For weeks, Jonas watched Rhiannon with a professional eye.
Maintaining that professional distance was difficult because he wanted to gather her up in his arms, throw her over his shoulder, and take her to his bed every time he saw her, but he was very good at his job.
Her voice developed a rich timbre, and her range lengthened. It strengthened, and after every show, she was a little less hoarse. Someday, she would be physically able to headline every night.
Her stage presence grew until, when Xan motioned her down from her upstage perch for the more demanding songs, she could fill the whole theater. His attention was riveted on her as she sang under the burning stage lights.
Professionally, he was an idiot if he let her slip away.
Killer Valentine was almost complete as a project as far as Jonas was concerned. They were firmly established on the arena circuit. He had planned to stay with them for another year or so until they were properly cemented in the music industry. They should sign their first big contract soon and receive their first massive multi-million dollar advance. Their next album, their first professional one, would shake the industry. Xan had already played a couple songs for him, and every damn one of them made Jonas’s scalp tingle with his spidey sense for hit songs. Their next tour would probably require stadiums.
Their June concert at Madison Square Garden would be the tipping point.
Yep, Killer Valentine was poised for superstardom.
Jonas wanted out.
He wanted to start working with Rhiannon now.
Xan would put out a contract on Jonas if he ditched Killer Valentine just yet.
More concerts flew by, and as he held Rhiannon’s fingers before she dashed for the SUVs, or as he held her in his arms in all the different hotel beds at night, he found his thoughts drifting.
Yes, he wanted to shape her career.
Yes, he wanted to work with her until she shone like the sun, and he could bask in her light.
But yet, for those weeks, every time Jonas looked at her, he lost himself.
At night, when he finished rounding up the band and extricating them from all their problems, when he finally slipped into bed beside her, the softness of her skin exhilarated him. Almost every night, he thought he would be too tired or she would be, but as soon as his fingers slipped over her skin, lightning flashed through him.
One night, and he wasn’t even sure what city they were in but they had driven south from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, he found his way to their bed, his legs shaking from thwarted angry adrenaline after he had found Rade and Grayson shooting up at a bar, in public, and tying off a groupie whom Jonas suspected had a fake I.D. and wasn’t even twenty-one. They had shot her up with heroin, too, and she could have died right there on the floor, even though it was probably at her request and very probably at her insistence because they didn’t give up their shit easily.
But then Rhiannon had rolled over and pillowed her head in his shoulder, nuzzling his arm, and all the irate tension fell away. He’d held her, which turned to kissing her, which turned to stroking her creamy skin, then pulling his Pink Floyd tee shirt off her and burying himself in her, pinning her to his bed, until she was panting his name in the early morning sunlight.
He found every opportunity to be with her, and when he wasn’t, that nagging feeling that he had forgotten something dogged him. When they were together, when he could run his fingertips over her skin or hear her puttering in the other room of the suite, he felt an energy between them, a calmness, like he wasn’t alone.
It took him a while to figure out what that meant, an embarrassingly long time, really, because he hadn’t had a family for more than twelve years.
In Dallas, Rhiannon shimmied off the stage and threw herself into his arms for a quick kiss before she sprinted for the cars, and the image came to him that even though they were on the road, even though they were essentially sleeping on couches and living out of backpacks like he had been since he was fifteen, when Jonas was with her, he was home.