Chapter One
“No,” said the bodyguard.
“But—”
“Miss, do you have any idea how many people try to get backstage by claiming they have some sort of relationship with Mr. Dillon?” Face a careful blank, the man in the slick black suit stared down at me. He had a point. I’d pushed through a crush of fans, getting my toes stomped on several times, along with taking an elbow to the kidney, just to talk to this guy. God only knew what it took to get near the star of the show.
“I’d imagine a lot,” I yelled back at him. Necessary given the volume of the music filling the space. “The difference here is I’m not lying.”
“But since everyone says that, you can see from my perspective how that’s not actually a point of difference.”
Adam Dillon, rock star extraordinaire, gyrated his slim denim-clad hips like an Alt-Rock Elvis on the nearby stage. He pouted and crooned about the woman who’d done him wrong. Me. That’s right, I was the big bad ex who’d broken him and woke him to the dangers of love. Or so the song said.
The song lied and then some.
According to the lyrics he was currently wailing, I’d ground his heart beneath my five-inch heels before blowing him a kiss goodbye. From memory, there’d been a lot of shouting, but no blowing of kisses. And having just kicked off the flats I wore for work, I’d been barefoot, my legs and back aching. No way had I been strutting around in stilettos. Home from a hard day at the hair salon, I’d returned to find Adam on the couch. The same place he’d been when I’d left for work approximately eleven hours earlier. The same place he’d been for what felt like months as I worked my ass off to pay the rent. That’s when all hell broke loose. However, it wasn’t the only issue that had caused our relationship to bomb. Nothing’s ever simple.
But back to the here and now. I grabbed the slip of paper out of my front pocket, holding it up for his perusal. “My name is Jill Schwartz. How many of those people claiming to know him have one of these?”
His eyes widened as he scanned the name on the check, before widening again at the amount. And fair enough too. I’d had a mild panic attack myself when it had first arrived. When Adam decided to make a statement, he didn’t bother with subtle. If only I could figure out what it all meant. If it meant anything at all, of course. And that question was what had brought me here tonight.
The bodyguard looked me over more carefully this time. His expression remained unimpressed. Understandable, given I didn’t resemble a rock star’s girlfriend, past or present. A bit below average height, sharp chin, pronounced cheekbones, olive skin, and a resting bitch face that was the envy of many. Or so I liked to think. I was basically a squirrel with attitude, who didn’t mind cracking the odd nut or two to get things done.
Meanwhile, Adam with his long dark hair, tattoos, and lanky body had appeared perfectly at home on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine the month before. He’d been sitting cross-legged on a Persian rug, strumming an acoustic guitar. It wasn’t hard to see how the bodyguard might struggle to imagine us as an item worthy of all this musical angst.
“Would you happen to have some ID on you, ma’am?” he asked.
I fished out my wallet from my jeans’ pocket. Not easy to do with the heaving mass of sweaty bodies around me, cramming me in on every angle. I produced my license, and he shone a little flashlight on it. “It’s from last year so my hair was a lot longer,” I explained. “And blue.”
The corner of his mouth twitched, but he gave no other reaction.
Blue hair had been great. Fr
om turquoise to indigo and back again. All of my childhood mermaid dreams come to life. Right now, however, it’d been cut to around shoulder blade-length and dyed silver and gray. Very kickass.
Next the security dude pulled out a slick little walkie-talkie and issued a series of orders. Another guy, this one in black jeans and a matching tee, joined him at the gate. Now it was his turn to look me up and down in mild disbelief. But then the gate carefully opened, and they ushered me through. A couple of the fans nearby complained bitterly and offered bribes (of both sexual and monetary nature). But no-go. Only I was permitted into the inner sanctum. Amazing. It had actually worked. I was really going to get to see him again after all this time. Every speech I’d prepared earlier disappeared from my head, and my hands started shaking for reasons I’d rather not ponder.
Up some stairs and into the elusive, exclusive backstage area the bodyguard and I went. A high wall sheltered us from the actual stage and its surrounds. But it soon opened to a larger corridor with people rushing back and forth. The banging vibration of the bass seemed to seep through the walls, the music loud enough to make my ears ring. We made a sharp right turn, and the sort of industrial look gave way to a slick little lounge with a bar and fridge, a large arrangement of white orchids, bottles of water lined up on a side table, a glass bowl full of M&Ms (Adam’s favorite), and an Amazonian woman busy with her cell. Tall, brunette, vaguely terrifying, and wearing a pair of fifties-style Saint Laurent platform heels I’d had wet dreams of owning. Oh, good Lord, those shoes. I could have drooled. A cheap knockoff of them sat at home in my wardrobe. I was still saving them for a special occasion. But not this sort of special occasion. Coming here tonight, doing this, had seemed like more of a combat boot kind of situation. Storming the rock ‘n’ roll castle and all that.
“Thanks, Ziggy,” she said, dismissing the bodyguard before her gaze flicked over me with obvious disinterest. “You’ve got sixty seconds. Talk.”
“And who the hell might you be?” I asked, not so politely, refusing to be cowed.
At this, she smiled. “I’m Martha, Adam’s manager, and you?”
“Jill. Adam’s ex. But I’m sure the bodyguard already told you that.”
The speculative look in her eyes increased some hundred-fold. “So, what do you want, Adam’s ex?”
“To talk to Adam about something he sent me recently.”
She raised her chin. “The check. I didn’t know he’d done that.”
“You know everything he does?”
“Basically,” she said, tone blasé. “You have to understand, rock stars are all big, whiny babies who need someone running their lives, or everything goes to hell in a handbasket. For Adam, I am that someone. Next question. If the check is real, and you are who you say you are, why not just take the money and run?”
I sighed. “I thought about it. That album has been the bane of my existence ever since it came out. I can’t go anywhere without hearing the damn thing. Bars, gas stations, the grocery store…it’s like I’m being musically stalked.”
“The songs aren’t exactly complimentary toward you,” she allowed.
At this, I rolled my eyes. A terrible habit, but I couldn’t help myself. If someone said something breathtakingly obvious, my first impulse was always the silent and deadly, duh. “I’m not getting into that with you. It’s private. Well, it should be private. Though it would be fair to say that Adam’s version of our relationship and mine differ significantly. But the fact is, he’s been working on making it in the music business since long before I met him. It was his dream, and he worked hard and saw it through. Kudos to him. If he’d just sent me his share of the rent and so on for the period we lived together, then I wouldn’t be here right now. Because this check…it’s too much. Way too much.”
“Seven digits is impressive. But he can afford it, if that’s your concern.”
“I’m sure he can, but that’s not the point.”
“You’ve never given any interviews about him. Never sold any photos from when you were together. I’d have been alerted to it if you had.”
“And?”
Her gaze scanned my body, up and down. “Are you pregnant?”
“No.”
“Do you hope to get pregnant?”
“Good Lord. Get your mind out of my uterus. I just want to talk to him about the check.”
For a long moment, the manager chick, Martha, just stared at me. Then she said, “Interesting. Come with me.”
Then she was off, striding in those elegant towering high heels. I bet she could sprint in those suckers. It was like the whole world was her runway and she had places to be.
“Where are we going?” I asked, not quite jogging to keep up. Short legs sucked sometimes.
“You want to talk to Adam?”
“Well, yes, but…”
“Yes or no, Jill? I don’t have time to screw around.”
“Yes, I want to talk to him,” I said, brows drawn down. “I need to talk to him.”
The various dressing rooms and storerooms and who knew what else gave way to larger hallways. Props, lights, and all sorts of things sat in neat piles here and there. Plenty of people moved to and fro, and more just hung around. Out through a pair of big double doors, and we were in a tunnel with a couple of security guards waiting alongside a large, shiny black Mercedes Benz SUV.
Martha opened the car’s back door. Once more, her cell sat in her hand, her gaze glued to the screen. “Get in.”