Hard Rock Arrangement

by Ava Lore

  Oh dear. Where had those thoughts come from? It couldn't just be his scent... could it?

  Stupid smell, I griped, get out of my head! I ducked my face and zipped up my jeans with shaking hands, struggling to hide my confusion.

  To his credit—or rather, to his credit since I didn't peg Kent Hudson to be the sort of person who would bother—Kent grabbed some toilet paper, wiped away the cum from the back of the toilet seat, and flushed it away. Then he straightened and looked down at me.

  I could see what was going to happen next. He was going to do the typical rock star manwhore thing. He was going to use me and then throw me away like a Kleenex during a spank session. The good vibes of the half-fuck we'd just had were already melting into anger.

  I'm sick of being used, I thought. I'm going to do the using from now on.

  I took a deep breath. “Well,” I said, “not bad. Thanks. But your going to have to do a lot more than that to convince me to take the job.”

  It was probably the jerkiest thing I'd ever said after sex, and I immediately felt bad as his eyes widened. “I...” he started, then shut his mouth with a snap. His brows twitched, and for a terrible moment I thought I might have hurt his feelings. Then he seemed to get himself under control, and I wasn't sure I'd seen that flash of emotion at all. He gave me a cool nod, turned, and waltzed out of the bathroom.

  The buzz of the plane roared around me. What the hell did you just do? I thought furiously at myself. Even if he was going to use me up and throw me away, that didn't mean he didn't also have feelings. I mean... What did I mean? I had no idea. My thoughts were just a jumble, a cluttered amalgamation of confusion, lust, and guilt.

  I stood there for a minute, and it was one of the longest minutes I think I've ever had to endure. When I judged enough time had passed, I slipped out the door and, on shaking legs, managed to stumble back to my seat, once again upsetting my businessman seat partner and startling a fart out of the old lady in the middle. I said nothing, only sat down in my seat and watched out the window as the wings bounced and wove their way through a cloudless sky.

  Chapter Three

  We took a limo to the hotel where Carter Hudson was staying. The whole time we drove, Randy kept chattering away about his time in 'the biz' and all his weird little anecdotes about the people he'd rubbed elbows with. I tried to nod politely while attempting to strangle him with the power of my mind, but Kent didn't even bother with that facade. He was staring out the window and not meeting my eye. If I hadn't known he was a hot shot bassist who probably banged ten groupies a night, I would have sworn he was sulking.

  The ride took us straight to the strip. I should have guessed that Carter was one of those guys who didn't take investing and saving seriously, so I shouldn't have been so shocked when we entered the Bellagio and headed for the penthouse. For all I knew, Carter was able to bill this shit to the record label. Keep the talent happy, keep the money rolling in.

  Kent had banished us to the overstuffed chairs in the lobby before he'd spoken briefly with the woman at the front desk, flashed his ID, then talked to a man obviously high up in the rankings at the hotel, before receiving a key. With a curt gesture, he indicated we should follow him. Randy leaped to his feet, and I stomped behind him, feeling like I'd somehow broken into this palace of opulence and was about to be arrested for contaminating the pretty people at any moment. We slipped down a beautifully decorated hallway to a private elevator. Kent swiped the key and we entered.

  The elevator rose like a dream, fancy hydraulics hauling it into the air without all that lurching and shaking that old elevators used to do. Instead, we ascended smoothly, and when we reached the top, Kent swiped the card again, and let us out directly into the penthouse.

  At least, I assume it was the penthouse. I'd expected something on the swanky side, and while this place sure had been swanky no more than a few hours ago, something had clearly happened to it to take away its swank cred.

  For starters, it looked like a tornado had come through. Two tornadoes. Two tornadoes and they were fighting. Two tornadoes and they were fighting and then they had crazy angry make-up sex. Because that was the only explanation I could think of for the level of destruction that met us.

  Clothes were strewn everywhere. On lamp posts, on light fixtures, over the backs of chairs, clustered in a heap near the dining table. The dining table was transformed into a blanket fort, and I could have sworn I heard someone snoring inside it. Glass bottles and small shot glasses peppered every available surface, glittering in the desert sun that was now free to stream in through the windows because someone had ripped the curtains away to fortify the southern side of Fort Blankie. The cushions on the furniture was, to a pillow, completely MIA, someone had tried to play a game of shuffleboard on the marble floor, and an array of dildos in each color of the rainbow had been meticulously lined up on the granite top of the bar. I shuddered to think what was going on in the kitchen.

  Behind us, Kent sighed. “All right. Eyes on me.” Dutifully Randy and I turned, and we caught each other's eyes as we did so. I could see in his face a reflection of my own thoughts: what the hell have we gotten ourselves into?

  Kent crossed his arms, and I tried not to think about how well his coat hung and displayed his slender hips when he did so. A rush of blood from my head told me I was unsuccessful, and I had to physically pinch myself to drag my attention back to Kent's face.

  To my surprise, he looked tired. Worn out. He pinched the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger before crossing his arms again. “I have already discussed this with Rebecca,” he said, “but I want to be completely clear with the both of you. As you can see, my younger brother Carter, the band's guitarist and songwriter, likes to live a bit on the wild side. He has gone through a number of personal assistants, first employed by him, and then employed by myself. They have all found him too much to handle, and I can't say I blame them. What I'm looking for in a personal assistant, then, is a babysitter. Someone who can be stern with him and who will keep him from accidentally killing himself. This is a hard thing to do with a child, and harder to do with a grown man. I assure you that you will be well-compensated for your work. I have sat down and added things up. Due to Carter's difficulties in acting like an adult, I expect you to be on-call 24/7, and your pay will reflect that.” He took a deep breath, then quoted a number that made a tiny atom bomb explode in my brain.

  Holy shit, I thought. Holy shit. Holy shit.

  Holy shit.

  That kind of money... I couldn't even comprehend it. It would be a miracle to me. It would change my life.

  Suddenly, I found myself not quite so ambivalent about the job as I had been before. My palms began to sweat.

  Kent continued: “I will be asking whichever one of you does not get the job to sign a confidentiality agreement, and I will be happy to give you a reference to whomever you choose to apply to in the future. For now, I would like to see how you would perform your duties, which consist of: Keep Carter alive, keep Carter's indiscretions out of the media, curtail his spending to the best of your ability, and do your best to curb his alcohol and drug abuse.”

  I laughed out loud at that last one. Kent raised his eyebrows at me. “You think that's funny?” he asked, and there was a hardness to his voice that gave me shivers.

  I shrugged, trying to be nonchalant. “I've known a lot of drug addicts,” I said. “It's almost impossible to help them. Rock bottom and all that.”

  “Nevertheless,” Kent said. “That would be part of your duties.”

  The impossible job from hell, I thought. That explained why the money was so good...

  Kent took a deep breath and appeared to compose himself. “All right, turn around and look around you. Pretend you are Carter's handler. He's escaped from you. You arrive here. This is what you see. What would you do in this situation?”

  Both of us were silent, surveying the destruction. Unfortunately, I didn't think put a match to it and watch that motherfuc
ker burn was an acceptable answer.

  Randy cleared his throat. “Well, first I would call you and ask you for instructions on how you wanted me to handle a situation as dire as this—”

  Even I winced at that answer.

  “No,” Kent said, cutting him off. “If you think this situation is dire, then you might as well turn around and leave. This situation is par for the course, and I don't need you calling me every twelve hours asking what you should do. Try again.”

  Kent began to sweat, working his hands at his sides as though he could grab the correct answer from his ass. “Er... I guess I would first call housekeeping...”

  Kent gave an exasperated sigh, and he sounded exactly like my father did whenever one of us kids managed to get our dumb asses into trouble again. “No,” he snapped. “Rebecca?”

  I looked around the penthouse. What would I do, if I wanted to keep this under wraps?

  “Um... I think first I would go find Carter. No, wait. First I'd make sure nothing's on fire, then I'd find Carter.”

  Behind me, Kent was silent for a second, then he grunted. “Fine. That answer is acceptable. Both of you, go.”

  Randy, clearly hoping to show that he wasn't as useless as he had already demonstrated, darted forward like a shot, rounding the bar to peer into the kitchen. I left him to it and began to pick my way across the floor. It was littered with glass and was sticky in places. A few used condoms stuffed in unlikely places made me shudder, but nothing seemed to be actively burning down. I made a beeline for the blanket fort and lifted one side of it, peering into the dimness.

  A pretty young woman with long blonde hair and wearing nothing but a bustier lay on a mound of pillows, fast asleep, her legs indecently spread and a scattering of condoms littering the pillows around her.

  My stomach turned. Grabbing one of the blankets from the fort, I gently covered her, my mind already racing with the implications. What if she'd been raped? What if Carter's DNA was in one of those condoms. I didn't want to hide that, at all. That was the sort of thing that should reach the media.

  Kent appeared at my shoulder, crouching down next to me. It was totally inappropriate, but I felt a heady rush of desire at the whiff of his scent that wafted my way. I clenched my jaw as Kent shook his head. “Showgirl,” he said. “I'll get her to a new room, see if I can't find her clothes.”

  “What if she was raped?” I said.

  He went still next to me, then sighed. “I'll leave my number with her. But I doubt it was rape. If we can find her clothes I bet you'll find a fat wad of bills stuffed inside her purse.”

  Ugh. Maybe it was true, but maybe it wasn't. I felt ill at the thought of leaving a rape victim alone in a strange room, but I didn't know what to do. Should I trust Kent? Would he really leave his number with her? I stole a glance at him from the corner of my eye and saw that the tired look on his face was even more pronounced. “Go find Carter,” he said.

  I supposed I really had no choice but to trust him at this point, since there was no way to slip her my own number and be assured that it would get to her. I stood up and rounded the rest of the room, taking meticulous stock of the damage that had been done. It continued to be breathtaking. When I was done, Randy had already finished his survey of the kitchen and lingered in front of the bedroom. I walked over to him, and together we entered it.

  The bedroom suite seemed to have fared slightly better than the living room, but the sheets and comforters were still all thrown off the bed, and a pair of fuzzy purple handcuffs dangled from the headboard. A huge dog, approximately the size of a tiger, curled up in the mess of bedclothes, watching us with one dark, blood-shot eye, while apparently grabbing it's light afternoon snooze with the other. I grabbed Randy's hand and edged around it, toward the bathroom. Randy inhaled sharply at the sight of such an enormous predator so close to him, but the shock was quickly supplanted by something else.

  “Oh god,” he said. “What the hell is that smell?”

  Really? I thought. What kind of sheltered douchebag has no idea what that is?

  “It's puke,” I snapped. I was starting to lose my patience. The chaos of the hotel suite weighed heavily on me, setting me on edge. I hated that every step I took was on something other than the floor. No square inch of horizontal surface had escaped the wreckage, and I couldn't stand it. The urge to purge made my palms itch. I tried to suppress it and dragged Randy towards the source of the vomit smell: the men's bathroom suite.

  As we entered, Randy gagged, and I finally found our culprit. Or at least, I hoped it was our culprit. I couldn't see his face, but a pair of long, well-muscled legs—not unlike another set of well-muscled legs I'd been admiring not a few hours before—were sticking out of the shower stall. His shoes and socks were missing The other half of his body lay inside the shower stall. Gingerly, I shoved a bong aside with my foot and stepped over him, peering into the stall. Randy, somewhat foolishly, did the same.

  Vomit. Vomit everywhere. On the walls. On the floor. Crusted on the man's clothes. The stench of it hit us like a freight train and even I, who had spent more hours than I could count dealing with the presents discourteous drunks left me in our bathrooms at the bar, found it almost overwhelming. Poor Randy didn't stand a chance.

  His presence at my back disappeared, and I heard him retch and then lose his lunch in the toilet. I wasn't feeling so hot myself, but someone had to be the adult here. Licking my lips, I knelt down and put two shaking fingers against the man's throat.

  To my relief, I found his pulse right away, thrumming strong and sure.

  “Is he okay?”

  I looked up to see Kent hovering in the bathroom doorway, his face as white as a sheet.

  I felt sorry for him in that moment. When he said he needed a babysitter for his little brother, I hadn't quite been sure what he meant, but now I could see why. He must be at his wit's end trying to keep this kid from killing himself all the time. The thought made me unbearably sad. My own family was large and warm; I couldn't even imagine how terrible it must feel to know that one of them was headed down a dark path. In fact, the only one of us who could even be remotely considered to be the troubled one was... me.

  Well, shit. I made a mental note to hug Rose extra hard when I got home.

  Abruptly I stood up. “He's fine,” I said. “He probably threw up from alcohol, so he purged a lot of poison. He's going to have a bruise across his stomach from that step that comes down from the shower, but other than that he should be okay.”

  Kent let out a breath. “Good,” he said. “Get him up.” And he retreated into the bedroom.

  Randy was still heaving into the can, so it looked like it was all up to me at this point. I tilted my head and studied the slack face of the unconscious man in the shower.

  ...Yeah, that was Carter Hudson, all right. I'd seen his face everywhere in the past few months, along with the lead singer. The drummer and Kent seemed to linger in the background more often than not, but I bet that suited them just fine. Carter was more fine-boned than his brother, more beautiful. Well. Except for the vomit. That was kind of ruining it for me.

  I reached out and turned on the water.

  Almost immediately Carter Hudson sputtered to life, so he wasn't mostly dead. Just half dead. That was good. He coughed and struggled to get to his hands and knees. The black t-shirt he wore became plastered to whip-like body composed entirely of lean muscle and sinew. When he finally lifted his head into the lukewarm spray and spotted me, he smiled.

  “Well hello, beautiful,” he said. “Somebody better call God 'cause I bet it hurt when you fell from heaven.” His eyes crossed briefly. “Is that how it goes?”

  Fucking wow. “Hello Mr. Hudson,” I replied. “My name is Rebecca Alton. Kent has told me to take care of you. Why don't you get the rest of the way into the shower?”

  He didn't respond. He was still pretty out of it. He glanced around, trying to get his bearings, but when he glanced down his body he shook his head. “No way,” h
e told me. “That'll wreck my threads!”

  Who the fuck actually says threads? I wondered. “Then take them off, but get in that shower by the count of ten or you'll be sorry.”

  An empty threat, but he was still either high or hungover and it worked. Rolling over, he divested himself of his pants and boxers, then worked his shirt off over his head. Within a few minutes he was completely naked... and I couldn't help but notice how nice he looked. I mean, yeah, he'd just vomited all over himself and was apparently the biggest poser in the world who had actually made it, but he had an ass that wouldn't quit. I wondered if it ran in the family.

  ...Who was I kidding? I knew it did. I'd had my eyes plastered on Kent's ass every single time he walked off in an authoritative huff.

  “Like what you see?” Carter asked.

  I shrugged. “Seen better,” I told him, striving to maintain some sort of professional distance. What would Supernanny do? “Now get in the shower while I start on this mess.”

  Carter climbed into the shower and sat on the floor, curling up into a ball and letting the warm water run over him. I decided he was probably fine there for a bit.

  I checked on Randy and found him done tossing his cookies. He had the decency to look ashamed of himself.

  “You think you can go find some clothes for him to wear?” I asked him.

  Miserably, he nodded. I think it was clear at that point that he wasn't going to get the job. Hauling himself to his feet, he moped out of the bathroom in search of clothes, and I set about tidying up the bathroom.

  By the time I was done, it wasn't perfect, but it was considerably neater. The trick had been to throw everything that looked even remotely like trash into the little pail sitting under the sink. Then it was to throw the rest into all the extra bags I found. Glass bottles clanged together, scented with alcohol and half-smoked cigarettes and discarded roaches. I took it upon myself to throw out any pairs of panties or underwear that didn't look like they'd fit Carter, and by the time I was done the bathroom was nearing merely unacceptable rather than disaster area. It felt surprisingly good, and I wondered if Rose hadn't been right. Cleaning was far more rewarding than slowly killing a bunch of depressed alcoholics or serving up spiked excuses for people to cheat on their spouses.