The bus rolled through the harsh Nevada desert toward Salt Lake City the next afternoon. Outside, the wide sky focused the sunlight like a lens, burning the brittle scrub brush and mica-sparkling sand. Even filtered by the tinted windows, the sun heated Rhiannon’s arm even more than the blazing stage lights every night.
Jonas was reading a dog-eared paperback on the couch across from her, not close enough to touch, but close enough that she could reach out if she wanted to, if no one were watching, but someone was always watching.
Rhiannon sat on the other narrow couch, staring across the desert and studying some of Killer Valentine’s more obscure singles on her iPod, just in case, while Tryp sat at the other end, earbuds plugged into his ears, beating on the cushions with his drumsticks. He twiddled a stick between his fingers, spinning it while he tapped with the other one.
“Which song are you doing?” she asked him.
“‘Be the Night,’” he said, chewing on one side of his mouth. “I dropped a measure at the Tucson show and had to improv to catch up.”
“You remember that, huh?”
He grinned at her but didn’t drop a beat with his sticks. “It was the third measure in the fourth line of the bridge that I missed. I’m still not sure how I did it, so I’m trying to beat it out until it’s stuck in here.” He flipped a drumstick over his knuckles, grabbed it, and tapped his temple, all without missing a beat.
For all his babyness, Tryp worked hard. She smiled at his antics.
Tryp grinned back and swung his stockinged feet around to rest in her lap, still drumming on the cushions and nodding to the music in his ears.
Rhiannon couldn’t resist and ran her fingernails up the sole of his foot.
Tryp crunched up, laughing, and dropped his drumsticks. “Jesus, don’t! That tickles!”
When he contracted, he lifted his feet, and thus the bottoms of his white socks were a much better target than even in her lap. She reached out and tickled both of them.
Tryp fell off the couch onto his hands and knees, laughing. In an instant, he gathered himself and pounced on her, gently digging his fingers into her ribs. Her whole body jittered, trying to get away from the tickling. His breath had just a little beer on it, and heat from his body flowed through her clothes.
Rhiannon’s squeal made everyone on the bus look up.
Tryp tickled her just a second more, and his weight was lifting off her to sit back when his dark eyes flashed open and he flew backward.
Jonas stood above Tryp, his face calmer than usual. “Don’t molest the backup singer.”
“We were just kidding around,” Rhiannon said, reassurances flooding her mouth. “He didn’t mean anything by it.”
Jonas held Tryp by the back of his collar and shoved his other hand in his pants pocket, as if this were a nonchalant discussion. “Tryp? Can we agree not to touch Rhiannon?”
“She started it!” he said, still laughing and pretending to struggle.
Rhiannon stumbled off the couch as the bus veered around a slow car on the road. “Jonas, please. It was nothing. Don’t get mad.”
“I’m not mad,” Jonas said, but his voice lowered. “Tryp, are you ever going to fucking touch her again?”
Tryp’s face darkened and he jerked away from Jonas’s hand. “What the fuck, man?”
Rhiannon grabbed Jonas’s other arm.
Near the driver, Xan was standing up and holding onto the straphanger bar that ran along the ceiling while the bus swayed to change lanes again, watching them.
Rhiannon said, “Jonas, everything’s fine.”
Xan strolled up the bus. His British accent tightened his lips. “No, everything’s not fine.”
Jonas stuck his hands in his pockets. Tryp toppled to the couch, still glaring.
Xan said, “Jonas, what the fuck is going on?” Xan wasn’t big on emoting unless he was onstage, but one of his dark eyebrows lowered, and his mouth set in a hard line.
“Nothing,” Rhiannon said. “Tryp was just roughhousing, and Jonas was just making sure that it didn’t go too far. Right?” She shook his arm.
Jonas nodded, but his jaw bulged where he clenched it.
“Bullshit,” Xan said. He looked straight at Jonas. “You’re fucking her.”
“Xan!” Rhiannon said, preparing to be properly aghast.
Jonas said, “I’m not fucking her. I’m in love with her, and if any of you assholes touch her, I will tear up your contract.”
Rhiannon’s legs wobbled, and she sat on the couch, holding her face in her hands, wanting to crawl under something to hide before the fistfight started. Their harsh breathing was louder than the bus’s diesel engine.
Xan was silent as Rhiannon stared at the insides of her fingers, then he said, “She’s fired. When we get to Salt Lake, throw her shit off the bus.”
In Rhiannon’s chest, fear turned to bitter desperation. They were getting rid of her, throwing her away.
The stinking slum house was one long bus ride away, and Gaston would pick her up from the bus terminal in that rusted out hulk and hand her back the keys, assuming that he hadn’t destroyed the engine by not adding a quart of oil every week like she told him to because the rings leaked. A black cloud of oily smog followed that car wherever it drove.
Assuming that Gaston and those guys didn’t abandon her, too.
Assuming that anyone would ever work with her again.
No one would touch her if Xan Valentine blackballed her.
Jonas reached over and took Rhiannon’s hand away from her eyes, holding her fingers. “Think about this, Xan.”
“We agreed,” Xan said. “Never again. Lynda nearly tore this fucking band apart. Tryp still gets shaky if we talk about her.”
“I do not,” Tryp said, sitting on the other end of the couch from Rhiannon, but he ran his hand through his short black hair and held it at the crown, pulling.
Jonas told Xan, “I didn’t plan for this to happen.” He was holding her hand, but her knees were still shaking too much to stand. “She’s a beautiful, intelligent, incredibly talented woman. Of course, I was attracted to her. Of course, I fell for her. She’s got the talent to make it in this business and stay on top of the charts. She would do better with another six months or a year with Killer Valentine, or you can fire her, and you’ll be alone on that stage until you break a cord.”
Rhiannon pressed her feet against the floor and forced herself to stand. Even if all those things that Jonas had said were lies, she didn’t want to get blackballed. “Xan, I love working with you and Killer Valentine, but it is ridiculous to fire me over this. There’s no discord in the band.”
Xan didn’t even look at her. “Why you, Jonas? Why the fuck you? I can see these buggers not able to keep their dicks in their pants, but not you.”
“I didn’t plan this,” he said, “and it’s not like that. It’s a relationship.”
Xan twisted and glared at Rhiannon, his brown eyes blazing. “Is it?”
Rhiannon swallowed hard and nodded. “Yeah.”
“If you marry him and get knocked up, your career will be over,” Xan said. “I thought you wanted to be a musician. That’s why I hired you, because I thought I saw something serious in you, not like all those other singers who had pretty faces and voices and nothing but bleeding vacuum in their heads, who just wanted to fuck the band to get a ring or child support.”
“I am serious,” Rhiannon said, all her earnestness rising to her face. “I’m not giving up music.”
Xan leaned down. “Music is a bitch mistress, Rhiannon. You can’t have both a personal life and make it in this business. Trust me on this. I learned the hard way. You’re going to have to choose, so choose now. If you choose him, it will fuck up the band, so you’re out. If you choose the band, then you have to cut it off with him right now.”
God, her heart clenched hard. It was an impossible choice. Killer Valentine wasn’t just a job. It wasn’t just her big break. She belonged with them. She was part of the music every night, an organ in the body of the band. They would have to cut her out.
And Jonas was so much more.
Her whole skin trembled.
Be the funny redhead.
But this wasn’t funny. Xan was asking her to choose between her heart and her soul.
Jonas stood above her, still holding her fingers in his. His pale green eyes watched her, turning anguished again.
Xan Valentine’s anger smoldered in his dark eyes, daring her to not choose music, to not make the same sacrifice he had.
Rage boiled in her, crazed fire that tried to launch her through the air to slam Xan Valentine’s stupid head against the window of the bus, but Rhiannon breathed in cool air, opening her throat.
The rage didn’t control her, but she wasn’t going to make a joke and laugh off this diabolical choice between her life and the kind of love that made life worth living.
Rhiannon stared right up at Xan Valentine the Rock Star who had brought her along on this blockbuster tour, the guy who had fought his way to the cover of Rolling Stone and dragged his band along with him.
“Fine,” she said. “You’re going to make me choose? I choose Jonas, but I’m not giving up music. I’ve learned so much from you about how to put together a music career, but I’m not going to burn myself and my band to the ground while I do it because I’m in this for the long haul, for dozens of albums and a career that spans decades. I choose Jonas because I love him, and without love, all this doesn’t mean shit and won’t last. I would love to stay with Killer Valentine, Xan. You’re the best in the business, and I love your music and all you guys, but I won’t give up Jonas. So, am I fired or not?”
Xan’s sharp expression scrutinized her like he was calculating just how much she was worth to the band and just how much damage she was going to cause when it all blew up. He stepped back, and his teeth didn’t unclench as he said, “This is just starting to come together. I can’t lose you.”
“Then don’t,” she said.
“You two had better behave like adults,” he said, glowering at her. “If you threaten the band, I will get rid of you both.” He straightened. “Tryp, up here with me.”
Tryp followed Xan up to the front of the bus, where they conferred quietly in the captain’s chairs area that they called Barcoloungerland.
Rhiannon’s legs gave out, and she fell backward onto the couch, clutching her chest. “Holy Christ on a cracker.”
Jonas looked over at her, his green eyes unaccountably gleeful. “That went better than I expected.”
“How?” she asked. “What on God’s green Earth was that better than?”
“I would have dropped them, if they had cut you.”
“You wouldn’t sabotage them?” she whispered, aghast.
“Oh, God, no. I wouldn’t have to try to hurt them. When it became known that Killer Valentine was no longer associated with me, it would have crippled them.” He lowered himself to the couch and wrapped his arms around her. “It’s all right. It’s over.”
She clutched his shirt, clinging to him, not crying but freaking out inside. “You almost got me fired.”
“Yeah. So?”
She told him, “This is my big chance. What was I thinking?”
He stroked her hair, his big hand calming her. “You had at least three song hooks in that speech you gave Xan. You should write them down so we aren’t scrambling to write songs when you go solo.”
“I would never have had a solo career. If Xan had blackballed me, I would have been sidelined.”
Jonas pulled away and looked down at her. His eyebrows pinched in confusion, and his mouth even hung open. “How?”
“Because I would have to start all over with new bands in L.A., assuming that anyone would even work with me after I got fired from my first real gig after less than three months. I’d be black death on a plate.”
Jonas chuckled and pulled her back into his arms. “Rhiannon, you really don’t know who I am, do you?”
“Jonas Hawkfeather Rees, manager extraordinaire and rocker wrangler.”
“I don’t want to talk business right now. You’re still too raw to lead your own band like Xan does. You do need some more experience, but before we hit the bus yet again, we should sit down and sketch out a career path for you. By the time you’re ready to front a band, Killer Valentine will be established and another manager can take them over, probably within a year, maybe in six months.”
“You’re going to abandon them?” Xan would freak, and then he would probably kill her for stealing their manager.
Jonas shrugged. “They won’t need a starmaker like me anymore, and I would get bored. I like the climb, not the Red Queen’s Race, where a band has to work like hell to stay relevant. After a certain point, record company politics become more important than merit or sales.”
“What did you call yourself?” Rhiannon asked, holding around his trim waist for dear life as the bus swayed around them.
“A starmaker,” Jonas said. “Like Richard Neville during the War of the Roses in England called himself the kingmaker. I’ve taken three bands from nonexistence to major acts.” He named them, and Rhiannon’s jaw dropped. “That’s why I took on Xan and we put together Killer Valentine. My only miss was Prison Riot.”
If Rhiannon had been standing up, her knees would have given out. She held onto the edge of the couch for balance because the world tipped under her, plus the bus rounded a long curve. “You managed all those guys?”
Jonas’s wry smile suggested that Rhiannon should have known that he was a major player. “They were all my clients.” He slid one hand down to the small of her back. “You really didn’t know that?”
Rhiannon bit her lip, embarrassed. “Um, no.”
His pale green eyes sharpened, and Rhiannon could see the savvy businessman behind the guy who had slept so peacefully in bed with her. “We need to have some serious conversations about business realities,” he said, “but I promise you this: no matter what happens between us personally, I’ll build you a hell of a career. That’s a manager’s job, and I’m very, very good at it.”