Rock All Night(50)

“Nice to meet you, Anabelle. And you?” he asked the guy on the other side of me.

“S-Scott,” the kid stuttered.

Derek gave him a whassup nod. “Good to meet you, Scott. Hey, you guys know of any nice hotels around here?”

“Uhhhh… no,” Gary said. “We drove up from San Diego.”

“Oooh, no good, can’t do San Diego.”

“I could check on my iPhone,” Anabelle said helpfully.

“That would be awesome,” Derek said, and she fumbled to get her cell out as fast as she could.

“Who’s your friend?” Gary asked.


“Who, her?” Derek asked innocently. Then he looked at me… grinned… and said, “She’s a huge reporter for Rolling Stone. We’ve got to do an interview, like, right away.”

“I thought you didn’t give interviews,” Scott said, shocked. I couldn’t tell if he was surprised about the interview, or if he was still processing the whole ‘biggest rock star in the world sitting three feet away from me after bumming a ride’ situation.

“I don’t. That’s why this one is so important,” Derek said gravely.

“Ohhhh,” Scott said, suitably impressed.

“Siri, what’s the closest hotels to where I am?” Annabelle asked from the front.

There was a beep, and the familiar voice said, “I found fifteen hotels fairly close to you.”

Anabelle peered at the screen. “There’s a Doubletree, like, one mile away – ”

“Perfect,” Derek said. “The Doubletree it is.”





36




The Le Baron pulled up in the Doubletree’s parking lot. Derek and I piled out of the car, but not before he took about a dozen selfies with Gary, Anabelle, and Scott. I got drafted into being the unofficial photographer, and I used Anabelle’s cell phone to snap a couple of pictures of them all together. Predictably, Derek hammed it up for the camera.

We said our goodbyes and left his adoring fans in the car, looking dreamily after their hero.

When we got to the front desk of the hotel, nobody was in the lobby except the clerk behind the desk. Thank God she was fifty-something and had no idea who Derek was – I’m not sure I could have taken another fan freak-out. Though she did keep looking at him from out of the corner of her eye, like she’d seen him somewhere and couldn’t quite place him.

Oddly enough, he registered as ‘Arthur Lee’ and claimed he didn’t have a driver’s license.

“Who’s Arthur Lee?” I whispered when the desk clerk was out of earshot.

“Lead singer of Love, this awesome, underappreciated band from the ‘60s. I always register as him when Miles isn’t handling things.”

I frowned at him. “Why?”

“Why not?”

“What if they look him up?”

“Then they might hear some really great music.”

The clerk came back asking for payment. Pessimist that I am, I was half expecting Derek not to have any money on him – after all, he was a rock star, right? Don’t they have people like Miles taking care of their every whim?

And I had left my purse on the bus. So part of me was waiting for everything to crash down, like it had been too good to be true.

That was when Derek whipped out a wad of bills thick enough to choke a mule. After a bit of back and forth about not having a credit card, he slipped the desk clerk a hundred bucks, and we were on our way to the best room in the hotel with a warning to be out by 11AM.

“You carry around that much money on a regular basis?” I asked as we stepped inside the elevator – right before he pinned me up against the wall playfully. My heart thumped hard with a rush of adrenaline as my back hit the mirrored wall.

“Uh oh, you’re not a golddigger, are you?” he teased as he leaned in close for a kiss.

I gave him an acid little smile, then nipped his lip as punishment.

He just laughed. “I was poor for years. Now I don’t walk around with less than a thousand bucks, ever… just in case.”

After that, all talk of money ceased.

In fact, all talk ceased, period.





37




You know how sometimes you’ve wanted something so badly for so long, and you’ve built it up in your mind, you’ve hyped it to the point where it’s just unbelievably, incredibly wonderful in your fantasies – and then you actually get it, and the situation falls flat? There was no way it could have ever lived up to your expectations, because your expectations were sky-high, and instead it’s just a gigantic disappointment?

Yeah. This wasn’t like that AT ALL.

This was one of those occasions where no matter how good you hoped it might be…

…it was better.

Holy f*cking hell it was better.





38




We stumbled out of the elevator, our legs entangled, him straining his head forward to kiss me as I twisted away, laughing, nervously saying “Wait!” as I scanned the hotel hallway.

Nobody around.

So I turned back around and let him ravish me, his lips insistent, his kisses wild, his passion uncontrollable.

He backed me up against the wall opposite the elevator and kissed my neck, licking it lightly from collarbone to ear.