bond with her stepdaughter. But back then Kiki was still convinced her mother would return and that when she did, Deirdre would go right back to where she came from. And though logic and reason told her adult self that it was a ridiculous notion, wasn’t there a tiny part of her that still wanted it to be so?
After she hung up, Kiki sat on her bed staring at the wall in front of her. She’d booked the hotel rooms, so she knew Dev was on the other side of it.
Or was he?
She’d been avoiding him as much as she could since that night in his dressing room. It was an impossible situation. Sleeping with him again was sure to end in heartbreak, and watching him move on would be excruciating—either way, she lost. But she had to stop kicking herself for getting into this situation and keep her eye on the prize: Sydney.
Dev started awake from a thin sleep. How long had he been out? His bedside lamp was aglow and the Netflix show he’d been watching was still playing, showing a young couple in the middle of an argument. He’d probably only dozed off for a few minutes, as per his regular pattern of sleeping and waking throughout the night after a show.
Staring up at the ceiling, Dev focused on making sure his head was straight. One by one he recited the facts. He was in Paris. Tonight’s audience had been wild enough to get security involved when two women tried to climb the stage. His hand had been sore, so he’d taken a non-opioid painkiller along with his usual pills. After the show he’d downed two bottles of water and greeted a few VIP fans. Then he’d taken a limo to the George V for his last night in a hotel; as of tomorrow the band would be using their tour buses for the remainder of the European dates. And even if the idea of being on a metal tube for hours on end filled him with dread, at least it was familiar. It was something a little closer to home than this damn hotel room.
An Ambien would put him out. He should take one, he thought. But the fact that he hadn’t cracked that bottle yet felt like a small victory—even if it meant lying in bed drowning in regret and self-doubt. He gave his pillow a hearty punch and closed his eyes, wishing for oblivion. But instead, memories of his first tour tumbled through his head. Twenty years old, nearly a solid year on the road, homesick and scared shitless. After his first show, he’d learned to dull his nerves with whatever he could get his hands on to keep from disappointing anyone. He’d discovered that there were so many people to keep happy—his record label, his booking agent, his business manager, his tour manager, his fans, the press. He would have dropped out right then and there if it hadn’t been for the money he owed his record label. Something no one had told him before he got famous was that the million-dollar advance that had seemed so huge would get eaten up by recording fees, management, lawyers and taxes, leaving him with almost nothing. On the day his first album went platinum, he had less than five thousand dollars in his bank account and an increasing debt to his record label, forcing him to continue touring to pay it off. After that he’d figured out that even the most successful musicians didn’t get wealthy by playing music—they got it by accepting endorsements. Pushing everything from watches to guitars to foreign cars were what had padded his bank account over the years. That took care of his money troubles, but nothing could fix the homesickness and loneliness.
Dev opened his eyes again. On TV, the same couple who had been arguing were now furiously ripping each other’s clothes off, evidently having made up. Dev nearly groaned aloud. For a guy with a near-fucking-permanent hard-on, a year and a half minus his one night with Kiki was a hell of a long time to go without. Sometimes he thought it would be easier to just go back to his old ways, when he’d stay up all night partying with the band and fans before taking his pick from the gorgeous women presented to him to bring home. But everything had changed. After the shows everyone went home to their families now, even Scotty and Stuart, who got on to FaceTime with their wives and kids the moment they could escape. But for Dev, after being showered by attention all day long, home was an empty hotel room or tour bus. And he was so goddamned tired of it. He wanted his room, his bed, his life to be filled with another body—with her body. He rolled sideways, grabbed a pillow and chucked it across the room in frustration. The monster was raging hard in his head tonight, and fans were such an easy Band-Aid. They threw their numbers at the handlers, who always tucked them into their pockets for their own use if Dev wasn’t interested. One phone call to Chester would be all it took. Within thirty minutes, he could have three women in his bed if he wanted to.
Fuck it. He wasn’t going to get through to Kiki.
Or was he?
Dev sat up in bed. He knew one sure way to find out.
KIKI WAS AFRAID she might get sick.
Bringing a hand to her stomach to steady herself, she left her tour bus and started across the underground parking lot of Milan’s San Siro Stadium. The last person in the world she wanted to see right now was Dev, but unless she was prepared to get on a plane back to Moretta she had little choice. Her job revolved around him, and she wasn’t about to sacrifice her entire reason for coming on the tour when Sydney was just around the corner. So she would face him and get her revenge by pretending his little stunt last night hadn’t even bothered her. She’d dressed for the occasion in a plunging V-necked pink sweater, a short denim skirt and knee-high boots. Her plan was to make Dev feel like the shit stain he was by being her usual friendly self with a little added sexiness, and then tonight she’d have a little fun herself. There were plenty of hot guys around—she was in Italy, for Christ’s sake, where she couldn’t cross a street without twenty men tripping over their dicks at the sight of her.
So she told herself, but Kiki had never been good at tough self-talk. Her heart hammered with each step that brought her closer to him. She tried to calm herself by listening to the sound of her heels clicking across the concrete. The bus drivers, off duty until the end of the show, leaned against a pillar smoking cigarettes. She was still recovering from her first tour bus commute, which had taken nine hours and all of her strength to refrain from strangling her twelve fellow crew members.
The buses themselves were built for comfort—hers even featured an entire second floor for the sleeping quarters—but the living space made for a forced sociability that was absent on airplane travel. Upon arrival, she’d barely ejected herself from the bus when the crew swung into high gear. The logistics that went into getting a show up and running were mind-boggling. Dev traveled with a convoy of eight tour buses to transport his team of nearly a hundred people including audio, video, stage and lighting managers, riggers, technicians, carpenters, electricians, wardrobe, security, catering and management staff. The equipment arrived separately and was met by a locally hired crew of workers at each city, who had to work at a relentless pace to get everything ready on time. Right now the crew was setting up inside, and Stuart and Scotty had chosen to hang out in their bus until showtime. But Dev was waiting for her in the building, and as Kiki headed up the stairs to the backstage maze, her stomach twisted hard enough to make her whimper aloud.
She fucking hated him.
Last night, as the first moans of passion had reached her ears, she’d thought she was literally going to vomit. Even if she had told him he needed to stay away from her, she’d also admitted how much she wanted him—and he’d slapped her right in the goddamned privates with it. As she lay in bed listening to the agonizing sound of his desire for someone else, she told herself that she’d been right all along. She’d known he’d go back to his old ways, and the only thing that had surprised her was the dizzying heights of his insensitively.
She clacked up the stairs and wove her way through the hive
