back.
I wasn’t going to be like that, though. Things were going to be different this time. I just prayed that my reputation wasn’t finally going to catch up with me and ruin my first true chance at something real.
18: Back to Reality
I sat in my cubicle staring at my monitor. I was moving numbers around in a spreadsheet, but I was having one hell of a hard time focusing on said spreadsheet.
I looked over to my second monitor which was just showing the desktop. The desktop that was sporting a wallpaper featuring the boys from Twenty Promises. It was from their new tour. I downloaded it first thing this morning.
I'm not sure what compelled me to do that. Maybe I just had to see him. Only it was turning into pure torture every time I looked over. Pure torture and pure bliss. I kept thinking about last night, about how out of character everything I'd done was. I kept thinking about how incredible he felt with his body pressed against mine. And more than anything I kept kicking myself and thinking how stupid I was to sneak out when I did.
Even as another part of me knew that it had to be done. It was just a one night stand. It couldn't be any more than that because of who he was and what he did. I didn't want to get too emotionally invested. I definitely didn't want him to get too emotionally invested. He was on tour, and it wouldn't work out.
Still, last night had been so damn fun!
"Enjoying the picture of your new boyfriend?"
"I told you he's not my boyfriend you bit…"
I realized too late that it was my boss Rachel standing behind me. Her arms were crossed she stared down at me from over her glasses. She had her hair done up behind her in a bun and overall it gave her a very severe stern librarian vibe.
"Sorry Rachel," I said. "I thought you were someone else."
"And I thought you were someone else last night," she said. "I almost didn't recognize the studious buttoned up workaholic on those big screens!"
She leaned into my cubicle with a decidedly non-stern-librarian looking grin on her face all of a sudden. She glanced around as though she was making sure there was nobody listening in on us. Meanwhile, I blinked. She mentioned monitors. She couldn't possibly be…
Only there was only one thing I could think of that would have her grinning like that. Sure boss lady was pretty easy-going when it came to running her ship despite the stern librarian thing, but she also wasn't one to break out in spontaneous smiles like that. I wondered if she went to the concert with a daughter or something.
"Why don't you come back to my office?"
"Sure," I said, not quite sure where this was leading.
I took a nervous seat in her office. I wondered how much she'd seen last night. Obviously a lot if she was alluding to seeing me on the monitors which meant she probably saw me up on stage.
"Go ahead and close the door Mia," she said.
The office was small enough that I just had to reach behind me and swing the door shut and then I was all alone with my boss. Something that had never happened before whether for good or bad.
Rachel leaned over her desk and regarded me through her glasses for a moment. Then the huge grin was back.
"So tell me," she said. "What was it like being that close to Grant?"
I blinked and said the first thing that came to mind, though it probably wasn't the right thing to say. "I can't believe you were at the concert."
"What?" She looked a little insulted. "Do I look too old to enjoy a Twenty Promises concert or something? Keep in mind they were huge just as I was getting out of high school and going into college. You couldn't go to a party without hearing their music! Sure the guys always complained, but they always played it if they wanted to get some play. And Grant was so hot back then!"
She stopped to think about that for a moment and then amended her estimation of Grant. "Come to think of it, he's still pretty damn hot!"
I was inclined to agree with her estimation of Grant's hotness. I knew firsthand just how fucking hot he was. More so than my boss could ever dream of. I'd seen it up close and personal, after all.
And suddenly all of that nervous energy left me. I felt like I was in a safe place. I'd already talked about it with Kayla, leaving out the part where I'd bailed rather than getting kicked out, but I figured I could share some of my experiences with another fan.
I blinked. Another fan? Did that mean I was a Twenty Promises fan now?
Well, even if I didn't particularly care for their music I was sure as hell a fan of Grant. I could at least admit to that much.
I grinned. "It was amazing! Having him sing to me like that, being up there on stage…"
"And what about the stuff later backstage?" Rachel asked with a grin plastered across her face.
I clenched my chair and leaned forward. "Kayla told you about that? That traitorous bitch! I'm going to kill her!"
I didn't even know Kayla knew my boss. She worked in a completely different department and she'd have to go looking for her to have that conversation. I was so embarrassed. I was going to kill my friend! Only Rachel was laughing, which made me pause in my potentially unfair hatred of my best friend. She was looking at me with a twinkle in her eyes.
"I don't know Kayla, and I didn't know whether or not anything happened last night backstage. I just wondered. Now I know for sure though!"
That brought me up short. My mouth snapped shut and I realized what an idiot I'd been. She was just fishing for information, and I'd seen that bait and thought to myself "that looks delicious." I'd taken it hook, line, and sinker.
Damn it!
"Backstage was pretty fun," I said. "We got a tour and we sat it on a fan meet and greet and even got to go to their after party. All in all it was pretty cool!"
Rachel cocked an eyebrow at me. "And that's all that happened backstage?"
"Yeah," I sighed.
I hoped that sight made it sound like I was wistfully thinking of other things that I would've enjoyed happening with Grant backstage. I just wasn't ready to discuss all of that with my boss. Kayla, sure, she'd been there and she'd been my friend my entire life. My boss who I was friendly with at work but otherwise didn't know all that well?
Yeah, fat chance she was getting any of the really good gossip.
Besides, it's not like I was telling a lie. Not exactly. Nothing had happened backstage, strictly speaking. Unless you counted that time that he came up behind me while we were looking out at the chanting crowd.
No, all the fun stuff, the stuff she was asking about with her implied question, happened on the tour bus. And she hadn't asked me what happened on the tour bus so I figured I could give her my answer with a clean conscience.
Rachel pouted and suddenly looked very disappointed. "That's it?"
That came very close to a question that I couldn't answer honestly with a little bit of obfuscation. Still, I wasn't going to spill everything to my boss. It just wasn't appropriate for the workplace. Particularly considering that everything I'd done at the concert the night before didn't exactly paint me in a very responsible light.
Meeting a rock star, going off to his tour bus, having a little bit of ill advised fun where I was nothing more than a glorified groupie no matter how into it, no matter how into me, he'd seemed? Yeah, that wasn't exactly the kind of thing that would be great for my long-term employment prospects once the gossip got around the office.
Although Rachel didn't look very disappointed. She still had that pout on her face. She looked more like Kayla last night in the car on the ride home when she was asking for details than a lady who was pushing thirty and probably shouldn't have been out at that concert anyways!
"That's too bad," she said. "The way he was looking at you while you were up on the stage with him last night, the way he seemed to be searching for you, it made me think there was something going on there."
There’d certainly been the potential for something to be going on there, but it wasn't going to happen. Not now. Not after I'd run. Only I
couldn't very well tell her that I was regretting my decision to leave him behind last night after a one night stand. No, that was edging too close to territory that was the kind of thing I shouldn't be sharing with my boss even if I was sort of bursting to tell someone other than Kayla.
I resisted the urge to spill though. Something about the way she was leaning forward also told me that the instant I spilled it would be all over the office. Behind my back, to be sure, but wasn't that the worst kind of gossip?
"No, I'm afraid nothing happened other than the autograph session and the party in the Quarterback Lounge," I lied. "There was absolutely nothing going on between me and Grant last night.
"That's a shame," she said. "You were living the dream."
I winced, but I tried my best not to show it. Kayla, and now my boss. Two women telling me that I was living the dream. And for one heady moment the night before I had felt like I was living the dream. I felt like I'd found a fun guy who was interesting to talk to, who surprised me, and who was so fucking sexy. So fucking good in bed!
He was everything I was looking for in a man, except for the pesky fact that he was the lead of a band that I absolutely despised until last night. He was considered the sexiest member of a band that was regularly on tour where he could pull any girl he wanted.
No, whatever happened between me and Grant had been fun, but it was just that. Passing fun. And no amount of wishing was going to change that even if he had felt like the perfect guy for one brief shining moment.
Rachel's desk phone started to ring. I glanced at it and she did as well, but then she looked back. "I can ignore it. I need to hear more about last night."
I shrugged. The phone stopped ringing. "There's really nothing to say. I got an autograph and that was it. There's nothing between me and Grant. You must've been imagining things."
The phone started ringing again and Rachel looked down in annoyance. "I told them never to bother me when my door was closed…" she muttered.
She did pick up the phone though. I could hear excited squealing from the other side. Now that was interesting. Usually the receptionist didn't get that worked up about anything, and yet I was pretty sure that was her voice shrieking into the receiver so loud that Rachel had to pull away ever so slightly.
Rock Hard: A Bad Boy Rock Star Romance Page 13
