Rock Stars Do It Dirty (2 page)

Anna seemed to be at a loss for words. “Jay, I’m not even sure what to say, or what to think, or how I’m supposed to feel about this.”

“Sshh-yeah. Tell me about it.”

“I mean, in one sense, I want to be happy for you, but on the other side, you’re my best friend and Chase
is
my ex. If I had to see him every time you and I got together, or something…it’d be impossible. It would hurt. I broke his heart, Jay. I did. He has every right to be pissed off at me. To never want to see me again. And I
hate
that I hurt him.” Anna’s eyes were downcast, as if the depths of her mixed drink contained some kind of answer to the situation.
 

There was a long silence then, during which both women sipped their drinks and tried to figure out what to say next.

Eventually, Anna broke the silence. “If he’s what you want, Jamie, I’ll deal with it. I love you enough to make it work.”

Jamie groaned. “I already—shit. I already told him it could never work. I couldn’t do that to you, Anna. I broke his heart again.”

“For me?” Anna said, her words barely a murmur. “Because of me?”

“Not just—I mean, yeah, sort of. You’re my best friend. You have such an intense history with him, and…” Jamie turned away and rummaged in the fridge, emerging with a bottle of cranberry juice. “I’ve had enough drama in my life. I don’t need a relationship predicated on the kind of intense bullshit anything between Chase and me would come with.”

“But, Jay…this is breaking your heart, too. I can see it.”

Jamie shook her head. “It’s done. Maybe in another life we could’ve…I don’t know. It’s moot now. He’s gone.”

Anna crossed the kitchen and wrapped her arms around Jamie. “Oh, god, honey. I’m so sorry. I wish I could—I don’t know. I just wish it was different for you.”

“Me, too.” Jamie whispered the words so quietly they were barely audible.

*
 
*
 
*

Jamie sat alone in a bar an hour’s drive from anywhere she knew. She’d been working sixty-hour weeks for nearly three months straight, working close-open shifts, doubles, extra inventory shifts, then working out at a twenty-four-hour gym, only going home when she was so exhausted she could barely make it through a shower before collapsing into bed.
 

Even still, she dreamed of him. She saw him on a stage, dark eyes boring into her, sweat running down his temple, down his chiseled cheek. She felt his scalp under her palms, woke up with her hands tingling from the vivid memory/dream of their stolen kisses. She woke up damp between her thighs, frustrated and alone and angry.

So, one day, she called in sick and drove away, pointing her car north on I-75 and just going. She blasted HIM and Hinder, Mumford and Sons and The Fray and everything on her favorite playlist until she was almost out of gas, and then she pulled off the interstate and found a bar.

And then she drank.
 

And drank some more.

She was in that pleasant place between buzzed and drunk, far enough gone to not care about what happened next, but sober enough to enjoy it. It was six in the evening on a Tuesday, so the bar—a just-off-the-freeway dive bar—was sparsely populated by a few isolated truckers and a table of drunk locals wearing John Deere hats and stained blue jeans. The only person of interest was a man who seemed to be none of the above, someone out of place, like Jamie. He was sitting at the end of the bar, a fitted baseball cap with a curved bill pulled low, sandy hair curling up from under the back edge. She couldn’t see much else, but his jeans were dark and tight and clean, and his arms seemed thick and muscular, stretching the sleeves of his T-shirt.

Jamie pretended to watch the Lions-Falcons game, checking him out in brief sidelong glances. He never really looked her way, but she thought he might be doing the same as she was, watching her out of the corner of his eye.

Maybe I just need another distraction,
she thought.
 

Then she mentally snorted, knowing it would be futile. She also knew she was going to go through with it anyway. She could tell from the way his finger traced patterns in the sweat on his beer bottle that he was preparing to make a move.

Yep, here it comes
.
 

He stood up, strolled over to her, and sat down next to her. He lifted his beer bottle and tipped it toward her. “To passin’ through, yeah?” He had a British accent, which did something fluttery to her stomach and made her toes curl in a way she hadn’t felt in a long time.
 

Jamie clinked her glass of shiraz against his. “To passing through.”
 

They both sipped, and then Jamie let herself give him a long once-over. He was hot, that was for damn sure. Gorgeous, piercing blue eyes in a classically beautiful face. His hands were strong-looking but manicured, large enough to make his Coors bottle seem small.
 

“So, where’re you from, Blue?” he asked, his voice deep enough to pleasantly rumble in her ear.

She quirked an eyebrow at him. “Blue?”

He laughed. “It’s an Aussie thing. People with red hair get called ‘blue.’ Haven’t the foggiest why, though.”

“You sound British.”

“Well, I am. But my mum’s from Perth, and I spend summers with her, so I’ve picked up a few mannerisms.”

“You still spend summers with your mom?” Jamie said, amused but slightly worried.

He just laughed again, an infectious, unselfconscious sound that made her grin. “Not like you’re thinking. I take a month every summer and go on holiday to visit her.”

Jamie lifted an eyebrow at him. “You take a month-long vacation every year?”

He shrugged. “It’s not uncommon, actually. For Europeans, at least. You Yanks are so obsessed with work you never take more than two weeks. A month is standard for most of Europe.”

Jamie sighed wistfully. “A whole month off? God, I’d kill for that.”

“Make it happen, then.”

She shook her head. “I wish, but no. It’s pretty much impossible.” Jamie stuck her hand out to him. “I’m Jamie.”

“Ian.” His handshake was firm but gentle, his hand swallowing hers.

Jamie felt another flutter in her belly. Maybe this distraction would be more effective than she’d anticipated.
 

“So, Ian, where are you headed?”

He shrugged. “Actually, this is the time of year I’m usually in Australia, but Mum is traveling this year, so I came to America for my holiday.”

Jamie laughed. “You came to Buttfuck, Michigan, on a vacation?”

“Is that the name of this place?” Ian asked, laughing. “I knew you Yanks were weird, but that really takes the cake. Kind of a strange name for a town, innit?”

Jamie found herself giggling. “I know you must get this a lot, but your accent is hot.”

Ian swigged from his beer. Jamie got the sense he might be embarrassed.
 

“I might have gotten that before, yeah.” He grinned at her, wiggling his eyebrows suggestively. “So…feel your panties dropping, then? ’Cause that’s what one bloke told me, just this week past. He said, ‘Your accent is a panty-dropper, man.’” He said the last part in a passable American accent, which Jamie found supremely odd-sounding.

Jamie shrugged nonchalantly. “Keep talking, and we’ll see what happens.”

“So your knickers
are
feeling a bit loose, then?”

“I’m not sure I’m wearing knickers.”

Ian choked on his beer. “I didn’t take you for that sort of girl, Jamie. Knickers is just another word for panties.”

Jamie laughed. “Oh. Well, I am wearing panties, yes. But they
might
be feeling the slightest bit wiggly. Especially if you buy me another round.”

Ian lifted his bottle at the bartender, then gestured at Jamie’s glass, holding up one finger. “In that case, we should toast to sexy accents and dropping panties.” He chuckled, making it seem like a joke.

Jamie clinked her glass against his bottle again, laughing with him. As she sipped, she wondered if he had any idea how close to the truth their toast was.
 

I’m back to my old tricks, I guess
, she thought.
’Cause I’m about to take this boy back to his hotel and fuck him silly.

She let him buy her a few more drinks, discovering over the course of two more hours that he was an IT consultant, and he was actually in Michigan on a mix of business and pleasure. He’d finished his contract in Detroit and had decided to venture northward with no real destination in mind. She also discovered that he was an only child, unmarried, and that he lived in London.

A couple more rounds revealed that he was staying in a motel just down the street from the bar.

“So, Jamie. What are your plans for the rest of the evening?” Ian asked.

“Don’t really have any,” she admitted.

She’d managed to avoid answering too many questions. Mainly, she didn’t want to admit she was trashed in a bar hours from anywhere.

“Well, why don’t you come back to my room with me?” Ian said. “Just…you know, till you sober up a bit?”

Jamie nodded, trying to calm her hammering heart; she wasn’t sure why she was nervous, but she was. Being nervous was a good thing. “Sure. Sounds good.”

“I hope you don’t mind a bit of a walk, though,” Ian said as he stood up, “seeing as I didn’t drive from the hotel.”

“No, that’s fine. Probably do me some good.”

“That it will, love. You seem a mite wobbly, if you don’t mind me saying.”

Jamie laughed as she stood up, swaying unsteadily. “Yeah, just a mite.” She exaggerated her unsteadiness, using it as an excuse to wrap her hand around Ian’s arm. “Mind if I hold on to you?”

Ian glanced down at her; standing up, he towered more than six inches over her. “Not a bit. Wouldn’t want to go and have a spill, now, would we?”

Jamie just shook her head in response, concentrating on the feel of his thick arm, corded with muscle. It was a nice sensation. He smelled good, too, she realized, leaning into him. Faint cologne, not overpowering, a spicy, male scent, along with deodorant, and that other more indefinable scent of clean man.
 

Ian laugh rumbled through her. “Did you just sniff me?”

Jamie giggled in embarrassment. “Um. Maybe? Shut up. You smell good.” She leaned in again and sniffed at his shirt. “A man who smells good is as much of a panty-dropper as a sexy accent.”

“So…if I’ve got both…”

Jamie glanced up at him through her lowered eyelashes. “I plead the Fifth?”

Ian just snorted. “The Fifth Amendment is an American thing, love. I’m British, so it doesn’t work on me.”

“Oh, damn.”

Ian didn’t push it, and she let it go. She had to be a
little
hard to get, after all.
Right
, she thought.
’Cause this is hard to get.

They were following the main road, walking across parking lots and stretches of yellowing grass, cars whizzing by to and from the freeway. A hotel sign about a quarter mile down announced their destination. They reached it after a few more minutes of walking in a surprisingly companionable silence.
 

Ian led her to a ground-floor room, unlocking the door and throwing it open with a flourish. “It’s not much, but…well…that’s it, really. It’s a hotel room. Sorry I can’t offer you better.”

“We
are
in Buttfuck, Michigan. I can’t really expect the Ritz, can I?” Jamie said.
 

She didn’t spare the room much of glance; it was the same as any Best Western anywhere in the country. There was a pile of clothes on the bed, and Ian rushed over and scooped them into a Samsonite suitcase, which he closed and tossed into a corner.

“Sorry about that,” he mumbled. “Wasn’t expecting company.”

“No problem,” Jamie said.

An awkward silence ensued, in which Jamie wondered how long she should wait before attacking him with her face. Ian seemed, if Jamie was any judge, to be wondering the same thing.
 

“I’m not as drunk as you think,” Jamie blurted. “I mean…I was kind of hamming it up. So I could hold on to you.”
 

She heard the words coming out but couldn’t seem to stop them. Embarrassment was shooting through her, centered in her belly as a knot of nerves. She hadn’t been nervous around a guy in…a very long time. Since high school, probably. Even with Chase she hadn’t been actually nervous; she’d been anxious, flooded with uncontrollable need and burning desire. She’d been mixed up around Chase, an emotional wreck, a physical mess. He turned her inside out and upside down and set everything about on fire.

Ian was different. He was…comforting. Familiar, somehow. And yet, she was nervous. She wanted him, but she didn’t want it to be like all the guys she’d picked up at the bar. He was only in the U.S. for a month, she assumed, so it was a limited-time offer only. Maybe that was the source of her nerves. She wasn’t really sure. She only she knew she didn’t mind being nervous. It was a new feeling, something besides the ache in her heart and the coiled knot of need low in her belly.
 

Ian regarded her with something like amusement. “Yes, I’m aware. I wasn’t going to say anything, since it seemed to be working in my favor.”

Jamie shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “This is where I say ‘I’m not usually this kind of girl,’ except…I kind of am.”

Ian lifted an eyebrow, the corner of his mouth quirking up in a smile. “Well, I guess we’re evenly matched, then, because I’m in the same boat, more or less.”

Jamie laughed. “Un-mix your metaphors, Shakespeare.”

“I just mean I’m supposed to say something like, ‘I don’t normally bring girls home from the pub,’ but I do, rather often, actually. I’ll admit I’m relieved you said it first, though.”

Jamie relaxed then. She sat on the edge of the bed, her purse still hanging from her shoulder, and glanced at Ian. “I’m in the middle of a big internal conflict, actually. Not about you, exactly, just…life. Myself. This tendency of mine to go home with guys from the bar. I promised myself I wouldn’t do this anymore. But then there was this guy…and it was all Shakespearean forbidden love and whatever. So now that’s over and I’m trying to go on with my life, but it’s not that easy and you’re here and I’m here, and—”