Rock Star Ex (4 page)

“What?
 
No!
 
That’s not what I…”

“You don’t need to explain,” she cut him off with
her icy tone.

He stood transfixed by the power in her voice.

 
“Message
received.”
 
 
She poked his chest with one of her perfectly
manicured fingers.
 
 
“But I also have something to say, you
self-centered, assuming jerk.
 
No one,
and I mean no one, is allowed to make decisions for me.”
 
Her voice was low now and could have deep-frozen
his testicles.
 
“The decisions you made
then were for you and you alone.
 
How
dare you try to make this about me.”

Her eyes could have easily drilled a hole through
his skull.
 
He’d never seen them glow so
hotly before.

She turned abruptly to leave.
 
Her hand was on the doorknob.
 

He couldn’t leave it like this.
 
“Eve…”

“Don’t.”
 
She
stopped him with a word, turning back to pin him with her eyes.
 
“We don’t
ever
need to speak again.
 
Do you understand
me?”

He nodded his chin just a fraction, but he didn’t
want to.

She opened the door and slipped out as the groupies
waiting in the hall flooded in.

Chapter
Two

Somewhere a cat meowed mournfully, and with a twinge
of annoyance.
 
Eve clenched the pillows
even tighter to her head in an effort to block out the sound, wishing there was
some way to train a cat.
 
Chloe was a
stickler for routine.
 
When she didn’t
get her breakfast on time she became demanding.
 
Cracking an eye open, she noted that it was twenty minutes after seven.
 
She’d barely made it home an hour ago.
 
Her entire body was exhausted and yet she
still couldn’t sleep.
 

Disrespectful entities like the sun, which now shone
through every available crevice, and her cat Chloe, were doing their best to
wake her up at the usual hour.
 
She
sighed and eased her hold on the pillow.
 
There was nothing to do at this point but get up and have a lazy, groggy
Saturday.
 
What other kind of day could a
person have with no sleep?

After the backstage party last night they had all
headed to a warehouse where the after-hours party had gone off.
 
Los Angeles had a strict policy with regards
to the closing time for bars.
 
After-hours
parties were illegal, but they were the trend these days, and they happened in
all kinds of places.
 
You just had to be
in the loop to get invited.

She slowly eased her calves from the bed and sat on
the edge for a moment to assess the damage.
 
Chloe ran over in excitement meowing even louder, pacing back and forth
in front of her.
 
The cat’s long, fluffy
orange tail brushed her legs with each pass.
 
This could not continue, her hangover wouldn’t allow it.
 
As quickly as she could, which was not very
quick, she went to the kitchen and dropped some food into Chloe’s bowl to stop
the meowing.
 
Then she moved to the coffee
pot.
 
Some caffeine would be a blessing
right now.

She plopped down on one of the wooden dining table
chairs, which she had restored herself, and waited for the coffee to brew.
  
Last night was a blur.
 
After speaking with Devon she’d made her way
back to Kate, who’d still been hanging out with the band, and had a fuzzy
memory of drinking shots.
 
Normally she
never did shots, but she distinctly remembered doing two in quick
succession.
 
After that, not much else
was clear.
 
There were some other snippets
of memories, of her dancing to techno music at the after-hours party, but that
was all.
 
Huh. Well, hopefully Kate would
be able to fill in the gaps.

Oh,
no.
 
Fill in the gaps!
 
Her eyes shot open and she was
instantly wide-awake.
 
Kate had been
taking pictures and posting them all night.
 
She grabbed the cell phone charging on the kitchen counter and scanned
several media feeds, groaning at what she saw.
 
There were posts not only on her personal and business feeds but also on
the Arsenal Facebook and Web site pages.
 
There she was, and it wasn’t pretty.
 

Apparently it had been a very wild night.
 
When had they gone to look at the band tour
bus?
 
Well, at least it looked like a bus
of some kind from the little she could gather.
 
There were pictures of her sitting in
different band members’ laps and even one with the manager and agent kissing
her cheeks.
 
Later there had been a dog
pile of bodies on a bed.
 
Her laughing
face and a couple of her limbs were clearly identifiable.
 
Thankfully there were none with Devon in
them.
 
In each picture she held a
different drink in her hand.
 
She could
tell by the colors and glasses.
 
She
groaned and let the phone slip back to the counter.
 
No wonder she felt like crap.
 
Ugh.
 

She was going to have to kill Kate later.
 
But she had to admit it: the pictures were
attention-getting, and ideal for social media.
 
And the captions Kate had posted were hilarious.
  
One read, ‘Super groupie works her magic in
the tour bus’ and another, ‘
Musical laps…Lap
ratings, coming soon
’.

If Devon hadn’t been there for those, she had no
doubt he would be seeing them soon.
 
She
wished she could remember.
 
She had been
so proud of herself for being strong when they’d spoken, but then to go and get
sloppy drunk right after that?
 
It just
wasn’t her style.
  

She didn’t know why it bothered her.
 
He meant nothing to her anymore.
 
Lifting her hands, she pressed them to her
face.
 
Her breath wafted out through her fingers.
 
It would be okay.
 
There wasn’t anything truly bad on there.
 

Besides, it was just business.
 
It was what she and Kate did.
 
They’d launched their own social media consulting
business right out of college.
 
Actually,
it would do wonders for them to have pictures of them interacting with high-profile
celebrities like Arsenal.
 
They were only
one year into it and the business was going pretty well but they had yet to
land a big customer.
 
Maybe Kate had been
thinking about the pictures generating business.
 
With that, she decided not to kill her
friend.
 
But a mild strangling might be
in order.

Having finished her breakfast, Chloe sauntered off
to her usual spot in front of the sliding glass door to groom herself.
 
Just like clockwork.
 
That was where the sun would shine into the
house first.
 
The coffee maker beeped
signaling it was ready and she got up to make herself a cup.
 
She stirred in her favorite hazelnut creamer
and some sugar and took a sip.
 
Ahhh
…
 
she might live
now.
 
Taking her cup with her to the
living room, she settled into her favorite leather recliner, pulled the blue
throw blanket over herself and clicked on the TV.
 
With the way her head felt, she was sure she
wouldn’t be moving much from this spot all day.

She was on what must have been her second home and
garden show, drifting in and out of consciousness, when the phone rang.
 
She would have let it ring but she could tell
from the ring tone that it was Kate.
 
Why
hadn’t she thought to bring the cell phone with her from the kitchen and put it
on the side table?
 
She heaved herself
out of the chair and went to answer it.

“Kate?”
 

“Eve, you will not believe what has just
happened!”
 

She held the phone back from her ear.
 
Kate’s excited voice had caused a searing
ache to shoot across her brain.
 
Did she
not know how early it was and that it was Saturday?
 
She squinted at the clock on her
DVR
, underneath the TV. The hands were pointing exactly at eleven.
 
She must have fallen back to sleep in between
shows.
 
“What happened?”

“Clayton Drake just called me.
 
They want to hire us to handle the social
media for their tour coming up, to promote the new album!”
 
Kate barely got the last bit out as her voice
escalated in a squeal.
 
It wasn’t hard to
envision her jumping up and down.

“He…what?”
 
She’d almost forgotten who Clayton Drake was.
 
“Do you mean for Arsenal?”

“Yes!
 
This is
our big break!”

For a moment Eve could only stand there in
shock.
 
Handle the social media for Arsenal.
 
One of the hottest rock bands ever… for a new
album.
 
It
was
the break they’d been waiting for.
 
And there was absolutely no way to turn it
down.
 
They could finally get them away
from the dinky, dry small-business consultations they’d been doing.
 
She remembered once wracking her brains
trying to come up with something exciting to post about a mechanic shop, but
could think of nothing even remotely noteworthy that the shop had been doing.

But working for Arsenal would be a whole different
story.
 
They were popular and alive and
exciting.
 
Sexy.
 
She felt a thrill start to well up inside
her.
 
The thrill was marred only by the
fact that Devon was part of the band, but there was no way she was going to let
that hold her back.
 
Handling social
media didn’t necessarily mean she would have to interact with him, just promote
things about him.
 
She was sure he would
be far away on the tour soon anyway.
 

She pushed the thought of him away and gave a whoop
of excitement, the rush of adrenaline overriding her hangover.
   
He was not going to spoil it for her.
 
“Oh my god!
 
I can’t believe it!
 
When do we
start?
 
What did he say?”

“We haven’t hammered out all the details yet.
 
But, when we were talking last night, he was
telling me how he felt like they were behind the times with this ‘social media
stuff’ and they needed a fresh perspective.
 
Remember?
 
You were there too.”

“Oh yeah.
 
Uh
huh,” Eve agreed, but no such memory came to her.

“Anyway, he loved the way we interacted with the
band and the shots we took.
 
I got some
great shots of the new lead singer when he was on stage.
 
He had asked me to send him some of the
pictures for their Web site, which I did right away, of course, along with a
couple of videos.
 
And he liked it.
 
He even checked out our posts online.
 
He loved everything!
  
Especially the spin I put on you as the
super groupie.”

“I was ready to kill you for that, by the way, but
that’s great!”
 
Eve said with a laugh.
 

Kate chuckled.
 
“I knew you would.
 
He even posted the stuff I sent him on the
band’s Web site and Facebook page.”

“I know. I saw it this morning.”

“You did? Great.
 
But get this: he wants to continue the super groupie thing.
 
He thinks it will build more intrigue and
participation from the fans.
 
He wants us
to give an intimate, up-close perspective on the band, so guess what?”

“What?”

“He wants us to go on tour with them!
 
We’re going to be on the bus, backstage, in
the dressing rooms, the hotel rooms, the after parties, the whole bit.
 
We are going to have the best time of our
lives!
 
Can you believe it?”