“Stay,” Vonn barked in the rough rasp typical of his post-concert voice.
“Stay,” I mimicked as he rounded the hood. After spending the last two weeks with the band, it was clear that the bassist was a man of few words. An introverted rocker. How novel.
He opened my door and plucked me off the seat. He had me on my feet on the snowy sidewalk supported by a swarthy arm around my waist.
“You really don’t have to go inside with me,” I insisted. “Everyone’s overreacting. I’m fine.” As I said it, my right knee gave out, and I would have gone down if it hadn’t been for his arm holding me to his side.
“Do me a favor, babe.” His voice was low, gruff.
My feet shuffled toward the clinic’s automatic door as he took more of my weight. “What?”
“Shut up.”
He sounded pissed off, which was more emotion than I’d managed to pry out of him on the northeast leg of the tour.
I couldn’t blame him. Spending Christmas Eve at urgent care was a special kind of depressing. Kind of like spending it at a strip club. Besides, he had better things to do than make sure I wasn’t concussed. The entire band was flying back to the West Coast tonight for a few days off before kicking off the final leg of their farewell tour.
Everyone stared at us when we walked into the waiting room. It had nothing to do with my head wound. Vonn, still wearing his Santa coat over a low-cut black tank that did everything for his muscles and ink, was the attention grabber.
A nurse practically galloped out from behind the desk. “Mr. Barlowe, your manager called ahead; you two can follow me.”
I glanced around the waiting room. There was a harried mother with a toddler who was vomiting into a bucket. An elderly man mid-coughing fit was sandwiched between what I guessed were his two worried adult sons. On the other side of the room was a twenty-something guy wearing sunglasses and lying across three chairs. Holiday hangover, I guessed.
Vonn steered me toward the door the nurse was holding for us.
“I don’t think I should jump to the head of the line,” I hissed.
He stopped and stared down at me. “Babe, you’ve got a bleeding head wound. Trust me, you’re priority.”
My fingers flew to the bandage on my forehead and I felt the dampness through the gauze. Gross.
The mom with the barfing kid was holding up her phone, mouth agape, and taking pictures of us. The thing about Sonic Arcade was they weren’t as big as, say, AC/DC, but they’d been reasonably popular for thirty years. And the older he got, the hotter Vonn got. He wasn’t the most gregarious member of the band by a long shot, but he was easily the sexiest.
As annoyed as I was by him, I knew he valued his privacy and would hate being splashed all over social media.
“Ugh. Fine. Let’s get this over with,” I grumbled.
He waited outside the exam room while I stripped and donned the scratchy gown. I expected him to stay in the hall since the medical staff were less likely to act like lovestruck fans, but when the doctor entered the room, Vonn was right behind her.
“Okay, Mrs. Zimmerman—”
“Ms.,” Vonn corrected. He leaned against the counter and crossed his arms over his chest. My body felt a slow burning fire as his piercing blue gaze traveled my body from head wound to purple toenails.
“Of course, sorry,” the doctor said, shooting me a tiny smile under her purple framed glasses. “Ms. Zimmerman. According to this you were injured at a concert.”
“I was an unintended victim of the mosh pit,” I explained, bracing for the “old enough to know better” judgment. Vonn was still staring at me with an unreadable expression on his stupid gorgeous face.
“What?” I mouthed at him.
He shrugged. But his mouth curved ever so slightly.
“We’ve all been there,” the doctor said, surprising me. “Now, let’s see what we’re dealing with.” Her competent fingers went to work on peeling back the tape on my forehead while Vonn’s blue eyes blazed into mine.
Mark: Sorry for the vanishing act. Had to sit in on an emergency call with the board. You can find a ride home, right?
“Where’s home?”
I glanced up from the text I’d only just seen. “Sorry?”
“Home,” Vonn repeated.
“You don’t—”
“Brooke, if you say ‘you don’t have to’ one more time, I’m gonna make you regret it,” he announced with a simmering look that made my knees press together involuntarily.
“Bossy,” I muttered under my breath.
“Deal with it. Here,” he said, thrusting a bottle of water at me.
When I accepted it, he dug into his front pocket and pulled out a small bottle of pills. “Extra-strength Tylenol. Doc’s orders.” I watched him thumb off the lid and pour two tablets into his palm.
I wasn’t too proud to admit I had an obsession with the man’s hands. Not just because they knew their way around a bass but because there was something dexterous, competent about the way his hands did everything.
He watched me down the pills, then flicked on the wipers to clear the snow from the windshield.
The snow wasn’t just “coming down,” it was dumping. This was a legitimate blizzard. The idea of having to shovel tomorrow with a battered, middle-aged body was not a happy one.
Vonn took the water from me, helped himself to a healthy swig, then returned it to the cup holder. “Home,” he said again.
I sighed. “Turn left out of the lot.”
The man might’ve been a pain in the ass, but he had turned on my seat warmer. The radio was playing an old Nat King Cole favorite. The headlights panned over a veritable winter wonderland dotted with festive Christmas lights.
My phone buzzed with a text alert.
Michelle: How was your stint as a groupie? Did you get any of the guys naked? Never mind. Save it for brunch! Day after Christmas. Love you!
My best friend and neighbor, Michelle, always made me laugh. She was wildly inappropriate for a mother of three and a real estate agent.
Me: Not much to tell. But I can make something up over Bloody Marys. Try not to be too hungover for Christmas morning!
I stowed my phone in my jacket pocket and stared through the windshield. “You’re pretty good at handling the snow for a California guy,” I noted as Vonn expertly maneuvered around a slick corner.
“I grew up in Colorado.”
“Right. I forgot. Is that weird?” I asked, turning to him.
“That you forgot where I grew up?”
“That strangers know where you grew up.”
“There’s weirder things.”
“I can’t imagine meeting someone and having them know what I was doing ten years ago, what my favorite song is, and when my birthday is,” I mused.
Apparently head wounds made me introspective.
“Imagine meeting a stranger and being expected to tell them all your deepest, darkest secrets.”
It was a dig at me. While I was officially an administrative assistant in the local high school, I’d dusted off my old dreams of being a music journalist. A few successful if not well-paying freelance gigs had landed me the Sonic Arcade farewell tour assignment.
“Excuse me if fans want to know how you feel about breaking up a band that’s been together for thirty years.”