“Well, I haven’t.”
She held her hands up in defense. “Sorry. I wasn’t saying you want to ravage her body. I simply commented that she’s beautiful.”
I sighed my frustration. “Fine. Sure. She’s beautiful. You’re beautiful. All the band girlfriends are beautiful. Are you satisfied?” Except that Daisy was beautiful. I mean, all the girlfriends were actually beautiful women in different ways, but none of them, thankfully, affected me the way that Daisy was.
“Hey.” She nudged my arm with her shoulder. “I promise I didn’t know they were doing that to your bus. I would’ve stopped them.” I cocked my head to the side and raised a brow, which brought out this melodic laugh from her. “Fine. I would’ve tried really hard, though.”
That much was true.
Even Barrett, the love of Dixon’s life, probably wouldn’t have been able to talk him out of his prank, but she absolutely would’ve tried. Barrett was good for Dixon. Actually, all of the girlfriends were good for their men. Perfectly matched and made my job a bit easier after Drinkswine had fucked things up. Our image was back to where it needed to be.
“Hey, guys.” Mack slid in beside us and my entire body tensed. Here I was, not able to take my eyes off his sister.
He’d fucking caught me. Or I felt like he had.
I stayed there until Pushing Daisies was almost done with their set, then I walked away. No way in hell was I going to watch Daisy, glimmering with perspiration, come off that stage. It’d almost been too much just to watch her.
Just in time, I slid into a side room before they passed by.
What was happening to me? All of a sudden, I was hiding from a twenty-one-year-old woman? I didn’t do that shit. Still, since I was there, I took a few minutes on my phone to answer a couple of emails then went back to make sure the guys were ready to go.
When I stepped out, Barrett was swinging her arm around while pointing down a hallway like she was giving someone directions.
“What are you doing?” I asked her when I’d gotten close enough for her to hear me.
“Oh.” She chuckled. “Trying to direct Mack to the right room for their meet and greet.”
“Right.” I stood there trying to remember what I’d planned to do. Oh, right. I’d wanted to touch base with the guys before they went on, yet when I walked away from Barrett, I went toward the room where Pushing Daisies was doing their meet and greet. That hadn’t been my intention.
Inside, I slid up next to Calvin, one of my favorite security guys. We’d hired him to tour with Courting Chaos for the summer. Both for the guys’ protection and their girlfriends’, as the guys hated it when the women went off on their own in strange cities. Calvin was big and intimidating, which was exactly what I liked in our security.
The meet and greet was going as normal. First, a couple of teenage girls stepped up. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but pictures were taken and this process was repeated until everyone was taken care of.
Her gaze locked with mine for the briefest moment. The non-contact contact caused my heart rate to tick up just a beat, but I kept my imagination at bay at least.
I was about to leave, as my presence here wasn’t needed at all, when this tall, blond guy stepped up. Something, maybe my gut instinct, told me to wait. At first, everything looked normal until he slid in between Daisy and her brother Van.
Daisy’s posture snapped up straight and rigid. Blondie put his arm around her then slid his hand down her side until it rested at her hip. Though I couldn’t tell if he was touching her ass or not, the mere thought of it had violence coursing through my veins and I wondered why her brothers hadn’t noticed.
Then the motherfucker gripped her hip. The tightness in Daisy’s jaw had me steaming. I had to fold my arms across my chest to keep myself from going over there and pushing the guy off.
Daisy hadn’t told him to move. Fuck. Maybe she knew this guy.
“Can I get one with just Daisy?” Blondie asked.
Unintentionally, I took a step forward before stopping myself. Literally nothing had happened, but I didn’t like the look on Daisy’s face and wanted to go over there to intervene.
But once again, she said sure. It wasn’t my place. Plus, they were done anyway and Blondie was being shuffled out of the room.
“I’ll see you later,” I told Calvin, then I slipped out of the room, hopefully unnoticed.
I headed for the band’s dressing room, even though there was only minutes left before they’d head out. They didn’t need me there to ensure they went on. This was their dream. Now that we’d cut out the cancer in the group, things had been running smoothly and this wasn’t our first show of the tour.
“Everybody ready?” I asked as soon as I entered the dressing room.
“Always,” Dixon answered first.
“Barrett.” I waved her over to me. “You confirmed all the hotels coming up in the next couple of weeks?”
“Pft. Of course. We’re all set. We got the rooms switched around for the rest of the tour since Hurricane shared two and clearly Pushing Daisies needs three. Mack and I worked that out over a Zoom call last week.”
“No problems?”
She shook her head. “They were all very accommodating. It helps when you’re renting out almost an entire floor.”
I snorted. Wasn’t that the truth. Sometimes the openers stayed at cheaper hotels, but we’d liked how Kissing Cinder had run things and decided to do the same. They’d set an excellent example for the guys.
“I guess it does.”
Within moments, it was time for them to go on.
I stood beside the stage where I tended to hang out when I watched the show. This band was on their way up. The crowd loved them. Yeah, sometimes, their antics got on my nerves like when I’d had to have Barrett babysit Dixon. Little had I known that forcing them together wasn’t a hardship for either of them.
Or maybe I had known. Fuck. It didn’t matter anymore.
After the show, the guys filtered into the dressing room, where they’d shower then head off to do… whatever they did with their nights, but I knew for sure they’d be on their buses. Tonight’s trip was a long one. We’d be heading out soon, which was why there was no meet and greet for them after the show.
They didn’t need me anymore, so I went straight out to my bus.
Now, since I didn’t have any roommates, we could’ve left right then, but my driver, Matt, knew that I was the last bus to leave. No one was getting left behind because that happened more than people realized.
To kill time, I headed for the bedroom at the back of the bus. That harness system needed to go. The last thing I needed was for someone to come on here, look down the hallway, and see this fucking thing.
Not that many people came on here, but Barrett did for work sometimes, though she’d know why it was there. Still, knowing it as here and having to look at it were two different things.
I grabbed ahold of the straps and pulled with everything I had. Didn’t budge. Once I found the bolts that affixed it to the bus, I knew there’d be no taking it down tonight. I didn’t have a toolbox on the bus and it wasn’t going to happen with my bare hands.
“Fuck,” I muttered, roughly pushing the straps back.