Sexy Lies and Rock & Roll (19 page)

And even as I say that, my eyes well up with tears.

“Keep it together, Emma,” I mutter to myself as I stalk through the hotel suite and back to the master bedroom.

My mind is spinning as I try to figure out what the hell I need to do.

1.
   
Get changed.

2.
   
Get packed.

3.
   
Get to the bus at the arena and grab Sirius.

4.
   
Figure a way back to North Carolina. I can afford a plane ticket for me, but I’m not sure how to handle Sirius. I’m assuming dogs can fly, but I really have no idea. So…

5.
   
Call my dad and get his advice.

I manage to get number one on my list completed, carefully taking off the expensive dress and hanging it in the closet, as well as putting the shoes back in the box they came in. Perhaps Evan can return them and get his money back. I pull on a pair of jeans and a summery blouse, along with a pair of flat sandals, and then turn my attention to number two.

I manage to get my suitcase on the bed and opened before I hear the suite door open with such ferocity it bangs off the wall, causing me to jump.

“Emma,” Evan calls out and he sounds pissed.

I furiously grab clothes out of a small dresser and turn to the suitcase by the time he enters the bedroom. His face is thunderous as he takes in what I’m wearing and the fact that I’m packing.

“What the fuck are you doing?” he grits out.

“Going back home,” I say as I dump my clothes in the suitcase and start to zip it. I think there’s another drawer full, but I’m prepared to leave them behind.

“Why?” he clips out.

I absolutely refuse to look at him, but I manage to say in a semi-calm voice, “Because you don’t need me here anymore, and well… it’s just the right time.”

His hand shoots out and grabs my arm, forcing me to turn and face him. “Try again. I nearly lost my mind when I couldn’t find you, and Tyler said he hadn’t seen you. When I realized the limo was gone, I grabbed a cab and came here, and I find you packing to leave. And you probably weren’t even going to say good-bye. So try again, Emma and tell me what the fuck is going on?”

I’m not in the least surprised Tyler played stupid with Evan. I’m sure he wasn’t about to admit it was his words that drove me out of there. And now, I could easily throw him under the bus and tell Evan exactly what happened at that party.

But I don’t, and I don’t because I’m leaving and Evan will need Tyler. I have to hope that Tyler truly does have his friend’s best interests at heart, even if he doesn’t care about Evan’s personal life. I’ve got to hope that he will at least look after Evan’s business interests.

I also don’t tell Evan the truth of what happened at that party because it would be admitting that I’m absolutely pathetic because I let Tyler manipulate me. I fell prey to weakness.

So, I take a deep breath, let it out, and tell Evan at least part of the truth. “I’m not cut out for this. That party… it was awful. I hated it, and I hated watching those women fawn all over you. I hated feeling insecure while those women fawned all over you, and I hated that you would be all over those women had I not been there.”

“What in the hell are you talking about?” he growls at me, his arm tightening just a tad.

“Those three women you were talking to,” I snap back at him, feeling the need to defend myself. “You know… big hair, tiny dresses, oozing sex at you. And you, laughing with them and being all intrigued by them.”

“You’re jealous?” he asks incredulously, his eyebrows knitted together.

“Yes, goddamn it,” I shout at him. He actually jolts over my language, because that was beyond foul for me. “And that will be your life from now on, and I can’t compete with that. I don’t want to compete with that.”

“I was just talking to them,” Evan says quietly as his shoulders sag. “One of them was the daughter of the one of the Phoenix execs, and she is in her second year at Duke. We were talking about the Raleigh-Durham area. She has a boyfriend who’s in med school there.”

Well, crap. That makes me feel absolutely stupid.

So stupid, I can’t even think what to say, so I lower my gaze and stare at the carpet.

“Emma,” Evan says softly, but I don’t look at him. “You have to trust me.”

At that, my head flies up and my eyebrows draw together. “I do trust you,” I say flatly, because it’s true. I never doubted Evan, specifically tonight. So I get to the real issue. “I just don’t trust myself.”

“Come again?” he asks.

I huff another breath out and try to explain. “I don’t trust myself to be able to handle all of this. You’re freaking Evan Scott. You have a legion of adoring female fans. It’s just so overwhelming to me, and I don’t like feeling badly about myself.”

“I don’t like you feeling badly about yourself either,” Evan mutters as he pulls me into his arms. He kisses the top of my head, and I can’t help but press into him tight. “And I don’t want legions of adoring female fans. I only want you, Emma. Why can’t you see that? I don’t get why you can’t trust that about me.”

“I don’t know,” I say pitifully into his chest. “I’m just so out of my element here. I’m so unsure, and I’m scared, and I absolutely hated it when you left me alone tonight. Why would you want someone so insecure? Someone who can’t handle herself at a party?”

I feel a chuckle rumble through Evan, and he squeezes me. “Babe… if it makes you feel any better, I hate that shit too. I hated getting pulled away from you, because you’re like a damn security blanket for me. I’m just as wigged out by these things as you are. I’m trying to figure this shit out too.”

This surprises me, and I pull my head back to peer up at him. His green-golden eyes are soft and beautiful as he gazes back down at me. “Really?” I ask.

“Really,” he tells me. “I mean… I love playing music, and recording it, and I’ve come to love being on that stage. But up there, I’m still removed from it all, you know what I mean? What I don’t like is having to play these games. Of having to politic with people, and figure out who wants to take a chunk out of me and who doesn’t. And the only thing I know for sure is that you, Emma… you don’t want to take a piece of my fame. You just want me.”

That’s true.

So very, very true.

“That helps,” I admit quietly. “To know you have some of the same insecurities.”

“This is all new to me,” he says. “This business is new, and this relationship is new. Both of which are unlike anything I’ve ever experienced before. But I’m going to trust in this. I’m going to trust that it’s all going to work out for both of us.”

I let my head fall forward so it bumps into his chest, and I heave out a sorrowful sigh. “I’m so sorry. I handled this badly tonight.”

“I kind of liked the jealousy though,” Evan teases me.

“Liar,” I tease back and look back up at him. “But I promise… I’ll try to be better at handling that.”

He grins at me. “I’m sure you will. Now can we have makeup sex?”

“Absolutely,” I say with a laugh, and then step into him for full-body hug. “It’s the only reason I left in the first place. For the makeup sex.”

Evan gives a grunt of disbelief and picks me up. He turns and tosses me onto the bed on the other side of my suitcase, then starts to crawl his way over it toward me. “If you ever leave again without telling me, I’m going to tie you up and redden your backside.”

A warm thrill of pleasure goes through me at the thought of that, and whoa… I’ve never thought of being spanked as being sexy before.

Perhaps I need to be a little more disobedient in the future.

Evan

I
open my
eyes, lift my head from the couch, and look past the sleeping black dog at my feet.

Yup… Emma’s still at her desk, face leaning toward the laptop, and intently reading something.

With an internal sigh, I close my eyes again and try to take a nap. I’ve found that a quick twenty to thirty minutes of sleep the afternoon of a show does wonders for my energy to keep me going. And while I’ve not found the couch on the bus to be any more comfortable than before, and would probably be able to fall asleep if I just went back to the bedroom, I don’t want to miss an opportunity if Emma decides to take a break from work.

If that is the case, then well… there is any number of things we could do. Go for a walk. Drink a cup of coffee and talk. Or my preference… I could take her back in the bedroom and fuck us both to an amazing orgasm.

But I’ll take anything really.

After the last show tonight in L.A., we’ll be moving on to San Francisco, then off to Portland, then Denver, followed by Chicago. While I’m enjoying this concert tour immensely, I’m really missing Raleigh and a somewhat normal life. A life where perhaps Emma and I can go on more dates. Where I can work on my music during the day while she pours over contracts or some shit like that. At night, we could cook dinner together, hang out, and watch TV, and well… of course, we’d fuck before going to sleep.

In the morning, I’d cook her pancakes before work and send her dirty texts during the day so she didn’t get too buttoned up on me.

Fuck, I want those things a lot, and I didn’t realize just how much that lifestyle would appeal to me until Emma came into my life. I can even see past that to perhaps marriage and children. Yeah… I can see a lifetime with her for sure.

But for now, I’ll settle for a bit of her time this afternoon, because I find myself spending every moment together with her as an opportunity to reassure her doubtful sensibilities. Emma trusts me, but I need her to trust herself and what we have. So I need to continue to make sure she sees what we have is the real deal.

“Evan,” Emma says with excitement, and my eyes pop open to look at her as my head rises up again.

She swivels the chair to face me and points back at her laptop. “We’ve got an offer to settle.”

“The copyright case?” I ask as I push up to a sitting position, slightly dislodging Sirius from my feet. The pup opens his sleepy eyes, yawns, and then lays his head back down on his paws.

“Yes,” she says as she throws a thumb over her shoulder at the laptop. “The senior attorney just emailed me. He’d received all of my discovery requests I mailed last week and said that before he spent time and his client’s monies answering them, he wanted to make some effort at settling.”

“Did he say how much?”

She nods at me. “One hundred thousand.”

“For each band member?” I ask to clarify.

She shakes her head. “Total. For all of them.”

“Holy shit,” I say in amazement. “You must have scared them shitless with those questions you sent.”

She grins at me, her cheeks flushed with excitement. For while a hundred thousand dollars seems like a lot of money, it’s really not. Not compared to the millions I’ve made off the songs in dispute. And Emma and I have spent a lot of time talking about what I wanted to accomplish with this lawsuit, and first and foremost was my integrity and that of my music. I was never going to admit that they held the copyright with me to the creation of the music.

But it didn’t mean I wasn’t willing to offer some money to make them go away, with a confidentiality requirement demanding the suit be dismissed with absolutely no discussion as to the terms of the settlement or if there even was a settlement.

“What about the confidentiality clause?” I ask.

“They’ve agreed to it,” she says, her smile beaming brighter.

“You are fucking amazing,” I say in awe, because no doubt they’re offering to settle because of Emma’s well-crafted questions. She did so much research and knew the elements they’d need to prove their case so well, she was able to hone in with incredible specificity on all the ways in which they’d fail to meet their burden. Their attorneys know when they answer those questions, the case is going to collapse.

“Well, not really,” she sort of mumbles with her gaze dropping down.

“You’re fucking amazing,” I reiterate firmly, and then I nod my head toward her computer. “So jump on it. Write him back and tell him we’ll pay it.”

“I think we should make a counter offer,” Emma says as her head tilts back up and she gets a little competitive gleam in her eyes. “I mean… if one hundred thousand is their original offer, I’m sure they’d accept less.”

Pushing up from the couch, I walk over to Emma and pull her up from her chair. Smiling down at her, I say, “Look at you… just itching for a legal fight, aren’t you?”

She gives me a sheepish smile. “It is kind of fun knowing they’re on the run.”

Laughing, I tug on her hand and turn to the bedroom, leading her down the short hallway. “We’ll pay the offer to just be done with it.”

She tugs back and I stop, looking over my shoulder at her. “Well… I should email him back then.”

I pull on her hand until she walks right into me. Wrapping my arms around her waist, I bend my head to give her a quick kiss before saying, “Let them stew a bit. And we’ll go ‘celebrate’ this win in the bedroom.”

I expect her to laugh, and for her eyes to sparkle with desire and mischief, but she just looks back at me solemnly. “Once that case is finished, you don’t need me anymore.”

And fuck… a pain stabs me in the center of my chest at the thought. “Well, maybe we should hold off for a few days. Well, maybe for a few weeks.”

“A few weeks would be good,” she says upon a soft breath, and it gets me right in the goods—by that I mean my heart—that she wants to stay with me on tour as much as I want her to. The woman who couldn’t wait to get back to Raleigh to take a new job doing contract law wants to travel the country with a rock star.

It takes nothing but a few moments to get Emma into the bedroom, shut the door on Sirius’ face before he can come in, and get her naked. She’s riding high on her achievement, feeling the burst of confidence that comes with it, and looks like she could handle something a bit dirtier than what we normally do.

This thought causes me to go achingly hard, and I make quick work of getting her ready.

This means I instruct her to get on the bed on her hands and knees, facing the top of the bed where a headboard would normally be. Of course, there’s not one, just the ledge to the large window in the back of the bus.