by Lane Hart
“Yeah, I’m sure you will,” Ford agrees as his eyes devour Tessa from top to bottom. I can tell the wheels in his head are churning even before he says, “You know, I could use some help giving up my smokes.” He pulls a half-empty pack of cigarettes from his pants pocket and holds it out to Tessa. “Do you think you could be my quit coach?”
“Sure,” she says, practically beaming because she thinks she can really stop him from smoking, or Ben from drinking. Poor girl. She doesn’t see the game they’re playing, or at least the one I know Ford is playing, where he cozies up to her as a way to get into her panties. He has no limits. Doesn’t he get she’s from our record label and that if he fucks her like a groupie and moves on to the next, it could come back on all of us?
“Let’s go look for Ben and Davis,” I tell Ford before I walk by him and grab the back of his shirt to clothesline him into coming with me.
“What the fuck!” he shouts as he’s forced to follow.
“We’ll be right back,” I assure Tessa over my shoulder before I go down the bus steps, still pulling Ford along.
“What’s your problem?” he asks, after we get far enough from the bus that I don’t think she’ll overhear us.
“Are you out of your mind?” I snap at him. “You can’t fuck her.”
“Huh?” he asks. “Why not?”
“Because you can’t!” I exclaim. “She works for our label, the one that is ready to fucking drop us if we don’t get an album out ASAP. One word from her, and they could say to hell with us!”
“Do you honestly think that’s not gonna happen anyway?” Ford asks. “Tour or not, we won’t be able to pull this off before their deadline. They know that, and would rather get rid of us than sign us for another album and tour.”
“That’s not true,” I argue.
“Yes, Clarke, it is. We’re done, man. It was fun while it lasted though, right?” Ford asks. “And before we go out, there’s no reason I shouldn’t get a little taste of her first.”
“That’s not gonna happen with Tessa,” I assure him. “And if you have that attitude then no, we won’t be able to do a new album. I’ll write all the new songs myself if I have to.”
“And they’ll suck,” Ford says.
“Probably,” I agree. I’ve never been as good at coming up with lyrics that can compete with Ford’s. “But at least we’ll have something to show the label before we’re back to Roanoke, broke as fuck, permanently.”
“Do what you want,” Ford says, before he starts walking back to the bus. “I’m gonna be doing her.”
“Who are you doing?” Davis asks when he comes up to us, towering half a foot over our own six-foot frames.
“The record label woman,” I explain.
“Of fucking course he is,” Davis grumbles. “Can’t have a woman walk by without using her up, can you, Ford?”
“Don’t be jealous, Davie. It doesn’t look good on you,” Ford replies. “Stick with the angry expression.”
“I tried explaining to Ford that messing with Tessa could end badly for all of us,” I tell Davis.
“Clarke’s right. Keep your fucking hands off of her,” Davis snaps at Ford as he stalks over and pokes him in the chest.
“You gonna stop me?” he asks.
“Fuck yes. You know I can too,” Davis replies.
“Why do you give a shit?” Ford asks, pushing his luck with our hot-tempered guitarist.
“Because Clarke is right. I don’t have anything to fall back on, pretty boy. We need the label, and you need to worry about writing down some shit for us to play rather than getting your dick wet.”
“I bet you’ve forgotten what that’s like, haven’t you, Davie?” Ford taunts him
“Dude, are you trying to get Davis to punch you?” I ask Ford as I step between them, putting a hand on each of their chests to move them back a few steps. Ford goes, but I can’t possibly make Davis budge.
“I can’t wait to get away from you dickheads,” Davis mutters.
“I feel the same,” Ford tells him through clenched teeth.
“What’s going on?” Ben asks when he walks up to our group meeting. More like stumbles, really, since he seems to be wasted.
“We’re getting on the bus and getting the hell out of here,” I say.
“Are those hot chicks from the label here yet? We can’t leave without them,” Ben says, as he looks around the dark parking lot. “Or wait. Did I dream them or were they real?”
“It’s just one woman from the label, and her name is Tessa,” I mutter as I grab his arm to steer him toward the bus steps. It takes him a while to get up all five of them.
Tessa was right. Ben’s drinking is getting worse, and it’s time he does something about it. We’re shitty friends for not trying to do more for him sooner, but I think all of us are just so used to each other’s shit that it barely phases us until someone else points out that it’s fucked up.
The four of us climb into the bus, and I tell Ken, our driver, that we’re ready to go as soon as the equipment team gives him the go-ahead.
“Hey, you’re all here,” Tessa says from her seat on the sofa.
“What’s she doing here?” Davis turns around to ask me.
“Ben wants her to try and help him stop drinking,” I explain. “Oh, and Ford wants her to make sure he doesn’t smoke.”
“Riiiight,” Davis drawls, knowing exactly what Ford is up to, but oddly enough, he doesn’t protest Tessa’s presence like I expected.
A few minutes later, our bus pulls out of Vegas and heads east, taking us home for the first time in as long as I can remember.
Chapter 7
Tessa
It becomes clear to me within the first five minutes on the bus with the four men why they’re not playing well together on stage—they can’t stand each other.
These guys have been in the same cramped space on the road for way too long. While they probably started out as best friends, they bicker and argue like two pairs of old married couples.
Ford has an I-don’t-give-a-shit attitude and may as well have the middle finger tattooed across his forehead. Davis constantly puts out a leave-me-the-hell-alone vibe, practically growling when anyone gets too close to him, which is all the time on the bus. And Bennett is mentally absent from the group because he’s too drunk to even hold a conversation. Then there’s Clarke. That poor guy is so stressed out about the three of his bandmates that he’s making himself physically ill.
It would probably take a dozen psychiatrists to get down to the root cause of how these four have drifted apart to the point where I’m guessing all of them would rather be anywhere else than on a bus together.
Since I don’t have any psychiatrists currently at my disposal, I guess it’s up to me to start digging and figure out why they’ve become so polarized. Then find out how to get them back to the group that stole the hearts of millions of fans, only a few years ago.
I think we’re already making progress with canceling the tour and taking them home, but it’s hard to tell since I wasn’t around them before that decision was made.
“Is this…tension always on the bus?” I ask Clarke. He is sitting on one of the sofas with his head back, an ice pack wrapped in a towel over his eyes because he has a killer migraine.
“Yes,” he replies, without moving an inch. “Maybe not quite this bad, but yeah, things have been unraveling for a while now.”
Davis stomped off and took over the bedroom without a word, shutting himself away from the rest of us just minutes after the bus started moving. Ford has been in the shower for over half an hour, and Bennett is snoring loudly from one of the bottom bunk beds Clarke managed to help him get into before he passed out.
The bathroom door opens, and Clarke mutters, “Finally” before he gets to his feet. Clarke doesn’t say a word when he walks past Ford, who is only wearing a towel around his waist, standing in the narrow hallway. His black hair is still wet and slicked back, making his chiseled face even
more distinguished. There are not any words to describe how incredible his damp chest and abs look. He may be tall and lean, but every inch of him is defined. If Ford were a normal man, he would be a pretty amazing sight to see. But throw in the fact that he’s a famous rock star, who writes power ballads and sings them with a voice that’s so smooth it could lure any woman and some men voluntarily to their deaths, then seeing him mostly naked is practically a religious experience. His picture should be next to God’s gift to women in the dictionary.
If I weren’t the professional that I am, it would be easy to fall into bed with him without a second thought. I remind myself that my job is to make this band successful again, not fulfill some idiotic fangirl dream. Besides, I was well aware of Ford’s reputation before I walked in and witnessed the woman between his legs. That just gave me all the more reason to steer clear of the bad boy rock God.
“Sorry,” I tell him as I slap a hand over my eyes, after I realize I’ve been staring at him gathering his clothes for an awfully long time.
“No problem,” Ford replies. “One of the problems of sharing such a small space with so many people.”
“Right,” I say, still hiding my eyes. “I guess you’ll be glad to have some privacy for once when we’re back in Virginia.”
“Yeah,” he agrees.
“I think the four of you should take a few days off, spend some time apart,” I suggest.
“Same here,” Ford agrees. “We’ve been at each other’s throats for so long, I forget what it was like when we all actually got along.”
“You were all friends in high school, right?” I ask.
“We were. Davis was two years older than us, but we were able to convince him to join us because he was the best guitarist we knew. Ben, Clarke, and I were all sophomores when we first started the group.”
“I bet you had all the girls in school fawning over you,” I say with a smile. “Can I look now?”
“Sure,” Ford replies.
But when I remove my hand to look over at him in the hallway, it’s just in time to see his bare white ass before he pulls a pair of gray jogging pants up. Wow, is my first thought, then, Did he do that on purpose?
“Actually,” Ford starts, when he turns around to face me with a smirk, “the girls in high school didn’t want anything to do with us, and the guys were all assholes who thought we were lame. I was ridiculously small and skinny, Ben had horrible acne, and Clarke was too shy to talk to anyone but us.”
“Guess they all regret that now,” I say.
“I bet they do,” Ford agrees when he comes over and takes Clarke’s seat on the sofa next to me. Throwing his arm over the back, his fingers are almost touching my shoulders. He smells clean, with an intoxicatingly manly scent that has my mouth watering and my gaze lowering to his sexy body that’s on full display. “We finally started getting some momentum in our senior year when the three of us finally turned eighteen and could play in some bars. The summer after we graduated was when the label signed us, and things took off.”
“So you never got to rub your success in their faces?” I ask, ordering my eyes to return to his face, even though I could just look at him for days and never get enough. Well, that’s not entirely true. Eventually, I would want to touch.
“Nope,” Ford answers, pulling me back into the conversation when my mind starts to wander in ways it shouldn’t. “But I think our reunion is coming up in a few months. If we’re still in town, it might be fun to drop in. And I mean, we did get our band name from the school.”
“Really?” I ask, since I haven’t heard how they came up with Malus.
“Yeah, Malus Drive was the road Glenvar High School was on, so I guess we can thank the school for giving us that.”
“Yeah,” I agree, unable to help my smile when he feeds me information that most people don’t know about the band. “And unless you all want to go someplace else, you can stay in Roanoke until the album is finished. I’ll find you a studio to record in.”
“So, what are you gonna do while we’re working?” Ford asks as his fingers on the back of the sofa reach for a strand of my hair and graze my neck, making me shiver.
Jeez, I have got to get a grip.
When I recover, I say, “I’ll be around, in case you need anything. The label wants me to stay with you all until the album’s finished.”
“You could stay at my house with me,” he offers. “That way, you’ll be close enough to take care of my needs.”
“That’s not a good idea,” I tell him as I glance down at him, half-naked on the sofa. I’ve only been sitting here with him for a few minutes, and my panties are already getting damp from looking at him. There’s no way I could endure months of looking but not touching. “I’ll find a long-stay hotel or rent an apartment in the area.”
“Why isn’t it a good idea?” he asks, his fingers still playing with my hair and occasionally touching my neck. When I feel myself leaning into his touch, I know I need to stop him.
Reaching up to remove his hand, I swallow down the rising lust to tell him, “Because we have to maintain a professional relationship, and living together could make things complicated.”
“We’re technically living together right now,” he points out.
“Yes, but it’s just temporary until we get to Virginia.”
“What about Ben, won’t you be staying close to him to make sure he stays away from booze?”
“I-I dunno yet,” I say, since I hadn’t considered the extent to which Bennett will need me to help him stay sober. Everything has been so hectic since I got here, and my nerves are all over the place having to try and have conversations with the four men I was once obsessed with after their first album was released. I saw them in concert, I followed them on social media, I played their songs over and over again. I don’t think I was prepared for how starstruck I would be while handling this assignment that could make or break my career in the music industry.
“And how will you make sure I don’t smoke if you’re not around, day and night?” Ford asks. “I may be tempted to light one up if you aren’t there to stop me.”
“You can’t keep smoking,” I blurt out, since that’s the one thing I’ve been certain of since the moment I saw the cigarette in his mouth up in the rafters. “If you don’t stop soon, you’re going to ruin your beautiful voice.”
Flashing me a grin that has no doubt stolen the panties off herds of women, he says, “You think my voice is beautiful?”
“Well, of course,” I agree, even if I can feel my cheeks warming with embarrassment for letting my fangirl slip. As a spokeswoman for the record label, I would also be against the nasty habit. “It would be a shame if cigarettes make your voice all scratchy. Losing you as the front man would kill the entire band’s future.”
“So I should definitely quit, right?” he asks.
“Yes!”
“And you’re gonna help me do that?”
“Or I could find someone for you, a quit coach to give you some pointers on how to cut back. You could look into getting those patches to wear, to help curb the urge.”
“I’ve tried the patches,” Ford says. “The urge was still there.”
“Oh,” I reply. “Then you need to find someone who has quit successfully that could help you since I’ve never been a smoker, and I’m not familiar with how to combat the urges.”
“Nah, I want you to do it,” he tells me. “You and Ben could live at the house with me, so you can keep us away from booze and smokes.”
“I-I dunno,” I say. While my career is incredibly important to me, living in the same place as two rock stars would be too much temptation for even me to endure. But at the same time, what if by me avoiding being near them because of my own ridiculous attraction to them, Ford and Ben are unable to quit the things that could not only end their career, but cause them serious problems with their health? “Let me think about it and talk to Ben.”
“Okay, good,” Ford replies with a smile, as
if he thinks that means I agree to it. “It’ll be nice to have you close.”
“If Ben does agree and convinces me to stay with you, it would only be in a professional capacity,” I assure him, and also to remind my fangirl self, who is doing cheers of celebration, complete with backflips.
Grinning wider as he slouches on the sofa, Ford smooths his hand down his abs and says, “We’ll see.”
Ugh, why does he have to be so damn sexy?
“No, there’s no seeing to it, Ford. Nothing of a…physical nature can happen. Ever.”
“It could be our secret,” he tells me as his hand goes lower to rest on the bulge of his sweatpants. My gaze has no choice but to follow and my eyes won’t look away, no matter how much I know that I should. I really, really should stop looking at him and thinking about touching him in all the places his hand roams. “The guys and the record label wouldn’t need to know,” Ford adds, as he hooks a thumb in the waistband of his pants and tugs it down enough for me to see his dark trail that leads…
“Stop!” I tell him as I jump to my feet, my legs shaky, either from lust or from the rocking motion of the bus, I’m not sure which. “Stop doing…that!”
“Doing what?” he asks innocently when he removes his hand and puts both out to the side.
“Whatever it is you’re doing here,” I reply. “And could you put a shirt on?”
Standing up so that he’s right in front of me, Ford is several inches taller than I am, so I have to tilt my neck up to see his face.
“Just admit that you want me but won’t give in because of your job, and I’ll stop trying to get a reaction out of you,” he says.
Now I’m just getting frustrated with his cocky attitude. He’s so full of himself that even while I do want him so much that I could see myself eventually caving, I tell him, “I don’t want you.”
“Liar.”
“I’m serious,” I reply with a shake of my head. “Even if I didn’t work for your record label, I would never let you touch me.”
“Oh, really?” he asks with a chuckle. “And why not?”