Racing to Rhapsody: A Rhapsody Novel

by Selena Laurence

  “Came to pick you up.”

  I’m flustered, and my words come out sharp and short. Or maybe I just am sharp and short.

  “That part’s obvious, but why?”

  The trunk magically pops open and he puts both bags inside before closing it.

  “I wanted to see you,” he says as if that’s perfectly reasonable.

  I sigh and stomp to the car where he waits holding the back door open for me.

  “I swear, Dez, whatever this silly crush is you have, you need to get over it. We have work to do. I can’t be trying to fend off your misguided advances all day.”

  He slides into the seat next to me, his thigh brushing against mine before we’re cocooned in the darkened interior of the car. He presses the button on the console and tells the driver we’re good to go. Then we’re trapped, the two of us, alone in the back of a car.

  He puts an arm across the seat behind my shoulders and I automatically scoot a few inches away from him, every nerve ending in my body prickling with an awkward awareness of his proximity.

  He doesn’t look at me while he speaks. “My advances aren’t misguided. Maybe ill-advised, but not misguided.”

  I huff out a breath. “What’s the difference?” Frustrating man.

  A tiny smile quirks the corners of his mouth. “Misguided is something done in error. Ill-advised is something done without due consideration.”

  “So it’s not wrong that you’re hitting on me, but possibly you didn’t think about it long enough beforehand?”

  He shrugs. “Possibly.” Then he turns the full weight of his stare on me. “But I doubt it. This didn’t happen overnight, Shannon, although it may seem that way to you.”

  My breath is coming faster and I feel my cheeks heating up. In fact, my whole body is hot. Can you have hot flashes at twenty-seven? Damn, I don’t even know the answer to that.

  “Dez, what is all this about? Do you have a bet with Blaze? Or you got tired of groupies and wanted a new challenge? Whatever the reason, you need to stop this. We have eight long weeks together, and I don’t want to spend it trying to talk you out of making moonie eyes at me the whole time.”

  He bursts out into laughter, and it’s so rich and so full of pure joy that I feel my heart thud against my chest like a caged bird. My hands clench in fists at my sides, but I’m not sure if it’s because I want to strike out or reach out.

  “Moonie eyes?” he teases, his eyes sparkling. “Your Midwestern is showing.”

  How the hell he knows I’m from the Midwest I don’t know, but I don’t appreciate him mentioning it. I was raised in Illinois by my grandmother, but I’ve been in L.A. with my dad for almost ten years, first in college and then working at his company. I’ve worked hard to fit in, become the kind of person my dad could want to have with him. I’m not that little girl from Charleston anymore.

  “What the hell would you know about the Midwest?” I grumble. “Aren’t you from Santa Fe?”

  “My dad was raised on a ranch in western Kansas. I spent a lot of time visiting Grandma Bea in Scott City. “

  I grit my teeth. How did he manage to get me sidetracked into talking about our family histories? What do I care if we both had grandmothers in the Midwest?

  “Stop distracting me from the point at hand, Dez.”

  He grins and leans toward me, his eyes dropping to my lips. “There was a point to all this?”

  His voice is raspy now, and I can hear his breaths. Light, quick, hot.

  “Um…” I stare into his eyes, my mind going to static.

  He leans even closer. “Shannon,” he whispers.

  “Uh huh?” Why is my voice so breathy and high?

  He puts a finger on my arm, sliding it down so slowly I feel like I might crawl out of my skin.

  “Have dinner with me tonight.” It’s not really a question, but also not a command. More like a statement of the inevitable—a recognition of what’s to come—as if fate has decreed it and we’re merely the chess pieces she’s moving around the board.

  “I don’t—I can’t—I mean—”

  He leans back and I have to stop myself from swaying to follow his trajectory.

  “Yeah, we need to get the itinerary ironed out. The copy I have shows us in London and Berlin the same day, which is a physical impossibility. I told Garrett to meet us at the restaurant at the hotel at six.” His voice is no longer sexy, but casual and disinterested now.

  “What?” Wait, he wants to eat dinner with Garrett? And talk about the tour? It’s sort of the conversational equivalent of having a glass of cold water thrown in your face.

  “The itinerary,” he says, raising an eyebrow at me. “We need to get that straight so I know what city I’m supposed to be in on what day. I realize travel is all arranged, but I still like to know where I’m going. Don’t you?”

  Mother. Trucker. I stare at him, anger rising in me like boiling water in a pot. He can’t just change the rules like this all the time. He can’t act like he wants to stick his tongue down my throat one minute then do a one eighty and start talking business the next.

  “You’re impossible,” I snap, crossing my arms and glaring out the window on my side of the car.

  “Sooo, you don’t want to talk about the itinerary?” he asks.

  I snort and refuse to look at him.

  “Okay then, we won’t. Dinner, but no talk about the itinerary. I’ll let Garrett know he doesn’t need to come.” Now he’s smug. What the hell?

  My head swivels on my neck like I’m auditioning for The Exorcist, and if it were possible to shoot flames out of my eyes, I bet I would be. He stares at me for a moment, and it’s like the whole world has suddenly stopped—cars, planes, humans—everything set to pause for a split second while his gaze holds mine.

  “You’re so passionate,” he murmurs, leaning toward me. “I could watch emotions dance across your face all day.”

  Dammit. I think my nipples just went rogue.

  “Dinner,” he tells me in the sexy voice again. “I’ll be at your door at six.”

  Neither one of us moves then, and I’m afraid that if I do, I’ll incinerate, explode in a burning ball of lust and flames. I’m not sure if it’s because I was livid mere moments ago, or he has some special sort of voodoo powers, but I realize that I am on the verge of having an orgasm, and he’s not even touching me.

  When he finally pulls away a bit and blinks, I gasp, the new distance actually causing me physical pain for a brief moment.

  The car comes to a stop then, and the driver tells us we’ve reached the hotel. Dez opens the door and gently takes my hand to help me out.

  After he’s retrieved my bags from the trunk he puts a hand low on my back and directs me straight through the lobby to a set of elevators.

  I do what he indicates, like a zombie. I don’t even look at the lobby or the people around me. He has me in some sort of thrall, and every bit of my focus is on that hand that’s barely touching me, just the softest of touches on my spine. But warm, safe, stable. Things that are the antithesis to me, to my life, to what I usually feel each day.

  Just before the elevator doors close us inside, I suddenly wake up. “I need to check in!” I throw my arm out to stop the doors from closing, but Dez merely waves a keycard in front of me, and grins.

  “All taken care of,” he says.

  I pull my arm back and the doors slide closed, but the moment, the magic, the crazy spell he cast on me is broken, so now I stand awkwardly in the corner, trying to think of what in the world I’m supposed to say to this odd, but utterly compelling man.

  He simply watches me and when the doors open, he touches me again, his hand wrapping around my elbow, as he steps off the elevator, towing me along. But this time the spell really is broken, because all the reasons why I shouldn’t be doing this come rushing back to me.

  I pull away roughly. “Dez, seriously, stop this.”

  He turns and looks back at me. “Stop what?”

  “You kn
ow what. Stop touching me like we’re…we’re…”

  “Like we’re what?” he asks mildly.

  “Just stop it, all right? You know I’m not going to sleep with you, so why are you doing this?”

  “Did I say I wanted to sleep with you?”

  I stomp my foot in frustration. I can’t even march off to my room because I don’t know which one it is. He’s managed to put me entirely at his mercy.

  “Well why the hell else would you keep trying to take me places and touch me?” I stare at him, daring him to deny it, but instead, he takes two steps to me, so close I have to tip my chin up to look at him. And God, looking at him makes my chest ache. He’s so beautiful. I don’t know that I ever realized just how beautiful until right this moment. His Amer-Asian features are refined, but masculine—deep brown eyes, thick black hair, cheekbones that go on for days, and the perfect amount of scruff on his golden skin.

  Just when I think he’s going to answer my mostly rhetorical question, he slides the keycard into my hand and says softly, “Room seven fourteen. I’ll see you at six.” Then he turns and walks ten feet down the hall to room seven sixteen—the one directly adjacent to mine—and slips inside.

  And thus ends my trip to the Twilight Zone, courtesy of one Dez Hemingway Takimoto.

  My mother was a Hollywood actress. Don’t ask me her name, because my father never told me, and like the good girl that I am, I never asked. It is, in fact, one of many things about my origins he won’t divulge. From what I do know, he was a fresh-faced agent, representing one of Hollywood’s up and coming darlings when he knocked her up. She told him there was no way in hell she was going to be a mother, so as soon as she had me, she jetted. Dad had a temporary nanny on standby, and he packed up her and his newborn infant and flew us to Illinois where he’d grown up.

  My grandmother took me and raised me for eighteen years. My father stopped in whenever he had a meeting in Chicago or sometimes for Christmas, although most Christmases he went to Aruba with whatever supermodel he was banging at the time. But oh how I yearned for those Christmases when he did show up. I used to spend weeks waiting for him to arrive, my little heart so full of anticipation it was probably in danger of exploding. He would always bring me something super fancy—a fur coat one year, diamond earrings another. My grandmother would complain that they weren’t appropriate gifts for a child, but he never listened, and I was always awestruck by both him and the gifts.

  After I finished my degree in entertainment management at UCLA Dad gave me a job in his firm. Five years later I’m still that little girl waiting for his gifts, hoping that he’ll love me.

  The phone rings at five p.m. on the dot, just as it’s supposed to. The man is nothing if not punctual.

  “Hi, Dad,” I answer as I sit at the small breakfast table in my suite and get out my iPad and stylus to take notes.

  “You’re in New York?” he asks, his voice typically terse.

  “Yeah, the promo tour for Rhapsody.”

  “They’d sure as hell better pay off,” he warns. “I’ve never had to babysit a fucking client for eight weeks. You ought to be in the office getting them more endorsements, not following their stoned asses around the world watching them sign autographs.”

  I sigh quietly. Dad was more than pissed when he found out about the mess Rhapsody had made with Lush. Lush is one of the biggest bands in decades. He would give his left nut, as he so eloquently put it, to get them for clients, but after what Rhapsody did it’s safe to assume that our firm is persona non grata with Lush and anyone who does business with them. He blames me since I’m the one who brought Rhapsody in as a client.

  I know there’s no point in arguing with my father, so I try to get him to move past it.

  “So, I was thinking that while I’m traveling I could be setting up some concert dates for that indie trio I just signed. You know, do some old fashioned personal networking with local club owners? I think I could manage to get them a tour set up that includes at least the U.S. and some of the western European countries.”

  “This is the lesbians?” he asks.

  I close my eyes, trying to be patient. I can’t expect him to remember our smaller clients, which is what most of mine are, but I wish he’d at least try.

  “Tres Chicas, Dad. They have the flamenco guitarist and just signed with Palm Tree Records.”

  “Right. If you can get them at least twelve stops it’s worth it, otherwise you’re wasting everyone’s time.”

  “Okay.”

  I hear him saying something to his assistant, so I wait. When he’s done I plunge in with a different tactic.

  “I have a lead on a new client.”

  “Yeah? Who’s that?”

  “She’s a former contestant on Kings of Talent,” I tell him, talking fast because I can sense I’m losing his focus. Dad has a short attention span, and you have to grab it while you can.

  “She’s a cross between Britney Spears and Rhianna’s newer stuff—pop star but with more edge. I think she’d be a great addition, maybe an opener for your guys that are doing the outdoor festival tour next summer.”

  “She win the show?”

  Shit. “Um, no but—”

  “Quit wasting my time, Shannon. No one wants the girl who lost the talent show.”

  My stomach roils. This is why I hate the weekly meetings with my father.

  “I need to get going,” he continues, “but I wanted to let you know about a new position I’m installing.”

  Double shit. My gut tells me this is going to be bad. I wait, every muscle in my body tensed.

  “The lawyers want me to revise my will, it’s outdated. And I’ve decided now’s as good a time as any to put someone in as vice president of the firm, and whoever that is will also go into the will to receive my controlling interest in the firm.”

  Everything inside of me goes numb. Whoever that is? Wait. What?

  “So I’m putting you on notice since you won’t be at the staff meeting tomorrow. All of you agents will need to be on your toes the next thirty days while I make this decision.”

  I swallow, not sure I can talk for a moment. “You mean you’re giving the company to—”

  “I’ll give the company to whoever earns it.”

  “But, Dad, I’m out of town during the next month. Out of the country part of that time. I mean, how am I supposed to—”

  “That’s your problem to worry about, isn’t it? Anyone who’s ready to run one of the biggest talent firms in the country won’t let something like geography stop them from proving they’re the right person for the job.”

  I nod vigorously even though he can’t see me. “Okay, um, thanks for letting me know.”

  “Good girl. We’ll talk next week. Bring me something good.”

  And with that he hangs up.

  Dez

  Keep her disoriented. That’s my whole playbook, and even I have to admit, it’s not much, but at the moment it’s all I’ve got.

  I know that if she has a chance to stop and think about this—me, us, starting something up—she’ll be out of my reach faster than her Ducati can fly. Because that’s what Shannon does—she runs, fast and far. I don’t know what she’s running from, but it’s consumed her for as long as I’ve known her.

  So, in order to keep her in one place—near me—I have to keep her too confused to have a chance to flee. The only problem is, it’s exhausting.

  I flop down on the bed in my hotel suite and stare at the ceiling, remembering the way her skin felt as I breathed in her spicy scent. She’s like a white hot light and I’m a moth fluttering on her edges, about to plunge into the heart of the flame and either find my one true home or be incinerated.

  The first time I ever saw Shannon was when Blaze got her to agree to come listen to us at a seedy bar in Venice Beach. I remember standing onstage and watching this redhead in a leather bustier and a tuxedo jacket with a pair of faded jeans as she leaned against the bar while we played. She was so intense
, serious and lasered in on us. Blaze had said someone from a big time management firm was coming to the show, so I wasn’t surprised when she strolled into the green room backstage.

  But when she reached out to shake my hand that first time, and I looked into those sparkling green eyes of hers, I was a goner. Something inside of her simply reached out and grabbed my soul, and it hasn’t let go. My mom would say we’d known each other in another life. Maybe that’s true, maybe not, but whatever the cause, there’s no question that in three years the feeling hasn’t abated, and I can’t sit by and hope that it will any longer. I have to resolve it one way or another so that I can move on with my life, whatever that might look like.

  At first I couldn’t believe that I had this powerful attraction to her, she wasn’t like anyone I’d ever dated. Most of the people I’ve had relationships with—both men and women—have been people who had a certain kind of peace about them. People who are content—whether that’s with their careers, their sexuality, or their place in the world. I haven’t dated many Type A people. And I have to admit, that with both men and women, I’m usually the one who’s being pursued, not the pursuer.

  So, everything about this situation with Shannon is the antithesis of my past experiences. That probably predicts a total failure, but I can’t let that fear stop me. I’ve either got to make her mine or flush her out of my system, only time will tell which one it will be.

  I have just enough time to take a quick shower and change before I go to get Shannon for dinner. I wonder if she’ll try to skip out on me? Giving her an hour and a half to think on it is probably not the best thing for my cause, but short of kidnapping her I can’t figure out a way to keep her with me twenty-four seven, so when she’s alone she’ll be able to escape my distraction tactics.

  I decide the best choice is to be ten minutes early. That way if she’s thinking she can sneak away before I show up I might catch her.

  I knock on the door, my hair still damp, and I’m relieved that I hear music playing on the other side.

  The music is loud and she doesn’t answer, so I pound again, harder this time. The music cuts off, there’s some fumbling, and then the door swings open and my jaw nearly comes unhinged.