by Vivian Lux
"How soon?"
"What?"
"How soon will you have something else to share?"
"My God, you're like a dog with a bone, aren't you?" I exhaled. The card was in my hand again, somehow, and I twirled it around in my fingers, idly tracing the edge with my thumbnail. "I don't know. Why don't you ask August Waverly, our new manager? She's the one who's setting everything in motion."
"Forgive me, Mr. Boyd, but you don't sound all that enthusiastic about getting back into the game."
I took a deep breath and as I did, Celia's words last night echoed around in my head. What did she mean when she said I needed to change my look? What was she going to try to change about me? I'd already been subjected to serving someone else's vision. I wasn't about to go down that path again "Scarlett, love. You woke me up out of a sound sleep. Forgive me if I sound less than enthused to be awake. Though I will thank you for waking me from that awful dream. Fucking hate wasps."
"Ah, okay sir." After that little detour into lunacy, Scarlett seemed much more amenable to hanging up. "I think I have all I need for now. If anything else comes up, would you mind me calling again?"
"Sure, no problem," I gritted. "Just like, aim for after noon next time, okay? I was working late last night."
"I get it, my husband's in the business too," she said.
"Yeah? What's he do?"
"Singer. Band called Ruthless."
"Bloody hell, for real? You're married to Keir? Tell him I said hey, we toured a leg with them last winter. He's a good chap," I suddenly put two and two together. "Ah, so you're the lass he went on and on about."
She laughed and her voice sounded softer when she said, "He's a goof. I'll tell him you said hi." She lowered her voice. "And Ewan," she whispered. "You hang in there, okay? I know what happened with Killian and Jane must have thrown you guys for a loop, but you need to get back out there, okay? I'm like, a huge fan of yours, to the point where it makes my husband a little jealous. You're too fucking talented to let this mess with your head."
I blinked. "Thanks," I mumbled.
"Right," she said, suddenly all business. "I'll be in touch."
The line went dead and I let my hand fall down to my side. I felt like my brain had been turned into mashed potatoes. Of course I objectively understood that millions of people had heard my music as part of Wrecked. But it was too fucking strange to have a reporter — married to hands down the biggest rock singer out there — turn out to be a fan. It was too much of a coincidence to not be significant.
And then, as if it was rushing to add to the sense of unreality swirling around, my fucking phone rang again. "Seriously?" was all I said in greeting.
"Hi there!" August sounded bright and happy and way over-caffeinated. "Did you talk to Auteur yet?"
"Yes I did," I grumbled. "About that, yeah? Maybe give me a little head's up beforehand? I was still in my boxers when that reporter called."
"You still in them now?"
I looked down. "Matter of fact, yeah."
"Kinky," she said, with a dismissive sniff. "I hope you chatted her up good." She didn't even give me a chance to respond before she veered off into another topic entirely. "So what's on your schedule tonight?"
"Ah, my schedule?" I laughed. "The fuck is a schedule?"
"Your plans."
"For tonight? I was actually looking forward to a quiet night in," I deadpanned. "Cup of tea, episode of The Bachelor, maybe give myself a pedicure."
"Tough shit," she said. "We're going to Queens. See you there!"
The line went dead. I stared at it, openmouthed. "Bloody hell," I muttered.
And then it rang again.
"She's a bloody nightmare, mate," Jules said.
"And good morning to you too," I sighed, reaching for my pants. Reporters and managers were one thing, but I actually had to be clothed when I was talking to Jules.
"She's called me three times already this morning!" Jules exploded. "I can't even let it go to voicemail because then she immediately starts texting."
"Really?" I laughed. "The way you were looking at her, I thought you'd like the attention."
Jules let out a deep sigh oh regret. "Yeah, I mean sure, she's fit as fuck," he clarified. "But she's crazier than a shithouse rat. Did she call you yet?"
"Yeah mate. Just hung up with her."
"Did she order you to show up at some undisclosed location in Queens tonight?"
"That she did."
"Christ," he groaned. "We hired her as our manager and I think she's already gone mental. That's gotta be a new record for us."
"Yeah," I said, trailing off. It didn't matter if I stopped listening now. He was still talking, complaining bitterly about August in a way that made it pretty fucking clear he wanted nothing more than to shag her silly. Jules hated and loved with equal passion, and sometime that passion was directed to the same damn person.
"She's pushing too hard," Jules was saying.
"You're right," I said, interrupting him. "This is all happening way too fast." I sat back down on my bed, my mind reeling. Just yesterday I thought we might just fade away into obscurity. Embraced it, actually. But now we had a gung-ho manager, a possible new label and if what I guessed from August's hurried instructions was true, we were going to go audition a new lead singer in Queens tonight. "This was how it happened," I said slowly, more to myself than Jules. "With Killian. The same fucking whirlwind started spinning around us and then it spun right out of control."
"Aye." Jules sighed. "I feel you mate, I do. But isn't this how these things happen? You wait forever with your thumb up your ass and then one day everything comes together?"
"I don't know," I muttered. "I have no idea how this is all supposed to work."
"Well good thing that's not our job," Jules quipped. "We hire people to figure out the career shit, mate. You and me and Niall, we just show up and play the music, innit?
I looked down at Celia's card, still in my hand. "Yeah, I guess you're right. For once in your life. How does that feel? You want me to mark it on my calendar? You wanna write it down in your diary? Dear Diary, for the first time in my life, I know what it feels like not to be a complete wanker."
"Fuck you, Boyd," Jules laughed. "I'm hanging up before your gloominess ruins my good mood."
I grinned. How quickly he forgot that he was the one to call me all freaked out. "Fine, go. I'll see you tonight in Queens."
Jules grumbled something profane and hung up. I glanced down at her card again.
Yeah she'd run away from me last night. But I had her number right here... She gave me her fucking card.
Without a second thought, I started dialing.
Chapter Thirteen
Celia
When my phone rang again, I looked up, startled to see that I'd actually spent the last half an hour being productive. Unreasonably proud of myself, I grabbed the receiver. "Celia Gilbert!" I chirped.
"That's not your name, now is it love?" came the slow, Scottish-accented reply.
Immediately, I ducked down behind the walls of my cubicle. "Ewan!” I hissed into the phone, looking wildly around me. "What are you doing calling me?"
He chuckled. "You gave me your card, lass," he reminded me.
"Oh."
"So," he said. "I was just wondering if you were going to be there in Queens tonight?"
I took a deep breath. "Ah, yeah!" I said, my voice unnaturally bright and false. My throat was dry all of a suddenly and I unscrewed the top of my water bottle, ready to walk over to the fountain to refill it, but I couldn't seem to stop talking. "August called me first thing this morning. It's on my calendar." My heart was pounding and I looked wildly around again, certain that someone was behind me, eavesdropping. I was praying he wouldn't say anything inappropriate while at the same time I longed to listen to him say every inappropriate thing he could think of in that lilting accent of his.
"Well then," he sighed. "Guess I won't be skipping it then."
I sat
up a little straighter. "Why would you skip it?"
He exhaled, a long slow breath that went on forever. "Just seems like everything's coming together too well," he finally said. "I don't like neat packages. They're usually hiding a pretty shitty gift."
My heart did a strange little sideways flop at that. "Well," I laughed. "That's a pretty bleak outlook if you ask me."
"I'm from the British Isles, lass. Bleak is what we do best."
"Strange," I mused, tapping my pen against my scratch pad, my father's words echoing in my head. Lead him to the answer and let him think he came up with it himself. "Because I'd think this would be a pretty exciting time for you. You're getting your music out there. The world needs to hear you, Ewan." Appealing to his ego. That was a masterstroke and I knew it. What musician could resist being told he was a genius?
Ewan chuckled and fell silent. I waited for him to speak up and agree with me, that he needed to be heard. "Don't you think?" I prompted.
"I'd be pretty thrilled to just sit in a room and play for you," he said softly.
My heart thudded, slamming into my ribs. "For me?" I squeaked.
"You know what I'm picturing?" he asked.
"No."
He laughed again. "Oh come on. You have to have a bit of imagination in that brainy little head of yours. I can picture it right now. Me on the couch..."
"What couch?"
"Any couch, really."
"What color is it?"
I could hear his amusement crackling like electricity through the phone line. "It's a green couch, Celia, you like that?"
"Helps me to picture," I deadpanned. "I don't have much of an imagination."
"Very well, I'm on that green couch, playing my guitar and you're sitting across from me...wearing those sexy little glasses."
My throat was suddenly bone dry. Gagging, I flailed out for my water bottle and promptly knocked it over. "Fuck!" I shouted into the line.
"CeCe?" Ewan barked. "You okay?"
"Oh dammit," I moaned, looking around for paper towels, tissues, anything to mop up the puddle of water that now soaked my desk. How on earth could the few mouthfuls left at the bottom of the bottle be such a deluge when overturned? "My water spilled. I think I just ruined my laptop."
"Quick," he said, suddenly all business. "Power it off and then turn it on its side, like an open book, yeah? Set it on the side you spilled on."
"What, why?"
"So you don't fry your processor, love."
"Are you a computer guy as well as a guitar guy?" I wondered.
"Nah, I've just destroyed more than my fair share of laptops in my day." He chuckled. "Usually it isn't water that I'm trying to mop up."
A small laugh squeaked out of the side of my mouth. "Does your laptop smell like Scotch then?"
"I never spill my Scotch," he retorted.
I laughed again. Normally when I did something clumsy like this I would spend the rest of the day dying of secret shame, certain than everyone was secretly judging what a catastrophe I was. But being on the phone with Ewan made it seem like...no big deal, really. Just something silly to laugh about. "There," I said, setting my laptop on its side. "My laptop is propped up. Now what?"
"Now you let it dry."
"How long will that take?"
"No idea."
"But I have to work!"
"You're talking to one of your artists right now. You're working."
I felt my cheeks heating up. "I haven't signed you yet," I reminded him.
"Right. You have conditions."
"Right," I exhaled in a barely audible whisper. I felt like my whole body was in flames. Talking to him was a rollercoaster, whipping me back and forth between easy laughter and inner fireworks just by the change of tone in his voice. "Conditions."
"Right now I'm not too concerned about meeting your conditions, love." His voice had gone a pitch lower, a cocky note entering his smooth baritone. "Right now I'm more concerned about blowing your mind."
I swallowed, the fireworks in my body bursting in their final salvo, a Fourth of July, 1812 Overture crescendo. "Blowing my mind?" I squeaked. It was disturbing just how real the picture was in my brain. Ewan Boyd kneeling over me, his dark hair hanging in his face as he grinned that wicked grin, deep dimple blazing as he inched downward, nudging my legs open with his knee. "How...?"
I could hear the grin in his voice and it made my toes curl even as his words made me blush right up to the roots of my hair. "In the studio, love. After you sign us."
"Oh, I uh..."
His chuckle faded into a growl. "Why, what were you thinking about just now? Tell me exactly, please."
"I have to hang up now."
"Then hang up."
My grip on the receiver tightened instead of loosening. Why did I have no willpower at all when it came to him? "I'm going to."
"Mmhmmm. I don't think you want to. I think you want to tell me what you were imagining when I said I wanted to blow your mind. How was it, love? Was I good?"
"I have to hang up," I repeated robotically.
His voice dropped. "Because however good you've imagined it, I promise you it'll be even better." And with that he hung up the phone.
Chapter Fourteen
Ewan
The bar was way the fuck out in the outer reaches of Queens, almost in Nassau County. August told us to meet her there, so that's what I did. Because if you asked me to my face if I was afraid of August, I'd laugh. But if you held a gun to my head, I'd break down and admit that the chick sort of terrified me. In the best possible way, of course.
I'd heard the tapes she'd made of the guy we were scouting tonight, and after first marveling at the giant brass balls she had to have to con the sound guy into letting her plug her tape recorder into his mixing board, I listened and had to admit I was excited. The guy had the kind of knock-out, blow you to the back of the bar kind of broken scream that made him sound like the next coming of Chris Cornell. He sounded...different. Not the wailing, ethereal harmonies of Jane and Killian. No, this guy had guts to his voice, and I had this little flutter of actual excitement in my stomach when I thought about what that kind of voice would do, what it would signal to people who wondered if we could make magic again. That voice told me, yeah. We could.
But as I sat in the back of the worst smelling cab in the city, that fluttery excitement in my belly turned over to nausea over the very idea of introducing someone new into the mix. The idea of trying to find somebody to replace Jane seeming like a worse and worse idea the longer it took me to get out here, so by the time I rolled up in front of the Riverside Ballroom, I was in a pretty foul fucking mood.
Made even worse when August wasn't even there waiting for me.
"Fucking hell," I growled, stomping my way into the place. No one turned a head or raised an eyebrow to see the guitarist from the band that dominated the charts a year ago slumming it in some backwater venue that looked like it was getting ready to host the junior prom tomorrow night, and somehow that convinced me even more that this was a mistake. Why the fuck were we trying to start over again when no one gave a shit in the first place? I scowled at the bartender and slumped on my stool in the reserved area — behind the bored, protective eyes of a bouncer who watched me balefully — determined to hate every last second of my time here.
Until I thought of CeCe.
That would be the one saving grace. She was coming out, she'd promised me that. I grabbed my beer and turned toward the front door, just in time to see it opening, letting in a shaft of late-evening light that momentarily blinded me in the dimness of the venue. I sat up straighter, ready to greet her, when the silhouette in front of me resolved itself into Jules.
I slumped back down again. "For a drummer, you have terrible sense of timing," I muttered as he walked over.
"Hey mate," Jules said by way of greeting. He obviously hadn't heard me and for that I was grateful "You're the first here?"
"Seems that way," I growled, fiddling with th
e label on my poor excuse for a beer. "I'm never going to get used to what these Yanks call a proper lager over here. Tastes like chilled ricewater."
"So you've mentioned," Jules said tiredly, sitting his ass down, taking up much of the reserved area.
"Oh is this us then?" Niall wondered.
"How the fuck do you do that?" Jules shouted, nearly falling off his chair. "No fucker as big as you has any right to be that light on his feet."
"I was in the loo," Niall explained, sounding wounded. "I've been here forever. Where have you lot been?"
"I just got here and got a drink," I said, raising my bottle of chilled piss. "Jules just got here after me because god forbid he ever be on time for anything."
"Hey fuck you, I'm here before August," Jules complained with a fierce scowl.
"No you're not," said Niall. "She was here when I got here, and then the band arrived and she went running off to talk to them." He shook his head, amused. "Neither they nor she have emerged yet. You think they're okay?"
"I think the band is probably fine as long as they do what she says," Jules said, with that dopey look on his face again. No doubt about it, he was smitten with our manager. I made a mental note to give him shit about it as much as humanly possible
But then I shoved that thought aside because at that moment the door opened and my heart started racing in a way that made no goddamned sense.
"There's CeCe," Jules remarked, as if my body hadn't already started signaling her arrival with everything it had.
Her hair was down again, swinging in a shiny waterfall around her shoulders but with this sweet little turn up at the end like she might have curled it. I liked the idea of her getting dolled up before coming out to see me, even if it wasn't just for me. As she drew closer, I could see that her eyes were rimmed in dark shadow, making her look like some kind of sexy raccoon. She wore her business suits and her fake name just as easily as she wore her eyeliner and skintight T-shirts. She claimed to want us to be completely professional, and then she bit her lip and looked at me from under those dark lashes.