Chapter One
Maggie
All you haveto do is avoidhim.
That’s what I’d been telling myself in preparation for this day. Thistour.
Just keep itplatonic.
Keep itprofessional.
And when all else fails…Avoid.
I took a sweeping glance across the parking lot; the members of Dirty were meeting up behind their former rehearsal space, which was now Jesse’s wife Katie’s art studio. There was room for a few of the tour buses to pull into the lot, but the sporting goods store across the alley had a larger lot where the rest of the buses had filedin.
It was a commercial-industrial neighborhood and not much else was stirring; it was ungodly-early for a January morning, the sun just starting to lighten the sky, and I could see my breath as I lookedaround.
I glimpsed a few of the band members. Jude’s security team. A few of our road crew milling about, those who hadn’t already headed south yesterday with the trucks. Our tour manager, Alec, counting heads, his assistant passing outcoffees.
Not one sign ofZane.
Allclear.
I raised my mochaccino to Alec; he waved back, and I turned to head across thelot.
“Hey, Maggie.” Zane’s bodyguard loomed in front of me, and I almost pissed myself. For a giant man, Shady was incredibly light on his feet. He eased back, seeming to realize he’d almost literally scared the piss out of me. “Uh… goodmorning?”
“Hey, Shady,” I mumbled, dashing pasthim.
I waved a hasty hello to my bus driver, who was talking on her phone, and beelined for my bus. I’d already glimpsed it across the alley, parked behind Katie’s studio. While the rest of the buses were silver-and-black, mine had a purple swirl down theside.
I turned to cut between two of the massivebuses.
And there wasZane.
I stopped so suddenly, I almost spilled coffee all over myself. It slopped out the sippy hole in the lid and burned myhand.
Fuck.
I licked the coffee off my skin and glancedup.
Zane hadn’t seen me. His left side was turned towardme.
I wasn’t even sure what he wasdoing.
He was just standing there, alone, in the shadows between the buses, staring at the ground and kinda muttering to himself… like he did when he was nervous before going onstage, or when he was working on a song in hishead.
Then his hand raised to his mouth, trailing smoke. He was smoking a joint—because, you know, that was a normal thing to do at the ass-crack ofdawn.
If you were ZaneTraynor.
He wore biker boots and fitted jeans with the knees ripped out, a white Henley shirt with pushed-up sleeves and one of his trademark black leather vests. He had maybe a week’s growth on his jaw and his blond hair had been freshly buzzed on the side into a swatch of velvet, the long part on top fallingforward.
Gorgeous.
Dangerous.
Dirty’s leadsinger.
