Decked with Holly

More accurately, she thought that Dominic Wyatt was gay for his bandmate. She appeared to find “Nick“ plenty attractive, if her exhausted ramblings were to be taken seriously. Holly Dayton might be a walking disaster, but that particular admission had still felt damn good.

Then she had announced her theory that the guys of ReadySet were probably gay for each other.

Christ. The girl was even more screwed up than I had originally thought.

And even snoring on my couch, she was messing up my plans. All I had wanted out of this vacation was some time to relax, get some space to myself. Not an option that night. I couldn’t even sleep my way through this living nightmare, because the coffee I had ordered from room service now had me wired. Which left me supercaffeinated and unable to make any noise in the room, in case it woke her up.

In my own damn suite.

It would have been one thing if I liked the girl. If we had met by the pool, struck up a casual conversation, and I had invited her to hang out in my suite . . . that would change things. Instead, she had commandeered my bathroom before openly speculating on whether I was sexually involved with my two best friends. Generally speaking, I prefer sane girls to crazy ones who demand pepper spray before they’ll take me up on an offer that, frankly, they don’t deserve.

Oh, yeah, she was a real treat.

I found myself glaring at her sleeping figure until she let out a pained groan and tossed around under the covers. She really had it bad: Not even a superfan could fake turning that sickly pale to meet me. I studied her carefully and was relieved to see that she didn’t look quite as deathly ill anymore—even her lips were starting to look more normal.

But while she might be looking less awful, the only real benefit of having Holly Disaster around was that she had effectively eliminated the deafening silence in the room. Now I just needed to tune out the moans and whimpers long enough to compose a song. Absentmindedly picking up my drumsticks, I began tapping out a beat that sounded sort of like her: a bit sharp and staccato, but with a pulsing, jagged edge to it. It sounded nothing like anything else ReadySet had produced before . . . but it wasn’t bad. Switching over to guitar the instant lyrics started coming to me, I lunged for my notebook and started scribbling:

You’ve got me seasick. I don’t know how you do it,
But my legs aren’t steady, they just won’t hold
The deck is buckling and it’s ready to fold
And I can tell, it’s my personal hell,
It’s been torture for us both
Someone’s got to stop, stop the boat.

And, okay, maybe it wasn’t quite as good as Tim’s stuff, but I didn’t think it was terrible, either. Not once we added in Tim on vocals and Chris on guitar. I scrawled madly across the pages, desperately trying to write the chords I was seeing for each instrument. I had to be able to replicate it perfectly back in LA. Tim would kill me if he ever found out that I had forgotten exactly how the bridge was supposed to go.

So I kept at it, tweaking old lyrics and adding new ones until the finished product actually looked producable to me. It might not be the cutting-edge indie-rock sound ReadySet was known for, but it was solid. Definitely something to keep in mind if the movie sound track contract came through. Rumor had it that the film under discussion was loosely based on Tim’s boyfriend’s best friend, Mackenzie, and how her embarrassing attempt at performing CPR on a high school football player (after she had accidentally body-checked the jerk with her backpack) launched her into YouTube fame.

Mackenzie probably wouldn’t be thrilled to be the center of any more speculation. I doubt there is a girl less predisposed to be part of the glitter and shine of Hollywood than Mackenzie Wellesley, geek extraordinaire. Not that there is anything wrong with her. In fact, if she hadn’t been so obviously hung up on a guy from her high school, I might have asked her out myself.

Thankfully, I realized early on that anything beyond basic friendship with us would be a royal failure. A long-distance relationship was the last thing Mackenzie would agree to—especially with a rock star. She had more than enough notoriety without dating me.

But my song sounded about right for her loosely based biopic. And even if the studio hired some starlet who would be in treatment for drugs, alcohol, or anorexia in a few years, the music should at least be good. I tapped the cover of the notebook thoughtfully. I might just have something of quality to show the guys after all.

Thanks, in part, to Holly.

I glanced over at her and noted that she wasn’t even slightly perturbed by the music. Once she was out, apparently nothing could rouse her. I yawned hugely as my caffeine buzz faded into oblivion and blearily eyed my watch. Four in the morning. No wonder I was exhausted. The whole reason I had insisted on taking a break was because the long days, and even longer nights, of nonstop work were wearing me down. Yet my first night of official vacation and I had been busting my ass every bit as hard, if not harder, than usual.

It had to stop.

So I flipped off the hall light I’d used so as not to disturb Goldilocks on the couch and fell asleep wondering what the guys would think of the new song.

I woke up only a few hours later to a loud thump and muttered curses from my suite guest.

I growled and pulled the blanket over my face. I didn’t want to deal with Holly Dayton’s latest disaster. I had played white knight long enough to make amends for the pepper spray. I didn’t care what she needed; I was done.

“Nick?” she called out tentatively.

“Go away, Holly.”

“Uh, do you mind if I use your bathroom first?”

Now she was asking permission? Seriously? She was only, oh, about ten hours late on that one.

“Sure. Fine. Leave me alone.”

I heard her mumble something like, “Well, I guess he’s not a morning person,” and fought the urge to snarl in response.

What I wanted to say wasn’t complimentary.

I tried to think of the shower as a good sign that she’d be gone soon. I’d probably only have to act semi-polite for another hour, tops, before I could luxuriate in my private suite at last. And if I could just fall back asleep before she stepped out of the bathroom, I wouldn’t have to do or say anything.

A brilliant plan . . . if Holly hadn’t been a shower singer. It started out quietly enough but then she must have gotten caught up in the song.

A ReadySet song.

Maybe it should have been flattering: She had our band shirt, she knew all the words to our songs . . . clearly she was a superfan. And she had no idea she was enjoying a shower in the drummer’s suite.

But I wasn’t smiling.

Holly couldn’t sing if her life depended on it.

She could warble. She could screech. She could make sounds remarkably similar to the yowling of a cat in heat. But singing? Yeah, not so much.

She was single-handedly butchering all of our biggest hits. It was so painful, I almost yelled for her to stop, but I thought better of it. Knowing her luck, my shout would startle her into slipping in the shower. Then I’d be stuck with a concussed naked girl in my bathroom.

The naked part might not be so bad if the other factors didn’t exist.

Factors such as that she was more than slightly unhinged.

I could still hear her singing brokenly as she used up all the towels I had requested for myself the night before. Then she strolled into the room, wearing her jeans from last night and my stupid Hawaiian-print shirt as if she owned it.

Well, today Goldilocks was going to get chewed out by the bear.

“What the hell are you doing?” I ground out.

She looked at me in surprise. “I was about to fold up the couch. I’m sorry, did you want to do that yourself?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Okay then.” She walked over to her makeshift bed and started pulling the blankets off.

“That still doesn’t explain why you’re wearing my shirt!”

She turned back to me, and while she was looking better than she had last night, that wasn’t saying much. Her face was still too pale and her hair clung together in long wet strands that made her look like a rather destitute, down-on-its-luck rat.

“What’s the big deal? It was lying in an ugly heap on the floor. I didn’t think you’d miss it.”

“You can’t steal someone’s clothes while they’re sleeping!”

“I have never stolen anything in my life!” Her glare made it clear that I was irritating her almost as much as she was me.

Good.

“No stealing. You just restrict yourself to breaking and entering then.”

She rolled her red-rimmed eyes. “Will you let that go, already? I became seasick. Obviously, I would’ve been better off puking in anyone else’s bathroom!”

I saw red. “Oh, really? You would have been better off. I bet you think someone else would applaud your screeching at this ungodly hour too! You’re mental.”

Her back straightened. “I don’t screech!”

“Trust me, I know music. The sounds you were making? That was not music.”

Holly shot me an intense glare. “I don’t know what your problem is, but for the record, you’re being a total jerk right now.”

There was a flurry of knocking at the door and her scowl darkened even as understanding appeared to sink in. “Oh, I get it! You’re mad because you invited girls over and don’t want me around. You could have said as much.” She shouldered her backpack. “It’s been . . . interesting, Nick. Have a nice life.”

And before I could say a word about how, yes, I wanted her out but not because I had a harem of women coming, she jerked open the door.

She wasn’t even able to cross the threshold of my suite.

The hallway was crammed with girls. Dozens of them, varying in ages, shapes, and sizes—but all uninvited—crowded in the doorway. Holly froze, dumbstruck in amazement, as they blinded her with camera flashes and shrieked some version of: “DOMINIC! I LOVE YOU! MARRY ME! OH, MY GOD, DOMINIC, I WANT TO HAVE YOUR BABIES!”

I think one of my fans might have even fainted.

Sprinting to the door, I grabbed onto Holly’s backpack, yanking her back into my room, and slammed the door shut. It locked with an audible snick.

Shit.

Holly stared at me for a long moment. “Who the hell are you, Dominic?”

And that’s when I knew I was officially screwed.