by M. S. Parker
“Ever hear of Reb Union?”
Shit.
“Yes, I have.”
And I knew exactly why he was hiring a PR firm. He was everything I detested about most musicians, especially rock artists. Pretending to be some upstanding guy until something finally led to the curtain being pulled away to reveal that he was exactly like all the rest, caring only about partying.
And my job would be to hide all that shit, so he came out like some repentant creative genius who’d never do anything like that again.
Four
Reb
I considered turning my phone off when I got home. I’d barely missed getting arrested after knocking out the son of a senator, and I knew my mother smoothing things over was the only reason I wasn’t cooling off in a jail cell. I also knew I was going to hear it at some point today.
That was the reason why I’d kept it on. If I turned it off or sent her to voicemail, she wouldn’t think twice about showing up at my apartment, and for the first time in months, I was actually there. After what I’d done to the hotel room, I knew better than to try to go back there, so I’d gone home.
But I’d slept on the couch. I’d told myself it was because I didn’t want to chance throwing up on the bed, but that was only a half-truth. Even the guest room beds brought back memories of that night. For all I knew, she’d fucked guys on every bed in the apartment. Probably on the couch too, but it was easier to push that thought away because I hadn’t caught her there. Not entirely logical, but it worked.
None of these things woke me up though. It was the jarring, shrill ringtone I’d assigned to my manager that pulled me out of a restless sleep.
“What?”
Shit, my voice sounded like I’d gargled with broken glass. I needed to be careful, or I wasn’t going to have a career left to fuck up.
“What the hell, Reb?”
I put the phone on speaker and set it on the end table. If I was going to be treated to a lecture, at least I wouldn’t have him yelling in my ear.
“First you flake out on an important meeting, and then I get a call from a hotel saying you and two women trashed their penthouse suite. They’re claiming hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage.”
“That’s a bit much,” I interrupted as I forced myself into a sitting position. “I cleaned out the mini-bar, but that wasn’t exactly the finest quality alcohol.”
He actually growled. “You broke the television, two lamps, two crystal vases, two crystal bowls, four wine glasses…”
He continued, reading from a list I assumed, and I put my head in my hands. It was sad, but I was almost used to waking up feeling like shit. I kept my eyes closed as I rubbed my temples, hoping to take enough of the edge off that I could walk without vomiting.
“The cleaning service also found three grams of coke in the bedroom.”
I jerked my head up and immediately regretted it. “Wait, what?”
“Oh, that got your attention? Destruction of property, drunken disorderly, all that and you don’t say a word, but some coke, and all of a sudden, you’re the morality police?”
“Those aren’t my drugs.” I ignored his sarcasm. “You know I don’t do that shit, Chester.”
“I know you didn’t use to do that shit,” he countered. “You also never punched a senator’s son during a charity event before last night either.”
I scowled at the phone. “That’s different. I don’t do drugs. Hell, I barely drink.”
As soon as the last sentence was out of my mouth, I knew he’d never believe that the drugs weren’t mine. Because he was right. Up until recently, I’d never gotten so drunk that I couldn’t control my impulses. Everything that had been true about my behavior before could be called into question now, and that included the drugs.
“I’ll take a drug test,” I offered. “Whatever you want me to do to prove that I’m clean.”
“Nobody gives a shit if you can pass a drug test,” Chester snapped. “There’s ways around those things, and everyone knows it. It’s what people think that’s the problem now. Especially after the shit you pulled last night.”
“He disrespected my parents.” I was grateful to hear the words come out steady.
“You’re nearly thirty years old, Reb,” he said dryly. “And we both know that, no matter how good you are, music is no guaranteed future. We talked about this when you first signed with me. You get an image, and that gets you endorsement deals. That’s what can set you up for life, even after everything else goes down the crapper.”
I considered telling him that my inheritance was large enough that I could live a decent life off of interest alone, but I kept my mouth shut. I’d been with Chester for nearly a decade, and loyalty kept me with him, but I’d never trusted him enough to share certain things about myself, one of which was exactly how much money I had.
“What do my endorsement deals have to do with this?” I asked, suspecting I’d regret the question momentarily.
“You had a reputation as being clean, the sort of rock star who could be sold to families as someone safe for kids to admire.”
I didn’t miss the word had.
“One fucking screw-up and I’m suddenly on the same level as Ozzy Osbourne or Marilyn Manson?” I had nothing against those guys, but they weren’t me.
“Ozzy’s gone mainstream,” Chester barked, his voice growing louder by the second. “And you’ve just proven to everyone that you’re not as squeaky clean as you’d claimed.”
I gritted my teeth to keep from reminding him that I hadn’t billed myself as squeaky clean. I hadn’t wanted to market myself as anything other than me from moment one, but Chester had sold me to the studio as someone who looked like a bad boy but behaved like the guy next door. I hadn’t liked it, but they hadn’t asked me to actually change who I was, so I’d just let it slide. It’d meant keeping certain preferences of mine a secret, but I’d always been a private guy when it came to that stuff. The people who mattered to me accepted me for who I was.
Or at least I’d thought they had until Mitzi had proven me wrong.
I pushed the thought of her out of my head as best I could.
“Can’t you sell it as one day of bad choices? Come up with some sort of personal problem that got the better of me for twenty-four hours?” I hated myself for even asking it, but I had to ask.
“It hasn’t been just twenty-four hours,” he reminded me. “This was definitely the biggest mess you’ve made over the last couple months, but people have noticed a difference in you, and not a good one. Fans are either saying that you think you’re too good for them, or that you’re spiraling into depression, neither of which is great for your image. Anyone who’s around you for more than a day notices that you’re drinking all the time. You might not look or sound like you’re drunk that much, but we can see the empty bottles and cans. You don’t even try to hide it.”
“I’ve had a shitty summer,” I snarled, well aware that I sounded like the spoiled rich kid I promised myself I’d never become.
“Your girl cheated on you. Big fucking deal. If you’d listened to me in the first place, it wouldn’t have been a problem. You can’t get cheated on if you’re not in a relationship.”
“Well, I’m listening to you now,” I countered. “Fucking random women without bothering to get their names, making sure they know where they stand.”
“Yeah, well, a threesome with the niece of one of the studio heads and her friend wasn’t exactly what I had in mind.”
“Fuck,” I muttered. I rubbed my hand over my jaw, trying to remember if either woman had told me that they were related to a bigwig where my contract was held. “I didn’t know.”
“You might have figured it out if you’d gotten your head out of your ass long enough to get sober enough to pay attention.”
I stood and stretched. “Look, Chester, I’m expecting a call from my mom so she can lecture me on my bad behavior, so if that’s all you’re going to do, I’d like to get some coffe
e and a shower before I talk to her.”
“That’s not the main reason I called,” he grouched, then sighed, loud and long. “I talked to the label this morning, and they’ve decided that you need to do damage control. I’ve already hired a PR firm, and they’ll have someone over to see you first thing tomorrow.”
“You hired someone without talking to me?” I was too tired to put much heat behind my words.
“I did. And you can fire her if you want, but if you do, there’s a good chance the label’s going to drop you.”
I cursed under my breath but didn’t argue. There was no point. Technically, I had a choice, but Chester and I both knew that I was stuck. I had to do what was expected of me or lose it all.
Five
Paige
I didn’t want to do this.
I really didn’t want to do this.
Most women would be thrilled at the chance to work with Reb Union. I’d never heard any of his music, but I doubted that was the draw. I’d seen enough pictures of him to know it wasn’t just the money either. He had the sort of features that could only be described as pretty, and was six four, with an amazing body, and bronze hair that always looked like he’d just climbed out of bed. Added to that, the most uniquely colored irises I’d ever seen, and wow. Indigo. As in almost purple.
One of his endorsement deals was with a suit company, and someone on the marketing team had been absolutely brilliant. They’d had the color leached from everything except his eyes.
I might not like musicians – or most people, for that matter – but I wasn’t a nun. He was gorgeous.
Not that it mattered. I knew better than to let a pretty face and hard body be anything more than fantasy fodder. The fact that he was a musician just made it easier to remember.
It hadn’t been easy yesterday, not giving Sybil a list of reasons why this was a bad idea. If I had, she would’ve wanted to know why, and that wasn’t anything I wanted to share, not with my boss, not with anyone. I loved my mother, and I was proud of everything she’d done to raise me on her own. I’d never let anyone say anything bad about her.
But that didn’t mean I wanted to advertise the fact that she didn’t know who my father was.
Just after she turned sixteen, she ran off to follow her boyfriend’s band, but they’d broken up only a few weeks into the tour. Instead of going home, she’d moved on to a different member of a different band. For nearly six years, she gone from one musician to another, sometimes between a couple guys. Sometimes they shared her. She’d been into the whole sex, drugs, and rock ‘n roll thing, never thinking about the future.
She’d always been honest about that, about why, and when she realized she was pregnant, she didn’t have any way to figure out who my father was unless she asked for paternity tests. It hadn’t mattered to her back then because she’d known that, whoever it was, he wouldn’t want to be a father, and she’d never be able to count on him for any sort of support.
So, my father was either a washed-up wanna-be rock god, or he’d actually managed to accomplish his dream, but either way, he wasn’t the sort of man my mom had been able to count on. Which meant I’d learned young to not count on anyone other than myself and my mother.
“Are you going to get in the elevator, or just stand there, staring at it?”
The snide question pulled my attention back to the immediate present, and I managed not to scowl at the woman impatiently tapping her toe at me.
“Sorry about that,” I offered as I stepped onto the elevator. That was the best she was going to get from me. I didn’t appreciate getting a dirty look from someone who looked like she was doing a late walk of shame.
Her glare didn’t get any friendlier when I pushed the button for the top floor. It was on the tip of my tongue to make up some lie about dating Reb, but I couldn’t bring myself to even joke about it.
She got off on the seventh floor, and I rode the rest of the way up on my own. I didn’t fall back into memories of my past though. No, I kept those firmly pushed down. This wasn’t about me or my dislike of a particular group of people. This was work. I needed to be professional.
When I knocked on his door, I was focused and ready for anything.
Anything but realizing that Reb was better-looking in real life than he was in any of the pictures I’d seen.
He looked down at me, his eyes blood-shot and half-focused, then gave me one of those far-too-charming grins that guys like him seemed to master in the cradle.
“Mr. Union?” I bit back a moan at how lame I sounded. Like he was anyone else. “I’m Paige Ryce, your PR rep.”
He stepped back from the door and made a sweeping gesture with one tattooed arm. I couldn’t make out what the designs were without staring, so I ignored my curiosity and went inside.
“If I would’ve known I could order someone like you, I might not have been so pissed at Chester for doing it without asking.”
I turned as he closed the door, folding my arms so I could give him a stern look. The alcohol fumes wafting off him were almost enough to make my eyes water. He was drunk. No surprise there.
“I’m here to discuss what my firm will do for you.”
As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I regretted choosing them. His gaze narrowed in on me, something predatory in his eyes. I had to fight to stop from taking a step back. He wouldn’t hurt me. That wasn’t the underlying danger I saw. No, it was the kind that made my stomach twist.
“I can think of a whole lot of things that fine ass can do for me.”
I raised an eyebrow. “How much have you had to drink today, Mr. Union?”
He gave me that grin again, the one that I knew he thought was so charming. “It’s a compliment, Ms. Ryce.”
“Today is just a preliminary meeting,” I went back to the speech I’d originally planned. “We’ll discuss the image issues we’ll be working to correct, as well as any suggestions we can come up with to give us a place to start.”
“Really?” He sauntered toward me with far more grace than an intoxicated person should have. “That’s what you want to do? Talk? I can think of a lot of things that are more fun than talking.”
If this was the way our conversations were going to go, I could think of a lot of things I’d rather be doing, but I wasn’t going to take the bait. This might be a giant joke to him, but it wasn’t to me. This was my job, my future, and I’d be damned if some drunken rock star ruined it for me.
Six
Reb
Full, pouting lips wrapped around my cock, and I buried my hand in her raven-black waves. Hair, soft as silk, slipped between my fingers, each lock in stark contrast to porcelain skin. Blue-green eyes looked up between thick lashes, desire visible in their ocean-like depths…
“Fuck me,” I muttered as I flopped down on the couch.
I wrote notes and lyrics, not prose, but that didn’t mean my imagination wasn’t vivid enough to make me hard. And my imagination had been working overtime from the moment I opened my door to see my PR rep giving me a look full of enough disdain that I probably would’ve felt ashamed if the alcohol flowing through my body had allowed me to give a damn.
I didn’t need a PR rep. I shouldn’t need one. Wasn’t everyone entitled to fuck up once in a while? I’d been in the music industry for nearly ten years, and all that time, I’d behaved myself. No scandals, no tabloid fodder beyond what the vultures made up. I showed up to things on time and always sober. I didn’t have temper tantrums or make outrageous requests. I worked my ass off, and still found time to do charity work. I had casual sex, but it was always safe and consensual.
The only part of my life before this that could have caused issues, I made sure I kept private. Being into BDSM wasn’t even really that shocking anymore. If I’d been a teacher or politician, the kind of guy parents wanted their children to emulate, sure, I’d understand. Even now, my sexual preferences wasn’t something I wanted advertised, but it wasn’t like I had some fucking morality clause in my
contract that dictated what sort of sex I was allowed to like.
What had happened with Mitzi changed all of it. Everyone who’d gotten wind of the story had painted a sympathetic picture of me. At first.
Chester had made an agreement with Mitzi that I’d keep my mouth shut about certain aspects of the break-up if she did the same, but most fans figured out that Mitzi had cheated. I started losing sympathy points when my brooding over a beer or two became reclusive behavior with too much alcohol, especially when Mitzi seemed to be appropriately ashamed in public.
I understood that some poor choices over the weekend deserved head-shaking and finger-wagging, to use some of my mother’s favorite phrases, but I could have done a lot worse things than trash a hotel room during a consensual threesome and punch a senator’s son for making disparaging remarks about my dead father. The way I saw it, that incident was completely justified.
Okay, maybe I would’ve had a bit more self-control if I hadn’t been drunk. But that didn’t mean he deserved a punch any less.
I picked up my remote and turned on the TV, flipping through channels too fast to really see what was on. I wasn’t much of a TV or movie watcher. Sometimes something would catch my interest, but I preferred music and reading. I hadn’t been doing much of either recently though. Too much thought was involved in reading, and listening to music was a reminder of how little I’d written over the last six months.
I couldn’t even blame that one on the break-up. I knew that part of the reason the studio had less patience with me than they would have in the past had to do with the fact that they had to keep pushing back the release date of my next album because I hadn’t written anything beyond the first song. And that one was a steaming pile of bullshit.
I was still buzzed, walking a fine line between drunk and sober, but as everything piled up, reminding me of all the ways my life was fucked up at the moment, I wanted to get completely shit-faced. And why shouldn’t I? I was in my apartment. If I wanted to get black-out drunk, whose business was it but mine? After all the times I’d made the smart, responsible choices, I deserved a break from dealing with my life.