by Meghan March
Real Dirty
Book 1 of the Real Dirty Duet
Meghan March
Contents
Real Dirty
Copyright
Notice
About This Book
1. Boone
2. Boone
3. Ripley
4. Boone
5. Ripley
6. Boone
7. Ripley
8. Boone
9. Boone
10. Ripley
11. Boone
12. Ripley
13. Ripley
14. Ripley
15. Boone
16. Ripley
17. Boone
18. Ripley
19. Boone
20. Ripley
21. Boone
22. Ripley
23. Ripley
24. Boone
25. Ripley
26. Boone
27. Ripley
28. Ripley
29. Boone
30. Ripley
31. Boone
32. Ripley
33. Boone
34. Ripley
35. Boone
36. Ripley
37. Boone
38. Ripley
39. Boone
40. Ripley
41. Boone
42. Ripley
43. Boone
44. Ripley
45. Boone
46. Ripley
47. Boone
48. Ripley
Also by Meghan March
Acknowledgments
Author’s Note
About the Author
Real Dirty
Book 1 of the Real Dirty Duet
Meghan March
Copyright
Copyright © 2017 by Meghan March LLC
All rights reserved.
Editor: Pam Berehulke
Bulletproof Editing
www.bulletproofediting.com
Cover design: @ Hang Le
www.byhangle.com
Cover photo: @ Sara Eirew
Sara Eirew Photography
www.saraeirew.com
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a review.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.
Visit my website at www.meghanmarch.com.
About This Book
I have everything a guy could want—a new single burning up the charts, more money than a simple country boy could spend, and a woman I’m planning to marry.
Until she doesn’t show up for my proposal.
The life I thought was so perfect, isn’t.
The guy who thought he had everything, doesn’t.
I’ve got my heart on lockdown, but life sends me straight into the path of a mouthy bartender who puts me in my place.
Now the only place I want to put her is under me.
I thought I was done with love, but maybe I’m just getting started.
1
Boone
As soon as the last chord of my brand-new single dies away, I jam the microphone back into its holder and stalk off the stage, leaving the lights and the roar of the crowd behind me.
Where the hell is she?
“Boone—”
“Great show!”
“Nice job!”
Over the noise of screaming fans, people yell to me, but I ignore it all and head for my dressing room. I don’t have shit to say right now.
Only a few people knew about my proposal plans, and I can’t stand to see the sympathetic expressions on their faces. I don’t need anyone’s fucking pity. It’s not like I was stood up at the altar. My girlfriend’s flight was canceled or delayed . . . and she’s not answering her phone. I’ll just have to come up with a way to top this one. Somehow.
Amber better have a damn good explanation for where she is. I know she’s independent and just as busy as I am, but that doesn’t mean I don’t frigging worry when she goes MIA like this.
After shoving open the door with my nameplate on it so hard it smacks into the wall and bounces shut, I flip the lock and lean back against the wood panel.
At least my parents aren’t here. Jesus. That would have been more than I’d want to deal with.
They’re my parents and I love them to death, but my mom would have alluded to this being the universe’s way of telling me I need to think about what I’m doing.
“Marriage is sacred, Boone. Are you one hundred percent sure that she’s the one?”
You would think Ma would be thrilled at the thought of adding another daughter-in-law to the family, but it’s safe to say she was more excited about me turning down my community-college baseball scholarship to try to make it in Nashville.
When I packed my rusted-out truck with my guitar and clothes, she hugged me hard and dished out her special brand of wisdom. “You do what you need to do, Boone. We’ll always be here to support you, and you better believe I’ll be first in line to buy your record as soon as it releases.”
Ma didn’t have to wait in line for shit. I hand delivered the first copy the label gave me to her house before release day, but that didn’t stop her from going down to Walmart and buying every one they had on the shelf. All sixteen of them. Because that’s my mom, supportive to a fault . . . on everything but this.
Tilting my head back, I focus on the white drop ceiling above me. Normally after a concert, I’m riding high, but tonight I’m off my game because of Amber. It’s not every day you have an epic proposal planned and the person you’re going to propose to doesn’t show.
Someone pounds on the door behind me, and I shove off the wood as it vibrates.
“Hey, man! I got the keys to your ride! Wanna get outta here?”
The voice belongs to Zane Frisco, one of the openers. The crooner with shaggy blond hair picks up plenty of the women I pass on because I’m not looking to cheat. This tour has been a pussy parade that launched his career to the next level.
When I don’t answer, he drops his voice. “Vultures are circling. Press must’ve found out about your plans. Time to roll.”
There’s no way I’ll make it out of this venue without being spotted, especially if the press is foaming at the mouth to get a story. It takes everything I have not to turn around and punch through the door. I flex my hand into a fist. It’s been a long time since my tattooed knuckles pounded into anything.
Putting my hand through the panel isn’t going to change a damn thing, though. Uncurling my fingers, I turn around and yank it open instead.
Frisco leans with his shoulder against the door and nearly falls inside when it swings wide.
“Thought you were tunneling out under the wall.” He straightens and holds up my keys and the pair of brass knuckles that serves as the keychain. “Your security detail is clearing out the press. Thought now would be a perfect time to get the hell out of here.”
After a couple of months of touring together, Frisco gets it. Sometimes you just need to walk away from all the shit that goes along with being able to draw a crowd big enough to fill a stadium.
I grab the keys from his hand and we st
ride back toward the stage where my new obsession waits. The completely restored Olds 442 is as sweet as fuck and was delivered only yesterday. Other than backing her off the trailer and driving into a room for the press to drool over her and then up onto the stage, I haven’t taken her anywhere.
I was going to drop to one knee beside her and ask Amber to spend the rest of her life rolling through the back roads with me, but we all know how that turned out.
My fingers tense, wanting to try to get her on the phone, but what would be the point? She’s got to be on a plane; otherwise, she would have called me back already. She’ll text me from her condo asking me to come over when she gets in.
She didn’t know what you were planning, so cut her some slack, I tell myself. I’m trying to give her some grace, but my patience is wearing thin.
Sometimes you just have to roll with the punches, so why not get out of here and put the 442 through her paces?
As soon as I lay eyes on the slick black-and-red paint job, I feel lighter. I jerk my chin at Frisco in the direction of the muscle car.
“Let’s go.”
The engine growls like the bad bitch she is as I roast the tires in the parking lot of the venue. In my rearview, two men in black suits stand with their arms crossed over their chests, watching me disapprovingly as a cloud of smoke fills the air.
Tough shit. My security. My payroll.
Which means I can do stupid crap like this and they can’t say a damn thing.
“You gonna let Tweedledee and Tweedledumb follow us tonight? Or are we gonna act like we got some goddamned balls and go have some fun?” Frisco asks, the taunt clear in his tone as a roadie waves me toward the open gate that leads out of the parking lot.
He’s still new enough in the industry that he can go places without being recognized, but I don’t have that luxury anymore.
“You know anywhere we can go without being mobbed by people? I’m not in the mood for that tonight, man.”
Frisco lays his arm along the open window frame. “I got the perfect place in mind. But first, let’s see what this beauty can do.”
2
Boone
A half hour later, the smile on my face is in danger of becoming a perma-grin.
Damn, it feels good to tear around town in the sweetest piece of American muscle I’ve ever owned. We only had to duck into one alley to lose a cop, which shows you just how much I’ve held back. Last thing I need is a reckless-driving charge for the press to chew on and blow out of proportion.
Frisco laughs his ass off as we head back toward downtown Nashville and his apartment. He’s got one of those lofts in a rehabbed warehouse somewhere around here.
“Where am I going? Am I dropping you off?”
His laughter cuts off. “Fuck no. That was just the warm-up, right? We need some booze.”
I slow as traffic gets heavier near Broadway. All the people crowding the streets reminds me of playing for tips in some hole-in-the-wall on Sixteenth Avenue before I finally landed a record deal. Everything happened fast after that.
One day I was sleeping in my car, and the next they were putting me up at a hotel I couldn’t afford on my own, all because some record exec saw dollar signs when I played.
Worked for me.
“Where we headed?”
“Take a left up here.” He points toward a dark side street.
Even though I’m questioning whether he’s got his directions backward, I turn.
“Two blocks down.”
A few minutes later, the glow of blue-and-green neon lights appears up ahead.
The Fishbowl.
The logo looks exactly like you’d think. A blue bubble of a fishbowl with green writing in the middle and a matching green fish inside.
I slow, intending to pull up to the curb, but he points toward the next side street. “Take a right and park in the back. Might help keep someone from spotting the car and trying to track you down.”
“Good looking out.”
I guide the 442 around the back of the crumbling three-story brick building and park next to a rusty Javelin. Frisco is already climbing out of the car and shutting the door when I stop and look at it.
“I wonder whose ride this is.”
Frisco shoots me a grin. “Only the hottest woman I’ve met in this town who keeps turnin’ me down.”
“You fucking serious? We’re here so you can try to get laid by some chick who shot you down?”
He pauses, his fingers wrapped around the crooked handle of the back door of the building. “Guess we’ll find out.”
Frisco yanks it open, and for a second, I consider leaving his ass here and going home. It would serve him right.
The light from inside streams through the closing door, and Johnny Cash’s gravelly voice slips out.
What the hell? It ain’t like I’ve got anything better to do tonight anyway.
The inside of the bar is like plenty of others I’ve been in. Stale aroma from years of smoke hangs in the air of the high-ceilinged space, longer than it is wide. A scarred wooden bar stretches down the middle section of the left wall, probably about thirty feet in length.
The walls are plastered with photos of country legends from a bygone era, and the one nearest to me has an illegible message written to Rhonda above the scrawled signature of Merle Haggard.
Frisco makes a beeline toward the bar where a woman with an incredible rack and a wild mane of dark hair works the taps for two people seated on stools.
She’s gotta be the one Frisco’s after. I can’t argue. The man has impeccable taste.
I tear my eyes off her and survey the only other patrons in the bar. The couple looks like they’ve been taking up space since Merle signed the picture on the wall.
Frisco may be right. No worries about a security problem here tonight. I doubt Fred and Ethel have ever heard of TMZ or would know who to contact to report a celebrity sighting.
But just to be on the safe side, I tug the bill of my worn baseball cap lower before crossing the scraped concrete floor.
3
Ripley
With a practiced snap of my wrist, I flip the tap and drop a hand to my hip as Zane Frisco approaches the bar with his trademark cocky grin. If he asks me out this time, what will that make? Five times? Obviously, it’s flattering, but that doesn’t mean my answer is going to be any different than it was the last four. I have to give the guy props for being persistent, I suppose.
“Shouldn’t you be fighting off groupies backstage right about now?” With a raised eyebrow, I set a pint glass of Miller Lite on the bar napkin in front of Earl before grabbing a second one for his wife, Pearl.
The older couple has been coming to the Fishbowl for as long as I can remember, even back before everything changed. They’ve seen the good, the bad, and the ugly in this bar, and if I were ever to take Miller Lite off tap, I’m pretty sure one or both of them would die of a heart attack and haunt this bar for the rest of its days. However few days that may be.
Snatching up the towel in front of me, I wipe away any stray drops of beer and attempt to shove down the negative thought. The Fishbowl may be a dying tradition, but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be spotless.
Frisco leans forward, his elbows on the bar, and his grin shifts into what I’m sure would count as a panty-dropping smile—if I were the kind of girl to wear panties, that is.
“What would I want with a groupie when I can come here and see your beautiful face?”
He’s not short on the charm, but I’m immune.
I drop the rag in front of me and cross my arms under my breasts, not worrying about whether it pushes them up higher under my George Jones Rockin’ with the Possum V-neck. “Put it in a song, Frisco. It’ll get you a lot more play than you’re gonna get in this bar tonight.”
He shakes his head, keeping that smile intact. “Someday you’re gonna say yes to going out with me, and I’ll let you apologize for all those times you shot me down.”
I do
n’t hold back, dropping my arms and letting my laughter go free. “Points for eternal optimism, but it ain’t happenin’. You know my rule. Better men than you have tried and failed to get me to break it.”
His cocky grin tilts. “Such bullshit, Rip. You and your rule are about the only things that make me wish I was still playing in bars and crashing on couches, broke as hell. If I’d only known . . .”
Frisco winks at me, and I know he’s not taking my rejection any harder than normal. He’s not stupid and he doesn’t lack for options. He’ll probably leave here, stop at a bar with customers who are under the age of seventy-five, and pick up a girl to take home.
And I’ll be going upstairs alone again to take care of business myself. That’s if I don’t fall asleep as soon as I climb into bed because I’m running on five hours of sleep total in the past two days. I shut down the momentary flash of fatigue and pin my smile into place.
“What are you drinking tonight, Frisco?”
“The usual. Plus, whatever he wants.” Frisco jerks his chin toward the direction of a man stepping out of the shadows near the back entrance.
Crap, I need to change that light bulb. When did it go out? As soon as the thought enters my head, it’s replaced by a flash of female appreciation.
Dayum.
Frisco is no slouch in the build department, but the way this guy’s broad shoulders, muscled chest, and thick biceps stretch out his faded black T-shirt has all the spit drying up in my mouth as he strides closer.
Wow. That is a man.
His battered baseball cap is pulled low, hiding his face, but I can make out the dark scruff of a beard on his chin. My gaze slides down to the ink on his arms, and the parts of me that haven’t seen any action in longer than I want to admit roar to life.