Saffron’s eyes darted around the small glass compartment. When the lift jolted to a stop, she clenched the handrail beside her. “Eh, elevators make me a little nervous.”
So Saffron did have a weakness after all. Not that Brit could or would use her slight fear of elevators against her. But it was good to know she wasn’t perfect at least.
The elevator opened into a hallway that went left and right, but the heavy double doors in front of them were their final destination that day. Brit had not been to all the rooms. She didn’t have much reason to wander, so she knocked on the large door in front of them and waited for a signal from inside.
“Come in,” Lander called.
Brit heaved the door open and passed through it first, holding it open for Saffron behind her. Again, Brit noticed Saffron’s look of approval as she surveyed the room for the first time.
“This is a pretty sweet office, Lander.”
“Hey, Saffron! A pleasure as always.” He stood, walked around his giant desk, and came to give each of the girls a crushing hug. “Good to see you too, Brit. I want to introduce you two to one of the newest members of the LMM family, my new little brother in music, J.J. Mack. Take a seat, ladies.”
Saffron beat Brit to it and took the remaining guest chair next to J.J. in front of the desk. Brit improvised by perching herself on an amp near the corner of the room. Lander had an over-sized beanbag chair in another corner of his office, but there was no way she was sinking into that.
J.J.’s big, dark round brown eyes watched her questioningly under dark brows, almost daring her to take the beanbag chair.
“J.J., these are my future sisters-in-law—Brit and Saffron.”
Brit melted into a puddle at his intense stare with his puppy dog eyes. Without taking his eyes off Brit, J.J. stood to so that the girls could admire him in his entirety. He had a boyish fullness to his cheeks and pouty lips. He was tall—taller than Lander, but maybe not quite as tall as Cord. His thick, floppy brown hair was pushed out of his eyes by a folded bandanna, and he wore what Brit guessed was his version of business casual. A baggy white polo shirt partially concealed a sleeve of tattoos that covered his left arm. Brit zeroed in on one in particular—a Dia De Los Muertos sugar skull near his elbow—until her eyes traveled back up to his face, passing over the fully unbuttoned collar with one side popped and one side laying flat. The haphazardness of the outfit continued to purposefully paint-flecked black jeans with a hole in the knee. It’s a good thing he was in this industry because he sure wouldn’t have gotten the job walking into any of the other office buildings in this area.
J.J. moved toward Brit, and Brit took his outstretched hand, her fingers making contact with the rings he wore, but otherwise she noticed the typical hands of a guitar player with the soft palm and calloused fingertips. She had shaken many of those hands in the past, but few gave her a jolt like this one did. But it wasn’t his hands. It was those eyes.
“Brit and Saffron are going to show you around. I’ll see you again after lunch. You kids have fun now, you hear?” Lander shooed them away and moved to sit back behind his desk as his phone beeped again with another message from his receptionist.
J.J. put his hand out to encourage the ladies to lead. Brit hung back to let Saffron go first. She couldn’t get lost anyway. The elevator was just outside the door. As they waited for the elevator, Brit tried to come up with what to say first. Lunch, right.
“So. J.J., are you hungry?”
J.J. pressed his hand into the elevator frame beside Brit. “Yeah, starved. I barely had time to brush my teeth before rushing out the door to meet with Lander.”
Their meeting had been at 10:30 a.m., but that was another thing with rock stars. Many of them preferred not to get up before noon unless there was a major radio or TV spot to do. And even then, Brit could always tell with their tired eyes that they’d much rather be in bed in their hotel or on their tour bus.
“Brit and I just finished breakfast, so...” Saffron pressed her body against the solid wall of the elevator for stability, staying as far away from the glass side and J.J. as possible. Brit couldn’t figure out why Saffron wasn’t as enamored with J.J. as Brit was, but she wasn’t mad about it either.
Brit waved off Saffron’s comment. “I could eat a little something. What are you in the mood for, J.J.?”
“I would straight punch a snake for some pancakes right now.”
Saffron’s groan was low, long, and barely noticeable if you weren’t paying attention. But Brit noticed.
“I know just the place.”
“You’re not into pancakes,” said J.J. to Saffron.
It didn’t come out like a question, so it must have been a guess based on Saffron’s groan. She had opted for a poached egg that she had made herself at breakfast, stating that she was on a diet that seemed fully unnecessary to Brit for a 22-year-old who looked as good as Saffron did. But who was she to judge—she had tried every diet herself, but usually not at the expense of breakfast with her family. Still, there was an odd familiarity in the way J.J. said it.
“Right,” confirmed Saffron. She was even tenser on the elevator this time, huddling in one corner with her arms crossed and a deep frown on her normally friendly face. “You know what, I really should prepare more before my first interview. I’ll catch you guys later.” Without another word, she stepped off the elevator on the ground floor and passed them on the way out the door. While she hooked a left back in the direction of her hotel, Brit guided J.J. to the right.
“What’s up with her?”
“She had eggs earlier. I think she’s on some sort of weird diet.”
“I never get why girls torture themselves like that.”
Brit chuckled quietly, but she couldn’t judge Saffron for that.
“And you had?”
To lie or not to lie? “Pancakes, but don’t worry about it. This time of day, I’m taking you somewhere that serves lunch and breakfast. They have the best appetizers around. I’ll probably munch on an order of poutine.”
“Oh, I miss poutine. I’ve been doing shows in the states, and they haven’t even grasped the concept of French fries with gravy. I missed roaming in my home.”
“J.J., can I ask you a weird question?”
“Shoot, sugar.”
“Do you always speak in verse? It’s cute.”
J.J. flashed her a smile. “I can’t turn it off. My brains always going in rhymes. All the time.” He chuckled. “My bad.”
“How’d the tour go? In the great United States?” Brit played along.
“I don’t know that I’d call it a tour. It was a bunch of lame little shows my last manager set up for me. Coffee shops and entertainment centers where kids hang out nonstop.”
“Wow, I would’ve thought you’d have much bigger gigs with the success of ‘Firecracker’.”
“Me too. That’s why I wanted to get signed on with the best, Ab...Lander. How’d he get that name anyway?”
“Abednego?”
“Yeah.”
Brit shrugged. “It’s from the Bible.”
“Cool.”
The restaurant was packed that day, and Brit couldn’t figure out why until she spotted an edition of SMS with a wide-angled lens picture of a woman on the cover holding a plated pancake close to the camera with the caption, ‘Best Kept Secret Is Secret No More.’“ No kidding. The restaurant had gotten press, and now everyone who wasn’t anyone wanted to be there.
“There’s going to be a thirty-minute wait,” the harried man at the host desk informed them.
J.J. leaned his tattooed arm against the podium and looked the man straight in the eye. “Are you sure?”
The man paused from frantically stacking menus to take a look at J.J. “Hey, aren’t you? Didn’t I see you on Wake up with Wanda the other day? My daughter loves you—you’re...J. Racked, right?”
Without missing a beat, J.J. offered his right hand to the man and gave him a firm jerk of a handshake. “J.J. Mac
k. Always good to meet a fan.”
“Yeah, listen, let me see what I can do.”
Brit wrapped her hand around his tattooed elbow. “See, this is why I love hanging out with rock stars sometimes.”
“Just sometimes?” His eyes smoldered down at her, and his mouth curved up slightly.
“Some more than others.”
“Am I in the ‘some’ or the ‘others’ category?”
“At the moment, ‘some,’ but the day is young. I have a good feeling you have a solid chance of staying in the ‘some’ category.” Maybe in even in the “one” category, but Brit didn’t add that part. She didn’t want to freak him out, and she had to remind herself that he was a musician, which is a type she had sworn off based on experiences in the past. The last thing she needed was another narcissist like Crazy whose attention she only had when she didn’t want it, but couldn’t get his attention if she danced around naked in an apron and rolling pin when she was entitled to it.
The host returned and beckoned for them to follow him. “I wouldn’t want to go home and tell my daughter I made J.J. Mack wait for a table.” He showed them to a two-person table near full-length glass windows but still in the inside seating area. “Sorry we don’t have anything outside.”
J.J. looked past the host through the glass. “Outside would be better.” He glanced at Brit. “I’m just playin’. This is perfect. Thanks, man. Tell your daughter I said ‘hey.’“
“Would you mind signing something?” The host slid a paper napkin across the table to the seat J.J. had taken and set a pen on top of it.
“Sure, man.” J.J. scribbled on the napkin with letters that didn’t resemble his name at all and handed it back to the host. “Nice meeting you.”
“Can I get you two anything to drink to start off? We have a Bloody Mary special going on right now.”
“Nah, I don’t drink,” said J.J. “Brit?”
At this new development, Brit’s stomach did a two-step. She and J.J. had more in common than she had hoped. “I don’t either. Sprite and orange juice for me.”
Brit eased into her seat, happy for that moment to be over and pleasantly surprised that she and J.J. had something so important in common. “I thought you were serious about insisting on an outside seat. For a moment, I thought I had another rock star diva on my hands.”
“I know, right? I saw the look of terror on your face, so I went with it. I know I’m not that big of a deal yet in this place. Yet,” he repeated.
Brit sipped the water that appeared at the table. “You’ll get there. With Lander’s help, you’re going to be huge.” She couldn’t help being reminded of her promising the same things to Vincent and how much of a disappointment he had turned out to be. She couldn’t imagine J.J. going down that same route, but she had to be cautious.
“Can I ask why you hang out with rock star divas then, other than the fact that your family asks you to?”
“As much as I sometimes tire of rock stars, I love music, and I love the music business. People can buy their way in, or people can, you know, sleep their way in; but at the end of the day, the real talent will bubble up to the top. And those are the people who will stick around. That’s what I like to stick around for. If I can help someone from my relatively lowly place in the biz, then I will.”
J.J. leaned back in his chair and stared out the window, the light reflecting in his brown eyes. “You must really be into music. Being around it so much.”
“Yes, you could say that.”
“You gonna find a gig in the biz?”
Brit sighed. Normally, she wouldn’t entertain this line of questioning from someone who she didn’t think earned the right to ask her that, but she had a desire to open up to J.J. and get him to open up more to her.
“I want to run Club Stanza, although my mother would like me to take over her business. I like bringing people together like she does—she runs a matchmaking company. But I love everything about the music industry. So yeah, in a perfect world, I’d run one of my dad’s clubs someday. Or who knows, maybe start my own label on top of that.”
“That’d be sick. Do you have a favorite band?”
“I have a favorite band of the moment. It all depends on my mood.”
“Which is?”
“The band or my mood?”
J.J. shrugged and rewarded Brit with a flash of pearly whites. “Both.”
“My mood is...content. The band is Free Range Guinea Pigs.” Brit winced, waiting for the reaction. J.J.’s eyebrow twitched, but that was the only reaction she got. “They’re pretty underground right now, but I want to get them into the club. I’m into reggae fusion at the moment.”
“What, would you say, music means to you? I got asked that in an interview. I tried to sound profound, but I ended up sounding like a douche. What would your answer be?”
The scene outside caught Brit’s attention as she tried to come up with something profound herself. By this time of day, the city she loved was bustling with businesspeople on lunch breaks, and a couple had gathered around a street performer with a guitar and harmonica.
“The bands I love write the songs that define my life. Whenever I wasn’t feeling whole, music filled that space. Movies need soundtracks, and those bands provide mine. Their songs saved me by giving me exactly what I needed to hear at the exact right moment.”
“That’s really deep. Can I use that for my answer?”
“Go for it. You don’t even have to give me credit.”
“You hang out with a lot of these bands. Do you ever tell them that stuff?”
Brit shook her head. “I don’t want to come off like a fan. They have enough of those.”
“But you are a fan.”
“Yes.” Brit cleared her throat, changing the subject. “You live around here?”
“I do. I grew up here, so my parents are in the area too. For a while, I lived with them while I was driving around, staying in hotels or sleeping in my car in the early days of gigging. But I do have my own house now that I can afford it. It’s not too far from here—just outside of the city.”
“Wow, a house, and you’re so young.”
“Twenty-four, yeah.” He opened his mouth to say something, and Brit guessed it was to ask her how old she was, but he wisely closed it again.
She decided to offer it up anyway. “I’ll be twenty-seven at the end of next month, and I’m still in an apartment that my daddy pays for.”
“Hey, if he can swing it, why not?” J.J. picked up the menu, and for a brief moment, Brit wondered if he thought she was indeed too old for him until his brown eyes popped over the top of the menu to smolder at her again. “I’ll take you to my home sometime. If you want to see it. You know, for when you’re in the market. For a house.”
Every clipped sentence sounded suggestive the way he said it. “I’d like that. I would be curious to know how the real estate market is looking these days.” She feigned a hoity-toity voice and cocked her pinky while taking another drink of water.
A visit to J.J.’s house? She wouldn’t mind that at all.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
BRIT COULDN’T BREATHE out of her nose. Sitting upright in bed, she sniffed. Nope. Nothing. Her head was as big as a disco ball and just as heavy, and her nose felt like it was stuffed with cotton. To make an uncomfortable situation worse, she had to get ready for the celebrity daughter interview later that day. When she stood up, her nose changed its mind and turned on like a faucet, leaving her running to the bathroom for a tissue.
How was she supposed to look glamorous with this rebellious nose doing whatever the hell it wanted, but not allowing her to breathe freely?
Pushing things from one side of the medicine cabinet to the other, she tried to find the cold medicine she thought she had in there. She located a few stray pills of Dayquil in a blister pack and popped them in her mouth. On second thought, she checked the expiration date. They had expired two years ago. Unsure of what to do, she spit them out and filled
her water cup and chugged. Her raw throat screamed at every swallow. Had she gotten this plague from Daisy? No, Daisy had had a stomach thing, and that was a while ago.
She shuffled to the kitchen, clutching her head, which felt giant, and the beginnings of a headache crept up like the crescendo of a song with too much bass. She searched her cupboards for the teapot she knew she had somewhere. It was from Holland actually, and she only pulled it out when she wanted to feel fancy for company. It had been out a lot when she was dating Crazy, and he almost broke it one time. Where was it?
She pulled a chair over to the counter and stood on it to see the back of the top cupboard. There it was. In the back of a useless cupboard above the refrigerator. She took it down, and the chair slipped from under her. She slammed her knee on the counter and then her hip on the floor but managed to hold the teapot in the air with one hand. In defeat, she set the teapot on the floor and curled up, putting pressure on her injured knee, not ready to see if she had broken skin or not.
On the one hand, her nose had released itself for a moment, and she thought she could try breathing again. Closing her mouth, she tested her clear nose. It whistled back at her. Dangit. She weakly punched the ground, and eased herself up, her nose clouding up again as she went. She filled the teapot with water, set it on the range, and slumped back into her bedroom to assess the damage. Pulling up the leg of her lounge pants, she found an angry black bruise forming, but no broken skin. Still, the mini dress she had planned to wear wasn’t going to work.
Opening her closet, she located her alternative outfit ideas. One dress she had been wanting to wear had a sheer overlay. It wouldn’t cover the bruise, but it may distract from it enough. Her other option was a black and white deconstructed men’s shirt that buttoned asymmetrically to show off her shoulders and a strip of belly. She would’ve wanted to wear it with shorts, but she could wear her wide-leg culottes instead, the hems of which hit just below her kneecap.
The teapot whistled at her from the kitchen, and she went back to heed its call. The tea wasn’t as hard to find. She kept it near the gourmet coffees she had on hand also only for company. Like alcohol, she didn’t like to have any vices, outside of fashion and musicians, of course. She unwrapped the tea bag and dropped it into the mug before pouring steaming water in after it.
Brit with the Pink Hair (The Rockin' Austen Series, #1) Page 15