He preferred not to think about Steve’s actual role in all of this.
‘Did you actually let them explain?’
Elspeth had made a particular point of filling him in on all the details. How they’d arranged it all behind his back and then ensured he was out of the way; what a glorious time they’d had on their wedding night. Frankly, he wasn’t interested in hearing any more. Nor was he going to be cowed by some statement about how much they loved each other, as if that made everything right. Loving someone didn’t excuse shitty, exploitative behaviour.
‘They’re hitched. End of,’ he said.
‘Steve and Elspeth got married,’ Spook blurted. ‘When? Why didn’t anyone say? I totally thought you and Els–’
Ash hit him in the gob, shutting him up. ‘She dumped him. That’s why we’re in this mess.’
Not entirely accurate, but the acknowledgement was a start at least.
‘Man, that sucks, man,’ Spook muttered, rubbing his lip. ‘No wonder you’re pissed.’
OK, so maybe he could excuse Spook’s previous lack of sympathy; apparently he hadn’t known what was going on. He looked distinctly uncomfortable now.
Surprisingly, Ash even managed to locate a small scrap of decency. ‘Yeah, it sucks,’ he agreed. The show of support lasted as long as it took him to wrinkle his nose. ‘But,’ he said, placing particular emphasis on the word, ‘the fact that your best mate stole your girlfriend isn’t a reason to punish the rest of us. I have not sweated my guts out for years to have you ruin everything now we’ve got it made. Why can’t you just fire them?’
Because the situation was far more complex than that and symptomatic of a bigger problem.
‘We could hire some sessionals for tonight, and look into recruiting replacements to play on the new tracks when we hit the studio,’ Ash suggested.
‘That’s a bit harsh.’ Spook continued to rub his lips where Ash had hit him. ‘Rock Giant’s not going to like that idea. You know him and Elspeth go way back.’
‘Steve and I go way back,’ Xane remarked. The fact he and Steve had known one another so long – right through school and beyond – and had been so close made his betrayal doubly hard to stomach, and that was before he got into the nitty-gritty of the situation.
‘Actually, never mind Rock Giant, I don’t want to see them go,’ Spook elaborated.
‘Nor do I.’ Ash reassured him. ‘But if it’s a choice between them or all of us …’ His words petered out as his attention focused to the right of Xane’s shoulder.
Spook’s jaw dropped too.
Xane turned to find Dani retrieving the backstage pass from the waste bin. She’d dressed – worse luck – not in her own clothes, but – fucking hey – in his. A pair of his leather jeans encased her lower half, too long in the leg but perfectly tailored to her rounded arse, while on top she wore one of his oldest, faded to grey, worn thin with age, dishcloth T-shirts. No doubt chosen because it was so old it would surely never be missed. She wasn’t to know its true value. Not that he minded her wearing it. She looked hotter in it than he’d ever done, and judging by Ash and Spook’s expressions, he wasn’t the only one to think so.
‘Sorry,’ she apologised, seeing the three of them gawping at her. ‘I was just getting my stuff together. I didn’t mean to interrupt.’ Only then she paused, as if it finally sank in whom she was addressing, and stared with a wild expression on her face.
At moments like this, Xane heartily wished his band mates weren’t so hot. Ash had dark and smouldering down to a fine art and Spook … Spook made Legolas look like a hobbit.
‘Well …’ Dani swallowed hard. ‘I’ll just let myself out. See you around …’
‘Bye,’ Ash called, getting his serious face on.
‘Prick,’ Xane blasted him. ‘No, wait.’ He started after Dani.
Meanwhile, released from the trance he’d fallen into at Dani’s rapid exit, Spook snatched the opportunity to steal Ash’s coffee and swallow half of it.
Xane caught up with Dani by the front door. ‘Don’t. It’s not necessary for you to leave.’
He didn’t want her to run away. He needed her to stay. If she left there’d be no excuse not to talk business with the guys.
Ash was right, they could adapt, but this wasn’t only about Steve and Elspeth sneaking off behind his back. The whole band needed to extract their heads from their arses and actually treat him with some respect. Until that happened, they could forget evolution.
‘I think it’s probably best if I do go,’ Dani insisted. She smiled determinedly at him while pulling on her shoes. ‘You and the guys need to talk, and I really need to catch up with my friend. She’s probably wondering where I am.’
‘Wait. Give me your number.’
Her smile drooped a fraction, betraying the fact she didn’t believe he’d ever need it.
Xane fully intended to call. He didn’t believe in inflicting false hopes. If he hadn’t wanted to see her again, he wouldn’t have asked.
Since neither of them had any paper to hand, Xane had her write the number on his inner arm in kohl.
‘Give me an hour or so.’ He glanced over at the guys, figuring that was the minimum time it would take to get them out of his hair. ‘Then we’ll catch up and finish what they interrupted.’ He kissed her in a rather indulgent fashion, trying to steal enough of her to propel him through the next hour or so of hell.
‘It’s OK. I understand. You don’t have to …’
He didn’t like that she that she didn’t believe him, or that she kissed him as if saying goodbye.
‘I’ll call.’
She waved as she got into her car.
Xane watched her reverse into the lane, then returned to the cottage and flopped onto the sofa. ‘Well, thanks for chasing off the only pleasant thing that’s happened to me in the last twenty-four hours.’
Ash came over and sat on the coffee table facing him. ‘Xane, it’s the finale tonight. You need to get your act together, not hide between some girl’s thighs.’
‘Not happening.’ He was no more inclined to prance about on stage tonight than he’d been the previous one.
‘Xane,’ Ash protested, though Xane suspected Graham had already warned the venue the show was unlikely to go ahead. With any luck the fans were already being refunded the ticket prices. ‘I was serious. If we need to change the line-up in order to get you back out there, then let’s do it.’
‘And what, that’ll magically make everything all right? I’ll still have to croon lyrics inspired by them.’ And he’d still have to share the stage with three guys who didn’t give a rat’s arse about him.
‘Oh, for Christ’s sake.’ Ash raked his hands through his hair, then abruptly stood. ‘Can you not just fucking well get over yourself? I get that they caught you off guard last night and it shot your performance, but the shock’s done with now.’
It had to be nice in Ash’s world, Xane decided. Nothing there affected anything for more than an hour. Relationships were done and dusted and you moved on. Things that happened in the past never impacted on the future.
‘It’s not like she was your one true love or anything. How many genuine dates did you have? All you did was shag, and you weren’t even exclusive about that.’
Now he was getting pissed off over the assumptions that were being made. Ash knew nothing about anything, and had no idea how he felt.
‘I didn’t realise there was a minimum date requirement for love,’ he snarled.
‘I didn’t realise you had more fucking piercings than brain cells.’
‘Um, chill out,’ Spook interjected, inserting himself between them, thus temporarily dissuading Xane from leaping on Ash and beating the living crap out of him.
Xane picked up the jewellery he’d left on the table the previous night and began fastening it on.
‘Xane, for God’s sake. I am not going to let you kill us over this.’
Actually, the killing blow had already been struck. Shame dumb-arse was too stupid to realise that.
He wasn’t about to have a change of heart over this.
‘Don’t do this. Xane, you’re making a mistake.’
The mistake he’d made was to have allowed his personal life to overlap with his professional one. That connection had seemed a good thing at the time. They got to work together and travel together. There was never any need for painful goodbyes, because they were always expected to be in the same place. Xane had thrived on that closeness, the sense of belonging together. The loss of that intimacy as much as anything else made this hard. He’d lost two of his closest friends in one swoop, and he couldn’t even figure out why the most precious of those hadn’t even bothered to try and break it to him gently first. Apparently he meant a whole lot less to Steve than he’d ever imagined.
When his fists formed, Ash hunched down beside him. ‘All right, I agree tonight’s gig’s off, but only on the proviso that you start being reasonable.’
‘Is what they did reasonable? Have you yelled at them for being insensitive pricks? Or were you too busy toasting them and wishing them a happily ever after?’
‘Why shouldn’t I wish them that? Can’t I be pleased they’ve found one another and made a solid commitment?’
Xane turned his head away. That probably ought to have been warning enough for Ash to stop, but of course he didn’t.
‘That, and I have to wonder exactly how cut up can you be, if you’re already chasing skirts. Don’t you think it lacks sincerity to be pursuing another woman at the same time as you’re performing the doom-and-gloom routine over your ex?’
Xane wetted his lips. ‘It isn’t like that.’ And even if it was, what the bloody hell was so bad about him wanting to get laid? At least while he was coveting Dani he wasn’t thinking about Elspeth and Steve, and not thinking about that pair of Judases was good for his blood pressure.
‘Have you considered that maybe I was trying to forget about shit?’
Ash pushed his black hair back off his face. ‘I thought they cured you of using sex as a crutch.’ They all knew he had a history of addiction. Other rock stars turned to drink and drugs when they got depressed. Xane got himself laid, or had done before he’d taken measures to sort himself out.
Actually, no – the insinuation that he’d been with Dani purely for that reason pushed his temper close to meltdown again. He sprang to his feet. ‘Don’t,’ he snapped, while restraining the urge to lash out with his fists to make the point. Dani had shown him more affection, more warmth and compassion than he’d had from anyone in a long, long time. And, despite what Ash thought, he hadn’t deliberately set out to seduce her. Things had simply developed that way as the night progressed.
Xane smashed his fist into the coffee table next to where Ash sat, making an impressive dent in the wood and another in his claw ring. ‘Shut the fuck up. You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.’
Ash stubbornly stared him out.
‘Well, I think she’s miles hotter than Elspeth anyway,’ Spook remarked, in a hopeless attempt to lighten the mood. ‘I still don’t get what you and Steve see in her. She’s no tits and no arse.’
‘And I think we’ve all had enough of your opinion for today,’ Ash remarked as he glared at Spook. ‘You must have used up your entire monthly quota of words by now.’
Spook gave Ash a one-fingered salute. ‘I’m not the one who’s about to get decked.’ He slumped onto the sofa where Xane had been sitting. ‘I wish I’d known she was here, I’d have brought my camera.’
Xane was thankful he’d forgotten it. Dani was far too nice to end up as a sordid entry in Spook’s Hall of Fame, the ignominious catalogue of the band’s conquests and groupies. He did however appreciate Master Mortensen’s attempts to defuse things a little between him and Ash.
‘How many pictures do you have now?’ he enquired, settling back on the sofa beside Spook. Not because he had any genuine interest, but because it got them off the topic of the band and his love life.
A wide salacious smile spread across the Norseman’s face. ‘Individual shots or girls?’
‘Girls?’ Xane replied dubiously.
‘A few hundred. Ash thinks all his hook-ups are unique, but he’s mistaken. The ones he goes down on mostly come back for a second helping. Apparently he’s good with his mouth as well as his fingertips. There are a few he’s shagged six or seven times.’
‘No way!’ Ash seemed surprised.
Xane shook his head, deciding this avenue hadn’t been such a good topic to move on to. ‘More than I needed to know,’ he remarked. He’d never understood what game the two of them were at, or what Spook got out of the arrangement besides the obvious masturbation fodder. Being hardcore pretty, Spook could easily have had all those girls for himself rather than watched them with Ash. Mind you, it was equally strange to him that Ash indulged Spook’s obsession. He’d often wondered if they ought to just shag one another and get their weird bromance over with.
‘Do you actually look at the snaps he takes?’ he asked Ash, when Spook went to make another round of coffees.
Ash wrinkled his nose as if the very concept smelled bad. ‘Course not. But, you know, feel free if you ever need something to get you going.’
Xane turned away, wondering why he’d even felt the need to try and defuse things further. He and Ash were never going to see eye to eye on this one. ‘You need to go,’ he said. ‘I’ve things to do.’
‘Like what?’ Ash gathered his hair back off his face in order to give Xane a hard look. ‘Start on the whisky, stick your head in the oven, climb into bed with another bird?’
‘No.’
‘With the same one, then.’
‘This isn’t about Dani.’
‘The snake in your pants says otherwise.’
It was true that his cock throbbed hard at the memory of her.
‘He does have a point,’ Spook muttered, returning with the mugs. ‘You really ought to do up your fly. I’m scared of the eyeful I’m getting.’
‘Stop looking, then.’ He deliberately didn’t button up on principle.
‘Look, Xane. This is stupid, us arguing,’ Ash said a moment later. ‘You know Elspeth didn’t love you. And I refuse to believe you’re that chewed up over her. I can see why you’d be pissed off at Steve, but …’ He shook his head, so that his long fringe flopped back over his face, masking both eyes. ‘The band’s more important, and we’re going to sit in this hovel of yours until you acknowledge that.’