Girl With Guitar (4 page)

K
ylie
did everything she could to try and behave like a normal human being for the rest of her shift. She waited tables, filled drink orders, and ran drinks for waitresses on break. She rolled her eyes when Tonya gestured maniacally at Trace Corbin and a few other men who were sitting in a back booth with Clive.

“That was seriously amazing. I mean,
wow
,” Tonya told her with wide eyes as they cleaned the hospitality room. “Trace’s band still hasn’t cleared out of the green room. And by the way, he was totally giving you fuck me eyes on stage.”

“No he wasn’t,” Kylie said, feeling her cheeks heat because she couldn’t help but wonder what
was
going on in that glare of his.

“Yeah he was,” Tonya said with a laugh. “And I mean it, you held your own.” The woman didn’t even attempt to keep the awe out of her voice. “That chick I told you about going on tour, she couldn’t hold a candle to you.”

“Whatever, I think you need to go home and get some rest. I got this.” Kylie shooed her away saying, “Think of your cute little kiddo in her little pink jammies.”

Tonya paused near the door. “I’m just…I’m afraid I’ll never see you again,” she said quietly.

“Unless Clive fires me, you’ll see me tomorrow.”

But Tonya just shook her head and then crossed the room to give Kylie a hard squeeze.

I am so fired
, she thought as her friend hugged her tighter.

“Don’t get pregnant,” Tonya whispered in her ear, and then she was gone.

Okay,
weird.

T
he
employee lounge was empty when Kylie settled in to wait for Trace Corbin and his band to vacate the green room so she could start cleaning up. Her heart was still beating a bit faster than usual from the night’s odd twist of events.

She couldn’t stop replaying the scenes over and over in her head. If this was how working at The Rum Room would be, hectic, unexpected, and amazing, she could see herself being happy here for a long time. A wide smile was still stretched across her face when Clive came in, looking similar to how Ms. Pam had the day she let Kylie go.
Of course.
In her life, everything that seemed to be too good to be true always was.

“Well, little lady. I have to say, you surprised me this evening,” Clive told her, wiping his sweaty brow and sinking into the couch next to her.

“Good surprise or bad surprise?” she asked, using all the self-control she had not to bite her lip.

Clive chuckled in response but didn’t answer. “There are some men out there that have a proposition for—”

“Oh no, Tonya already told me about those men,” Kylie broke in.

“Not
those men
, Kylie. Trace Corbin’s guys.”

“Um, am I like in trouble or something?” She gave in and chewed her bottom lip.
Geez, could the guy not handle a little sarcasm?

Her boss laughed again and shook his head. “For heaven’s sakes girl, they want to talk to you about touring with him.”

“What?” Kylie figured this had to be a joke. And not a particularly funny one.

“Look, Trace is a good kid. I’ve known him a long time but lately things have been—”

“I know,” she interrupted quietly. “I watch TMZ.”

“Right, so here’s the thing. It’s your life and this is a huge break. I’m not too old to see that. But you’re young and talented and I can make some calls. It’s not like this is your only shot, understand?”

Her mind couldn’t even fully accept that this was really happening in order to answer. Trace Corbin’s “guys” were about to offer her some kind of a deal. But Clive was advising against it, sort of.
Too much to process
, she thought to herself while trying to regulate her breathing. Her hopes were on the verge of soaring out of her reach but Clive’s warning kept them hanging on, even if it was by a thread.

“So you think I should tell them ‘thanks, but no thanks’?”

Her boss heaved out a sigh. “I can’t tell you what to do. You seem like a smart girl, and if you decide to go…then I’ll understand. You will always be welcome here to play music or to wait tables or whatever you want.”

“Thanks, Clive. Seriously.” She paused for a second and then added, “He doesn’t like me very much, does he?” She said a silent prayer that she wouldn’t have to clarify.

The older man cleared his throat so loud it sounded painful. “It’s not about that. And if it does start to be about that, then you need to get the hell off that tour.”

L
ike
the ghost of dreams past, the girl staring back at Kylie was a stranger. So many times she’d dreamed of performing in front of a packed house. And now here she was, about to live her dream.

Straightened silky blond locks flowed over her shoulders framing perfect skin and clear blue eyes that were wider and brighter than they’d ever been. The spray tan, facial, teeth whitening, and full body wax she’d had to undergo had peeled away plain old Kylie, and underneath was
Kylie Ryans
, fresh-faced newcomer touring with Trace Corbin.

It was her first show as Trace’s opening act. Pauly wanted them to do a song together, but Trace wasn’t interested. In fact, Trace was pretty much non-existent.

The morning after Trace’s big night at The Rum Room, Lulu had called shrieking with excitement about seeing Kylie and Trace on the Internet. Kylie had told her friend about the offer from Trace’s guys.

Despite the arguments she’d built up in her head and the long list of reasons not to run off and jump on a fledgling tour, Lulu had cut clean to the point. “No offense, Ky, but what have you got to lose?”

A cold hotel room and a waitressing job, albeit a pretty good one. Seemed stupid to turn down a legitimate offer from a once platinum album-selling superstar. Plus, there were only six shows left on the tour. How bad could it be?

So far, pretty damn bad.

The first time she’d stepped onto the huge bus, the smell of leather and expensive men’s cologne nearly overwhelmed her. Running her hand lightly over a marble countertop, she stopped abruptly when she saw Trace Corbin sitting in the circular booth across from the compact kitchenette area she had to walk through to get to the room she’d been told was hers. Like a gauntlet.

“Mr. Corbin,” she said softly, mentally slapping herself for how much of an intimidated kid she sounded like.

He didn’t stand up, didn’t shake her hand, or even offer her a head nod in greeting. No “Welcome to the tour,” or “Mi casa su casa.” Nothing. Just steely eyes raking over her, appraising her and finding her lacking. He raised an eyebrow and leaned back in the booth, taking up as much space as possible. As if to say he was king of all he surveyed and she was taking up too much of his time and too much room on his bus.

Well, she wasn’t looking for a new BFF. She could deal. She quirked a brow of her own, passing him quickly. And then she hid in her tiny room for the rest of the evening.

Giving up on the fitful version of sleep she’d been working at, she sat up in the middle of the night somewhere between Nashville and Dallas. The bus was stopped and she could hear men arguing. Kylie tried lying back down and closing her eyes to block them out until she heard something that sent her heart pounding. Her name.

“Seriously, this is the best you could come up with? A waitress from nowhere fucking Oklahoma? If I’d have known this was going to happen, I never would’ve pulled the little twit up on stage,” Trace’s cold voice said. Kylie tried to ignore the jagged blade of hurt carving into her. Well, she’d been called worse. The insults Darla had slung at her when she’d kicked her out had included words she didn’t even know the meaning of.
Whore
was one of the ones she knew. Kind of ironic since Kylie was still technically a virgin, not that her stepmother would believe that. She jumped at the sound of something crashing against an interior wall of the bus and thudding to the floor.

“Look, I get that this isn’t the ideal situation. But what the hell did you expect? There was the debacle with The Pretty Pistols, you punched Bryce Parker in the face, and then you broke the little American Idol girl’s heart and tossed her out like yesterday’s garbage. You’re not exactly playing well with others, here, and frankly…you’re out of options.”

Kylie didn’t hear his response but she had just learned a great deal about Trace Corbin. Turns out he was kind of an asshole.
Figures.

Great
, she thought, relaxing her crouching position and resting her head on the wall next to her.
I’m on the tour from hell and everyone else has been smart enough to get off.

The morning after her eavesdropping, Kylie was getting some fruit from the kitchen when Trace stumbled in. Pauly was doing something on his iPad in the curved booth. “Was that the last banana?” Trace asked as she began to peel her breakfast.

She stopped mid-peel. “Maybe. You want it?”

“Yeah, I do,” he said, practically growling at her.

“Well, you can have it,” she relented, tossing him the banana, even though she couldn’t remember the last time she’d eaten. “On the condition that in the future, you keep your late night, whiny baby, celebrity crap to a dull roar so the little twit can get her beauty sleep.” Kylie paused to glare at the man across from her. “Think you can manage that?” Pauly’s head snapped up and they both waited for Trace’s reaction.

Trace glared back but the corners of his mouth twitched. “I can try,” he said evenly.

“Yeah, well, don’t hurt yourself, superstar,” she said as she sauntered past him into her room. Screw it. She wasn’t that hungry anymore anyways.

If he responded to her it was drowned out by the sound of Pauly’s hysterical laughter.

Since then he had been polite. Distant, but polite, which Kylie was more than fine with. But now there was an hour before she was supposed to go on stage in Dallas, and Trace Corbin was nowhere to be seen. While staring at her almost unrecognizable reflection, she had a feeling he was going to make damn sure her dreams never came true.

Like hell
.

“G
et
off the stage!”

“We want Trace!”

“Go back to Oklahoma, waitress! Hey, get me a beer first!”

Kylie had been on stage for over an hour. Her set was only forty-five minutes and the crowd knew it. Pauly’s voice had come through her ear piece demanding that she stall both times she’d tried to wrap it up. But the patrons at The Blue Moon knew a hack job when they saw one. She was out of material and the crowd was about to get violent.

“I’m so sorry, Trace can’t be here tonight. He’s—”

An amber glass bottle whizzed past her head before she even had time to think up a decent excuse for his absence.

“Pauly!” she shouted as two security guards converged on a man in the back. Pauly appeared and escorted Kylie off stage. She was shaking. Not from fear. From anger. Trace Corbin was going to get an ear full. Whenever he turned up.

I
t
was nearly three in the morning when Kylie heard the bus rumble to life. They were scheduled to perform in Baton Rouge tomorrow night.

If the bus was moving, he was on it.

Kylie burst out of her room and started to storm to the front of the bus but stopped halfway. Trace was strewn across the booth in the compact kitchen.

“Fun night, Mr. Corbin?” she asked him. The beautiful mess in front of her lifted his head, hair flopping over one eye. He threw her a wicked grin before answering, “Yeah, yeah it was.”

“Good, I’m glad. Because I got booed off stage and had a beer bottle thrown at my head. So at least one of us had a good time.”

If she thought she was angry before, she was nearing homicidal. The cocky jerk laughed. Freaking laughed, as if the thought of beer bottles being hurled at her while she was booed was the perfect end to his night. No ‘I’m sorry,’ or even ‘That sucks,’ just outright laughter.

“I’m glad I amuse you, but in the future if you can’t be bothered to show up to your own damned show, feel free to give a girl some notice.” Kylie started to stalk back to her closet of a room, but she was still boiling. And she was determined not to lose anymore sleep over this selfish jackass. No, she was going to rage on, getting it all out until she was exhausted.

“No, you know what? Here’s what really burns me. There are people out there, real people, with kids they can barely feed, and bills to pay, and rent, and real problems. And they show up to work day after day, night after night. But you, with your money and your flashy bus and your tight ass jeans, you show up whenever you feel like it. Or not. Like there aren’t a million people out there who would step over their own mothers to be in your shoes. And you know what else?” She sucked in more air so she could finish.

Something resembling pain flashed across the man’s face at her last comment but she couldn’t stop. Words tumbled out so fast she barely had time to think. “You probably have about fifteen more minutes until some guy with deeper dimples and tighter jeans, if that’s possible, comes along and steals your thunder. Because really, you’re not all that damned special. But congratulations. I hope it makes you feel like a big man to leave me and Pauly high and dry while you go out and have a good time.”

“You done?” Trace’s eyes were only half open. The red tingeing Kylie’s vision was fading slightly.

“No, I’m not, but I think two more seconds would be too much time to waste on some pathetic drunk who pisses away God given talent for his own amusement.”

At that, he sat up, squaring his shoulders and leveling her with a cold stare. “Oh yeah, and what the hell do you know about it?”

Oh, wow. He was just spraying her fire with gasoline. Kylie lowered her voice and leaned close enough to smell the liquor emanating from him. “I know that I thank the good Lord that I’m not a fan of yours, because the only people you treat worse than me and Pauly are your fans—or maybe your band members who’d rather travel crammed into the Winnebago behind us than be this close to you.”

“Really waitress, that the best you got? If I’m so pathetic, why don’t you just run on home to Daddy now?” He cocked his head and folded his arms across his chest.

Tears stung the backs of Kylie’s eyes, but no way was she going to let this guy cut her any deeper. Snapping back as if he’d slapped her, she tried to keep her tone light. “You know, I would, but he’s been dead for seven months. And it’s a good thing for you because if he was alive to see you destroying everything I’ve worked for, you’d be in a world of pain.”

“Shit, I didn’t know—” Trace interrupted himself to scrub a hand over his face.

“Makes no difference,” she snapped. “But I can tell you this much. Your ass better show in Baton Rouge because one of us actually wants to be here. And I’ll be damned if someone like you is going to piss all over my dream before I’ve even had a chance to live it.” She knew she was snarling. Good. Maybe he would realize that she wasn’t screwing around. “I could care less if you like me, or respect me, or give a damn about me, Mr. Corbin. But this is my shot and everything I’ve ever wanted and—”

And that was all she had. She shook her head, trying to convince herself not to cry. One more word and Kylie would break down in humiliating sobs. So she turned on her heels and escaped to her room.