“If I’d known you were both here, I would’ve brought you both coffee. You can fight over this one,” she said, offering it and the bag of food to Craig. “It’s terrible.”
Craig handed them back to Lucas. “Come on, Lucas will be down in a bit.”
“Don’t be late,” she called over Craig’s shoulder. “You know how I hate it when things run late.”
Craig shut the door and they walked down the hall. He shoved his hands in his pockets. “Heard some of that, huh?”
Gwen glanced over at him. “Sam is my younger sister, not the other way round.”
“Shit. I’m sorry he’s giving you a hard time,” Craig said. “He’s not getting his way right now and that makes him—”
“Petulant? Bratty?” Gwen supplied.
“I was going to say ‘cranky,’ but yeah, that works.”
“He doesn’t like me much, does he?” Gwen said as they reached the elevator.
“Honestly? He does. I’m waiting for him to start pulling your pigtails on the playground.” Craig caught her around the shoulder and gave her a shake. “You’re just lucky I decided I like you. I would’ve made your life hell.” Gwen shoved him away and laughed.
***
In the van, Lucas took up an entire row, where he was curled up and watching the scenery pass by. The flight from Boston had at least been short. Gwen and Craig were in front of him talking about something dull: logistics, making plans. The others filled out the back rows, laughing and chattering.
By all rights, this forced inactivity, this confinement to a small space with other people, should have been driving him mad. It wasn’t that he was the kind of guy who normally craved solitude, but since rehab it was like people were a constant source of irritation. That hadn’t happened before. When he’d gone through rehab the first time (and the second time), he came out energized and ready to dive back into his life, which was exactly what he did—all of it, including the drugs.
This time he was more tired, more easily rubbed wrong by people. He tried to think of the change as a good thing.
There’d been a guy in rehab old enough to be Lucas’s grandfather—a musician too, but long past washed-up—who’d sat him down before Lucas was released.
He had more than a few harsh truths to impart, and Lucas had listened with as good a grace as he could manage then—which wasn’t great. One of the things Tom had said was, “A man like you is never alone. Always someone around to party.” For better or worse, the people surrounding him now weren’t there to party, and he didn’t know yet how to respond to them.
He turned his attention to Gwen and Craig. They faced each other, deep in conversation, ignoring him. Lucas studied Gwen’s profile. She narrowly missed “cute” by virtue of having a long, lovely neck and a strong jawline—but the slight upturn at the end of her nose and the faintest dusting of freckles (he’d bet she hated them) would make people continually underestimate her. He had. For all of his bitching to Craig earlier, she was picking things up faster than he’d expected.
He’d been an ass this morning, and she’d overheard it. The embarrassment of it pricked at him, making him even more irritable.
“When we get to D.C. on Tuesday, Marshall is going to try and skim as much as he can off the take. He always does,” Craig said. “And for the love of Christ, don’t let him give you a check. Cash only.”
“Bad?” asked Gwen. Her short, sensible nails pried at the upholstery on the back of the seat. There was a slight tremor in her left hand that Lucas hadn’t noticed before.
“Rubber wishes it could bounce that high,” Craig said. “We’d get paid eventually, but better to avoid the annoyance.”
“Right. Anything else I should know about?”
“Yeah.” Craig raised his voice enough to make it clear he wasn’t speaking to Gwen alone. “Watch out for that bastard behind us. When he’s got that look on his face, it means he’s about to cause trouble.”
Lucas pulled his attention away from Gwen to Craig. “What look? This is my face.”
“Exactly,” Craig said, and Gwen laughed. Lucas hated Craig right then, for being able to make her laugh.
“Honestly, I was only trying to learn something about Sergeant Tennison,” Lucas said.
“Gwen,” she said. “How many times do I need to tell you?” She smiled blandly, and God he wished he had a way past the mask, to see something of the real her. “What would you like to know?”
“Well, I know the basics,” Lucas said, settling back against the bench seat. “Sergeant Gwen H. Tennison, age thirty-f—or maybe I shouldn’t say. You were a medic, so you’ve got some medical training, but for some reason, you didn’t go to medical school. Grades not good enough? Or maybe you felt a rush of patriotism and wanted to serve Queen and country.” Being charming was so much easier when he was high. Sober, he was an asshole.
Gwen glanced at Craig, then turned back to Lucas. Her eyes were flint-gray and infinitely patient, as if she’d listen to him for ages without showing him a thing. She wore the same faint hint of a smile, or maybe a suggestion of bared teeth. “I could dig up my transcripts for you, if you’d like.”
Lucas smiled a slow, lazy smile. “That’s not necessary. You won’t be removing my appendix anytime soon, so I couldn’t care less about your academic qualifications.”
“What do you care about, then?” Gwen asked.
Lucas leaned forward and lowered his voice. “I care about the woman who was willing to practically fuck me in the middle of a dance floor. Where did she go, Gwen?” He took some satisfaction in the way she blushed.
“She’s a smart girl,” Gwen said. “She figured out if you spend too long around an arsehole, sooner or later you’re going to get shat on.”
A chorus of snickers came from behind him, and he flushed. “Well, if that’s what you’re into. I’m not one to judge.” She still had on the same infuriatingly calm smile, and he hadn’t so much as put a scratch on her surface veneer. He sat back and folded his arms, knowing he was retreating and hating it.
Who are you really? He would find out, if it took the rest of the tour to do it.
***
From the moment Gwen’s feet hit the pavement in New York, she was running. Carrying equipment, helping set up equipment, making sure the theater had what they needed … she had more than one occasion to be grateful for the meticulous lists that Craig had given her the first day.
Sally, the merch manager, didn’t have enough space for her tables. The theater manager thought the contract rider to provide food in the green room meant a bag of pretzels and some beer. By four PM, Gwen was wishing she’d taken a nap on the plane. Barring that, she was grateful to take a long enough break to watch part of Lucas’s sound check.
She almost didn’t recognize Lucas in the man standing behind the ridiculously complicated setup of synthesizers, guitar, drum machines, and computers. He was relaxed. He joked with the house engineer on monitors and with Craig out in the sound booth as they worked to get the levels right. This was the third time she’d seen it, but each time Gwen was surprised again at the difference between offstage Lucas and onstage Lucas. Damned if he wasn’t capable of being charming when he felt like it.
Gwen heard laughter from the stage and looked out to see Lucas picking up the guitar—not something he used often in the show.
“Not again. One of these days she’s going to kill you,” Craig said over the PA.
Lucas grinned, rare and mischievous. He fiddled with the tuning, then started playing a blues riff Gwen would have known anywhere, but never would have expected to hear from him. He vamped for a few bars, then came in with the lyrics to Wilson Pickett’s “Mustang Sally.” Gwen folded her arms and leaned against the side of the proscenium arch with a smile. His usual music, the type that made him famous, didn’t show off his voice the way this did. Bluesy and a little smoky, low enough to make her feel it in her belly—she could listen to this all day. And watching him play guitar was almost obscene.
The way his forearms flexed as he played made her mouth go dry. Then one of the doors to the lobby opened, and Gwen realized who the “she” in question was and laughed.
Sally didn’t bother entering the theater all the way; she stuck her upper body through the door long enough to give the stage the bird. Lucas’s response was to dirty up the song even more, complete with a few unmistakable groans that had Gwen somewhere between laughing and squirming.
“You’d think she’d stop reacting by now.” Cathy’s voice behind her made her jump.
“Does he do this a lot?” Gwen tried to keep her eyes on Lucas while still talking.
“One of Lucas’s old bandmates had a thing for Sally. One night after a show he, uh, tried to impress her with that song.” Cathy shook her head. “It got pretty X-rated, and she wasn’t amused. Problem was, neither of them knew we could all hear them.”
“Ouch.”
“Yeah. So now it’s kind of a joke.” Cathy grinned. “Well, for everybody except Sally.”
Lucas had moved on to one of his more traditional numbers, and Gwen was able to pull her attention away. “So how do you guys manage to have … well, any kind of life really, but especially a love life? Um, if that’s not too personal.”
“A lot of us don’t,” Cathy said. “Come on, I need to go up and check the rigging upstairs. We’ll talk as I go.”
Gwen followed her up to the catwalk that stretched across the stage and stood by as she made some adjustments.
“Anyway.” Cathy pulled a wrench from her back pocket and went to work. “Sometimes it works when one partner is in the business and one isn’t, sometimes it works better when both people are in the business. Craig and I are lucky. We get to work together, and usually tour together.”
“How long have you been dating?”
Cathy laughed. “Oh, nobody dates in this business. It’s either one-night stands or full relationships.” Gwen couldn’t tell if she was teasing or not. Cathy went on. “We’ve been together about three years. Working together for four. We spent some time on tour before we decided, what the hell? He’s a good man.”
“Yeah, he seems like he is.”
Lucas was directly beneath her on the stage, fingers moving adroitly over his keyboards. She tried not to stare, and tried not to think about what else those fingers might be good at.
“You must not go for the good ones,” Cathy said. “Not if Lucas is your type.”
“He’s not my type.” Gwen pulled her eyes away. “A man like that is strictly ornamental.”
***
The better part of the guest list crowded into the green room looking to join in the after-show party. Chatter filled the air as everyone ramped up for a meandering trip from the green room to assorted hotel rooms. New York had been a colossal pain in Gwen’s arse. The theater manager had settled up, and the money was tucked away safely in her jacket. She leaned against the wall nearest the lighted mirror and shifted to ease the bite of the jacket against her aching shoulder.
The party was just getting under way. Gwen smelled cigarettes and pot, but there was no haze over the room yet, and everyone was holding a drink. She planned to nurse her single beer for as long as she could; she felt a bit like a babysitter. Across the room Craig was chatting up two girls dressed in various permutations of skimpy and black.
Cathy and Sally were tossing popcorn at the guitar tech, who was trying his best to impress the house engineer, who’d been working monitors throughout the show. She looked like she could break the guitar tech with one arm. She also looked unimpressed. Every so often, Cathy glanced toward Craig. Despite her earlier comments about him being a good man, he did have a habit of flirting with the fans after shows. Everybody knew Cathy wasn’t crazy about it, but nobody said anything. There were a lot of open secrets. Gwen supposed when you spent weeks and months in close quarters with the same handful of people, the only concession to privacy was to not talk about what you knew. It hadn’t been so different in the barracks.
Lucas, still sweat-drenched from three hours on stage, was sulking on the couch, clutching a towel around his shoulders. A rep from some small indie label sat next to him trying to start a conversation. Gwen almost felt sorry for the rep. Lucas barely even feigned interest in the man.
He hadn’t bothered to change out of his stage clothes, although leather pants that tight had to be uncomfortable. Most of his stage makeup had melted away under the hot lights, but there was still eyeliner smudged around his eyes. Gwen itched to either wipe it away or snog him senseless. Maybe both at the same time.
Lucas stood up, cutting off the label rep mid-sentence and stepping up and over the battered coffee table. “Get out.” His voice cut across the party noise, which dulled in response. The partiers, some dozen in all, looked at him. “I said get out.” They started to shuffle out with a few mutters. Sally rolled her eyes and murmured to Cathy. It sounded like “not again.” Gwen shrugged up from the wall to follow them. “Not you, Sergeant,” said Lucas. “Someone has to keep an eye on me, right?”
“Right,” said Gwen, and settled back against the wall with a swig of her beer, feigning casualness despite the sudden spike in her heart rate.
Once the room was empty, Lucas used the towel to start drying off his hair, tousling it into wild waves. “So. Can we both agree, for the duration of this tour, that I’m actually an adult?”
“I wasn’t aware that was at issue.” Tension tightened her shoulders, sharpening the ache.
“Really. I found out today that my per diem is half of what the crew is getting. Half, Gwen.” He turned from the mirror to look at her directly. “I’m the goddamn star, and the guy who plugs in my equipment is getting more money than me.”
“You did sign a contract agreeing to the terms—”
“I wouldn’t have if I’d known I was the low man on the fucking totem pole!”
She took a deep breath. “Look, it was my understanding that you agreed that a chunk of your salary was being held in reserve until after you successfully finish the tour. With your history”—he opened his mouth, but she kept going, steamrolling over his words—“you present a risk to the company, and they’re just hedging their bets, making sure your per diem isn’t going up your nose.” She moved toward the now-empty couch and sank down. “So tell me the truth. Are you upset because you’re not able to get by on what you’re getting, or are you upset because your ego is bruised?”
He turned back to the mirror and scrubbed at his face with the towel. “If he hasn’t already, my brother is going to call you. And when he does, he’s going to ask you to keep an eye on me. He might even offer to pay you extra, to keep me on the straight and narrow.”
“As much as I’d enjoy a call from him,” Gwen said, pleased at the way her words made him scowl, “that’s not my problem. As long as you’re not fucking off during shows, I don’t care what you do.”
“Good,” said Lucas, meeting Gwen’s eyes in the mirror. “Because I like to save my fucking off for between shows.”
“I’d got that impression, yes,” Gwen’s voice was mild as an April morning.
“What about you?”
Gwen rested her elbows on her knees, leaning forward and cupping the beer bottle between both hands. “I don’t see where that’s any of your business.” Gwen gave him a smile, all teeth.
Lucas turned around from the mirror and walked closer in lazy steps that gave his hips a feline sway; Gwen could practically see the twitching tail, as if he were about to pounce. He plucked the beer bottle out of Gwen’s hands with long elegant fingers and drank from it, the swallow shivering the white line of his throat. “Could make it my business,” he said.
“You really couldn’t,” she said, leaning back against the couch as if she hadn’t a care in the world. She reached up and took the bottle back. “And I’m pretty sure beer isn’t part of your sobriety plan.” The sensible side of her demanded to know what the hell she thought she was doing, issuing that sort of invitation, but the puls
e racing in her ears drowned it out.
“It was just one drink. A little bit of anything never hurt anyone, did it?” He wasn’t talking about alcohol, or even coke, not the way his gaze moved over her body.
She fought to keep her expression neutral. “In this case, I’d say a little bit is too much.”
“You sure?” She wasn’t surprised when he straddled her knees as he spoke, leaning over her with his hands to either side of her head. “Because you seemed interested the first night we met.”
“Do you do this to everyone, or am I a special case?” She held on to her composure and simply looked up at him.
Lucas leaned in, and the scent of sweat and leather mingled with the smell of the spilled beer trickling on the couch from someone’s forgotten bottle. The combination shouldn’t have been arousing, but it was. Then there was that low chuckle close to Gwen’s ear. “Oh, you’re something special, all right.” He licked at her earlobe, and she fought a gasp. He drew back to speak, but she pulled him to her. His mouth was hot and wet and perfect against hers, and it had been so ridiculously long since she’d been properly kissed.
Gwen curled her fingers in his damp hair and held him there, kissing and biting at his lips until she couldn’t breathe. Stop. You need to stop. Her body tingled from head to toe. It was going too fast, and she needed to think this through. Lucas settled into her lap, and the discreet little roll of his hips left no doubt where he thought this was headed. Which was why Gwen reacted the way she did, pushing at his chest. “Lucas, get off.”
He grinned down at her wickedly, his eyes dark and hungry. “I was trying.”
Gwen gritted her teeth. “Get off my lap.”
Lucas drew back and gave her a second’s worth of a pout, followed by a slow, molasses-dark smile. “Make me.”
It was a simple thing really, to catch one of his wrists in her left hand and to press it up and behind Lucas’s back, just so. Just enough for leverage. It didn’t matter if he was a good seven inches taller than she was, or if he outweighed her by at least fifty pounds—Lucas had to stand or be hurt. She followed him to his feet, keeping his wrist pinned behind him, which also pinned their bodies together. Her eyes were about level with his chest, but height had long since ceased to be a disadvantage for her. “I don’t know what game you think you’re playing,” Gwen said. “When I say stop, you stop. Do you understand?”
The Farther I Fall Page 3