Once Upon a Sure Thing (Heartbreakers #2)

Macy: And your lavender streak is like a signature of awesome. Love ya, bunches.





I return to the mirror, checking out my side reflection, then my other profile.

I look sinful.

I look hot to trot.

But I also don’t look like me.

At all.

Chloe’s words echo in my mind. Be yourself.

I believe in that. I truly do. But I’m not the singer Miller wants. He wants the woman with the smoky voice, and I need him to see I can be the part.

Except as I stare at myself, my eyes keep darting back to my chest, and the way my breasts look in this top. If I’m drawn to the Boobsy Twins, that’s the only place a man will look.

Looking the part is well and good, but I can’t entirely play this role. Nor do I want to, I realize. I want to win on my voice and my talent. Not my tits, and not my lipstick.

I tug off the top, toss the push-up bra on my bed, and change into a regular bra and a simple black sweater that slopes off my shoulder.

There.

I’m leaving something to the imagination.

There’s something else that needs to go. This red lipstick is too look-at-me-I’m-Sandra-Dee. I grab a tissue, wipe it off, and slick on some pink lip gloss instead.

I pull on jeans and ankle boots and consider my reflection one more time. I don’t look like Honey. I don’t look like Ally. I look like a mash-up, and that’s what has always served me well: mashing up songs. Today, I’m going to attempt to mash my style with Miller’s.

“Wish me luck,” I say to my reflection, then I call Campbell and tell him I need a teeny favor in about an hour.

He laughs. “Consider it done.”

I leave and head to the studio, telling all these fidgety nerves to get the hell away from me, and don’t go near Honey either.





Chapter 7





Miller



The eight singers so far have been solid. Some have even bordered on good. The trouble is when you hear a voice that haunts you, and it’s a good kind of haunting, nothing else comes close.

“Thanks so much. I’ll be in touch,” I say to the redheaded alto, Angelica, as she leaves the studio.

I turn to my brothers and Jackson, who asked if he could watch the auditions too, since he’s off from school today. Miles dropped off his son, Ben, with our parents for the day. “What do we think, gentlemen?”

Miles shrugs and scratches his stubble-lined jaw. He’s working the scruff look hard these days. “I could have taken a nap during that last one.” He yawns majestically. “There was no snap, crackle, or pop. No spark that became a fire. No electric—”

“I get it. No chemistry.”

“But maybe there will be gobs of it when the next woman comes in,” Jackson says.

I stand a little taller. “That’s Honey, right?”

Miles scans the list of names then nods. “She’s the last one.”

Campbell taps his watch then meets my gaze. “Looks like she should be here any minute. Any chance you could grab me a bottle of water?”

I shoot him a look. Campbell isn’t usually a can-you-grab-me-a-bottle-of-water type of guy. “Would you like me to order you dinner and set your table too?”

“That sounds nice. Please put me down for a full meal service, as well.”

Miles rolls his blue eyes. “I’ll go with you, Miller. Our big brother is so lazy sometimes.”

I look at Campbell meaningfully, clapping my hand on Miles’s shoulder. “See? Dodgeball wants to help me.” That’s what we’ve always called Miles, due to his ability to get out of trouble every single time our parents came down on us.

Campbell shoos us out. “I bet those water bottles are so terribly heavy. It’s a good thing you have assistance.”

Miles and I leave the studio suite and head down the hall.

“You enjoying the break, or are you itching to get back on the road?” I ask him.

“Actually,” he says, taking his time answering, “not as much as I thought.”

I jerk my gaze toward him. “Touring was always your favorite part of this whole thing.”

“It was, and I made it work for a long time, but Ben is starting school soon.”

I nod, understanding completely. Miles has hired babysitters and nannies galore for Ben, so his son could be with him on the job in the early years. “You can always tour in summers though.”

“That’s the plan. Pretty sure I’ll go crazy if I don’t tour.”

“I know the going-crazy feeling well, Dodgeball,” I say as I turn into the snack room and grab a couple bottles from the fridge.

“You do know that I have a nickname and you don’t, and that’s because you’re the middle child, and therefore totally unloved.”

“I do suffer without love and a nickname,” I say wryly as we make our way back to the booth.

I toss a bottle of cold water to Campbell, and he catches it easily then tips his chin toward the glass. “She’s in there.”

A laser beam of excitement zips through me. “She just arrived?”

“I was a big boy and let her in by myself. She’s waiting for you.”

I peer through the glass, but she’s looking away. Bright blonde hair hits her jaw, showing off the sexy curve of her neck.

Don’t think of her neck as sexy, you jackass.

Her neck is functional. It holds up her head.

I uncap the water, take a deep swig, and head into the recording studio.

The second I step inside, I’m walloped by music. There isn’t even a moment to extend a hand and say hello. Campbell has already started playing the music track to Lady Antebellum’s “Need You Now.”

He doesn’t usually start it that quickly, so I snap my gaze in his direction, but his head’s down. In a split second, Honey launches into the duet, the sweet and sexy notes filling my head like decadent perfume.

I regard her in profile, trying to figure out this blonde in painted-on jeans and boots. She swivels around, and I blink.

The world slows.

My brain blurs.

One of these things is not like the other.

Because there’s no way Honey is my best friend.

There’s no way that’s Ally holding the mic and singing in a tone I’ve never heard come from her pipes before.

There’s no way her blue eyes are lined that deliciously dark, no way her hair is that sexpot style, no way her lips are so pouty.

My puzzlement shifts from curiosity to intrigue. I’ve never seen this side of Ally, and I gawk like I’m watching a giraffe dance the rumba at the zoo. She slides into the next verse, lighting me up with her voice.

Her eyes linger on me, roaming over my face. I mouth, You? Even though she’s here, I still need the confirmation. I still want the confirmation.

She nods, smiling playfully as she sings.

I’ve been tricked. I’ve been treated. I’ve been fooled. And I love it.

She sings like a sinner. She sings like an angel. She sounds like whiskey and sugar. I’ve only ever known her for her church-bell voice, but now she’s a glorious mix of dirty and sweet, and I never knew she had it in her.

But I can’t marinate in this change-up. It’s showtime for me.

Grabbing the mic, I dive into my first line as I gaze into those blue eyes of my friend. Only I have to think of her as Honey, so I sing to the new woman about how I can’t do without her, how I need her now.

Something is in the air between us when we sing, something charged. Something that hasn’t been there before. Stage chemistry.

I move closer as if I’m drawn by the pull of gravity that I have no control over. We lock eyes and everyone else fades away. I’m still in shock that I’m loving singing a song with my best friend.

That’s what terrifies me. Especially since we sound good together, and we move well together.

Maybe we even look good together, as we belt out this hot-as-fuck duet, and for the first time we’re not butchering a holiday tune or destroying “Total Eclipse of the Heart” at karaoke. As she moves closer to me, we sing the final chorus like it’s going out of style, and when the music softens, I can’t resist. I finger a strand of her blonde wig, the coconut scent from her lotion floating into my nose.

Reluctantly, I let the hair fall.