CHAPTERONE
Robert Lawson—Bubbato his friends, family, and about anyone else who’d known him for more than fifteen minutes—was not the kind of man who made women stop and stare when he walked down the street. He was tall and dark, with slightly wavy brown hair and warm brown eyes, but he’d missed the handsome part. He was…pleasant-looking. His was a face that made babies smile, and old women pat his cheek on their way out of church. He was a good old boy, with a good old boy’s face, and a good old boy’s grin that had gotten him out of more than his fair share of trouble growing up.
If someone had told him two weeks ago that women would be screaming his name when he walked onstage, and tracking him down after the show to offer to take him home/follow him home/give him a blow job right there in the backstage hallway, he would have laughed his ass off and called them a liar.
And then he would have apologized for the liar part.
Bubba had been known to let his mouth run now and then, but he was always sorry after. He had been raised by people who insisted family came first, friends came second, and kindness came always. Those were lessons he’d taken to heart. He was a kind man, a good man, and he knew better than to take advantage of a woman who had fallen for the lights and the music more than the person beneath the fancy new cowboy hat and designer jeans.
But damn, if the curvy little blonde who had been waiting by his truck when he came out of The Cadillac Club wasn’t making it hard to remember his manners.
“I’m sorry, ma’am,” he said, forcing himself to look away from the blonde’s very generous, verybarebreasts. “You’re a beautiful woman, but it’s late and I’m sure you’ve had something to drink, so…”
“I’m not drunk,” she said, swaying her shoulders coyly back and forth, setting those killer breasts to bobbing gently. “I know what I want. So let’s take this party back to your hotel room, cowboy.”
Bubba shook his head as he exhaled. “Probably not a good idea, though I appreciate the offer. Truly.”
Just tell her, “Thanks, but no thanks,” idiot. This isn’t time for your Sunday school manners.
But it was the first time a woman had ever greeted him by taking her shirt off, and he wasn’t sure how to handle himself—or the voice in his head that said he should reach out and take what was being freely offered. He hadn’t been with a woman in more months than he cared to admit, and he was already imagining how good it would feel to have this girl’s hot hands on his bare skin and those full breasts heavy in his palms. It had been so long since he’d touched a woman that way. So long, that for a crazy second he almost opened the door to the truck and told this complete stranger to climb on in.
He might have done it, and had his first one-night stand, if Marisol hadn’t emerged from the club’s back door at that moment, and shifted immediately into talent protection mode.
“Oh no, girl. No, no, no,” Marisol said, shaking her finger as she power-walked across the parking lot in her shiny black flats and skinny jeans, her long black hair bouncing around her shoulders. She had so much attitude packed into her slim frame that even her hair seemed to have a personality of its own. “Robert is not interested, sweetheart. He has to be up for a meeting at seven o’clock tomorrow morning, and he prefers women who keep their clothes on in public.”
The blonde’s eyes narrowed and her heavily lined lips parted, but Marisol was already barreling on.
“I want you to go home and think about where you misplaced your dignity,chica.” She clucked her tongue with concern as she grabbed the blonde’s tee shirt off the ground and tossed it at her chest. “You are better than this, girl! You deserve a man who will treat you like a princess. Look how pretty you are. So pretty! Way too good-looking to be this guy’s booty call.”
Marisol jabbed a thumb at Bubba and wrinkled her nose. “I mean, take a good look at that good old boy face. He’s not even that attractive. Stage presence is all smoke and mirrors, sugar. Take it from someone who learned the hard way.”
The blonde blinked in confusion, her gaze shifting back and forth between Marisol and Bubba. She looked ready to speak, but after a moment, her lips closed and she backed away with a dazed nod.
Either she’d gotten a good look at his face and agreed with Marisol’s less-than-flattering assessment, or she was simply too beer-buzzed at the end of a long night to keep up with Marisol’s rapid fire delivery. Whichever was to blame, moments later the girl and her tempting chest were gone, vanished to the front of The Cadillac Club, where the valet would slip her into a cab that would whisk her away into the Austin night.
Cabs. They still seemed foreign to Bubba. Growing up in a town as small as Lonesome Point, Texas, he hadn’t seen a cab until he went to see Willie Nelson play in Dallas when he was sixteen years old. He was a small town boy, more comfortable alone in the desert than prowling the concrete jungle, and he should be grateful he had a big city girl like Marisol looking out for him.
But right now, he wasn’t in a grateful frame of mind.
“That could have been handled better,” he said, gruffly.
Marisol rolled her eyes. “Whatever, it was handled.”
“Could you have been more condescending?” He glared down at her, wondering if he should have signed with the greasy guy with the tattoos and the handlebar moustache after all.
After his first industry open mic night, he’d taken one look into Marisol’s brown eyes—eyes that sparkled with energy and ambition—and decided she was the one for him. He was giving the music career one shot, and he wanted the fiercest ally he could get on his side. Marisol might not look fierce—she was tall, but slim, with delicate features and a sexy baby deer thing going on that club managers seemed to find irresistible—but Bubba had enough firecracker female friends in his life to know a live wire when he saw one.
Live wire, he could handle. He could handle being bossed around, told what time he needed to go to bed, what he should wear on stage, and which of the new songs he and Marisol were writing he should work into his set, but he wasn’t going to put up with being treated like a dumb country bumpkin.
“I’d prefer that doesn’t happen again,” he said, his voice hard.
“I’m sorry.” Marisol let out a surprised laugh. “Did you want me to put on the kid gloves for a girl who took her shirt off in a parking lot?”
“I wasn’t talking about the girl.” Bubba felt like a fool the moment the words were out of his mouth. He usually wouldn’t care if someone made fun of his face. He didn’t know why he let Marisol get to him. Maybe it was because she was supposed to be on his side, or because the past three weeks writing songs with her had been some of the best times of his life. Maybe it was because she felt like a friend, more than an employee, and Bubba wasn’t used to friends with edges as sharp as hers.
Or maybe it was simply because he couldn’t quit thinking about how much he’d like to fist his hand in her wild hair and kiss her until she couldn’t think of a single thing to say with that pretty mouth. He couldn’t stop imagining the way she’d respond to his kiss, his touch, and how damned beautiful she’d look laid out on his bed, naked as the day she was born.
He had a thing for his manager. A bad, bad thing. He wished he didn’t, but the truth was even the way she sighed and rolled her eyes at him made him a little thicker.