Crash and Burn (Love You Like A Love Song #1)

by Michele Callahan

  All three of them looked at Jake like he was an alien.

  “What the hell? Is this a weird version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers?” Derek narrowed his eyes.

  “What happened to our brother?” Mitchell pulled a pocket pin light that doctors always seemed to carry around hidden somewhere, and shined it in Jake’s eyes. “What have you done to our brother?”

  Jake tipped his chin toward Chance. “What about Chance? He’s sitting here pouting and I don’t think he’s had sex since Sherry Swanson popped his cherry in middle school.”

  Mitchell choked on his beer and Derek chuckled. “No, that was me.”

  “Oh, yeah.” Jake looked appalled, his blond hair and baby-blue eyes made him look like a giant-sized kid. “Seriously, Derek. What the fuck? You were what? Fourteen?”

  “She was hot.” Mitchell chimed in.

  Derek smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “She was seventeen, looked like Barbie, and had tits the size of melons. Like you would’ve said no.”

  Jake and Mitchell both shook their heads, but Jake didn’t let it drop. He fiddled with his hat on the bar, spinning it in circles. He had a hat ring on his head, as usual, but Jake never seemed to care about appearances. Hell, Jake wasn’t happy unless he was covered in mud. “Chance would’ve turned her down.”

  “That’s because our brother is a straight-laced, conservative do-gooder.” Mitchell’s tone was so serious that Chance felt his back stiffen. The only barbs that ever hurt were the ones that held grains of truth.

  Chance took a handful of fries off of Mitchell’s plate and dodged his brother’s half-hearted attempt to get them back. “Screw you guys. I’m entitled to be a whiney bitch tonight. I took lead on my first deposition today. I got my ass kicked by a fifty-year-old in an olive-green jacket with a beer gut the size of Texas.”

  “What did you expect? You’ve been a real lawyer for all of six months. This guy probably started wiping his ass with little boys like you twenty years ago.” Derek shifted out of his black biker jacket and hung it over the back of the stool. His black T-shirt hid about half of Derek’s tattoos. Combined with his black hair and perpetual scowl, Derek looked like a hard ass. Which he was. Derek ordered a shot of vodka, but when the glass came, Derek slid it down the bar to Chance. “Here, Chance. We’ll drink a toast to you getting your ass kicked.”

  “Gee, thanks.”

  “At least you’re in the game. You’re smart. You’ll get him next time.” Jake fiddled with his cowboy hat, holding on to it like it was a teddy bear. He looked way too serious. Heart-warming words of encouragement weren’t exactly their family style, especially when they were drinking. It was all smart-ass, all the time.

  Chance studied his blond baby brother. Jake looked like he did every day, blue jeans and boots, a T-shirt stretched tight and a flannel shirt thrown on top. Jake towered over all of them by about five inches without his boots on, and they loved to give him a hard time about it. But tonight the big boy had dark circles under his eyes and frown lines at the edges of his mouth. Not normal. “You all right? Seriously?”

  Derek and Mitchell remained silent, waiting for Jake’s answer. They all horsed around and gave each other hell, but they were brothers, and when shit went down for any of them, they had one another’s backs.

  “Yeah, man. I’m fine. Mom’s card trick is really messing with me. You know.”

  “Yeah.” Chance thought about the guitar in the backseat of his car. He’d had it for twenty-four hours and since he’d left the guitar shop, hadn’t brought himself to break open the case. “Me, too.”

  Mitchell cleared his throat. “Please tell me we aren’t going to cry and hold each other as we reveal our deepest darkest secrets like pretty little girls.”

  “Hell, no.” Derek put an end to that possibility before it had time to develop and Chance was glad. He felt like an idiot for what he’d written. A ten-year-old’s dreams were just that, childhood dreams. He’d written three things, three goals in life.

  He’d accomplished one. Sort of.

  The other two were proving…difficult.

  Jake slapped him on the shoulder and headed for the restrooms at the back of the bar, off to the right of the stage where tonight’s band, Fourth Strike, was setting up their equipment. He’d never heard of them, but it didn’t matter. First Friday of the month he met his brothers at Tucker’s Bar. Girls came and went. Jobs. Cars. Whatever. Unless they were overseas, or in jail, and Derek had been both, they all made time to get together every month.

  Just one more promise they all kept to their dead mother.

  “Hello.” The lead singer’s sultry voice came over the sound system and Derek and Mitchell both turned around to find the source. Chance’s pulse sped up in anticipation of hearing her speak again and he spun around to find the face that matched that voice. “We’re Fourth Strike. I’m Eva James, and this is my brother AJ on lead guitar, Ricky on the keyboard, and Todd on drums.” She smiled and gave the crowd a nod for their polite applause.

  “And now, it’s time to get this party started.”

  The crowd cheered as Eva struck her first chord on the bass and Chance raised his hand to his mouth to whistle as the rest of the band joined in. A few beats later, her voice filled the room and he couldn’t keep his eyes off her.

  Damn. The woman was sex on a stick. She had a bass guitar slung over her shoulder and she handled it like she knew what she was doing. Her short black skirt flirted with danger, her legs were long and tight and displayed to perfection by a pair of knee-high black boots. Her top was tight red lace that hugged every valley and curve, but left her shoulders bare. Her breasts were just big enough to swell above the top of the lace and tempt him. Long blonde hair fell in waves around her shoulders and down her back. She’d put part of it up so that the golden waves framed her high cheekbones and delicate bone structure. Her lips were cherry red and they gleamed beneath the red and blue spotlights that shined down on the band. He couldn’t quite make out her eyes from across the bar, but from here they looked intensely focused. Fearless.

  Holy shit. He knew that face. His dick stirred in his pants and he cleared his throat. Another job and a lot of late nights, huh?

  “Damn.” Derek leaned forward.

  “Not my type.” Mitchell leaned back against the bar and popped a pretzel into his mouth. His brother never freaking stopped eating. How he kept his body in such great shape would be one of those eternal mysteries.

  Derek hit Mitchell in the side with a friendly elbow. “You only like them in scrubs, or what?”

  “Naw. She’s hot.” Mitchell had to shout over the loud thumping music and Chance leaned over to make sure he caught what Mitchell was saying. “But she’s trouble. Capital T. That’s not the kind of girl you want to tangle with. Way too much going on. Just look at her.”

  Chance was looking all right. And unlike his brother, he wouldn’t mind tangling, either. The last few years all of his girlfriends had been just like him, driven workaholics too busy chasing their futures to live in the moment. Everything in his life felt like it centered around the need to worry about tomorrow. Or next month. Or five fucking years from now.

  Work. Get ahead. Keep running. Keep working. The noose around his neck felt like it tightened a bit every day, and he found himself staring at his computer monitor, wondering if this was it? The big fade. Get married, have kids and spend the next thirty years paying for a minivan he hated and a house he couldn’t afford? Was this all there was left in his life? Keep running on the hamster wheel? Be logical? Responsible? Reasonable?

  He watched Erin sing on that stage and admired her spunk. She was completely transformed from the mild music teacher into a sexy siren, from the wild makeup to the four-inch heels on her boots. She was living her dream, fighting for it. Stubborn. Restless. Passionate.

  But he knew she had another side, a soft, kind, intelligent, girl-next-door side to her personality. And right now, his brain was having trouble sorting the two. Hi
s dick, however, had no trouble at all. The longer he looked, the harder he got.

  Jake slid back onto his barstool, took one look at Chance’s face, and ordered a round of shots as the song came to an end.

  Chance grinned at his little brother. ”Good idea.” Eva James was the same woman he’d spent an hour with yesterday, the same girl he’d lusted over as she’d taught him how to play his new guitar. And the fact that she had this alter ego fascinated him.

  Which personality would she bring to bed? His mind wondered, but his dick didn’t care which version of her showed up in the bedroom, as long as she let him strip her naked and bury himself balls deep. No logic there, just lust.

  An hour into their set Eva, the seductress on stage, announced that the band was going to take a ten-minute break. They piped in canned music from the internet and set down their gear.

  Chance watched every move she made. He knew he should wait, that this probably wasn’t the best time to approach her. Yes. He knew it. Didn’t fucking care. Couldn’t make himself care. Not tonight. Playing it safe had earned him a solid ass-chewing by the senior partner today. The urge to do something reckless burned a hole in his gut. He was tired. He didn’t want to toe the line. Time to let go a little, get back to the hard-ass, smart-mouthed kid that regularly got into playground fights.

  He was supposed to act like a grownup now. Be responsible. Work his ass off. But what the hell? He’d really loved that fucking kid. At least that kid had some excitement once in a while.

  Watching Derek be hauled out of court in handcuffs had been bad enough. But the first time their mother took them to visit Derek in jail, Chance had nearly shit his pants. That place had scared him straight. That was seven years ago and he was beginning to think that maybe he’d taken things too far. Sure, he didn’t take cars for joyrides or tag buildings after that. But he didn’t have fun either. He didn’t take risks. Chance had been buttoned down for so damn long, he felt like he’d forgotten how to live.

  Eva James, or Erin, or whatever name she wanted to call herself, was a wild card. She burned bright, took chances, and followed her heart. And he wanted to taste that wild side with her.

  When Eva James disappeared down the hallway that led to the restrooms, he got up off his barstool. He took one step before Mitchell’s hand landed on his right arm and Jake’s on his left.

  “Whoa. Where do you think you’re going?” Jake’s shit-eating grin said he already knew the answer to that question.

  “I’m going to get her.”

  Derek burst out laughing. “Let him go. I gotta see this train wreck.”

  “Fuck you, Derek.”

  Even Mitchell was grinning now, but he let go of Chance’s arm. “Go for it, brother. She’s going to love you, bad boy. Just so you know, that tie of yours can be used for all kinds of things besides wearing it in court.”

  Derek was still chuckling. “We’ll have to pry her off your rebel ass with a crowbar.”

  Chance flipped them all off and headed for the side of the stage to wait for her. He didn’t give a shit what any of his brothers said. So what if she wasn’t his normal type? Fuck normal. He wanted her. He looked, and he wanted. End of story.

  He was tired of playing it safe. Tired of taking care of other people’s problems. He needed a damn break. He wanted her to rattle his cage.

  He wanted to talk to her, to touch her. And if she didn’t run scared? He damn sure was going to get her into his bed.

  <><><>

  Erin checked her makeup one more time. The amber-yellow contact lenses made her look oddly exotic. She loved wearing them and had lined her eyes in black and smoky gray to enhance the color. The clip-in extensions in her hair made her blonde strands fall in wild waves halfway down her back. Her normal length was just long enough to pull up into a ponytail, but not long enough to be a headache. Practical and efficient. Erin was both.

  Her pop-star alter-ego, Eva James, was neither.

  She checked the skirt and lace top she’d picked up last week. They looked good. And the boobs were hers. They weren’t big, but they looked tempting, especially when she smashed and tugged them into a push-up bra. She thought she looked hot. Sexy. Like a woman who knew what she wanted and took it. That was the image she had worked so hard to create. And so far, as Eva James, it was working.

  But as Erin? Not so much. Erin was still quiet and reserved, a struggling musician who was afraid she might never make it in music. Erin was just a twenty-something college dropout who wasn’t sure if she was going to make rent this month. She had ten songs out to multiple agents as well as one of the biggest talent managers in the industry right now, hoping to make a breakthrough sale on one of her songs. As of today, she hadn’t heard a word back from any of them.

  But Shipton Records would be at her show next week. A few days from now, her life could change. The life she wanted was so close she could practically taste it.

  “Fake it ’til you make it, baby.” Erin grinned at her sexy alter-ego in the mirror.

  “Give ’em hell, Erin.” Melanie Ross, their drummer’s girlfriend for the last eight months, had followed her to the bathroom. Erin looked at her friend in the mirror. Melanie looked a little pale.

  “You okay, Mel?”

  Melanie nodded, her hand over her stomach as she leaned one hip against the sink. “Yeah. I’m sure it was just something I ate. Bar food is nasty. You know?”

  “Yeah.” Which was one of the main reasons Erin usually brought her own food. That, and she couldn’t afford to pay restaurant prices and not all the venues fed the band. “You want me to call you a cab? Or go get Todd?”

  “No, thanks. I’m just going to hang out in here for a minute in case I need to hurl.” Her grin, while obviously forced, was infectious and Erin returned it. “I’ll be fine.”

  “Okay. Text me if you need me.” Erin waved on her way out and kept her head down as she headed back toward the stage.

  Normally, she tried not to meet the eyes of anyone unless she was actually onstage. She found that men took eye contact as in invitation to come talk, and when she was playing a gig, she generally didn’t have time to flirt anyway.

  Besides, they didn’t really want to talk to her, to Erin. They wanted to hook up with Eva James, the sexy lead singer of Fourth Strike. Eva wasn’t a real person, she was a suit of armor Erin wore every time she walked onstage. Eva James was sexy, confident and an all around badass. Eva James was all smoke and mirrors and putting on a great show. Compared to Eva, plain old Erin was boring as hell.

  Which was why she just didn’t date anymore. Dating was too complicated. Being Eva all the time was too much work, but being Erin disappointed the men who claimed that they were interested.

  Erin walked back to the end of the hallway and surveyed the crowd. Several people who had been sitting at the bar had now migrated to the front of the stage. As usual, more than a few girls were already flashing cleavage and throwing themselves at AJ and the other guys. And, as usual, Todd, who was completely head-over-heels for Melanie, ignored them, but AJ and Ricky were eating it up.

  Erin sighed and resigned herself to driving the van home alone, as usual. The guys would find girls to hook up with for the night and, once the van was loaded with their gear, Todd would leave with Melanie, and the other two would disappear until sometime the next day. She tried not to be annoyed by another few minutes of delay while her brother and Ricky flirted with and groped the girls hanging all over them.

  Some days she was ashamed to be female.

  A warm hand wrapped around her upper arm as she walked behind two stacked speakers that sat near the edge of the stage. She freaked and her heart raced in panic when she realized she would be out of view of the rest of the band.

  “Hi.”

  Erin started to shove at the arm holding her steady, but then she looked up. Holy crap. Mr. Suit-and-Tie was here? Chance Walker was here, and looking at her like she was the only woman on the planet. Like a regular caveman. The focused heat
in his gaze made her shiver.

  Speechless, she gave him a once over. He looked even sexier in a pair of jeans and a soft brown sweater. The sweater was the exact shade of his eyes, not that she noticed stuff like that. Her unusual, super-human ability to smell must have been activated by the cinnamon and dark chocolate spice that seemed to be emanating from his skin because she actually picked it up over the smell of stale beer and kitchen grease. His scent drowned her logical, thinking brain and made her body ache in all the right places. Damn, this man was dangerous.

  His gaze locked onto hers like a laser beam and she couldn’t look away.

  “Hi, yourself.”

  “So, this is what you call insomnia?”

  Embarrassed, but flattered that he’d remembered their conversation from the day before, she batted her insanely long fake eyelashes at him. “A girl’s gotta pay the bills.”

  “This isn’t exactly the usual second job.”

  “I’m not exactly a usual sort of woman.”

  “I can see that.” His gaze roamed her face and he looked like he wanted to say more about that, but he changed the subject instead to something a whole hell of a lot safer. “That was an awesome set. Did you write the music?”

  He loosened his hold on her arm, but instead of releasing her, he ran his palm up and down her arm. Over and over. The touch of skin on skin electrified her entire system until she felt paralyzed with pure want. He stood close and completely invaded her personal space. Warning bells should have been going off, but this was Chance, and she couldn’t seem to care.

  “Most of it.” The faint trace of alcohol on his breath made her want to find out how he tasted with a hint of whiskey in his mouth. If any other man had grabbed her, she would have taken off at a dead run, but she had already met Chance, and he didn’t make her feel uncomfortable or threatened. No, he made her ache to lean forward and offer up her lips for a kiss.