Chapter Fourteen
In his dressing room at Estadi Olímpic de Montjuic, Zander breathed deeply through the mask of his steam inhaler. He imagined the moist heat relaxing his vocal chords and easing the vise-like constriction in his chest.
Maybe Rocco had been coming down with something.
Because Zander didn’t get performance anxiety, never had. If anything, he soaked up nervous energy like a power grid.
Removing the mask he wiped steam from his face with a chilled towel and resumed his vocal warmup, humming through the scales.
He always prepared alone, rejoining the band ten minutes before going onstage. He was the spark that lit the fuse and timing was everything.
Tonight his timing was off.
Distantly, the muffled beat of a war drum signaled Rage’s impending arrival and roused the Barcelona crowd to fever pitch.
He laid his palm flat against the wall, connecting to the vibrations of kinetic energy, but the precise rhythm only underscored the erratic tempo of his pulse.
Could he be having a heart attack? He did feel queasy, dizzy.
Of course you’re not having a heart attack.
Refocusing, he warmed his upper and lower register, climbing steadily to each note, and then down again.
“By continuing to tour, you’re effectively playing Russian roulette with your voice.”
His voice cracked. As panicky as a baby needing its pacifier, Zander resisted the urge to grab the mask. Thirty-six hours traveling with children and he knew all about pacifiers, God help him. He reminded himself that his voice had been strong in sound checks this afternoon. That he’d successfully toured with this problem for months.
“Over time, particularly with continued overuse, the mass will become larger and firmer.”
That damn specialist had gotten into his head.
A staccato rap on the door made him jump. “Zee, we’re waiting.” An unprecedented second reminder from Dimity.
He fumbled for the mask. “Two more minutes.”
“Is something wrong?”
“I said two more minutes!” He sucked in another rush of moist hot steam.
“How will I know if I’ve had a hemorrhage?”
“A sudden voice change or hoarseness while speaking or singing, pain, loss of range.”
He hadn’t felt such terror since he was sixteen.
So what are you going to do, send everyone home?
The magnitude of his problem steadied him because it punctured the illusion of choice. His voice might last the distance, it might not, but cowering in his dressing room guaranteed failure.
Drawing on twenty years of willful self-belief, he dropped the mask, straightened his shoulders and conjured an insolent rocker’s grin. “Let’s roll the dice.”
* * *
Elizabeth sat on a couch in the band’s dressing room in her official role as a fly on the wall—if that fly twitched and buzzed. Who knew nervous energy could be so contagious? With drums thundering somewhere overhead, she could be in a bunker under siege; certainly the tension in the room reinforced that impression.
Minus his usual affability, Seth paced the carpet. “What the fuck, Dimity? We should have been onstage twenty-five minutes ago!”
Huddled on a barstool in the corner, her long legs entwined around the steel frame, Dimity snapped, “I’m not going to knock a third time.”
“Alienating the crowd isn’t the way to launch our European tour.”
“I’m aware of that!”
Everyone, except Elizabeth, was fraught through lack of sleep. Apparently the turbulence had been a problem throughout the flight but thanks to Zander’s benzodiazepine, she couldn’t remember a thing.
In a brief drum lull, she heard retching from the adjacent bathroom. She looked at Jared who sat opposite, methodically eating his way through a bowl of M&Ms by color while he answered her technical questions. “Should I check on Moss?”
He shook his head, expertly shoving the red candy to one side of his palm. “He always throws up before a show. FOH stands for front of house speakers. On to sound engineering…”
He launched into a staccato spiel to which Elizabeth only half-listened. Where was Zander? Apparently it was unheard of for him to be late. And why hadn’t he let her into his dressing room when she’d been given a free pass everywhere else? When she’d queried her ban, he’d said he needed privacy to focus on his performance.
“You didn’t need it when we met in your dressing room in Auckland.”
“I made an exception to close the deal. Don’t make me regret it.”
She’d backed off, conscious of a slight feeling of hurt she couldn’t explain.
“The main speakers face the audience,” Jared chewed through the red M&Ms as rapidly as he spoke, “and in big venues, sound bounces back to the stage slightly delayed.” Elizabeth was more fascinated by his manifestation of performance anxiety. Like a crime scene, she could mark his progress by the colors staining one side of his sweaty palm. Brown, yellow, red, blue.
It might have helped having Kayla here, but she’d texted to say she was running late. Their jet-lagged kids were over-tired and it wasn’t fair leaving Stormy to deal with them alone.
“So to hear the music in real time, we use a mix of wedges and sides—smaller speakers—facing the band.” Jared grabbed another handful from the fishbowl on the coffee table.
Moss exited the bathroom and leaned against the wall. His pallor contrasted with the black leather gave him the appearance of a sexy vampire. “I can’t take much more of this.”
The water in the jug on the coffee table shivered as the crowd stomped with the drums.
“Zander-also-uses-a-wireless-in-ear-monitor,” Jared’s delivery accelerated, “so-he-can-move-anywhere-and—” He stood abruptly, scattering M&Ms. “Where the fuck is he!”
“I’ll get him.” Seth stormed toward the door, but it opened before he’d taken three strides. A chant surged into the room with the band’s lead singer.
“We want Rage. We want Rage.”
Zander closed the door and the roar abated.
Rings on his fingers, steel caps on his booted toes, black jeans molded to his hips. Elizabeth swallowed. When he moved, the black, silk-backed waistcoat gave tantalizing glimpses of his muscular chest with its angel-wings tattoo.
“Where the fuck have you been,” Seth snarled.
“My hair wasn’t quite right.”
Everyone stared at him.
Zander grinned. “How does it look?”
Seth said shakily, “You son of a bitch,” and sat down.
“So,” Zander glanced casually between them, “we feeding this frenzy or what?”
Moss pushed away from the wall and attempted a grin. “Who was she?”
“I don’t kiss and tell.”
So that’s why he’d needed privacy. Elizabeth took a moment to remember her recorder on the coffee table. She felt Zander’s gaze as she switched it off and pocketed it, but didn’t look up. None of her business.
The four men met in the middle of room and joined knuckles with a deliberation that suggested a ritual.
“For the next ninety minutes,” Zander said, “our job is to make each and every one of our fans forget their troubles.” They bumped fists, grins rippled around the circle. “Be gods, gentlemen.”
Seth led the way out, braving the sound blast that hit when he opened the door—“We want Rage. We want Rage.”
Zander looked at Elizabeth. “Let’s go, Doc.”
The stage wing was a hive of controlled chaos as stage crew and technicians sprang into action. Having taken a tour earlier, she knew there were dozens more manning other stations through the arena. The main stage lights dipped and the crowd’s chant faded into anticipatory silence. A sound engineer finished hooking Zander up and he did a few jumps to loosen up, swinging his arms.
As the band took their places onstage, Zander lifted his hand to shove back his hair and Elizabeth saw he was trembling. Even legends had nerves. Closing his eyes, he sucked in a deep breath, then another. Oblivious to her now, completely focused on the zone.
Onstage, Moss plucked the first note on his guitar.
A roar went up from the crowd and excitement shivered down Elizabeth’s spine. Facts meant nothing against the visceral power of those famous opening chords cresting toward the moment the man beside her took the stage.
Zander vanished into the dark. Seconds later a vocal note, as menacing as dragon-smoke, rose and curled like a helix around the instrumentals. A spotlight flared and he appeared, arms raised, stance wide, his face seared white. And still that note soared…
Wham! Light and pyrotechnics almost blinded her as the band slammed into the first song.
She tried to imprint the impressions whirling through her brain, but she was too swept up in the spectacle, barely noticing Kayla’s arrival halfway through the concert.
Performing, Zander was selfless, giving himself away in every song and effortlessly playing the crowd’s emotions.
Rage’s final encore with Zander on rhythm guitar, was a playful, sleazy, seductive promise of a good time, delivered by the world’s sexiest snake-oil salesman. “Yeah, I’ll be bad for you, but baby, I’ll make you feel so good.” Elizabeth fanned herself. Talk about sexual crack. Lordy, Zander could dance, sinuous and sensual, firing the imagination of every female in the audience-
“Oh my God, I want that man so bad right now,” Kayla murmured beside her. Glancing over, startled, Elizabeth saw her ogling her husband and laughed.
That only left her and thirty thousand women turned on by Zander. But laughing didn’t help when her body was hot and restless, her blood seething with lust.
She lived mostly in the tranquil depths of her intellect, but Zander kept drawing her to the surface, where there was sun and, she struggled to remind herself, pummeling waves and mouthfuls of brine. Spit out that idea right now. But her hips swayed with his.
* * *
Jared clattered offstage first, damp with exertion. He grabbed an offered towel and made a beeline for his wife. “Well, baby?”
Kayla tiptoed to whisper something in his ear and he laughed, his hand dropping to cup her bottom. “Hold that thought.”
Winking at Elizabeth, he steered Kayla along the corridor toward the backstage exit where the van waited, engine running, to return the band to the hotel.
Seth arrived grinning, his russet hair dark with sweat, and exchanged exuberant high fives with the crew. He’d revealed a Jekyll side the moment he sat behind his drum kit, turning into a demon possessed.
“Best show of the tour,” enthused Dimity.
“You got that right,” agreed Moss as he joined them, now a sexy vampire, rosy with recent feasting. “We nailed it tonight.” He grinned at Elizabeth before turning to Dimity. “Say it!”
“You were gods.”
“Hear that, Seth?”
“I did, mate.”
The two men picked Dimity up between them, holding her easily by the upper arms. “Let’s go hit a bar,” Seth still had the wild man vibe. “I’m buying.”
“Put me down, you idiots.”
“That’s no way to talk to gods.”
Feet swinging vainly for the floor, Dimity released a cashmere sweater as they passed Elizabeth. “Give this to Zee.”
“Sure,” she croaked. Zander was at the other end of the stage wing, being divested of his mike and earpiece. He’d stripped off his waistcoat and draped a white towel over his shoulders.
Time seemed to slow as he walked toward her with a sexy swagger, his eyes blazing with exhilaration. He swiped the towel across his pecs and her mouth went dry as she noted the contrast of fluffy white cotton against the black tattoo and hard muscle of his naked torso.
As he passed under a light everything glittered—his white-gold hair, the silver skull on the belt of his low-riding jeans, his rings, his chain, his nipple ring. He stopped in front of her and finished rubbing himself down, heat radiating from his body. She sucked in a breath, but that just added the salty tang of healthy male sweat to the sensory onslaught.
“Well?” he asked with a conqueror’s arrogance.
“It was fantastic,” she croaked.
His eyes gleamed. “Thank you.”
“You’re…” So. Hot. Elizabeth cleared her throat. “I wish I’d learned a musical instrument other than the recorder.”
He laughed, wired, buzzed. “It was a particularly good show tonight. I don’t know why I was…” He broke off.
“Why you were?”
“Nervous.” Zander shrugged. “I shouldn’t have doubted myself.”
“No.” Realizing she was swaying toward him, Elizabeth thrust out the cashmere sweater. “Cover up. Um, we can’t have you catching cold.”
“Thanks.” Exchanging the towel for the sweater, he hauled the garment over his head. Elizabeth resisted the impulse to clutch the discarded towel to her bosom. Pull yourself together.
“The van’s waiting,” she said.
Outside, she deliberately chose the space beside Kayla and Jared. Zander climbed in and settled opposite, next to Moss and Seth.
Dimity, she noticed, had taken refuge up front with Luther and the driver. The mood inside the van was raucous. All fatigue forgotten, Seth and Moss insisting Kayla and Jared join them partying.
“Stormy will get up with the kids,” Seth said. “Live a little. Elizabeth, you in?”
“Thanks, but I’m not really a nightclub person.”
“Hey, I saw you dancing with Kayla,” Jared said. “You’ve got some moves.”
“Another time. I need to”—take a cold shower—“write down all my impressions while they’re fresh.”
Zander’s knees bumped hers and she nearly hit the ceiling.
“You okay?”
“Just a little hyped from the concert. All that raw energy.”
The moment the term left her mouth, she regretted it.
Cognizance entered Zander’s blue eyes, the laugh lines at the corners deepened. One arm slung along the back of the seat, he cataloged every shallow breath and convulsive swallow, every nervous twitch of her eyelids.
She resisted the urge to moisten her lips.
Zander stretched his legs either side of her bent knees. “Do you mind? It stops me cramping up.”
Elizabeth pressed her knees together, minimizing contact. “I expect it’s losing all those salts, sweating and such.”
“And such,” he agreed smoothly.
The van cornered, his calf bumped hers. They both wore jeans and yet the contact was incendiary. She’d looked up what to wear to a summer rock concert and matched her jeans with sneakers and a black tank that made the most of her modest assets. Another corner. Another bump, this time thighs touched.
The bastard was playing with her. Feigning a yawn, she looked out the window. “Lovely night.”
Zander started to hum and it took her a few minutes to recognize Marvin Gaye’s “Let’s Get It On.”
Next to her, Kayla and Jared were exchanging soft murmurs and caresses. Ten minutes into the journey, Elizabeth decided she’d had enough of the lovemaking beside her and Zander’s insolently sexy grin opposite.
The furthest seat away was Moss’s. “Mind if we swap places?” she asked, breaking into the lead guitarist’s conversation with Seth. “I’ve been told there’s a great view of…” Elizabeth racked her brains, “…Sagrada Família as we near the hotel.” Gaudi’s cathedral.
“Sure.”
She stood, bumped her head against the roof and Zander caught her hips to steady her. His big, beautiful hands. “Careful,” he said.
She loosed his hold. “I’m trying.”
Jared and Kayla slid along to make room for Moss. As Elizabeth shuffled sideways, the van swung into a roundabout and she tumbled into Zander’s lap.
She leapt like a scalded cat, but his arms tightened. “Wait until we pull out of the turn.”
“You sure we’re close to the Sagrada?” said Seth, looking out the window. “Still looks like the port to me.”
The driver missed the turnoff and circled the roundabout again.
Zander’s chest vibrated against her back with silent laughter and she straightened, annoyed, but that only pushed her bottom more firmly onto his thighs. He stopped laughing.
Moss and Seth were discussing local sights and Elizabeth made an effort to join in, but she was intensely, painfully aware of the strength of the arms circling her ribcage, and the slight adjustments Zander made to counter the sway of the vehicle. She’d pulled her hair into a topknot for coolness and his breath stirred each loose strand and whispered over the nape of her neck. His breathing deepened to become as deliberate as hers.
Electric eel, she reminded herself, but her panties were damp and her body yearned to lean into his heat and wiggle further into his lap.
Opposite, Jared kissed his wife.
Elizabeth’s fingers curled, she dug them into her thigh trying to think unsexy thoughts. Zander has already had sex with someone tonight. Yes, that cooled her blood. Chilled it, actually.
The van steadied on straight road and she dived for the free space. Seth was tapping a drumbeat on his knees while Moss organized dates on his cell. He held it away from his ear. “Zee, you interested? Oh, that’s right you already got laid.”
“I wasn’t late because of a woman,” Zander said. Elizabeth gusted an unconscious sigh of relief and fogged the window. She wiped it dry and saw Zander smiling at her, a dangerously intimate grin that made her fog up the window again. Fumbling, she opened it and stuck her head into the night, needing air.
“Still looking for the Sagrada?” Seth asked.
There were fans waiting outside the hotel, even though it was well past midnight. The guys stopped to sign autographs and Elizabeth seized the opportunity to leave the group, calling a cursory good night. As she punched the elevator button, she felt frazzled and horny. A hot shower, a warm drink, a few pages of a thriller—they always put her to sleep and… Damn.
She turned with a smile at the sound of Zander’s voice and saw with relief that Luther was with him. The elevator arrived and the bodyguard ushered her in, then nodded to his boss. “See you both tomorrow.” The doors closed, leaving them alone. She swallowed.
A small smile playing on his lips, Zander pressed the buttons for their floors. “I recall somebody saying they were insulated from the energy-conducting penis.”
Elizabeth returned a blank look. “I don’t understand the reference.”
“Doc, Doc, Doc.” He shook his head. “Remember that kids’ rhyme… How did it go? Liar, liar—”
“—pants on fire,” she supplied automatically, then thought, Oh. And then, Bastard.
“My pants aren’t on fire for you, Zander,” she responded with icy dignity. “If anything, they’re the opposite.”
She only realized what she’d implied when his grin developed another shade of wicked.
Gathering the scraps of her dignity, she faced the elevator doors.
“I’ve been thinking, Doc, we should interview after the show one night. There’s something about the raw energy, then, that stimulates lively intercourse.”
“What do you want me to say? That you’re sexy, that I was a little turned on?” She glared at him in the reflective surface of the door. “Consider it said. Now quit poking fun at your biographer.” Doh.
“Having a fling with me would add depth to your research.” His tone was unholy with glee. “Kinda like a crime reporter going on patrol with a cop. And if you’re worried about the publicity, we’ll sneak around.”
“Zander, you couldn’t sneak around if you tried.”
“Doc,” the husky tone sent a shiver down her spine, “you have no idea what secrets I can keep.”
Electric eel. “Our interviews are giving me some idea.”
There was a tiny pause. “Maybe I don’t tell you every terrible thing I’ve done because I don’t want you to think badly of me.”
She snorted. “You don’t care what I think, and you only flirt to stop me asking awkward questions.”
“Like that’s working,” he grumbled.
“Besides, we wouldn’t suit.” She relaxed as their relationship reverted to verbal dueling. “I’d expect you to regularly put my interests first.”
“How selfish!”
Elizabeth chuckled. She expected him to drop the subject. Instead he stepped closer. “I’ve noticed something about you too,” he said lazily, looking down at her. “You talk like a shrink when I fluster you. And yeah, maybe the flirting started as a diversionary tactic, but somehow, Doc…” His gaze brushed her face, almost in discovery. “For both of us, it’s getting personal.”
She swallowed and said in a bored tone, “I expect my indifference makes me a novelty.”
“No, your difference makes you a novelty. And we both know you’re not indifferent.”
There was a thread of invitation in his voice and she felt an urge to tug it and see where it led. And that scared her. “It’s a reflex, same as gagging. Nothing to do with you.”
For the first time since they’d met, uncertainty entered his eyes. Because he lived with objectification. Elizabeth pressed her lips together to stop herself blurting a rebuttal. She might be able to hold her own in trash talk but she was no match for him inside the ring.
“I don’t have coping strategies for rejection.” His smile remained in place, but his flirting took on all the intimacy of an orgy.
“Consider me training wheels—no extra charge.”
The doors opened at her floor. Elizabeth stepped into the hall and hesitated. “Good night, Zander.”
“Add me to your nightly prayers.”
“Always do.” The elevators doors closed on his rock-star smile.