And I would have if I’d have been given some warning. My nerves spike again.
“I’m Tommy Stevenson,” he says, and I suppose I should know who that is.
“Danielle Watson,” I say, holding out a hand.
“Where’s Patrick?” he asks.
“He had an emergency, so I’ll be taking care of you tonight.”
His eyes flick down to my chest and back up again. “I’d love to have you take care of me tonight.” He offers a lazy grin, and God these rock stars are really just all the same, aren’t they? Like they can just flick their eyes wherever they want and women will drop their panties for them.
I don’t let him fluster me, though, and thankfully I’m saved from awkwardness when the rest of the band descends the steps of the bus and starts walking toward us.
And that’s when I hear it.
“Dani Watson?”
No one has called me Dani in the last six years. Maybe longer.
I glance up and my eyes meet semi-familiar ones, but the rest of him doesn’t match the memories I have of those eyes. I’d remember someone who looked like that. From this distance, his eyes are dark. He has dark hair, a little bit of sexy scruff on a strong jawline, and tattoos snaking down powerful arms. “Do I know you?”
He chuckles, and then he sings three words of a slogan that take me back nearly ten years. “Guacamole, fajitas, chips.”
“The salsa makes me do backflips!” I finish, and the other members of the band stare at us like we’re dorks.
“Tyler Caldwell,” he says, pointing to his chest.
We worked together at Carne’s, a chain restaurant in Los Angeles where I hail from...so it is him.
And wow, he’s aged nicely.
My jaw falls open. “Tyler Caldwell?” I repeat. “But you were a skinny band nerd!”
A skinny band nerd who, by the way, bussed tables at Carne’s and passed by the hostess stand twelve times every hour just to ask me out.
I always said the same thing. “Ask me later.”
I figured he was just doing it to be funny. We were friends. Close friends, and admittedly I had a little bit of a crush on him at the time. I honestly thought he was just teasing me every time he asked me out, and so I told him to ask me later. That way it was never an actual rejection.
We hung out after work in a group with the other bussers and hostesses around our age. We snuck shots from the bottles behind the bar when our boss wasn’t looking and we nabbed French fries from plates before they were served to our guests.
But if I’d have known he’d grow up to look like he does now...maybe I would’ve taken his advances more seriously.
He closes the gap between us to give me a hug, and while it should just be two old friends sharing a hug, something lights up inside me when I breathe him in. He smells good—clean and fresh—but it’s something more.
He tilts my entire world on its axis for a second.
A sharp, dull ache presses between my thighs, so sharp that I actually gasp a little at his touch.
Whoa. I don’t even know where that came from.
I always liked Tyler back in the day, but I never felt like that around him. Apparently just a hug from a hot guy can do that to me now.
I haven’t felt this way since Nate and I first started dating...well, come to think of it, maybe not even then. Nate and I dated for six months before we got engaged, and then we broke up three years later, a month before we were supposed to get married.
And I haven’t been with anybody since the last time I slept with him over a year ago.
The four men standing across from me all laugh, Tyler included. He shrugs once he pulls out of our hug, and I still feel a little dazed by it all. Especially up a little closer, where his eyes aren’t so dark anymore and they look more familiar. Green and clear, like they can see right through me.
Wow.
“I’m still a band nerd, but I started working out in my early twenties.”
“And you’re a member of Capital Kingsmen now?” I surmise, doing my best to hang onto my cool. I remember him always talking about his band, but it didn’t go by that name. He went off to college, and I started dating my first real boyfriend, and we just sort of lost touch.
He nods. “We went by Dust to Dust back then.” His brows wrinkle. “How’d you end up in Milwaukee?”
I laugh. “Long story that involves a dog and an ex-boyfriend.”
The other members of the band are watching us like a tennis match. “Man, we have a lot of catching up to do.”
I smile, and as much as I want to stand here and catch up with a total blast from the past who I’d like to see blasting into my future, too, I have a job to do. “First we need to get the four of you situated. Follow me.”
Tyler leads the pack and walks beside me rather than trailing behind me. “What kind of dog?”
I glance over at him with my brows down in confusion.
“That brought you to Milwaukee, I mean. You just never seemed like the kind of girl who’d want to leave California.”
“I wasn’t,” I admit. “And it was a Jack Russel Terrier.”
“Was?” he asks, and I nod. “I’m sorry.”
“He’s still alive,” I say. “But my stupid ex got him in the break-up.”
He chuckles. “Why didn’t you go back to California?”
I hold my hands up to motion all around me.
“This job?”
I nod. “I love what I do, and jobs in the music industry are hard to come by, as I’m sure you know. But California has nearly seven times the population of Wisconsin, so that means getting a position like this would be about seven times harder if I went back home. Probably even worse odds than that. What about you? Are you still in LA?”
He nods. “I still go to Carne’s all the time. Their salsa really does make me do backflips. Or I like to go and remember the gorgeous hostess who turned even hotter over time.”
My cheeks burn at his assessment, and then we arrive at the dressing room door marked with a temporary sign that reads Capital Kingsmen.
I open the door to let them in. I want to keep talking to Tyler, but he’s here for a reason. We both have jobs to do, and I’m sure catching up with me isn’t his top priority, so I make an easy out. “Let me know if you need anything. I’ll be in my office prepping for tonight.”
Three of the four guys walk into the room, but Tyler hangs back. “I need something,” he says. His voice is low and gritty, and our eyes lock. Heat passes between us.
The attraction I thought was a joke when we were teenagers?
Holy hell.
I’m not laughing now.
My chest buzzes as his words thick with innuendo wash over me. “What can I do for you?” I murmur.
“I never forgot about you,” he says. “I always regretted that I never got to kiss you.”
I squeak out some noise as I’m at a total loss for words.
“Tyler!” one of the guys yells from inside the dressing room.
He turns back and glances at them. “Fuck,” he mutters. “I need to go, but maybe we can talk later?”
I nod, and he smiles, and it’s the kind of smile that makes me want to get naked right here, right now. I’m not sixteen anymore. I’m a woman now.