The Reverse of Perfection (Bad Decisions Book 2) (6 page)

The guy was as cool in person as he looked on the stage. Dylan nodded. “Never thought I’d be so happy about everyone being carded.”

Jones snickered. Grabbed an open beer bottle off the ticket counter and took a long pull. “I’ll drink to that.”

Ariel spread her arms wide, palms up. “I’m sorry. I’m apologizing to Dylan, and to all of you. I swear I only invited legit press. And I made it crystal clear there were to be no fans. I don’t know what happened.”

“I do.” Cam dusted his hands together. “Somebody blabbed. The question is, who?” His gaze shifted back toward Dylan.

A petite redhead marched over to Cam. Got right in his face. “Obviously, the press. You know, the ones you hate and badmouth on a daily basis? They thought it’d be fun to stir things up. To try and highlight Dylan’s old group in order to drive a wedge in front of his new one. They just wanted a bigger story. Please tell me that you’re not dumb enough to give it to them.”

After a beat, Cam pulled her to his side. “Should I worry about this evil-genius side of your brain?”

“Not as long as you stay on my good side,” she retorted, going up on tiptoe to drop a kiss onto his cheek.

“How about we start over?” Ariel suggested in an overly bright tone. The way the morning sun pinged against a hangover. “Cam Watson, Kylie Stafford, Jones—this is Dylan Royce. Oh, and be ready to do this all again in five minutes in front of the cameras.”

After a long, deep breath, Cam extended his hand. “You’re helping us out of a jam, stepping in for Jake on such short notice. Thanks.”

“You’re giving me one hell of a chance. So thanks back at ya.”

The redhead waved, still tucked against Cam. “Don’t worry, I’m not a surprise fourth member of the band. I’m Kylie, and I’m interning with Riptide. Focusing on tour production and artist management. I’d love to pick your brain sometime on the bus about what you did and didn’t like about your last tour.”

She was focusing on Cam, too, by the looks of it. Not that it mattered to Dylan one way or the other. Ariel was the only woman he’d be staring at on this tour. “I liked the fries in Belgium. With that out-of-this-world mayonnaise sauce. I
didn’t
like that I had no control and couldn’t work in any of my own music. Or convince my fellow performers to collaborate on it.”

“Wow.” Kylie blinked at him. “Okay.” Then she broke into an enthusiastic grin, bounced twice on the balls of her feet. “This’ll be fun.”

Cam looked down at the duffel at Dylan’s feet. “Is that all you brought?”

Dylan widened his stance. Crossed his arms over his chest. This was his chance to make up for the humiliating intro. “I brought the music.”

“Cocky bastard.” Jones raised his bottle in salute. “I like that.”

“I do, too—as long as you’ve got the talent to back up the trash talk.” Cam jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Ariel, how about you get Dylan away from these glass doors before somebody gets hurt? We want those kids to scram. Wouldn’t want them to scare off the paying customers. Rehearsal in ten.” He and Kylie went through one door, and Jones disappeared through the one on the other side of the ticket counter, carrying his beer and a large pizza box.

Ariel ran a hand lightly down the sleeve of Dylan’s jacket. “See? My brother’s not so scary.”

Being reasonable didn’t make Cam any less scary. “It’s still not the way I wanted to meet him.”

“I know. I’m sorry. Truly.” She dropped her arm to fist both hands at her sides. “I’ll find out where the leak came from and cut off their info stream. It won’t happen again.” Then she bit her lip. God, he loved when she did that. “Well, I can’t actually promise it’ll
never
happen again. But I can promise to do everything I can to prevent it. And to be on alert. I should’ve looked out the windows before letting you get out of the limo. If it happens anywhere else, we’ll have a plan to take you in the back entrance.”

Shit. It hit Dylan that he was partly to blame for this disaster. He’d put Ariel off her game. Distracted her with a make-out session. Otherwise, she probably would’ve at least glanced out the window.

No point trying to bypass his nerves with anger. He had to give her a pass on this one. From what he’d seen so far, her drive to succeed at making him a, well, success was as focused and strong as his own. They were united in this, and he needed to keep that mind.

“No big deal.”

The warmth of her smile dazzled him. “That’s kind of you.”

“Yeah. The identical-twin haircut, though? You owe me for that.”

“I stand behind my extremely sound image-transformation choice. You should
thank
me for that.”

“Funny how you owing me…and me thanking you…could look as identical as me and Cam…” Dylan gave an exaggerated leer and lunged for her.

Shrieking, Ariel darted out of his reach. Yeah, he couldn’t let the little bumps in the road distract him. He had his dream girl within reach, his dream gig about to go down. It’d be one hell of a night to remember. And Dylan had a plan to take it up a few notches, too…

CHAPTER FIVE

Ariel watched Dylan pace the tiny backstage area. His excitement was both adorable and contagious. Even though she’d seen Riptide perform about a zillion and two times, she couldn’t wait for Jones’ first drumbeat tonight. Because Ariel would bet her entire shoe collection on it being one heck of an amazing show. And that included her prized pair of crystal-encrusted Louboutins a client had given her as a thank-you for preventing a few dozen naked selfies from hitting the Internet.

To be perfectly honest with herself, Dylan had…
it
. That magical
it
that couldn’t be taught or bought. When he’d sung to her in that zero-atmosphere conference room, sex appeal and charisma had rolled off him in waves, like fog hitting the coast up in Carmel. Now that he’d ditched the bad clothes and bad hair, there’d be no more hiding his raw sexuality from the world. No more disguising all that pent-up passion. When he truly unleashed it for the first time tonight, Ariel just knew it’d be electric. Magical. Irresistible. As long as she helped push him just a little bit more.

“Dylan,” she said, sharper than usual, to get his attention.

“Huh?” His hands stilled in midair from whatever piece he mentally played on an invisible keyboard. “Sorry. Just walking my way through a tricky chord transition in
Leave It All Behind.
”

“You don’t need to cram, Dylan. I heard you at warm-ups, remember? You blew the guys away.”

He compressed his lips and shook off her compliment. “I kept up. I’ll do better when there’s an audience. Is it time to go on?”

“Almost.”

Dylan crooked a finger at her, beckoning her closer. “Want to wish me luck?”

It was crazy hard to ignore his pull. Sadly, Ariel had official business to transact with him. “You don’t need it,” she said firmly. “But I do want to give you one last piece of advice.”

“Thanks, but you can relax for a bit. This next part is all about performing. Out of the two of us, I’m the expert on that, babe.”

How come that casually tossed-off
babe
made her heart skip a beat? “You can perform the music, no question. My advice is that you need to work the crowd.”

Dylan rolled his eyes like she’d told him to turn on the keyboard before starting to play. “I know. Connect with the whole audience.”

“No. I need you to connect with just a few women. I mean
really
connect. Choose two or three that you stare at, keep going back to, for the whole show. Others will notice. They’ll wonder how those women caught your eye. They’ll try to get your attention away from them.”

“Hang on. You want me to make ninety-nine percent of the women in the audience jealous?”

She cinched the tie at the waist of her red wrap top… as an excuse not to look him in the eye. “Exactly.”

Dylan chuffed out a laugh. “That’s a little messed up.”

“That’s show business. Just be sure to pick a few girls before you even get into the first song.”

“Done.” His head snapped up and down in punctuation.

Ugh. Rock stars could be so darn cocky. “Dylan, you haven’t scoped out the crowd yet,” Ariel scolded. “Don’t blow this off. Even if it sounds silly to you, I promise it’ll make a difference.”

“Hey, I told you I’d follow all your instructions on this image reboot. I’m in your hands.”

“Then go on.” She twitched the edge of the black curtain away from the wall. “Pick them out right now, before the lights go down.”

A reverse twitch of his wrist fluttered the curtain back into place. “I told you, I’m done. I’m going to sing to you.”

This time her heart skipped enough beats that Ariel had to remind herself to drag in a breath. “Dylan, you can’t use me.”

“Sure I can.” One of those long fingers stroked her cheek as tenderly as it stroked the piano keys. “I’d be singing to you anyway, babe. Now I’ve got your official permission. All the other women out there can eat their hearts out. You’re my focus. During the gig, after and for this whole tour.”

No matter how difficult it was to turn away from his touch, Ariel did. Because Dylan’s long-term success depended on it. “One of the main points of putting you on this tour is to convince the world that you’re sexy and available. To make all those screaming fans think they at least have a shot at ending up in your dressing room. I can’t stress this enough—you
cannot
be a one-woman man.”

“I can be. As long as nobody else notices.”

This time when he reached for her, she swatted him away. “More than a dozen girls swarmed you after the sound check. Why won’t you just choose some of them?”

“
Girls
is right. Interchangeable
girls.
I want a woman. One woman.” He slid his hands through her hair to anchor at the base of her skull. Then those glacier-blue eyes blazed down at her. “I want you, Ariel. Not matter who I look at, know that you’re who I’m singing to tonight. Just you.”

In a much weaker voice, she said again, “You can’t want only me.”

“Wrong again.” Dylan swatted her on the butt. “Hurry up and go find a spot. According to my very wise publicist, I need to know where I’m focusing.”

“You’re focusing on the wrong woman,” she warned.

“Nope. I’ve never been more right.”

Cam clapped Dylan on the shoulder as they walked backstage with applause and cheers still filling the hall. “You rocked tonight, D.”

Holy shit. As one of Riptide’s biggest fans, he’d watched all their interviews. Knew all sorts of trivia. Knew that the sentence Cam had just uttered was his traditional post-concert compliment to the missing Jake McQuinn. It was huge that he felt good enough about the gig, about Dylan’s performance, to honor him with the ritual.

He had to play it cool, though. Not be a sycophantic jackass and make it obvious that he’d watched all their film. So instead of offering up Jake’s
Right back at ya
, Dylan said, “I just tried to keep up. You guys rocked the house down.”

“Yeah, we did, didn’t we?” Cam shared a shit-eating grin with him. Then he whipped the red bandanna off the forehead of their drummer to complete the post-show routine. “Your sticks were slick, Jones.”

“Simple math. My sticks being slick equals women’s panties soaking through. It helps me home in on which lucky ladies will get my big stick later tonight.”

Cam slapped him on the back of the head with the bandanna. “You know the drill. At least half an hour of face time at the meet and greet before you slide into a closet and your first willing victim.”

“And you know the rest of the drill. The faster you keep my drink refilled, the longer I’ll stay.” He tucked his sticks in his back pocket and kicked his black cowboy boot against the fire door. “I’ll start with a beer, to slow-roll it. You get me for two beers, then two whiskeys. After that, I’m sticking my dick in the next thing that walks by.”

Dylan followed him onto the sidewalk. Jones cracked him up. The guy lacked any filter at all between his brain and his mouth. “Even if it’s the buffalo that’s the CU mascot?”

“It can’t be worse than the lady in Portugal who’d never shaved anything. Remember her, Cam?”

“I remember you claimed to have nightmares about screwing a yeti for months afterwards.”

Dylan paused at the corner. “Well, have fun.”

“Come on, then.” With an impatient jerk of his head, Jones said, “Didn’t you hear me say I’m thirsty?”

No doubt watching Jones drink and chase women would be an education all by itself. But Dylan didn’t feel right about borrowing any more of their spotlight. “I’m just a substitute. A temp. I’m not a real Riptide
member. Nobody will want to hang with me. Or if they do, they might be 4X4 fans, which we definitely don’t want.”

Jones whipped out his sticks and drummed a complicated beat on Dylan’s arm. “Shut the fuck up. You’re one of us.”