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He was so ripped he was shredded, but I remained unaffected. “What’s the problem?” I asked.
“Nothing.” A smirk lifted the corner of his mouth. “I was only making sure you were doing your job, Yankee girl.” He rolled my nickname on his tongue, his London accent making the word ‘girl’ sound more like ‘giew’.
I was glad he’d reminded me of my position as his employee. For one moment, one tiny moment, I’d wobbled on the brink of letting him affect me.
Pierce Fox was not the kind of man who’d want to settle down with a girl like me. Not with any girl, for that matter. He was a manwhore, a serial heartbreaker, and I wasn’t into guys like him. Nor any kind of guy.
I straightened my spine and looked him in the eye. “I always do my job to the best of my ability, Limey,” I said with a wink. It was the nickname I’d retorted with when he’d first called me Yankee girl. “Now get your butt dressed or you’ll be late for that meeting.”
He barked out a laugh. “Yes, Miss.”Chapter 2PierceThe band meeting had started. Nausea swelled in my gullet and it was taking every ounce of my self-control not to puke over Jake’s shiny black dress shoes as I sat opposite him in his hotel suite. He was discussing over my head with the other band members what they should do about me. I heard the words ‘alcoholic’, ‘rehab’ and ‘addiction,’ and I swallowed the sour taste in my throat.
I twirled the drumsticks I always carried around with me and tapped them against my thighs. Couldn’t remember much about what had gone down last night. There’d been a party to end all parties after the concert. The wine had flowed freely followed by enough hard liquor to sink a ship…and I’d enjoyed every last drop. Finding Yankee Girl in my suite when I’d woken up had been a surprise, but not an unpleasant one. She was hot as hell and, if she weren’t my stylist, I’d have fucked her before now.
Jake launched into telling the others about how he’d had to pour me into bed in the early hours. The bloke was so bloody patronizing, the epitome of an ex public schoolboy, what the Yanks labelled ‘preppy’. I could never get my head around the fact that we Brits called private schools public. There was nothing public about them… they cost a shitload of money in fees, catered for the elite, and reinforced the class divisions in society.
I sped up the drumming on my thighs and shot Jake a look. He’d been our Creative Director since we’d gotten so big that we didn’t need a manager but a management team. It was Jake who toured with us, though, while the team stayed behind in LA at CM Records, the label we’d set up soon after we’d won our first Grammy. We’d named Jake the fifth member of the band and were grateful he handled the day-to-day shit for us. Wasn’t his fault he was so straight he could have had a rod inserted up his ass.
I swiveled my gaze to Axel, our lead singer. I’d met him, Rhys, our guitarist, and Zach our keyboard player at UCL, University College London, when we’d been students. We were supposed to have been studying Economics but spent most of our time jamming together. Jake had tagged along right from the beginning, being as he was Axel’s mate—they’d known each other since they were kids— and Jake had been the driving force behind our rise to fame. We owed our success to him and it was he who held us together after Axel’s sister, Ella, had died. Jake wasn’t a bad bloke at heart, just bloody annoyingly right about everything.
The guys and I had gone into rehab and, except for a small slip up two years ago, we’d been clean ever since. The stress of performing had turned us into white powder junkies, and I still craved the cocaine induced euphoric haze. It wasn’t just pressure that had made me become a cokehead, I knew it wasn’t, but I avoided thinking about why it was harder for me than for the others to stay sober.
I returned one drumstick to my pocket and spun the other between my knuckles, letting it rise to my fingertips and passing it to my left hand without breaking the spin. I heard the word ‘rehab’ being repeated again and I tuned back into the conversation going on around me.
Axel leaned toward me, invading my space. “You need help, man. You’re drinking yourself to death and we can’t let you do that.”
I cradled my still aching head in the hand not holding the drumstick. “I’m not going into rehab. Been there. Done it. Bought the fucking t-shirt.”
The guys and I had gotten clean at a Betty Ford clinic after Ella had passed. Just thinking about going cold turkey in that environment made me want to puke again.
