"I can't believe you took me to a burger joint!" Mia said.

We were walking along one of the canals that ran through the downtown area. It really was quite peaceful at this time of night. And, best of all, it was mostly deserted. Sure there were houses and businesses that ran along the canal, but most of them seemed empty. And it was late enough that everybody seemed to be gone.

I just hoped that it wasn't an example of the locals knowing something I didn't. The last thing I wanted was to get mugged in the middle of a date that had been going so perfectly so far!

"What can I say? I heard that burger place is supposed to be one of the best in the country!"

Mia reached out and playfully slapped me on the chest. A playful slap that went straight to my cock. What can I say? Just about every touch from her went straight to my cock.

"That was part of the fun though," I said. “It was a pretty funny joke, too! You should've seen the look on your face when we walked in there!"

"The look on my face? You should've seen the look on everybody's faces staring at me like I was crazy for showing up dressed like that!"

"They were probably just staring at you like that because you showed up with the great Grant Thompson," I said.

She rolled her eyes. "Full of ourselves much?"

I shrugged. "What can I say? It's true, isn't it?"

Mia rolled her eyes and moved to smack me, but this time I caught her hand and held it. I liked holding her hand. It was odd, but holding her hand like this was having almost the same reaction as feeling her body pressed against me.

Weird how I could feel that way just from feeling her hand against mine. I think it said something for how I was starting to feel about her. It was crazy. It was way too early to say anything like what I'd said in the mall earlier, I was still kicking myself over that, but I really did have a feeling that I was falling for this girl. She had a unique blend of hotness and intelligence that I'd never gone for in a girl before, but she was driving me wild.

Not to mention her take no prisoners approach to life. What she'd done with that wannabe paparazzi in the lingerie store was nothing short of amazing. I still couldn't believe she'd been that bold, but it had been an amazing sight to behold.

"So did you ever think you'd be doing this?" she asked.

Walking along a canal on a peaceful night with this beautiful woman I’d worried I was on the verge of losing this morning when she wasn’t there upon waking? "Not really…"

"Really? You wanted to be doing something other than the rock star gig by the time you were this old?"

I blinked and realized we'd been talking about completely different things. I was walking along trying to woo her rather than just trying to get her in bed, but she was wondering how I felt being back in the band after so many years.

"When they started talking about the reunion tour I thought they were crazy, to be honest," I said.

She looked up at me, her eyes twinkling in the light from a street lamp hanging out over the canal. "Really? Because I thought it was pretty ridiculous when Kayla started talking about it!"

I laughed. It was easy to laugh with her. Everything seemed to come easy with her, and not in the way that girls I was with were usually easy, if you catch my drift.

"We were ancient history even if we were pretty popular once upon a time. I wasn't sure people would even still pay for us to get up on stage and do our thing."

Mia winked. "I was impressed none of you were coming out with a walker!"

"Hey now. We’re not that old. Remember I'm only about seven years older than you."

“So why did you guys break up anyways?”

I very nearly stumbled. That was the last question I wanted to talk about. It happened ten years ago and the pain was still fresh. The band breaking up around me. Losing the desire to write anything new. The joy of thinking I might finally have a family. The pain of having it all ripped away.

“Let’s not get into that right now, Mia.”

It was something I’d have to come clean about someday if we were going to have a relationship, but that story seemed like at least third date material. Way too heavy for tonight.

She looked down at the water and then back up to me. We continued strolling in silence for a moment. I figured she had more questions, but I'd let her ask them in her own good time. I was more than content just being out here next to her.

"What was it like? Getting so famous so young. I just can't imagine…"

I took a deep breath. I let it out in a long slow sigh. What was it like? Well, it screwed me up for the better part of a decade. I felt like I'd only recently started to get my life under control, and then this new tour came along and it was like the universe was giving me one big middle finger reminding me what I didn’t have while also throwing the same temptations at me that screwed me up in the first place.

Of course I wasn’t going to tell her any of that. I didn't want to go with the whole poor little rich boy routine. Poor famous rich boy, for that matter. Something told me she wasn't going to have any sympathy even if there was some truth to it in my case. We'd all gotten too famous way too young, and it did a number on me.

"I don't know," I said. That seemed safe enough. "This is the life I've known for so long that it's hard to imagine any other life, you know?"

She sighed. "I guess I can sympathize with that. You get stuck in a rut and before you know it years have gone by."

I grinned and reached out to hold her other hand. Looked down into her eyes. "What are you talking about? Didn't you just get out of college? You haven't had enough time to have regrets!"

"You don't seem old enough to have many regrets either, you know," she said.

I shrugged. "Fair enough, but you'd be surprised."

"So what would you have done if you didn't become a super famous singer?"

"I don't know," I said. "Music and singing was always sort of my dream, I just didn't expect to get into a situation where I'd be the front man for an international pop sensation!"

She grinned. "Well you're certainly modest, but seriously. If it wasn't for the whole superstar thing, what would you be doing?"

More questions when all I wanted to do was sweep her off her feet and have my way with her right here. My cock was screaming in frustration. I was so close to her. Close enough that I would just have to take another step forward and I’d feel her delicious body against mine. But I resisted my more animalistic urges and gave her question serious consideration. And finally I shrugged and grinned.

"Can you keep a secret?"

“That depends. What kind of secret are we talking about? Who killed Kennedy?"

I laughed. "No. Just the secret of what I'd probably be doing if it hadn't been for the whole pop star thing. I've never told anybody. Not even those stupid magazines. Made all the stuff I told them up on the spot."

“Interesting,” Mia purred. “Kayla would be very disappointed to hear that. She memorized all that bullshit.”

She moved forward and then there it was. She was pressing against me. Pressing against my cock. Oh fuck. God she felt so incredible. I could feel my hard on moving up between us. Pressing against her stomach. There was no way she wasn't feeling the incredible effect she was having on my body.

She stared up at me, her eyes lidded, her mouth open ever so slightly. There was pure sex in her eyes, and it was turning me on so much. I wanted to take her now, only that probably wouldn't be a good idea. No, this location was entirely too public. Entirely too exposed.

All it would take was one person with a camera and our little tryst would be on the front of every gossip site in the world. It didn't matter that most of those gossip sites considered me to be a has-been, even with the most recent tour. No, all they’d care about was someone who was marginally famous once upon a time was caught doing something salacious in public and got caught on camera.

Such was my life.

"Fine," she said. "I think I could keep a secret."

"Band teacher," I said.

She blinked. And then she started giggling. "What?"

"I always wanted to be a band teacher. You know, going to marching competitions, all that stuff? Maybe it's because it was right around that time in my life that I was plucked out of the normal world and into… you know, but for whatever reason I always felt safe and secure thinking back to those days. And I'd want to help give a similar experience to other kids."

She searched my eyes for a moment and grinned. "You're serious."

"Totally," I said. "I've never told anyone about that though. You're the first."

And then she surprised me. She leaned up on her tiptoes, causing her breasts to brush against me. Her lips brushed against mine. It was a brief kiss, but it was hotter than any make out session.

Okay, so maybe that wasn’t entirely correct. It was hotter than, say, a makeout session I'd had with other girls. She definitely put to shame anything I'd ever had with the string of groupies I'd been with over the years.

"Damn," I said.

"Damn yourself," she said.

And in that moment I realized something. I realized that I was absolutely right in thinking the guys who settled down were absolutely right and I was absolutely wrong. All those years of chasing random girls, and what I really needed was this. Someone I could share my life with. Someone I felt comfortable enough to share my secrets with. Not someone who was a just a random one night stand, no matter how much fun those had been.

Mia stared up at me and I was really feeling the moment as we were lost in one another’s eyes. She blinked and the moment wavered. A smile started to cross her face. That quickly turned into a huge grin. Then she was laughing, shaking her head, and the moment was gone completely.

"What?" I asked.

She reached up and wiped a tear from her eye. "I'm sorry," she said. "That's just so ridiculous!"

"Hey! I was pretty good at the drums before I left high school band to become an international pop sensation!"

She fixed her eyes on mine. "You were really in band?"

"What can I say? Music has always been my thing. How else d’you think I got these broad shoulders? Those drums aren't light when you're marching you know."

She shook her head again and started giggling. "Grant Thompson, band geek. I can't believe it."

I shrugged. "Look at any of our biographies. You might be able to still find a couple of dusty books in the back of some forgotten county library somewhere where they don’t have a budget to replace books more than every twenty years."

"I might do that," she said. "I’ll look for you next to the biography of the Beatles. Do they have pictures of you in your band geek get up? Because I'd really like to see that!"

"Hell, you don't even have to go for the books for that. You can probably just find it online if you do a search. I know there was a site about twelve years ago that dug those pictures up and had a field day with it."

"Well that’s nice to know at least," she said.

"What's that?"

Mia pulled her hands away from mine and started walking again. I paused for a second to admire the view as she moved in that dress before I went to follow her. She looked up at me again. "At least if you were in high school band I know music really had to be in your heart. That you weren't doing it for the checks or the girls or anything like that."

I raised my eyebrows. Now probably wasn’t the best time to mention that the paychecks and the girls certainly hadn’t hurt once I really got into the swing of things with Twenty Promises. Better to say something a little safer.

"You'd be surprised. Band girls could get pretty freaky!"

Okay, so maybe that wasn’t the best response. That still made it sound like I was all about bedding girls and I was throwing my former fellow band geeks under the bus. I’d had some pretty fun times in the back of a bus on the way back from band trips before Twenty Promises pulled me out of high school prematurely.

"Oh trust me I know," she said. "I may or may not have been in band myself."

Both of my eyebrows went up at that. I grinned as I took her arm and mine and we continued walking along. "Really now? And what did you play? Clarinet? Flute?"

"That's for me to know and you to find out if you're a good boy," she said. "But I can at least back up your assertion about how crazy band girls could get."

I mulled that over and thought about some of the good times I’d had, though it had never been with a girl as gorgeous as Mia. That was just sending new thoughts running through my head. "So you're a band girl…"

It was one hell of an oblique way to get at the question I'd been wondering all night long. Everything had gone so well, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn't thinking about last night. That had been some of the best goddamned sex of my life! And I was very much hoping for a repeat performance, but had no idea if there was a chance in hell of it happening considering how she felt about me. Considering how she felt about my profession.

"You're right, you know," Mia said.

"I am?"

"Us band girls could get pretty wild. You might even be able to find out for yourself just how wild we can get if you can manage to swing a hotel room tonight."

I grinned and took her by the arm, practically dragging her back up to the road to get a cab. How hard could it be to get a hotel room downtown this time of night? Especially with the kind of money I could throw around?

I’d pay whatever it took. I needed to have Mia and I needed to have her now. And I needed to have her before she realized how crazy she was acting and decided to pull another disappearing act!