Fade Into You (Shaken Dirty #3)(11)

He was riding it all the way home.





Chapter Four


He was on fire. There was no other way to describe it, no other words to do justice to what she was seeing. What she was hearing. Wyatt was in the back right corner of the stage, but it was like he was the only one out there. Like there was a giant spotlight focused right on him while everyone else was just standing around in the dark.

Obviously, that wasn’t true. The whole band sounded amazing. Ryder’s vocals were right on, Jared’s guitar playing was phenomenal as usual, and Quinn was as close to perfect on the keyboards as a human could get. It was crazy.

More, it was like it had been two days since they’d played together instead of two months. That’s how well they blended together, how well their styles meshed. Sure, Li was a little off, just as she’d known he would be—he was good, but his skills weren’t up to their level and his style was too removed to work with what the others were throwing out. Plus, he wasn’t coming close to keeping up with the drum line Wyatt was laying down, which was a problem considering bass and drums worked hand in hand in most Shaken Dirty songs.

But then again, it wasn’t like keeping up with Wyatt was easy at the best of times. And now, when he was mounting a full-on assault on those drums? Even Jared and Quinn were struggling to stay with him and this was their music. He was their drummer.

But hell, she didn’t think any musician in the world could be on that stage tonight and be anything but overshadowed by what Wyatt was doing. His stick work was so fast, so precise, so f*cking brilliant, she wouldn’t be surprised if his whole kit burst into flames right in front of him. There was a part of her that wondered how it hadn’t already.

Music was her life, and rock was the genre she was most passionate about. She could name every member of every halfway decent rock group in the world, could list off the best singers, best guitarists, best drummers and bassists and keyboardists to ever live, along with their best performances. And she would swear that at this moment, no drummer she’d ever heard—not Keith Moon, not Dave Grohl, not Josh Freese, not even Charlie Watts—could hold a candle to Wyatt Jennings. He’d always been amazing, had always been brilliant at making the drums the creative backbone of every Shaken Dirty song, but right now, in this club after two and a half months of rehab, stone-cold sober and wailing away on the tom-toms, he was the best she’d ever seen. The best she’d ever heard.

And she wasn’t just thinking that because it had only been an hour since he’d given her the two most intense orgasms of her life…

Which she still couldn’t believe she’d let happen.

Not with Wyatt.

Not when she had a job to do that so specifically revolved around him.

Not when she’d worked so hard and for so long to prove her father wrong…one slipup, one moment of giving in to the fire she worked so hard to keep tamped down, and she might have f*cked it all up.

If her dad found out what she’d done, it was more than enough ammunition for him to cut her out of this side of the business once and for all. More than enough ammunition to make him think that his archaic views about her had been right all along.

Then again, maybe he had been right. Not about women and rock stars in general, but about her. About her response. Because, God knew, her panties hadn’t stood a chance against Wyatt’s charisma, and neither had the rest of her. The fact that she hadn’t known it was him at the time didn’t make her feel any better about the whole situation. She’d still let the man she was here to babysit go down on her behind a Fifth Street bar. She’d still clutched his shoulders and begged him to make her come.

There was no getting around that, no pretending it hadn’t happened. And if she didn’t have a clue what she was going to do about it now, then it was nobody’s fault but her own.

Besides, that wasn’t strictly true. She knew what she should do. After forty-five minutes of trying to wrap her head around the fact that she’d just let Wyatt Jennings get her off behind a bar, she knew she should call her brother back and come clean. Tell him everything and convince him to hightail his ass down here to Austin before things got any worse. Hopefully he’d have better luck keeping his jeans on around Wyatt than she had…

But knowing it and doing it were two different things, because no matter how many times she’d told herself to make the call, she couldn’t bring herself to do it. Couldn’t even bring herself to text him that there was a problem.

And it wasn’t just because she didn’t want to blow this chance—though she’d be lying if she said that didn’t play a small part in it. But the real truth was—orgasms notwithstanding—she really was the best person for this job.

Besides the four men on stage, nobody knew this band better than she did. Not their management, not her brother, definitely not her father. From the moment Caleb had convinced her dad to sign them at her behest, she’d been there, behind the scenes. Listening, watching, learning all she could about them. Strategizing about how best to break them out in today’s pop-heavy market.

Their dad thought Caleb was behind the bold publicity and social media moves Shaken Dirty had made over the last few years, thought her brother was the one who’d finalized the song choices for the album. But the truth was, it was all her. She’d spent weeks, months, years of her life figuring out a plan to blow Shaken Dirty up, and when it had succeeded—when they’d broken wide open and started selling out stadiums—she’d sat down in the middle of her office and cried with joy.