Love on the Rocks (Love on Tour #1) (7 page)

7

Even before I opened my eyes, I felt like hell. My head was pounding, my mouth was dry, and my stomach felt like it had been through a blender.

I managed to pry my eyes open. The room was relatively dark, but harsh sunlight was sneaking in at the edges of the curtains. The bedside table immediately in front of me held a tall glass of water and two white pills. I pulled my legs around and my torso up to sit on the edge of the bed. I downed the pills and the entire glass of water before noticing that I wasn’t wearing pants. My shirt was desperately wrinkled. My bra was still in place, though slightly twisted. But below my waist I wore only a pair of light pink cotton bikini briefs, not exactly the kind of underwear you normally wear to bed with a rock star.

I could hear the hushed voices of three men coming from the other room, which was separated by an archway, rather than a door, from the bedroom area. They must have been whispering to avoid disturbing me. I knew they were worried, but I couldn’t face them just yet. I needed to shower and brush my teeth if I was going to even resemble a human being today.

I managed to get myself into a standing position and walk slowly toward the bathroom. This path took me past the archway that led to the main part of the suite. Apparently, the sight of me shuffling across the carpet in my underwear caused an uproar.

“Where the hell are her pants?” Henry asked accusingly.

Sean was already making his way toward me as he threw the reply over his shoulder. “She was uncomfortable, dickhead.”

Sean took my arm like I was an old lady needing help to cross the street. “Are you okay, Baby?”

“I’m okay. I just need to clean up.”

“Okay. Take your time, Baby.”

“Not too much time. We have to go soon,” I heard Mike say.

“Shut up, Mike,” Sean replied. “It doesn’t matter what time we get there. So what if it’s the middle of the fucking night. Let Baby take her time.”

Mike’s apology was the last thing I heard before I closed the bathroom door, shutting them out.

After the shower I simply felt like a cleaner version of a pile of crap. The boys tried to get me to eat, but my stomach was a mess. I only wanted coffee, though I drank a bunch of water to appease them. By the time we boarded the bus I just wanted to go back to sleep.

Henry was behind me on the steps, his hand on my waist, waiting for me to fall over at any moment. Sean was ahead of me. When he reached the booth he slid into the far side, his back against the window and his left leg up on the bench against the back cushion.  He opened his arms to me. With Henry’s guidance I slid into the booth beside him. Then Sean’s arms wrapped around me and he pulled me to him so that I was lying back against his torso. My head was resting on his chest, my legs spread out on the bench, my arm resting on his hard thigh, and his arms wrapped around my waist. I was so incredibly comfortable that I couldn’t imagine moving. So I didn’t.

I slept most of the day away, tucked into Sean’s arms. It wasn’t until late in the evening that I sat up and ate something, at the insistence of my companions.

We hadn’t discussed the events of the night before, and I did have some questions I needed answered. But first, I needed some more immediate information.

“Where are we going, anyway?” I asked, between bites of my grilled cheese sandwich.

“Mandatory R and R,” Mike said.

“Which means?”

“We’re about halfway through with the tour,” Henry explained. “After Denver we head east. We always build a couple days of chilaxing into the schedule, preferably while we’re still out west. This time we’re stopping at a little ranch resort outside of Grand Junction, cabin in the woods, hiking trails, lake stocked with big, fat trout, the whole bit.”

My spirits lifted. “How long are we staying?”

“We’ll get there late tonight, stay all day tomorrow and Wednesday. We’ll leave Thursday morning for Denver,” Mike explained.

I nodded and tucked into my grilled cheese. They were dropping me off at Melanie’s on Thursday afternoon. That meant that I had three more days and three more nights with Sean.

My brain still felt fuzzy, but I knew that everything had changed. I had chosen Sean. I wanted him by my side last night. I trusted him when I was most vulnerable. All of this would amount to a great friendship, if it weren’t for the fact that I liked the feel of being in his arms so much.

I could no longer deny that I was attracted to him. Despite the fact that he was nothing like any man I’d ever been with, I wanted him. And all of that might still have been harmless if I hadn’t so clearly felt his erection as I cuddled with him on the bus that afternoon.

The next three days were going to be very complicated.

“So, are you guys going to tell me about last night?” I asked, pushing away my empty plate and leaning back into the seat.

The three men all looked at one another for a long beat. Then Sean pulled me back into his arms, tucking my head under his chin. I went willingly.

Henry leaned over the table toward me. “Somebody drugged you last night, Baby.”

“That much I pieced together already, Henry. Who was it and why did they do it?”

“First of all,” Mike said, all business. “You should know that the perpetrators are gone. Outta here. You will never see them again. And if you want to press charges, we can still–”

I held my hand up. “Mike, I don’t want any of that. I just want to know what happened.”

Mike sat back and looked at me with concern. Sean was silent and still. His left arm was wrapped around my waist. His right lay on the table in front of me. I couldn’t look at him from my position. So I stared Henry down.

Henry ran a hand through his hair. “It was Krysta. She was the mastermind behind it. Then Heather and a couple of the other girls went along with it. They’re all gone.” He made a slicing motion in the air with his hand and leaned back, as if this settled it.

Mike fidgeted. “They put the drugs in your drink when I went to the bathroom. I should have fucking taken you with me.” He shook his head.

I reached over and put my hand over Mike’s. “It’s not your fault.”

“It most certainly is,” he said vehemently.

“No, it isn’t.” Sean’s voice was quiet, but his tone was severe. It left no room for argument.

“I want to know why,” I said quietly. “What was their plan? What was their endgame?”

There was a deep silence on the bus.

“Tell me,” I demanded.

I tried to sit up, but Sean was about a thousand times stronger than me, and he easily held me in place against his chest. I didn’t struggle, but I did slap his thigh with my hand to show my frustration. I think it hurt my hand worse than his thigh.

Henry and Sean exchanged one of their looks, then Henry returned his gaze to me and spilled. “Apparently, the plan was to get you unconscious, and leave you in Sean’s hotel room. How the hell they were planning to get you up there I have no idea, since Wendy was supposed ‘distract’ Mike, so they would’ve had to carry you themselves.”

“Which was only one of many moronic parts of that plan,” Mike said dryly.

“That doesn’t make sense,” I pointed out. “What does leaving me unconscious in Sean’s room do for Krysta?”

Henry and Mike were clearly uncomfortable. Sean’s muscles tensed even further. I was just starting to think they weren’t going to answer me when Sean spoke. He leaned down so that his mouth was close to my ear and spoke softly, as if he were whispering to me, though I knew the others could hear.

“Apparently, Krysta got it in her head that you and I are sleeping together. She was pissed because I rejected her for you the other night. She decided to make you look bad. She was going to leave you in my room… naked… with some other guy’s underwear… so that when I came back it would look like you were sleeping around.”

When Sean finished the story he tightened his grip on me. He took my hand and held it on the table, our fingers interlaced. I sat quietly and processed. So this is what it meant to be with a rock star. If you were more than a one-night stand you would have to tolerate the jealousy and rage of so many women. And those women were all far more conniving and resourceful than me. I wasn’t even ‘with’ Sean or Henry, but I’d become a target by dominating their attention. It was a lot more than I’d bargained for when I got on the bus in Searchlight.

8

The resort was actually a collection of tiny log cabins nestled in the woods at the edge of an idyllic lake. At least that’s what it looked like on the brochure. When we arrived at one in the morning it was too dark to tell.

I was desperately hoping that there would not be a discussion of any kind about my sleeping arrangements, that the decision would simply be made for me. I would accept my fate. If they wanted to give me a cabin of my own, so be it. That’s what I tried to tell myself. But I was extremely relieved when Mike led Sean and I to a cabin farthest away from the rest and handed us each a key, before leaving to find his own room.

The cabin was adorable. It was about the size of a studio apartment in San Francisco. The whole thing was one room. The front door led immediately into a living space that featured a love seat with a worn wooden coffee table in front of it. Behind that, was a queen size bed with massive oak head and foot boards, which meant Sean would have to sleep all scrunched up. On the opposite side of the room was a small kitchenette and a scrubby pine table with two spindle-back chairs on either side. The bathroom door sat immediately behind the small table. At the far end of the room was a sliding glass door that led to a tiny porch with a wooden swing and a view of the mountains.

“I love it,” I said.

Sean smiled. “Wait till you see it in daylight.”

“You’ve been here before?” I asked, as I dropped my bag on the side of the bed closest to the bathroom.

“A few times.” Sean dropped his own bag on the loveseat and sat down on the edge of the bed. He leaned over and started unlacing his boots. “We can go for a hike in the morning if you’d like.”

“Very, very much,” I said enthusiastically.

He looked up at me. “How are you feeling?”

“Better. Still tired though. I think I’m going to take a shower and crash.”

He nodded and turned his attention back to his boots.

I grabbed my secret parcel from where it was hidden inside my backpack and went into the bathroom. Earlier in the day I’d been lazing about, cuddling with Sean, who was fast asleep when Tony parked the bus in a small New Mexico town. Mike and Henry got off the bus to retrieve dinner. Henry returned with my present. And tonight I intended to put it to use.

When I entered the bathroom I got a pleasant surprise. It wasn’t any larger than I expected, but it did have a deep, clean, and inviting claw foot tub squeezed between the toilet and the back wall. To my delight, a large bottle of bath salts sat on the small extension platform, along with some fluffy white towels.

After a good long soak I combed through my knotted hair, brushed my teeth, and pulled on the blue cotton full-length pajamas Henry had gotten me. They were amazingly comfy, not too warm, and super soft. The pullover shirt was roomy, with a V-neck and squared off bottom that hung below my waist. The bottoms were yoga pant style, with flared legs and featured little teepees in various orientations all over them.

When I walked back out into the main room Sean was already in bed. He was under the covers, propped up on one elbow, facing the bathroom, with a book sprawled on the bed in front of him. There was plenty of room for me on the other side of the book, and the sheet was pulled back in invitation.

Sean looked up and stared at me. “What the hell is that?”

I twirled around. “Henry’s present. Aren’t they great?”

The expression on his face showed me that he didn’t think they were great at all. He groaned.

“What?” I asked innocently.

“I’ll have to thank him for that later.”

I pretended not to know what he was talking about and wandered to the kitchenette to get a glass of water. Once I had that perched on the nightstand and all the lights out except for the one on the other side of Sean, there was nothing left to do but to crawl in bed with him.

As I got in, Sean moved his book, set it on the table on his other side, and turned off the light.

We were in bed together. Both of us were under the sheets, in the dark.

I wanted to relax. The bed was soft and I was tired. But I couldn’t. I lay there on my side of the bed, facing away from Sean, waiting for something. And then I felt his arm snake around my waist. He pulled me, as if I weighed no more than a pillow, into his chest and tucked my head under his chin. And just like that, I relaxed and fell asleep.

****

When I woke up I felt like I was in some sort of Disney-induced dream. Light was streaming through the sliding glass door of the cabin, which looked even more quaint by day. The smell of fresh coffee permeated the air, and I could hear the sounds of running water in the tiny bathroom beside the kitchen.

I padded over to the counter in my bare feet, and was delighted to find the percolator on the stove bubbling away. I found two stoneware mugs waiting patiently on the counter by the sink. The refrigerator held fresh milk, along with eggs, bread, and sandwich meats.

I was humming a
Chrome
song to myself as I poured one cup of black coffee and one with a touch of milk. Then the bathroom door opened, and my whole body came to a screeching halt. Brain, heart, lungs – all were incapacitated.

I had met a few men in my life that were so magnificent looking as to seem unreal. At the time I’d had the desire to pinch them to see if they felt pain as us mortals do. I had rarely had conversations with such beautiful creatures. I had most certainly never stood in the kitchen of a tiny cabin with one of the beautiful people, wrapped only in a wet towel just inches away.

“Good morning.”

“Hi,” I managed, as I thrust the black coffee at him.

“Mmmm, thanks,” he murmured, taking a sip.

I watched him as he placed the mug back on the counter and walked across the room to the loveseat, where his bag still sat. I could not look away. His wet hair hung down around his shoulders in soft clumps, the color of rich soil. His arms were sculpted into hard lines of muscle beneath colorful tattoos.  His chest was clear of any markings, not even a scar or a scratch. It too, was perfectly contoured, strong and hard, and with the exact right amount of fuzzy hair in the center.

When he bent over his bag I could see that his back was just as well defined, also free of tattoos, but with one small scar just above his right shoulder blade.  And the towel stretched across an absolutely exquisite
butt. The man was a work of art.

As I watched Sean retrieve a pair of cotton boxers, dark green cargo shorts, and a light grey t-shirt that said ‘Special Olympics L.A. Polar Plunge’ on it, I contemplated the irony that two weeks ago I found Hank Tolk to be the hot one. I was so afraid of my attraction to him that I took refuge with the harmless Sean Rush, who was scary-looking, and who I was sure would not find me attractive.

I nearly laughed aloud at my idiocy. I must have had quite the bizarre look on my face when Sean turned around, because he approached with curiosity.

“How are you feeling today?” He tucked his clothes under one arm and reached for me with the other, stroking my cheek gently with his thumb.

I spent the entire night being spooned by this man, and yet this little touch had me in knots. I stepped back in the guise of needing to pick up my coffee from the counter behind me and take a sip. 

“I feel great. No headache. I actually feel awake, finally.”

He smiled. “Hungry?”

“Definitely.”

“Good. There’s a breakfast buffet at the lodge. You’ll need sustenance if we’re going to take that hike today.” He looked me up and down casually, as if this were a normal way of assessing that someone needed to eat.

“Oh yeah, the lodge, I forgot they had that, too.”

“Yeah, it’s where pussies like Mike and Hank stay so that someone cleans up after them every day and brings them room service.” He winked at me and headed into the bathroom.

I reached for the counter behind me and slumped against it. Good Lord, was I in trouble. Somehow, overnight, I had managed to acquire a massive crush on a man who, despite the short time I had known him, was my best friend – a man who happened to be a GQ-photo-shoot-worthy rock star. I was an idiot.

****

“My God, she’s normal! And adorable!” Sue cried, as she pulled me into a bear hug.

“I don’t know what that means,” Sean grumbled.

Lyle shrugged.

His wife was beautiful, but in a regular person kind of way. She wore a plain white t-shirt that fit her loosely and a pair of khaki shorts that came to mid-thigh. She wore her hair in a messy ponytail that a stylist would have taken hours to recreate, and she had little to no make-up on. She did not make me feel intimidated.

“Come sit with us,” she said, ushering me over to a cozy booth.

We settled in, me opposite Sue. She beamed at me.

“You’re acting crazy, honey,” Lyle said.

“I know. I’m sorry. I can’t help it. It’s just that on tour there are so few normal women.” She looked slightly embarrassed.

I laughed. “How do you know I’m normal?” I teased.

“Oh, I’ve heard all about you, honey.” She winked at me. “Besides you’re wearing Tevas.”

I laughed. “Well I’ve heard about you, too, and I’m glad to finally meet you.”

We had a long, relaxing breakfast with Sue and Lyle. Sue and I did most of talking, asking each other a slurry of questions. Sean and Lyle mostly just watched us.

Lyle was gazing at his wife like a starving man looked at 16-ounce steak. So I wasn’t surprised when, at the end of the meal, they announced that they were going back to their cabin for some alone time.

****

Sean and I spent the rest of the day on the trail. We wound our way through the thick Ponderosa forest and up to a viewpoint of the canyon. While we hiked, we played a game. We each took turns asking a question. The other person had to answer the question, then you yourself had to answer it.

“Favorite color,” I said, starting off tame.

“Blue,” Sean replied.

“Yellow.”

“Yellow? Like the sun?”

“Exactly like that.”

“My turn,” Sean said. “When you were five, what did you want to be when you grew up?”

“A firefighter.”

“Nice. I wanted to be a rock star.”

“Boy, you sure screwed that up,” I said, chuckling. “What stereotype did you fit into in high school? And you can’t say none, that’s cheating.”

“Quiet, shy, and into music. Band geek I guess.”

I was trying to imagine Sean in with the ‘band geeks’ I knew from high school. It didn’t compute.

“You?”

“I was definitely in the theater kids’ crowd.”

“Not surprised. Most significant life event that occurred while you were in college?”

“My Grandfather died. We were really close. He was the only one that understood me in my family. I still miss him.”

“Sorry, Baby. That sucks. Mine seems lame now.”

“No, tell me.”

“I played at CBGBs.”

“Yeah, that’s good. My turn. Best family vacation.”

“That’s easy,” he said. “We went to Niagara Falls my senior year in high school. My sister got sick and puked off the deck of the Maid of the Mist. My brother was dinking around at the edge of the falls and almost fell in. My Mom and Dad were like chickens with their heads cut off. And I just watched the whole thing and laughed my ass off. Also, I made out with a Canadian chick I met at the campground.”

I laughed. “That sounds like a hell of a vacation. Mine was slightly less disastrous. My parents took us all to Yosemite right before they split up. They hated each other by then, but you’d never know it. They made this amazing memory for us. It was a very selfless thing. Oh, and I made out with a kid from Fresno that I met in the campground.”

“That’s a perfect segue into my next question.” Sean said. “First kiss, age and location.”

“I was thirteen and it was the kid in the campground at Yosemite, actually.”

“I was, get this, sixteen.”

“No way.”

“Yep. I told you I was quiet and shy. I’d just started with an established garage band my junior year. They already had a few fans. After a practice one day, this girl Sheila pulled me behind the garage and taught me a thing or two.”

“Okay, my turn,” I said, feeling brave and stupid, a heady combination. “Ever been in love?”

“That’s hard to answer,” Sean said. His tone was quiet and thoughtful.

I tried to be playful. “What’s so hard about it?”

“I have never had a past relationship where I was in love with the other person.”

“That was cryptic.”

“Yes, and it’s your turn to answer.”

“I thought I was in love once. But now I think I was wrong.”

After that we hiked down to the bottom of the canyon and stopped to eat lunch at a small waterfall. I leaned back on the heels of my hands and stared up at the falls. Sean said he didn’t know what they were called and that I should pick a name for them. Fully sated from the killer turkey sandwich Sean made me, I contemplated it.