Staged

by Olivia Cunning

  Jack’s eyes met Steve’s and, with teeth clenched, he shook his head, a sure sign that he wanted rescuing. Steve would do whatever it took to rescue one of his drummer idols from shopping.

  “We don’t want to shop,” Steve said. “We’d rather pub crawl.”

  “I’m up for that,” Azura said.

  “No changing your vote!” Sage poked her. “We decided on shopping.”

  “The women will shop, the men will pub crawl,” Iona said, no room for argument in her tone.

  It was too bad she was already involved with Kyle Schultz; she was perfect for Max. Though maybe they were too much alike to get along. Max would probably argue with her constantly, which might take away from his time arguing with Steve and that would take all the joy out of Max’s life.

  “Are there pubs in the shopping district?” Roux asked.

  “Probably,” Steve said.

  “So we can split up for the afternoon—women shop, men drink.” She stuck out her tongue and made a face of disgust. “Then meet up for dinner and go from there.”

  He drew her hand up to press against his cheek and kissed her wrist.

  “That’s our Roux.” Raven rolled her eyes. “Always compromising.”

  “What’s wrong with compromising?”

  “Nothing,” Steve said. “As long as you get something for yourself.” He knew she really wanted to go the sightseeing, touristy route today.

  “I get to spend time with my sisters, and later with you, and don’t have to go to any pubs. All win.”

  He kissed her wrist again, grateful that he’d fallen in love with a positive person. He was having a hard time remembering why he’d fallen for his first wife. She’d been so different from Roux. Always negative and bullheaded. Never satisfied. It was Bianca’s way or no way. She never even attempted to compromise. He’d been miserable. Even more miserable than he’d realized at the time.

  “Do you want to get married?” Steve asked Roux.

  She smiled gently. “Maybe someday.”

  “To me, I mean?”

  Her smile widened, crinkling her nose and the corners of her eyes. “Maybe someday.”

  It wasn’t a no. He could work with that.

  When they landed, a shuttle waited for them. Steve tipped the driver well for making suggestions that would fit their plans and for dropping them off on London’s West End instead of taking them to the hotel. Steve called Logan, who’d arrived on the first jet, and asked if he wanted to join them. He told him to round up as many guys—Max, Dare, the guys of Sinners and their opening band, Riott Actt—as he could find, and even remembered to invite the ladies to shop if they wanted to tag along.

  They chose the closest restaurant for their regrouping and made a dinner reservation for thirty as they weren’t sure how many people would be joining them. When it was time to part, he drew Roux against him and kissed her as if he wouldn’t see her for months rather than a handful of hours. He pressed a credit card into her hand.

  “Buy yourself something nice,” he said.

  Her eyes widened, and she tried to give the piece of plastic back. “No!”

  “It will make me happy.”

  “I’m not using your credit card.”

  “It has your name on it.”

  “It does not.”

  She held it up to her face and discovered that he wasn’t lying. He’d planned for her to have it for emergencies and had been carrying it around for over a week looking for the right time to give it to her. This time seemed right. And he didn’t want her to use it just for emergencies. He wanted her to spoil herself as much as he wanted to spoil her.

  “What the hell, Steve? Did you steal my Social Security number and apply for credit in my name? How did you get this?”

  “It’s my account,” he said. “I had your name added as an authorized user. I wanted you to have it for emergencies.”

  “Shopping is not an emergency.”

  “Yeah, it is!” Raven said, nudging Roux with her elbow. “Take it.”

  “I will not.”

  Steve tried to think of a way to trigger Roux’s natural tendency to compromise.

  “I don’t like to shop,” he said. “I thought maybe you could get me some new clothes or . . .” He shrugged. “Some sexy underwear or something.”

  She looked down at the credit card again, obviously weighing her options. If he could get her to accept it, maybe eventually she’d start using it on herself.

  “And socks,” he said. “I could use some socks.”

  “Steve,” she said, pressing her hand to his chest and looking up at him. “I know what you’re doing.”

  He opened his eyes wide, feigning innocence. “I’m serious. When does a famous rock star have time to buy socks?” He threw his hands out wide.

  She pursed her lips and shook her head.

  “Please,” he said, wriggling his toes in his shoes. “Help a guy’s feet out here.”

  “Fine.” She tucked the card into her purse.

  He forced himself not to crow over his small victory.

  “I’ll buy you socks,” she added.

  “And if you find something nice for yourself, you should—”

  She covered his lips with her fingertips. “I’m not buying anything for myself on your credit card.”

  “I’ll work on her,” Raven promised. Steve was glad he had at least one of her sisters on his side. “She doesn’t know how lucky she is.”

  “I do.” Roux stretched up on tiptoe and replaced her fingers with a soft peck from her lips. “I just don’t need material things to remind me.”

  “Come on, lover boy,” Zach said, patting Steve on the back. “Beer beckons.”

  For the first time in his life, Steve thought holding a woman’s purse while she tried on clothes sounded better than drinking beer with his friends. He resisted the urge to grab his crotch just to make sure his balls were still where they belonged.

  “Love you,” he whispered to Roux, letting her go only when Raven forcibly pulled her away.

  “Love you, sweetie,” Roux called, walking backwards and waving at him. He wasn’t the least bit embarrassed that her loud confession and horrendous pet name turned the heads of several bystanders.

  Once she turned around, he kept watching her as her sisters drew her close.

  “He gave her his fucking credit card,” Raven said.

  He didn’t hear their responses—they were now too far away—but he smiled to himself and followed Zach into the nearest pub.

  *~*~*

  They were on their third pub, and Steve, who was answering Roux’s text asking what size socks he wore, was on his fifth beer. Suddenly their cozy group of four guys became a rowdy crowd of twenty as all the members of Exodus End, Sinners, and Riott Actt—plus a few crew members and significant others—entered the bar. A few minutes later, a familiar burgundy-haired pest slunk into the bar, her eyes watchful.

  “What is she doing here?” Reagan—who much preferred hanging out with the guys to shopping—asked Steve. “Is it illegal to throat chop bitches in London?”

  “Technically, she’s doing her job,” Steve said, turning his back on Tamara, who, as usual, was watching him more closely than anyone. “But feel free to throat chop at will and hope for legal immunity.”

  “If she so much as looks at me cross-eyed, I’m throat chopping.” Reagan jerked down her hand in a wannabe karate strike. “And why the fuck is she smiling like that?”

  “Will you just ignore her?” Trey said, wrapping an arm around his wife’s lower back. “She isn’t bothering you.”

  Some of the tension eased from Reagan’s rigid spine, and she released a heavy breath. “I hope Toni’s article does more good than harm.”

  Article? Steve vaguely remembered Toni interviewing Reagan on the jet as they crossed the Atlantic several days ago. Steve wondered how the world would handle Reagan’s polygamy, especially since it was the woman with multiple husbands and not the other way around.
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br />   “Her words will make the world love us as much as Ethan does,” Trey said.

  Reagan laughed. “I don’t think that’s possible. Where is Ethan, anyway?”

  Trey nodded toward the big dark-haired man in the corner, who for once wasn’t wearing his neon orange shirt announcing him as a member of Exodus End’s security team. Ethan still looked like a guy no one should mess with, however, and he was watching his husband and wife closely as he sipped on a beer. Though it was true that the marriage between the three of them wasn’t legal, it was obviously binding. And a bit weird in Steve’s opinion, but hey, other people’s love affairs were none of his business. If they were even half as happy together as he was with Roux, he wished them the best.

  “He looks lonely,” Reagan said. “Maybe we should go keep him company.”

  “You read my mind.” To Steve, Trey said, “Will you excuse us?” before guiding Reagan to the corner of the room. She kissed Ethan’s jaw, and the naturally tan man turned white, his eyes darting to the spot behind Steve where he’d last seen Tamara. Steve set his beer down and decided now would be a great time to confront her, since she’d slunk off the last time he’d attempted it. And maybe if he distracted her, she wouldn’t notice the obvious chemistry between Reagan and her two husbands. Without another second’s hesitation, he stalked in Tamara’s direction.

  Someone grabbed Steve’s arm, drawing him to an abrupt halt. “What are you going to do?” Zach asked.

  “Ask her why she’s here.” And also why she was always watching him, because it was creepy as hell.

  “Do you need backup?”

  “Nope.”

  Zach let Steve’s arm slip from his grip and took a seat at a nearby table—undoubtedly so he could provide backup should Steve change his mind.

  Tamara watched Steve’s approach, and the smug smile she had plastered on her face rivaled the one Sam Baily typically sported.

  “Why do you have to be such a pain in the ass?” Steve said, sitting across from her without waiting for an invitation. “Nothing’s going to happen here that will be remotely interesting to your readers.”

  “I just came to unwind.” Her smug grin widened.

  “What are you smiling about?”

  “Oh, nothing.” But she kept right on smiling.

  “Are you going to leave?”

  “Are you asking me to leave?”

  “Yes.”

  She shook her head. “I want to watch it all go down.”

  “Watch what go down?”

  “Oh, nothing.”

  Steve was about to call Reagan over to deliver that throat chop she’d promised but decided instead to try making Tamara as uncomfortable as she was currently making him. Maybe he’d get some answers, or maybe she’d leave. He’d be satisfied with either outcome.

  “How do you know Sam Baily?” he asked, leaning his elbows on the table.

  That wiped the smug look off her face. “None of your business.”

  “So the lives of all my friends are everyone’s business, but your life is nobody’s? That doesn’t seem fair, does it?”

  “I know him through my sister.” She shrugged. “Not that interesting, is it?”

  “And how does Bianca know him? Why did he save her from bankruptcy?”

  She crossed her arms and turned her face toward the wall beside her. “Why don’t you ask her?”

  “She doesn’t answer my questions unless it’s ‘would you like some more money?’ and I bet you can guess her answer to that one.”

  Tamara straightened, her eyes narrowing. “Don’t you dare say anything bad about her. You ruined her in that divorce.”

  “I ruined her?” Steve laughed. “If anything, I protected her. I was stupid, I see that now. I was still in love with her at the time, but I’ve finally let all that go. I met someone who loves me for me, not for what I can do for her.”

  The smug smile returned to Tamara’s face. “I can’t wait to watch her dump you.”

  Steve frowned. “And why would she do that?”

  “You’ll see.”

  “What do you know that I don’t know?”

  “I’m not going to spoil the surprise.” She pointed toward the door. “I think you might want to check on your friend, though.”

  Steve turned in time to see Zach dash out of the pub, and Steve was pretty sure he was crying. Oh fuck.

  Thirty

  Roux lifted an adorable designer purse and checked the price tag. Fifteen hundred pounds! Surely the decimal place was off. She did some quick mental math on the exchange rate—two thousand bucks. Who the hell would spend two thousand bucks on a purse? That was a mortgage payment on a nice house. She set the purse down carefully, afraid that if she scuffed it, she’d be forced to buy it.

  “You could get that for yourself,” Raven said.

  “And make payments on it for two years? No thanks.”

  “Put it on Steve’s card. You know you want it. It’s so cute.”

  Actually, no, she didn’t want the reminder that she was broke. It was bad enough that she couldn’t afford to buy him those socks he’d requested.

  Maybe she could afford to add the bag’s adorable matching coin purse to her collection. She squinted at the tag, hoping to make the price smaller. Eighty pounds? For a fucking coin purse? Perhaps she should start collecting thimbles instead.

  Iona, who was trying on hats as if she’d been invited to a royal wedding, reached into her purse and pulled out her phone. “Google alert,” she announced. She had dozens of them set up so that she’d know what anyone was saying about the band or its members on the Internet. She’d been getting a lot of them over the past couple days as people who’d attended the Download Festival had been posting about them. There had been a few slurs, but most of the attention had been positive.

  “Will you stop obsessing?” Azura tried to take her phone from her hand. “We’re supposed to be having fun as sisters today, not as bandmates.”

  Iona’s eyes widened, and she glanced at Roux. Azura peeked at Iona’s phone over her shoulder. Her face also registered shock before she looked at Roux. Iona clutched her phone to her chest and took a deep breath before stuffing the device back into her purse.

  “You’re right,” Iona said. “Play today, work tomorrow.”

  “It was about me, wasn’t it?” Roux said, digging through her purse for her own phone. All she had to do was search for her name on Google and she’d get the same results that the alert had shown Iona.

  Iona grabbed Roux by the shoulders and crammed a hat on her head. “This hat is perfect for you.” She forced Roux in front of the mirror and took her purse—the phone still inside—and handed it to Azura, who grabbed the nearest evening gown and made a beeline for the dressing room. Sage dashed after Azura while Iona, Raven, and Lily made a human wall around Roux to keep her in front of the mirror. The silly red hat with the feather shaped like a question mark was tugged from her head and replaced with a wide-brimmed black-checkered fedora. Roux knew her sisters well enough to know they were hiding something from her.

  “I’m going to find out sooner or later,” she said, removing the hat and passing it Iona. “What did it say?”

  “It’s not important,” Iona said, but she drew Roux into a tight hug and squeezed her as if one of her favorite shelter dogs had been adopted by a dog-fighting ring.

  “Was it about me and Steve? We were expecting our relationship to go public.”

  Iona crammed another hat on Roux’s head. Was she fighting tears?

  “How bad can it be?” Roux said.

  “That motherfucker!” Azura bellowed from inside the dressing room. “I’m going to rip his entrails out through his ball sac and strangle him with them.”

  Roux’s stomach dropped. “That bad, huh?” She pushed Lily aside and marched toward the dressing room, not slowed at all by Raven, who had her arms around Roux’s waist and was trying to dig her feet into the carpet.

  “The pictures are probably old,�
� Iona said, chasing after her. “From before he met you.”

  Roux was trying not to jump to conclusions, but it sounded like what had her sisters so upset on her behalf was more about Steve than her. Roux checked under dressing room doors until she found the pairs of feet that belonged to Azura and Sage. She tried the knob, but the door was locked.

  “Open this door and give me my damn phone!” Roux demanded, pounding on the door with her palm.

  “That gown looks lovely on you,” Sage said to Azura, as if Azura’s outburst had never happened and Roux wasn’t now trying to rip the door off its hinges.

  “Roux,” Iona said in her most calming alpha-bitch voice. “Let’s go back to the hotel and we’ll discuss this in private.”

  “Are you worried that I’ll make a scene?” Roux spat, dropping to the floor and lying flat on her belly, squirming under the dressing room door. She got stuck when her butt—always too round, in her opinion—caught on the bottom of the door. “Oh, I’m about to make a fucking scene. Give me my damn phone!” She reached out and caught Azura around the ankle, trying to pull her down to her level. Her shoulder protested at the angle of her arm, but Roux refused to let a little pain stop her from getting her phone and finding out what had everyone so freaked out.

  “Sage,” Lily said calmly. “Unlock the door before she hurts herself.”

  The door latch clicked, and the bottom of the door scraped across Roux’s back, forcing her to lie flat until she’d been freed. Lily helped her stand, and even though Roux didn’t know exactly what all the drama was about, she could feel tears building inside her. Instead of directing her out of the store, Lily eased her into the dressing room. Raven and Iona squeezed in behind them and shuffled close so they could shut the door. Six grown women in a dressing room stall didn’t offer much breathing room.

  “Iona,” Lily said, “tell her what to expect before we show her.”

  “I . . .” Iona sucked in a breath. “I don’t want to.”

  “Steve,” Azura blurted. “He’s with some other chick. They’re both naked and . . . and doing stuff.”

  Oh, was that all? Did they think she’d freak out over pictures of Steve’s past lovers?