With Vengeance (2 page)

“’Ello, love. So you’re the one who’s going
to help us make this album?”

His British accent made her want to melt into
a puddle. She nodded and shook his hand, hoping she didn’t look too
star-struck. “I’m Katana James.”

“Roderick Powell.” He continued to scrutinize
her. “You look too little to be behind those blistering samples we
heard.”

Behind her, Klement laughed. “Yeah, she is
pretty short.”

“Five feet.” Kat managed a nervous smile
before her gaze strayed to the front man of the band. Cliff Tracey
stood only five feet away. Her breath halted as she took in the
sight of his rich chestnut curls, chocolate eyes and sculpted jaw.
The man was too beautiful for words.

His gaze swept her from head to toe as he
shook her hand, making heat rise to her cheeks. “So you’re
‘Metal-Kat’ from Metalness.com. You’re even better-looking than
your partner. But you look too cute for this work.”

A line from the Rudolph Christmas special
rang in her head.
He thinks I’m cute!

She choked back a giggle. She could do that
later when she called Kinley and told her how it went.

“That’s right.” Roderick leaned forward. “I
love that site. You give us good promo, and your memorial post for
Lefty did him justice.”

“Thanks,” she murmured. “Kinley wrote most of
it, since…uh, she was there with you guys when it happened. I just
filled in the background.” Kat looked down at her feet, feeling
depressed and awkward at bringing up that tragic day when Lefty had
been found dead from a cocaine overdose in his hotel room during
the band’s tour with Viciӧus. Kin had called her both right after
it happened and then at the memorial service, knowing Kat wished
she was there herself to honor the memory of her idol.

The fact that she was here to replace their
fallen comrade and her idol struck Kat again full-force. She didn’t
want to usurp Lefty. She wanted to honor his legacy. She prayed
they would see that.

Cliff stepped closer to her. “The part you
wrote was the most beautiful.”

Kat shivered at his proximity and husky
voice. “Thank you.”

Klement made an impatient sound behind her.
“Let’s get rolling.”

She snapped to attention, ashamed of her
giddy distraction. She was here to work, not flirt with a potential
colleague.

Cliff grinned. “Open up that case, sweetie.
Let’s see what you got.”

Kat smiled back, hoping she wasn’t blushing,
and opened her case to reveal her vintage Gibson Flying V.

Cliff nodded in approval. “Good choice.”

“Lefty played a Gibson V.”

Klement’s soft voice washed over Kat,
tremulous with sorrow. The grief in his eyes gave her an
unreasonable urge to hug him.

“I know,” she whispered. “He was my
hero.”

They exchanged a long look, and Kat was
struck by the sincere respect in the bassist’s eyes. In all her
twenty-three years, no one had ever taken her so seriously before.
Even Kinley often rolled her eyes at her, accusing her of being too
girly. Kat wanted more than anything to be worthy of this
respect.

She was led into the recording room.

“So, where do I plug in?”

He handed her a giant set of headphones and
gestured to the center of the room, where speaker cabinets were
arranged along with a set of whammy pedals. “Right here.”

Kat hooked up her guitar, and Klement showed
her where to plug the headphones so she could hear the music and
instructions from the console station behind the glass. “We’ll be
back there keeping an eye on things, but try to pretend you’re
alone.”

Easy for you to say,
she thought.

Roderick and Cliff were already in there.
They waved at her from the window. Klement nodded and strode off,
leaving her alone in the chamber feeling like a zoo exhibit. Kat
swallowed, mouth dry.

The bassist’s voice echoed in her headphones,
alarmingly intimate in her ears and somehow familiar. “We’re going
to start with ‘Sorrow’s Harvest.’ Are you ready?”

She nodded with a confidence she didn’t
feel.

“Remember, just like you’re at home
practicing….”

Klement’s voice faded out. Something about
the echo made Kat think of her IT guy again.
But
he
couldn’t be—

The thought broke as music began to play
through her headphones.

The song sounded almost the same as it had on
the MP3 sent her to practice with, only the scratch guitar section
was gone and Cliff’s voice sounded more pure. Closing her eyes, Kat
struck the first chord just in time. The faces of her audience
faded from her awareness as fierce concentration overtook her
being, focus on touching each string at the right time, adding the
correct pressure, making her instrument sing. Like an auditory
engineer, she focused on one note and then the next until the song
finished and triumph straightened her spine. She hadn’t messed up.
In fact, she’d sounded pretty good.

Clapping echoed in the headphones, jolting
her back to reality.

“Bloody well done, love!” Roderick said.

Cliff stared at her through the window with
increased interest. “Where’d you learn to play like that?”

“I…uh…” Kat shrugged. “I just keep trying
until I get it right.”

Klement shook his head. “It’s not where she
learned it, it’s why.” He looked at her long and intently. “Why do
you play?”

She gave him a direct stare through the
glass. “I love music.”

He smiled with such understanding and
satisfaction that her body warmed. “That’s right. Now let’s see how
well you learned the new songs.”

Those penetrating blue eyes left hers and
turned to the others. “Let’s do ‘Forsaken.’ It’s the one that’ll
probably get the most airplay.”

Kat sucked in a breath. The song began with a
complicated lead guitar riff.

I can do this
, she told herself as she
positioned her fingers. Klement gestured for her to start. Kat
breathed out slowly and executed the riff. Was it right? It sounded
right.

As the bass, drums, and rhythm guitar played
in her headphones, her pulse settled and she was able to continue.
Her usual joyous abandon was diminished in the face of her
concentration upon playing the song perfectly. However, there was
another sort of bliss in tapping her feet and focusing on the beat
as her fingers moved with precision across the fret board and the
right sounds were birthed.

When the song finished, Klement and the
others gave her quick, satisfied nods before moving on to
another.

So far, so good.

They had her do two more songs. On the last,
just as she was beginning to relax, she fucked up and hit a G
instead of a C. Her hands lifted from the guitar as if it had
suddenly turned molten hot. After she halted, the music stopped
with a sharp click in her ears and everyone turned to stare at her.
The silence rang like a death knell.

“Sorry,” she whispered, face flaming. “I
fucked up.”

“So?” Klement snapped at her, eyes suddenly
gray and stormy with annoyance. IT Guy never sounded that sharp.
“That doesn’t mean you should stop. We can mix it out if we need
to. Now start over.”

The music began again before she could reply.
Kat breathed a silent prayer and played her part. When she came to
the solo, she gritted her teeth until it had been
executed—flawlessly.

Klement’s voice echoed in her ears. “Okay,
that’s enough for today.”

Her headphones went silent as she watched the
band file out of the room. But what did it mean,
“That’s
enough?”
Had she blown her audition, or would she be invited
back tomorrow to work on another song?

The band came out and unplugged the gear and
rolled up the speaker cords while Kat packed her guitar.

She rubbed her shoulder. “Sorry I fucked up
that riff.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Klement said. “Just
don’t stop next time.”

She dared to raise her head to meet his gaze.
“You mean there will be a next time?”

“Maybe. Unless…” He paused and approached
her. His great height made her tilt her head up. “Hold out your
arms.”

Blinking with incomprehension, Kat complied,
extending her arms, palms upward as if in supplication. And as the
bassist scrutinized the pale flesh of her inner elbows, realization
struck. He was looking for track marks.

Outrage and disgust made her stomach roil.
How could anyone think that
she
shot up?

“I already told you during the first
interview that I don’t touch that shit,” she growled.

Klement crossed his arms over his broad
chest, resembling a merciless Viking. “Sorry, it’s a precaution
that we all decided to adopt. We don’t want to hire another
guitarist only to lose them to that shit again. If you’re offended,
you can go and we’ll call the next guy on our list.”

“No,” Kat answered quickly, chastened. Of
course they’d make double sure that their next guitarist was clean.
She must look like a petulant bitch. “I’m not offended, and I
completely understand why you want to be careful. You just caught
me off guard.”

The tips of Klement’s fingers, long and
callused from his trade, lightly touched the palms of her
outstretched hands. An unidentifiable tremor coursed through her
body at the feather-light contact.

“You can put your arms down now.”

His words broke off in a chuckle. Reeling
from embarrassment, Kat dropped her arms and clutched her guitar
case. Why couldn’t she be more like Kinley? Kin was tough. She
never had stage fright and she always remained cool and
professional in front of her band even though she’d had as big a
crush on Quinn Mayne, lead singer of Viciӧus, as Kat had on
Cliff.

At the thought of Cliff, Kat whirled around
to face him, praying he wasn’t looking at her like she was an
idiot. He wasn’t looking at her at all. He was cleaning under his
nails with a guitar pick.

As if sensing her attention, he glanced up
and winked.

What did that mean? Was it a good-job wink,
or a flirtatious wink? Kat tentatively smiled back.

Klement’s voice yanked her back to business.
“How about you meet us around five at my place and we’ll let you
know how we’ve decided to proceed?” He grabbed a pen and wrote down
his address and directions.

“Okay.” Her stomach churned with anxiety. Was
she hired? What if fucking up that note made them change their
minds? What if Roderick or Klement—or worse, Cliff—decided he
didn’t like her?

No,
she admonished herself.
Aside
from one mistake, I nailed that audition. They all were impressed,
I could tell. And Klement—

The thought broke off as Cliff smiled at her.
“See ya later, babe.”

Her cheeks warmed, and she barely heard
Roderick’s and Klement’s farewells as she made her way out of the
studio.

He called me babe!

As she got into her Subaru GL Wagon, she
allowed reality to sink in.

I might be the new guitarist for Bleeding
Vengeance!
She flipped on the air conditioner and let out a
sigh as gradually cooling air blew across her sweaty brow.
If I
do make the cut, I have to be professional. I can’t be ogling
Cliff, no matter how hot he is. I need to see him as a colleague
and not a fantasy.

But what if he wanted to date her or
something? A rush of dreamy hope came at the thought, only this
time it ebbed quickly with cold practicality. She’d lose all
credibility with the rest of the band if she did that, and never
gain any with the fans. Hell, some Viciӧus fans were calling Kinley
“Yoko” ever since she’d started dating Quinn, and she was only a
temporary band member.

No. No matter what, Kat couldn’t give in to
temptation and do anything with Cliff.

She put the car in gear and headed off to her
hotel room. Her IT guy was supposed to call in an hour. With all
the new traffic the site she and Kinley owned was generating, the
comments section had exploded with spam.

Despite the irritation of dealing with
computer errors, she looked forward to talking to him. He had a
gentle lullaby voice that made her worries flee, if the echo from
the speakerphone was annoying. He never yelled at her like her
father or her ex-boyfriend, even when she jumped ahead of his
instructions and clicked the wrong key. During long nights when bad
dreams and depression kept her from sleep, Kat was tempted to find
out more about him: where he lived, what he did when he wasn’t
helping people with their computers. If he was single.

But she never dared. Not only would it be
unprofessional, he probably lived across the country. And he could
be married, or one of those antisocial overweight guys that lived
with their moms and spent all of their income on video games.
That’s what Kinley said when Kat brought up her speculations.

Would it even matter if he was chubby,
though? After her last relationship, looks were starting to matter
less to Kat. All she wanted for her next boyfriend was for him to
be kind. IT Guy definitely fit that bill.

Either way, they had a good friendship. She
took pleasure in that. He’d known she had a big audition and would
be excited to hear how it went. Of course—Kat grinned—she hadn’t
told him that the audition was with
Bleeding Vengeance
. Even
though he’d never mentioned the band when they’d talked music, he
had to have heard of them.

She wouldn’t tell him that he sounded like
one of the band members, she decided. That would be weird.

Chapter Two

All three members of Bleeding Vengeance
watched Katana’s swaying hips and deliciously curved ass as she
walked out the door. Klement tried not to look—it wasn’t
professional—but hell, he was a guy. And she was a lot more
attractive than he’d expected, with her wavy black hair, ebony
eyes, and exquisite figure.