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Nothing beat sharing her music with a live crowd. Absolutely nothing. There was a connection behind it. A raw energy fueled by the emotions of those around her that flooded her insides and smothered all the day-to-day minutia. All that was left in its wake was pure bliss. An indescribable aliveness akin to fantastic sex—only without the vulnerability and risk of heartbreak.
Hopped up and fresh off the stage from her last set, she strode into the dingy ten-by-twenty storage room that doubled as the bar’s staging area, her bandmates hard on her heels.
“Lizzy, baby! That was fucking awesome!” Tony’s praise ricocheted off the once-white walls now stained with too many years of nicotine. At six-two with long-ish dirty blond hair, dreamy blue eyes and a wicked smile, he attracted female music lovers with little more than a crook of his finger. How the guy could pound the massive drum kit he set up for every show and still have this much energy five hours later, she’d never know, but it’d take him a good two more hours to come down.
She snagged her guitar case off the crude wooden shelf, laid it out along the third-or fourth-hand leather couch and flipped open the lid. “The place might be a dive, but they draw a hell of a crowd.”
“Ain’t the bar that draws the crowd,” Skeet said, following suit with Lizzy and stowing his Telecaster. His vibe was the polar opposite of Tony’s. More of a biker meets cowboy combination with the Marlboro raspy voice to go with it. He paused just before sliding the black-and-white beauty into its plush-lined case and eyeballed her over one shoulder. “It’s you.”
“Man, you keep that shit up, she’s gonna clam up on us again.” Ever the pragmatist, Dewayne—or Phat D as a recent reviewer had dubbed him—propped his Rickenbacker bass on the stand he’d left in the corner and dropped into the oversized black chair in the corner with a sigh. “She knows what she’s capable of. When she’s ready to make a move, she’ll make a move.”
“No shit, Skeet,” Tony said. “Don’t kill our buzz.”
“Not killin’ our buzz. Just drivin’ home my point.”
Said point being that it was time to start working their way into some of Dallas’ better gigs. Of course, to get those gigs you had to have connections and public relations wasn’t exactly her strong suit.
Actually, people in general weren’t her strong suit. “No point to drive home. I’m not sticking to dive bars on purpose. As soon as I can get a foot in the door at the better places, I’ll make a move.”
“You’ve had three promoters hit you up in as many weeks,” Skeet fired back. “You want a foot in the door, you’re gonna need to actually talk to them.”
“And I told you—Rex and I can handle it.”
“Rex is a good guy and a helluva friend, but he ain’t a promoter or a manager. He’s a welder and an artist.”
“He’s also trustworthy and doesn’t fuck us around.”
“Skeet.” D wasn’t the most charismatic of the group, but when he pulled that low grumbly voice, people shut up and paid attention. “Give it a rest.”
“Buzz. Kill,” Tony added.
Lizzy grinned and dug her phone out of her purse. For all Skeet’s hounding, she knew he meant well and wanted the same things she did. Hell, she wanted it about thirty times worse. While the rest of the guys had trade jobs to help pay their bills, ringing up groceries at the local Aldi didn’t exactly set her inspiration on fire. “It’s gonna take a lot more than Skeet pushing me for better gigs to kill tonight’s buzz.”
She glanced at her phone and the unread text message plastered on her home screen.
Rex: Stuck doing overtime. I’ll try to make it, but if I don’t, you’re gonna have to deal with Vic the Dick.
Now, that was a buzz kill.
She thumbed through her passcode and flipped directly to her text app.
Nope. Still the same shitty message.
“What?” Still gripping his sticks, Tony sidled closer and craned his head for a look at her phone.
Lizzy killed the screen, turned her back and tossed her phone back in her purse before he had a chance to read it. The only thing worse than Lizzy dealing with Vic the Dick—AKA the bar owner—was sending Skeet, Tony or D to collect their cash. God knew, they’d tried that approach a time or two and still couldn’t manage to book any return gigs as a result. “Nothing. Just gotta take care of some business.” She schooled her expression the best she could and faced them. “I’m going to go settle up with Vic.”
D snickered, stretched his long legs out in front of him and crossed his boot-shod feet at the ankles. “Guess that explains the look.”
“What look?” She looked to Tony, then to Skeet. “I don’t have a look.”
“Yeah, you do,” Tony said. “Kind of like you’ve held a fart in too long and are gonna throat punch the next person who keeps you from getting somewhere private so you can let it out.”
“You got a shitty poker face, doll.” Skeet fired up a cigarette he wasn’t supposed to have lit in the building and exhaled a healthy amount of smoke on a chuckle. “You startin’ to see why someone with interpersonal skills might come in handy for us?”
“I’m starting to think the person I’m going to throat punch tonight is you.” She tried to make it come out like the badass she pretended to be on stage, but one corner of her mouth curled up in a smile she couldn’t hold back. Strolling past him, she punched him in the shoulder with an equally lame delivery. “If I’m not back in fifteen minutes, come see if I’m being hauled off in a cop car for attempted murder.”
All of three steps past the doorway, their laughter was swallowed up by the chaos of the lingering crowd and the requisite end-of-the-night strains of “Sweet Home Alabama.” As bars went, The Crow wasn’t the worst Lizzy had played. The single-story was a free-standing structure and big enough to hold a decent crowd—a necessity when a good chunk of your pay came from a cut of the door. That said, it was also the kind of place where the bouncers didn’t intervene unless more than two sets of fists were involved, and you definitely didn’t want to see the place with the house lights on. The scarred tables and floor stains highlighted by the neon beer signs showed plenty as it was, thank you very much.
Lizzy sidestepped a three-woman posse that’d circled a lone man left unprotected by his wing man—and almost tripped in her four-inch-heel boots.
Standing with his feet braced in a casual yet confident stance behind one of the many black pub tables was a man who turned the rest of the room’s predictability on its head. Dressed in tailored tan pants and a crisp white button-down with sleeves rolled up to show corded forearms, he looked like he’d just escaped long negotiations in a board room, and as tall and built as he was in the shoulders, every thread on him was probably custom-made. But where his clothes were the refined flip side to the rest of the room’s occupants, his long auburn hair and beard completely bucked the businessman stereotype, and his sharp features spoke of life experience learned the hardest way possible.
A powerful man. One who commanded attention with nothing more than a look.
And every ounce of his attention was locked on her.
A whole different buzz fired beneath her skin, and her steps slowed, a sexual awareness she hadn’t felt in years fueling the sway in her hips as she worked her way through the people between her and the bar.
“The crowd’s light tonight.” Vic’s gruff yet petulant voice ripped her attention from the stranger just in time to keep her from slamming into a table directly in her path. It took her a second to tag him behind the bar, half hidden in the shadows of one corner and counting out twenties. “Didn’t help you were late starting up the last set. We lost five big tables waiting on you and your guys to get back to work.”
Light crowd her ass. Every single table had been full right up through their last song, and the waitresses had been hustling nonstop since Lizzy first fired up her amp. Then again, Vic was a sour fucker of the first order a
nd always acted like the whole damned world was lined up and eager to screw him when, in fact, it was him plotting to screw everyone else.
She pushed the insanely hot guy out of her mind and closed what was left of the distance to the bar in what she hoped looked like a laid-back stride. “The only thing you lost tonight was about a hundred bucks worth of Fireballs.”
Vic paused in his counting and eyeballed her with one eyebrow cocked high.
For a second, Lizzy considered sliding onto a barstool in that ready-for-conversation way Rex always used, then remembered Skeet’s comment about her shitty poker face and ditched the idea. “Oh, come on. You slid any woman who talked to you for more than five minutes tonight a free one.”
One thing about Vic and his fragile ego—watching him puff up his chest like a disgruntled baboon while he huffed and puffed and grappled for a witty comeback was mighty entertaining. “Keeping women here is good for business. When my band can’t hold a crowd, I do what I’ve got to do.”
“Man, you can say a lot about tonight, but us holding a crowd isn’t one of ’em. Every table was full until after we walked off stage.”
