Their Favorite Band Manager (Three Men, One Woman #4)

1 | Black Belt

It was difficult to behave professionally when the label locked me inside a snow-covered lodge with three men who had been professionally photographed into national fantasies.

Fortunately, they were all irritating enough to keep me grounded.

Leo was irritating because he knew exactly how attractive he was.

He had the face of a woman who would have ruined my life in a lesbian bar and the personality of every man I had ever crossed the room to avoid in one.

Dark curls brushed his shoulders, a silver hoop hung from one ear, and tattoos disappeared beneath the sleeves of his coat.

He looked careless and fully aware that most people would forgive him for anything before he even did it.

I had already decided I wouldn’t be one of those people.

Kadir was irritating in a quieter way. He had the shoulders of a man who considered lifting heavy objects a legitimate personality trait, but none of the loud enthusiasm gym men usually brought with them.

He barely spoke unless someone asked him a direct question, and even then, he took his time answering.

Thick brown hair had grown past the point of looking intentional, curling around his ears and falling over his forehead.

A slutty little mustache shadowed his upper lip, and tattoos covered most of the hand wrapped around the handle of his suitcase.

He was too composed for someone built like he could carry the rest of us inside one trip.

There was something happening behind his silence. I could feel it. Resentment, boredom, the early stages of a felony. I hadn’t determined which.

Wesley was irritating in the way a golden retriever could eat half a couch and still have everyone in the room discussing how adorable he was.

He had spent the drive pointing out mountains, suggesting places we could stop, and asking whether anyone else thought the clouds looked close enough to touch.

He was broad through the shoulders, fit without making it everyone’s problem, and had a small silver hoop through one nostril that should have made him look less wholesome.

The cuteness didn't fool me.

Wesley was sweet because sweetness got him attention. He smiled, people relaxed, and five minutes later he was convincing them to do something that had never been part of the plan.

The three of them stood on the stone path ahead of me, staring up at the lodge the label had rented for the next six weeks.

It was less of a lodge and more of a privately owned mountain kingdom.

The house stretched across the slope in dark timber and glass, with three stories of balconies overlooking the valley.

Snow covered the roof and gathered along the railings in smooth white drifts.

Warm light glowed through windows tall enough to display whatever poor decisions we would make to the surrounding wildlife.

Wesley let out a low whistle.

“They put us in here together?” Leo asked.

His tone suggested the label had made a dangerous administrative error.

Kadir looked from the house to the four of us. “Maybe they want us to kill each other.”

Leo considered that. “Who goes first?”

All three men looked at me.

I tightened my grip on the handle of my suitcase. “That’s ridiculous.”

“Dasha,” Wesley said immediately.

“Definitely Dasha,” Leo agreed.

Even Kadir nodded.

They were wrong. I would survive by locking myself in an upstairs bedroom while they destroyed one another over songwriting credits, refrigerator space, and whichever one of them had used the last clean glass.

“I’d lock you in the studio,” I said, starting toward the front door. “You could finish each other off in there. The acoustics would probably be excellent.”

Wesley hurried after me, dragging two bags through the snow. “You would leave me with them?”

“Yeah. Absolutely.”

“I would have defended you.”

“I was a black belt in tae kwon do. I don’t need defending.”

There was a brief silence behind me.

Then Leo laughed.

Kadir made a low sound that might have been a cough if his shoulders had not started shaking. Wesley tried to hold it in, which was somehow more insulting than the other two openly losing control.

I turned on the top step. “I earned it.”

“How old were you?” Leo asked. “Twelve?”

“That isn’t relevant.”

I opened the door before I could demonstrate a kick in snow boots and lose whatever remained of my authority.

The warmth hit us as soon as we stepped inside.

We crowded into the entryway, peeling off coats and kicking snow from our boots onto a wide slate floor. The lodge smelled of cedar and whatever expensive candles people bought when they wanted a house to feel rustic without ever becoming uncomfortable.

Beyond the entryway, the first floor opened into one enormous room.

Exposed beams crossed the high ceiling. A stone fireplace rose nearly two stories beside a wall of windows overlooking the mountains.

There were deep couches, shelves filled with books no one had selected personally, and enough blankets folded over the furniture to survive a minor ice age.

The label had not been subtle.

This was a controlled environment designed to make Midnight Theory produce an album before they destroyed either their contract or one another.

The men forgot that part immediately.

Wesley crossed the room first, making an impressed sound when he saw the view.

Kadir wandered toward the kitchen and opened the refrigerator before he had removed his beanie.

Leo stood beneath the staircase, looking up toward the second floor as if he were deciding which room would photograph him best.

Then they scattered.

Their voices carried through the lodge as they discovered new reasons to shout at one another.

“There’s a sauna,” Wesley called.

“Of course there’s a sauna,” Leo answered from somewhere upstairs.

Kadir opened another cabinet. “They stocked the kitchen.”

For several minutes, they moved through the house like children released into a very expensive playground.

Wesley found the game room. Leo found the piano and played three deliberately dramatic notes.

Kadir located the gym and announced its existence with more enthusiasm than he had shown toward any human being since I’d met him.

I stayed near the entryway with my bags and watched them enjoy themselves.

This was the version of Midnight Theory the label wanted me to recover.

Not the three men who communicated through assistants, skipped meetings, and recorded their parts separately whenever possible.

These men still knew how to tease one another.

They still noticed when the others laughed.

They still moved through a new space as a unit, even while pretending they had nothing in common besides a contract.

For one brief, inconvenient moment, I felt hopeful.

Then Leo shouted that he had found the largest bedroom.

I grabbed both of my bags.

“No, you didn’t.”

I left them downstairs to argue and hauled my luggage up the broad wooden staircase before any of them could object.

The hallway curved around the open living room below, lined with bedroom doors and framed black-and-white photographs of snowy trees.

Each room appeared to have its own bathroom, balcony, and unnecessary quantity of decorative pillows.

I chose the bedroom at the far end of the hall.

It wasn’t the largest. Leo could have that if his ego required matching square footage. Mine was quieter, separated from the others, with a wide bed, a small sitting area, and windows facing the slope behind the house. Snow-covered pines stood beyond the glass, their branches heavy and still.

I set my suitcase beside the dresser and closed the door.

For the first time since the airport, no one was talking.

The silence made the assignment feel real.

Six weeks. One unfinished album. Three men who had stopped trusting one another enough to create together. And me, placed in charge because the label believed I could fix what several producers, executives, and previous managers had failed to repair.

Or because my father had suggested my name in a meeting.

I sat on the edge of the bed and looked around the room the label was paying an obscene amount of money for.

I had earned this position. I knew that.

I had spent years doing the unremarkable work that kept artists functioning while other people accepted the credit.

I had handled missed flights, broken equipment, venue disputes, public meltdowns, and one singer who refused to perform because the green room contained the wrong brand of sparkling water.

I was qualified.

Unfortunately, qualifications did not prevent people from assuming my father had handed me the job.

Midnight Theory didn’t need to love me. They didn’t even need to like me. They needed to finish an album, stop treating every disagreement like proof the band was already dead, and leave this mountain capable of standing in the same room without making the label’s legal department nervous.

That was the job.

I unzipped my suitcase and began placing clothes into the dresser, folding everything more carefully than I had ever done in my own apartment.

Be professional. Maintain boundaries. Do not let Leo provoke you. Do not mistake Kadir’s silence for cooperation. Do not encourage Wesley merely because he smiled at you like you had personally invented snow.

Most importantly, do not sleep with anyone you manage.

That shouldn’t have required its own rule.

I placed a sweater in the drawer and shut it harder than necessary.

The lodge had gone quiet.

I stopped.

A house containing three musicians should not have been quiet. Not when they had discovered a piano, a game room, and an argument over bedroom ownership within the first ten minutes.

I stepped into the hallway.

“Guys?”

The silence continued.

I looked over the railing into the empty living room below.

That was probably not a good sign.

I went downstairs and checked the kitchen first.