As soon as the door at the top of the stairs closed behind her, the intense euphoria Lucas felt disappeared. It was ripped away, replaced by a great sense of loss. It was as if he’d just found something he’d been searching for his entire life, and then it was gone in an instant. He stared at the back of the door, unconcerned about his nakedness and the chance that someone could walk in at any minute. He felt empty, as if a piece of him had been stolen, which was insane. He just met Sindy. Their volatile relationship had his head, his heart and his body turned upside down. She came in like a tornado and spun his head in a million directions. She turned his emotions into a washing machine of contradictions. As soon as he realized that he wanted her, physically and emotionally, she was gone. She gave him a taste of heaven only to take it away.
Sindy sped down the Meadowbrook Parkway with no destination and drove until she was dangerously low on fuel. She knew it was stupid to waste gas when she needed to account for every cent. She’d done a lot of stupid things in her life and had made some pretty bad decisions, but messing around with Lucas Blade topped them all. It jeopardized her future. She needed this gig, and she couldn’t let a moment of weakness ruin it. Besides, she didn’t like Lucas. His over-confident attitude about his guitar playing annoyed her, even though he had the skills to back it up. He had a strong will, and he didn’t budge an inch on his convictions. He was annoying, even if he was the smartest person she’d ever met. He thought women worshiped him and swooned at one glance. Most probably did, but not her. She thought about what just happened and how easily she melted the moment he kissed her. Damn him!
Prodigy was her salvation. She loved playing the guitar, but never imagined she could make a living at it. She knew she had talent, but she was a realist. Getting discovered while playing for change on the street or in a coffee shop didn’t happen – except it did.
Tessa had come along and saved Sindy when she was at her lowest. Discouraged with the prospects that lay ahead, with no substantial education, little money, and a nowhere job, Sindy was barely scraping by. Living paycheck to paycheck had become her way of life, and she hated it.
Tessa was kind, sweet, overly generous and supportive and had become Sindy’s best friend. And how did she repay that best friend? By sleeping with her brother and complicating their working relationship instead of acting like a professional. Sindy, you fucked up again!
Sindy’s shift at the diner flew by. For once, she wished the day dragged on. She wasn’t looking forward to seeing Lucas after what happened yesterday, but if she planned on moving forward with a career in music she needed to get past it. She showed up at rehearsal, shoulders back and her head held high, although her heart raced and her mind was all over the place.
Thankfully, Tessa and Mason were already in the studio when she got there, and she greeted them with a wave. She didn’t dare look at Lucas. The exchange they would have shared would have been a dead giveaway, and she didn’t want anyone to know that they had slept together. She froze. Maybe they already knew. Lucas and Tessa were close, and Mason was like a brother to Lucas. Tessa would have said something, she reasoned. The girl was so outspoken, never sugarcoating her words.
Play it cool, she told herself as she unlatched her guitar case and slipped the strap of her Strat over her head.
“Need help with that?” Lucas asked.
Sindy’s heart rate sped up. “No. Thank—” She shouldn’t have looked at him. His gaze rendered her motionless, and she forgot what she was about to say.
“I was thinking about the way you changed up the riff in The Stage.”
She raised her brow.
“I think we should go with it.”
Her mouth fell open and her cheeks burned, enraged at the way he suddenly changed his mind. “Now you think we should go with it?” She lowered her voice to a raspy whisper. “Do you think I slept with you just so you’d take my suggestions?” she hissed, eyes narrowed into thin slits.
“No! Of course not. I just think that maybe I was being too—”
“Too damn self-righteous?”
He had the nerve to smile, that God damn bewitching smile that he thought was so damn irresistible.
“Relax,” he said, holding up his hands. “I’m backing down. You won. This round.” He looked over his shoulder as he walked away and gave her the onceover, that cocky smile still on his lips.
The man was infuriating.
“We’re trying something new,” Lucas told Tessa and Mason. “We’re gonna use the alternate chord progression Sindy came up with on The Stage.” He glanced at her. “It’s not that bad. She convinced me to give it a shot.”
Sindy fumed. She knew what he meant by “convinced”. She inhaled a deep breath and swore steam would shoot out her nostrils when she exhaled.
“Go ahead.” Lucas nodded at her. “Show ‘em what you got.”
Instead of snapping at him or coming up with a witty retort, she channeled her energy into her guitar and delivered a fierce and ardent version of The Stage. She stopped after the last chorus to get their reaction to her take on the song, slapping her strings to silence the sound.
“Holy shit! That rocked.” Tessa gave her brother a playful nudge in the shoulder. “She upstaged you, big brother.” Mason laughed at the dig, but Lucas scowled, clearly not one to handle criticism so well.
Sindy gloated. “Let me show you the chord progression again, Lucas.”
“I got it,” Lucas said, sternly. “Show off,” he muttered under his breath.
Victory. It never felt so good. They ran through the song a few times with Lucas adopting the new riff as if he’d written it himself, and Sindy playing along backing up his lead. It amazed her how quickly he picked up the changes and ran with them. Watching him play was an amazing thing to witness. She needed to reel in her need to control everything, because she could learn so much from him. And he wanted to teach her. Too bad he was such a jerk.
After thirty minutes they took a break. The uneasiness returned to Sindy’s stomach as thoughts of last night with Lucas flashed inside her head once again, and that damn couch mocked her with memories of what transpired on its surface. Few things unnerved her, but being alone with Lucas overshadowed all of her other previous trepidations. Tessa and Mason were on the other side of the room, but they may as well have been in another zip code. She needed the awkwardness to be over but didn’t know how to move past it. Sitting on one of the amps, because she’d never sit on that damn couch again, she fiddled with the strings of her guitar until a black boot landed next to her leg.
Lucas put his guitar on his knee and rattled off the hook from Rock God. “I think you should come in with something like this.” He played a short melody. “What do you think? Do you need me to play it again?”
“No. I don’t need you to play it again.” She repeated the notes, but her head was reeling with too many thoughts, and she forgot how it ended. Flustered by his open legs spread in front of her, she was forced to look at his crotch and her mind went blank. Damn him and those sexy tight jeans. She pulled her eyes away and looked up at him. He was smiling with perfect white teeth. “Can you play it again for me?” she asked.
He chuckled and played the short melody. She paid close attention this time and mimicked what he played.
“That’s good,” Lucas said with a smile. “Do you hear how the heaviness of what you played enhances the riff? It ties in with the rhythm. You, Tessa and Mason need to lock in that sound.”
Normally, she would have thought he was talking down to her, explaining things only an educated music major would understand, but she realized that playing rhythm guitar required a different skillset than taking the lead, and he was only trying to improve the music. She turned off her defensive mechanism, for once, nodded, and accepted his advice.
Over the next few days, rehearsal sessions became bearable. She reined in her smart mouth, curbed her teasing smiles, and paid attention. She actually began to understand some of the concepts Lucas taught her
. In turn, Lucas backed off on his elaborate knowledge of music theory and concentrated on teaching her to read notes on paper. He was nicer. More patient. They hadn’t argued. They talked and discussed the music and exchanged ideas.
Tonight’s session went smoothly. They’d perfected several songs so far and had played them for the last two hours without a hiccup. For the first time since Sindy joined Prodigy, she felt like part of the band.
“Great job.” Tessa gave them a big smile, and then gulped some water. “I don’t know about you guys, but I’m exhausted.”
Mason laughed, a happy, carefree musical sound. “I can’t believe we finally wore her out.”
“Very funny.” Tessa looked tired, but still glowed with enthusiasm. “I’m going upstairs to shower.”
“I’m outta here, too.” Mason stretched and rolled his shoulders. “Same time tomorrow?”
They both looked at Sindy, waiting to hear what time her shift at the diner ended. “I’m on early, so I can be here by six.”
“Cool.” Mason placed his sticks down on his snare, patted Lucas on the shoulder and gave Sindy a small wave and one of his dimpled smiles. Tessa yawned and waved and followed Mason up the stairs.
Sindy’s cheeks flushed as her mind went back to the last time she was alone in the studio with Lucas. The couch stared at her, once again mocking her with the secret they shared.
“I guess it’s just you and me.” Lucas smiled at Sindy, so full of ego and so full of charm, turning her insides to butter. Had she mistaken attraction for anger and annoyance when they’d first met? Was their constant banter a mutual egotistical form of aggressive flirting? Is that what made her heart beat faster whenever he looked at her?
They were both obstinate and headstrong. They were like two bulls butting heads over stupid things, like whose chord progression sounded more pleasing to the ear. He was the master. She didn’t need to question the music he wrote. If Lucas Blade thought his riff worked better, who the hell was she to argue? Why was she always ready to challenge him? A smile crept onto her lips. Because she enjoyed the power play. The arguing ignited the heat between them, until they couldn’t control themselves and real feelings burst through. Feelings she didn’t know she had. But she needed to put those feelings aside and lock them back up, because this was a dangerous game. “Don’t look at me like that, Lucas.” If her voice would have been stronger, without the nervous waver, her warning may have held weight.
Lucas saw right through it. “You know there’s something between us. I know you have feelings for me. Don’t fight it.”
Her shoulders fell, and she let out a deep breath. “You can have any woman you want. Why me?”
“Why not you? You’re smart. You’re funny. You’re feisty. Talented. Independent. We have similar styles on the guitar. We’re a lot alike.”
Arguing with him had been easy in the past. But she had no words to combat him today. All she could do was huff out a breath and run her fingers through her hair. “You need to let this go. We’re trying to do something big here. I need this opportunity, but I’m not going to sleep with you to get it.”
He jerked his head back, insulted and offended. “I’d never do something like that. Why would you think that? You already have the gig. We wouldn’t be teaching you all of our songs if you didn’t. I told you the job was yours. My word means something. We’re just waiting on a background check to finalize the deal. I have no control over that. One of my fathers, Angel Garcia, is the band’s manager, and he’s in charge of that. Not me. I can’t tell him to nix procedure and get the contract from the lawyers. Besides, Tessa and Mason are two-thirds of this band. You were voted in. Unanimously. I can’t oust you. And I don’t want to. One thing has nothing to do with the other.”
“Please, Lucas. I don’t want to screw this up. The band is the first good thing that’s happened to me in a long time. Let’s not complicate things by messing around.”
He stared at her, without the bright smile and some of the light in his eyes missing. His penetrating gaze and the darkness that shrouded his face somehow rendered it even more handsome. She wished things were different and he was just a regular guy instead of the man who held the key to her future. She knew she couldn’t have both, and she wasn’t going to screw up her chance at success because she couldn’t control her urges. She needed to choose between Lucas and the band, and she chose the band.
Lucas made his way to the back of the house and entered the large room that served as Papi’s office. He gazed at the garden through the wall of windows and wondered how any work got done in here with such a distracting view.
“Lucas, my boy!” Papi always addressed everyone with a lively greeting, as if a lengthy span of time had elapsed since he’d last seen them. In this case, it was dinner, only three hours earlier.
“Hi, Papi. What’s up? What’d you want to see me about?”
“Have a seat.” Papi rounded the granite-topped desk and sat in the high-back leather chair, while Lucas sat opposite him wondering what necessitated a discussion in his office.
“I want to talk to you about Sindy. There’s a little snafu with her background check.”
Lucas sat back in his chair, imagining the worst. “She has an arrest record, doesn’t she?”
“No. Not at all. She has a clean record. A clean driver’s license. Her credit’s not the best, but I can forgive that considering she’s a young woman on her own struggling to make ends meet. It’s her address that doesn’t check out.”
“What do you mean?”
“She originally put down a P.O. box, so I called her and asked for a street address. The address she gave me belongs to a storage center.” His eyes turned pensive, trying to make sense of the false address. “I don’t know if she’s staying with someone and doesn’t want to give out their information and this is where she stores her things, or if she gave me a false address on purpose. I don’t know what to make of this, so before I investigate further, I thought I’d ask you how to proceed before I confront her. I’m happy to call her again, but perhaps she’d be more forthcoming if you or Tessa spoke to her about it.”
Lucas furrowed his brow with confusion. He began to have genuine feelings for Sindy, and now this puzzle presented itself. “I don’t know what to make of it either. We were finally getting along. She’s a fantastic guitar player.”
“She’s very gifted. I can’t believe she doesn’t have a signed contract already.”
One of his brows arched, and he grunted a little. “Well, she can be opinionated and argumentative.”
Papi smiled. “All divas have an attitude, male and female.”
“You should have seen her when I first started teaching her music theory. She would roll her eyes at me, and she’d play riffs that she thought were better than mine. She drives me crazy sometimes. She would bait me into an argument. Like she enjoyed watching me get flustered and bothered.”
“Women are tricky little minxes. It’s not just the schoolboy who pulls the little girl’s ponytail for attention.” Papi pushed a manila folder across the desk. “I’ll leave this with you. Follow up on her address and get back to me. I’m sure it’s just a misunderstanding. In the meantime, I’ll have legal go ahead and prepare the contract. But, I need a valid address.”
Lucas took the file back to his suite and Googled the address. As expected, it linked to a self-storage facility. Something wasn’t right, but he didn’t know why Sindy would give Papi two wrong addresses. He stared at the computer screen, baffled. “What are you hiding?” he muttered under his breath. “Let’s find out.”
He chose to take the car instead of his bike so he didn’t draw attention to himself with the loud engine of his Harley. Thirty minutes later, he found himself in front of the storage facility that matched the address that Sindy put down as her residence. A clerk sat behind the counter, visible from the curb where Lucas was parked. He didn’t plan on going inside, but he didn’t know what else to do.
A jingle anno
unced his presence and the clerk looked up from his computer. “Can I help you?”
“Does Sindy Cavanaugh rent a storage unit here, or do you collect her mail?” Lucas asked.
“I’m sorry. That’s confidential information.”
“Is there an apartment or residential unit on the premises that she might rent?”
“Nothing like that. Only garages and storage units for people’s junk.”
Lucas returned to his car, no clearer about Sindy’s home address than before he came to the storage place. He’d have to ask her about it and hoped it didn’t start an argument. It was as if she thrived on combative dialogue with him sometimes. A flutter ran down his back and arousal made his crotch tingle. He let out a small laugh. What the hell was wrong with him? No one ever affected him like this before.
He slipped the key into the ignition, but before he could turn over the engine, a Toyota Corolla pulling into the storage facility caught his attention. It was Sindy. He stuck his head out the window and called to her, but she didn’t hear him and continued to punch a code into the keypad. He stepped out of the car and called her name again, but she drove through the gate. It didn’t close behind her, so he trotted after the car and into the alley that led to the individual storage units. She never slowed down, and he lost sight of her car when it turned a corner. When he finally rounded the turn, he saw her car parked along the fence, but she was gone. He stood near it while he caught his breath and looked around to see which unit she entered. All of the roll-up metal gates were locked, but there was a door leading to a lighted hallway for indoor units. He poked his head inside. “Sindy? Hello?” Nothing. He took a few tentative steps into the dimly lit hallway, an eerie prickle sending a shiver over his flesh. There was nothing but rows of metal roll-up doors, some secured with deadbolts or padlocks. It didn’t feel right. It was too quiet. Too desolate. He felt like he was intruding and decided to leave. He turned toward the exit when music suddenly came from one of the storage units. He paused when he realized it was Knocking on Heaven’s Door. “Sindy?” Maybe this is where she came to play. He followed the sound to the unit where the music came from and hesitated with his hand in the air ready to knock on the metal door. He didn’t want her to think he was spying on her. Would she believe that he didn’t intentionally follow her here and that he was only checking the address and coincidentally ran into her? Or that she didn’t hear him when he called after her as he chased her car into the alleyway?
LUCAS BLADE: Radical Rock Stars: Next Generation Duet Book 1 Page 9
