Slow Burn (Feverish #4) Page 8

  Hoping what she was doing wasn’t obvious, Sophie tilted her phone so that she could snap a couple of photos of the band while they got into position. The cameras weren’t set up yet, but the lights were in place, allowing her to snap some really great photos. Those would probably be worth serious money to a professional photographer, but perhaps to her they were priceless…because they were helping her career.

  Then, as she started looking through the pictures and they still hadn’t called her into place, she settled on what she thought was the most flattering picture of all four band members. She put a filter on it and then opened up Instagram, added the appropriate hashtags, and then wrote a tantalizing post: Hmm, wonder what I’m up to today? Then she closed the app, letting it do its thing.

  As she tucked her phone in her pocket, she hoped it wasn’t obvious. The waiting got boring after a while, even with her eyes on Brian as often as she thought she could get away with it unnoticed. Maybe she felt restless because there was a growing hunger in the pit of her belly, something she couldn’t explain to herself any more than she could someone else.

  It made no sense.

  Finally, after about an hour of getting everything to look just right, the director spoke to her, telling her what he expected. “At the beginning, I want you simply looking up at the stage, love. The shots we get of you now will merely be incidental, but I need you there in case we capture you in the frame. Later on, we’ll intentionally film you.” Considering Sophie as if she were a show horse, he tilted his head. “Have you ever been on film before?”

  “Other than modeling? No.”

  “That’s okay. You’ll do just fine.” Moving closer to the foot of the stage, he pointed toward the floor. “So, for now, I want you over here. I want you looking up at the band in general, but when you look at Brian, I want us to see that he’s your man. I want there to be no doubt in our minds.” As if contemplating the mysteries of the universe, he paused several seconds. “Are you the woman who was recently caught on camera arguing with Brian?”

  Sophie hoped her sigh wasn’t obvious, but she was already bored with that old news. “Yes, that was me.”

  “Do you think you can pull it off?”

  “Of course, I can. I’m a professional. I could probably do it in my sleep.”

  “Fantastic. That’s all I needed to hear.” Raising his voice, he said, “Places, everyone.”

  And so the process began. Through a sound system, one of the band’s songs began playing, and each member pretended they were onstage in front of a real live audience, from beating the drums to singing. Sophie got caught up in the spectacle, finding herself impressed that they would look realistic in the video. After going through the song twice, the director yelled, “Cut!” Then he approached the stage. While he wasn’t raising his voice, it was clear that he was a little miffed. “Guys, do you really play like this in concert? Where’s the energy, the enthusiasm?”

  Sam said, “Sorry, man, it’s kinda hard, because one of the things that happens with a live audience is we feed off their energy. They actually become part of what we’re doing, and so every show is different.”

  “Wait a minute,” Brian said, stepping closer to the edge of the stage. “I thought this fucking video was supposed to be our band playing for an audience of one—which means that naturally our energy would be different. Doesn’t it make sense that our playing would be more low key?” With a smirk, he added, “Or is that too high concept?”

  “Last I checked, Mr. Zimmer, I was hired to direct this video, and I’m telling you right now if you’re that fucking boring in the video, then your fans aren’t gonna want to watch it. They’ll watch Pink instead, because at least they’ll be entertained.”

  Sam said, “He’s not wrong, man. We know, other bands know in real life it’s not like that, and who gives a shit? This man obviously has a vision, and the sooner we nail it, the sooner we’ll get the hell out of Dodge.”

  Although glaring, Brian gave a short nod and took two steps back into place.

  And that was merely the beginning of a long, agonizing morning that flowed well into the afternoon without pause. Sophie just kept reminding herself of how her bank account was growing. After all, that was why she was here, right?

  That was the only reason. So why the hell couldn’t she keep her eyes off the bassist?

  Chapter Nine

  Finally, they took a well-deserved break. Good thing, because not only Brian but all the guys were feeling pretty grouchy, not to mention hungry and irritated. The director might’ve been a big deal in Hollywood, but he was far too anal, so they kept reshooting the same shit over and over and fucking over. It was ridiculous.

  Maddening even.

  But Mark or somebody had planned for lunch, because a catering company brought salads and sandwiches, not just for the band but for the whole crew. The director reluctantly told everyone to break for half an hour, and everyone descended on the long table of food before finding a place to sit down. Needless to say, the band sat together. After a bit, Brian started looking around for Sophie, thinking maybe he should try to make nice. After all, the woman was there to make them look good. No matter what he thought about her personally, she could potentially make or break this video. And with as much money as they were probably spending on it, he wanted it to work. So he could be nice for the next twenty-four hours. It wouldn’t kill him. He’d done it before, and he could do it again.

  But as he looked around the cavernous room, she was nowhere to be found. He almost asked Mark if he knew where she’d gone off to, but he knew that might give away how his feelings were changing for this enigmatic and infuriating woman.

  That didn’t stop him from continuing to look around for her, though, when he thought no one would catch him. Goddammit. He felt like he was in high school again, the way he was acting. Glancing around furtively, actually giving a shit what other people thought. It was dumb. He was a fucking famous rock star millionaire, for fuck’s sake, and he was worried about what the people here thought was in his head?

  Dumb.

  “Man, where’s your head?” Clay asked, snapping his fingers. “Earth to Brian. Anybody home?”

  Shit. He’d been caught vacationing in his own little world, easily spotted when he thought he was being so clever.

  Hoping he was pulling off the innocent act, he raised his eyebrows and looked from Clay’s fingers to his eyes before speaking. “What? Can’t a guy tune out for a minute without getting the third degree?”

  “Nice try, Bri. We’ve been talking about you for the last three minutes and you’ve obviously been somewhere else. Cough it up.”

  Fortunately, Brian had been a quick thinker since childhood. Usually, he saved that talent for delivering zingers and cracking jokes to keep people laughing and off guard, and it had served him well all these years. The question was if he could use that skill successfully in other ways. “Don’t you guys think after being on the road with you for a couple months already and then being forced to act in this shitty video—in the lead role, no less—that I sometimes just need to tune you all out for five fucking minutes?” Lowering his voice, he said directly to Clay, “Are you that needy for my attention? Do you need someone else’s adoration while Emily’s out shopping and you’re stuck here pretending to have fun?”

  “Goddamn. Who pissed in your cornflakes, Zimmer?”

  Sam set his sandwich down on the wrapper. “Guys, we’re all in this together, even if we’re getting on each other’s nerves. But at least if we’re getting along, it’ll make this whole process a little bit easier.” Shifting his eyes to Brian, he said, “Whether we like it or not. We need you on board, man.”

  “It wasn’t my idea to be the love interest here. That’s your job, Sam, not mine, and it always has been. If I wanted to be a front man, I’d be in a different band. But I happen to like the roles we play—and sometimes it’s nice being the boring bassist.”

  Jesus. Where the hell had that come from? Did he
really feel that way? As he looked at his bandmates eyeing him as if he’d lost his mind, he realized that, to a degree, what he’d just said was absolutely the truth. Sometimes, it really was what he thought and how he felt. While he didn’t mind the spotlight, he often preferred somedays. And he definitely did not want it in a stupid make-believe video.

  But that was, perhaps, a conversation for another day.

  “Look, man, I didn’t ask for this concept any more than you did. I’m not sorry that I wrote those lyrics—but I didn’t ask for this song to be a single, and I didn’t ask for them to make it into a video. But the people in charge think the song will get some play, especially if we make a video—so this is a no-brainer. You can either suck it up, or you can fight the whole way through. If you want to keep being a sarcastic smart ass, making us all miserable—which we already are, by the way—then go ahead.” Sam shook his head. “Scratch that. I really am sorry. None of us are having a good time here today, but some of us actually wanted this time to be home. It wasn’t my idea or Clay’s or Dane’s to do this video, so I’m sorry that you’re stepping outside your comfort zone.”

  By this point, Brian felt like a real asshole, so he held up his hand, shaking his head.

  “They say it’s good for the soul.” With a grin, Sam picked up his sandwich and took a bite.

  Brian looked at these three men, his brothers from other mothers, and he knew Sam was right. Add to it, if he was being this big a pain in the ass this early on in the tour, they would all be at each other’s throats halfway through. Looking back over the years, he knew each one of them had taken one for the team at one time or another. Brian himself had back in the day when he’d switched from drums to bass—and he do it again. They were doing what they loved, playing music for appreciative fans, so he was going to do his best to take Sam’s advice and suck it up. “All right, all right. But, for the love of God, can you at least just let me go to my happy place while we’re eating lunch? That’s all I ask.”

  Dane said, “Of course, we can.”

  Sam and Clay nodded their heads in agreement and Brian grinned back—and he realized his ruse had worked. They had no fucking idea that he was starting to fall hard for the model.

  He did, though, and it begged the question: What the hell was wrong with him?

  * * *

  During lunch, Sophie had taken a walk around the neighborhood but had walked quickly back to the warehouse when she realized maybe this wasn’t the safest section of L.A. Most times, she skipped lunch. It was a good tactic to help keep the weight off, because if she gained so much as two pounds, there were certain things she wouldn’t be able to fit in and so she was particular about the foods she ate. Walking helped keep her mind off food.

  At least there had been salads delivered for lunch, but the lettuce had definitely seen better days. She really wasn’t hungry. Add to it, she was still feeling pretty uncomfortable with that crowd. The only person there she really knew—and even that was debatable—was Mark, and that man seemed a bit creepy. He was nice enough, so maybe creepy was too strong a word. Interested was more accurate, but the feeling wasn’t mutual, so she didn’t want to encourage interaction. She also didn’t think it would be a good idea to be friendly with any of the other guys in the band in case they had possessive girlfriends—and she definitely didn’t want to hang with the film crew.

  And, of course, Brian wanted nothing to do with her—and the feeling was mostly mutual—so removing herself from the scene for now was the best idea.

  When she got back to the warehouse, she stayed outside near the small parking lot and pulled out her phone. Once again, her Instagram post had blown up, and there were dozens of comments. She wasn’t surprised when a few of them figured out who the band in question was. Any real fan would have known instantly, because the guys in Last Five Seconds were recognizable.

  While she was questioning herself, wondering if maybe she shouldn’t have posted that picture, she made her way back inside. In less than five minutes, everyone was in position again, but this time, the director was giving her his full attention.

  “We’re going to start moving into the story now, so we’re going to have a camera pretty much in your face, Sophie. That means now I want you acting your heart out. Make us believe Brian is your man, the only man for you. He consumes your every thought. You would die for him. You’re feeling weak just looking at him up on the stage.” Although Sophie tried to keep her expression neutral, the director paused, seeming to question himself, but then he nodded. “Do you think you can do that?”

  Before answering, Sophie conjured up an image of a pile of money, trying to think what a stack of hundreds of one-dollar bills might look like piled on her kitchen table. Four digits. “I sure do.”

  “Great. Then let’s get started.”

  And she did. She acted her little heart out and, after an hour or so, she was surprised about one thing. She’d never liked the kind of music Last Five Seconds created and yet, after watching them perform the song over and over and over, it was clear to her that this really was art in its own way. Each man was expressing himself through his instrument and together they were more than the sum of their parts. While she’d never admit it out loud, that afternoon she grew to have an appreciation for what they were doing. More than that, she found that most of the time, she was able to pull off the look the director wanted—one of being infatuated with the band’s bassist.

  In between takes, though, it was a whole other story. She made sure she glared at Brian at least once every single time they were paused, hoping to remind him how very much she despised the man.

  It was obvious that there was no love lost from him, either. The man was giving glares as good as he was taking. The unfortunate side effect was that the more he did that, the harder it was to get him out of her head, because there he lived and in the most primitive of ways.

  No longer could she deny to herself how very much she wanted this man.

  She had it bad.

  Finally, though, she was able to drop the charade, because the director called it a night. “I want to see you all here bright and early—and I don’t care if you’re wearing something different.”

  Mark said, “I’ll get them all back here by eight.”

  “Eight?” Clay asked. “I don’t do shit till nine.”

  “If it makes you feel any better, it’ll be nine in Denver when it’s eight here.”

  “It doesn’t make me feel better.”

  “If we’re lucky,” the director said, “we’ll be done early tomorrow. I want to see what we’ve shot so far before I decide exactly what we’ll shoot and in what order tomorrow.”

  While she hadn’t had the sense that Mark always did what was best for the band, he changed her mind with his next words. “I respect your vision, Mr. Hahn, but we must be done tomorrow night, even if it means we work late. The band has a show in Seattle the next day, so you’ll have to work with what you have between today and tomorrow.”

  The guys looked happy with that; the director, not so much.

  And Sophie comforted herself with the fact that she was halfway done with this gig, no matter what.

  Chapter Ten

  “Sophie will be joining us for dinner this evening,” Mark said as they walked out of the building into the warm, slightly humid evening air. “Since we’ll be working together, we might as well get to know each other better, and what better way than over a meal?”

  Brian didn’t say a word, but he could tell she wasn’t happy. He’d been as calm and kind and pleasant as possible throughout the day, but there was only so much a guy could do. If his bandmates had been paying any attention to the events of the day (which they hadn’t), they would have noticed that there was no love lost between the two of them. And, Brian guessed, she probably didn’t want to go to dinner with them, either, but he decided he would let her be the bad guy in this case because he was tired of being that particular asshole.

  But when they got read
y to leave, she got in the limo with them, and she was all smiles. Mark kept the conversation going, talking about the weather in L.A., the dip the stock market had taken that day, and even social media trends, for God’s sake—nothing anybody in the limo other than Mark could give two shits about, but their manager didn’t notice. That was probably for the best. Brian supposed the man’s job was in part to help everybody get along, and so maybe talking about stupid things so that no one else felt the need to say a word was a good skill.

  After about a half an hour, the limo dropped them off at a pizza joint. When they got out, their nostrils were assaulted by the smells of garlic and other Italian aromas, and Brian’s mouth started to water as he realized he was way hungrier than he’d thought, probably because until now he’d been pretty distracted. When they got out of the limo, Brian caught the look on Sophie’s face. Maybe Mark hadn’t picked up on it, but the girl wasn’t eating. She had a nice figure without appearing to be bony—but was it possible that maybe she had an eating disorder and rarely consumed food? Brian had no way of knowing but, now that the idea had popped into his head, he was going to keep an eye on her.

  Not that it was any of his damn business.

  As they walked in and were greeted warmly, it was comforting to know that the restaurant had been expecting them. The whole lot of them had barely made it through the doors when the waitress began walking them toward the back to the big table. The first words out of her mouth were “What can I get you all to drink?” Again, Brian noticed Sophie’s avoidance of calories when she ordered a glass of water with a slice of lemon.

  The guys, however, decided to share a pitcher of beer, maybe two. Although they ordered a couple of large pies, Sophie spoke quietly with the waitress, requesting something different, Brian guessed. At this point, he was hoping she was planning to eat something substantial, because otherwise he was going to worry about her.