Taylor, however, leaned toward me and dropped her voice. “I can see by the look on your face that you know exactly who I’m talking about, Rivers. I saw you watching her when she was onstage. I saw the way you wanted to eat her up. Stick her in your breast pocket and take her home like some sort of pet. You were practically drooling, and the funny thing was, she was just as into you. You two were acting like you were the only ones in the room. So I don’t think chemistry is going to be a problem.”

  Shit.

  “She’ll never agree to it,” I said hoarsely. Sure, Lila was insanely cute and too sweet for words, and if I was being honest I’d admit to myself that I’d fallen for her from the moment her big green eyes turned up to mine. But she was also smart.

  She’d never agree to some fake-dating scheme cooked up by my agent.

  Even if she did, the press wouldn’t believe it. She was the exact opposite of what I usually went for.

  Taylor just shrugged and went on looking smug. “Course she will. She already did.”

  Fuck.

  “What? What did you offer her?”

  “A contract. Luckily, she has the voice to deserve it. And she didn’t think hanging out with you while you’re on tour was the worst price to pay for it.”

  I didn’t hear the rest of what she said. Some part of my brain knew that she was outlining how this was all supposed to work and what I was supposed to do to hold up my end of this deal. I distinctly heard the words ‘do this or you’re off the tour.’ But the rest?

  Yeah, I was too busy staring at Lila Potter to listen. The girl was sitting at the table with Anna, chatting at her friend like she hadn’t just agreed to sign her life away for a contract with Avery Dawson’s label.

  Until she looked up at me and I saw that she was just as doubtful about the whole thing as I was.

  LILA

  Anna didn’t approve.

  I mean, of course she didn’t approve. We’d come out on the road to find Olivia and Connor’s tour with one goal in mind: getting in front of them and auditioning for that contract. Winning our way into a deal with Avery Dawson Records and finally getting our careers off the ground and into the big time. Maybe even getting on a first-name basis with Olivia Johns herself.

  We’d thought that getting to ogle Rivers Shine while we were here might be great.

  But we hadn’t actually intended to meet him.

  Or get drunk with him. Find our way into his hotel room and then his bed.

  Making a deal with his agent to play Rivers’ fake girlfriend in order to win the contract we wanted had never even crossed my mind, and judging by the look on Anna’s face, I definitely should have at least talked to her about it before agreeing.

  “You did what?” she asked, her voice low and disbelieving.

  I shrugged, trying to play it off. “I agreed to play his girlfriend. Not for long. I’m guessing like a week or two, max. And after that, we get first shot at the contract. Which is why we’re here, right? The contract? I figure I do this favor for Taylor James—you know, Olivia’s agent—and that contract is basically in our hands.”

  I mean, it made sense. Taylor hadn’t exactly sounded desperate but I’d seen enough magazines to know Rivers’ reputation. If she wanted to clean that up—which she obviously did—she had her work cut out for her. She must have known that she needed a girl who could pull it off and would agree quickly. I didn’t know whether she’d figured out that I already knew Rivers or not, but she’d evidently seen me staring at him from onstage and drawn her own conclusions. She’d decided I was the perfect candidate.

  And she was lucky I’d said yes.

  And if all that held true, then I was doing her a big favor. As far as I was concerned, that meant she owed me. I was about to spend the next week or two hanging out with the guy who’d made me fall for him and then deserted me the moment he realized what he’d done. I’d have to watch my back—and my heart—the whole time. Be on my guard against anything that looked like it might hurt me.

  And Taylor was going to reward me with a contract.

  I grinned at Anna, incapable of stopping myself, and took her hand. “Anna, stop looking like I’ve just made the biggest mistake of my life. Taylor James owes me for this. And we’re going to get our contract out of it. I guarantee it.”

  She didn’t look convinced.

  But she also hadn’t believed me when I said I had a direct line to God. And look how that had turned out.

  Word came down that afternoon that the tour would be moving on in the morning, and Anna and I spent the evening staying out of the way of the chaos that ensued. It was like a whirlwind had suddenly come into town and settled right on the hotel where we were staying. Roadies, managers, band members, and a number of other people with unknown positions were constantly coming and going, pounding up and down the hallways and shouting at each other about grabbing this or that piece of equipment and making sure the vans and buses were ready to go. Everyone seemed to know exactly what they were doing, and yet it was like the place had become a beehive. Or an anthill. No one was standing still and everyone had a job.

  Everyone but Anna and me. We’d spent fifteen minutes packing our things and then stared at each other, at a loss for what else we were supposed to do.

  The one thing I know for certain was that I didn’t want to run into Rivers. I didn’t know what we were supposed to be doing—Taylor hadn’t exactly sent me a set of instructions—and I hadn’t yet managed to get my feelings about the situation under control. Until that happened, I didn’t want to risk seeing him again. My brain was still too full of the secrets we’d told each other, the way he’d laughed as he answered one of my questions.

  The memory of whiskey on his breath as he leaned in to kiss me.

  The echo of his fingertips brushing down my side.

  I gasped involuntarily, confirmed my idea that I didn’t want to see him until after I’d figured out how I felt about the deal I’d made, and turned to my best friend in the world—who only knew half of why this was going to be so complicated.

  “Dinner?” I asked breathlessly.

  She frowned, obviously noticing my tone, but then shook her head. “Dinner. Somewhere away from the hotel, I think.”

  I reached down and took her hand. “That,” I said, “sounds like the best idea you’ve ever had. Let’s get out of here and not come back until it’s quiet enough to sleep.”

  The next morning came quickly and before I knew it we were caught in the stream of people heading down the stairs and into the lobby, each of them babbling about some plan or other for during the tour, or something they were supposed to be doing today. I’d never been on such a large tour before—certainly not as part of the entourage—and I couldn’t believe how many people were involved. I knew there were three bands on the tour and that they all had people supporting them, but there had to be at least one hundred people milling around in the lobby when we got there, adjusting bags and equipment and visiting with each other. A couple of them seemed to be in charge of everyone else and were shouting out directions for who was going in what bus and where we’d be heading next.

  Honestly it was all more than a little bit overwhelming.

  When Anna grabbed my hand and started to pull me toward the front doors, I followed her gratefully.

  “Thank God we have our own car and don’t have to worry about this lot,” she muttered over her shoulder. “If this is the kind of chaos they deal with on tour, I’m thinking Olivia and Connor might have been right to do it the way they did the first time.”

  I laughed. “That first time was mostly a mistake, from what I’ve heard. I don’t think it was their choice.”

  “Maybe not. But I’m guessing they might want to go back to it,” a voice said from my right.

  I glanced up, wondering who the hell was listening in on my conversation with Anna, and stopped dead when I saw Rivers Shine looking down on me. His mouth was caught in something that was half smirk, half shy smile, and he shrugged.

  “Hey, sunshine girl.”

  “Hey,” I said faintly. I’d woken up this morning thinking I had a handle on my feelings. Or at least a plan for how I was going to get through this. It was just a business deal, I’d told myself. Just an agreement I’d made in exchange for a shot at a contract.

  I wasn’t going to let Rivers Shine get into my heart or even under my skin. Hell, I didn’t even have to like him. I just had to pretend I did.

  Easy.

  But standing there staring up at him, I couldn’t stop the flood of emotions going through me. They started small. Just a tickle in my throat. But soon they were ballooning inside me like someone had injected pure Rivers into my blood. I was tingling all over and something had happened to my voice.

  “Rivers. What are you doing here?” Anna, who evidently hadn’t had Rivers injected into her bloodstream, asked sharply.

  He cast her a slightly less shy smile. “My job. I’ve got orders, and they include borrowing your girl for a second.”

  “Borrowing my girl?”

  “Yep.” He turned back to me and slipped his fingers between mine. “Ready for this?”

  “Ready for what?”

  Instead of answering, he pulled me through the doors and into the bright, flashing lights of a number of cameras, all the lenses pointed at us as reporters shouted Rivers’ name and a bunch of questions, each of them trying to get his attention.

  “Rivers, who’s the girl?” one of them screamed. “Is this one actually something special?”

  When he turned to me, his eyes were glinting with mischief. He ducked down and pressed his lips to my ear, the touch both soft and electrifying at the same time. “Just smile,” he whispered. “We need some pictures together but you don’t have to say anything. Just pretend I’m saying something really funny.”

  I smiled automatically, already knowing what the cameras would capture of this moment. Rivers’ face buried in my neck, my eyes glazed and a gentle smile on my mouth as if he was whispering sweet nothings to me. These would be the perfect pictures to start us off on this whole scheme, and would definitely make it look like we were an actual item.

  We were doing the jobs Taylor had assigned us. And we were doing them perfectly.

  And fucking hell was I going to have trouble protecting my heart if this was the way he was going to go about it all.

  RIVERS

  I figured out within the first two days that the only way either of us was going to survive this was if I stayed as far away from her as I could.

  Sure, I had to make public appearances with her. I had to make sure we were walking together on the sidewalk at times when the paparazzi were around, and that she was part of my entourage whenever I went anywhere. I found her in the crowd whenever I sang and did my best to make it look like every single song might actually be about her.

  Despite the fact that I’d written all those songs before I even met her.

  And most of that was easy. I had no problem taking her hand and walking with her like we were a cute couple out for a stroll. Leaning into her and saying something to make her laugh right when the cameras arrived. Looking at her like she was the most important and beautiful thing I’d ever laid eyes on, and like being with her filled me up to the top with something many people had never even felt before.

  Putting on a show like that was easy. Hell, I’d spent most of my life performing and I’d practically perfected pretending I felt something I’d never felt. I was a walking mask, giving the people what they wanted and protecting myself as best I could while I played their bad boy, in love with nothing but whiskey and rock and roll. I lost myself in a string of girls whose names I couldn’t remember and towns I wouldn’t recognize if I saw them again, and I drowned all the loneliness with an act that everyone thought was the truth.

  I knew how to pretend.

  The problem was, I wasn’t pretending with Lila. When I leaned into her it was to press my nose against her skin and smell the sunshine on her. When I took her hand it was because I didn’t think I could stand one more moment of not touching her. I looked for opportunities to take her out, even started tipping the photographers off just so I could tell her we had to go take pictures.

  Making her smile quickly became the best part of my day.

  I was literally pretending to feel something I actually felt, and that was so fucked up that I could hardly wrap my mind around it.

  Even worse was the fact that I knew I shouldn’t be feeling any of it. Lila Potter was the best person I thought I’d ever met. She was literally sunshine and rainbows, her smiles lighting up the room and her laugh drawing everyone around her. It had taken her about five seconds to get to know every single one of my crew by name, and even less time to worm her way into the hearts of the guys in my band. Hudson, our rhythm guitarist, was so soft on her that he practically worshiped the ground she walked on, and Matt had taken to spending some of his free time teaching her how to play bass. Even Noah, our designated badass, grinned every time he saw her.

  It was infuriating.

  Mostly because I knew I didn’t have any right to her. Not really. I was damaged goods, the baggage I was carrying around with me so heavy that I couldn’t stand it myself most days. I’d never had anything I didn’t break, and I knew enough to know that it was because of who I was. My parents had deserted me when I was just a baby and I’d spent my entire childhood realizing that it was because I hadn’t been enough for them.

  Lila was soft and gentle and sweet... and way too perfect for me to touch. I’d break her like I’d broken everything else in my life, and I didn’t think I’d be able to stand it when I did.

  Sure, I’d jumped at the chance to spend more time with her on that first night, when we’d had so much to drink we could hardly walk straight on the way to my room. I’d held onto her like she was a life jacket and I was drowning, and I hadn’t given my reputation two thoughts. I’d been too caught up in how good I felt with her.

  But that had been one night, and I hadn’t thought I’d ever see her again.

  This was weeks of pretending we were a couple. Weeks in which I could screw everything up. I’d seen the way she looked at me that first morning in front of the cameras. Her eyes had been full of her heart, those bottle-green orbs telling me exactly how much she was feeling in the moment, and that hadn’t changed. When she looked at me I could see a girl on the edge of falling in love.

  I wasn’t going to let it happen.

  Because I wasn’t the guy who fell in love back, and I would be damned if I was going to let her get hurt that way. This was a fake relationship that I’d agreed to only because it would save our spot on the tour. She was only doing it for the promise of a contract. It was a business deal, and nothing more.

  Nothing less, either. But still. We didn’t mean anything to each other.

  Period.

  The answer was simple. I avoided her like the plague unless we were making an appearance together. Getting our photographs taken. If I could, I kept my distance, and if we had to be together I made sure someone else was around to pad us.

  Unless I didn’t have a choice in the matter.

  On our third night on the road, I was backstage, hurrying through our preparations because we’d been late getting into town. The audience was already in the house by the time we rolled in and though The Leathers had performed first and had at least warmed the stage up for us, we used different equipment and had to change everything out before we could go on. Our roadies were good but weren’t capable of doing it all on their own, so Matt, Noah, Hudson, and I were running around like chickens with our heads cut off, getting amps and speakers onto the stage and ferrying out guitars, microphones, and the drum set.

  We should have slowed down. We should have been more careful. But you get on the road and you get into this place where all you can think about is getting in front of the audience, and I think we all knew that the sooner we got everything set up, the sooner we’d be up there playing.

  We had several speakers still stacked backstage and I was reaching up to grab one of them when someone hit me from behind. I stumbled into the stack, swearing, and felt the bottom speaker give... then start to tip.

  Oh God.

  I looked up at the stack, everything caught in slow motion, and realized that the whole thing was about to go. My eyes tracked slowly—too slowly—to what was on the other side, trying to figure out whether anything was in the way.

  Because this stack of speakers was on its way down.

  To my horror, Lila was standing on the other side, her arms full of boxes. She’d been helping the band, I realized. Carrying stuff around for us. Making herself a part of our family.

  And now she was standing in harm’s way.

  I was moving before I made the decision to do it, rushing toward her with my arms outstretched and my gaze locked with hers. I couldn’t let her get hurt. Couldn’t let her be crushed under falling speakers on my watch.

  I got to her in three strides, wrapped my arms around her, and threw us both out of the way, my body surrounding hers so that I was the one who hit the ground first. We rolled over and over, crashing through boxes of supplies and a couple of microphones, and finally came to a stop with her underneath me, her chest heaving and my arms still wrapped around her.

  I rose up a bit so I could look down at her and met those green eyes, my breath caught in my throat. “Are you okay?” I whispered.

  She huffed out a laugh. “Sure. I was just tackled by an enormous rock star and thrown around, but that’s nothing new. No problem.”

  Her eyes flicked to the scene behind me and she frowned.

  “Though I do sort of wonder what you were doing. I mean if you wanted a hug or something, you could have just said so.”

  In that moment, I realized that I didn’t hear the crashing sound of speakers coming down or the shouts I would have expected to accompany them.