by Quinn, Cari
She smiled up at him, her eyes almost matching the damn purple. The girl had contacts in every color. Deacon wasn’t sure what her real eye color was.
Simon peeked his head in. “Damn, now that is a bathroom. But you gotta see my pimp palace. It makes this look like a Barbie playhouse.”
Jazz hopped out of the tub and followed, but Deacon couldn’t take any more of the whole show me the money aspect of their place today. He wandered down to the first floor and into the kitchen. The fridge was filled with sports drinks, hipster beer that he’d never heard of and bottled water.
“We have a service that will stock your kitchen for you when you move in.”
Deacon turned to Jackson, a water bottle in hand. “It’s great. Really.”
“You sure about that? You don’t seem too enthused.”
He shrugged. “The bill for this sort of deal is way out of our league.”
Jackson handed him a sheaf of papers. “Not so much.”
Unfathomable numbers lined three full pages. Sales figures, downloads, radio plays, and projected earnings ended in a number he’d never thought he’d see in his lifetime. “Is this for real?”
“There’s a reason we rushed your song into production, Deacon. The minute I heard it I knew it was going to hit and hit big.”
Deacon uncapped the water for a deep drink. Weighing his words, he decided against ruining the day. “When you’re right, you’re right.”
“I’m just glad the public agreed with me.” Jackson nodded to the papers. “You’ve got it in black and white.”
Deacon glanced at the sheets one more time, his blood racing when he read the number again.
“Hey guys, why don’t you come down here. I have one more surprise for you,” Jackson called up the stairs. He led Deacon to the huge projector screen. A white sheet covered the wall beside it. He hadn’t noticed it in the mad eye-popping tour of the place.
Jazz dragged Nick into the room and hopped onto his shoulders. Gray stood next to them, his hands fisted at his sides.
Simon came to stand next to Deacon. “What’s under the sheet?”
Jackson walked over to the wall and picked up a long pole that looked like it should have been in a clothing store. He flipped off the sheet and three frames filled the space. Three frames with a platinum record in each of them. Below it was the art for Pacific Coast’s soundtrack and the band’s name engraved on a platinum metal square. It was all professionally mounted.
Deacon dropped into the oversized leather sectional and just stared.
“‘The Becoming’ single went triple platinum on its own. The soundtrack has gone gold so far, but it’s only been out for two weeks.”
“Holy freaking crap.” Jazz dropped from Nick’s back and stood between Nick and Gray. Simon was quiet. He simply walked to the framed record on the left and traced the tip of his finger along the edge then snatched his hand back and folded his arms.
Nick dropped into a crouch and stared at the floor, his palm flat to the carpet. Jazz settled next to him cross-legged and Gray followed suit on the other side of her.
“Not exactly the reaction I was expecting,” Jackson said. He went over to the bar and pulled a bottle of champagne out of a bucket. With a few deft twists, he had it popped and flutes passed out to everyone. “This is cause for a celebration, you know.”
Jazz laughed and shook Nick’s shoulder. “Of course it is.”
She kissed Gray on top of his freshly buzzed head. Then she stood and looped her arm around Simon’s back, dragging him onto the couch.
Crashing next to Deacon, she slapped the top of his thigh. “This is freaking awesome.”
Somehow Jazz’s words shattered their collective trance. Simon laughed and Nick let out a war whoop. And then it was all right. They all started talking at once and Jackson held up a hand. “Trident is impressed with your sales and the buzz that Jazz is creating with your social media platform.”
“I have a platform?” Jazz asked with a sparkle in her eyes.
“Well, I was referring to Oblivion’s platform, but yes, you’re developing your own too. Between you and Nick, you’ve perfected the art of doing Twitter status updates. I get all your updates on my phone. Not to mention Simon’s legion of followers waiting for the next scavenger hunt picture. I wish I had people like you as assistants for some of the other bands I work with. They could learn a lot from you.”
Nick tapped his fingers on his thigh and said nothing. Deacon knew he didn’t like to own up to how much he enjoyed working on the social media stuff with Jazz, but it was obvious. Jazz even got Nick to do a vlog with her twice a week.
Jackson rubbed his hands together. “We want to set you up in the studio as soon as humanly possible. You already have a catalogue of songs to choose from. We’ll pick the best five and get an EP put together so we can get you out on tour later this summer. I’ve got a few tours in mind, but don’t want to say anything until I get an album in the can.”
Deacon stared down at the pages in his lap and handed them to Nick, who’d come over to slouch on the arm of the sofa. “This is really happening.”
“What’s this?” Nick shuffled through the pages and blew out a breath. “Are you kidding me?”
“What?” Simon bounded off the couch and took the papers. After scanning them quickly, he got to the last page. The one that gave Deacon a heart attack. “Dollars?”
Jazz snatched the now very wrinkled pages from Simon’s slack fingers. Gray read over her shoulder. His long, slow whistle and raised eyebrows were his only reaction. But from Gray, that was a lot.
“You’ve made Trident very happy and we want to keep up the momentum. We want to offer you a record deal.”
Jazz swayed backward. Gray and Nick both made an instant grab for her, but Simon scooped her up and over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry, startling them all. “Airplane!” he called out.
Jazz instantly extended her arms and legs and Simon spun them both around. “We have a fucking record deal,” she screamed.
“Can you put her down for five minutes so we can talk like humans?” Nick asked.
Simon laughed and spun faster. “Leave me be, Pixie Barbie and I are having a moment here.”
Deacon shook his head and speared his fingers into his hair to push it away from his face. Nick and Gray stood together watching Simon with their girl. Because no matter what anyone said, Jazz was their girl. She belonged to all of them. She was a sister, a confidante, a partner and a playmate in the grand scheme of the band. Somehow the pixie-sized woman made Oblivion work.
Deacon was just afraid that one wrong move by any of them and all of this would be gone as fast as it had arrived. He knew one thing for damn sure.
He would do anything to keep Oblivion together.
Rocked
Lost in Oblivion Book 1
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This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.
Rocked
© 2014 Cari Quinn & Taryn Elliott
Rainbow Rage Publishing
Cover by LateNite Designs
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First ebook edition: April 2014
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Burn
The Becoming
Breaking It Down
Ripcord
Balls to the Wall
Taste of Candy
Too Still
Trident Records
OBLIVION
Co-Lead Guitar: Nick Crandall
Co-Lead Guitar: Grayson Duffy
Bass: Deacon McCoy
Drums: Jasmine “Jazz” Edwards
One
August 12, 12:00 PM - Food For Thought
Harper Pruitt hauled another tray out of her seven-tiered food cart. Lunch was the big meal when it came to a rock tour. The roadies and technicians would be working right up until the 7:30 p.m. curtain time, so they needed to fuel up now. Then she and her staff would break it down and start all over for the musicians and their guests.
Already the first wave was lined up in the doorway to the make-shift cafeteria. Pop-up tents, two dozen banquet tables, and a whirring portable air conditioner gave a brief reprieve to the outrageous heat of Alpharetta, Georgia. Honestly, how was anyone supposed to think clearly when the air was thick enough to chew?
“C’mon, Harper. It doesn’t need to be perfect. We’re just going to demolish it anyway.”
“You will wait until I’m ready, Randy Pruitt.” Her brother, a third generation roadie, was always first in line for food. He might be whip-skinny, but he could pack it away.
She snapped the last of the trays over cold packs she’d designed after much of their first week had been spent cleaning up after the rapidly melting ice. No matter how hard that air conditioning unit chugged, it was still hot as hell with seventy plus bodies in the room.
She might be low man on the cooking staff, but she had standards, dammit. She made the best lunch these idiots would ever taste. Refusing to believe that everything was wasted on the tour animals that called themselves roadies, she ignored the shuffling feet and groans behind her.
Any man or woman that didn’t want a broken finger knew better than to rush her. She knew how to handle the burly, the grouchy, and most definitely the too friendly.
Setting out the last tray—rolls and bread—she stepped back a good four feet, put her hands together in a mock prayer, and bowed. “You may begin.”
And boy did they. Within eight minutes her pretty display looked more like a sad deli counter. The bed of lettuce leaves she’d used were scattered like discarded pages from a TV writer’s room during sweeps week. All but the chicken salad had been scraped clean.
She hauled the tray out of its housing. What the heck did they have against her chicken? Unless it was slathered in jar mayo or mustard, a lot of these guys turned their noses up. Each day she tried to sneak in a little something new, believing that even roadies deserved culture—but alas, they proved her wrong again and again.
She waved at her brother as he jammed ham and turkey into a roll—his third sandwich, thank you very much—and crammed it into his mouth on the way out the door. Randy was still young enough to be excited about the prospect of sweating over the lighting rig that had to be set up.
It was the last leg of this particular tour. She’d graduated from culinary school and hopped on a plane the next day to work this job. She had six weeks to prove herself to Meg and Danny so they’d hire her on full time.
“All set, Harper?”
She blinked out of her thoughts and smiled at Mel, one of her cleanup staff. “Yeah, you can start loading up.”
The clang of metal trays and crinkle of white paper table covers was part of her everyday symphony. Roll it out, roll it up, rinse and repeat. Crap, she was only six days into the tour and already she was tired of tuna salad and cold cuts.
Not good.
“Excuse me?”
“Sorry, we’re all done for the lunch rush, but you can come ba—” She stopped mid-turn, her eyes stuck on one of the most impressive male chests she’d ever seen. And seriously, she’d seen a lot of nice ones over the years. But sweet Pete.
Wide, firm pecs filled out a vintage Journey t-shirt with little room to spare. In fact, the faded scarab logo had little tears in it from the stretch to accommodate his toned muscles. That had to be some seriously amazing man flesh under there.
She forced her gaze up, and up, and wow.
He smiled, and a dimple dug into his left cheek. The slash of white teeth and the dent was bad enough but man…the eyes. Green. Middle-of-the-forest green, earthy, and cool—the kind that contact commercials promised with their too beautiful to be real colors.
They had to be fake.
Who had green eyes with flecks of sunlit gold in the center? Not real people, that’s who. Or…
“Anything protein will do. I just finished up a workout, and I could sure use some fuel before soundcheck.”
Or rock stars. Of course he was a musician. While there were a few men on staff that bumped her hotter-than-hell-meter into taking notice, the first one to put her meter into the red had to be off limits.
“I really don’t have anything left.” She caught one tray out of the corner of her eye. “Well, I have some chicken salad left, but…”
“That’s perfect. Chicken salad is perfect.” He crossed one arm over his drool-worthy chest and gripped his triceps, rubbing absently. A wide tattoo stretched across his left forearm in bold, black letters that looked like they’d been through an earthquake with a teasing red devil tail wound through the letters. Oblivion.
Holy hot.
Nope.
No looking, Harper Lee.
Man, his bicep really bulged beautifully. And on the arm he gripped a flash of more black and red ink teased beneath the edges of his t-shirt sleeve. A sleeve that was seriously working hard at not ripping. That just wasn’t right. She forced her eyes up to his face and that dimple was back, deeper than ever.
Crap. Now he was going to think she was interested. Damn, double damn, and triple crap. She snatched the ice cream scooper out of her apron and snagged one of the paper salad boats stacked up beside the plates.
“Another scoop if that’s okay.”
She tried to ignore the deep tone of his voice. She was such a sucker for baritones. “You don’t even know how it tastes.”
He leaned down into her space, and she bit back a groan. He smelled like cedar chips and something fresh. The ocean? She took a giant step back. “Whoa there.”
Unrepentant, he picked up a fork and scooped out some. “See, tastes…”
He stopped chewing, and she winced. She’d made her own dressing, sprinkling in some balsamic for a kick to make it just a little less boring. The tender breast chunks had sucked up the vinegar. Definitely not a traditional chicken salad.
“What is this?”
She pulled the paper boat closer to her chest. “I think I might have some turkey—”
“No, seriously. That’s awesome.” He took her scooper out of her limp fingers and put another two helpings on his paper boat. Then he reached around her for a few of the last few tomatoes on the veggie tray.
“Awesome?”
“Wow.” He shoveled another forkful into his mouth, those sharp, perfect teeth slicing through a tomato with ease. “I usually have to choke down whatever protein I can find with a Coke, but this is awesome. Can you make me this every day?”
“That would get pretty boring.”
“Have you tasted this?” He turned his fork out to her.
“I made it. I taste everything before I put it out.”
He shrugged. “More for me.” He transferred the boat, a wad of napkins, his fork, and his phone all to one hand. Long fingers handled the entire bundle with ease. He held out his right hand. “I’m Deacon by the way.”
Oh, hell no. He had tingles written all over him. There was no way she could shake his hand and keep up the cool, calm, and collected deal. Especially when his hand looked like it could swallow hers and have room for two more. He was ridiculously big. Like wow-you-must-play-basketball tall. God, why did she have to be so tactile? She couldn’t walk through a store without touching everything. And Deacon had plenty of real estate to touch.
Harper Lee, catch a clue.
She smiled up at him and then wiggled her black latex clad fingers. Dodged that one.
The burst of pleasure that hummed through her middle made her swallow a groan.
Simmer down. He’s just flirting.
“Thanks. Glad someone likes it.”
Deacon glanced down at the tray. “Obviously people don’t know a good thing.”
Resisting the call of a warm glow, she stacked the now empty veggie trays.
“What’s your name? I can tell you right now you’re going to see a lot of me. I’m pretty much a black hole when it comes to food.”
Sidestepping the question, she picked up another tray. “I’ve been on the tour for almost a week now, and this is the first time we’ve seen each other.”
“That’s because my band just met up with the tour last night. We’re opening for Rebel Rage.”
Ding, ding. Musician confirmed.
She’d known it, but man, it really was too bad. She didn’t date musicians. Heck, she didn’t even interact with them. They were way too into themselves and this first job really needed to be drama free so she could concentrate on establishing herself.
“That’s great.” She flashed him her professional smile. “Welcome to the tour.”
“You’re really not going to give me your name?”
It really was too bad. Because that voice would sound delicious all low and close in her ear. “I’m just the help. You don’t need to know my name.”
“Maybe some musicians are like that, but not me. Six months ago I was waiting tables and hustling pool for gas money.”