“Christ, Bryan, we’re not that bad,” Ennis said, rolling his eyes.
“Really? Your coke bust last year was no big deal, huh? And Stone’s two arrests this year were just for the fun of sleeping in a jail cell?”
Jesus. What was I getting into? Did Randall know all this shit? I mean, I was good at PR, but I didn’t know about cleaning up disasters like this.
Maybe these guys weren’t the blessed-by-the-gods men I’d thought they were.
Bryan, apparently not done scolding the guys, turned to Hugh. “And didn’t you punch a photographer a few months ago?”
Holy shit. Was it too late to turn and run? Could I handle this, and these assholes?
Bryan turned back to me, satisfied he’d made a strong case. “Now you see why we need you.”
Chapter 8
ENNIS
If Bryan didn’t stop talking to us like we were bad little kids, I was going to lose It. Seriously. I could only take so much of his scolding.
And he was making us look like major douchebags in front of the hot PR girl. What was her name again? Carol? Carla?
It didn’t matter. She wouldn’t be around long enough for us to need to know her name.
But damn if she didn’t look familiar. I couldn’t place her, but the long red hair and nice tits got my motor revving. And my dick stirring.
Redheads did that to me.
And that fucking green dress she wore. On one hand, it had that uptight librarian vibe with its pointy collar and long sleeves. But the low neckline and clingy fabric blasted its sex quotient so far off the charts I could barely see straight.
I tried to focus on something else in the room. It didn’t work.
The way she’d crossed her legs showed just enough of her lightly tanned knees, and the heels she was wearing—well, it was clear she didn’t plan to do much walking.
Just my type. I figured I must have fucked her at some point, and that was why she was familiar. It seemed I’d fucked nearly every beautiful woman in LA, anyway. Had I met her at a show? Or maybe chatted her up at some party?
Either way, I wouldn’t mind getting her naked again. Especially if she kept those shoes on.
I could see Stone felt the same way. He’d barely moved his gaze from her shapely legs the whole time she’d been sitting there. Hugh, on the other hand, was probably enticed as well. But he was way more discreet than we were.
The bastard.
In fact, Stone was so mesmerized, I had to give him an accidental kick to the shin to bring his attention back to the room.
Bryan’s phone buzzed, and he looked at the screen. “Sorry guys, Coral, I have to take this.”
Coral. That was her name.
He scurried off to the backyard, leaving the hot PR girl with us.
Fuck, I wondered if she’d be game…
Down boy. Not the right time.
Stone popped to his feet and began to pace, walking close enough to Coral to brush her chair, like an animal in the wild asserting his dominance.
Coral, to her credit, pretended not to notice and kept her attention trained on Hugh and me.
“We don’t need a fucking PR person,” Stone growled, his shoulders hunched and his fists tight.
Still, she showed no reaction. I had to hand it to her.
He looked at her hard. “We are under a lot of pressure. Something you’d never understand.”
Here comes dick Stone. Sometimes you got nice Stone. But today was not that day.
She finally looked up at him where he loomed over her.
“You’re right,” she said. “I have no idea of the stresses you face.”
Stone nodded, carrying on. “We’re under an incredible amount of pressure. Each album has to be better than the last, and each tour has to outsell the last. Add to that, every fucking band out there wants our position as number one. It’s insane,” he said, running his hands through his hair as he loped across the long room and back.
A sudden movement caught everyone’s eye, and we turned to see Bryan rush back into the house, his face red.
“I knew this would happen,” he growled, his hands in fists. “You guys couldn’t be happy with all the good fortune that’s come your way. You just had to fuck it up.”
What the fuck?
He chewed on a thumbnail and stared out the window at the mountains.
“Jesus, Bryan. We love you, too,” Stone said flippantly.
Hugh leaned forward in his seat, frowning. “What the hell happened, Bryan? What’s going on?”
Stone stopped pacing.
Bryan shook his head slowly. “That was the record label. They’re about to pull the plug.”
I watched Coral’s head snap back as the room erupted into a litany of that’s bullshit, fuck those assholes, and other protests against the insults visited on us.
“Let them dump us, Bryan. We’ll just go to another label,” I said.
“It’s not that easy, Ennis, and you know it,” he snapped. “They’ll say you’re a bad bet.”
“I don’t see how filling a stadium to capacity for a show is a bad bet. Are they fucking idiots?” Stone shouted. “We don’t need them,” he said, throwing his arms in the air.
Then he picked up a glass and flung a glass across the room, where it shattered on the wall—my wall— the liquid inside it splashing in every direction.
“Don’t throw shit in my house, Stone,” I hollered.
Asshole was going to clean that shit up later.
“Shut up. Both of you. Just shut up,” Hugh said quietly, rubbing his hand over his bald head.
In fact, he said it so quietly that everyone in the room actually did shut up.
He turned to Coral, who had jumped to her feet, her sky-high heels clicking across my tile floor. Her green dress swung back and forth just above her knees, the silky fabric skimming her round bottom.
She had our attention now.
Chapter 9
ENNIS
Coral waved some newspaper clipping around in her hand, moving it too fast for me to read. But I knew it had to be bad news.
She turned to face us and looked from one to the other to ensure we were listening.
“I can help you,” she said simply.
The room was silent.
She continued. “I can help you keep your contract with the record label. I can help you improve your reputation. I can help you get publicity that will make you the kind of band that people admire for many things, and not just your music.”
Stone, perpetually unable to keep his mouth shut, crossed his arms, furious. “What you don’t seem to understand is that all we want to be known for is our music. The other stuff is just fluff. It doesn’t matter.” He shook his head frantically.
Undeterred, Coral stood right in front of him, holding the newspaper clipping in his face. “See this photo here, of you about to punch some photographer?”
He glanced at it, then back at Coral.
She took a step closer and got in his face. “This is you being known for something other than music. You can’t have it both ways. You do things like this. You are known for this. And you only get so many passes for this sort of thing. And if what your manager says is true, and we have no reason to believe it’s not, then your passes have expired.”