78
I was remembering all these things on the flight to LAX.
I was replaying them all in my head as I got my bag from the luggage claim and hailed a taxi outside.
And I was trembling with fear… and maybe something else… when the cabbie dropped me off outside of the hotel.
It was a new place. Fancy shmancy. Called the Dubai.
It looked like a fitting place for rock stars. Lamborghinis and Porsches out front… red velvet carpet… valets in white suits… a cavernous lobby of black and white marble trimmed with gold, trying hard to look like a fever dream out of 1001 Arabian Nights.
I wheeled my crappy little rolling suitcase over to the front desk. A bellhop tried to take it from me, but I politely declined. Then I talked to the supermodel concierge about the cheapest room they had, which I’d only gotten because Rolling Stone was footing the bill and had to maintain appearances.
I looked around the lobby, filled with men in Armani suits and women who had more silicone in them than body fat.
Thank God I’d worn something halfway nice on the plane – designer jeans, suede boots, and a silk camisole top. I was going to change into something better, though, before I met the band.
Halfway through check-in, though, the supermodel behind the desk changed my plans.
“You’re Kaitlyn Reynolds?” she asked, reading her screen with a slight frown.
“Yes.”
“You’re here to interview guests of the hotel?”
My stomach twisted. “Yes… how’d you know that?”
Then I quieted down.
I was from Rolling Stone, baby! They probably got Rolling Stone journalists here all the time, interviewing rock stars. No big deal.
But that wasn’t why.
“Derek Kane left a message for you as soon as you checked in. He said to tell you he’s waiting for you in the bar.”
My stomach dropped through the floor.
“In the… the bar?” I asked, my tongue suddenly numb.
“Yes,” she smiled, and pointed across the lobby to my left. Two hundred feet away was a restaurant, a dark alcove set into the white and black marble.
“I… okay, I’ll just go up – ”
“He was very insistent that you should join him as soon as you arrived.”
Out of nowhere, the bellhop materialized and snagged my bag.
“Hey – ”
“He’ll take it up to your room for you. Here’s your key,” she said, handing over a little plastic card in a paper slip. “Mr. Kane said to send you right over.”
What if I don’t WANT to go right over?!
What if I want to go hide in my room and never, ever come out?
Instead, I just nodded dumbly.
“…okay…”
I don’t remember turning away from the front desk. I barely remember the long walk across the marble floor, my heels tck tck tck-ing in the vast, cavernous openness.
I sort of remember navigating through the dark wooden tables and leather chairs, past the ma?tre d’, who smiled like I was expected.
But I will always remember my first sight of him.
He sat there against the far wall of the restaurant, his arms spread out atop the booth like he owned the place – the cock of the walk, the king of the world, the emperor of rock. He was wearing ripped jeans… a designer t-shirt that probably cost several hundred dollars… and his trademark sunglasses, even in the dim light of the bar.
I could see the tattoos on his muscular arms, even from far away.
Even more clearly, I could see the cocky grin he wore as he watched me walk slowly through the bar towards him.
I reached the table and stared down at him.
Before I could say anything, he peeled off his sunglasses. I was instantly transported back four years as I stared once again into the most beautiful green eyes I’d ever seen.
“Kaitlyn,” he said in that sexy, low growl of his. “I’ve been waiting a long, long time for this.”
ROCK ALL NIGHT (Part 2 of the Rock Star’s Seduction) should be available in January 2014!
For an email when it (and any other future book) is published, sign up for my email list at OliviaThorneBooks.com!
Meanwhile, if you haven’t read it yet, here's the first part of my previous erotic romance series: ALL THAT HE WANTS (Part 1 of the Billionaire’s Seduction)!
ALL THAT HE WANTS
1
I’m writing this because I’m heartbroken.
I’m writing this because I’m in love.
I’m writing this because more amazing, astounding, mind-blowing things have happened to me in the last two months than in my whole life before I met him, combined.
I’m writing this because I’ve lost more than I ever thought I would be able to bear.
And even though I hate myself for doing it, I pray to God I can hold him…
…kiss him…
…make love to him…
…just one last time.
Okay, enough of mopey beginnings. I’m really not that kind of girl, I swear.
I guess I should say ‘woman,’ not ‘girl.’ I am 24, after all, and, well, you know – ‘yay feminism,’ right?
It’s just that I never really felt like I was an adult. In a lot of ancient societies, they had some sort of ritual that women go through where you know you’re a woman afterwards. ‘You passed the ritual? Congratulations, you’re a woman by definition!’
In the 21st Century United States of America, getting married or having a baby probably qualifies. Although I’ve never been married or had a baby, so… problem not solved.
I guess the other closest possibility for a single woman is losing your virginity… but that happened for me when I was 17, and I sure as hell didn’t feel like a woman with my high school boyfriend. Or my two college boyfriends. Or any ‘boyfriend,’ really.
He was the first one that made me feel like a woman. Entirely. Through and through.
But we’ll get to that soon enough.
2
My name is Lily Ross. Born in Charlotte, North Carolina, went to the University of Georgia, got a business degree with a psychology minor, had a horrible time getting a job after college, finally moved out to Los Angeles because my best friend Anh got hired at a prestigious consulting firm and promised me she could get me in, too. She did… although in a terrible position for next to no pay.
But I’m not complaining, mind you! (Not much, anyway.) It was a job, I had my foot in the door, and – Los Angeles! Come on! One of the most glamorous cities in the world!
That much is true, though I never saw the glamorous side of it until waaaaay after I arrived.
Also, Anh had an apartment in Hollywood! Land of movie stars, the silver screen, the place where dreams come true! Right?
Wrong.
Hollywood as an idea – the ‘dream factory’ – I guess that’s still valid. But Hollywood the ‘place’? The geographic location you’ll find on Google Maps? All the film studios and movie stars bolted over 50 years ago. Except Paramount Pictures, but they’re right next to a graveyard, so let that tell you something.
Our Hollyweird apartment is down the street from a tattoo parlor and a skeezy-as-hell ‘Thai massage’ parlor.
That was my first introduction to reality versus fantasy.
I know these are all boring details to you, but I guess I bring it up for a couple of reasons.
One: as you’ll see very shortly, my version of fantasy and reality began to blur together quickly and very dangerously.
Two: I was intimidated as hell by the women in Los Angeles when I got out here. It’s like the best skin/hair/boob gene pool dumping ground in the country. (And if you want some extra help in the boob department, the plastic surgeons in Beverly Hills will gladly sell it to you.) Sometimes it feels like every good-looking girl from every town in America comes out here to try to make it… and when you’re not in that crowd, it can be rough on your self-esteem.
However, as my dad used to say, sometimes even a blind squirrel finds a nut.
In case you missed it, I’m the blind squirrel in that analogy.
Nothing that happened to me happened because I’m gorgeous. I’m not. In Los Angeles, I’d almost say I’m plain.
At 5’4”, I’m fairly short by LA standards. I could stand to lose 10 pounds (maybe even 15… that’s it, I’m cutting off speculation at 15). I’m not even in the same zip code (okay, not even the same state) as Sofia Vergara or Jennifer Lopez in terms of, um, assets. Not exactly Victoria’s Secret model material.
Guys I’ve dated tell me I have pretty eyes. My hair’s good. I like my cheekbones. I have nice calves, and they look even better in heels. (We’re not going to talk about my thighs.)
I’m fairly smart, I think I’m funny (you may beg to differ after you’ve spent enough time with me), and I have a few interesting quirks.
The point is, none of this happened because I look like a pin-up model. Because I don’t.
Hell, I’m still not sure how it happened.
3
It was a Friday night at Exerton Consulting, and of course, my boss was being a douchebag.
Excuse my French.
Exerton is a small multi-national consulting firm with offices in a few big cities around the globe – LA, New York, London, Tokyo. But they’re not among the biggest fish in the pond, not by a long shot.
‘Consulting firm,’ you ask. ‘What does that mean?’
(If you didn’t ask that and don’t care, skip down about ten paragraphs.)
It means that other companies think they have problems, so they get Exerton’s ‘experts’ to come in and tell them how to fix said problems. Efficiency problems, human resources problems, hiring problems, blah blah blah, are your eyes glazing over yet?
By the way, most of the problems are things the companies could have solved by talking to lower-level employees, or by trusting good people in their own organization. But they never do that. Oh no. That would be craaaazy.
Don’t mind me, I’m just being snarky because I got hired as a temp secretary. I couldn’t even make the cut to regular staff, much less a junior consultant like Anh.
Anyway, back to the douchebag boss.
I work in the Executive Compensation division, which advises companies on how much to offer when they’re hiring high-level executives – CEO’s, CFO’s, and other alphabet-soup positions – in order to be competitive.
So, basically, I make $20,000 a year (which, in LA, is like $12,000 a year in Atlanta) supporting a senior VP who makes at least a half million a year, who advises companies on whether they should offer 11 million or 12 million to a potential new CEO who drove the last company he worked at into the ground.
Sorry, I’m a little bitter.
I’m even more bitter because my boss, Klaus Zimmerman, is… well, he’s not the nicest person on the planet. Even more than that, he’s disorganized, high maintenance, and wishy-washy. He can’t find anything and yells at me like it’s my fault his office is a pigsty. He is constantly coming up with a humongous list of time-consuming demands that he adds to hourly. He makes a hundred last-minute changes on any big project we send out, which means that I’m constantly begging the copy room guys to reprint and rebind 50 reports at 5:45 PM so I can make the last FedEx pickup. Otherwise I get to drive seven miles through LA rush hour – which is, to say, I get to wait in traffic 45 minutes – to drop off the delivery at the closest shipping office.
And he has the evil, evil habit of saving a ton of busywork until 6PM Friday night, which he needs corrected and emailed to him, because he ‘has to work at home on the weekends.’
Ah – but I get paid overtime for this!
Which means I make $12.50 an hour instead of $10. (Don’t forget, the temp agency gets their cut.)
And virtually every Friday night is shot because I’m exhausted by the time I wrap up at 10PM getting Herr Klaus’s reports ready.
I don’t think he even works from home on the weekends. I think he just likes torturing me.
But I shouldn’t complain, because if Klaus weren’t such a jerk, I would have never met him.