She twirled a lock of hair between her thumb and forefinger, her eyes pleading. “I did know that it was a long shot, but I thought that there was something between us. Don’t tell me that you didn’t feel it? Please, Jared. Be honest with me.”
Her tone matched her eyes. Eww. Begging didn’t do it for me. Not outside of, Please, let me come, Jared, when I was in bed with a chick anyway. “Fine, I’ll be honest with you, but you might not like what you hear. I like confident, sexy women. I hate beggars like you.”
Madison looked as surprised as if a clown had jumped out from behind me to slap her, or if a mariachi band had jumped out to proclaim my feelings, or lack thereof, toward her. “I’m not a beggar.”
“On the contrary, honey. You might not have been, but you definitely are right now. Which means that whatever minuscule chance you might have had with me again, you just blew it.”
“I have no chance with you?” Her eyes lit up, fury replacing the desperation in a way that would have gotten me going if not for our situation. Well, probably. Passion of any kind was something that I loved in a girl.
“Your minuscule chance at getting with me again,” I repeated, in case she needed further clarification. “It’s not happening. At this point, the only thing that you’re doing is embarrassing yourself. Please don’t do that on my behalf. I’m not worth it. Get going, Madison. That’s what I need to do.”
I figured that our conversation was over, and I had already allowed her to get in the one slap she’d deserved, so I turned away from her and headed to my garage. Suddenly, I wasn’t in the mood for the SUV that I was holding the keys to, but something that could give me more of a thrill, and banish that waste of time of an encounter from my mind.
Luckily, there was a gleaming new Aston Martin sitting on the tiles of my four-car garage, and I went to fetch its keys from the hook instead. Sliding onto the cream leather seat, I tried my best to lose myself in the purr of her engine and the soft grip of the smooth leather that covered her steering wheel.
I didn’t activate my security system every day, something that was a great thorn in the side of my management team, as well as my bandmates, but I made sure to click the remote that day, even waiting until I heard the siren that indicated that it was on.
Madison was still there in my driveway, arms folded, eyes narrowed as she watched me leave in the sports car, and I didn’t want her doing anything to my house, or god forbid, be in it when I got home.
My tires squealed on my paving stones as I got the hell out of dodge and left Madison glowering in my wake. I wasn’t an animal, contrary to popular belief. I did actually have feelings—from time to time, anyway.
Part of me was worried about her and why she’d been acting the way that she was when she clearly knew that there had been no chance, but the far larger part of me was contemplating why women so often pretended to enjoy one-night stands when they were, more often than not, so hung up about them afterward.
I wasn’t a chauvinist, and I never had been. In fact, I fully supported a woman’s right to do what she wanted to, and I fucking adored it when what she wanted to do was me. But what puzzled me was why some women, like Madison back there, engaged in casual sex at all when they weren’t able to separate the physical from the emotional.
Why would anyone put themselves through that? It was always sad when women didn’t know when to let go. For all that I knew, men in the same situation were the same way, but I wasn’t qualified to talk about that or to even think about it, so I let it go.
Contemplating the sad realities of unrequited expectations, I realized that perhaps the most important element of perfecting the great one-night stand was the ability to recognize it for what it was and not to think it was anything more.
If there was one thing I was an expert at, it was that.
CHAPTER 8
ALICIA
The door to my office burst open unexpectedly, and of course, the person who walked through it was the devastatingly handsome man I was trying my best not to think about. I blinked when Jared appeared in my doorway, more than a little surprised that he was here.
I managed to compose myself quickly, set down the pencil I was marking documents with for my review of venues for the next tour, crossed my legs and arms, and arched a brow at Mr. Larsen.
“To what do I owe the pleasure? I heard our meeting had to be pushed back to a couple days from now, so I know it’s not that. What is it that I can do for you, Jared?”
He appeared to be amused by my question, and he certainly didn’t offer any context for his amusement. Instead, he pursed those full lips and stared back at me.
“I was supposed to be meeting with the band a couple of days from now, supposedly thanks to some scheduling errors,” I said when he remained in my doorway and stayed silent.
Jared sauntered into my office without being invited in and sank into one of the wooden chairs in front of my desk. He leaned back in it as if the place belonged to him, hooked his right ankle over his left knee, brought his hand to rest over where his toes were in his black sneakers, and lifted his gaze to mine.
“I thought we might have gotten off on the wrong foot, and I wanted a do-over.” He smirked a bit at the mention of a do-over, and I couldn’t help but wonder why. I didn’t know Jared, but it seemed true to form that he didn’t offer an explanation.
“We didn’t,” I told him. “I’m perfectly happy meeting with your entire band in a couple of days, when your practice and rehearsal slows down some, and I’m more settled in.”
Jared sat perfectly still, unnaturally so, even. “Practice is taking longer than we’d thought, so I thought I should come down here and give you the heads up, maybe let you buy me lunch for the way that you ogled my ass the other day.”
I hadn’t had the opportunity to ogle his ass the first time I’d met him, though I had little doubt that I would have if the opportunity had presented itself. “I didn’t check out your ass. You never even had your back turned toward me.”
“Oh.” He laughed, the sound making both my stomach and my sex clench in a way that was entirely inappropriate. “That must have been me checking out your ass, then.”
There was no way. “You checked out my ass?”
Smirking, he nodded, not in the least bit embarrassed. “I guess that means I owe you lunch. You ready to go?”
A short, abrupt peal of laughter escaped me at his assumption that I’d go with him, and I couldn’t help but notice Jared’s satisfied expression at my laughter.
“Just so you know, PR agent or not, I wouldn’t have gone to lunch with you, but thanks for the offer.”
Jared looked crestfallen, but I knew that he was faking it when he clutched at his heart in mock hurt. “My poor ego. It’s going to curl up and die from the way that you keep shutting us down.”
“I’m sure that it’s big enough to withstand a couple of knocks from the likes of me.” My laughter was barely suppressed, but I was also being honest.
Jared’s expression was playful, his soulful brown eyes filled with amused arrogance. “It’s plenty big enough, I assure you. You’re welcome to do whatever you want to it, but just for the record, knocking isn’t encouraged.”
Can the guy say anything without it sounding sexual? I was grateful that this wasn’t my first rodeo, and that I could give as good as I got. “The record shall reflect that knocking is too rough for your… fragile ego.”
The humor in Jared’s eyes intensified, and I was sure that lesser women had melted under that look. I prided myself on being able to withstand these types of guys, but if he kept looking at me like that, my panties were signing their own weekend pass and going with him.
“My… ego can deal with rough. Why don’t you let me worry about that?”
“Because that’s my job, Mr. Larsen. I worry about whatever that ego of yours gets you into.” Both of us knew that I had long since stopped talking about his ego, but Jared seemed to play along.
“It’s Mr. Larsen
now? Let’s stick to Jared and Alicia, shall we? I’ve always hated unnecessary formality.”
“Your wish is my command. Jared it is, then.”
“Well, well, well.” He rubbed his hands together, a mischievous glint in his eyes. “Tell me more about these wishes.”
I heaved a playful, exaggerated sigh. “I’m here to proverbially clean up after you, so the wishes are up to you, but please try to think about the fact that I love sleep before you make them come true.”
“I don’t know what you mean. I’m always on my best behavior.” The grin on his face directly contradicted his words.
“Your best behavior leaves something to be desired then. Maybe we should start there.”
“Have you been stalking me, Alicia?” he asked, arching a dark brow, but looking genuinely interested in my answer.
“If you want to call my job being a professional stalker, then yes. Considering that I get paid to know about your behavior, I would only call it being good at my job.”
“Point taken,” he said. “I’m assuming Gerry told you about the Ford Anglia incident. That seems to be one of his go-to stories about us.”
“He did,” I answered honestly. If I was going to get to know these guys and get them to trust me the way I needed them to so I could do my job properly, I was going to be as honest with them as I needed them to be with me.
Jared wasn’t going to let me off that easy, though. “Did he also tell you about the time Nick and I were photographed in a hot tub with nine naked Victoria’s Secret models? Or about the time Brad had to pretend to be gay to get a stubborn, particularly insistent girl to leave my room?”
I saw what he was doing. In a way, it was no different than Gerry’s tests when I’d first met with him. Jared was asking whether I was comfortable dealing with their sexual exploits. “I hadn’t heard about those things, but thank you for telling me. We’ll need to be open with one another going forward.”
“If you want open, I can give you that,” he told me, his lips curling up into a grin that signaled trouble. “Matt once accidentally nailed our producer’s much younger wife, and Caleb spent an entire tour taking his blue balls out on Brad. Nick still swears that he got chlamydia from a koala bear that he held for a photo shoot when we were down under, and I narrowly avoided becoming a cliché in Vegas by marrying a stripper whose rack I swore was made of gold.”
If he was trying to rattle me, he’d failed dismally. I burst out laughing instead. “Those sound like some great stories. I can’t wait to see what you guys get into next.”
Jared probably would have been less surprised if I’d grown antlers, but he masked his surprise quickly and started laughing along with me. “I’m glad you can see the humor in these situations. You’re going to fit in just fine with Destitute.”
Now that he was comfortable enough with me, it was time to lay down the law. “You’re going to have to keep things under control while you’re recording this album, though. If you start generating negative publicity now, chances are that it will fester and ruin the hype before you even drop your first single. That could cause some serious damage to your album release, and I’d hate to see that happen.”
Jared laughed, muttered something about whiplash, and fixed me with those famous brown eyes, the color of melting milk chocolate and equally as delicious. “You can trust me. I know what I’m doing. They don’t call me the Emperor of Rock for nothing. They want me to do whatever I want.”
It was exactly that attitude that I was afraid of, because his cheesy title of Emperor wasn’t going to get him far if they colored too far outside of the lines. “I’ve worked for other bands before you, and before that, I worked under some of the great public relations people of our time. Believe me when I tell you, that exact attitude has taken down more reputations than you can count.”
“I can count real high.” He winked, then continued. “The public loves me. They adore us, and they eat up whatever we do.”
Jared leaned back in his chair as if he’d just won in Epic Rap Battles of History. He wore a satisfied look and a smug smile.
I breathed in deeply and reminded myself that he was the Destitute front man, and as such, if I could get through to him, I would have less trouble with the others. Also, since he was the front man, I should refrain from punching him right in his smug, beautiful face.
“The public will only eat it up for so long. They have limits, Jared. Testing them isn’t a good idea.”
“I don’t know if anyone told you this, sweetheart, but testing limits is kind of my thing.” The sad part was that he looked all too sincere when he said it, but I wasn’t his psychologist, therapist, or even friend for that matter.
“It’s your career. You made it, and if you want to, you can break it. If you want to keep pushing the limits, then so be it. I’ll be here, doing my job the best that I can, but I can’t keep you from imploding if that’s what you want. Go ahead. Do your worst, and see what happens to your career. Again, it’s yours to ruin if you want.”
He was quiet for a long time, folding his arms and looking at me like I had created the Ebola virus. “You’re a buzz kill, Diamond. Just in case no one has ever told you that.”
“I’ve been told.” A half smile formed on my lips as I remembered the amount of times that Kelly had said those exact same words to me. “It’s not my job to keep you happy, though. I’m sure that you have an entire army full of women dying for that role in your life. It’s my job to make you look good.”
“I always look good,” he said, but his eyes were dark and troubled. “I appreciate that you’re here covering our backs, but again, I don’t need you to make me look good.”
CHAPTER 9
JARED
My tongue swept quickly between my lips as I took in the mouthwatering sight in front of me. Alicia was wearing a tight black shirt that exposed the tops of her tits and made me want to suck on them. Her ass looked fucking incredible encased by a white skirt that didn’t reveal any panty lines, and I was itching to lift it, if only to confirm my suspicions that she wasn’t wearing any.
The very thought that she might be bare beneath the fabric was threatening to make me hard. I sucked in a deep breath and clenched my stomach muscles to keep from popping a boner in her very first meeting with the band. It wasn’t anything they hadn’t seen before, but I wasn’t sure that Alicia would appreciate it.
Somewhere along the line, I’d learned that women didn’t find that kind of thing as flattering as some might think, and from the stern expression on Alicia’s face as she briefed us about her multipronged public relations strategies, it was clear to me that she would probably get as angry as a hornet stuck in a washing machine.
“So,” she was saying when I forced myself to pay attention to her words instead of her body. “I’m really excited to be working on our promotional strategies for your new album.”
We were sitting in the conference room at Gerry’s office, a professional slideshow being projected onto the white screen against the wall showed icons for various social media sites on one side, with arrows pointing to mainstream media on the other.
Nick and Matt were staring off into the distance, hungover as fuck from the party we’d been to the night before. My own head was still feeling a little fuzzy, but I tried to listen to what Alicia was explaining.
Dom and Caleb, both still annoyed with me, were listening closely and nodding at the suggestions that she was making.
Fucking brown-nosers.
“I’m already working on building the fan hype among your online community.” Between the five of us, we had over a hundred million followers on Twitter and God only knew how many across all the platforms combined, and I knew what was coming. “A part of that will have to be you guys also posting about it from time to time.”
It was what she said next that surprised me, since Brad had always had us go the other way. “I’m not going to ask you to post about it every day, like some other people might have. It will buil
d the hype more if people have to wait for news from you. If one of you could post something every couple of days that would be fine.”
“We’re not ready to post teasers about the songs yet,” Dom said, folding his arms across his chest. I rolled my eyes, but in the relative darkness of the conference room, he hadn’t seen it, so I would be spared that lecture, at least.
Like fuck we weren’t ready. We’d recorded nine songs by my last count already and since we didn’t record anything until the song was perfect, we could tease any one of those.
“I understand,” Alicia said, her steady gaze meeting his. Strangely, his intensity didn’t seem to intimidate or bother her at all. Not many women reacted to him that way. I kind of admired her for it.
“What would you like us to post then?” Caleb asked, clearly eager to get into the action.
“Whatever you want, really.” She seemed to realize her mistake, and her eyes flashed in warning. “Anything you want that’s related to your new album, that is. It can be something as simple as a picture of the road when you’re on your way to the studio, a shot of your instrument—”
“She means your musical instrument, Jared,” Nick chimed in, and laughter broke out in the room as I flipped him off. I played the piano like a boss, but whenever anyone said anything about our instruments, a comment like that one was sure to follow since I was the only one in the band who wasn’t up there with an instrument.
That was in addition to the fact that they wouldn’t have any songs to play their instruments to if it wasn’t for me. Sure, they all dabbled in songwriting, and they’d all been responsible for a hit or two, but even that had been with my help.
Alicia allowed a minute for the laughter to die down then continued, an easygoing smile on her lips and her own laughter in her eyes. “Good point. Your musical instrument can be in your posts.”
“What are we doing about seeding hype in the entertainment press?” Gerry asked, almost always the one to bring us back to business when we started veering off track.
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