The Opposite Of Right (Bad Decisions Trilogy #1)

by Christi Barth

  Two steps down the hall, Cam spun back around on his heel. “Hey—is your sister okay now?”

  Deondra stopped biting her lower lip long enough to flash a quick smile. “Yeah. So I’ll be fine.”

  “Make sure of it.”

  As he swaggered off, Kylie couldn’t help but notice the way his jeans…well, her mouth just went dry at the up close and personal view of his ass and those long legs. They’d felt tightly muscled, even through the thick denim, when she’d wrapped her leg around them. Kylie pulled in a deep breath.

  “You’re not some crazed stalker, are you?” Deondra asked as they moved at a snail’s pace down the hallway and back out into the main club.

  “No. God, no.” She didn’t want the other woman to worry for even a second about leaving her in charge. “I mean, you’d have to be blind and deaf not to lust after Cam Watson at least a little. But I don’t even follow him on Twitter.”

  “Probably good. Seeing as how I write all the band’s tweets.”

  Kylie looked at the glass-encased posters flanking the entrance. They were promo shots from the band’s last big album, before Cam had cut his hair. Amazing how different—and ten times hotter—Cam looked now without the long locks. She decided to put Deondra’s mind permanently at ease with a confession. “I didn’t even know who I was kissing. I was just trying to do something…different. Something very, very wrong.”

  “Ha! I like that. Nobody’s ever said that swapping spit with Cam was wrong. I’m gonna tease him about that for a long time.”

  Except that Kylie was quite certain that kissing Cam—accidentally on purpose—was the most right thing she’d ever done.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Cam clapped Jake McQuinn on the shoulder as they walked backstage. “You rocked tonight.”

  A quick shake sent sweat flying from Jake’s brow. It’d been hot under those damn spots. “Right back at ya.”

  It was the same thing they’d said to each other at the end of every single concert. Kind of an after-the-fact good-luck charm. Cam, as superstitious as every other performer, wouldn’t ever skip saying it. But some nights he meant it more. This was one of those nights. Riptide’s sound was gelling again. The capacity crowd had stayed on their feet the whole time. It beat back Cam’s constant worry about their new album. By about a tenth of a percent.

  He whipped the red bandanna off the forehead of their drummer to complete the post-show routine. “Your sticks were slick, Jones.”

  “Somebody has to do the real work in this group. Get the women all riled up and their panties soaked.”

  Jake snatched the drumsticks out of his back pocket. Gave a quick rat-a-tat-tat on the drummer’s arm. “You’re a giver, Jones. No doubt about it.”

  “I’m hoping to give it to that blonde who was over by the speaker. Did you see her?”

  “Nah.” Cam had kept his eyes glued to the back of the club. Every once in a while, the had door opened. Probably for smokers craving a hit. It provided just enough backlight for him to catch a glimpse of Kylie. Kylie Stafford of the long red hair and dark eyes.

  Just about any day that ended in the letter Y, a woman or twelve threw themselves at him. Kylie was different. Her shock at recognizing him after the kiss had been all too real. It’d been years since someone had wanted just Cam. Not Cam the famous singer. Not Cam who dated supermodels and actresses. Just a guy she thought was hot enough to hit on in the bathroom line. Yeah, he got a kick out of that.

  A guy as wide as he was tall, with security in block letters across his shirt, gave them the slow clap as they approached. “You sounded good. Better than I expected.”

  “Hope they write that on my tombstone,” muttered Jake.

  “I trust your judgment, T-Bone,” Cam said. “Thanks.” The man stood guard backstage for every band that came through, big or small, new or classic. He damn well knew good music when he heard it. Cam indulged in a complex handshake/fist-bump combo with him. “Hey, if a redhead tries to come back here, let her through. She’s filling in for our goody girl. Name’s Kylie.”

  “She pretty?”

  “And then some,” Cam murmured under his breath as they entered their private room.

  Jones whistled. “A hottie who rates VIP access? What’s her story?”

  “Don’t know. Yet.” But he wanted to find out. Cam beelined to his guitar case and carefully nestled the white and black custom Fender Stratocaster into the satin lining. Was the black satin over the top? Especially with the standard velvet underneath it to actually protect the instrument? Sure. But, as Jake said when he gave it to him three birthdays ago, to be a true rock god, you couldn’t just act the part. You had to live it.

  “You said Deondra’s okay, though?” Jones asked, with uncharacteristic seriousness. They were all worried about her.

  “Yeah.” He’d ducked behind an amp to thumb through his texts just before the last song. “Here’s the bad news—she’s not coming back. The surgery’s routine, but when Deondra asked the doc when she could go back on the road, he laughed at her. I guess a tour bus isn’t considered a healing environment.”

  “Sexual healing, definitely.” Jones waggled his eyebrows and leered. Jake snickered.

  They were a tight, balanced trio. Plus, the added layer of their managers and agents and label reps and all that crap. But Cam had always been the guy in charge. The one who pushed new ideas and made the hard decisions. No Deondra was a problem. One he was ready to fix before the other guys even realized it.

  Cam grabbed a towel, scrubbed it over his face and head. And went with his gut. ’Cause there was no other way to describe the harebrained idea he’d come up with. “We need a new goody girl. I was thinking of asking Kylie if she wanted the job.”

  A wolf whistle almost split his eardrums. Jones followed it up by asking, “The chick from tonight?”

  “Yeah. The club manager found me after the opening act and raved about her. Said she managed the crowd like a pro. Never once got flustered with the payments. Looks like she’s got some retail experience under her belt.”

  As he bent to flip open a cooler, Jake pinned him with a hard stare, colder than the ice he was rooting through for a beer. “Were you under her belt?”

  “No,” Cam bit out.

  “Good. Keep it that way.”

  If this conversation kept going, he’d need to dump that entire cooler over Jake’s head to keep from getting into it with him. Best friend or not, some lines didn’t need to be crossed. “Since when do you get a vote on my sex life?”

  The bottle cap snicked as it popped off and landed at Cam’s feet. It was too close to be an accident. Jake dropped the opener to the table with a clatter. Spread his feet wide. “Since it screwed us over once already. I don’t believe in making the same mistakes twice.”

  Neither did Cam. But he also didn’t believe in being reminded of all the ones he’d already made. Fisting his hands on his hips, he ground out, “You plan on throwing that in my face for how long, exactly?”

  “Fuck if I know. How many times did you do Suzy? How many times did you let her fill your ears with her shit ideas that tanked our last album while you were filling her?” Jake started counting on his fingers. “Three? Five?” Then he wiped his hands on his jeans. “Let’s multiply that by the millions we lost. It’ll be a good starting point for how many times I’ll remind you not to mix sex and business. Our business.”

  Jones threw a handful of ice at each of them. “Everybody simmer down. Sit down, too. Let’s take a step back. Cam only said he wanted Kylie on the bus, not in his bunk. Fact is, we need to replace Deondra. How about we don’t overthink it? Ask the girl, see what she says.”

  For all his pranks, non-stop talk of sex and an alarming tendency to moon the audience—even when they were at a college or in the Bible Belt—Jones had a cooler head than the rest of them. And when you crammed a handful of people onto two buses for long amounts of time, that became the most important quality to have. Not to mention that his drum
solos brought down the house every night.

  Cam got it. He regretted sleeping with Suzy more than Jake could ever know. “This tour is our fresh start. Our second chance to grab back our fans before they give up on us entirely. I won’t do anything to screw it up.”

  “Yeah. I know.”

  “Look, I promise I won’t have sex with her on the bus. If she even says yes to working for us. And she probably won’t. How many people can drop out of their lives for a month with no warning?”

  Jones retied his bandanna to hold back his long blond hair. “I’m going out there to find a groupie who appreciates my particular…talents. If she likes my drumming, that’s just a bonus.”

  After a beat, Jake walked to the door and put his hand on the knob. “I’ll come with you. So Cam has some privacy to take care of our personnel issue.”

  It was a peace offering. Leaving the room proved he trusted Cam to be alone with Kylie. “Thanks.”

  Cam knew not to walk through a patch of poison ivy. He was smart enough not to eat the tacos out of the back of some guy’s truck in the middle of Mexico, the same ones that had given Jones the runs for three days. So he waited until Kylie perched on the edge of the brown leather couch. Carefully picked the spot farthest away from her in the room for himself. Because this girl with the caramel-colored eyes was guaranteed to be trouble. Did that mean he should pay her, send her on her way and avoid the potential for trouble entirely? Nah. He wasn’t that smart.

  Leaning against the closed door, Cam asked, “Did you have fun tonight?”

  A wide smile burst across her face. “I really did. Like I mentioned before, I’d been having a super crappy day. It made me feel like there wasn’t a single thing I could do right. And then Deondra asked me to fill in for her. I made change, I swiped credit cards, I made a couple who were on their first date blush and I even upsold.”

  “You what?”

  “You know, when you convince someone to buy something more expensive than what they planned.” She was an expressive talker, her hands as animated as her face. “A shirt and a cap instead of one T-shirt. Or a sweatshirt, which is an even higher price point. Cleaned you out of shot glasses entirely by inventing a drinking game that can be done to your songs.”

  “No kidding?” Despite his good intentions, Cam pushed off the door. Came a few steps closer. Because that was a damned good idea. One that none of the suits at the label had ever mentioned. They’d been lugging around those shot glasses since the middle of the disastrous last tour. Hadn’t been able to get rid of them, even for at a lower price. Until tonight. Until Kylie. “That’s amazing.”

  She shrugged one shoulder. “I worked at Great America the summer after high school. If you can survive a theme-park gift shop with screaming kids and exhausted parents and grabby hands coming at you from all angles, you can sell anything, anywhere.”

  Cam knew he needed to add some due diligence to his gut instinct. Mostly so he’d have a good rebuttal the next time Jake gave him shit about asking her to come on the bus. “Is that your only retail experience?”

  “No. I work every summer. I just upscaled myself from magnets and stuffed animals to trendy boutiques in Lincoln Park.” Kylie leaned forward. Which gave him a good look down the cut-off neckline of her shirt, but he dragged his eyes back up after just a glimpse of creamy flesh. He remembered how those breasts had felt against his chest, and Cam refused to sport wood in the middle of a job interview. “I’ll tell you a secret. Some of those women can be worse than a screaming toddler if we’ve sold out of a blouse in their size.”

  “Sounds miserable.”

  “Oh, no. I like a challenge. I also like the feeling of knowing exactly what I’ve accomplished at the end of the day. Success, and results, are immediate and tangible.”

  Cam had never looked at it that way. Probably because he sold himself and his creativity. Couldn’t get much less tangible than that. Which brought him back to the make-or-break question of the hiring process. “I actually meant, did you have fun listening to the concert?”

  “Oh.” Her hands flew to her mouth as her eyes widened so he could see glints of green and gold amidst the brown. “Oh my gosh, of course I did.”

  It was a start. But he needed more. He sat on the couch next to her, letting his wrists hang off his knees. “Why? Just because you’re a huge fan?”

  “Yes. Well, yes and no. I’ll shamelessly admit to being a fan. But the new songs you played tonight?” She dropped her hands to his thigh and squeezed. “They were amazing. They blew me away.”

  Cam didn’t just need the salve to his wounded ego. He needed everyone on the team to believe in Riptide. To be a brand ambassador for the band and on this tour, she had to love the new sound as much as he, Jake and Jones did. “Glad to hear it.”

  “I’m honored that I got to be a tiny part of Riptide, just for tonight.”

  “What if it wasn’t just for tonight?”

  Laughter burbled from her glossy red lips. “My family doesn’t even let me sing along to Christmas carols. I don’t think there’s a spot for me in Riptide.”

  “Not in the band. Supporting it. Deondra’s appendectomy leaves us without a goody girl. I don’t know what you have going on in your life right now, but how would you feel about coming on the bus with us for the next four weeks to do exactly what you did tonight?”

  Leather squeaked as she shot forward to the very edge of the couch. Her already pale cheeks went even whiter, then flushed a pink that made him seriously wonder if it matched her nipples. Then, to his surprise, she threw herself back, arms spread wide and laughed. A deep belly laugh that made him want to join in even as she rolled side to side.

  “Want to let me in on the joke?”

  A wind-down chuckle, a snort, and then, holding her ribs, Kylie pulled herself together. “I officially have nothing going on in my life right now. I graduated from college yesterday. Since then, I’ve managed to lose my boyfriend, my job and my apartment. So if you really need someone who can drop everything and ride around on a tour bus with you? There’s no one more available than me.”

  “Tough breaks.” He shook his head. One of those things would’ve put most people in the fetal position with a case of beer—or chips. Or both. Kylie had one hell of a backbone to work for him all night when her entire life had imploded. “All of them.”

  “Yeah. I spent today in a serious nose dive. Until tonight.” She bounced up onto her knees. Swooped her hair behind both ears. “You know what happened?”

  Cam couldn’t wait to hear whatever fell from those irresistible lips. “You tell me.”

  “I decided my decision-making skills are for crap. That, for a while, I’d do the opposite of whatever seemed right. See if it turned out any better.”

  He almost laughed out loud. Although maybe it was just crazy enough to work. “You know how nuts that sounds, right?”

  A head tilt paired with a smug-ass grin told him that Kylie didn’t care. “Three hours later, and I’ve got a job and a place to live.”

  “That’s all you’ve got,” Cam warned. Better to be upfront. “Room and board—well, a bunk—come with the gig, but we can’t pay you above that. Deondra needs to keep drawing her salary while she recovers.”

  “Sounds good to me.” Another bounce sent her hair swooshing into a sunset-colored halo. “Sounds great, as a matter of fact. When do I start?”

  Enthusiastic. Beautiful. Liked their music. And from the way she’d helped Deondra, Kylie had a tender heart, too. Jake was right. This woman had the potential to be as dangerous as a nest of jellyfish. Cam shifted a couple of inches away. “Tomorrow’s a rest day for us. We pull out the next day. Can you be ready by then?”

  “You bet.” For just a second, white teeth worried at her lower lip. In exactly the spot he wanted to sink his own teeth. “Um, can I ask you something?”

  “Sure.”

  Her tongue shot out to slick across her lips. God, the woman was killing him. And she probably didn’t e
ven know the effect she had on him. In a quiet voice, Kylie asked, “Why me?”

  “You did great tonight. You’re here. Apparently, you’re available. Sometimes things just line up right.”

  “Like our lips, earlier tonight.”

  Cam shot a desperate glance at the door. Sadly, everyone in the music industry treated the post-show closed door with a solemn reverence. Nobody would interrupt them even if John Lennon came back to life. Why the hell had Jake trusted him to be alone with Kylie? “Yeah, about that.”

  Kylie straddled him. Hooked her wrists behind his neck. “We were interrupted. Let’s pick up where we left off.”

  Heaving a deep breath, Cam said, “That’s not a good idea.”

  The wide-eyed enthusiasm disappeared, replaced by a knowing, sultry look full of promise and passion. “That’s exactly why I want to do it. Bad decisions are a recent specialty of mine.”

  “No, I mean, I promised the guys.” Cam kept his promises. Sure, he thought this particular one was stupid, but he still planned to keep it. Performing was the equivalent of stripping yourself naked in front of hundreds, if not thousands, of people. There had to be deep trust between the people doing it with you.

  She licked her lips again. And it was obvious that this time she did it on purpose, eyes locked on his. “What, you’ve saved your lips for them alone?”

  Funny girl. Funny girl with soft breasts pressed tight against his chest. And thighs that kept grinding her pelvis against his. “I promised them no hanky-panky on the bus.”

  “We’re not on the bus yet.”

  Smart girl, too. Cam did love a good logic loophole. No one could fault him for obeying the letter of the law instead of the spirit. Or if they did, he’d at least have a decent defense. With his last shred of self-control, he shook his head. “It wouldn’t be right. You work for me.”

  “Not yet. I haven’t signed on the dotted line. In fact, I’m not even sure if I have a pen on me to sign.” In one swift movement, Kylie whipped her Riptide shirt over her head and tossed it on the floor. “Maybe you could help me look for it?”