Insatiable (Sex, Love, and Rock & Roll Book 3) Read online

  I whirl, throwing all the muscle in my back and shoulders into one punch that explodes into the hallway wall. Pain bursts through my knuckles and wrist, a chunk of drywall falling to the carpet when I yank my fist back.

  The first hallway door flies open, and a girl stands there. Wide brown eyes and creamy dark skin, and as soon as her eyes touch me, I know what she sees.

  Some crazy asshole who just punched a hole in the wall. An asshole that’s out of control and probably about to hurt her. Shame deflates all the anger out of my chest, leaving me wilted like a sun-faded balloon. “I’m sorry. Shit, I can’t believe I just did that.”

  Old Cell Phone Guy appears in the living room behind me with a wary look like, damn I wish I had security here right now and then—BOOM—guess I read that expression wrong because security’s right next to him. Wearing an expensive suit on shoulders as wide as most European cars.

  The pretty black girl sends a wincing smile in their direction. “I’m so sorry, I forgot to plug in my phone and the alarm didn’t go off. I just need five minutes to get ready.” Strangely, they head back to the conference room without me—apparently this girl is late for work, too, and in a little bit of hot water. Maybe they don’t care if the crazy junkie singer goes berserk on her.

  “Sorry,” I say again. “It’s just...one of those mornings.”

  She glances at the hole in the wall, coming farther out into the hallway. “I know the feeling.” She fingers the edges of the hole, like the damage is fascinating. “Did it help?”

  “Not really. Just one more nail in my coffin.”

  She glances over her shoulder at me and frowns. “Why? It’s just a wall. They can be fixed.”

  “It’s never just a wall, not for me. It’s...” I exhale, sick of everything and too tired to watch my mouth. “Because I’m the bad guy, you know? Used to be such a screw up that now I can’t even stop to grab coffee on the way to a meeting or everybody assumes I’ve gone off the deep end.” She’s already nodding by the end of my sentence, and it’s so fucking nice to have somebody look at me like that, so I keep going. “You know, like I probably robbed a hot dog vendor on the way and kicked a trash can over in front of a bike messenger.”

  “Pulled the whiskers on a kitten,” the girl adds. “Stole the brownie out of the break room fridge.”

  A smile spreads across my face. “So, you do know me.”

  She laughs, leaning against the doorframe, her oversized tee shirt falling to the side to expose a fragile collarbone I immediately want to kiss. Her hair is a soft mass of tiny black curls, pulled back off her makeup-free face to expose small skull-shaped studs in her earlobes. She looks a little young to have earned a room in this insane suite the record label rented for Ava’s key staff.

  “People are like that,” she says. “They think they know you, so when you change, they never really notice. They just keep treating you like you’re the person you used to be.”

  “Yeah.” I blow out a breath. “Yeah. They kind of do.”

  That coaxes a smile out of her that changes her face, and suddenly it seems a little familiar. Jesus, tell me I didn’t sleep with her. I always think I remember all the faces, all the names, but how would I know if I were wrong?

  She tilts her head at me in question, and that’s all it takes. With a jolt like a slap, I realize the body under those cuddly pajamas is the one that starred in the music video that won last year’s Grammy.

  This woman is no one’s employee.

  “Ava.” Nausea swims thick through my head as I murmur her name. She looks so much younger, more vulnerable without her stage makeup. I gesture futilely at her hair, which is always smoothly wavy and every color but black. “Oh shit, and I was just whining to you like—”

  Her face falls just the tiniest bit, but her brown eyes still belong to the sweet assistant I thought she was. “Hey, don’t...” She takes one step forward, reaching for me, and then seems to change her mind and gestures to the hole I left in the wall instead. “I’ve woken up to that kind of day thousands of times.”

  I shake my head in automatic refusal. The charity-conscious, famously sober Ava isn’t exactly known for wrecking hotel rooms.

  Kick it back into gear, asshole.

  “Let’s start over.” I give her a half-bow and a chagrined smile. “Great to meet you, Ava, I’m a huge fan. And I know you’re busy so I’m gonna just show myself out.” I hook a thumb over my shoulder, already walking backward down the hall. “The nearest balcony is this way, right?”

  “Hey wait!” She takes a step after me, and I stop before the scraps of my better nature can propel me away. “I’ll make you a deal. Give me a second to get dressed, and we’ll go into the lion’s den together. I promise after two minutes of me, nobody will remember anything you did wrong.” She winks, and my body responds immediately to the pure curve of wickedness in her smile. “Unlike you, I like playing the bad guy.”

  She ducks back into her room, not giving me a chance to argue, and I close my eyes.

  “Scotty, beam me the fuck out of here,” I mutter.

  I just served up a buffet of all my pre-sobriety worst behavior to my rock idol and the staff we’ll be working with for this entire—nearly year-long—tour.

  Super.

  I take a breath, slipping my hand back into my pocket to squeeze my sobriety chips, remembering the ninth step. A junkie would run away and shoot blissful oblivion into his veins. A man would go back and face the music.

  And he damn sure wouldn’t wait to hide behind a beautiful woman.

  I turn and force my feet into movement, swallowing back the panicky bile that rises at the thought of looking into all their faces again.

  Just past the first white flowers, I rap my knuckles on a pillar so I won’t surprise them and overhear any of the whispers. Faces jerk toward me. The security guy stands at the side of the room now, and he takes a subtle step my way.

  “Hi, everybody.” I give them a small wave. “My name is Jackson, and I’m a recovering addict. I am four months and eleven days sober, and though I didn’t use last night, I did go dancing and pick up a date. I let her distract me this morning until I was late” —This pulls a faint smile from the guy on the laptop— “the fans made me later, and I felt guilty as hell. Which is why I exploded when I saw how much I had worried and disappointed the people in my life. Again.” I turn to Jera, who watches me with wide eyes. “I’m sorry. I’ve given you every reason not to believe in me, so I have only myself to blame when you don’t.” I look to the strangers at the table. “I apologize for the scene. I promise I am at least a little more professional usually. If you’re still up for it, I’d like to get started.”

  “Not too often somebody upstages my entrance,” a soft voice drawls from behind me.

  I turn, and the adorable pajamas are history.

  She’s rocking five inches of heel, twelve miles of legs, a black minidress with a business jacket that loves her curves, and a platinum blonde wig with a candy-pink streak. She’s also not wearing enough hastily-applied eyeliner to disguise the kind face of the girl I met in the hallway.

  She smiles and holds out her hand to me, giving me a second chance at our first meeting. “I’m Ava. I’m sorry I’m late, and I’d love to get started.”

  Chapter 2: Rock Stars From Mars

  “I’m a huge jerk, actually.” Ava drops into a big chair at the head of the table. “That bedroom is so lovely and insulated I didn’t even hear you all out here. If Jackson wouldn’t have woken me up, I might have slept until next week.”

  I take the open seat next to Kate, trying to decide if I should interrupt Ava’s attempt to draw the heat off me, or if I ought to keep my head down for once.

  “You’d probably only have slept until the next Nashville episode.” Kate winks at her, then turns to me, moving the meeting neatly past any awkwardness. Danny’s wife is great at that, and even better at directing our band’s career. “This is Curt, Ava’s manager.” She points to Old
Cell Phone guy, who doesn’t change a thing in his disdainful expression when he looks at me. “Dean, security.” That’s the guy with the three-foot shoulder span. No surprises there. Kate continues around the table, introducing a personal assistant, a girl from Cornerstone Records, and a publicity guy.

  I forget all their names as soon as the first syllable is out. Memorization has its limits. I’m about to have a whole tour crew’s names to learn, so my brain deserves a little rest.

  Ava glances at Kate, as if for permission, and my eyebrow quirks. Um, okay... But then, if I were a multi-billion-dollar entertainment icon, probably I’d still be a little afraid of Kate, too.

  Kate nods, and Ava clasps her hands in front of her on the table and leans forward. “So, full disclosure: I’m in swoony, fangirl love with your music, so I want you to be ready for all kinds of embarrassing behavior on my part.”

  Danny and Jera swap a look, but before either of them can figure out how to address a woman who looks out from the posters in our garage practice space, she keeps going.

  “Once Kate gave me your first album, I wore out two sets of earbuds on it. And since we’re on the same label, and I was already signed in blood to do this monstrosity of a tour...”

  Curt goes back to playing FarmVille on Facebook, or whatever else douches do in their quest to Look Important. Ava’s eyes sparkle with excitement as she speaks. How the hell can that guy look away from her? Is he a eunuch?

  “And for bonus points, I don’t have to be conjoined at the hip for nine months with those boy children who fancy themselves rap artists. What are they called again?”

  “2KüüL?” Jera asks, a little faintly.

  Ava shudders. “Let’s never speak those words again, shall we? Triple bonus points, I get to hijack your tour manager”—she tosses a sly smile at Kate— “who I have been unable to hire for love, money, or panda bears for years now.”

  “One third of a year.” Kate rolls her eyes. “It’s barely been four months. And you haven’t even had a tour since the last one I ran for you.”

  “That’s not the point! How many times have I tried to hire you?”

  “Five,” Danny says.

  “After three, he hired a voodoo priestess to put a muteness curse on you,” Jera says. She reddens slightly and then leans forward. “No offense. I mean, I think you’re amazing. I’m just saying, you were sort of trying to lure his wife from their marital bed and back out onto the road and all.”

  “So actually, you’re in gushy fangirl love with Kate,” Dean says, leaning against the wall in a particularly forbidding way. I don’t think he means to give that impression, but he can’t really help it—the wall is twelve feet tall and it still looks like it wants to whimper for its mother.

  Ava narrows her eyes at him. “You were the one who told me to throw the beach house into the last offer!”

  “Because Kate makes those little no-bake snacks with the pecans and caramel and the coconut chips.” Dean gestures with his giant mitts as if this will help us obtain the visual of sticky nuts. “She can do it right out of a hotel room, no stove or anything.”

  “You were going to give her a beach house for that?” I say. “Really? Because I’ll be your tour manager. Wait, you’re going on tour right now? That’s super convenient, I’ll start today.”

  Ava smiles, her eyes dancing and her hasty eyeliner just the tiniest bit crooked. “Sing a duet with me and I’ll give you two beach houses and my traitor bodyguard for a tip.”

  I give the leg of my jeans a tug, because I need some extra space to accommodate the things that smile just did to me.

  Especially when she follows it by saying, “Let’s talk production.”

  Jera sits up straighter. “Ooh, do we get to choose the opener?”

  Ava laughs and gestures down the table toward Record Label Chick. “If you want to argue that one out with the powers that be, be my guest. Just be ready to hear the word ‘demographic’ a lot in a very short period of time.”

  “I’ll help if you do the arguing, Jimi.” Danny doesn’t rise from his languid slump in an ornate—probably antique—chair, chunks of his black hair poking out from beneath a threadbare beanie.

  Jera grins at him. “Done.”

  “More important than openers,” Ava says. “Are headliners. We’re both billed as the attractions on this one, though the font size depends on the promotional material.”

  She makes a face, even though I’d bet my new Chihuly chandelier the only variation is if her font tops ours by a little or a lot. As it should. In the last nine years, she’s gone from child star to a sexy ball buster with pop-glitzy shows and a strict allegiance to hard rock and roll. Her name is her band is her personality is her brand. It’s two small but capitalized gunmetal-black A’s with a shimmering scarlet V slashed through the middle like a weapon. AVA. I have it on at least three shirts and a beer koozie back home.

  “What I’d like to propose is that we flip-flop time slots by the venue. That way, I’m not always the one going to bed when the sun is coming up.”

  Kate’s eyes widen, Danny glances at Jera, and I lean forward and ask, “Um, you want to open for us?” It sounds just as crazy out loud as I thought it would.

  Record Label Chick says, “Ava, you realize this is not what we talked about.” It sounds like she maybe has to say that a lot.

  Curt finally puts down his phone. “They can’t close for you, Ava. It would confuse the fans and we risk some amount of walk out, which is always bad for reviews.”

  Walk out? Does this assclown think I can’t hold a crowd?

  Danny’s leg starts to jiggle under the table.

  “Your set is all explosions and earthquakes,” Curt continues, “a Broadway production worth of backup dancers, and laser shows so big we can’t book an outdoor venue within five miles of an airport. They’ve got one guitar and a single effects pedal board, for crying out loud.”

  Ava slams her hand down on the table. “That’s right! Because they keep it classic: the focus on the music, the band dynamics, the beat. The heart of what rock and roll really means. Or what it used to mean, anyway.”

  Vindication rushes hot through my veins and I can’t help but sit a little straighter.

  “I think you ought to be proud of what you do,” Ava says, speaking straight to me. “You guys have integrity. But okay, right after my show, the crowd’s still going to have sunspots.” She shrugs. “Why don’t you use my lights, whatever lasers you want? The pyro’s pricey but you could throw in one or two just for fun.” She glares at Curt. “Nobody expects backup dancers in a male fronted rock band anyway.”

  “The label is not prepared to extend that kind of touring support,” says Record Label Chick.

  “I don’t think it’ll be too expensive,” Kate says. Danny and I both turn to stare, because I’m not sure I’ve heard our tightwad manager ever say those words. “All that stuff’s already set up,” she points out. “If we hire one set of staff instead of two, we don’t have to train new people, the band changeover will be super fast, and we can cut down on the number of buses.”

  Ava grins. “And that’s why I keep trying to buy you a beach house, girl. If we hire with the expectation that the employees will work both sets instead of each band having their own staff, then we can offer the job at 60% of a two-set salary and—”

  “And get everybody signed for under 70%.” Kate nods. “I can set up a shell corp for this tour and we can run the payroll together, simplify some of our overhead expenses.”

  Publicity Guy says, “You know, we could combine this more closely from a publicity angle too—share the load of the promo appearances between the two bands.” He sounds funny, like he’s delivering a line from a script and overacting it a bit. Is Ava just throwing us a bone because she’s tired of doing her own press?

  “Great idea!” Ava enthuses.

  I don’t have time to sort out her backstage machinations because I have something more important to do just now. I grin a
t Curt. In your face, Douchesandwich. “See? Problem solved. You’ll get your show.”

  “You can’t advertise the jobs together,” Curt says. “I already have our whole staff on contract. If you try to add another band, it’s on paper you’ll have to pay them double, plus probably two per diems.”

  Personal Assistant Girl stares down at the table like she really wishes somebody would send her for coffee.

  Ava doesn’t move. Not a muscle, not an eyelash. “That’s your problem. Maybe you shouldn’t have signed an entire tour’s worth of contracts without asking my plans first.”

  Wow, I’m starting to wish somebody would send me for coffee.

  Curt sighs. “You’re the talent. You’re supposed to be writing songs and practicing your choreography, not fussing with details.” He gestures at Kate without even deigning to look her in the eye. “I don’t know why you keep trying to hire this girl, when everybody knows you’re going to keep micromanaging yourself into an early grave. You should be thanking me for getting this tour off the ground while you’ve been off curled up—”

  “Maybe if I had staff I could trust, I wouldn’t have to overextend myself.”

  It’s suddenly so clear how this sweet, soft girl can blast the hair back on ten thousand people at a time. Even the air seems to have grown spikes and I can’t so much as look her in the eye right now. What is not clear is why someone who has three times been voted Feminist of the Year has been employing this patronizing dick nugget for her entire career.

  “Can we get back to business?” Record Label Chick interrupts. “Ava, I’m afraid we’re going to have to run these changes by the label. It’s really not the kind of thing you can just—”

  “Anything to do with my career is the kind of thing I can just do.” She shoves to her feet. “Or do they want to have that chat again about exactly what I am authorized to do with my own body and time?”