Just Sing: An Enemies-to-Lovers Rock Star Romance (Just 5 Guys Book 1) Read online

  Now I pulled the grunge chick back through the accordion door to my bedroom, which wasn’t much more than a bed, a nightstand, and a tiny closet with designer sweats and t-shirts. I never appeared in public without wardrobe pre-approval from my team. Even a trip to Starbucks in sweats required the right branding and accessories.

  After yanking the door closed, I tossed the girl on the bed and crashed on top of her. My crew could find their own way out after chasing off the celebrities who wanted to hang.

  Without waiting for the chick to catch her breath, I ripped down her jeans, my mouth crushing hers. She kicked her jeans off her feet while I ripped open my own and yanked her knees apart. After wetting my fingers in my mouth, I pushed them into her until she was gasping and squirming under me.

  I stood up off the bed and pulled her to her feet, then spun her around, shoved her forward onto all fours on the floor, and dropped to my knees behind her. Then I plowed into her. Her hair had come loose and tumbled around her shoulders and down her back in a wild tangle. Winding my hand into it, I drove my cock into her again. She cried out and arched her back, spreading her knees to let me go still deeper.

  “Harder,” she gasped, bracing one hand on the wall beside his bed.

  I slammed into her with punishing force, expecting her to beg for mercy, but she only grunted in loud, animal bursts and repeated, “Harder,” over and over, like a chant. I could feel the whole tour bus rocking under us, but I kept going until my knees ached and my thighs shook with the effort. When I was close to coming, I grabbed the corner of my bed for leverage and rammed into her so hard she gasped and tensed up, and I knew I’d finally reached the tender spot at the very depth of her pussy.

  I started to pull back but she whispered, “harder,” one more time. I dragged her head back as hard as I could and drove deeper again, grinding myself into her depths. She let out a strangled cry, one I wasn’t sure was from pleasure and not pain until I felt her squeezing around me, then releasing as she came.

  Refund her money? Ha. Never.

  Then, before I knew it was going to happen, she clenched around me again, milking my cock until I exploded inside her. Fuck yeah. We collapsed together, shudders wracking our bodies, sweat slick between us. Five minutes later, I was halfway asleep when she said, “Ready for round two?”

  “Glad the show wasn’t a total bust for you,” I said, pushing myself up from her.

  She rolled over and sat up, touching her knees gingerly while she examined the skin peeling back. “Maybe on the bed this time, though. I’m bleeding.”

  “I see that,” I said. “You got it on my carpet.”

  “Whoops. Sorry.” She stood and tossed my blankets back and dropped onto the edge of the bed, where she peeled off her t-shirt.

  I pulled up my pants, picked up her t-shirt, and handed it back. “You can go now.”

  “Seriously?” She stared at me so incredulously I found my mouth twitching, but I held back a laugh. I’d let her run the show for a while, but it was time she knew who really ran things when Brody Villines, was around.

  “Seriously, baby-doll.”

  “You are such an asshole.” She stood and pulled her shirt on, then snatched up her jeans.

  I picked up her underwear, hooked them on one finger, and held them out to her. “Unless you want to leave them for a souvenir.”

  She made a grab for them, but I held them out of her reach.

  “I think the words you’re looking for are thank you.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Because I rocked your world like it’s never been rocked before. Where I come from, we say please and thank you.”

  “Where I come from we say fuck you.” She flipped me off and then yanked on her jeans, flinging her hair around in a way that was quite sexy, really. When she’d shoved her feet into her black converse with the heels crushed down, she turned to the door.

  “Forgetting something?” I asked, letting the panties swing lazily from my finger.

  “Keep them,” she said. “You know, so you can remember the girl who rocked your world like it’s never been rocked before. And by the way, you’re welcome.” With a smug smile, she ducked out of the open bedroom and marched through my bus to the door. I was sure I saw her limping just a little. Oh, well. She’d asked for it.

  three

  Laney

  Laney Tucker was a good girl. Everybody knew it. My teachers at school had known it since the day I entered Kindergarten at the private academy, my little blonde ringlets full of velvet bows that matched my shoes and purse. Yes, I’d carried a purse to school in Kindergarten. It was a black velvet clutch with a sterling silver clasp. Now, as I turned my white Camaro down the long stretch of dirt road that led to my family’s farm, I tried to remember what had happened to that little black purse.

  Surely it had been gone by the time I was old enough for homework, always turned in on time and with the proper heading, and makeup. Somewhere along the way, I’d traded out cutesy things for serious ones. Serious things like straight A’s, music lessons, ballet, horseback riding, and a steady boyfriend at the neighboring boys’ academy.

  I’d had one of those—all the good girls did. I needed one for Cotillion, for prom and homecoming, for graduation pictures with both our families and trips to the Kentucky Derby. And hadn’t we been the perfect pair, the girl with the mane of long golden hair, blue eyes, and just enough curves to be sexy without anyone calling her a slut based on her body type alone; the boy with the sexy smile, bronze hair, and eyes the color of the Kentucky sky. It was this same boyfriend who escaped parental watch with me the night we lost our virginity to each other amid promises of eternal love and forever faithfulness.

  A good boy like Brody Villines, he was the perfect match for a good girl like me.

  Dust billowed up behind my Camaro, and I sighed in resignation. The one bad thing about going home, besides the obvious one, was my family’s resistance to joining the twenty first century. My father said if we paved the road, hooligans would come mess with our property. That was unlikely, but I supposed it was possible that they’d find the dirt road a bit of a deterrent. After all, one couldn’t escape at a high speed on a dirt road. One had to know how to drive on gravel.

  I wondered if Brody still remembered all the turns, each one seeming to be at a sharp ninety-degree angle. Brody had served me well, from freshman year to senior year. He’d even served as an excuse to avoid what my mother referred to as the “slut culture” of sororities, when I went off to study at Rhodes my freshman year. Yes, a good man was hard to find, and a good girl had to do everything in her power to hold onto him, even encouraging him follow his dreams of fame. It didn’t matter that my serious boyfriend, my good guy, had later turned out to be a lying, cheating, egomaniacal piece of shit. It just mattered that I’d had one when I needed him.

  As I passed the Villines’s estate, I sped up, my wheels spinning in the gravel a second before the tires got purchase and the car roared forward. I’d have to have it washed in the next couple days. It was impossible to keep it clean while driving around on dirt roads. But I didn’t want to linger any longer than necessary. Once, my heart had raced every time I neared Brody Villines’s place. I hated to admit that it still did. It was from rage now, though, rather than excitement. Or so I told myself.

  Yes, a dirty car was the least of my worries. My mother would undoubtedly give the hunky stable boy the job of washing it so she could watch him working in a wet t-shirt. So it all worked out.

  My phone buzzed on the passenger seat, and I picked it up, flicked it free of the charger, and looked at the screen. A good girl like me would never ordinarily text and drive. But after twenty-two years of calling this place home, the dirt road was so familiar I could’ve driven it with my eyes closed. And besides, I only drove twenty miles an hour on it, and the lack of a dust cloud hovering on the road ahead let me know that no cars approached for a good long while.

  It was Paul. Of course it was. Nerdy Paul
, with his shirt always buttoned up one button too far, with his swampy breath and perpetually slipping glasses. I’d started dating Paul the moment I found out that Brody had turned into the clichéd man-whore I should have known he was all along deep in his evil heart. All men would be, if given half a chance. I hadn’t given Paul even quarter of a chance. I wasn’t going to make that mistake again. I may have been a good girl, but I wasn’t a dumb one.

  4:42 pm Paul Griswald: Did you make it okay?

  Even his check-in was timid. Paul was not the sort of man who would ever make a woman’s heart race, which was probably why I’d chosen him. That, along with the fact that he was about as far from Brody Villines as it was humanly possible to be while still possessing a penis. At least I assumed he had one of those.

  Once, when I had been a teenager, I’d overheard my mother—a bit tipsy on sherry during her Sunday brunch-and-bridge club—saying something about Brody Villines that concluded with the word “Me-OW!” This was followed by a thunderous round of hooting and cackling from all the women. The previous winter, at Paul and my engagement party, my mother had congratulated me on making a “safe choice.”

  I tossed my phone on the seat and pulled my car to the keypad at the end of my parents’ long, straight driveway. I could always text Paul later. I pulled through the gate onto the gravel drive that led along a seemingly endless white horse fence on each side. A flock of guinea hens had wandered into the road, and I slowed to let them trundle across. Horses grazed far off in the pasture, but I couldn’t tell which was Pegasus. My father had gotten new ones since I’d moved to Memphis, and I was no longer involved in his equine business.

  Finally, I pulled my car to a stop in the four-car garage hidden behind the large, Confederate-style house—an exposed garage was too modern for my mother, who insisted on preserving the sense of the past, and old money, at all cost. Another reason the private road remained unpaved, I thought as I ran a finger through the skim of dust that had settled on the snowy white paint and hot pink trim of my Camaro. I shouldered my duffle bag and headed across the gravel pad that separated the house from the garage and provided parking when guests visited.

  Today, I was the only guest arriving. Not that I was a guest, exactly, but after four years at college, I always felt like one for the first few days. I had come home each summer, but this time, a moving truck would arrive the next day with my remaining possessions. This time, I would not be returning to Memphis in September.

  “Honey?” my mother called as I let myself in the back door.

  “Hey, Mom, it’s me.”

  “I was wondering when you’d make it,” my mother said, emerging from the mud room wearing an oversized sunhat and elbow-length rubber gloves along with a bright yellow blouse, a pair of floral culottes, and gardening Crocs. If there was one thing Blair Tucker knew, it was how to dress for every occasion, including a morning of tending her precious flower gardens. She held a spray bottle in one hand, which she held away as she hugged me. “Come out front with me, I’m just finishing up spraying the roses. I’ve got some news.” She gave me a mischievous smile and sashayed out the front door, leaving it open for me to follow.

  I dropped my bag and followed my mother down the front steps—freshly swept and recently scrubbed, judging by the redness of the bricks—to the row of rose bushes that served as a hedge along the stone walkway.

  “How was the drive?” Blair asked, misting the roses with her spray bottle.

  “Good,” I said. “How’s everything here? You and Dad, the horses all okay?”

  “Every one of them,” my mother said.

  “And the cousins?” I asked. “Has Aunt Cindy recovered from her knee surgery?”

  “They’re all just fine,” Mom said, giving me an expectant, amused look. “Aren’t you forgetting to ask about a certain neighbor?”

  “Don’t remind me,” I said with an eyeroll. “Let me guess, the Villines’s garage gained a new Lamborghini or something ridiculous like that?”

  “No,” Mom said slowly. “Haven’t you heard? Brody’s band broke up.”

  “Oh, yeah. That.”

  Of course I’d heard about the breakup of Just 5 Guys. Pretty much the whole world was in chaos, according to Your Celebrity Eyes and the other gossip channels that I left running in the background while I got ready for school every morning.

  “Yes, that,” Mom said, watching me over the roses.

  “How tragic,” I said lightly, unable to hide one hundred percent of my smugness.

  “That’s very mature of you,” she said. “I would have thought you’d be more concerned.”

  “Why would I care if his stupid band broke up?” I asked, turning to go back inside.

  “Oh, I don’t imagine you’d care about that,” she said, plucking a rose from the bush and pressing her nose into its velvety white petals. “But I thought you might be interested to know that Brody’s coming home.”

  * * *

  8:08 pm Laney Tucker: What a day.

  8:09 pm Piper Reid: What’s up?

  8:10 pm Laney Tucker: Mom.

  8:10 pm Piper Reid: What did she do this time?

  8:11 pm Laney Tucker: She’s all innocently gardening and drops a Brody bomb on me.

  8:12 pm Piper Reid: It’s weird, sometimes I forget you dated the Justin Bieber of boy bands.

  8:14 pm Laney Tucker: Too bad I can’t forget.

  8:14 pm Piper Reid: Sorry.

  8:15 pm Piper Reid: I mean, I don’t think about it like OMG my cousin dated someone famous. He’s just Brody. It’s like boyband Brody is not the same person as the guy you dated.

  8:16 pm Laney Tucker: So anyway, he’s coming home.

  8:16 pm Piper Reid: No fucking way!

  8:17 pm Laney Tucker: Fucking way.

  8:17 pm Piper Reid: Like next door home?

  8:19 pm Laney Tucker: Three miles if you go by the dirt road.

  8:20 pm Piper Reid: Sounds like a bad country song 

  8:21 pm Laney Tucker: Don’t remind me.

  I had once thought we’d be a country duo. How pathetic was that? In high school, we’d played together at church, strumming our acoustic guitars and singing about Jesus. We’d played at school, too, and at the country club. Brody’s uncle was some big shot music guy in Nashville, and we’d been in the early stages of planning our career when Brody was “discovered.” Being the good girlfriend I was, I’d been ecstatic that he had a shot at major fame so soon. I’d encouraged him to take it, supported him all the way. What a sad sap I’d been back then.

  But Piper knew all about that. Piper was the friend who spent weekends at my house when we were kids, talking until one of us fell asleep mid-conversation at dawn. The friend who shared all the memories that girls shared with their childhood best friends, from my first crush (Brody) to my first love (Brody) to my first time (again, Brody). She was the friend who would stand up for me when she didn’t stand up for herself, or stand back and let me shine when I got something for myself. But she was more than that, because she was my cousin, so she understood me in a way that only people inside a family could.

  It had just about killed me to be happy for her when she’d gone to school in New York for fashion design. It felt like a world away.

  8:26 pm Piper Reid: Sorry. I had to switch trains. What are you going to do?

  8:27 pm Laney Tucker: I have a plan.

  8:27 pm Piper Reid: So what is it?

  8:29 pm Laney Tucker: Call me.

  I had seen enough movies to know that a good revenge plan centered on never leaving written evidence. I wasn’t about to text something that might later come back to haunt me. If I was going to get Brody back, I couldn’t have any secrets hidden in my phone, secrets that would somehow, by the weirdest coincidence, end up in his hands. No, this would be done the right way, without an evidence trail. Because after I got Brody back, I was going to get him back for what he’d done to me.

  four

  Brody

  As I mad
e my way off the tarmac and into my H2, I couldn’t help thinking about Laney. I hadn’t seen her in three years. I tried not to think about her, and for the most part, I did an okay job of that. But Jesus. She must be home for the summer now that it was June. Or did she stay at school all summer? I hadn’t wanted to ask my mother. She’d take it the wrong way. And my dad was in Louisville most of the time and wouldn’t know. What did I care if she was home, anyway? It wasn’t like she’d want to see me. Not after the shit I’d pulled.

  I couldn’t blame her. But still. Maybe I could make things right.

  My phone buzzed, interrupting my thoughts, and I picked it up. “Hey, Nash,” I said, peering out the window at the unsuspecting cars passing the H2. They didn’t know that at that very moment, greatness was slipping by them. That one of the most famous celebrities in the world was behind the tinted glass windows in the next vehicle.

  Though I was supposed to be taking a break after touring for almost four solid years, I didn’t want greatness to slip by me, either.

  “Listen, I want you to get some rest,” Nash said. “But be thinking about where you want to go from here. I’m going to take you there.”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  I knew what Nash was doing. Not that he couldn’t live without Just 5 Guys. He could make another band the way he’d made us and a dozen other bands, creating something out of nothing. There was a reason the dude’s nickname was “the Wizard.” Making the band was his favorite part, he’d told us a million times. That was his passion—the challenge of putting the group together like a puzzle, melding our sounds, building our public personas, bestowing upon each a unique personality to show the world. But he’d never had the kind of success he’d had with us. That kind of success could be addictive.

  “Listen, I could call Zane or Quincy, but I chose you,” Nash said in his weird accent. Brooklyn? Italian? He reminded me of Danny Devito—short and round, loud and energetic, and with an accent. But Nash had olive skin and tight, wavy black hair instead of a bald head.