Lowdown and Lush Read online

  I laugh bitterly. “I doubt that. I can pretty much guarantee that Michael doesn’t want to see me except to get my album done. He’ll be glad to get rid of me, however that happens.”

  “I don’t believe that for a second,” she says with an eyebrow raised. “But if it is true, then there’s one less reason not to bunk with JR. He’s a good guy, Jenny. I swear it. You’ll be safe there, and he’ll be a buffer between you and Mike. Unless you want Joss and me to just get you a place of your own. We’d be happy to.”

  I feel my cheeks heat. I’ve never had to rely on charity. At least if I were staying with JR, I could cook and clean for him so I’d earn some of my own keep. I don’t care how much money Joss and Mel have. I can’t let them just give me a place to live for the next four months.

  “I could never ask that of you,” I tell her. “Maybe I could stay with JR just for a few days until I figure something else out?”

  “Okay. I’ll call him,” she says. “Now, about work…”

  After we plot how I’m going to handle Michael at the studio every day, Mel calls Joss and he goes down to get their rental car. I grab my car and follow them over to the studio, trying not to sweat through my top the whole way. I think I’m more scared to see Michael now than I was when he took me to bed last night.

  When we arrive in the studio, the lights are on, but no one’s there. I breathe a big sigh of relief. Mel stays around for a while, but at some point, Joss and I become immersed in what we’re doing and I see her slip out the side door. Probably off to shop for more wedding stuff. Apparently, she’s having the wedding of the century in Portland—the combination of Joss’s money and her mother’s fantasies.

  We’ve been working about two hours when he finally shows up. I swear I can feel him in the building before he even walks through the door. He comes in uncharacteristically quietly for him. Joss stops the chord he’s strumming as I sing the refrain to the song we’re working on. My words fade and we all just sit there awkwardly looking at one another. I realize right then that Joss knows what happened and I want to melt into the floor. I’m not sure I can ever face the man again.

  “Hey,” Michael says, his brow furrowed. “Can, uh, can you give us a minute?” he asks Joss.

  Joss nods before setting his guitar in the case on the floor next to him. He stands, walks over to Michael, and leans into him. “Don’t fuck this up,” he growls before he looks back at me and gives me a sympathetic smile. “I’ll be right outside, Jenny. If you need me.”

  Then he’s gone and I’m faced with the man who smashed my heart to pieces twelve hours earlier.

  “Hi, Sunshine,” he says tentatively.

  “Don’t.” I tell him, somewhat startled by the forcefulness in my own voice. “Don’t call me that.”

  “I’m sorry, Jenny. I’m sorry for everything. I…” He shoves a hand through that thick batch of dark hair he has. I want to go over and stroke it, soothe him, even though I know he’s lost the right to ever get that from me again. “I was a complete asshole. I just, um… You startled me. A lot. I had no idea.”

  “Obviously,” I deadpan.

  “Why? Why would you do something like that?” he asks, sounding more than a little desperate.

  “It’s not like I planned it, Michael,” I snap. “If you’ll recall, you were the one waiting for me in my room at two a.m. spouting off all kinds of jealous things about who I could and couldn’t spend time with.”

  He paces the room, frustration rolling off him in waves. “I wasn’t jealous.”

  I stand up, feeling at a disadvantage sitting down while he’s stomping around above me. “You were as jealous as an old hen when the rooster brings home a fresh one. Just admit it. You don’t want me, but you don’t want anyone else to have me either.” I feel the tears threatening to reappear. Haven’t I cried enough of these damn things yet?

  He turns to me, a smoldering look on his perfect features. His dark gaze assesses me in a moment and I’m hot and bothered even as my heart is aching.

  “You’re so wrong. I absolutely want you, Sunshine. That’s the problem. This isn’t about wanting. It’s about doing, and I can’t be doing anything like I did last night again.”

  “No need to worry, then. You won’t be getting any more invitations. Trust me on that one.”

  As if he were a cannonball just released, he’s across the room in a split second, in my space. He looks down at me with what I can only describe as possession. “You sure about that?” he asks in a low voice. “You sure you can turn me away that easily?”

  I cross my arms protectively and glare up at him, the heat in me now coming from sheer anger. “Stop it!” I hiss. “Stop playing games with me. I’m not some blow-up doll you bought at the porn shop. I’m a human being. I have feelings and needs and a heart—not that you know what one of those is.”

  He takes a step back, watching me, his expression cautious. “This is killing me. You have to know that.”

  “I don’t know that. I don’t know much of anything. You say you want me but not if I’m a virgin. You say you want me but you can’t have me. You say you want me, but you never say you care about me. You’ve been my best friend for months now, Michael, but there’s always been this underneath it, and now that it’s finally out in the open, it’s no clearer than it was before. Why can’t you just put it out there so we can be done with it?”

  “Why don’t you?” he snaps back. “You put it out there. What was last night? Did you just want to get it over with? Lose your v-card and I happened to be convenient?”

  “Aaah!” I shriek. I think I might hate him right now. “You’re impossible. And you know that’s not what last night was for me. I was ready to do that with you because I thought we had something special, because I thought you were something special. But you proved me wrong, didn’t you?”

  He snorts. “I didn’t prove anything except that I’m me. You’ve known who I am since the first time we met, Sunshine. And you know I’ll press any advantage I can get. You can’t expect me to be alone in a dark hotel room with a hot and willing woman and not take you up on it. I’m Mike Owens.”

  I stare at him, horrified. How in the world the sweet guy who’s been my friend all this time became this monster is beyond me. How could I have been so wrong about someone?

  “I guess you are,” I whisper. “I just wonder who it is I’ve been with the last six months.” The fight is sucked right out of me now. “So, that’s what last night was, then? You pressing the advantage you had? Jumping on the chance to get laid when the preacher’s daughter was dumb enough to be alone in a dark room with you? Wow, Michael. Just wow.”

  He’s leaning against the wall now, his back to me. His arms are extended, hands pressing into the plasterboard, his head hanging down. He doesn’t turn or look at me.

  “We need to get this album done, and then you’ll be rid of me,” he says.

  I wish I could say that made me happy, but it doesn’t. In spite of the last twenty-four hours, I’m not ready to be away from him forever.

  “How are we supposed to work together now?” I ask frankly.

  He pushes off the wall and turns to me, his eyes sad for just a moment before they go flat. I shiver.

  “You just push through. I’ve done it before. You can do it too. You don’t have to spend any more time with me than is necessary for the album. I’ll stay out of your way.”

  “I need to find somewhere to stay.”

  “Why?” he asks.

  “I’m not going to stay in your house with you, Michael, I’m just not. But Mel said she’s going to call JR. He’s renting a place while he’s in town on business. We can room together. I just need the hotel suite for a couple more days while we work out the details. Then I’ll move my stuff.”

  I can see his entire body stiffen, and his face grows dark. “No.” His tone is sharp. “No, you won’t be rooming with JR. As soon as the loft is done, you’ll move in there. I’ll stay at the hotel.”

 
; “You can’t be serious—” I start to argue.

  He cuts me off. “As a heart attack. It’s in your contract, Sunshine. I provide you with all housing and an expense account—that’s what I’m going to do. Not JR, me.”

  I look at him with a raised eyebrow but decide it’s not worth the fight. As long as I don’t have to see him when I’m done with work every day, I don’t really care where I sleep.

  “Fine,” I answer. I know the polite thing to do would be to say that I’ll stay at the hotel and he can have his own house, but I’m not feeling like being polite to Mike Owens. Ever again.

  “All right then.” He moves to the door. “When will you and Joss have those songs hammered out so I can start doing some arrangements?”

  “We have four of them. You can hear them tomorrow if you’d like.”

  “Great. I’ll see you here in the morning.”

  I feel like all the life has been sucked out of me. I can envision the next four months reduced to this. Short business conversations. Nothing more. It makes me ill.

  He looks at me as he opens the door. I see Joss leaning against the wall across the hallway and I have to smile inside—he stayed that close. Mel has him trained well.

  “If you need anything, please let me know,” Michael says very formally. “It’s in your contract, and I will fulfill every word of it.” With that, he mutters something at Joss and walks out.

  Mike

  THE WOMAN underneath me is blond. I know it’s twisted, but I can’t help it. Every woman I’ve been with in the last six days has been blond, but none of them are her. I pound into blondie again, and she makes some noise like a wailing cat. I roll my eyes but try to focus on the sensations of slick heat that will get me off.

  I have her ass up in the air, doing her from behind so that I don’t have to look at her face. All I can see is skin and that blond hair. But it’s the wrong shade—platinum from a bottle instead of gold from nature. When she makes that noise again, I feel my dick shrivel from the sound of her.

  “Hey, let’s see how quiet we can do this, babe. It’s a little quirk of mine.”

  She pants, “You have a lot of quirks, but okay.”

  I’ve lashed her wrists to the headboard, and when I reach down underneath her, I can feel her tits swaying with the motion of my pumping. I close my hands around them, but they’re like two water balloons and I let go as soon as I touch them. My mind buzzes with the memories of Jenny’s perfect, soft, pliant breasts in my palms. I feel things down south start to take a fall again. Jesus, it shouldn’t be this hard to fuck a woman. At this point, I’d rather be in the shower with my right hand and my fantasies of Jenny.

  So I close my eyes, keep my hands pasted to blondie’s hips, and think of Jenny. I think of her smile, her big, blue eyes, and her incredible ass in that ice-blue dress she had on the night I took her to bed. I’m finally getting caught up in the fantasy, my balls tightening up, when blondie lets loose with another one of her cat cries.

  “Fuck!” I hiss as I pull out of her.

  She looks over her shoulder at me, her face a mask of confusion. I stand up and snap the condom off, dropping it on the floor.

  “What’s the matter, baby?” she asks in her rough smoker’s voice.

  “I told you to be quiet,” I say callously.

  “I’m sorry. Come on back over here and I’ll make it all better. I can be quiet. Honest.”

  I walk over and pull the end of the silk cord binding her wrists, untying her. “No. I’ve lost interest, princess. It’s time for you to go.”

  “You can’t be serious?” she says, incensed.

  “Completely,” I tell her. “Get your shit and get out.”

  “You’re an asshole,” she snarls.

  “Yep. It’s my specialty.” I grab her clothes off the floor, toss them into the living room, and give her a little shove out of the bedroom. I slam the door and lock it. Then I stride to the shower, knowing that I’ll enjoy the next few minutes a hell of a lot more than I’ve enjoyed the last few days.

  JOSS AND Mel left last night, and I’m preoccupied by the knowledge that Jenny is all alone, no friends or family here in Dallas. It’s Sunday, so we’re not working today, but I’m ready to say that we need to work seven days a week so that I have an excuse to see her. My whole damn body aches. My chest, my head, my dick. I never thought losing her would be this hard. Never.

  The time in the studio working out arrangements is the only chance I have to be with her. But she’s so coldly polite, so distant and unlike my Jenny, that it’s like looking at a photo of someone who’s dead. You feel better to see their face but worse too because you can’t touch them.

  Once I have blondie washed off me, I get dressed and decide to do what I always do after a rough Saturday night—go out to breakfast.

  I step off the elevator, focused on the view out the front doors of the hotel. I’m not as recognizable as Joss, but there is the occasional day when a few Lush groupies will set up outside, hoping to catch me as I come in or out. I’m not in the mood to be ‘rock star Mike’ this morning.

  Instead of fans, however, I see Jenny standing beside the front doors in a sweet, peach sundress and a little, white, short-sleeved cardigan. I pause for a moment, taking in her angelic profile, and I’m flooded with the knowledge of what a fool I’ve been for the last week. How I could have thought those pale imitations of Jenny could ever be substitutes? I really am better off alone. My same old routines just don’t apply anymore. It’s like my life is divided now into “before the night with Jenny” and “after the night with Jenny.”

  I’m watching her, flooded with all these overwhelming feelings, when I see JR fucking DuBois stride into the hotel. He goes to her and puts his hands on her shoulders as he smiles down at her. She smiles right back, saying something that makes him laugh, and he gently ushers her out to his car, which is waiting in front of the doors. It’s obvious that this is not the first time they’ve seen each other since they met.

  As they drive away, I feel like I’ve been kicked in the chest. It’s hard to breathe, and the ache that’s been there for days increases until it’s a sharp pain. Fuck. I think I might be having a heart attack. I stumble to a nearby armchair in the lobby’s seating area and collapse.

  I had no idea. No idea that she was seeing him.

  I think back to the last six nights—nights I’ve been going out to bars, getting loaded, and fucking random women. What an idiot I am. I just assumed that my Sunshine was home, tucked safely in her room the way she was all summer while we were on tour. But I realize that, over the summer, we were still a possibility, still best friends, still hanging on each other’s strings, waiting for that mysterious something that lay between us.

  Everything changed that night last week. The possibilities died, the friendship was destroyed. There’s no reason for Jenny to sit in a lonely hotel room waiting for me to wake the hell up. I woke up, slapped her in the face, and ran out the damn door. She’s beautiful, sweet, talented, and the fucking sexiest woman I’ve ever known. Of course she’s seeing JR.

  I put my head in my hands, noticing that they’re shaking. I’m fucking shaking, and it’s not the hangover.

  “Excuse me, Mr. Owens?” The concierge appears above me. “I was just ringing your room, sir. You have an important message.”

  I look up at him, not processing what he’s telling me. “What? A message?”

  “Yes, sir. It’s from a hospital in Portland, Oregon? Apparently it involves your father?”

  Shit. I swallow. Why the hell would a hospital be calling me about my old man? I haven’t seen him in over a year. I make sure he always knows where I am, but we only talk every couple or three months and we never visit.

  “Uh, yeah. What is it?” I say.

  The concierge hands me a slip of paper with a name and number on it. “They’ve asked that you call right away and speak to the nurse whose name is listed there.”

  “Yeah, okay. Thanks.”

/>   He nods, giving me a sympathetic look before he walks away.

  I take my cell phone out of my pocket, noting the five calls from an unknown number in Portland that I ignored this morning, and dial, wondering what new level of hell my life is about to reach. Who says there’s no karma?

  MY RIDE to the airport is short and thankfully quiet. It’s only been forty-five minutes since I made the phone call. My father had a massive heart attack last night and triple bypass surgery at five this morning. He’s in the ICU and things aren’t looking good. I’ve called Walsh and Tammy and they’re on their way to go watch over things until I get there. It’s not my first choice. I don’t like to get anyone else involved in my family shit, but at least my dad has known Walsh for a couple of decades and will be comfortable with him.

  I stare out the window, watching the freakishly flat and sprawled landscape of Dallas speed by. I think back to the last time I saw the old man. It was Christmas before last and I was in Portland on a break from one of our tours. I was still reeling from Tammy and Joss’s little rendezvous and I wasn’t in any mood to spend time with Richard.

  He wanted to make us a fancy Christmas dinner, thought it was something we could do together in between football games. I just wanted to order carry-out and hit a bar without him. It’s so painful to be in the same room with him. I feel so many contradictory feelings that I spend most of my time with him thinking up excuses to get away.

  When Christmas finally arrived, I stumbled downstairs at noon. My dad was in the kitchen, a turkey in the oven and all kinds of things spread out on the countertops. He was mixing some sort of batter, with a laptop set up live-streaming a college ballgame.

  “Well, look who’s managed to come to,” he joked. “How’s that morning-after treating you, rock star?”

  I snarled at him and went straight to the coffee pot, pouring myself an extra-large mug.

  “You going to help me make this food?” he asked as he measured corn meal and poured it into a bowl.