Mal snorted, the jerk.
Ben just nodded. “Yeah, I noticed. He’s like Houdini when he gets an idea into his head that he wants to be somewhere else. Kind of impressed you kept him occupied for as long as you did, actually.”
Phew.
“Keeping track of children isn’t as easy as it looks,” said Jimmy with a small smile. Not a smirk, however, which was interesting. It might have almost been kind. Marriage and fatherhood must have mellowed him plenty.
“I’m finding that out,” I said.
David just jerked his chin at me. Not awkward at all.
With an electric guitar in his hands, the new kid, Adam, stood waiting nearby. He looked a little wide eyed at the company he was keeping. Fair enough. Any no-name baby rocker like him would give up valuable parts of their anatomy to be hanging out with Stage Dive.
“What did you think?” he asked Ben, gaze hopeful yet braced for the worst.
Mal cleared his throat. “So you’d label that maybe a standard sort of rock, pop, soul, with a dash of Americana-type sound, yeah?”
Adam just blinked. “Ah, well—”
“Don’t get me wrong. While there’s nothing particularly fresh or interesting about what you’re doing, you don’t completely suck. Not completely,” said Mal, all seriousness. “I hope you can find something to cling to in that, son.”
“Ignore him,” groaned David. “Unless you want to hit him with something. That’s fine too.”
“Hey!” Mal held up his drum sticks, making the symbol of the cross. “Stay back, fiends. I’m a ninja master with a set of sticks in my hands. I could take you all down without even raising a sweat.”
A hand rubbing tiredly over his face, Ben nodded in agreement. “Definitely ignore him. God knows we do. Your sound is fine, Adam. In fact, it’s damn good. That’s why you’re here.”
Brows drawn tight, Adam looked around the room. “Okay.”
Mal grinned. The man truly was the Puck or Loki of rock ’n roll. Pure mischief with a side order of annoying as all hell. “Actually, the truth is that you’re killing it. But we hate any sort of genuine competition and the only way we could think of crushing your talent was to have Ben produce your next album.”
Ben quietly grumbled something rude, given the small ears no doubt listening.
“So I’ve decided I’ll play on your album, Adam. But like under a pseudonym,” said Mal. “This is going to be great. I’ll use a cool fake name like Captain P. Niss. Get it?”
“You’re an idiot,” said Jimmy flatly.
Surprisingly enough, the drummer actually looked vaguely wounded. “Anne thought it was hilarious.”
“Your wife is an incredibly kind and gracious person.”
“Enough. You can play uncredited,” said Ben, ending the discussion.
“You can’t hide talent that easily. The true musos will still recognize my style. They’ll be like, ‘no way that’s anyone but Malcolm Ericson on the drums’. Tell them, Marty.”
“Ben, you guys are working. Let me take him.” Ignoring Mal, I wandered over to my brother, arms extended for the two-year-old terror. Gib of course scowled and turned away, hiding his face in his father’s thick shoulder. Like I was the worst. Sigh. To think, I’d actually imagined he and I were bonding sort of over the last few days. Sure, it was based on an illicit chocolate chip cookie enticement system, but you had to start somewhere.
The doors to the outside pool and garden area opened, Sam slipping inside. Immediately, I tensed up further. This was just not my day.
“Done a full sweep of the surrounding area, Sam the Man?” asked Mal. “We under attack from rabid teenage girls again or what?”
The red had faded from my right eye, but I kept my face angled downward just the same. What with the amount of concealer I’d been using, no one could possibly see the bruising. Still, the bodyguard tended to notice things others didn’t.
Sam’s expression never slipped from his business-as-usual demeanour, regardless of the drummer’s ribbing. God knows where he found the patience. Though he had been working with the band for years. Guess he was used to it by now. “A few fans and some paparazzi are hanging around the front gate. Ziggy’s keeping an eye on them. Otherwise, you’re as safe and sound as I can make you, Malcolm.”
“Does that happen often?” asked Adam. “The rabid teenage girls thing?”
Sam shook his head. “Nah. Their fan base has grown up with them. These days, they’re more likely to just want to have a chat and take a picture. It’s the odd one who’s unbalanced that we have to watch out for.”
“Like the chick that broke into Jimmy and Lena’s place last year. The woman used their shower then took a little nap in their bed,” said Mal. “Crazy town.”
Adam’s eyes opened even wider.
“My bed I could have understood, but Jimmy’s? That woman needs help.” Mal paused, remembering. “Then there was the dude following me around last year and sending me poetry. He actually wasn’t bad.”
“How’d the one about your eyes go again?” Jimmy smirked.
“Don’t get him started,” groaned David.
With a heavy sigh, Mal smiled. “Yeah, it was all fun and games ’til he tried to rip some hair out of my head. I mean, I can understand where he’s coming from, me being a sex god and all. But he scared the crap out of Anne. Pushed her out of the way to get to me. She could have been badly hurt.”
Jimmy took in Adam’s seriously alarmed expression. “That’s about when we brought Ziggy and Luke on board to help Sam out,” he said, in a soothing, nonchalant tone. “We always had a team on tour, but with wives and kids involved…better to be safe than sorry. They rotate between us, keeping an eye on things.” Jimmy scratched at the stubble lining his jaw. “Plus Lena and I got a place with better security. Our daughters needed more space anyway, a bigger yard to play in and stuff like that.”
“Oh, please, your old place was like a freaking mausoleum.”
“It was not. That house won an architectural award.”
“It was cold and ugly,” said Mal. “Lena made you move, admit it. Your wife runs the show and she’d had enough of all the butt ugly monochrome and marble. That’s the truth.”
After first checking Gib wasn’t watching, Jimmy flipped the idiot drummer the bird.
The small child, however, had already found something inappropriate to latch onto. “Butt! Butt-butt-butt!”
“Good work,” grumbled Ben.
Mal laughed, spurring the kid on. Figures. They were both about the same maturity level.
“Are you sure you don’t want me to take him?” I asked, one brow arched high.
Ben shook his head, setting Gibby down once he started wriggling, wanting to explore. With more shouts of “butt,” he ran over to his Uncle Mal, who immediately set him up on his lap. A pair of kid-size earmuffs, no doubt hanging on the kit for this very reason, went on Gibby’s head, and soon Mal was helping him wield the drum sticks. The resulting noise was without rhyme or rhythm and astonishingly loud. Made me wish Mal had earmuffs for the rest of us too. But at least Gibby had been distracted from yelling out any colorful language.
“Having second thoughts about the fame thing?” I asked Adam, wandering closer.
The young man shrugged. “I just want to play my music. What happens happens, you know?”
Sam stood in the corner, doing his silent sentry thing. Every now and then his gaze would take in the view of the pool outside, checking for anyone who didn’t belong. With all of the guys gathered in the one place, security would be more intense than usual. Today he was wearing thick black boots, jeans, and a matching T-shirt. It suited him, the whole dark and dangerous thing he had going on.
I might have been somewhat distracted and lost track of the conversation when something caught my attention. “What did you say?”
Ben looked up. “I said Adrian’s talking about getting Adam a place in the Mackee Festival line-up.”
“That’s a terrible idea.”
“Why?”