Octo BEAR fest (Renaissance Shifters #1)

Chapter 19

CHAPTER 19

B ill Torben was the only guy Gwen had met in years—maybe ever—who'd learned she used to be Emma Hart, absorbed that information, and then just didn't seem to care very much. He asked questions like he was interested in her, but not like he was desperate to find out all the dirt on being a child star, or like it changed what he thought of her.

It was weird, Gwen thought, and it was wonderful. She hadn't told anybody but Penny, over years, as much about herself as she'd told Bill in a few hours. She could hardly believe how easy and comfortable it was. Or how much fun she'd had, just wandering around downtown Renaissance putting up posters with him.

The town really was a lovely little place, snugged right up against the mountains. Bill had mentioned it would start snowing pretty soon, but that they usually got through Oktoberfest without the white stuff. The whole place had an old-timey old-west feel to it, with the tallest buildings being maybe four stories, but those were mostly church steeples or statuary on top of government buildings. It was all mostly stonework, not wood like she actually thought of the Old West, although that idea was probably from movies rather than towns that had survived the gold rushes and railroads coming in. The streets were unexpectedly wide, and traffic was surprisingly limited, which Bill had waved off with a pass of his hand. "It's the whole Colorado outdoors lifestyle thing, only moreso for Renaissance. Pedestrians and cyclists get priority. There's a stoplight you have to wait at for almost five minutes over in front of the courthouse. Other places have statement sculptures. Renaissance has a statement stoplight."

Gwen had burst out laughing. "That's incredible."

"It makes everybody mad, including locals," Bill had replied with a grin. "Most of us learn not to drive on Court Street at all, and tourists get a lot of tickets there. And since it and Main Street are the main streets, it cuts way, way down on traffic."

There was an airport that catered to the winter tourist season, but of course, ran year 'round with flights to the West Coast and as far east as Chicago and Atlanta. A girl could get to most major cities for gigs from here, if she really needed to. And, although she'd driven, there was a new high-speed train that went from there to Denver, and she could get anywhere in the world from Denver.

Not that Gwen was thinking about moving to Renaissance. That would be ridiculous.

But it was awfully pretty, and she could obviously drop by the Harlequin to play any time she felt like it, and—and Gwen Booker was smart enough not to throw her entire life over for some guy. At this stage of the game she was, at least. For sure. Definitely. She'd learned her lesson on that front at least three times, and in her grimmer moments recognized that there was probably some kind of pattern there that involved her horrible father and bad decisions regarding men.

Bill really didn't seem like a bad-decision kind of man, though. He practically had 'responsibility' written all over him, given how seriously he took running his family's business, and how frustrated he was with his younger brothers' lackadaisical attitude toward it.

He was the kind of man who would tell her moving to Renaissance so she could snuggle up to his huge, safe self some more was an unwise decision. Dammit.

Gwen breathed, "Hold your horses, girl," under her breath to herself. They had plans for a not-gig-related get-to-know-you weekend the next weekend. That was far enough in advance to be planning stuff for a guy she met yesterday.

Bill, who apparently had amazing hearing, said, "Horse girl?" in an odd tone, and Gwen laughed as they headed back to her car.

"Not really. I haven't ridden since I was a teenager, and I only did then for work. I liked it, though. You?"

"I think it would be cruel and unusual punishment to make a horse carry a guy my size. And they don't like how I smell."

"Really?" Without thinking about it, Gwen leaned over to give him a sniff after they'd both gotten in the car. He still smelled as nice as he had the night before, with the hint of cinnamon fading. "I think you smell nice."

He looked down at her with her nose on his shoulder, fighting off a grin. "Well, thank you."

Gwen sat up again, trying to find some shred of dignity. "I'm not weird."

Bill totally lost the battle with his grin and went straight into a peal of laughter. "Glad to hear it. Let's go home, weirdo."

Gwen's heart gave another silly jump at the word home , although she told herself, very sternly, that Bill certainly didn't mean it that way. His home, maybe, more or less, but not hers . Still, she felt bubbly inside, and the drive back to the pub was a quick one filled with more light-hearted chat. Pulling up, she saw Penny's van, and yowled in dismay. "They got here before us! Oh, but only just, okay, that's fine."

The rest of her band members were in fact just piling out of the van. Penny, a firecracker of a drummer at five foot five; Myles, the lanky bass player almost as tall as Bill who towered above her, Gemma, the keyboardist, and Sandy, who played guitar. Penny waved at the Impala, shouted a greeting, and widened her eyes when Bill got out the passenger door, her gaze darting back and forth between Gwen and the big man with interest. "This is Bill Torben," Gwen called. "He's the owner. We've been out flyering the town!"

"Uh huh." Penny, still wide-eyed, came over to shake Bill's hand. She was a full foot shorter than he was even in her boots, and made entirely of curves and red hair. "Nice to meet you, Bill. I'm Penny, the drummer."

Bill's hand, which enveloped even Gwen's, swallowed half of Penny's arm. He was a little wide-eyed, too, shaking her hand. "Nice to meet you too. Welcome to Renaissance and the Thunder Bear Brewpub."

"Thanks. Those are Myles, Sandy, and Gemma. I hope you've got a lot of beer ready, because our socials are actually going nuts." She turned to Gwen, all business. "We had people coming in anyway, you know that, but with this 'OMG potential disaster' thing, they're frickin' rallying , G. I got people posting road trip pics from all over the western half of the country. We got some folks coming down from Edmonton. "

"In a car?" Gwen asked in horrified appreciation. "That's a full day's drive! I mean, a twenty-four hour day!"

"In a car," Penny confirmed. "They left last night and are driving in shifts. Planning to be here by tonight. We better put on a hell of a show."

Sandy, who sang a tenor second lead as well as playing guitar, called, "We always do," in an alto much lighter than her singing voice. Myles put a laconic thumb into the air, and Gwen ended up beaming at her bandmates.

"Yeah, we do. Okay, Bill, do you mind if we just kind of do our thing for a while? We'll want to get set up and make sure the sound system is all working."

"I brought the screens," Penny said in a significant tone.

Gwen paused, looking from her to the van and back again. "Really? You think it's going to go that well?"

"Babe, you got two new songs from our album going viral and promised four more over the weekend, which, thank you very much you might have warned us about, and you sent up a bat-signal-distress-call. People are loving this. Yeah, I think it's going to go this well."

"Viral?" Gwen's voice rose. "I didn't film them or anything?"

"My dude, " Penny said in a voice she reserved for when Gwen was being particularly dim, " you didn't have to film it. The audience at the Harlequin last night did."

Gwen stared at her. "But I don't want to go viral. That's what you're there for."

"You're the only lead singer in the entire universe who actually wants the rest of the band to get more face time than them, you know that, right? If you didn't want to go viral, you shouldn't have played two new songs in front of three hundred people the day you asked your fans to come save your ass because of a mess-up with the booking. No offense," Penny said to Bill, crisply.

"None taken. This is the most interesting mistake I've ever made. But…screens?" The big man sounded a bit lost.

"Fortunately you've got a big parking lot here," Penny said, as if that cleared everything up. "You're going to need somebody to police the actual parking, because we'll be putting the screens up probably…" She turned, examining the parking lot, then waving. "There and there. Maybe there, too. And there. I brought six," she told Gwen, turning all the way around to get back to her.

"I'm sorry," Bill said slowly. "Are you suggesting you think there's going to be overflow audience?"

"Have you checked your ticket sales?"

"No, I…" Bill trailed off, staring at the petite drummer, than got his phone out and scrolled through it, paling. "What the hell? The pub—the code—we're not fire-coded for this many people! Not even with the beer gardens!"

"Hence the screens," Penny said patiently. "You might need to put a cap on sales. Keep some for the door, but I think most of our fans who are coming from out of town have gotten their tickets already, so we shouldn't have to turn anybody away. That would be crushing. Bad PR. Can't let that happen. I'll make sure to put the word out about buying them in advance, though, to make sure of not being disappointed."

Bill said, "Screens?" again, and this time Penny, shaking her head, yelled for Myles to get one. He eyed her, but ambled into the van and came out again with a rolled-up screen about two feet taller than he was. Sandy hurried over to help him unroll it, then waved at Bill through its incredibly thin material. The whole thing was probably eight by twelve, not exactly jumbo, but pretty flipping big for something that could be rolled up and put in a van. Bill made a spluttering noise, and Penny gave him a serene smile as he said, "Is that even real ?"

"Myles's company is developing them. They're insanely cool and we get to stress-test them. Look, I'm sorry," she said to Bill, "but I've really got to take Gwen away and us get this all set up so we're sure we can be seen inside and out tonight. We brought the outdoors sound system stuff, too," she said to Gwen.

"Where did you put the band if all that was in your van?"

"I tied them to the roof. No, Myles drove, too. We couldn't make it work otherwise. First thing I'm buying when we hit it big is a tour bus, G. This trying to Tetris everything and everybody into the van sucks."

"I'll buy you a tour bus when we hit it big," Gwen promised. "All right, it looks like we've got some real work to do. Bill, is it okay if we prop the doors open so we can tromp in and out?"

"Yeah, of course. I'll tell the staff—and my family—to stay out of the way, or better yet, be helpful if they can be." He gave Gwen a wide-eyed smile. "You have no idea how impressed I am. And also slightly terrified. This has been the most overwhelming twenty-four hours of my life."

"So far."

He stared at her, then laughed. "Yeah. If you're going to stay in it, yes, definitely, so far. Nice to meet you, Penny. I'm going to go tell everybody to take their marching orders from you."

Penny said, "Oh, I like him," approvingly as he walked away, and then, as soon as he was out of earshot, elbowed Gwen. "Eeeehhhhh?"

Gwen hunched her shoulders, trying not to grin. "'Eeeehhhhh,' what?"

"He's hot! He's huge! Are you into him?"

"What do you mean, he's hot? He's one hundred percent not your type!"

Penny gripped both Gwen's shoulders, looking up into her eyes. "Babe, I don't need to be into guys to aesthetically appreciate huge hotness in one. And you are into him, or you wouldn't be prevaricating."

"Oh, I'm prevaricating, am I? What the hell is prevaricating?"

"Avoiding the question."

"Oh." Gwen hunched her shoulders again. "I guess I'm prevaricating, then, yeah. Yes, he's hot, and yes, I'd hit that like a gong. In fact, I almost did earlier, except I—" She broke off, frowning after Bill. "He put the brakes on, actually. He said he had something to tell me and I figured it was, you know, he recognized me and all that, except it wasn't that, so I confessed my entire stupid history and he never did tell me what he wanted to say."

"Oooh." Penny's eyebrows rose and she, too, swung to look after Bill. "I bet he wanted to tell you he'd fallen in love with you at first sight and you were meant to be together, but since you derailed that, how'd he take it? The whole sordid past thing?"

"He thought my dad sucked."

Penny nodded, waited, then blinked back at Gwen. "That's it?"

"Pretty much."

"Oh." The drummer's smile bloomed. "Oh, yeah, I do like him. Awesome. Hang on to that one, G. He's a good 'un. But not until after we're done setting up, because O. M. G. do we have a lot of work to do."