I swallow hard. “I’m sorry, Isaac, but that feels like a huge betrayal of my best friend’s trust.”
He nods and scoots his chair back and walks around to the front of the desk. His tall frame towers over me as he leans back against his desk while both hands rest on either side of him. “I know this sounds bad, but it’s not exactly what you’re thinking. Diana was going to give this account to someone else until I threw my hat in the ring. I didn’t think it was right to pull the rug out from someone like that, so I figured if I took the account, that since you know her, you could get her ideas. That way, we can still implement some of them...if they’re good. She’ll still get some credit.”
“That seems awfully nice of you, but I can’t help but wonder why you would get involved.”
He shrugs. “Because you work for me, and I would like to keep it that way. If your friend quits because she gets angry over the Black Falcon account, I don’t want her to convince you to quit with her. I like having you around.”
That’s kind of sweet, in a weird twisted way, but I’m not sure why he would go through all the trouble. It’s not like we talk much, other than when we have to for business-related things. This sudden act of chivalry causes me to raise my eyebrows.
“Isaac, even though I love Lanie, I wouldn’t quit my job on a whim. Center Stage has been my dream place to work since my third year of college. I’m glad you put your faith in a new grad and hired me even though I had no experience. No one else would’ve given me a shot like that, so I’m grateful to you for the chance.”
Isaac’s face lights up and his smile brightens. “Good, because I really don’t want you to go anywhere. Matter of fact, I would like to keep you around so I can get to know you better.”
I meet his gaze with my mouth slightly agape. Why am I getting the distinct feeling he’s trying to make a play for me? This is so not good. I can’t get into a relationship with my boss—it could end my career.
Feeling a bit uneasy about the situation, I stand and fight the instant urge to run as fast as I can out of this office. “Okay, well, will there be anything else?”
He pulls his lips into a straight line. “No. That will be all, Aubrey. Please keep me informed of Ms. Vance’s progress on the campaign.”
I nod curtly and flee from his presence.
Shit.
I flop down in my desk chair inside my little cubicle and run my fingers through my hair. How can I tell a man to take his O.C.D. ass and beat it because I’m totally not interested in dating my boss? They certainly never prepare you for this in college. They should teach a
When Your Boss Wants to Fuck You: 101.
I punch the spacebar on my keyboard, ready to fire a message of warning out to my best friend, but the message from Riff still sits on my screen.
If I tell Lanie about this, she’ll probably quit and ruin the one shot she has at getting her foot in the door here. Pissing off people as powerful as Diana Swagger is highly inadvisable. She practically runs New York’s advertising world. If she wants to destroy you and make sure you never work in this town again, she will.
Besides all that, going on the road with the man she still loves, even though she denies it, might be the start of a beautiful new relationship for her. One that I can tell even as an outsider isn’t completely over for either one of them.
I stare at Riff’s message, and the thought occurs to me that I cannot only get insider information from Lanie to help her out secretly with the ad, but I may have just won myself a new connection in the form of a sexy, tattooed rocker.
I hit reply and begin to type.
Riff,
I’m amazed and flattered you remember me. It’s nice to know the golden ticket still stands. I am kind of curious as to what it grants me admission to?
Aubrey
I hit send before I have a chance to chicken out. Since my last break up, I swore off the bad boy type, but I can’t help but to still be attracted to them. When I saw my mother over the weekend back in Texas, she went on and on about how at twenty-four
she
was done with college, settled down with my father, and was ready to start her family. She just can’t understand that I’m not ready to settle down, or feel that I have to.
I’m still young, with my entire life ahead of me. Twenty-four isn’t old by any stretch of the means. What’s wrong with messing around with a guy for fun every now and then? It’s not like this thing between Riff and I will ever turn into a relationship anyway. My mom would have a heart attack if I brought someone like him home to meet her. She would like nothing more than for me to find a nice, boring man like Isaac and pop out a few heathens.
I shudder at the thought. Not that there’s anything wrong with Isaac, but I know me. He would bore me to tears, and the organization issues he has would drive me insane.
I shake my head. The last thing I need to be thinking about right now is men, especially my boss. I’ve got bigger problems than that—namely, how and if I can break the news to Lanie about what’s going on in the dirty underworld of Center Stage Marketing.
I
t’s been a couple days since I received my Wild Cat’s reply. So many times I’ve stopped myself from answering and telling her to name the time and place so I can fuck her out of my system. I don’t want to seem desperate.
It’s been a long time since I allowed a chick to get under my skin this way. The last time was clear back in high school when I set my sights on the Prom Queen. I didn’t relent in that situation either, not until I had her legs thrown over my shoulders and she screamed about how big my cock was while we were in the back of my Charger.
Sexy women that play hard to get are my downfall.
I lean my head back against the headrest of the captain’s chair while Big Bertha rolls down the road and I fish my phone from my pocket. To hell with trying to resist her allure. It’ll drive me bat shit crazy if I don’t have her soon.
“Who you calling?” Trip, our crazy-ass drummer, flops down in the seat beside mine with a huge bowl of cereal.
I ignore him and open up the social media site on my phone. “Not that it’s any of your fucking business, but I’m not calling anyone.”
Trip readjusts his baseball cap. “Damn, dude, just trying to make some conversation. This place is boring as shit with you and Noel not really talking.”
I raise my pierced eyebrow and shoot him a sideways glance. “That’s not exactly my fault, now is it?”
He takes a huge bite of his cereal and swallows it down before he answers. “Don’t start this shit again. Are you ever going to let this go? You weren’t in love with Sophie. You said that yourself.”
I shake my head and search out Aubrey’s message. “That’s not the fucking point, and you know it. Regardless if I loved her or not, you don’t go behind your friend’s back and fuck his girl. Period. Drunk or not. That’s no excuse.”
Trip nods in agreement. “Yeah, yeah. I get that. And you’re totally right, but you’re going to have to find a way to get past this shit. We’re still a band, and we’re trapped on this tiny fucking bus for far too long to allow this tension to go on. What’s it going to take to fix this?”
I flip my lip ring in and out of my mouth a few times while I reflect on his words. He’s right. Things around here have been tense for the past couple of months. It sucks for everyone because Noel and I have completely zapped away all the fun of being out on the road together. Yeah, it’s partially my fault for bringing a chick on the road with us, but both of them fucking knew better, and I completely blame him.
Her—I couldn’t really give two shits about.
But what Noel did broke our brotherly bond. It’ll be hard to forgive him for that, but Trip’s right. We can’t keep going like this.
“I think I need to learn to let it go, for the sake of the band, and quit being a total fucking dick to him all the time. He’s apologized to me several times—still claims he was too wasted to remember sleeping with her though. It’s hard to let it go. Every time I see him, I think about it.”
“I’ve been friends with you a long time, man. You’ve been through a ton of shit with your family, and I know it’s hard for you to trust people. Hell, if this had been anyone other than Noel, I would’ve helped you beat his ass myself. It was a dick move on his part—he knows that—and now he has to deal with the fucking mess he’s gotten himself into by knocking Sophie up. Be the bigger man, and let it go. It’s what’s best for this band. We’ve worked too damn hard to get here to flush our careers down the toilet over some skanky hoe.” Trip gives me a pointed look and then drinks down the remaining milk in his cereal bowl.
For the guy that’s the goofiest motherfucker in the band, he’s sure making sense out of this fucked up situation.
When he gets up to go to the sink, I open Aubrey’s last message. The thought of exactly what I’ll be willing to give her when she cashes in that ticket makes me smile. It’s nice to think about her and get my mind off all the other shit I’m going through.
Wild Cat,
Why don’t you come use it and find out for yourself? ;) Riff
I press send and then stuff my phone back into my pocket. She’ll either be intrigued or tell me to go to hell. More than likely it’ll be the latter, but that won’t stop me. It’ll only push me harder to get what I want—a night with her tangled up in some sheets.
M
y phone chirps with a new message as I help Lanie pack her bags to get ready to go on the road with Black Falcon.
“Do you need to get that?” Lanie asks.
I shake my head. “Nah. It’s probably just Mom. I’ll call her back when we’re done.” I fold one of her shirts and stuff it into her suitcase. “Are you excited?”
She sighs and her green eyes drift across the room. “Yes and no. I’m scared more than anything, but at the same time I am grateful for the opportunity to work on such a large account.”
My heart sinks a little. What Diana is doing to her is completely wrong, and as I open my mouth to explain everything to her, she gets another text on her cell. The excitement in her eyes is evident as she reads the message. It’s obviously another one from Noel. That guy has been texting her non-stop since she went on a ‘business dinner’ with him, but she refuses to tell me any details about it, which leads me to believe it was more pleasure than business.
No matter if I think telling her about Diana’s plan is the right thing to do, I can’t rob my friend of the happiness I know she’ll have once she admits to herself that she’s still madly in love with Noel.
After we have her pretty well packed, we get comfy and decide to veg out and watch a movie together. I load up a bowl of my favorite double brownie ice cream and head into the living room just in time to hear Lanie’s cell ring with yet another text message.
She definitely has the most attentive Black Falcon band member chasing her. It’s been days since I’ve heard from Riff, not that I honestly believe that we’ll ever be anything other than pen pals, but I do feel a twinge of jealously at all the attention she’s getting from Noel.
I roll my eyes as she grabs her phone off the coffee table. “Mr. Wonderful, again? You still owe me some juicy details about your dinner date, you know.”
She shakes her head. “A lady never kisses and tells. Besides you already know nothing happened. It was strictly business.”
That’s rich. I wish she would quit kidding herself. I plop down on the couch beside her. “You, missy, are no lady. So, dish.”
She shrugs. “Nothing happened the other night. I swear.”
I fold my legs under my butt, take a bite of my ice cream, deciding I need to force her to try to see the bigger picture here. “Bull. You expect me to believe Noel Falcon makes a romantic date with you and after a couple of hours together nothing happens? He’s texted you at least fifty times over the past few days, and there was no sex involved? I say bull. No man gets that sprung unless he gets a little somethin’-somethin’ if you know what I mean.”
She gives me a pointed look. “Getting romantic with Noel is the last thing on my mind.”
Just as I thought: she’s in complete denial. I lick my spoon and push for a little more details. “So he’s PG-13, huh? That’s kind of disappointing. Not much of a ‘Sex-god’ is he? I figured as much as you talked about him he’d have you out of your panties within the hour.”
“Aubrey!” She smacks my bare leg. “I can’t believe you just called him that.”
“What? A ‘Sex-god’?” I say around my spoon. “I got the name from you. That’s how you always referred to him, but I’m thinkin’ of revoking his title after the boring business date story you just told me.”
She’s quiet for a few minutes, and I fidget in my seat. I know that look on her face. It’s the same look she used to get back in college when she was about ready to drop one of her brilliant ideas on me.
She sighs. “Well, there are other single guys in the band...Why don’t you meet us at a show or something?”
“Are you serious?” My thoughts instantly flick to a second chance with Riff. Sleeping with a bad boy of rock and roll has always been one of my bucket list items, and now that I know he’s interested there’s no way he won’t be down for a night of hot sweaty sex. After all, he’s famous for one-night stands.
“Totally serious. I know how much you wanted to get backstage and meet the guys before, so I figure I kind of owe you.”
I fight the urge to toss my ice cream on the floor and throw my arms around her and go into a total girl hugging and screaming fit of excitement. She really is my best friend.
That last thought causes my heart to twist a little and makes me feel like a complete jerk. Would a best friend keep a huge secret? Isaac is asking a lot from me, but I know deep down, he’s right. Telling her now would only cause her to do something crazy, like walk out on Center Stage Marketing. Lanie’s hot-headed, and when she’s pissed she speaks her mind with no filter.
Before I can struggle anymore with the internal debate, her cell phone rings. Noel’s calling her
again
. She answers with a sickly sweet tone to her voice and I shake my head with a grin on my face. Fight him my ass, that boy will have her in his bed before the week is up. For a while I sit and listen to how happy she is by merely talking to him and my thoughts are confirmed. I can’t screw this up for her. If she knows the truth, she’ll never go to him and possibly find happiness.