“Ta gueule!” The bus driver yelled from up front. “Je ne peux pas conduire ce putain d’autobus avec toi hurlant, comme ça.”
“Nobody understands you, LeStrange,” Cato said. “Speak Eeengleesh.”
Instead, LeStrange swerved the bus and knocked the bassist on top of Annie, who screeched like a stuck pig.
“Shut the fuck up,” Elias shouted. “The man’s trying to drive. We’ve got a million dollars’ worth of equipment on this bus. You guys gonna pay for it, if he wrecks this rig?”
Cato glared at him for an annoyingly long minute.
“What?”
“What. Is. Up. Yo. Ass?” he asked. “You been buggin’ since we left New York. You need me to put Prozac in your smoothie or sumptin?”
He flopped back on his seat. “I don’t like getting shitty reviews.”
Griffin growled his assent. Since the tour started, that’s all his drummer had been doing—growling, barking, and howling at the moon. That, and screwing every female within a ten-foot radius. Whatever was going on between him and his girlfriend wasn’t helping their reviews at all. But as long he didn’t break The Rules, that was his drummer’s business, not his.
The Rules were like the band’s Ten Commandments, except there were only four. And instead of being carved in stone, they were written into their contracts.
Rule 1: No Yoko Onos
Girlfriends, boyfriends, spouses, groupies, and random one-night stands—none of them were allowed on tour.
Rule 2: Everyone Signs an NDA
Band members, and those in an intimate relationship with a band member, must sign a non-disclosure agreement. This was a recent addendum, created after his groupie fiasco.
Rule 3: No Fraternization
Shitting where you ate caused drama. And he had first-hand experience to prove it. Long before they made it big, he and Missy had a fling. Things were tense back then, and though they had finally worked through everything, it had taken a serious toll on the band. In fact, she still held a grudge. It was subtle, no one spoke about it, but it was always the proverbial elephant in the room.
Rule 4: No Drugs or Alcohol on the Tour
The band was their job. And like a job, substance abuse wasn’t allowed. Drugs didn’t just ruin careers, they killed people. Including his mother.
Anyone caught breaking The Rules, would get kicked out of the band and lose their future song royalties.
In the band’s seven years together, no one had ever broken The Rules. He was convinced that was the reason for their long-term success.
So even though Griffin’s wandering dick was affecting his soap opera of a relationship back home, as well as his performances, his drummer wasn’t breaking The Rules. Still though, his emotions were getting in the way of his career.
Elias could relate. Ever since he’d left New York, he’d felt achy and weird—almost like he had a mild case of the flu. And it wasn’t the bad reviews. It was Effie.
Everywhere he went she was with him. When he was performing, she was onstage next to him, adding chaos. On the road, she didn’t leave his thoughts for a second. When he ate dinner, she was there, telling waitresses to ‘fuck off’ in Chinese. And when he went to sleep at night, she was curled against him with her head above his dick.
Except she wasn’t there. And that was the problem.
Why didn’t he get her number? He’d give anything to hear her smoky voice.
He rested his forehead against the window and watched the rain-blurred Irish countryside whizz past in slices of green. Pickle green.
He needed her. He needed help. He needed music.
From the overhead compartment, he pulled out his guitar and tried to work out the remaining lyrics to the songs they’d written. He played the chorus to “Chaos” a few times, but his mind kept drawing a blank. It didn’t sound right. Not without the violin. Not without her.
Cato shuffled back and sat across from him.
“Go away,” he grumbled.
“What? The black man can’t sit in the back of the bus?”
He sighed. “What do you want?”
“I want to hear that song again.”
He played the whole thing.
“That’s tight. When’d you write that?”
“Last weekend,” he said.
“I like it.”
Missy sat across from him. “It’s great,” she said. “Doesn’t sound like the stuff you usually write. Are we playing it on the tour?”
His immediate response should have been yes, but they were Effie’s songs. And even though she’d given him permission to play them live, she also didn’t have a clue who he was. Plus, he didn’t want to play them—not without her. “I’ve got five new songs, but they’re not mine.” He set down his guitar.
“Fuck you mean they’re not yours?” Cato said.
“Someone helped me write them.”
Cato blinked then flapped his palms out. “Well? You gonna tell me who it is, or am I gonna have to Guantánamo Bay your ass?”
A wild woman. An enchantress. A dream. “Someone in New York.”
“Songwriter?” Missy asked.
He picked up his guitar again. “Something like that.”
Cato’s burning scrutiny seared the side of his face.
“What, pendejo?”
“We’ve been playing the same old shit for a year and a half, and you finally write something new, now you’re telling me we can’t play it, because”—he cupped his ear—“say it again. Because somebody else wrote them?”
“We wrote them together.”
“So pay the man. And be done with it. We’re dying. If we don’t get some new life . . .” He tweaked a nod, forcing him to fill in the blank.
“Woman,” he said. “A woman wrote them.”
“A woman?” Missy’s question sounded like an accusation.
“Violin student from Juilliard.” He hesitated briefly. “She can play anything, though. She’s a genius.”
“So? Students need green. Pay her for the songs and be done with it. Problem solved.” Cato wiped his hands on an imaginary dishrag.
If he paid her off, she’d think he used her. And he didn’t want to be another guy on her list of bad experiences. That weekend meant a lot to him. She meant a lot to him. And she deserved better than a payoff.
“They’re her songs,” he said. “Without her, they don’t sound right. It’s the way she plays them.”
“There’s violin in all of them?” Cato asked.
“Not all. She played the cello and the piano in two songs.”
Missy’s hand shot up. “Hold on. Are you saying I can’t play the piano?”
“It’s not the instrument. It’s the way she plays.”
Both his bandmates’ faces broadcasted disbelief. He slumped down in his seat and fixed his gaze on the roof. What exactly was he trying to do? Convince them to hire her? Could he even do that? Bring her on tour? Would she do it? She might, if she were broke enough.
“So hire her, then,” Cato said, reading his mind.
Missy tossed her mane and raised a smug chin. “We have enough musicians in this band.”
Typical Missy response, he thought.
His keyboardist was one of the few women in the industry who wasn’t a plastic pop singer, and that made her royalty in her fans eyes. And another cool female in the band could easily usurp her place on the throne.
Around other women she was catty, to say the least. She was especially unpleasant to the women he slept with. Her silent treatments were legendary. And when she was in a bad mood, the whole band suffered.
She’d never agree to let Effie play with them. Which sucked, because his mental health was at stake, not to mention his career.
Cato held an imaginary microphone in front of Missy. “Miss Reed, can you describe what it’s like to go back on welfare after making it big in music?”
Her face paled. Missy grew up hungry. She still had issues with food. She never left anything on her p
late. To her, it was a criminal offense to waste food.
They’d all been hungry back in the day, and none of them had any desire to return to that life.
Missy’s bitchy attitude instantly dissolved and left her droopy and meek.
Cato slapped her slumped shoulders. “Our ship is sinking, boo. We need a life boat, quick.”
She huffed. “How well do you know this girl?”
He shrugged. If he told the truth, that he’d only spent a weekend with Effie, she’d never go for it.
“What if she’s a psycho? Or a drug addict? Or an axe murderer? Or what if we don’t get along?”
No way Effie was a psycho druggie, but Missy had a point.
“Tell her it’s a temporary gig until further notice,” Cato said. “And make her sign a contract.”
“What about our contracts?” Missy added. “Is she going to share song royalties like the rest of us?”
He hadn’t thought of that. “That’s her decision.”
“Gail will have a shit fit if she doesn’t,” she said.
Gail. Another roadblock. “What if we make a new label for the songs?” he said. “Heart’s been screwing us for years. How about we screw them over for a change?”
Cato tapped his temple. “Smart man. I like it. But what about your little friend?”
“She follows The Rules like us.” Elias said. “If she breaks them, she’s out, and the royalties go back to us.”
Griffin made his way to the back. “Gail will never go for that shit.”
“Her daddy might, though,” Elias said.
Cato dove back in his seat. “‘Kay, while I get my beauty sleep, you kids figure everything out.”
A spark of excitement burned inside him. Bringing Effie on and making a new label was a brilliant idea. He should have done it years ago, back when he’d signed with Heart Records.
Since then, he’d spent over a million dollars in legal fees trying to get out from under them. But unless Heart proved to be grossly negligent, he was locked in for life. And since Urban was one of their biggest moneymakers, Heart was anything but negligent.
They flat out owned him.
But they didn’t own Effie.
He whipped out his phone and texted his roommate for his boss’s number.
After going back and forth with that idiota de mierda, Skip, he finally got her digits.
The minute he heard her voice, a slice of vividly blue sky appeared from out of the gray clouds.
16
Rallentando
Glasgow, Scotland
Soundtrack “Reflektor,” Arcade Fire
In an old nunnery outside of Glasgow, on the coast where several lochs merged, the band practiced the new songs. The secluded location and thick granite walls turned out to be the perfect location for the explosion about to take place.
Spontaneously adding new songs on a tour was akin to lighting a stick of dynamite—things were bound to blow up. Pulling off their shows was a gargantuan feat.
Urban’s crew of twenty included the sound guys, stagehands, roadies, grips, lighting technicians, and hair and makeup. Their team ran Urban’s shows like a machine. Dropping Effie ‘the bombshell’ into the production at the last minute was breaking the machine into a million tiny parts.
In the old days, all they did was get up on the stage and play. It wasn’t the theatrical performance it was now. In fact, the planning for this production had been in the works for a year. And now they had to start from scratch.
Chip, the sound guy, spoke up. “I know nothing about violin acoustics.”
“We’ll cross that bridge when she gets here,” Elias said. Effie was arriving in Edinburgh the following day. And they’d planned to introduce the new songs at the show that night.
“Is she going to string her own instrument?” another guy asked.
Que lío de mierda. What a mess. A stabbing ache took up permanent residency in his shoulder, and sleep was nothing but a distant memory.
Despite everything, deep in his core, he felt calm and peaceful. This is right. I know it. I feel it.
“We’ll figure that out later,” Elias said.
A door slammed shut, and a blur of red blasted into the space. Gail stomped toward him, her fancy shoes clomping on the wood floor. She crooked a finger, beckoning him to follow her outside like a puppy dog. “A word,” she said.
He hated her alpha bitch act. “Here’s fine.”
She tore off her sunglasses and shot him a tight-jawed smile. “Sure. Here’s fine. As long as you’re comfy with me carving off your nuts in front of everyone.”
Someone laughed then coughed.
“You hired that weekend blonde from New York? The one in the pictures? To play in the number one highest grossing band? Without telling me? Are you insane?” She dropped her bags with a bang. “Missy told me you didn’t write the new songs.”
Et tu, Missy? He shot his keyboardist a warning fire look—she’d better have a good explanation for stabbing him in the back.
“Effie and I wrote the songs together.”
Gail snorted. “You don’t have a clue, do you? You think all I do is run errands? There are unions involved. Payroll. Legal. The press. Licensing deals with Spotify and Pandora and iTunes. Call up your little fling and tell her you changed your mind. Maybe you can hook up after the tour.”
Boiling heat flooded his head. He swept a stiff arm toward the door. “Everyone out except the band.”
“Aw, I was about to order popcorn,” Hal said.
“Out!” he shouted.
Hal and the crew scurried out of the room.
Elias motioned to an empty chair. “Have a seat, Gail. You must be tired after that long flight. Did you take the jet you bought with my money?”
Gail dropped her hard stance and vigorously rubbed an eyebrow. “I am a little tired.”
Cato scooted a chair across the floor and sat in it backwards. Griffin set his drumsticks on the snare. Missy stood wired in the back. No one spoke a word. He allowed the silence to linger longer than necessary.
“How long have we been together, Gail?” He sat down and crossed an ankle over his knee. “Five years?”
“Almost six.”
“That’s right. Happy anniversary.”
She didn’t thank him.
“And in our almost six years together, have we ever let you dictate our music?”
She bolted up and shook her fist at him. “I’m looking out for your best interests.”
“Our best interest would have been to scrap this tour. But since we’re here, let’s get something straight—I pay you to do a job. If I want your opinion, I’ll ask. Is that clear?”
He directed the next speech to the band. “Effie is a professional musician and a songwriter. She’s not a fling. Understood?”
The lie’s impact hit him right after he said it. That meant he couldn’t be with Effie out in the open. He’d be breaking The Rules. There was no way around it though. If they knew the truth, they’d never go for it. He’d just have to solve that problem later. After his managerial problem.
With the conviction of a preacher, he asked them to take a blind leap of faith. “Our music needs to evolve or we die. Effie’s the big bang.”
He glared at Missy until she turned away.
Then he blazed out of there and ran down to the coastline. A freezing gust of wet wind bit his face, and a gong buoy clanged in the distance. An eerie orange moon backlit the clouds over the black loch, making them look like haunted . . . boobs.
A vision of Effie under the jungle gym entered his thoughts. He chuckled to himself, and just like that, the cutting wind turned into a tropical breeze.
17
Reprise
“She generally gave herself very good advice (though she very seldom followed it), and sometimes she scolded herself so severely as to bring tears to her eyes.”
Soundtrack “Welcome To Your Life,” Grouplove
“Do you believe in love at first sigh
t?” Effie asked her sister on the phone.
“Are you high?” Callie asked.
“Just answer the question.”
“Are you?”
“I told you, I’m clean. For good.”
Her sister let out a loud breath. “Why are you asking this incredibly random question?”
“I met someone—”
“No,” her sister shot out.
“No, what?”
“No, I don’t believe in love at first sight. Not for you. You love everything at first sight, the postman, that gross guy at the gas station, that mustachioed woman at the store you hugged. Hi! I’m Effie! I do whatever feels good. I don’t think. I just do—”
The airline announced her flight was boarding soon.
“Where are you?” Callie asked.
“JFK.”
“Oh, shit.”
In the background Walker shouted, “Jesus Christ on a cracker. Give me that damn phone.”
Callie muttered a few obscenities then Walker hopped on the line. “Effie, darlin’. How are you?”
“Great,” she said. “You?”
“In love and sh—poo. Pull over! Your sister should not be allowed to drive.”
She chuckled. “Where are you guys?”
“Michigan. It’s cold here. But we’re snuggling up. That’s it. Give me the keys, Blue.”
A muffled struggle occurred then Callie came back, panting like a prank caller.
“What’s that heavy breathing? Is Walker touching you?”
“I’m having an anxiety attack. Why. Are. You. At. The. Airport?”
Rewind to eight days ago.
Penniless, desperate, and on the edge of a dark hole, she had her phone out, ready to call her sister and beg for money for a flight home. At that precise moment, Elias called.
It was kismet.
She couldn’t stop thinking about their weekend together. Did it really happen? Or was it a dream? And why did he show up only to leave a day later? What was the goddamn moral of the story?
Head-Tripped: A Sexy Rock Star Romance (Ad Agency Series Book 2) Page 8
