ONE
Evie was on her knees, face up close to Grip’s cock, hands either side of his open zipper, when the man who ruined her life stepped into the corridor looking every bit the rock god he now was.
She bit her tongue to stop a shocked exhalation and involuntarily yanked on Grip’s pants, making him jerk forward and put a hand on her shoulder.
“Steady, Evie,” Grip said. “That’s my best asset you’re getting personal with.”
It wasn’t easy to be steady while her gut twisted, and her throat filled with the taste of a decade’s disappointment and rage gone sour.
Grip hadn’t seen Jay, but Jay had seen them. His eyes widened, his brows cranking up. He stumbled to a stop, a hand coming up to sweep through his mane of messy dark hair.
It’d been ten years since Evie last saw Jay in the flesh. She’d had to actively avoid seeing him on screen; he was everywhere from Instagram to the Grammys. She’d been preparing mentally for seeing him again for weeks but that was supposed to happen in a crowded meeting room where she could avoid interacting with him one-on-one.
Standing not a car-length away, staring at her, he was an electric shock that made her freeze in place. He was so much taller and rangier than she remembered.
And sexier than any man had a right to be.
“I. Ah. Shit.” Jay ducked his head, but not before Evie saw his cheeks under a scratchable stubble flush. “Evie. Grip. Sorry, I didn’t. Shit.” He wiped his hand over his mouth. “Serves me right for arriving late and needing to piss.”
“Hey man,” Grip said, letting go of Evie’s shoulder. “Better fucking late than never.”
Evie didn’t care if Jay Endicott, the current King of Rock, thought his ex-girlfriend was about to fellate his old band mate in the corridor of Sound Blast Touring’s offices. So long as he and his big shot global concert tour did right by Grip and her brothers, she didn’t care what Jay thought, did, said, ate, drank, sang or fucked, and she hadn’t for years.
Jay had to pass them to get to the bathroom. “Step around,” she said, not letting go of Grip’s zipper, but watching Jay so that when he lifted his head they were eyeballing each other.
For a moment there was just the two of them and the vast chasm of broken promises and bitter regrets, and then Grip flattened his big drummer’s hand on Evie’s head and said, “She’s fixing my zipper, not about to swallow me whole.”
Jay blinked, laughed. Was that relief on his face? “I didn’t know you were seamstress for the band, Tiny Dancer,” he said, and it was better that he didn’t say her name again, there was an angry stitch in her side from the first time.
Evie jiggled the tab of Grip’s zipper and the teeth aligned. She ignored Jay. He didn’t know anything about her or what she did for the band. She zipped Grip, got to her feet and patted his cheek.
“Cool,” Grip said, adjusting his jeans at the waist and doing the button. He turned towards Jay. “These are my fuck-lucky pants and I am not ready to mourn them.”
The Levi’s were frayed and ripped and so well-worn they were almost soft enough to use as a towel, and the zipper had already been replaced twice. Grip looked every inch the badass drummer of Lost Property wearing them.
“Wait,” Jay said. Now he was staring at Grip. “Those are my old 511s. You nicked them from me in Tokyo about five years ago.”
Grip laughed. “They look more awesome on me and I didn’t think you’d miss them.”
“Fucker,” said Jay, advancing on Grip, arms wide for a hug.
That’s when Evie got away, ducking past the two backslapping friends and making for the meeting room where a dozen people milled about waiting to hash out the final details of the Australian leg of Jay’s band’s Planet Possible tour.
At the last minute, she veered towards the ladies’ room. The meeting wouldn’t start without Jay but no one was sweating on her presence. She wasn’t the star in anyone’s show, only the insider who got the Lost Property’s fans excited. She could take a few seconds to get her game face back on.
“He’s nothing to you except a bad memory and a new paycheck,” she said, grateful to have the bathroom to herself. She shoved a stall door. It hit the tiled wall with a satisfying bang and she immediately felt less as if she’d tried to cram her body into a too small space.
“You’re a professional. Jay freaking Endicott can take his ridiculously hot body and his fucking lethal charm and seduce half the wannabees and groupies in the city for all you care.”
That was the score. Seeing her ex again shouldn’t make her feel anything. Certainly not like punching something. She smoothed an eyebrow instead. Without the surprise factor of Jay appearing during Grip’s zipper emergency, she wouldn’t be feeling anything but curiosity about Jay a decade after he ran out on her without a word.
The best part of the surprise was the way he blushed. As if he hadn’t seen every wicked sex act there was to see on the road and backstage. As if he hadn’t had every kind of sex there was offered to him and yet he’d been embarrassed thinking Evie was about to blow Grip.
The worst part was the way he’d looked at her once he realized he wasn’t interrupting a deep throating. As if he was disappointed in her. Which made no sense, because he couldn’t possibly car
e what she did with Grip or anyone else.
“The next time he looks at you like you kicked his kitten, you have permission to fuck with him.”
She checked her face in the mirror, shook her head so that the red under-color flashed in her hair, happy that the shock of seeing Jay again unexpectedly wasn’t showing all over her face. Perversely pleased that the shock of seeing her on her knees with Grip had shown all over his.
TWO
Jay quit breathing as he watched Evie, in her skintight black pants and a top that slid all over her shoulders and didn’t show bra straps, saunter up the corridor and disappear into the ladies’ room. It was impossible not to. It was a matter of life and death. She could start a fire with a swing of her hips and he and Grip could be burned alive.
There were worse ways to go.
“You and Evie, huh?” he said to Grip. He hadn’t seen that one coming and he didn’t buy the wardrobe malfunction story. He’d seen the look on Grip’s face as Evie knelt at his feet, a mixture of adoration and fear. Once a boy scout, now a heck of musician, Grip had good survival skills and wasn’t afraid of a challenge and letting Evie handle your zip required both attributes.
His old friend and bandmate whistled through his teeth. “I wish, man. She treats me like one of her bros. And she’s the queen of hit it and quit it.”
Evie was a player. He didn’t see that one coming either, but ten years was a long time with no contact. When they got together, he was eighteen, and nothing but restless energy and burning unfocused ambition. Evie at seventeen had been incandescently talented and carelessly beautiful. She was still beautiful, in a way that made an ache bloom in the middle of his chest the moment he saw her.
He rubbed the spot, trying to soothe away the knot of unease. He’d planned to love her forever. Turned out forever was only three years and the rest was rock and roll.
They were staring at an empty corridor, at the place where Evie had been, when Grip said, “Doesn’t stop me trying to get her to hit on me.”
“Be careful what you wish for.” The Evie Jay knew would slice Grip up for sandwich meat if she didn’t already love him like one of her brothers. And if she stopped loving him, well at least Grip would have good solid heartache to fuel his songwriting. “Speaking from experience.”
Grip laughed. “You still hot for her?”
“Hell, no.” He knuckled that achy spot in his chest. “Evie and me. That was a long time,” and a file folder full of lyrics that would never be set to music, “ago. First contact I’ve had with her since I left Sydney.”
“No shit?” Grip’s mouth dropped open. “You guys were such a unit. I thought you’d have waited out the teen angst, reconnected. Done the friends thing at a min.”
Jay shook his head. “Come on, Evie torched me.” He made a sound approximating an explosion and added a hand action to symbolize his heart being broken into infinitesimal fragments of gore and glued back together with whatever substance made you harden the fuck up.
Grip closed an eye. “Remind me why what was again.”
Because she wanted to be famous singer-songwriter more than she wanted to be with a loser like me and then she burned that opportunity down. “We were both young and dumb.” It shouldn’t still hurt.
It still fucking hurt.
And he wasn’t ready for that. Made him want to smack his head into the wall until he wised up.