Outrageous Proposal (A British Bad Boy Romance) (48 page)

I smiled. “Thank you, Kev. Seriously.”

“Don’t mention it. You still a Jameson man?”

I
’d packed very particularly
, but it felt like I’d left my confidence in a bag somewhere between the red-eye flight I caught last minute at JFK and the layover in Denver. In ten minutes I had strewn my hotel room with dresses and jeans, black shirts and bright tank tops, trying to find some magic combination of clothing that made me feel invincible. Or hell, just make me feel okay.

I never got this nervous before a job. What was wrong with me? Maybe it was the shitty airline food messing with my blood sugar.

As I rifled through my bag, the sound of the TV blaring a commercial for the local news affiliate caught my attention. “Tonight at eleven—we speak to the childhood friends of rock star Noah Hardy about his latest legal trouble. And Seattle PD is in hot water again—you won’t believe why. Tune in.”

I shook my head at the news anchor, as if he could see me. Childhood friends, eh? Someone was desperate for a lead.

Finally, I unearthed the shirt from the depths of my bag and threw it on over my head. It had been a long time since I’d gone for this particular look, but as I wandered into the glowing white hotel bathroom, I had to give myself a smile. Ten years old and my torn-up skin-tight black jeans and band shirts still fit like a dream, accented by a studded, black leather belt. The combat boots, well… I had never really given those up.

My makeup was scattered out across the counter in a constellation of colors. I was going to need more than I usually cared to wear. In the debris field, I found a half-broken compact of deep maroon eyeshadow and used my pinky to sweep it across my eyelid in thick lines. It took me three false starts to get the swoop of my black eye liner just right, looking like the elaboration of a wrought-iron fence at the corner of my big, blue eyes. I’d splurged for a salon cut and color before I left New York, and my shoulder-length blonde mane was looking better than it had in months. Workaholics tend to push salon visits down to the bottom of the to-do list, but then, this wasn’t my usual job.

“All right,” I said to the skinny girl in the mirror. “You can do this.”

Something was missing. I looked myself up and down in the mirror’s reflection and decided it was lipstick I needed. I pulled out the brightest red from the counter mess and painted my pursed lips in the mirror.

“Oh, yeah,” I said with a grin. “He’s toast.”

I flipped the TV off and grabbed my leather jacket from one of the chairs near the window before double-checking that I had all my necessities: phone, wallet, keys, lipstick, pocket knife. I left the hotel room a mess and headed down to the lobby.

About halfway through the bright, high-ceilinged room, Steve appeared from out of the tiny gift shop with a plastic bag. He was older than me but athletic and good-natured, and I hadn’t seen him since we checked in yesterday. He’d been sick on the plane something fierce, but at least his face had some color now. His eyes widened as I approached.

“Holy shit,” he said. “You look great. DTF for sure.”

“Oh, fuck you,” I said with a flip of my middle finger.

“No, fuck
him
,” said Steve, pointing his finger up and over my head. I turned to look at the giant flat screen TV hanging over the fireplace. Another commercial for that story about Noah Hardy blared with a still photo of the rock star, his shirtless, tattooed chest exposed as he screamed like a banshee into a microphone at some concert.

“Yeah, right,” I said absently. “So, what’s the deal, are you feeling better? You still look a little queasy.” We ignored the businessmen and tourist families moving around us as we spoke.

Steve gave an earnest shrug and held up the plastic bag from the gift shop. “Better, but still bad enough I needed this. I think I’d just be holding you back if I came out with you tonight.”

I bit my lip, concerned. “I’d hate to miss an opportunity if it comes along…”

“So don’t,” said Steve. “You don’t have to wait for me to get this started. I’m basically back-up, right?”

I pulled out a piece of paper from my jacket pocket and made him take a picture of it with his phone. “I went around to some of the record shops today and did some asking. Took me a few hours, but I’ve got a couple different sources that think Noah and Duke are both in town, roaming around, but the others haven’t been spotted.”

Steve made a thinking noise as he overlooked the list of clubs I had given him. “They could just be trying to impress a pretty girl.”

“It would not be the dumbest thing a man has done to impress me,” I said, and meant it. “Nevertheless, there are enough similarities in the stories that my gut tells me it’s worth checking out.”

“So, what’s your plan?”

“One of the record store owners says he’s heard Noah’s looking for new band members, scouting out his old hardcore haunts, and the like. A couple other dudes said they’ve seen him at shows in the last two weeks, so it seems like a safe bet to get out to some and see if I can’t stumble across him.”

Steve nodded and put his phone in his pocket. “That’s good. That’s clean. Doesn’t sound like me spending the night with some room service and Pepto Bismol is going to slow you down even a little.”

I shrugged. “I am pretty good at what I do.”

“And I must give the obligatory dude speech of ‘please don’t get yourself into trouble…’ ”

I held up a palm and shoved it slowly onto Steve’s mouth until he was muttering gibberish and half-smiling underneath it. “No, you mustn’t, unless you want some trouble yourself. I’ll check in with you tomorrow and see how you’re feeling, tell you how the night went.”

“Knock ‘em dead, Laurel,” said Steve. He clapped a friendly hand on my shoulder and headed for the elevators.

I
growled
as I slumped into the driver’s seat of my rental car. It took me two tries to get the key in the unfamiliar ignition, but once I did the car flooded with warmth and made me feel a little better. I hadn’t even been in the Funhouse long enough to let the engine cool off, despite the chilly, wet Seattle night. The car smelled like pine and moss, a combination that surprisingly sent a feeling of calm through my nerves. With eyes closed, it was easy to imagine I was out in the middle of some quiet forest, instead of idling in a dive bar parking lot after a night of failure.

I pulled the list of clubs from my pocket and used a red sharpie to make an X next to the Funhouse. Strike seven. I’d paid over a hundred bucks already in cover charges and overpriced drinks and I was still no closer to finding Noah Hardy. All the chatter about him or Duke being in town was suddenly gone, and I found myself wondering if I was chasing ghosts out here.

There were only two more clubs on my list. The list was rated purely by proximity to the hotel, starting close and working my way out to the edges and suburbs of Seattle. The next on the list, the Horned Goat, already had a question mark next to it. I hadn’t been able to find a working phone number for the place and so suspected it was closed, joining many other independent clubs and bars that were folding under gentrification in this city.

The last bar on the list was the Graveyard Club, and its address wasn’t even in Seattle. It was in some place called Thornwood. My phone GPS put the drive at twenty minutes.

Tonight had already been such a disappointing bust that I decided to hell with the Horned Goat. If they couldn’t have a working phone, then I wasn’t even going to waste the time.

The Graveyard Club would, appropriately, be my last stop for the night.

With the help of the GPS, I drove Seattle’s winding, dark streets until the city was just a distant silhouette in my rear view. The highway exit to Thornwood came out of the depths of the pine forests like a surprise. It was a pretty cute little place in that shiny Americana way, but to be honest, everywhere in the northwest felt like an episode of
Twin Peaks
to me. The whole place felt haunted, dark, mysterious—and I loved it. So all I could think about behind the pretty storefronts and normal people were their secrets. We all had them, didn’t we? But something about this place made it feel like it would help you hide them.

It was in a seedier part of town that the Graveyard Club finally appeared, a gray, two-story building on a dangerous curve of road, nestled among the dark pines. The building looked like it had been around since the twenties, but without the care and upkeep of some of the other historical sites. Someone had painted the front side of it a sloppy black, then over that, in the same messy strokes, painted the club’s name in enormous letters I could see from twenty yards away.

The gravel lot was strewn with vehicles, so I pulled in carefully and took a quick look around after I killed the engine. A glance in the visor mirror made me touch up my lipstick with a heavy sigh. “If he’s not here, I’m getting drunk.”

The building thrashed with the sound of some seriously heavy music coming from inside that was loud even before I stepped out of the car. Each crunch of gravel under my boots lit my nerves up again, like earlier, back at the hotel. The failed search had turned my anxiety into boredom, but now it was coming back with a vengeance. I stuck my hands in my jacket pockets and tried to ignore it, head high, as I stepped into the Graveyard Club.

The hardcore music hit me in the face first thing, speakers blaring, shaking the walls. A fat, pale guy in a black t-shirt sat, bored, on a stool three sizes too small for him. I tried not to roll my eyes when he gave me a suggestive smile. Over the deafening music, he signaled for my ID, but when I gave it to him all I could focus on was his gross, sweaty palm beneath mine as he stamped my hand. I tossed him the required five dollar cover charge so I didn’t have to touch him again and hurried to the bar. I definitely needed a shot after that.

Like many of the other city dives, this place was dark, dirty, and had a smattering of schizophrenic décor gathering dust. Decades of scuff marks from people and equipment pocked the black-and-white tile floor. The club space was sort of split in half, with the bar and tables off to my left, and the stage and open crowd areas to the right. A few ratty booths lined the outer wall, most of which were vacant. A small group of dedicated moshers were going crazy in front of the stage, pushing each other in a circle pit. To an outsider, this ritual looked crazy, but it was just smoke and mirrors: no one was ever out to hurt anyone in a pit. It was good, old-fashioned daredevilry. And there was nothing like watching a good mosh pit to get my blood going. I stepped up to the bar with an eye on the crowd.

A grizzled old dude with waist-length, salt and pepper hair came up after a few moments. His face was weathered but smiling, eyes betraying he had probably just been blazing a joint in the back room. He leaned over the counter and shouted at me in a practiced voice, “Hi, darlin’! What can I get for you?”

“Shot of Jameson and a pint,” I shouted back over the music, to which he replied with the “okay” sign. Watching his tan, tattooed arms work, I had a feeling the Metallica shirt with the cut-off sleeves he was wearing was a straight-up original he’d gotten in the 80s, and it made me smile.

The Jameson burned softly down my throat as I scanned around the room, ready to be disappointed and, eventually, drunk. The lights near the stage strobed and swung, making it difficult to really get a handle on anyone’s face, at least until the band stopped and sets changed.

The old bartender returned with my beer and a smile. I took a big drink and looked back toward the crowd. The band wasn’t bad, young guys probably just starting out on the local circuit, but something about them had the crowd going pretty fierce for a tiny underground show. This wasn’t a show for the suburbanites, the ones who pay triple digits for nosebleed seats every five years when Neil Diamond comes to town. This was a place for the loyal dogs.

It was halfway through my beer when I spotted him in the mosh pit. Really, it was a fucking wonder I hadn’t seen him the second I opened the door to the club. Say what you want about the dude’s reputation or his music—but Noah Hardy is a built, attractive man that stands out in a crowd. Like a wolf among lap dogs.

Noah Hardy, the world-famous rock star. The bad boy. The drunk-in-public, fight-picking, womanizing lead vocalist of Cut Up Angels, right here, ten feet from me in some hometown mosh pit.

The light glowed across his bare chest and shoulders, exposing his tattoos in little swatches, like works of art being uncovered from the dark. Sweat coated his skin, making his muscles glisten. With his strawberry blonde hair and shaggy beard, his firm muscles, and his whittled waist, he looked like some gorgeous Irish bareknuckle boxer. Like he belonged in some tougher, more violent century.

Good God, he was the hottest fucking thing I had ever seen in my life.

It wasn’t like I hadn’t seen Noah before. I’d been to his shows, of course—who hadn’t, at this point? But this was something else. I felt like I was seeing him naked. As he raged in the mosh pit with the rest of the hardcore crowd, it was like I was privy to some intensely private side of Noah Hardy that I hadn’t even known existed.