Chapter 8
CHAPTER EIGHT
The press conference was a multi-interview thing in the hotel. It started with the full band, and then Steve, Tal and Pete were cut loose. They headed off to grab breakfast while Moss and DJ stayed pinned down for further meets with local news and entertainment outlets.
Roy had noticed DJ eyeing the trays of baked goods left by the hotel staff for the interviewers. Since he didn’t eat while handling those interviews, Roy had an inkling that his interest wasn’t for himself. DJ never seemed to get hungry.
When DJ was done, his theory was confirmed.
Moss had several more one-on-one meets, and was chatting up an attractive brunette reporter.
DJ rose and detoured to the table. As he piled muffins into an empty basket, Roy noted he seemed excessively quiet and unobtrusive about it, keeping his back to Moss, but Moss was sharp-eyed.
“Hey.” Moss stopped mid-sentence and tossed DJ a glare. “The hotel staff can provide you your own tray.”
“Your budget’s bigger than ours.” DJ decided being caught meant he could select another dozen.
“Leave me a blueberry one.”
“Of course. I know they’re your favorite.” Then DJ cupped a hand by his mouth, and tossed out an exaggerated whisper to the interviewer. “Take the blueberry one, Jana. He’s too much of a gentleman to fight you for it.”
She laughed, and when DJ grinned at her, she had to check her notes to find her next question.
“He has that effect on pretty much everyone,” Moss sighed, but pointed at Roy, standing expressionless by the door. “Except for him.”
Yeah. On the outside.
“Shoo,” Moss said severely, and DJ gave Jana one last parting wink.
When they arrived at the rented studio space, Lolly pulled him into the live room where the tech had been working her magic, DJ’s pedalboard hooked up to her laptop.
“I think I’ve got it.” She handed DJ his guitar. “Try that riff now. Found you a new preamp model that I think you’ll like. It’s less ch-ch-ch and more growly, like you wanted. And it sounds stellar with Tal’s new snare.”
She nodded to Dub, Tal’s drum tech, who sat with his kit. He waited until DJ tried it once before putting the drums in. DJ’s eyes lit with pleasure, and he gave them a thumbs up, confirming the techs had nailed it.
“Why do they even pay us?” Steve asked, coming in with Pete and Tal. The three bandmates had gone out to grab breakfast while waiting for DJ.
“We ask ourselves that every day,” Lolly said, deadpan. Dub twirled his sticks in agreement. Then he got up and offered them over his forearm like a courtier to a king. Tal, despite slouching in with his usual surly look and dark glasses, swiped them and gave him an affectionate shove.
“Because we’re prettier,” he said.
“Not right now you’re not,” Pete said. “Ooh, muffins. Steal them from Moss?”
“Yep, but hands off.” DJ flicked a guitar pick with decent accuracy, making it plink off Pete’s chest. “Lolly and Dub get first pick.”
“Damn straight.” The techs grinned and dove onto the baked goods.
Being a bodyguard and security professional required a practiced balance between pinpoint focus on details and sweeping situational awareness. Once the skill was acquired, Roy had found there was room for him to absorb key emotional nuances about his clients.
The bond between DJ and his bandmates was electric on stage, but their studio sessions brought forth its deeper roots.
Pete’s mind was on a favorite team that had lost last night, Tal was nursing his inevitable hangover, and Steve was texting Lonnie.
But once DJ pulled them into a circle in front of Tal’s drums, they started bouncing the music off of each other, rattling off a few notes here and there, adding to it, putting in cool licks, fills or accents that had them nodding, frowning or building on that to get where they wanted to go.
Then came the moment it clicked. There’d be an exchange of grins and knowing looks as the song took off. From there, they didn’t even have to stop to work it out. It was raw in places, but Roy was hearing close to how it would be recorded and performed.
Occasionally, DJ glanced his way. Roy stayed poker faced, but he still felt the weight of the connection they’d forged last night.
Clients had offered themselves to Roy before.
The advances, whether about straightforward sex or the response of their submissive nature to his Dominant vibes, had been rejected.
Courtesy and firmness put everything back on the footing it should be to help the client save face and let Roy do his job.
DJ had offered himself to Roy as a submissive because of a genuine attraction between them, but also a disturbing compatibility. Attraction was easy to manage. Compatibility was something calling to the other, saying “we fit.” It cast everything he watched DJ do in a different light.
But it didn’t change a thing about how he protected him. If it did, he’d impose the same consequence on himself he would on DJ. Put it back on a purely professional footing. Since neither of them wanted that, he supposed that was a good incentive. But he didn’t mind those occasional looks.
Once the band was done with their rehearsal, they took off. All except DJ, who sat down at a piano to do his “noodling.” He was deep into creating when Roy got a buzz on his earpiece from the team member out front.
“Boss, Johnny showed up. I told him you wanted to talk to him, and he’s headed your way.”
Roy acknowledged with a brusque, “thanks” and stepped into the hallway. Survival had this wing of the studio reserved, so that would give him the privacy he needed.
Johnny was twenty-nine years old. He had no military background, like most of Roy’s contract employees did, but he’d given him a chance because he had a decent resume of related work.
Bouncer at busy city night clubs, and he’d put in the work to get additional trainings and certifications.
But Roy wouldn’t tolerate what he’d pulled yesterday.
“Man, I know what you’re going to say,” Johnny began when he was still a few paces away. “But my grandmother got sick and I had to get her to the hospital. My sister—”
Roy held up a hand. The kid had a sharp crew cut and looked good in his suit, lots of sinewy muscle, but if he didn’t have more of a brain than this, he was no good to him.
“You didn’t tell anyone you weren’t going to show up.”
“I texted and—”
“When we sat down to go over the rules of this job, what did I tell you?”
“That I call if I have to be absent. No texts, no emails. But she’d collapsed and…”
“Johnny, you’re trained to deal with medical emergencies.
I don’t expect you to call me while you’re on the floor with your grandmother, but when she arrived at the hospital, she was taken for a CT right away.
That was when you should have called me or G.
Not a text two hours after the start of your shift. ”
“But—”
“This is when you shut up and take this to heart. I’m not trying to hurt your feelings, Johnny, because I don’t care about your feelings.
” Roy pinned him with a hard look. “I care about your understanding. I don’t run a daycare.
Lives depend on my people being where they’re supposed to be, and doing what I tell them. Are you listening?”
“Yeah, I’m listening.”
“No, you’re not, because I can hear the attitude. This is a pivotal moment. You wanted to work at this level. You worked hard for it, but working hard for something doesn’t entitle you to mistakes or slacking off. You excel by always working to excel, always knowing you can be better. Got it?”
Roy watched Johnny’s youth and belligerence war with his better qualities, the ones that had gotten him hired. Fortunately, they won out. “Yes, sir,” he said. “It won’t happen again.”
“Good. Does your grandmother have someone with her for your full shift?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’m moving you to G’s team for the foreseeable future. Let her know if you have to alter your schedule to ensure she has what she needs. Do you want this job, Johnny?”
“Yes, sir. I do.”
“Then prove it to me, every day.”
Johnny strode away, his expression tight. G had a way with team members who needed reinforcement on what was expected of them. He’d let her work her magic and confirm if the lesson stuck or they needed a replacement.
He stepped back into the control room. DJ was at the piano in the live room, but his position, straddling the bench, several pages of notepaper on the floor, had Roy’s gaze narrowing. He moved to the threshold between the rooms. “Were you listening at the door?”
DJ shot him an innocent look. “Roy, that’s so juvenile.”
“You went into the sound booth and engaged the camera over the door so you could see and hear.”
DJ’s brown eyes sparkled. “Is it wrong that I found it seriously arousing, how you dressed him down? I think you held back, though.”
“Why? What do you think I overlooked?”
Affecting a Roy demeanor, DJ straightened and squared his shoulders.
“If you don't come to work,” he barked gruffly, “it damn well better be because you’re dead or missing a body part. Not some bullshit piece either, like an ear or pinky finger, or something you have two of, like an eye or leg. One can still do the job. Got it?”
DJ chuckled at Roy’s look. “You do it, too, you know.”
“What?”
“Get fascinated by how I do my job.”
“Do not.”
DJ’s smile deepened. “I could tell by the way you watched us putting that song together. It’s like I said from the beginning. You do this because you’re a metal-head. Come sit beside me for a minute.”
“I’m working.”
“So am I. Let me show you.”
Roy considered, then locked the door and joined DJ on the bench. It wasn’t big enough for two men of their size, so he straddled a corner, bracing his feet. His thigh brushed DJ’s. “We’re working,” he informed DJ. “No taking advantage.”