She took a deep breath.
“I just think—” Someone—a bulky someone—bumped her from behind.
The stilettos wobbled, her balance precarious. She threw her arm wide to catch herself. It didn’t work.
Her knees buckled.
Damn. This was going to hurt.
She fell forward.
“Shit.” Tucker moved to grab her.
Too late. The momentum caught her.
And that’s how, two weeks before Christmas, she found herself face-first in Tucker McKay’s crotch.
* * *
“No.”Absolutely not.
Tucker McKay might be willing to do a lot of things. Hell, he’d even put on a beat-up trucker hat because the damn stylist his record label assigned said it worked with his Justin cowboy boots. He may have once been the lead singer of a rock band, but he wasn’t giving up his boots. Or his denim.
Especially for the leather pants and eyeliner they’d tried to force on him. That had been a hard no.
So, sure, he might do a lot of things, but not this. Not with her.
Even sellouts had limits.
And right now, his hard limit was being the arm candy of America’s Hollywood Sweetheart—Mackenzie Bennett.
“You don’t have a choice.” His manager, Jessica, spread Kenzie’s headshots across the shiny conference room table in the Los Angeles high-rise. He itched for his ranch in Colorado.
He glanced to the photos—as if he didn’t already know what she looked like.
The pink-lipped mouth that launched a thousand wet dreams. The signature long red hair. The green eyes so bright they drew in millions of movie goers, and so sharp they’d shredded dozens of Hollywood hearts before tossing them aside like worn-out vinyl records.
Oh, he knew what she looked like, all right.
The clear twinkle lights on the Christmas tree in the corner flashed at him:You’re screwed. You’re screwed. You’re screwed.
Then there were the photos of Kenzie’s face dive into his pants three nights before. Someone had gotten a cell phone photo, and they’d wasted no time in selling it to the highest bidder. The gossip magazines went crazy with the image.
Tucker glanced to the closed door to ensure no one else played witness to Jessica’s insanity. Just the two of them—figuring out how to extract him from the limelight without his last public image being Kenzie’s head in his lap.
He’d started his career with a solid footing: refusing drugs, keeping his head down while he wrote music and performed for stadiums of screaming fans.
Then one day his muse walked out on him.
Everyone said there was a reason when you couldn’t get the lyrics to flow. A bad breakup. Illness. You name it.
None of that had happened to him.
One day the pencil refused to work. The signature lyrics that had catapulted him to stardom wouldn’t come. Boom. Done.No more music making for you, Tucker. Oh, you have a career? Sorry, not sorry.
Without new songs, there were no new records. He’d refused to spend the rest of his career rehashing the same old hits.
His band had imploded. Broken up. No more concerts, no more tours.
