FIVE
CHAPTER
Someone was cutting down a tree. Fuck that, a whole forest.
What kind of sick bastard…?
I lifted my head, blinking hard. The whirring sound stopped, and my hazy gaze was drawn to the coffee table and its array of colorful glass paperweights. They were pretty—beautiful even—but my appreciation was lost as they refracted the sunlight straight into my eyeballs.
Shifting my gaze, I saw a glass filled with water, two aspirin tablets beside it. I sat up ever-so-slowly and a hideous orange and green knitted afghan fell off my shoulders. I glanced down at myself. Still 100% dressed. Even my boots.
Dignity intact. Score one for me.
But the thought didn’t bring me any comfort.
Here I was again, waking up in strange surroundings after a night of drinking I didn’t remember.
On a couch this time, but it could’ve been a trash-strewn alley.
Or the proverbial ditch mothers are always warning their kids they’d turn up in if they weren’t careful. I wasn’t careful. I was never careful.
It hurt too much to move or look around.
It hurt to blink. I focused my attention on swallowing the aspirin down, chasing them with water.
My mouth felt as dry and dusty as the Nevada desert.
I would have chugged the whole glass if I thought my stomach could handle it, but I had my doubts.
I took a few deep breaths and waited until the churning feeling in my gut subsided, then glanced around at my immediate surroundings.
A small apartment, sparsely decorated with plain, mismatched furniture.
On the other side of the coffee table and its glass knick-knacks was an old Laz-y-Boy chair facing a flat screen TV.
The walls were bare but for two framed degrees from universities I couldn’t read from the couch, and a half-dozen photos.
The front windows showed a view of a busy Vegas street.
Nothing about the place made any kind of impression on me. Nor was it familiar.
“Well, I’m not chained up and the door is three feet away,” I muttered to myself, and raised the water glass for another drink.
“True, on both counts.”
I coughed the water all over my chest and looked around. “The hell…?”
A guy stood in the tiny kitchen behind me.
His dark hair was wet, fresh from a shower and his sharp brown eyes regarded me with dry bemusement.
He was tall, super cute and totally not my type.
I liked the thick, loose curls of his hair, but he was too clean-cut for me.
My men were tatted and pierced and came with an exit strategy in their back pocket after I slept with them.
The guy in the kitchen looked like he made breakfast for any woman who stayed over, and instead of kicking them out, told them to ‘make themselves at home.’
Nice Guy, all caps.
But God, he had a sweet face. A face I could have sworn I’d seen before. I searched the boozy depths of my memory for when and where…
“I’m your limo driver,” he said. “I took you and your band to the Pony Club last night?”
“Oh, right,” I said. “That’s it.”
The guy came around to the front of the kitchen counter, facing the living room, and leaned against it, arms crossed. “ Jonah Fletcher.”
“What?” My brain thudded behind my eyes in time to my pulse.
“My name,” he said slowly, “is Jonah Fletcher. In case you were wondering on whose couch you were sitting.”
“Oh, sorry,” I replied, my cheeks burning. “I was just…listening to my headache. I’m Kacey Dawson. Though you probably already knew that.”
Jonah’s eyes widened slightly into bemusement, and I shook my head—a movement I regretted instantly. “I don’t mean because I’m famous or anything, I mean because of your job. My name’s probably on some paperwork… Eh, forget it.”
I held my aching head in my hands and tried to recall something from last night. A vague sense of Something Not Very Good happening added to the misery of my hangover.
I peered up at Jonah Fletcher. “So, uh…last night. Did we…?”
He arched one eyebrow at me, perfectly. The other didn’t even move. “Did we… what ?”
I huffed. “Do I have to spell it out?”
The stiff, sharp expression on his face softened slightly. “We didn’t. You were passed out.” He cocked his head. “You don’t remember anything?”
“Not much.”
“Happens a lot?”
I snorted. “I can’t see how that’s your business.”
“And yet, last night it became my business.” He shrugged. “Seems like a dangerous habit, is all. Not all guys are as nice as me.”
“That has yet to be determined,” I muttered and glanced around. “This is your place? Why not take me back to the Summerlin house?”
“Oh, believe me, I tried. Bringing you here isn’t exactly work protocol. I could lose my job.”
“What happened?” I asked, mostly because I should, not because I wanted to know.
This guy, Jonah, rubbed his chin thoughtfully and came to sit across from me in a beat-up reclining chair.
The chair’s upholstery might’ve been brown leather, but I’d guess it was more likely vinyl—cracked in places and well-worn.
Jonah sat in it and hung his arms off his jean-clad knees.
A heavy silver bracelet ringed his right wrist. His T-shirt fit tight around his shoulders and biceps. Nice muscles. Lean but defined.
My eyes drifted to the collar of his shirt, to take in some of his chest. A quarter inch of a fleshy red line peeked above the seam. Some kind of gnarly scar.
I quickly averted my eyes.
“I tried to take you back to the house,” Jonah was saying. “Tried to get in touch with your manager, too. No luck. It was either bring you here or back to the Pony Club, but your bodyguard seemed pretty insistent I get you away from that scene.”
A lump of dread joined the churning in my guts. “What scene, exactly?”
“Not sure. It sounded like there was some sort of riot going on.”
“A riot.”
Whatever blood was left in my face drained out. A vague memory, blurry and soaked in booze swam up. Me, urging a bunch of fans to the green room. I couldn’t remember the actual moment but the sound of so many cheering voices thundered in my head and made it ache harder.
“Did, um… Did Hugo—the bodyguard. Did he say what happened? How it started?”
Jonah shook his head. “You don’t recall anything?”
“Pretty sure I don’t want to,” I said, my voice hardly a whisper.
I fished around in the top part of my boots for my pack of smokes. I shook a cigarette out and was fumbling with the little matchbook when Jonah cleared his throat .
“This is a no smoking zone, if you don’t mind.”
“Have mercy,” I said with a wan smile. “Besides, everyone smokes in Vegas.”
“I don’t.” The hard tone in Jonah’s voice froze my hand. He offered a small smile. “Sorry. House rules.”
I set my pack down longingly on the table. “You picked a tough city to live in if you don’t like cigarette smoke.”
“And yet somehow I manage.” He rubbed his hands on his thighs, impatiently. “You don’t need to call your people? They might want to know you’re okay. In fact, I would prefer they know that you’re okay. I’m sort of half expecting a SWAT team to bust down my door any minute now for kidnapping you.”
“I guess…” The very last thing I wanted to do was call ‘my people’ but Jonah was watching me.
Just get it over with.
“Can I use your phone?”
Jonah handed over his cell and I started to punch in Jimmy’s number. I was 99% sure whatever catastrophe had happened at the Pony Club was my fault, and 100% sure I didn’t want to know how bad the scene really was. I chickened out and called Lola instead.
She answered on the third ring. “Yeah?” she said, her voice full of sleep.
“Lola? It’s me.”
“Kacey?” She yawned. “Where are you? Are you calling from in the house?”
“Um, no,” I said. “I’m not…there.”
“Well that narrows it down,” Lola said, sighing. “Jesus, Kace. Do I need to send a search party? On second thought, you’d better lay low where Jimmy can’t find you. He was pissed last night. Jeannie too. Then again, she’s always pissed.”
I closed my eyes at the accusation and braced myself. “Why is he pissed?”
“You don’t remember, do you? You fucking drank yourself into a J?germeister coma right after inviting half the audience into the green room.
But instead of sticking around to deal with your mess, Hugo saved you.
He put you in the limo, right? Yeah, we had to cab it home. Jimmy was not happy about that.”
I twisted a lock of hair around my finger. “That’s why he was pissed? Because he had to take a cab?”
“Kace, you think he was worried about you? Hon, he figured you were fucking the limo driver.” A pause. I could hear the unspoken words. We all did.
Another ugly flush of red colored my neck. I steadfastly refused to look at Jonah.
“Well, I didn’t. I was in a J?germeister coma, remember? You can tell him that.”
“Whatever. Does it matter? Jimmy called the company and gave them an earful for not picking us up. That limo driver is going to be up to his ass in hot water. Hugo too.”
“No, no, he didn’t do anything wrong,” I shifted on the couch away from Jonah and lowered my voice. My headache ratcheted up ten notches. “Neither of them did. Tell Jimmy it wasn’t Hugo’s fault. I’m all right.”
I heard Lola light a cigarette. I found my fingers inching toward my own pack and had to sit on my hand.
“You realize you totally trashed the place, right?” Lola asked on an exhale of smoke. “According to Jimmy, the Pony Club is talking potential lawsuit to pay the damages.”
I nearly dropped Jonah’s phone. “Did anyone get hurt?” I asked in a small voice.
“No,” she said, the anger deflating from her voice. “But the green room is trashed. Beyond trashed. It looked like a war zone when we left.”
“So… What’s happening now? Is tonight’s show cancelled?”
Lola snorted. “Hell no. Not with sixty grand worth of ticket sales on the line.”
“Oh.”