by Raine Thomas
Just as Archer turned to say something to Keith, his band mate pushed away from the table and took a few casual steps over to intercept Brandon. Keith put a companionable hand on Brandon’s shoulder, leaning in and issuing only a few words before turning around and heading back to Archer’s table. It had looked like a friendly enough encounter, but the look on Brandon’s face as he glanced back at Keith had Archer lifting an eyebrow.
“What the hell did you just say to him?” Nikki asked as she returned with her drink.
“I told him if I ever hear him call my front man Archie again that he’ll be wearing his testicles as earrings,” Keith calmly replied.
Liquid spewed out of Nikki’s mouth as she started choking and laughing at the same time. “I’m sorry!” she exclaimed, using her tiny cocktail napkin to blot at Keith’s shirt. “Let me go get some more napkins.”
Archer grinned and slapped Keith once on the back as she hurried off. “Thanks.”
Keith just nodded.
Although he knew he needed to start socializing, Archer looked again at the club entrance in hopes of seeing Lily walk through the doors. She had always been great at helping him keep things in perspective, especially when it came to dealing with Brandon. He really, really needed her right then.
“You’ve got a hint of desperation about you, Arch,” Keith observed in his level way. “You’ll want to watch that. I know you think Lily will help keep you from punching out Brandon’s teeth, but it would be pretty easy for her to misinterpret the kind of eagerness you’re conveying right now.”
The casual comment had Archer fighting a wave of guilt. If only Keith knew.
Archer slid a glance at a man surrounded by people at a nearby table. Elijah Long was five-feet, six inches tall and weighed over two hundred pounds. He had nicotine-stained teeth and one of the worst comb-overs Archer had ever seen. He sweated too much and laughed too loud.
And he was the answer to Archer’s goddamn prayers.
After earning the award and nomination for their first album six years ago, The Void hadn’t progressed as far as he’d hoped among the ranks of musical artists. Yes, they had a strong following in the U.S., but the band was shooting higher than that. Archer had been feeling stuck between moderate success and just barely remaining relevant. When Elijah approached him and said he was a production manager who was interested in developing a reality show centered on him and The Void, Archer had known it was exactly what they needed to achieve the success they were all striving for. The show had the potential to air not only in the U.S. but in foreign markets, possibly gaining them a huge international presence. Christopher said that the publicity and money this show could generate would surpass anything they could ever dream.
It wasn’t long after Elijah started explaining how reality TV worked that Archer realized they had a problem. Unless something drastic changed in his life or the lives of the other band members, they would never generate enough interesting footage to support the show.
He had been wrestling with this problem for a couple of weeks now. Elijah and the show’s production crew would be looking for drama, things like encounters with popular celebrities, revelations of long-buried family secrets, backstabbing among The Void’s members, intense relationship issues, drunken brawls, and other things that the band hadn’t experienced much in the seven years they’d been together.
Oh, Archer had met his share of celebrities over the years, having begun his career as a successful child actor. He still made a few television appearances a year, guest starring in a variety of roles. That would hardly support a full season of this reality show though, never mind the producers considering extending it into a continuing series.
Archer’s normal—well, normal for a kid living in Beverly Hills—upbringing and happily married parents didn’t help matters any. He couldn’t even count on his extended family to provide some juicy content. They were a supportive bunch of blue-collar workers in Detroit whose worst sin was asking him for money when they fell on tough times, and he could certainly afford to give it to them.
His band mates did have some family issues, but those wouldn’t provide even a season’s worth of content. Truthfully, Archer and Lily had made their decisions about The Void’s members in part because they wanted people who wouldn’t create a lot of drama. It was painfully ironic that their caution could result in losing this unbelievable opportunity.
The possible solution to this problem had occurred to Archer during a recent conversation with Elijah. The production manager had observed that Nikki’s new relationship with Keith had the potential to provide some great content for the show. New relationships were often fraught with drama, he had explained. The more screwed up and compelling the romance, the better the ratings. He had said that he rather wished Nikki was dating Archer, since he was the band’s front man and would ideally generate the most content for the show they intended to call House of Archer.
Almost as a reflex, Archer had thought of Lily. Her life had always been filled with drama. She had more crazy relatives than he could count, a history of attempted and failed off-the-wall jobs, colorful friends and associates with questionable pasts, and the propensity to speak whatever thought entered her head. The public would have a hard time believing half the stories that had actually happened in her life.
Lily was practically a reality show all on her own, but Archer knew she had spent most of her life just trying to be normal. No one knew more than he did how much she hated drama. She would never willingly place herself in the spotlight for the world to see, nor was it fair of him to ask that of her.
Of course, being on the show wouldn’t necessarily be such a terrible thing for her. Archer had told her numerous times that their friendship would open doors for her that she was having difficulty opening herself. She had stubbornly refused his help in the past, stating that she didn’t want to abuse their friendship or question whether her work was appreciated on its own merit.
Her willingness to come on this tour now told him that her resolve was weakening. He was sure he could convince her that making a name for herself through House of Archer would help bolster her flailing writing career. Assuming he did gain her cooperation, however, there was still the glaring fact that they weren’t in a romantic relationship. It wasn’t even something he’d ever contemplated. As much as he adored Lily, she wasn’t his usual type.
Elijah had all but said the romance angle was the best one to assure good ratings when the show aired. Convincing Lily to be on the show was one thing. Convincing the world they were in love was something else altogether.
Archer wasn’t absolutely opposed to the idea of wooing Lily. It just took a lot of consideration. This was his best friend, after all. When it came down to it, there wasn’t even a guarantee that she’d be interested or that there would be any chemistry between them.
So Keith’s comment about Lily possibly misinterpreting his eagerness to see her struck a major chord. Archer had lost many a night’s sleep lately as he weighed his options. As much as he hated to admit it, he was still wrestling with what he probably should do and what he wanted more than anything he could ever remember.
Time was quickly running out. He soon had to decide if it was worth risking the loss of his best friend to pursue his dreams.
Chapter Four
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Regina hissed at Brandon when he finally joined her in a small alcove out of sight of the VIP area. “We have gone over and over this. The only thing you have to do is behave for two months on this tour. After that, we’ll be back at the top of the charts and you can tell Archer to shove it up his ass.”
“We don’t need him to get back on top,” Brandon argued in an equally heated tone. “You just have to do your job and get the right people behind our music. We’ve got a pile of hit songs ready to soar up the charts.”
Regina struggled to stay calm and not shout at him for being a stubborn pain in her ass. She was no stranger to pride an
d acting like a diva herself. Usually that helped her relate to him and handle his tantrums. A few handfed compliments typically did the trick to cool him down. Now, she knew that approach wouldn’t help their cause. She had worked too damn hard to get them this opportunity just to watch him destroy it by acting like a temperamental toddler.
“What you’ve got is a pile of mediocrity,” she snapped back at him. “If we release one more album with only songs you wrote, it could bury us. You need talented songwriters to work with you and no one wants to, thanks to your arrogance. By buddying up with Archer you’ll open doors that your attitude has slammed in our faces.”
His nostrils flared and he stepped closer to her, his hands clenched into fists. “My attitude? I’m no different from thousands of other musicians out there except I’m more talented. The entire band is clean at the moment and only one of us has an arrest record, which really just generates some actual interest in us from the public. We should be at the top of the goddamn charts and you’re trying to convince me that the reason we’re not is my attitude?”
Regina drew on the last of her patience to stop herself from responding how she really wanted to. It was all part of the job, she reminded herself.
“All right,” she said, holding up her hands in a show of complacency that she instantly resented. “You want to hear me say it, Brandon? Fine. We screwed up eight years ago when we let Archer leave.”
That confession made her throat raw with anger. Brandon was the one who had all but shoved Archer out the door, much like he had done with numerous other musicians. The biggest difference was that those other musicians hadn’t been as talented, well-connected, or determined as Archer.
Nor had they had the meddling Lily Montgomery talking in their ears.
“Denying that we screwed up just makes you sound like an idiot,” she added when Brandon looked like he was about to argue. “Suddenly Something hasn’t ever achieved the same level of success that The Void has. Our sales have continued to drop since Archer’s departure. Those are facts that none of us can overlook. Unless you want to flush what remains of your career completely down the toilet, you’ll play nice with Archer during this tour.”
Brandon’s color went from pink to red the longer she talked. He looked like a thermometer about to blow. Regina braced herself for his predictable response.
“It was your damn fault he left,” Brandon shouted, drawing the attention of a few people at the end of the hallway attached to the alcove. “You should have done your fucking job and enforced his contract and told me to cool down before things got to the point they did.”
Regina crossed her arms over her chest to keep from strangling him. “Watch your step,” she said in a much quieter—and thus more cutting—voice than his. “There aren’t any other managers out there who will deal with spoiled, egotistical pricks who shoot themselves in the feet with their explosive tempers and overinflated egos.”
His heated gaze cooled in an instant. “Wanna bet, Regina? Let’s break things off and see who ends up on top.”
“You tried that threat once before,” she volleyed back, glancing down the hall at Archer standing among the crowd. “How’d that turn out for you?”
He stepped away from her as though she’d physically struck him. Rather than respond, he turned and stormed back into the VIP area. She started to call him back so she could apologize but stopped herself when she saw his expression ease into a more pleasant one the moment he got into sight of the cameras.
At least he wasn’t a complete moron, she silently mused as she tried to rub the tension out of her forehead.
It was rare these days that she let her temper get the better of her. Nearly thirty years in the music industry had taught her the value of maintaining control. She supposed things had been escalating to this point for some time now. It was unfortunate that it had to happen on tonight of all nights.
The sad part was that she actually agreed with Brandon. It truly had been her misstep eight years ago when she let Archer out of his contract. She hadn’t grasped his full potential back then and had been so incredibly tired of him and Brandon bickering all the time. She had figured booting Archer would only improve things for Suddenly Something.
Oh, how wrong she had been.
That miscalculation continued to haunt her. It also seriously pissed her off because it made her question her judgment. From the age of sixteen, she had worked tirelessly to prove that she had what it took to make a well-respected manager and talent recruiter. Her single goal in life had been to outshine her bastard of a father, the high-paid manager of some of the world’s most popular and in-demand musical artists.
She quickly rose through the management ranks in her twenties, signing a couple of artists whose albums went platinum. The music industry opened up at her feet, providing her access to some of the most exclusive places in the country. Little did she know that those artists would end up being anomalies.
Her brush with greatness took a hard hit not long after she turned thirty. She had known it would be difficult to remain on top as an aging woman in a predominantly men’s occupation, but thirty was hardly over the hill. Whispers of rumors that her father was involved in her tanking career reached her ears. She soon confirmed his involvement when a few of the acts she had been pursuing ended up signing with him.
That realization had left her in a dark place, one she didn’t want to look back on now as she put on her most engaging smile and rejoined the party. It was during that bleak time when she had signed Suddenly Something.
She wouldn’t be stretching things to say that Brandon and Suddenly Something had saved her career. Possibly more than that. She would do anything it took to get them back to the top of the charts.
Anything.
Chapter Five
By the time Lily finally made it inside the VIP section at Magellan’s, she was sure she would kill someone before the night ended. In all likelihood it would be Aria for making her wear the four-inch peep toe heels that were pinching her feet like frenzied piranhas. She was cursing everyone from the bouncer at the door to the creator of the first push-up bra as she was finally ushered past the velvet rope separating the party zone from the rest of the club.
A number of curious heads swiveled in her direction as she led Aria and Sydney into the heart of the VIP area like a military general on the march. She ignored everyone, even those who tried to get her attention. There was only one person she wanted to talk to just then and he was about to become the brunt of her frustration.
Dane stood at a table surrounded by—surprise, surprise—a herd of fawning females. Lily supposed she couldn’t really blame the women for fawning. He was smiling at them and giving them his undivided attention, something many females could only dream about. Even in her exasperated state, Lily had to give herself a brief moment to take him in.
He was actually even sexier in person than he was on television or in magazines, something she’d never really considered before. His brown hair, usually worn short in an edgy, untamed cut, had grown longer in the front, his bangs drifting close to his dark brown eyes. It made him look a little wicked. The club’s energetic lighting flashed across the chiseled planes of his face, highlighting his sultry mouth and the 5 o’clock shadow that amped up his outrageous sex appeal.
He’d clearly been working out since she last saw him. The taut muscles of his upper body flexed as he leaned over the table to pose for a photo with the females at the table. He wasn’t wearing anything particularly remarkable, just a pair of jeans and a black T-shirt, but the way that clothing clung to his well-defined body, well, it had Lily looking at him in a different way...a way that she wasn’t sure made her entirely comfortable.
As she got closer, she also noticed that he had gotten more ink since the last time she saw him. Most of his right upper arm was now covered in tattoos and he also had a few on his left bicep. She almost smiled when she thought about how much his mother must hate them. She actually would have smiled if
it wasn’t for the toe-pinching going on.
He glanced over at her as if sensing her approach. In that instant she saw a look in his eyes that had never been directed at her, a look of pure male admiration. Her pulse raced in excitement and feminine pleasure, shocking her. Realization rocketed through her.
Was the look in Dane’s eyes the reason she was standing there in an outfit she couldn’t afford and shoes that hurt her feet? Had she actually dressed like this for him?
She was afraid to look too deeply for the answer.
His scan of her body from her high heels to her eyes took only a second. To Lily, it felt like he had just run his hands along her body, especially when she saw the desire in his dark gaze. Then she registered his astonishment when he reached her face and recognized her. She wasn’t sure whether to be insulted over his stark surprise or even more thrilled that he had looked at her the way he had without knowing her identity.
“Lily!” he exclaimed, his face breaking into a wide smile.
Cameras clicked and flashed as he pushed away from the table and hurried forward to meet her. Normally she despised being in photographs, especially those that had the potential to end up in tabloids. Her life was enough of a spectacle as it was. Dane had begged her to get over her hang-up just for that night. To butter her up, he had asked Christopher to draft an agreement forbidding the release of Lily’s image without her consent for every other part of the tour. It had seemed a fair compromise, so she now had to suck it up for a few hours.
Before she could issue a greeting, Dane reached her and swept her up in a hug, placing a resounding kiss right on her lips. “I’m so glad you’re here!” he exclaimed as he placed her back on her feet.
She wasn’t sure if her sudden breathlessness was caused by being lifted off her feet, Dane’s unexpected kiss, or being pressed so close to his hard, delectable body. Her heart felt like it was tripping over itself as he returned her to the ground.