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I’d told Coop to go ahead and help himself to the complimentary champagne, because no way I was drinking it. Instead I grabbed one of the little glasses by the sink and fixed myself a vodka cran, pouring from the bottle of Stoli I’d paid for myself. Then I lay my travel case open on the floor and took abreath.
The last hour of my life had been a total gong show, the conversation with my father pretty much the furthest thing from an aphrodisiac. I just needed a few minutes to get my head together and switchgears.
I took a swig of my drink and assessed myself in the mirrored wall. I was still wearing the jeans and midriff-baring jacket I’d worn to dinner with the crew, but I’d already decided the occasion called for something alotsexier.
I dug through my stuff, unearthing the new lingerie and snapping off the tags. Then I went over my mental checklist as I gotundressed.
The band was all settled into the hotel, finished with the promotional interviews I’d set up for them earlier in the day, and they were officially set loose for the night. In Las Vegas. The last I’d seen of each of them, they were off in various directions in search of sex (Zane), booze (Dylan), and/or solitude (Jesse and Elle). Tomorrow night was the final show of the tour and everyone was jacked up on a hazardous cocktail of anticipation, adrenaline and hormones. Not the kind of hazard I could do much about, other than stay out of the way and be on hand for cleanup later. My boss, Brody, and I were band management, which meant we booked gigs, made sure everyone got paid, and generally kept the money flowing in. But it also meant we took it upon ourselves to make sure everyone stayed relatively sane, so the reality was, if anything fell apart between now and tomorrow’s show, my phone was gonna blow up like the Freemont Street light show, and not like I could ignoreit.
Story of my life, but at least everything was as it should be on thatfront.
Security, crew, and gear were all accounted for and everything was set for Dirty, hottest rock band on the planet and my kickass employers—fuck, yeah—to rock the hell out of the new arena on the Vegas Strip. And while I was excited about tomorrow’s show in that bittersweet way that marked the end of each tour, I was really looking forward to a momentary diversion from themadness.
A diversion of the sexual variety. Because the Penny Pushers were also in town for the show, and that meant I was hookingup.
I slipped into the skimpy lace babydoll and matching thong, both a vibrant lime-green that looked amazing against my complexion. Thanks to my mom, I had flawless light-brown skin, which I’d always considered my best feature. Admittedly, because it made me look less like mydad.
Usually when people found out who he was, they assumed I’dwantto be associated with him. He was rich and famous, afterall.
But those were the people who’d never methim.
I took a couple more swigs of my drink, hiked up my cleavage with the stiff demi cups of the babydoll, and touched up my makeup, letting the liquor and the bizarre, hyper-reality of this moment soakin.
I, Maggie Omura, was about to fuck a rockstar.
What would you think of that one,Mom?
She’d laugh, I figured. Hard. Since this went completely against TheRule.
I’d made up The Rule myself when I first came to work for Dirty six years ago. Actually, I’d made up many rules. What the hell did I know? I was a nerdy, idealistic nineteen-year-old with stars in my eyes. But as I’d discovered, in the total shit storm of rock ’n’ roll chaos that soon became my life, there was only one rule that warrantedkeeping.
No Screwing TheTalent.
When I first met Dirty, their debut album had just incinerated the charts and they were coming off their first world tour. I was naive and inexperienced, but I had a head for business and all I’d ever wanted to do was work in the music industry. I managed to get an incredibly tenuous foot in the door merely because of a lucky-horseshoe-up-the-ass situation—I happened to have a class with Dirty guitarist Jesse Mayes’s sister in college, and she and I had become friends. I also had the hugest, stupidest puppy-love crush on Zane Traynor, blond bad boy and lunatic lead singer… and when he set his ice-blue eyes on me, I knew the only way I wouldn’t fuck everything up was by eating, sleeping and breathing TheRule.
Over the years, The Rule had kept me out of trouble. Alotof trouble. However. Sometimes rules became outdated. Needed a little revising. Or strategicbending.
And since I wasn’t about to screw a member of the band I worked for, it didn’t totally count,right?
“Maggie?” Coop tapped on the frosted-glass bathroom door, amusement and a touch of concern in his voice. “You ever coming out?” He also sounded horny, his voice low and a little huskier thanusual.
Perfect.
I stood back to check my work and felt ridiculously sexy for about five seconds, knowing he was gonna love it… until it really dawned on me that I’d bought the lingerie for that reason. Because Andy Cooper had mentioned, months ago, that I looked hot in this color. Which meant… yeah. I was putting way too much effort intothis.
Kinda like I did with every-fucking-thing.
But this was weird, right? Crossing aline?
Coop was just a hookup, and no sane woman bought hot, expensive lingerie just for some guy she was hooking up with unless she was looking to turn that hookup sex into hang-out-afterward-and-do-it-again sex, followed by wake-up-together-the-next-morning-and-do-it-yet-againsex.
And I definitely wasn’t looking forthat.
WasI?
I smoothed my long, dark hair and chewed my lip at my reflection. Hot. But yeah,weird.
“Maggie?” Coop knockedagain.
