American Diva

by Julia London

  Jack responded by twirling her around and pushing her up against the trunk of a tree. His lips began to press more urgently against hers; his hands swept down her arms, to her waist, and then up again, to either side of her breasts. She plunged her tongue wildly into his mouth, relishing his guttural moans of approval, and the feel of him pressed hard against her.

  The fingers of one hand splayed against her breast while the other swept around to her back, down to her hip, pressing her against him, against the hard ridge of his arousal.

  Audrey pushed her hands through his hair, caressed his ears and the breadth of his shoulders. She moved seductively against him. Her blood was pounding in her veins; her pulse was racing and making her breathless. She had never felt such massive, consuming desire, had never wanted so badly to throw a man to the ground and ride him.

  It was, thank God, the sound of an approaching jogger, the sound of hard breathing that was not hers or Jack’s, that brought her to her senses. It took all of her willpower to turn her mouth from his, to push against his chest and her unconscionable lapse of judgment.

  But he still had his arm around her and a lustful look in his eye. He discreetly caressed the peak of her breast with the palm of his hand.

  “Stop,” she whispered, and closed her eyes. “We have to stop. I’m sorry. I . . . this is insanity.”

  “Is it?”

  “Yes! I don’t want . . . I mean, this isn’t what you think.”

  He leaned in, trapping her with his arms and his eyes against that tree. “I think it’s exactly what I think,” he said huskily, and nipped at her lips.

  “What?”

  “I think you need to be with a man, Audrey. I think you need it worse than any woman I have ever met. You don’t need pills, sweetheart, you need—”

  “No!” she exclaimed, and shoved hard against him.

  His arms fell away. His eyes roamed over her face, and he pushed a curl behind her ear, then reluctantly dropped his hands altogether. “I will tell you this once,” he said, shoving his hands in his pocket. “Don’t. Do. That. Again.”

  “No, of course not,” she said weakly, and turned away from him, pressing a hand to her forehead, where she felt a sudden and searing pain. “I don’t know what came over me,” she muttered, playing back in her mind how she had practically attacked him, almost thrown him to the ground and ripped off his clothes in a public park in Omaha. What was she thinking? “I just lost it,” she said. She glanced at him from the corner of her eye.

  Jack was watching her closely, his expression still hungry, his body still hard.

  “Look,” she said, stepping away from him and skittishly pushing a hand through her hair, “I apologize. That . . . that definitely will not happen again,” she said, pointing to the space where they had just been standing. “I mean, I’m not that whacked out.”

  A wry smile tipped the corner of Jack’s mouth.

  “Okay, wait. I obviously don’t mean that like it sounded,” she said instantly. “But I will never do that again. I can’t believe I just did that. I mean, you’re really not—”

  “Okay, okay, I get it,” he said, and turned around, whistling for Bruno. The dog instantly came running from a stand of bushes. “We need to get back . . . unless you want more time to look at the ducks.”

  “Ducks?” She snorted and shook her head. “No. No, I really need to get back.” She moved forward, anxious to get back, to put some distance between her and Jack. When she paused and looked over her shoulder, he was walking behind her, holding Bruno like a football again. “I . . . that really was just a reaction to stress,” she said, feeling a desperation to explain. Or perhaps to convince herself—she wasn’t certain. “It didn’t mean anything. I don’t want you to think—”

  “Audrey,” he said, looking ahead on the path. “You don’t need to say more. I get it. Let’s go.”

  “Right,” she said, and began to walk, head down, her heart spinning in her chest.

  Critic Picks for the Week

  (Minneapolis Star Tribune) Whether or not you buy into Audrey LaRue as the next great American pop star—particularly without benefit of American Idol to propel her into that superstardom—it’s hard not to get caught up in the buzz over her first national tour. The American Diva puts on a show with everything the public wants: pyrotechnics, sensual dancing, and the chops that have the tone of greatness behind them. Don’t miss this show—it’s guaranteed to rock you. (7:30 p.m. Fri. $33-$58. Northrop Auditorium, University of Minnesota)

  BLOGGING CRITICS Your Source for All Music

  CD Review: Audrey LaRue—Frantic Frantic, Audrey LaRue’s third pop album, made its debut in July and had the firepower to go platinum in the first two weeks. But it is a jumbled bag of emotions delivered in a confusing mix of rock and pop that leaves the listener wondering if LaRue knows what she’s singing. “Take Me” is either LaRue’s attempt to sing a pleading balled or to head bang her way through a successful tour. She alternately screeches her firepower and then breathlessly falls off in “Frantic” and “On the Wall.” She does demonstrate a depth of talent in the more sultry offerings of “Sweet Dreams” and “Without You,” whose lyrics are contemplative and show a side to LaRue’s talent not likely to be seen on tour, where sexy pop and dance are showcased. When LaRue sings a ballad, one can believe she has loved deeply and lost even deeper. But this album of pop lacks the maturity of a seasoned songwriter and performer—there is nothing to distinguish her songs from other pop artists who populate the charts, with the exception of perhaps LaRue’s age, which, at 28, is five to seven years older than most of her competition.

  a diva in the making?

  (Us Weekly) Does Audrey LaRue have what it takes to be a diva? Sources say the stress of her first nationwide tour is getting to her. “She threw a magazine at her assistant,” a source reveals, “because she can’t handle distractions.” LaRue’s publicist, Hollywood veteran Mitzi Davis, said the report is ridiculous. “Nothing happened,” she avows. “The tour is going great.”

  Ten

  That kiss at the lagoon was hot enough to rouse a dead man, but it was nonetheless a huge mistake, and Jack was going to make damn sure it did not happen again.

  Frankly, he didn’t know if he was insulted or amused by the whole thing. He’d never had a woman launch herself at him in quite that manner, then just as quickly fall all over herself to assure him she had just made a colossal mistake, and that it would not, come hell or high water, ever happen again.

  It wouldn’t because now he was in charge. But he was right about one thing: Audrey LaRue needed someone to make love to her. Real love to her—and he hoped she had good luck with that because it would not be him.

  Fortunately, Audrey kept her distance during the first week of the tour. Jack and his guys rotated through the tour buses, but he managed never to end up on Audrey’s. They made it through Minneapolis and Grand Rapids without incident—either the kissing kind or the ugly letter kind. He and Audrey avoided each other—when he saw her coming, he went in the opposite direction. She apparently was employing the same avoidance technique, for he rarely saw her, and when he did, she was usually with Casanova, who, Jack wryly noted, continued to show up in her encore and do his bit.

  But that didn’t matter to Jack—the only thing that mattered was that he remain as invisible as possible to Audrey. He didn’t want to be near her, didn’t want to smell her perfume or the sweet scent of her hair. At their tour stops, he managed it just fine. There was a lot of work to do; he didn’t even see her until show time. When the lights went down and the smoke began to fill the stage, Jack would stand back, his eyes trained on the stage and band and crew, watching everything but her.

  But he could not avoid her voice, and his head, his senses, were filled with it. And what a voice she had—explosive, powerful, but alluringly seductive. There were some songs she sang that gave him a chill, others whose beat and tone were so persuasive that he couldn’t help but move a foot. Yet it was the
ballads, the love songs and the haunting melodies of love lost and love survived that really moved him. He marveled at her ability to convey emotion and struggled to fathom how someone, born of flesh and bone and blood like him, could produce such a surreal sound as she did.

  He knew she was destined for greatness.

  But once the songs were over and the lights came up and the inevitable after party was in full swing, he would see her from the corner of his eye, talking and laughing and looking beautiful, and his thoughts would flash back to the beach. Or the lagoon. And he would feel something inside him tug a little harder.

  It was making him crazy. He didn’t need thoughts like that clouding his mind. He didn’t need to be near her, didn’t need to catch her eye across the room as he did every once in a while and feel something flow between them. He just needed to do his job and get back to his life and his flight school and the plane he had left half torn apart in a rented hangar in Orange County. He just needed to keep his head down, his mind focused on his work and the wiring specs he’d brought along, and everything would be fine.

  That was his standard operating procedure, ever since Janet Richards, the girl for whom he had developed a massive crush when he was seventeen, dumped him. He tended to retreat into extreme sports or flying. Something as far removed from women as he could possibly get within the bounds of earth.

  It was only a couple of months. But if a person was counting—and he wasn’t, not really—it was seven weeks. A man could do anything for seven weeks if he put his mind to it.

  That was his intractable belief until the day of the shoes.

  It started when Bonner decided to stick his nose in Jack’s business. When they were loading up for Cleveland, The Assclown tracked Jack down and insisted he ride in the tour bus.

  “Why?” Jack asked.

  “Because I caught your boy over there,” Bonner said, nodding at Ted, “about to do Courtney before I stopped him. You’re lucky I didn’t call the cops.”

  Jack scoffed. “Why should he lose out on what she’s offering to all the other guys? If you’d called the cops, she would have hit on them, too.”

  “Whatever,” Bonner said dismissively. “The point is, you need to make some adjustments. You need to be on the bus—no one else.”

  Jack did not want to be on that bus—he would rather be strung up naked between two light poles than get on that bus. So he argued with Bonner that his guys were the real trained bodyguards, that he was really along to coordinate the security effort.

  Lucas wouldn’t hear of it.

  “We hired you, man. You need to be there, and I think that the fee we are paying you buys us you on that bus. Audrey won’t feel safe with any other guy.”

  Jack paused and squinted at Bonner. “Did she say that?”

  “Look, dude, I know her better than anyone. Trust me. I know what I am saying.”

  The Assclown had no clue what he was saying, but Jack was stuck. Without a word, he turned and strode away from Bonner to grab his gear and give Ted the good news that he’d be riding Audrey’s bus.

  How in the hell had he ended up on this gig, anyway? What stupid brain spasm had he suffered that actually made him think he could endure this bullshit? Forget it—he was beginning to believe he would rather earn every penny for his flight school through his work with TA than this, even if it took him one hundred years to raise the dough he needed.

  And it had only been a week. One week.

  When he boarded the bus an hour later, Courtney was on hand to greet him, smiling broadly as she leaned over the stairs leading up to the interior, and in doing so, revealing her cleavage. “Hey, Handsome,” she crooned so loudly that Jack wondered if she’d started her happy hour, “I hear we’re going to be bedmates.”

  “Don’t get your hopes up,” he said as he entered, brushing past her when she refused to move to let him past.

  But Courtney was cheerfully undeterred. “Let me show you where you’ll sleep,” she said, and led him through a small area that doubled as a kitchen and lounge, to a dark hallway that housed some coffin-like sleeping berths. Just the sort of accommodations every man dreamed of getting. Jack shoved his bag onto the top bunk, then turned around and walked back to the so-called lounge area, and sat down, cell phone in hand.

  “What are you doing?” Courtney asked, taking a seat directly across from him and leaning forward again.

  “Making a couple of calls,” he said, and shifted his gaze to the ground to avoid Courtney’s breasts.

  For two hours, he avoided those breasts completely. He chatted with the representative from local security they’d hired for the Cleveland performance, which would present a different set of challenges as it was an outdoor venue. He checked in with the guys in L.A., too.

  “Hey, how’s it going?” Cooper asked cheerfully.

  “Different,” Jack said.

  “The women? Or the job?” Cooper asked with a snort. But when Jack didn’t answer immediately—he was uncertain how to answer it—Cooper laughed. “Don’t tell me you’ve already gotten yourself into trouble.”

  Jack frowned at Cooper’s laughter and quickly changed the subject. “Anything I need to know about?”

  “Women, apparently.”

  Jack closed his eyes. “About work, Coop.”

  “Oh yeah. Remember Lindsey, the production assistant on War of the Soccer Moms?” he asked, referring to a film the Thrillseeker guys had worked on and a woman Jack had tried hard—and unsuccessfully—to date.

  “Cooper,” he said wearily.

  “I thought you might,” Cooper continued. “She got married over the weekend.”

  Jack blinked.

  “That young director everyone is talking about—Sam somebody. Anyway, apparently they met on a set and it was love at first sight.”

  “Thanks for sharing,” Jack said. “What about work?”

  Cooper laughed again. “Don’t let it get you down, pal. Someday, a woman will be able to see past all your obvious issues and phobias and—”

  “Cooper,” Jack said again, only more forcefully.

  “All right, all right,” Cooper said, and managed to get over his amusement, telling Jack about a new film that had cropped up on their radar screen—a remake of The Jetsons.

  When Jack finally clicked off—and not before Cooper could get one more good-natured dig in—he was relieved to see that at least one of his strategies had worked. He’d been on the phone so long that Courtney had grown bored of him and had wandered to a different area—about two feet away—to look over Lucy’s shoulder as she flipped through some fashion magazine.

  In addition, Fred, Audrey’s hairstylist and makeup artist, had rolled out of one of the coffins and had wandered into the lounge area, where he stood, yawning and scratching his bare belly. As Jack put his phone away, the two lovebirds decided to come out of isolation from the back bedroom.

  Assclown came first. Jack was fascinated by his appearance—his hair was carefully messed up and sprayed into place. He was wearing a pair of jeans that rode low on his hips and made him look like a toothpick. The muscle-man tank did nothing to dispel that illusion. Jack had been in Hollywood a long time, had seen lots of guys who had paid a lot to be put together—but he’d never known anyone who looked like they’d paid so much to be put together.

  Audrey followed behind, carrying a guitar. In stark contrast to the leech she called boyfriend, she looked perfectly natural and pretty damn good. She wasn’t wearing any makeup, her hair was knotted at her crown, and little corkscrew curls floated around her face. She was dressed in a pair of cut-off shorts, which, intentionally or not, flaunted a pair of the shapeliest legs he’d ever had the good fortune to view. She also wore a T-shirt that had the words GRUENE HALL, GRUENE, TEXAS curved around a drawing of an old dance hall.

  As Bonner took the lone empty seat—no surprise there—Audrey looked around and realized the only seat left in the lounge was the one next to Jack. Her eyelids fluttered with a little panic;
she shifted her gaze to Courtney, who was in another of the captain’s chairs, leaning over the arm to read the magazine with Lucy. Audrey opened her mouth to speak, but closed it again, and glanced at Jack from the corner of her eye.

  He winked.

  Audrey did not smile as she carefully took the seat next to him, taking great pains to sit on the very edge of the couch, her back ramrod straight and stiff, her guitar in her lap. Without speaking to him, she strummed a few chords. She seemed very self-conscious.

  She paused in her strumming and adjusted a string, then struck another chord. Jack leaned back, slung one arm over the back of the couch behind her, and stretched his legs in front of him, crossing them at the ankles on a stool next to her.

  Audrey paused and looked at his feet. Then she slowly turned her head and looked at him over her shoulder.

  He lifted a questioning brow. “Don’t let me stop you.”

  “Who said you were stopping me?” And as if to prove it, she turned away, folded over the guitar, and began again to strum a melody.

  She’d played a couple of stanzas when Bonner suddenly looked up from a stack of mail and peered at her, listening for a moment. “No,” he said, shaking his head. “No—that’s too subtle.”

  “What?” Audrey asked, sounding confused.

  “The chords are too subtle,” Bonner said, swiveling around to face her. “You need it to pop,” he said, making a gesture like he was flinging something. “You want something strong and vibrant to form the skeleton of the song, not soft.” He sang a few da-da-dums to demonstrate.

  From where he was sitting, Jack could see a bit of color bleed into Audrey’s cheeks. Her hand curled around the neck of the guitar. “But I like soft,” she said. “It’s what I do best. This is a song about a love gone cold. It’s not pop.”