Rock & Roll Nights: The Lila and Rivers Edit

9. Lila

9

LILA

A nna didn’t approve.

I mean, of course she didn’t approve. We’d come out on the road to follow Olivia and Connor’s tour with one goal in mind: getting in front of them and auditioning for that contract. Winning our way into a deal with Avery Dawson Records and finally getting our careers off the ground and into the big time. Maybe even getting on a first-name basis with Olivia Johns herself.

We’d thought that getting to ogle Rivers Shine while we were here might be great.

But we hadn’t actually intended to meet him.

Or get drunk with him. Find our way into his hotel room and then his bed.

Making a deal with his agent to play Rivers’ fake girlfriend in order to win the contract we wanted had never even crossed my mind. In fact, it hadn’t even been in my wildest dreams. I’d been half in love with the guy for most of my life, but I’d never thought I’d be in a position to be anything more than a fan.

Of course I’d never thought I would spend an entire night enjoying him, either. And yet here we were.

Still, judging by the look on Anna’s face, I probably should have at least talked to her about Taylor’s plan before agreeing to it.

“You did what ?” she asked, her voice low and disbelieving.

I shrugged, trying to play it off. “I agreed to play his girlfriend. Not for long. I’m guessing like a week or two, max. Just enough time to help him improve his image. And after that, we get first shot at the contract. Which is why we’re here, right? The contract? I figure I do this favor for Taylor James—you know, Olivia’s agent—and that contract is basically in our hands. Bonus: We’re famous ahead of time because I’m the girl who dated Rivers Shine and fixed him. We’ll be, like, pre-famous. Famous in advance.”

I mean, it made sense. Taylor hadn’t exactly sounded desperate, but I’d seen enough magazines to know about Rivers’ reputation. If she wanted to clean that up—which she obviously did—she had her work cut out for her. She must have known that she needed a girl who could pull it off and would agree quickly. I didn’t know whether she’d figured out that I’d already met Rivers or not, but she’d evidently seen me staring at him from the stage, and him staring back, and drawn her own conclusions. She’d decided I was the perfect candidate.

And she was lucky I’d said yes.

Because if all that held true, then I was doing her a big favor. As far as I was concerned, that meant she owed me. I was about to spend the next week or two hanging out with the guy who’d made me fall for him and then deserted me the moment he realized what he’d done. I’d have to watch my back—and my heart—the whole time. Be on my guard against anything that looked like it might hurt me.

If I did that, the least Taylor could do was reward me with a contract. I’d just have to remind her of that at every opportunity.

I grinned at Anna, incapable of stopping myself, and took her hand. “Anna, stop looking like I’ve just made the biggest mistake of my life. Taylor James owes me for this. And we’re going to get our contract out of it. I guarantee it.”

She didn’t look convinced.

But she also hadn’t believed me when I said I had a direct line to God. And look how that had turned out.

* * *

Word came down that afternoon that the tour would be moving on in the morning, and Anna and I spent the evening staying out of the way of the chaos that ensued. It was like a whirlwind had suddenly come into town and settled right on the hotel where we were staying. Roadies, managers, band members, and a number of other people with unknown positions were constantly coming and going, pounding up and down the hallways and shouting at each other about grabbing this or that piece of equipment and making sure the vans and buses were ready to go. Getting the stars themselves in line, with all their baggage—both real and metaphorical—and being sure to get Rivers on a different bus than Noah. Everyone seemed to know exactly what they were doing, and it was like the place had become a beehive. Or an anthill. No one was standing still, and everyone had a job. More than that, everyone knew exactly what their job was.

Everyone but Anna and me. We’d spent fifteen minutes packing our things and then stared at each other, at a loss for what else we were supposed to do.

The one thing I knew for certain was that I didn’t want to run into Rivers. I didn’t know what we were supposed to be doing—Taylor hadn’t exactly sent me a set of instructions—and I hadn’t yet managed to get my feelings about the situation under control. Until that happened, I didn’t want to risk seeing him again. My brain was still too full of the secrets we’d told each other, the way he’d laughed as he answered one of my questions.

The whiskey on his breath as he leaned in to kiss me.

The echo of his fingertips brushing down my side just before he positioned the head of his cock between my legs and entered me, his eyes on mine and his lip caught between his teeth.

I gasped involuntarily, confirmed my idea that I didn’t want to see him until after I’d figured out how I felt about the deal I’d made, and turned to my best friend in the world—who only knew half of why this was going to be so complicated. I need advice, or at least an outlet for the maelstrom of feelings careening through my head, and I couldn’t tell the person I loved the most in the world.

Torture, thy name is Rivers Shine, and your weapons are tattoos, heartbreak, and an achingly sweet smile that I don’t think I was supposed to see.

“Dinner?” I asked breathlessly.

Anna frowned, obviously noticing my tone, but then shook her head. “Dinner. Somewhere away from the hotel, I think.”

I reached down and took her hand. “That,” I said, “sounds like the best idea you’ve ever had. Let’s get out of here and not come back until it’s quiet enough to sleep.”

* * *

The next morning came quickly and before I knew it, we were caught in the stream of people heading down the stairs and into the lobby, each of them babbling about some plan or other for during the tour, or something they were supposed to be doing today. I’d never been on such a large tour before—certainly not as part of the entourage—and I couldn’t believe how many people were involved. I knew there were three bands going on the road and that they all had people supporting them, but there had to be at least one hundred people milling around in the lobby when we got there, adjusting bags and equipment and visiting with each other. A couple of them seemed to be in charge of everyone else and were shouting out directions for who was going on what bus and where we’d be heading next.

Honestly it was all more than a little bit overwhelming.

When Anna grabbed my hand and started to pull me toward the front doors, I followed her gratefully.

“Thank God we have our own car and don’t have to worry about this lot,” she muttered over her shoulder. “If this is the kind of chaos they deal with on tour, I’m thinking Olivia and Connor might have been right to do it the way they did the first time.”

I laughed. “That first time was mostly a mistake, from what I’ve heard. I don’t think it was their choice.” That was an understatement, given what I’d read. They’d essentially been deserted on the road by their label and told to get home however they could. A great publicity stunt, as far as the label was concerned. Probably a terrifying nightmare for Connor and Olivia.

Though they’d come out of it in love, and with thousands of people hanging on their every word. So maybe it hadn’t been all bad.

“Maybe not. But Anna’s right. It was probably easier than dealing with all this,” a voice said from my right.

I glanced up, wondering who the hell was listening in on my conversation with Anna, and stopped dead when I saw Rivers looking down on me. His mouth was caught in something that was half smirk, half shy smile, and he shrugged.

“Hey, sunshine girl.”

“Hey,” I said faintly. I’d woken up this morning thinking I had a handle on my feelings. Or at least a plan for how I was going to get through this. It was just a business deal, I’d told myself. Just an agreement I’d made in exchange for a shot at a contract.

I wasn’t going to let Rivers Shine get into my heart or even under my skin. Hell, I didn’t even have to like him. I just had to pretend I did.

Easy.

But standing there staring up at him, I couldn’t stop the flood of emotions going through me. They started small. Just a tickle in my throat. But soon they were ballooning inside me like someone had injected pure Rivers into my blood. I was tingling all over and something had happened to my voice.

“Rivers. What are you doing here?” Anna, who evidently hadn’t had Rivers injected into her bloodstream, asked sharply.

He cast her a slightly less shy smile. “My job. I’ve got orders, and they include borrowing your girl for a second.”

“Borrowing my girl?”

“Yep.” He turned back to me and slipped his fingers between mine. “Ready for this?”

“Ready for what?”

Instead of answering, he pulled me through the doors and into the bright, flashing lights of a number of cameras, all the lenses pointed at us as reporters shouted Rivers’ name and a bunch of questions, each of them trying to get his attention.

“Rivers, where are you off to first?”

“Do you have new music for us this time? I heard you were working on some love songs!”

Then they all stopped, like they’d just had their microphones silenced. And into the silence, a single voice called out, “Rivers, who’s the girl? Is this one actually something special?”

When he turned to me, his eyes were glinting with mischief. He ducked down and pressed his lips to my ear, the touch both soft and electrifying at the same time. “Just smile,” he whispered. “We need some pictures together, but you don’t have to say anything. Just pretend I’m saying something really funny.”

I smiled automatically, already knowing what the cameras would capture of this moment. Rivers’ face buried in my neck, my eyes glazed and a gentle smile on my mouth as if he was whispering sweet nothings to me. My bright, unmarked fingers caught in his tattooed hand like he had every right to claim me. These would be the perfect pictures to start us off on this whole scheme, and they would definitely make it look like we were an actual item.

We were doing the jobs Taylor had assigned us. And we were doing them perfectly.

And fucking hell, was I going to have trouble protecting my heart if this was the way he was going to go about it all.