Wound Up (20 page)

The compassion she'd felt when she'd first seen him in his raggedy clothes, haggling with the hostess, came back in a wave. Which was weird, because she rarely mourned people's “old selves,” rarely had qualms about rehabbing their images. She believed in image. Image was its own armor, and donning it could make you ready for anything. Even so, people could be resistant. Sometimes they had ideas about wanting to be themselves or not wanting to be fake. In those cases, Haven reassured them that the right image wouldn't be like that. It would feel as though they were showing their best selves to the world.
Let me show you how to wear the real you on the outside.

She didn't expect that argument to fly with Mark. He was too smart, too cynical. Too sure his best self was already showing.

“Can I ask you something? Given how much you obviously don't want to work with me or apologize to Pete Sovereign, why are you doing the tour? What are you hoping to get out of it?”

The look he gave her could have lasered through glass, sheared it off clean. “Do we have to analyze it? I'm here, right? What if I just tell you I need to do this?”

“That's fine,” she said, and watched his shoulders sink with relief.

It would be helpful to know who he was, what he was about, but strictly speaking, no, she didn't have to know his motivations to do her job. She just had to get him cleaned up,
keep
him cleaned up and present him to the public eye at events where journalists would make a stink about his new, clean-cut self and the boozing, womanizing wreck he'd renounced.

She'd keep it simple, do her job and deliver a shiny new version of Mark Webster to his manager, as promised. Which meant she couldn't waste time on sympathy or curiosity or any other extraneous emotions. She was an artist, Mark Webster was her medium and she had work to do.

* * *

M
ARK
'
S
STEAK
WAS
AWESOME
, no two ways about it. It was worth the awkwardness of this whole stupid scene, worth eating in this sterile black-and-gray room with the other stiff-backed diners, worth getting waylaid by the teenaged hostess and her judgmental eyes, worth being head-shrunk by Haven Hoyt. Mark could almost slice the tenderloin with the side of his fork and the flavor was amazing. He loved it when meat tasted like meat, not frou-frou ingredients.

Concentrating on the food also made it easier to keep his gaze off Haven's breasts, which otherwise were... They were the eighth wonder of the world. He was surprised the other diners weren't magnetically drawn right out of their seats to stare. Every time he lifted his eyes from his steak, he had to focus like a madman on her face and not on her curves. He didn't know what she was wearing—the bottom part was like a burlap sack with a riding crop tied around the waist, and the top part was a 1970s-style button-down shirt under an absurdly short sweater—but whatever she'd engineered underneath her clothes should be part of the building plan for the next generation of bridges. He could practically feel her against his palms. His hands curved involuntarily.

It would probably be a bad idea to proposition her, but that was what he really wanted to do. He wanted to do that a hell of a lot more than he wanted to have a conversation with her about whitewashing his bad self.

She was asking him another question. “Do you have a look in mind you want to achieve? Besides ‘pop star'?'”

Pop star
had never been a look he aspired to. It had been a look he'd stumbled into, that he'd worn like too-tight clothing. And it sucked to think it was now something he had to work to attain. He shook his head.

“Particular people you want to see? Places you want to go?”

“I'm just not that guy.”

She nodded, like that made sense to her. Well, that was something.

He already saw the people he wanted to see—the guys he played blues with in the crappy little club in the Village, and the ones he shot hoops with at the gym near his apartment in Queens. But he was pretty sure that wasn't the answer she was looking for. Haven Hoyt's people to see and places to go were in a whole different league than his.

“I'm going to set up a bunch of appointments for you—hair, nails, skin.” She touched her hair and stroked the hot pink slickness of her own nails as she spoke, and his body heated. He had to look away. “For clothing, I'll bring in a personal shopper—we can keep it simple at a department store.”

He hadn't shopped anywhere other than his local secondhand store in nearly a decade. The whole idea made his skin crawl. He still remembered the way it had felt to be fussed over and groomed like a baby monkey when he was in the band. He didn't miss that, not for a second.

He itched to get away from her scrutiny and her plans as intensely as he'd wanted to touch her earlier. His primitive brain screamed,
Run away.

“Can't I just promise I'll get a haircut and buy some new clothes?”

A half smile appeared on Haven's glossy lips as she tugged a bite of pasta off her fork. She shook her head.

“I hate this.”

He hadn't meant to say it out loud, but he
liked
Haven, and something about her loosened his lips. She wasn't a ballbuster, and she didn't come off fake. She had a way of looking at him that, yeah, maybe bordered on pity, but it was better than the other brands of female attention he usually got—scorn or leftover band worship from self-destructive women who wanted to flush their self-esteem down the toilet with him.

“I'll try to make it hurt as little as possible.”

She said it without sexual emphasis, but it still made the blood rush out of his brain. He bet she would. If he swept the utensils and plates off the white cloth, the table would make the perfect surface on which she could make it hurt, or not, as she pleased. He'd take it either way.

Only he wouldn't. Because women like Haven Hoyt didn't sleep with men like him. He could tell by looking at her that, despite the softness of those curves, she had a thick, hard shell. He'd bounce right off if he tried to get through. But knowing that didn't stop him from craving Haven and her sleek black hair and riveting mouth. The steak had become tasteless and chewy, and he hastily redirected his thoughts. No point in missing the prize he could have to fantasize about the one he couldn't.

“I'll get you a schedule as soon as I can. It'll have the makeover stuff on it and then a whole bunch of events you and I will appear at.”

He set his fork down at the side of the plate. “Events.”

“Parties, concerts, clubs—we're going to take you out on the town so you can get photographed and written about. Otherwise, your new image isn't going to do you any good.”

He tried not to let it show on his face how much he dreaded “events.” How much he loathed the people and the publicity, the fakery, the exposure. “It's not going to do me any good.”

She tilted her head to one side. “It could do you a hell of a lot of good. If you want to do this tour.” Her eyes narrowed in scrutiny.

He couldn't turn away, and it probably wouldn't have helped, anyway. She'd see. He couldn't decide if he liked that, or if it terrified him.

“So—I'll ask you again. Why are you doing it?”

He still didn't want to answer the question, but he knew she'd keep asking him until he spilled. She was that kind of woman.

“I said no when they asked me, at first,” he admitted.

Two of his former bandmates and his old manager had come looking for him after he hadn't returned their calls, showing up at Village Blues one evening to corner him.

You look like hell, man.

He'd run out of disposable razors a few days earlier, along with milk and cereal. That meant no shaving, and it also meant breakfast had been Bloody Marys in the neighborhood bar. Nothing new on either front.

Thanks, guys.

They'd bought him
several
drinks and then explained the situation. His bandmates needed money. They wanted to do a reunion tour. They were sure he needed money, too, how about it? Jimmy Jeffers, the manager, would make it happen.

He'd told them no. In much stronger language, a burst of fiery self-righteousness that had felt better than sex.

They'd backed off, right out of the club. He'd thought it had been the persuasive power of his refusal, but probably they'd already decided they could replace him. His assholery had only reinforced their intention to do so.

“You know the band's history?” he asked Haven.

She nodded. Her hair was up in some kind of fancy twist thing. He wondered how many hairpins it took to keep it there, how much hair spray. She was so flawlessly put together, the kind of woman he didn't waste his time pursuing. Different worlds, different values. But Haven wasn't looking through him. She was looking at him with sharp, knowing,
memorizing
regard.

“What that history
doesn't
say is that I never should have been in Sliding Up in the first place. I'm not pop-star material, and anyone could have seen that by looking at me. I was going to school at Berklee, playing blues and rock and roots, and I let myself get snowed by a producer, which is what happens to a lot of musicians. Labels go after young guys in crappy circumstances who can't say no. I should have had the balls to refuse, because I had other options.”

“So why did you eventually say yes to the reunion?”

“My dad had a stroke. A few weeks ago.”

Her face softened. She'd been pretty before, but now looking at him as though she cared—

It pissed him off that he still had this weakness in him. He hadn't learned that women could do this at will—listen raptly, make you think you were the only man in the world. He hardened his heart and plowed on.

“He's got months of physical rehabilitation ahead of him and a nurse taking care of him in his house. The bills are a bitch and his crappy insurance barely makes a dent. I'm his only kid. My mom's dead. I told him I'd take care of it.”

“That was kind. You're a good son.”

He waved it off. “I'm not, really. He and I hadn't spoken for years. He raked me over the coals for being a screwup and—I lost my appetite for getting reamed out every time I had a conversation with him. But when this happened, I realized he's not going to be around forever. I want a chance to have a father-son relationship with him. And it's the right thing to do.”

Her eyes softened a little more, and he tried not to like it.

“So you agreed to do the tour.”

“Jimmy didn't tell you all this?”

She shook her head.

“Did he tell you they were holding a replacement over my head? Someone who looks like me, plays the guitar, can lip sync a hell of a lot better than I can and doesn't need you to dress him in the morning?”

She bit her lip, another partial smile. “I don't think you need me to dress you.”

She stopped right there, perfectly innocent, but his dirty brain knew exactly what it wanted to say back.

Nah. I'd rather have you undress me.

The thought got a grip on his dick.
Nice work, schmo. Make this even worse on yourself.

“So, they can replace you. That must be weird.” She leaned across the table.
Keep your eyes on her face
. And it was no hardship. Her nose was long and elegant with a slight upturn at the very tip. Her eyes were greenish, her skin pale and creamy. He wanted to taste it. His tongue tingled.

He needed another beer as soon as humanly possible, but the waiter was nowhere in sight.

He'd lost the thread of their conversation. “What'd you say?”

“I said it must be weird to feel like you're replaceable.”

Now she sounded like a shrink again.

The truth was, it pissed him off how easily they could drop another man into his slot. Which was stupid because he'd known that pop groups like Sliding Up were just pretty illusions that presented the music some producer dreamed up. And there was nothing—
nothing
—about the job that he wanted, except the money.

Or so he told himself. But if he didn't want the job, why was he so pissed? He hated to think he still had the same old craving for fame and fortune that had gotten him in trouble in the first place. The desire to have an arena full of people telling him with their applause and their screaming that his music was worth something...when he knew all too well it wasn't.

“Whatever,” he said, because she was too much—too pretty, too sympathetic, too easy to talk to. Because he had this feeling that she wouldn't want to stop with messing with his hair, his clothes, his nightlife. She'd want to open him up and make him over from the inside out. And there was no way she was getting in there. “It's fine. I need the money, I'll do the tour, I'll live with their stipulations.”

He would let the exquisite Haven Hoyt put her hands all over him (metaphorically) and turn him—but only the external him—into some version of himself he wouldn't recognize.

She was still looking at him as if she could see right through him. He wondered what the hell she saw.

Maybe the truth. How much it sucked that he needed the tour, sucked that the only way to help his dad was to sell himself out—again.

Or maybe she saw what he saw most of the time when he looked inside.

Failure.

Copyright © 2015 by Serena Bell

ISBN-13: 9781460344569

Wound Up

Copyright © 2015 by Denise Tompkins

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