“God, I love this song,” she’d announced the night we met. “Come dance with me.”
She’d grabbed my hand with surprising strength for a petite redhead who couldn’t have weighed a hundred pounds soaking wet. She had the kind of raspy voice that instantly made you think of dirty talk. Or maybe that was just me. I had just turned sixteen and was basically a hard-on with a pulse.
Gavin had raised his eyebrows and smirked as she dragged me closer to the truck blaring the music. She shook her sexy ass and sang at the top of her lungs, off key, but proudly off key. I couldn’t take my eyes or my hands off her. For several years.
That damn song was on some bootleg CD someone had from a random folk concert they’d gone to. Just to torture me, the same damn song hit it big, spending a fuck-ton of weeks at number one on the mainstream Billboard charts around the time Robyn and I ended things. That was some weird poetic full-circle bullshit I still couldn’t wrap my head around.
Fucking Lumineers.
I can’t let myself get distracted right now, can’t afford a pointless trip down messed-up memory lane trying to figure out what happened with the one that got away. I need to focus.
The biggest break of my career is right around the corner—literally—and I have to leave everything I have out on the stage. I don’t have time to get caught up in memories that don’t matter. No matter how damn beautiful they are.
I have no idea what’s gotten into me. Except the overwhelming desire to be alone with her, to feed her pancakes and then . . . I really can’t go there right now. And yet, here I am.
“So the redhead from Midnight Bay. You’re acquainted with her?” Mandy’s words snap my attention back to the present. Her question is innocent enough—but the images it conjures aren’t.
I have been buried deep inside Robyn Breeland’s body while she came around my cock. I’ve felt the pulsating waves of ecstasy radiating from the writhing figure that fit perfectly in my arms. I was her first. And her second and third and we lost count after a year.
“Yeah. She’s from Amarillo. You could say we’re acquainted.” To put it mildly.
“Well, relax on mooning around after the liquor girl when fans are around. We’re promoting you as a single guy looking for the right girl. Fans don’t want to see you tripping over yourself for some scrawny nobody.”
There is venom in her voice. I frown at her as I tune my guitar. “She’s not nobody. She’s a girl I dated in high school. She’s a friend.” She’s a C-cup, too, so I’d hardly call her scrawny, but whatever.
Mandy’s eyes practically bug out of her head. “Are you kidding me?” Before I answer she mumbles something under her breath about “the fucking odds.”
“No. I’m not. It’s not that big of a deal. So she works for the tour sponsor.” I shrug to convince her I believe this. Or maybe to convince myself. At this point I’m not sure.
“Well, that’s just great, Dallas. Go enjoy your show.” She throws a hand out toward the stage. “It’ll probably be your last one on this tour.”
Wait. What? I tell myself I must’ve misunderstood her.
“Why? Is there some rule about fraternization among sponsors and artists?”
She glares at me like I’m the biggest moron on the planet.
“No,” she answers slowly. “There is an unspoken understanding about Jase Wade getting what he wants.”
“You lost me.”
Mandy nods. “That girl is only on this tour because Wade wants her to be. You think she’s earned enough respect at her company to head up the marketing campaign for a tour this size?”
I open my mouth to defend Robyn because she really is driven and hardworking and a pretty incredible girl. But before I get a word out in her defense, Mandy continues.
“She’s on this tour for one reason and one reason only.” My manager goes back to texting after gesturing with manicured fingernails at Robyn blushing beside the stage where Jase Wade is whispering something in her ear. “She’s here because he requested her.”