“So, what do you think?” Zane’s ice-blue eyes met mine as he mopped sweat off his face with the T-shirt he’d just peeled off, and clawed his now-limp mohawk back. “Wanna do that again sometime?” He tossed the shirt aside and grinned at me in a way-too-happy, carnivorous sort of way that I knew from experience was probably a bad thing.

We were backstage, Dirty had just come offstage for the final time, and we were all gathered around in a tiny dressing room—just Zane, Jesse, Elle, Dylan and I, sweaty and spent, flung across the furniture—and they were all looking at me.

Staring, actually.

“Um… sure? Maybe.” I didn’t actually know if I ever wanted to do that again, but this didn’t seem like the time to put that out there. Clearly, they were all in their afterglow phase. Why ruin it?

“Yeah?” Dylan asked. “How’d it feel?” He’d also stripped off his drenched T-shirt and his kilt, and was now sitting next to me on the couch in nothing but his incredibly revealing white underwear, his booted feet thrown up on a broken end table and his arm slung behind me. The overwhelming—and alluring—aromas of sweaty men, whiskey, beer and pot assailed me. I met Elle’s eyes as I avoided the sight of Dylan’s prominent package, and she smirked knowingly. I wasn’t sure I’d ever understand how she got used to this.

“Terrifying,” I said, straight-faced.

Elle snickered and Zane laughed. “That’s how it’s supposed to feel.” He shot my brother a look, which was when I noticed the serious expression on Jesse’s face. He sat quietly in a corner, his dark eyes on mine.

“What?” I demanded.

“What would you say if we told you we want you to join the band?” Jesse asked me, and everyone got really quiet.

“Join…?” I repeated stupidly, the connections in my brain not quite working right. My head was still pounding from the adrenalin and the thunder of the crowd; from being completely blindsided by Seth’s appearance, and disappearance. “What do you mean… join?”

“Join Dirty,” Elle said. She cocked her head at me in that cute way she did, smiling. “As our new rhythm guitarist.”

“And lyricist, of course,” my brother said.

“And we know you can sing,” Dylan added with a grin. “You know, decently.”

“A fuck of a lot better than Dylan,” Zane said, grinning lazily. “You’ve got a lot to offer, little sis.”

“Good-looking, too,” Dylan added.

“A fuck of a lot better-looking than Dylan,” Zane agreed.

I just stared at them all, blinking, like maybe this was a hallucination. I’d breathed in too many moldering-old-beer-carpet fumes in this place and it was getting to me.

Seriously?

Were they serious?

Gathering from the looks on their faces—Jesse’s, Elle’s and Dylan’s dead serious, and Zane’s with a maniac grin—they were.

I also noticed that Ash had suspiciously disappeared.

“What about Ash?” I asked.

“Ash already has a band,” Dylan said. “He’s not gonna quit as the Pusher’s lead singer to play rhythm guitar with us.”

I wasn’t so sure about that. Dirty was only about ten times more famous than the Penny Pushers.

“And we didn’t ask Ash,” Elle said.

Which was crazy. Why not ask Ash? He was way the hell better than me on guitar.

I looked around the room, struggling to understand, which was when it struck me that Brody wasn’t here, and he should really be here for this conversation. Where the hell was he?

And where was Maggie?

“What does Brody have to say about this?”

The expression on my brother’s face got a shade darker. “Brody will say whatever we want him to say.”

Okay?

I knew my brother was a little… put off… by what went down between me and Brody in his driveway the other night, though he didn’t even know what happened. I wasn’t about to get into it with him; all he really knew, as far as I knew, was that Brody and I weren’t talking.

I watched as Zane kicked my brother’s boot. Dylan just shook his head a little, tussling his sweaty auburn hair. Elle shrugged and smiled at me, sipping her bottled water.

“Just think about it,” Zane ordered. Then he pulled out a couple of joints and handed one to me. “This might help.”

* * *

It was the middle of the night and the Back Door had closed, but in true rock ’n’ roll fashion, we were still partying—down at Misty’s. The band and the crew, the bar staff and a few dozen VIPs. I’d made it a point not to get drunk—I didn’t want to be wasted when I talked to Brody. But I’d smoked up with Zane to take the edge off, and I was glad I did. Because the pot had slowed down my anxious mind enough that I could truly absorb my surroundings.

For the first time, the shiny, glossy, pink-and-sparkly room really came into focus.

Maggie had just left. I couldn’t really blame her, though she’d appeared unfazed by the sight of a pair of strippers leeching onto Zane like sparkly bookends in their skimpy stage clothes. When I asked if she was okay, all she said was, Zane isn’t into chicks who expect more attention than they’re willing to give.

And maybe she was right about that.

Those girls were definitely vying for his attention, but Zane just sat back in his chair, legs spread and relaxed. It was Dylan who had one of the girls—a cocktail waitress—right up in his lap. And while I perused the club with my slightly fuzzy eyes, watching the strippers work the room… and that cute girl flirting with Dylan, her cleavage in his face… and Katie in her miniskirt, with my brother all wrapped up in it… something occurred to my slightly doped-up mind that hadn’t quite occurred to me before.

Why?

Because I was an idiot, apparently.

Because it should’ve occurred to me long before this moment that if Brody wouldn’t look me in the eye and listen to what I had to say, I still had a whole arsenal of weapons at my disposal which I hadn’t really put to use. I, too, had boobs and a butt. Among other things.

And it wasn’t like it had never occurred to me that I possessed such assets. It just hadn’t occurred to me, until now, to use them on Brody, so to speak.

Yeah. Idiot.

Since Maggie had made her exit, I figured I could slip away without seeming entirely ungrateful for the offer the band had just made me. The truth was, I didn’t know whether to be more stunned by the offer or by the fact that Brody wasn’t there when they’d made it. And I really needed to face that bullshit down. The silent treatment had gone on long enough.

Maybe this was payback for my years of avoiding him, but it’s not like Brody had hunted me down and made me talk to him; not like I was about to do to him, right now.

I knew he was probably wherever Jude was, since Jude was also conspicuously missing from the party, so I went looking. I headed upstairs through the staff stairwell, into the backstage area, where I ran into Zane. He’d magically vanished in Maggie’s wake, and now I knew why; he’d either walked her out, or followed her out.

“Hey, sis.” He started to smile his charming, Viking-on-a-pillage grin when he saw me, but I shut that right down.

“You better be good to Maggie,” I told him, because for the moment, I was over men and their bullshit. And Maggie being secretly married to—and possibly in love with—Zane, while he let sparkly strippers drool all over him in front of her, was bullshit.

His smile faltered. At the suggestion that he wasn’t being good to Maggie, or because he was caught off guard that I knew he wasn’t being good to Maggie? I couldn’t tell. Wasn’t really in the mood to explore it, either. But I figured I was within bounds.

Maggie had made me promise not to say anything about what was going on between them—what little of it I knew—but I assumed that didn’t mean I couldn’t say anything to him, since he already knew.

“Always am, little sis,” he said, a bit of an edge to his voice. Then he burrowed his hands in his jeans pockets and drew up his shoulders, like a kid caught stealing. His eyes looked a little glassy and pink from smoking up, but there was something else there too.

Oh, Jesus.

Did he have feelings for her, too?

What a fucking disaster.

Had he even thought about her job while he was sticking his dick in her? How important it was to her? Because the reality was, Zane held the cards. If it was Maggie or Zane, she’d have to be the one to go. Zane was the face and the voice of Dirty, and as valued as Maggie was, the band was never going to fire their lead singer, a founding member, so they could keep her.

I wasn’t exactly in a position to give relationship advice, though, and even if I was, Zane wouldn’t hear it from me. Little sisters weren’t really qualified to give that kind of advice. Jesse had never taken my advice over the years, even when I warned him not to go there with Elle because he’d break her heart. I’d seen that one coming from miles away, but did he listen to me?

Nope.

“How’s Brody?” Zane asked, his cool blue eyes still on mine.

I planted my hands on my hips. “None of your business.”

His pierced eyebrow arched and I didn’t love the smirk twitching on his lips.

“Whatever. Get out of my way.” The Viking grin was back as I brushed past him.

I hit up the ladies’ room and checked myself out in the cracked mirror. I looked a little buzzed, since I was—a few beers and a couple of Zane’s joints had taken care of that—but not in a bad way. And the silver halter was doing my figure some major favors.

Surely Brody had noticed that, even if he’d barely given me a glance?

Pretty much every guy who’d talked to me tonight—or even brushed past me—had put his hand on my bare back, which meant this top was doing its job.

How could Brody ignore me if I cornered him, wearing this?

Let him try.

In my slightly buzzed state, I couldn’t imagine any other outcome to that maneuver other than Brody and me promptly making up, then making out.

All I had to do was get him cornered.

I peeled off my bra, dumped it in my purse, and went braless. The slippery fabric of the halter against my bare breasts felt like the promise of sex.

On second thought, I took off my panties too, then put my jeans back on.

Then I smoothed my hair, took a breath, and went to find Brody—and sex him into submission.