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Authors: Marni Bates

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BOOK: Decked with Holly
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“Well, good riddance! I never really wanted that job in the first place. Too many crazies.” Her face brightened. “And now we get to enjoy the holiday without ruining it with work!”
I just glared at her. “I've got a security escort. I'm wearing a slutty elf costume, and Santa just groped me. Now might not be the best time to tell me
it was all for nothing!
”
I knew murder was against the law and that killing Santa at Christmas was wrong. But I didn't remember any regulations against elf-icide.
Jen turned her puppy-dog eyes on me. “I'm sorry. Let's go to my house, get out of these stupid clothes, and see if I've got something you can wear on the cruise. I'm really sorry, Holly. I'll make it up to you.”
Except we both knew that she couldn't when I heard an all-too-familiar voice yelling out my name.
My grandpa. With my whole family: aunt, uncle, cousins, the lot of them staring at me as if . . . I had just gotten into a fight with Santa.
He shook his head and I knew it wasn't because he was admiring my chutzpah this time. “We wanted to support you on your first day of work.”
Well, that plan had definitely backfired.
It was only then that I noticed Allison and Claire both had their iPhones out and had obviously taken photos of the whole thing.
Allison grinned at me maliciously, flicking her eyes over my barely-there skirt. “Ho. Ho. Ho.”
'Tis the season, all right.
To make me want to crawl under a rock and die of mortification.
Chapter 2
Dominic
 
I
love being a rock star.
Sure, it has its share of disadvantages—a lack of privacy being one of the biggest issues—but overall, it's a damn good career. I'll always choose speculation over which starlet I might be dating over spending my days crunching numbers in a cubicle. Especially since I could never hack it as a corporate drone, sitting in a cubicle, fastidiously shuffling papers from one side of my desk to the other. I would drive all my colleagues insane by incessantly drumming on anything and everything nearby. A four-hour drum solo that features a number-two pencil thwacking away on a stapler and a paperclip dish would justify someone walking over and stabbing me with my makeshift drumsticks.
Dominic Wyatt, rock star drummer, also has an excellent ring to it.
So I'm perfectly aware of just how lucky I am to have a job working with my two best friends and doing what I love the most: playing music. Truthfully, Tim and Chris aren't just friends—they're family. That's what happens when you travel across the country together in a tour bus . . . you connect with your band . . .
unless
someone “accidentally” takes the last can of Coke in the minifridge on the hottest strip of road between Las Vegas and Los Angeles, denying you a caffeine rush that you desperately need, and you snap.
Unless bodies are dumped in Middle of Nowhere, Nevada, it's not possible to spend that much time with two other guys and walk away as casual acquaintances or people who can be described merely as “coworkers.”
But as much as I love my job, it's still work. Grueling work where the hours bleed into each other until you can't tell one eighteen-hour day from another. It's a grinding job where you can never rest and you can never look as tired as you feel. Nobody wants to see an exhausted rock star rubbing blearily at his eyes and croaking about how if he is expected to handle a photo shoot, a rehearsal, an interview, and a recording session before noon, so there
damn
well better be Starbucks within arm's reach. Nobody wants to hear that performers work
damn
hard to look laid-back or that there's a point when it becomes impossible to tell just how little energy you have left since you've been running on empty for so long. That's the scariest part: when you've deluded yourself into thinking that if you can just have one more double-shot espresso, it'll be fine.
Because at some point, most people crack. If you're lucky, that won't include shaving your head and attacking parked cars with umbrellas or going on weeklong benders that result in a long series of stints in rehab. But that aching, gnawing pressure that comes from working single-mindedly for a nebulous concept called
success
. . . it can't keep building forever without some sort of a release. Eventually, there has to be an outlet for the pressure, which ironically is what music used to be for me before it became my job. My foolproof method of relaxation now keeps me up at night with the guys, pacing recording studios, and obsessing over every minute detail of our careers.
Which is why when Tim called out, “Okay, let's take it from the top, everyone!” instead of nodding and leading into the song on the drums, I found myself setting down my drumsticks and massaging at the pounding headache beneath my temples.
“Tim, I'm calling a group meeting.”
That got his attention fast. Something that doesn't happen often when Tim goes into full work mode. In fact, the only thing that can consistently break through Timothy Goff's famed concentration is a call from his boyfriend, Corey O'Neal. But since they're still in the happy, chipper stage of a fresh relationship, despite the long-distance challenge, it's hard to know how long even that will work.
Tim set down his guitar and Chris rubbed his left eye, a sleepy gesture that he always makes when we've been pushing too hard for too long. Not that he'd ever admit it. Tim's a workaholic and Chris refuses to say anything because he doesn't want to slow anything down or hold anyone back. Maybe that's why we work so well as a band: All of us are paranoid that we're not pulling our weight. Except it also meant that Chris was never going to set down his guitar and demand some time off. Which left it up to me.
“I need a break.”
I blurted it out before I could convince myself to keep my mouth shut. One moment of hesitation and the part of me that had busted my ass for years would point out that the higher you rise the harder you fall. That I should keep my head down a little longer, slog through just one more brutal week laying down tracks for our upcoming EP . . . then the promotional period before the release . . . and the concert tour after.
My stomach twisted. I couldn't back down. Not again. Not this time.
“I need a break,” I repeated firmly.
Tim blinked at me in confusion. “We can take five if you want. Starbucks is on me.”
That's the way Tim works; someone's having an off day and he steps in and tries to fix it. Even though he's usually oblivious to the problem.
Chris eyed me and shook his head. “I don't think he's talking about a coffee break. What's going on, Dom?”
“I think that we should take a break for a while . . . try something new.”
Tim frowned. “I don't understand.”
Christ, I felt like I was trying to spit out the dreaded “It's not you, it's me” breakup line.
“I can't keep working at this pace! I want to get out of the recording studio at a decent time for a change. Get a full eight hours of sleep. Have a day to relax. Go out on a date. I want to enjoy what we've got going! Take a well-deserved break. And who knows? Maybe I'll even try my hand at songwriting.”
The guys nodded silently while I spelled out exactly what I wanted; neither of them looked the least bit fazed, until I mentioned that last part. At least they hadn't seen that one coming.
Chris stared at me as if I had just announced I wanted to go to all our interviews in drag. “You want to
write?
I had no idea. Since when, Dom?”
I shrugged uncomfortably. “I've considered it for a while, but . . . we've always been rehearsing or performing or giving interviews and . . . I never found the time.”
Pathetic excuse. “My dog ate my lyrics” would have probably sounded better. Sure, being a member of ReadySet left me with little time to sleep, let alone to do anything else. But as the photogenic band frontman, Tim had to do even more of the publicity stuff than Chris or me combined—and he always came through with fresh material.
Then again, not everyone could be like Hollywood golden boy Timothy Goff.
If it weren't for the fact that the guy was my best friend, I'd have a hard time keeping my competitive nature in check.
Still, I wasn't lying when I said that I had considered composing songs. I just couldn't seem to do it when I knew that one of the best lyricists in the U.S. would be breathing down my neck the whole time. It was kind of like a high school student working on writing his first horror story with Stephen King reading over his shoulder. Not exactly the most conducive atmosphere for a first timer to create something great, or even halfway decent.
Tim nodded cautiously. “Look, Dom, if you want to write songs I think that's great. Hell, it'll ease up my workload.” He flashed his famous grin, the one that had landed him on
People
's Most Beautiful list for two consecutive years; Chris and I had teased him mercilessly about that. “But now just isn't the time for a break.”
“Now is the perfect time,” I argued. “We're a week out from Christmas. If we split up our existing obligations—and don't add any new ones—we can actually enjoy the holidays. Relax for a change. Maybe even get real social lives!”
Chris and Tim exchanged looks, and I forcibly shoved my hands back into my pockets before I could rake them through my dark brown hair and make it look like I'd recently shoved a fork into a light socket. That's how a photographer had once described the look I'd accidentally created when I'd gotten frustrated near the end of his photo shoot. Everyone hanging around had a good laugh except the hairdresser, who scurried over to fix the damage.
“Uh, you don't seem like yourself right now, man,” Chris said finally.
Which was absolutely true. I couldn't maintain the easygoing, laid-back drummer persona I had carefully packaged for the public. Even knowing that everyone wandering in and out of the recording studio could surely see that I was at my breaking point, I couldn't force any of my muscles to lose their rigidity. Dominic Wyatt, casual rock star, had left the building. In his place was a shell of a musician, exhausted yet restless, drained yet jumpy, like an insomniac who had just downed a triple-shot espresso after a sleepless night.
But I wasn't about to admit as much to my friends. My pride had some limits. So I deflected instead of answering. Even at my most ragged, my Hollywood training in the art of changing the subject had turned it into a reflex.
“Look, if we don't take a break now we'll just keep pushing it back. And soon we'll have the MTV awards, or maybe a movie sound track job, or a concert tour, and it'll be another night on the road or in a hotel room, scarfing down food between sound checks and performances.”
I turned to Tim. “You've got a boyfriend, Tim. Don't you want to be able to see him instead of texting between interviews and appointments?”
I had him there and all of us knew it. He had been trying to schedule more visits to Portland, but it's not exactly on concert tour routes with the regularity of bigger cities like LA and NYC.
“You could surprise him for Christmas. You remember Christmas, right? That's the holiday we've worked through for the past two years. And, Chris, weren't you dating an actress not too long ago? What happened with that?”
Chris grimaced. “We started living in this studio. That's what happened.”
I could sense the two of them slowly coming around to my point of view.
“Tim can handle that
Cosmo
shoot by himself and then fly to Portland. Chris, you didn't want to leave LA, did you?”
He shook his head and I found the tension in my back easing a little.
“Great! Then you can take that movie sound track meeting. That'll take a day, max. Which should give you plenty of time to pay a certain celebrity a visit. Although, what she sees in a guy like you . . .”
Chris feigned a punch to my arm and when I moved to block it he smacked me upside the head. But he was grinning the whole time and seemed more relaxed than I had seen him in ages. I might have been the first to admit exhaustion but that didn't mean I was the only one feeling it, which made me feel slightly better about being the first to break.
“And what will you be doing, o mastermind?” Tim wanted to know. “Partying it up in a club?”
I smiled, glad that the time I had spent poring over our group obligations and upcoming events had paid off.
“Remember that deal we were considering with Famous cruise line? Three nights of concerts and complete freedom the rest of the time? Well, I called up the owner, Jeff Ridgley, and he's very interested in hiring us. Best of all, he's open to our provision for limited fan access. So I'll meet with him and check it out on his eight-day cruise to Mexico and then catch up on my sleep.”
“Right,” Chris replied, his grin growing wider. “With all those girls on board wearing skimpy bathing suits and throwing themselves at you,
uninterrupted sleep
is exactly what you'll be looking for at night.”
“I might be interested in other means of relaxation,” I admitted, thinking more about putting my dive certification class to good use in clear tropical waters than girls in swimsuits. Air tanks don't have a tendency to squeal and ask for autographs.
Tim raised an eyebrow. “What about all that songwriting you wanted to do?”
“I'm sure I can squeeze in time for that between drinks and dives. Or I can hold off and do my writing back in LA after the trip. After all, if you can do it, it can't be
that
hard.”
He shook his head but laughed all the same. “Okay, so we take one week off and—”
“Two,” I corrected.
Tim looked ready to mutiny at that.
“Two full weeks,” I repeated. “Starting immediately. And by the time we meet up, we'll be well rested and working on the best songs ever produced by ReadySet. And those songs will be written by me.”
That last part sounded pretty damn cocky, especially when you consider that I didn't have any experience stringing more than a single sentence together or tweaking Tim's words in collaboration with Chris. But it felt good to pretend like I was actually the laid-back, confident drummer most people expected, now that things appeared to be going my way.
Tim looked skeptical. “And when are you going to get all of this writing done if you're relaxing with a swarm of female fans?”
BOOK: Decked with Holly
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