One More Time Read online

  Matt, Nick, and Dom had agreed to a sit-down so I could get a different story angle, but so far, all I was getting was frustrated. Nick and Matt had a way of turning everything into a joke and not taking anything seriously, insisting on talking about partying and just about nothing else.

  I wasn’t actually interested in their love lives, but I was curious about their personal approaches to romance. Nick smirked, sliding his sunglasses down to the tip of his nose. He’d been wearing them despite being indoors, claiming that the late morning sunlight filtering in through the windows was hurting his eyes. Again, on account of his partying the night before.

  “Romance? I can do romance, as long as it’s limited to one night only. I don’t do repeat performances.” He winked, though it was more playful than lascivious, then pushed the dark lenses back over his beautiful eyes. Even red-rimmed, his greenish brand of hazel made you want to lean in closer and closer to distinguish where the differing colors originated.

  “You’re a one-night-stand man, then?” I asked, getting back on track. At least I’d gotten a real answer from him this time.

  Nick mimed a drum roll and nodded. “You got it. There’s only so much of this to go around. Wouldn’t be fair to deprive anyone. We’re one man down as it is.”

  “Jared?” I hadn’t thought that they would feel like they’d lost a man to monogamy. It turned out I was wrong as Nick pouted and nodded again.

  “Right again. Someone has to pick up the torch. Might as well be me.” He sounded cheerful again. “I should remember to thank Alicia for that actually.”

  “Really? Why is that, though? I mean, don’t you want someone to come home to and to settle down with? Or have you been hurt before? Is that it?”

  A low shout of laughter erupted from Matt, while Dom rolled his eyes and Nick grunted back a chuckle. “Nope, nothing like that. I’m a rock star, baby. Don’t you agree that I deserve as many women as possible?”

  Not really. “I guess. That’s an interesting perspective at the very least. What about the two of you?”

  Turning my attention to Matt and Dom, I resisted the urge to gape at Nick. Or maybe to slap some sense into him. He deserved as many women as possible? What an ass. Rockstar or not, gorgeous and playful and talented or not, it was a pretty arrogant outlook to have on life as far as I was concerned.

  Matt grinned at me, his eyes crinkling at the corners as he turned a heavy silver ring around his index finger. “Ignore Nick. He has a lot of growing up to do.”

  He dodged Nick’s elbow, which came jabbing at him, chuckled, and met my eyes. Where green was the dominant color in Nick’s eyes, today anyway, blue was the color of the day for Matt. Turquoise really, like the ocean under a glittering sunrise on a beautiful, sunny, tropical day at the Indian Ocean.

  “I’m all grown, wanna see?” Nick joked, but when he started reaching for his zipper, I was hoping that he was actually joking. Dom shot him a glare, and while Nick flipped him off, he settled back into his chair and let go of his zipper.

  “So, where were we?” I asked Matt, writing his name at the top corner of my tablet screen and drawing a block around the other notes I’d scribbled from Nick’s answer.

  “You were ignoring Nick, and I was about to answer your question about romance,” he said. I tapped my nose and waited for his answer. He took a second to think about his answer before giving it. “I’ve been labeled as a playboy or a player.”

  I laughed, appreciating his frank acknowledgment of the rumors surrounding him, but I didn’t interrupt.

  “I’m not though,” he said. “At least, I don’t think I am.”

  “You don’t?”

  A tiny crease appeared between his eyebrows as he considered my question, but it was gone as quickly as it appeared. “I don’t. I’m not adverse to settling down like Masters here is. I just like to party, and women usually don’t like that about me. So for now, I’m just doing my thing.”

  “Just doing your thing,” I repeated, knowing that his quote was going to get a lot of women vying to show him that she could be the one to show him there was someone out there who could accept his party-boy ways. “So you’d settle down eventually?”

  Matt shrugged and pushed his long blonde fringe off his forehead. It still looked perfect. “Eventually, yeah. Sure. Is it going to be tomorrow? Hell to the fuck no.”

  Nick looked satisfied by Matt’s answer, though he’d become fidgety when Matt started talking about settling down, while Dominic looked vaguely bored and kept glancing toward the door. He was making no big secret of the fact that he wanted out of there. ASAP.

  He eyed me rather warily when I turned my focus to him. “What about you, Dom? Is there a Mrs. LeSalle in Destitute’s future, or are you a one-night man like Nick?”

  Dom raked a hand through his brown hair, shaking it out a little at his shoulders, and fixed his steel gray eyes on me. “I don’t believe in one-night stands. It’s simple. I want perfection. Music, relationships, it doesn’t matter. I treat them the same way. Most women just can’t handle that kind of intensity for too long, so it makes it look like I’m going through a lot of women when I’m not really.”

  The air itself seemed to still while Dom spoke. The man was definitely intense—he had that right. It wasn’t uncomfortable exactly. It was more like it made you want to sit up and listen to what he had to say and then go dig into a cocktail on a beach to relax again when he was done.

  The men of Destitute were a force to be reckoned with. That was for sure. Having now spent some time with them all, some more than others, I was quickly learning why they all had fans the world over and why their personalities drew in people from all different walks with all different beliefs and styles.

  I was interested in getting their take on Caleb, which shouldn’t ring too many alarm bells because the piece was supposed to be centered around him, but I wasn’t sure how to approach it. The first part of the Caleb Larsen piece ran the week before, and our readership skyrocketed since Caleb was generally so tight lipped. As a result, my editor wanted me to keep going, and I was happy to do it. Surprisingly, so was Caleb.

  Today’s interview was specifically set up with the other guys to add a bit of their perspectives to the next piece, but I’d still been hoping Caleb would show. So far, there hadn’t been so much as a peep from him. When I’d parked in the spot Alicia had reserved for me at her office building, I sneaked a peek at the VIP band parking area, but Caleb’s truck hadn’t been there.

  “Thank you guys for being so candid with me about all this,” I said, smiling at each of them in turn.

  “No prob, little Diamond,” Nick said, drumming his fingers on his thighs. “Hope you got what you were looking for. We done here?”

  “Almost,” I said. Nick’s face fell a little, but he sat back again and waited for the next question. “Just so I get this rounded out properly, what do you think Caleb’s approach to romance is? Where does he fall on the ‘one-night stand to eventually settling down’ scale? I think we all know where Jared stands on that.”

  “I guess we do know where Jared stands on that now.” Matt smiled. It actually seemed like a genuine smile, like he really was happy for his friend. Or maybe he was just happy that the interview was almost over. “Caleb though? I’m not speaking for him.”

  Interesting. “Personal opinion?”

  “Nope.” Matt chuckled, folding his arms. “Not going anywhere near that question. Boys?”

  He raised his eyebrows at the other two and looked from one to other sitting beside him, but they both shook their heads. Dom gave me a curious look and shifted so he was facing me more fully.

  “You should just ask him. In fact, why haven’t you?”

  “Oh, I, uh…we’ve been talking about Jared and Alicia and the impending nuptials so far, along with the new album, the tour, and the likely impact of their relationship on it. Today is the first day I’m venturing into the rest of your feelings about relationships.”

  I silently
congratulated myself on what I thought was a pretty decent save, though Dom didn’t look convinced. “Well, I think you should probably just ask him. None of us will speak for him.”

  “Understood,” I said, trying not to look as disappointed as I felt. I tapped ‘Save’ on my tablet and clicked the sleep button. “In that case, we’re all done.”

  “Whoop whoop,” Matt cheered dryly, then surprised me by reaching out and giving me a quick, one-armed hug. “Thanks for making that relatively painless, little Diamond. I’m sure we’ll be seeing you soon.”

  “Sure thing,” I told him, not able to stop from smiling. Matt’s easy way brought that out in me, it seemed. “Have fun with whatever it is you do later.”

  He laughed and sauntered over to the door, stopping to shoot me a wink. “Always do. You too, Kelly. Peace.”

  Without a backward glance, he pulled on the door handle and was gone. Dom and Nick said their goodbyes too, seeming to forget that I was even in the room as they left. They were heading off to practice next, and Dom was saying something about the setlist while Nick was muttering about how they’d better finish on time.

  They followed Matt out the door with brief, final waves, and when it shut behind them, I sagged back into my seat and just took a minute to pull myself toward myself—proverbially speaking. I’d just interviewed three of the most adored, most desired, and undoubtedly most beloved sons of rock ‘n roll of our time, and I’d lived to tell the tale. And to tell it with some pretty cool, down-to-earth, and honest quotes.

  Mentally congratulating myself on not having had a superfan moment or something, I couldn’t help but think about the members of Destitute who hadn’t been in attendance. And I didn’t really care where Jared had been. I was pretty sure he was out smooching my sister.

  The missing member of Destitute I was thinking about was the other Larsen. Caleb’s deep brown eyes played in my mind as I wondered how he might have answered my questions. He didn’t seem like any of the other three, but he was still known for his one-night stands.

  Even so, I hadn’t seen him photographed with anyone else since we’d started sleeping together, and it was really starting to mess with my head about what we were doing. He kept saying it was just fun, and boy, was it fun, but it still felt like something deeper was happening.

  We’d slept together several times, sure. But we also kept going out to dinner together, and we always talked straight through. We weren’t worried about being seen out together since we had a cover: if a tabloid showed up, it would just look like a reporter interviewing a subject. Because of our cover, we could stay out for as long as we wanted to, and we took advantage of that, staying out for hours and eating wherever we wanted to, cameras be damned.

  The more time we spent together, the more it started to feel like something more than fun. Caleb was so insistent that it wasn’t, though, that I had to be imagining things. Maybe I was in a state of semi-permanent, post-orgasmic bliss, and that was why I was seeing things or making things up that weren’t really there.

  The man was a god in bed. Surely, my orgasms were what was actually messing with my head. There was nothing going on between me and Caleb. I just really liked sleeping with him. That was it. I had to stop imagining that it was anything more.

  Chapter 11

  Caleb

  “I think that’s a wrap, boys.” Jared spun his microphone in the air, caught it in one hand, and grinned like a maniac. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I gotta get out of here.”

  “And into your fiancée,” Matt offered with an equally wicked grin and set his guitar down in its stand.

  “Fuck yeah, you got that right.”

  Jared fist-bumped him as he walked by, still carrying his favorite mic. He always guarded it like a talisman before we went on tour. No one knew where he went with the thing, but I couldn’t help but wonder if he took it to bed with him.

  I laughed a little at the mental image that thought produced and then banished it immediately. I did not need to know what Jared did with that thing. Matt and Nick left with Jared, apparently having been invited to sundowners on a yacht that was rented for the album release party of a new girl band I couldn’t stand.

  “Caleb, you got a minute?” Dom asked quietly, cornering me once the others were gone. I was packing up my guitar, wanting to make sure that this one got loaded in its correct case when the time came.

  “Sure. What’s up?” Lifting my head after securing the Cort in its case, I found Dominic standing over me, brow furrowed. The guy was always worried about something. Sometimes, I envied how much he cared, but mostly, it just looked exhausting.

  “We had an interview with Kelly Diamond earlier.” Just the mention of her name made my dick stir, though hearing it from his lips sent a stab of annoyance through my gut. I pushed it down. I didn’t have time for that shit. Besides, my gut had no business feeling a damn thing about this.

  “I know. I was told you were meeting with her. How’d it go?” I straightened up once I was done with the guitar, equal in height with Dom now that I was up.

  “It was fine. Same shit, different day. It’s not the interview I wanted to talk to you about. It’s her. Kelly.”

  “What about her?”

  Dom studied me carefully, eyes searching mine suspiciously before he sighed and hooked his thumbs into the pockets of his jeans. “I think she’s into you.”

  “What?” She wasn’t into me really. She was into my cock and what I could do to her with it, but Dom didn’t need to know that.

  “She asked about you in the interview, and I got this vibe. She’s crushing on you, man.”

  “Okay, let’s say you’re right. So what if she is? I’m a rock star, and a hot one at that. Half the fucking world’s crushing on one of us.” I tried to keep the amusement out of my voice.

  Dom prided himself on his read of people and vibes as much as he did his music. That he couldn’t tell that Kelly and I had already slept together was funny as fuck. Especially since he was about to lecture me about not doing it. I could see the speech coming from a mile away.

  “Half the world doesn’t have a sister who’s about to marry your brother. You should tread lightly here, Caleb.”

  “Yeah? And why’s that?” Even though I’d seen the lecture coming, the tone he’d taken and the way he was looking at me was still pissing me off. It was bad enough being Jared’s biological younger brother. It was another thing when Dom pulled his “father figure of the band” shit.

  “Because if you go after her and you fuck her around, Alicia will be pissed as hell, which means Jared gets pissed at you, which means actual trouble for the band.”

  Trouble for the band, my ass. Jared might be a little annoyed, and Alicia might scowl and call me a jerk, but Kelly and I were both consenting adults in this. My blood was starting to run hot in my veins, the familiar itch to punch someone surfacing fast. My business was my business. Dom’s nose had no place in it.

  “I can handle my brother,” I said curtly.

  Dom’s frown deepened. “Yeah, I know. The two of you can handle each other all the way to the fuckin’ emergency room, and where’s that leave the tour then?”

  “Whatever happens between me and Jared stays between us. There’s nothing going on with me and Kelly, and it’s not like I’m fucking Jared’s girl. So calm down, would you?”

  “I am calm, asshat. What I’m trying to tell you is that if you’re actually interested in Kelly, go for it. She’s hot, and she’s smart. I get it. Seriously, I do. But if this is about nothing but the tail, then move on. Leave the poor girl be.”

  “This isn’t about anything because there is no this,” I told him, staring daggers into equally hostile eyes. I appreciated what Dom was trying to say, understood it even, but it was none of his goddamned business. I already had one older brother busting my ass about this kind of shit. I didn’t need another one. “There’s nothing going on that’s going to influence the band or the tour.”

  “I know wha
t I saw in that interview, and I know what I’m seeing right now. You better know what you’re doing if you go after her just to tap that. I’m warning you, Caleb. I don’t give a fuck who you think you are. You better not fuck this tour up for all of us.” Dom got in my face as he was talking, jabbing his index finger into my chest.

  I grabbed his hand and shoved it down. “Fuck you, Dominic. I’m not fucking anything up, and I don’t take orders from anyone about who I do or do not sleep with.”

  Dom’s eyes narrowed, and he took a step back, a vein in his neck pulsing. “I mean it, bro. Stay away from her unless you’re actually interested.”

  He didn’t wait for me to say anything more, shoving at my shoulder as he walked past me. I had no idea how that escalated so damn quickly or why my blood was boiling, but it had, and it was.

  My hands were shaking, and rage rolled around in my stomach like a barely contained beast as Dom let the door slam shut behind him. He’d gotten to me in a big way.

  Why though? I’d only slept with Kelly a few times. It didn’t mean a thing emotionally, so why was I so damn pissed? Better yet, why the hell couldn’t I stop thinking about her?

  Chapter 12

  Kelly

  “There’s nothing like a good romcom to get you out of your head for at least a little while.” Alicia swooned as we walked out of the movie theater. Stopping by a trashcan to get rid of the last scraps of our popcorn and empty slushy containers, she turned to face me with a sickeningly sweet smile on her face.

  The red lights framing the movie posters for the next showings behind her made her hair glow, giving her an almost ethereally peaceful look. My sister was suffering from full-on romcom fever and was clearly thinking about her very own prince charming waiting for her at home.