Fade Into You (Shaken Dirty 3)

“Hmm.” He deliberated for a few seconds, his fingers unconsciously toying with the ends of her hair as he did. Finally, he settled on, “What do you do at the label? When you aren’t formulating social media plans for pain-in-the-ass bands? Or is that what you do all the time?”

Shit. Seriously? He could have asked her anything, and that was what he’d chosen? She was going to kick Caleb’s ass for putting her in this position—and her own ass, too, as soon as she figured out how to manage that. How was she supposed to lie to him when they were naked in bed together? And when she was trying so hard to let him know that he could trust her? When she was working so hard to trust him, too?

In the end, she decided to stick as close to the truth as she could manage. “Mostly I’m in marketing. I work out plans for bands when we first sign them, decide how we’re going to market them, what kind of publicity we want to garner for them, what demographics we want them to appeal to. I’m also often the liaison between the label and the band’s management. I make sure we’re all on the same page.”

“So you do all that, but you don’t actually work with the bands?” He looked skeptical. “Or is it just Shaken Dirty that you didn’t work with early on?”

“No.” She tried to keep the bitterness out of her voice. “I don’t work with any of the bands. I just strategize.”

“Why not? You mentioned before that music is your life. Or was that just about your work?”

“No! Music is my life.” She rolled over, despite his efforts to keep her in place, and settled on the side of the bed with her feet on the floor. “Rock, especially. I fell in love with Queen and Aerosmith and Led Zeppelin before I could even walk. Spent my childhood going to Pearl Jam and U2 concerts. Soundgarden, Nirvana, The Cure. Nine Inch Nails. I loved them all. From the time I was in junior high, I never wanted to do anything but work with musicians and help connect them with fans who really got their music.”

“Which explains your obsession with social media. You get to do that on a global scale now, right?”

“I guess.” She sighed. It was so much more complicated than that, but she couldn’t explain it to him. Not if she wanted to keep her cover.

“There’s a story there,” he said, brows raised. “Do you want out of marketing? Would you rather be focusing on the music end of—”

“Dude! No offense, but I’m pretty sure you’re on like your fifth question, and I only got to ask one. That’s not how this is supposed to go.”

“Yeah, but this is so much more interesting!”

“To you, maybe. Not to me.”

“Okay, fine.” He settled back against the headboard with a little bit of a huff. “What do you want to know?”

“When did you move to Austin?”

“When I was sixteen.”

“So you didn’t grow up with Jared, Ryder, and Micah.”

“Nope.” He shook his head. “They felt sorry for me and pulled me in a few months after I started at Austin High.”

“And by ‘felt sorry for you,’ you mean they were awed by your talent.”

He snorted. “Not quite. Jamison and I got to be friends and Jared freaked out. I had trouble written all over me, even then. I’m pretty sure he befriended me to make sure I wouldn’t take his little sister to bed.”

“I doubt that’s it.”

“No offense, but you weren’t there. I guarantee that was almost one hundred percent of his motivation. Can’t fuck your band mate’s little sister, after all.”

“Yet now she’s with Ryder.”

He laughed. “She is. And that was hilario

us to watch. Jared almost killed him at one point.”

“I’m glad he didn’t. Replacing a bassist is one thing. Replacing your lead singer and guitarist is something else entirely.” She paused. “Almost as hard as replacing your drummer.”

“Really? We’re going to go there now?”

“No.” She shook her head, pressed several soft kisses to his chest. “We’re not. But you’ve got to admit, the opening was too perfect to pass up.”

“I don’t have to admit anything,” he answered with a smirk. “But, since you brought it up, I should probably get going.”

“No, you shouldn’t.” She tangled her legs up in his, then rolled until his back was pressed into the bed and she was sprawled above him. “Not yet.”