Tempt Me Like This (The Morrisons 2)

Chapter One

San Diego, California

Drew Morrison was a rock god.

During the hour and a half that Ashley Emmit had been standing in the middle of the very crowded concert venue in downtown San Diego, she'd heard dozens of people say those exact words. Normally, she would have chalked it up to hyperbole or to collective excitement. But in that moment, there didn't seem to be even a hint of exaggeration in the crowd's claims. Not only were Drew Morrison's songs incredible, but from the moment he'd stepped out onto the stage, Ashley hadn't been able to keep her body from moving...or her heart from racing.

She was a numbers girl. She studied facts and figures. Her teachers had always said she was the very definition of a left-brained person. Sure, she'd always been drawn to music--not playing it, but listening to it. But even when she was on the verge of being swept away by a certain song, her enjoyment had always been tempered by her practical nature. She'd analyze the song's structure, the chord progression, the rhyming patterns. She'd read dozens of articles about how the brain was hardwired to process music, as well. She didn't just want to enjoy something--she wanted to understand why she enjoyed it.

That was why she was at this show. She had one last chance to get into Stanford Business School--and it all rested on figuring out every last detail of the way the music business worked. The graduate program had spawned a truly stunning amount of corporate innovation and had been her dream school since she was a teenager. It still hurt to remember the rejection letter they'd sent her: Our pool of applicants was truly phenomenal this year, most with exceptional real-world experience in their field of choice. We regret to inform you that we do not have a space for you and wish you all the best in the future.

She'd known it wouldn't be easy to get in, but where other girls had pretty smiles and knockout figures, the one thing Ashley had always been able to count on was her brain. Somehow, though, her brain had let her down. Big-time. But since it was all she had, after wallowing in a freezerful of ice cream, she'd forced herself to brush off the devastating rejection and refocus.

Ashley had read every book written about the music business. She'd listened to every talk given by the experts. She'd pored over financial spreadsheets from both major and indie labels. But she didn't have an ounce of practical experience. How could she truly understand how to innovate in the music industry when she'd never spent any time with a musician?

Going on tour with Drew Morrison was the crucial piece to her new plan: total immersion so that she could finally understand what was happening on both the business and the artistic sides.

As luck would have it, her father had been one of Drew's undergraduate professors at Stanford, so even though Dad would much prefer she chose a steady and safe profession that had nothing whatsoever to do with the music business, he'd been able to pull some strings to get her a spot on Drew's tour.

Ashley was so nervous about traveling from city to city in tour buses with Drew and the group of strangers who were in his band and crew, that she'd done what she always did when she felt unsure about things--buried herself in books and research. Even though she knew it would do absolutely nothing to help her fit in with the rockers on Drew's crew, it had made her feel a little better to fill up a couple of notebooks with notes and questions, at least.

She was a nerd in the normal world. She'd just have to accept that she'd be a nerd to the millionth degree in the rock and roll world.

Tonight, she'd come to the venue armed with her notebook and tablet, ready to take notes on any-and everything. Only, from the moment Drew strummed the first chord on his guitar and began to sing, instead of all of the mental lists she should have been making or the details she should have been noticing, everything had been lost to the musi

c.

To Drew Morrison's genius.

"Thanks for coming out tonight, everyone." His speaking voice was just as sexy and mesmerizing as his singing voice. The screams from his fans nearly drowned him out as he said, "I wrote a new song a while back that I haven't played for anyone yet." More screams came, truly deafening ones. "But tonight..." He'd been smiling earlier, but suddenly he looked terribly serious. And so sad that Ashley wished she were close enough to wrap her arms around him. "Tonight I finally feel like I need to play it. It's called 'One More Time.'"

The rest of the band left the stage, leaving only Drew and his guitar in the spotlight. Watching him, she felt as if he was steeling himself before the first notes rang out from his guitar and he began to sing the most beautiful--and devastating--song Ashley had ever heard. About loss. About his heart breaking. About pain that ran so deep he wasn't sure he'd ever be able to recover from it.

She wasn't absolutely sure what the song was really about, but her father had told her that Drew's mother had passed away from cancer earlier this year. She knew what it was like to lose a mother, but hers hadn't died--her mother had simply boarded a plane to Miami seven years ago after her parents had divorced.

The rest of the songs Drew had played tonight had been fast-driving and often upbeat. But this one held hints of sixties folk music. A little Dylan. A harmony reminiscent of Crosby, Stills and Nash. A lyric that she could easily have imagined Joni Mitchell singing. Ashley had never heard anyone combine their own new sound with the past in such an amazing way.

Drew's song reached deep inside of her, deeper than any other had ever gone. Ashley ached for him, even as she found herself aching for her own losses. Losses she never liked to look at too closely because they hurt so bad.

Tears were streaming down the cheeks of the girl standing next to Ashley. More than one fan, actually, was losing the battle with her emotions. And as he sang, "I wish I could see you one more time," and the final note rang out and the stage lights abruptly went dark, Ashley reached up and was shocked to feel dampness on her own cheekbones. She sucked in a breath, and then another when that first one didn't quite make it all the way into her lungs, as she quickly wiped away the moisture.

She tried to center herself and steady everything that had just gone so topsy-turvy. She knew from reading all those science journals that a good song could trigger a cascade of involuntary physical and emotional responses. That had to be why she'd reacted so emotionally, right? Plus, she wasn't used to being around so many people who had so few inhibitions.

From the first moment she'd set foot inside the venue, just as she'd thought, she stuck out. Her hair was too neat. Her clothes were too plain. Her shoes were too flat. And her makeup was too--well, nonexistent. The women in Drew's audience were openly sexual, both in the way they dressed and in how they danced. And the truth was that at the same time as she felt out of place, Ashley envied them a little bit for the way they owned their sexuality. As if it were something not only perfectly natural, but also wonderful.

But when the girl next to her sniffled and said, "Isn't he amazing? When I listen to his songs, I feel like I can do anything," Ashley was surprised to realize she didn't feel like a total outsider anymore. Drew's music had brought all of them together. And even if the moment they stepped out onto the sidewalk they reverted back to their normal roles, at least for a couple of hours they'd all shared the exact same urge to dance and sing along and even cry.

The lights suddenly blazed back on in a kaleidoscope of colors that had everyone cheering just as Drew launched into "Wild," his biggest hit to date. And even though she never danced in public, she couldn't keep from wiggling her hips, lifting her arms to the beat, and clapping along with everyone else.

Suddenly, Ashley could see it all so clearly--this was Drew Morrison's gift. Not only could he write one heck of a chorus, but he was also able to tap into the purest of emotions again and again with every song he wrote. Tears to laughter. Pain to joy. And everyone in the venue was more than happy to be taken on the roller-coaster ride with him. To let him take the wheel as he whirled them up and around, inside and out.

After his encore, however, Ashley forced herself to watch, to listen, to examine the reactions of the audience members, the managers of the venue, the employees running concessions, and to note her impressions in the tablet she took out of her bag. An impressive number of people had walked in wearing T-shirts with his face on them before the show, but pretty much everyone bought one on their way out and put it on. She could only imagine how gleeful Drew's label must be at the way his fandom was growing.

A few minutes after he left the stage, the staff was quickly working to clean up, and she was one of the only people out on the floor. Having previously arranged over email with Drew to meet backstage after the show, she fished her VIP pass out of her purse and showed it to the large man guarding the door.

"Drew is just about done with pictures and autographs," the man said as he gave her a surprisingly nice smile, "but if you hurry, I'm sure he won't leave you hanging."

"Thanks, but I'm not a fan." The man's eyes widened, and as she realized what she'd said, she fumbled to say, "I mean, of course I'm a fan. It's just that I'm here to go on tour with Drew."

"Are you Ashley?"

Surprised that this man knew her name, she said, "That's me."

He grinned even wider as he reached for her hand and gave it several good, hard pumps. "I'm James. It's my job to keep Drew safe."

Resisting the urge to rub her shoulder socket after he let go of her hand, she smiled back at Drew's security guard. "It's lovely to meet you." Of course, as soon as the words were out of her mouth, she had to fight the urge to groan out loud. Lovely to meet you made her sound like she was an eighty-year-old grandma rather than a twenty-two-year-old woman.

"I'll let Drew know you're on your way." James pulled out his phone and sent a quick text, probably also letting Drew know he should expect a supernerd backstage. "Welcome to the madness, Ashley."

As she walked down the hall in the direction in which James had pointed her, she mused that Drew's bodyguard really was a lovely man. And though he'd just referred to touring with Drew as madness, the truth was that he'd helped make her feel a whole lot less nervous about being here.

Ever since the night she'd introduced herself to Drew after one of his shows and realized just how ridiculously good-looking he was in person, she'd been more than a little anxious. Going on a rock tour at all was a huge leap away from her normal life, but going with Drew?

It might very well be madness.

Ashley took a deep breath and tried to push her nerves away as she walked through the door at the end of the hall. A group of women were all talking and laughing at once, obviously still on a high from the show. She didn't see Drew at first and thought maybe she was in the wrong place. But then, when the crowd parted to reveal him standing in the opposite corner of the room, she swore it was as though everything slowed down and then went completely still as Drew looked right at her.

His eyes held hers with a look so intense, and so full of heat, that she actually forgot how to breathe for a moment.

Oh God. He was beautiful. So beautiful that it almost hurt to look at him.

The record label didn't need to put makeup on him to make him better-looking in pictures. They didn't need to put him in special clothes or cut his hair a certain way to make him attractive to the masses. All they needed was for him to smile...and the person he was smiling at felt as though she was the center of his entire world. Like he would live and die only for her.

A woman's super-sultry voice saying, "Drew, can you do a really special signature for me?" broke Ashley out of her frozen stance by the door.

Drew held Ashley's gaze for another moment before turning to the woman. "Sure," he said, his smile easy now, rather than intense. "Where do you want it?"

Before Ashley knew it, the woman had pulled her tank top up--and off! All the way off, so that she was

standing completely topless in the middle of a room full of strangers...and the rock god she was obviously hoping to entice with her bold move.

To Drew's credit, he didn't so much as blink. Not even when the woman moved way too close to him and said, "You can write your name anywhere you want on my body. Absolutely anywhere."

Ashley was still busy trying to pick her jaw up off the floor when Drew quickly scrawled his name with a black Sharpie on the side of the woman's ribs, about as far from her breasts as he could get while still writing on her skin the way she clearly wanted him to. And when he picked up the woman's shirt from the floor and handed it to her, saying, "Thanks for coming to my show tonight," Ashley could see that the last thing he wanted was to make the woman feel bad that he was rejecting her advance. Even though he clearly was.

She had never seen someone take off a shirt so fast...or put it back on so slowly. She could only imagine the way she'd be fumbling with the fabric if she tried to pull off a move like that. Not that she ever would, of course. Besides, her father would kill her if he found out she'd ever done anything like that.

Charlie Emmit had told her he wanted to come to the show tonight to say hello to Drew. But Ashley had known the real reason her father had wanted to come--to go over a huge list of all the potential dangers he wanted Drew to protect his daughter from.

Ashley and her father were usually of like mind, but this time she'd put her foot down. She wasn't going to allow him to drop her off on tour as though she were a little girl heading to her first day of kindergarten. Instead, she'd promised him that she was going to be smart and safe, just the way she'd always been.

They were two peas in a pod, both of them rational and practical. So unlike her mother, Camila Emmit, who hated lists and rules. Her mother loved music and poetry, but numbers made her go cross-eyed. For the fifteen years she'd been married to Ashley's dad, her mother had been a blur of colorful flowing skirts, laughter in the house when she was happy, yelling reverberating off the walls when she wasn't, and a smell that Ashley realized as a teenager was pot.

But backstage at Drew's show wasn't the place for memories of her mother. And, clearly, given the way the other women in the room were also now flirting with Drew, this wasn't the place to be thinking of her professor father either.