Raw Deal (Larson Brothers #1)(22)
Nicole briefly laid her head against his shoulder while he shifted uncomfortably, resisting the urge to shrug her off. “Well, I missed you.”
“You got my number.”
“Rude,” she teased, but he had no doubts by the sultry sweetness of her voice that one of the three criteria for their hooking up was on the table tonight.
He chose not to reply. For the moment. Across the stage, he saw Rowan and Savannah materialize in front of the small side-stage crowd while a roadie set down a chair for Rowan’s use.
Fuck. Savannah. If she could be standing beside him right now, he wouldn’t be plotting an escape for anything in the world. But for now, all he could do was watch. He wouldn’t let her out of his sight if he had any choice in the matter.
But he didn’t, and never would.
“What?” Rowan asked accusingly after catching Savannah looking at her for the third time.
Savannah snatched her gaze away. “Nothing.”
“Savvy. Something’s on your brain.”
“If you must know . . . yeah, that conversation we had in the car on the way to the airport is on my brain.”
Rowan didn’t have to ask which conversation that was. She said a quick thanks to the crew member who set her a chair at the front of the side-stage crowd and perched on it. Savannah knelt down so she could hear her over the restless hum of the crowd. “We were just talking.”
Rowan had spent an alarming amount of time in Zane’s dressing room after his assistant had come to fetch her soon after the girls reached the venue. Savannah had been invited, but she’d declined, preferring to let Rowan have her moment. Now she wondered if that had been a good idea. “What did you talk about?”
“The tour, how much I love his music—the same boring shit he probably hears from his fans day after day after day. He was very cool to let us hang out like that. I get the feeling not many people get to.”
And you have Mike to thank for that, she wanted to point out, but she held her tongue on the matter. It was getting too loud and rowdy to have a conversation in here, anyway.
She stood up, and all at once every light in the arena went out. A roar rose from the crowd, surging and shifting in the air like a living thing, electric, raising the hair at Savannah’s nape. Across the sea of people, tiny lights sprang up—people holding up their cell phones. Beside her, Rowan shot up from her chair and clutched Savannah’s arm in excitement. A sudden flashback to Tommy’s funeral when Rowan had leaned on her for support shook her for a second, making her breath shudder out and kicking her heart rate into double time. Dizziness washed over her, and then a voice sounded in the darkness, alone and soaring and competing with the explosion of adulation from the audience. Even over it all, Savannah heard Rowan shriek beside her, and everything was okay again.
Okay, so he’s pretty good after all, she thought, just as a blue spotlight hit Zane’s solitary figure on the stage. The white of his clothes glowed eerily as he sang into the mic in front of him, completely still. She didn’t know many of the band’s songs, and caught up in the moment, she didn’t pay much attention to the lyrics he sang in a rich, deep vibrato. It was difficult to reconcile that soaring voice with the guy she’d spoken with only a little while ago.
After his a cappella opening, the music kicked in all at once with a roll of thundering bass and grinding guitars. Even the most hardened critic couldn’t have resisted bouncing with that beat, and Savannah found herself nodding along beside her giddy sister-in-law. Side stage. At a rock concert. Never in a million years would she ever have imagined herself here. But it was pretty amazing nevertheless.
She might have misgivings about Zane, but there was no doubt he made Rowan smile again. Seeing her have fun was the best part, that utterly blissed-out look on her face, singing every word and swaying and dancing beside her while he prowled the stage and whipped the crowd into a heated frenzy. She was so different from that unrecognizable, broken woman a few weeks ago. For that reason, and that one alone, Savannah could have found Mike and kissed him.
And there was a thought she didn’t need to entertain, because it shimmered through her like lightning. No sooner had she trounced it into the farthest reaches of her mind than she saw him standing on the other side of all the action on the stage, nearly lost among the shadows and the cluster of people.
Could he see her too? She kind of hoped so; maybe it would make him feel better to see them having fun for a change. Charged with the idea, she waved frantically at him, hoping Rowan wouldn’t notice—and she wouldn’t, because she was in her own little world, carried away by the music. Sure enough, even from this distance, Savannah saw the white of Mike’s smile and his casual wave in return.
Then her own smile faltered. Because he wasn’t alone. Beside him stood a statuesque blonde complete in corset, revealing an abundance of flesh, and tight ripped jeans with tall boots encasing her slim calves. No doubt those boots sported four-or five-inch heels; she looked incredibly tall standing beside him. And incredibly good. At first, Savannah could have surmised she was just a groupie who had wandered in, but when the woman put her hand on his shoulder and stood on tiptoe to speak into his ear, that idea died screaming.
Suddenly she felt sick.
A girlfriend? Had he had one all this time? Not that it was any of her business; it wasn’t as if she’d had any expectations at all. At all. They were only two people trying to come to grips with their new realities. To even contemplate it being anything more than that was crazy. But damn. She’d never really considered that he might be taken.