Slow Burn Read online

“Now this is interesting.” He looked at her then back to the device. “Amy Winehouse, Ben Folds Five, Bob Dylan. Not bad, and I haven’t even made it past the Bs.”

  “I’m so glad you approve.”

  He ignored her sarcasm and continued to scroll. “You like Gilliam Welch? I played with her at a festival last summer.”

  “Seriously?” she said, taking her eyes off the road to look at him.

  “Abso-fucking-lutely. She was awesome. Dave Rawlings, her partner, is a master. I would love to tour with them.”

  “Hm. Too bad I wasn’t with you last year.”

  “You would have hated it. This tour’s way more civilized. We’re still operating on a shoe-string, but the album’s doing well and we’ve been able to upgrade to actual hotels. Last year it was either stay at some flea bag motel or on a friend’s couch.”

  He was looking at her iPod again. “Justin Timberlake, huh? All the ladies like him.”

  “Jealous?” she asked, arching a brow at him.

  He shrugged a shoulder. “Maybe a little. He’s definitely got that something.”

  She refrained from telling him so did he.

  “I’ve got something I think you’ll like,” he said, switching her iPod for his.

  A few seconds later a song started playing, one that sounded vaguely familiar.

  “I feel like I’ve heard it before, but I can’t place it.”

  “This is Waylon Jennings, honey. Where I come from, he’s practically a religion.”

  He flashed that smile again, the smile that shot straight to her stomach and down to her toes, stopping at every place in between. One of his front teeth was a little crooked, twisted so that one edge poked out a fraction beyond the other, and for some reason it struck her as a hundred times sexier than a perfect row of teeth.

  She breathed a sigh of relief when he put his sunglasses back on, but he couldn’t hide the rest of him. She could feel him studying her and resisted the urge to turn her head.

  “Are you from Vegas?” he asked.

  “No, Gulliver, Ohio. It’s a small town south of Columbus. I just moved to Las Vegas a week ago.”

  “What for?”

  She shrugged. “I needed a change and that’s where my best friend lives. I’ve been in Ohio my whole life. Plus my parents are a little…not stifling exactly, but they’re just so cautious, and I needed to get away from that.”

  “Huh, sounds a little like my parents.”

  “Most parents, really. I think it goes with the territory. It didn’t help that my dad had a big set-back just a few years into their marriage. I think it’s colored everything since.”

  “What happened?”

  “He was laid off during the air traffic controllers strike in eighty-one. None of them were allowed to work again in that field so my dad had to start all over when he was thirty. I think that made them both risk-averse, as we say in the biz. They always encouraged me to do something practical so that I’d never have to worry.”

  “Right, Stu said you were an accountant. You can’t more practical than that, can you? My parents would have loved if I’d done that. They wanted me to get out of our town as much as I did, but they were hoping I’d do it by going to college. My mom actually cried when I told her that was never going to happen.”

  “Because you wanted to play music?” she asked.

  “Yeah, but I was never one for school. I was too restless and bored.” He smiled at her. “Looks like we both ran away to be in a band.”

  “I guess I’m having my teenage rebellion a little late. Not that I’ve told my parents, mind you. It’s bad enough I moved to Vegas. My mother would die if she knew I was doing this.”

  “I’m surprised Stu hired you. You don’t seem like the type for this sort of gig.”

  “Why do you say that? Is it because I’m female?” she asked. She was only slightly annoyed. She wasn’t the type, that was pretty obvious, but she wanted to hear what he thought.

  “I guess that’s partly it, but only because you don’t get a lot of women doing what you’re doing.” He was serious now, the easy charm he’d been displaying since she met him falling away. “But it’s mostly that you seem…nice. You’re an upstanding citizen, not a semi-dirtbag like most people you meet on the road.”

  She couldn’t help the face she made. “You make me sound so boring.”

  “You’d rather be a dirtbag?”

  She huffed out a breath. “No, but I don’t want ‘up-standing citizen’ to be the first thing that comes to mind when people meet me.”

  “Trust me when I say it’s not.”

  She flushed, embarrassed and a little turned on by the implication behind what he said. He was attracted to her. She wasn’t so clueless that she couldn’t see that. But some guys came on to every woman they met. It didn’t mean anything. And even if he didn’t hit on everyone with a vagina, she wasn’t going there.

  “Touring’s more exciting than an office job,” he said, breaking into her thoughts, “but it’s not exactly glamorous. I do it because it’s part of the job, and in between the hours of driving and endless hotel rooms I get to go up on stage and play for people. It’s a crazy high and I pretty much live for it. But you won’t even get that.”

  “Are you trying to talk me out of this or something?” she asked.

  “I just want you to know what you’re getting yourself into.”

  “I know I want something totally different than what I’ve been doing. What would be the point in moving if I didn’t try something new?“

  “Fair enough.”

  Jesse pulled out a notebook and Beth turned her attention to the scenery. The side of the road was littered with scraps of twisted black rubber flung from truck tires, and everywhere she looked she saw dun-colored earth covered with some sort of scrubby bush.

  Driving through it she felt more than ever that she was worlds away from her former life as an Ohio accountant, a woman on the verge of getting married. The landscape proved that more than anything with its alien contours and coloring, its terrifying heat just outside the shell of the car. Nothing looked or sounded or smelled like she was used to.

  This was the adventure she was after, but as glad as she was to have made the leap, the sense of liberation she’d been waiting for wasn’t coming. If anything she felt more unsure of herself.

  What if the car overheated in the middle of this godforsaken place? There were hardly any cars out here. Already she’d gone miles without passing one. She had a couple of gallon jugs of emergency water stowed in the back seat, but even so, the thought of some unforeseen calamity worried at her.

  She glanced over at Jesse. He was writing, his tangled hair hiding his eyes from her. Even as still as he was he radiated energy, and it was an uncomfortable and seductive thing.

  Having him in the car felt dangerous, kind of like all that heat outside. She wasn’t sure how to handle any of it and she was starting to realize she’d jumped into something she wasn’t the slightest bit prepared for.

  Chapter Two

  Jesse looked up from his notebook to find Beth gripping the steering wheel with both hands, as if the car might suddenly bolt out of her control. They were in the middle of the Mojave desert with virtually no traffic, no cops in sight and she was going a steady sixty-five miles per hour like the good citizen she was. She nibbled on her bottom lip, frowning in concentration or worry.

  “You okay?”

  Her body jerked and she turned toward him. “What?”

  “You seem a little tense. I was just wondering if you’re okay. I can drive if you like.”

  “I’m fine, thanks,” she said, defensive.

  “Okay.” He paused, trying to work out how to say what he wanted to say without pissing her off. She was on edge, though, so probably it wouldn’t matter how careful he was. “It’s just that you could go a little faster.”

  “But the speed limit is sixty-five. I don’t want to get a ticket.”

  God she was adorable.
r />   “Trust me, you won’t. No one bothers with this stretch since it’s more or less a death trap. The sooner human beings get out of it, the better.”

  “Oh. Okay.”

  She sounded doubtful, and she was biting her lip again as she depressed the gas. They were now going a whopping sixty-eight miles per hour. He had to hide his smile.

  “Just out of curiosity, have you ever gotten a ticket?” he asked.

  “No, never.” She grimaced. “God, I’m boring.”

  “Maybe just more careful than you need to be.”

  Her mouth tightened and she only looked at him, clearly torn between her need to be good and her desire to break a rule. The speedometer crept up higher and her knuckles turned white as they car reached a cruising velocity of seventy-five.

  “There you go, honey. Now just set the cruise control, sit back and enjoy the ride.”

  She did as he suggested and sagged back against the seat as if relieved the car had taken over. She really was wound kind of tight. Maybe his role in her little adventure would be to help her loosen up. If so, he was definitely up for the job. Her good girl vibe was seriously turning him on.

  He’d thought she was pretty when he first saw her through her car window, but that was nothing compared to watching her unfold her long body from the car to stand at her full height. She was toned and curvy, like a pin-up girl, but with way more wariness in her wide hazel eyes.

  There was something pure and innocent about her. He’d bet anything she’d been a good girl even as a teenager, the kind who would have babysat during high school and never ever snooped through the parents’ drawers or had a boyfriend over after the kids went to sleep.

  His body tightened at the way her short, caramel colored hair revealed her neck, and he pictured himself kissing his way down her throat and into the delicate fretwork of her collarbone.

  Stu had warned them all away from her, but that didn’t mean shit. Everyone knew bringing a woman on tour was a hazard. He’d already pissed Will off and it was probably gonna happen again. But it was his band, and he could handle Will.

  “You hungry?” he asked, no longer content with the silence.

  She glanced at him then back at the road, still vigilant. “A little. Why, do you have something?”

  “I have a few morsels,” he said, his teasing voice back again. It was pretty much automatic when he was talking to a pretty woman.

  Rummaging around in his backpack, he came up with two unopened bags. “Barbecue potato chips, fried pork rinds or pretzels?”

  “Pork rinds?” she asked, clearly disgusted.

  “Nah, not really.”

  She gave him an exasperated look. “Pretzels, thanks.”

  He opened the bag and set it between them. “You want me to drive?” he asked.

  “No, I’m good. Maybe in an hour or so.”

  She popped a pretzel into her mouth and chewed. He watched her tanned throat work as she swallowed. Shit, the woman even looked hot eating pretzels.

  “So what’s the story with your tattoos?” she asked. “Do they mean something, or are they just supposed to be cool?”

  “You really want to know?” he asked.

  “Obviously.”

  “I got bit by a rattlesnake. Twice.”

  “No way.”

  “Yup. Once when I was nine and again when I was sixteen.”

  “So the tattoos are, what, symbols of your near-death experiences?”

  “As a matter of fact, yes, in a way, and I’d appreciate it if you didn’t sound so skeptical. It hurts my feelings.”

  She snorted. “I doubt that.”

  She had him there.

  “Rattlesnakes don’t tend to kill people,” he said, figuring it was only fair to admit that up front. “They can take out small animals and really young kids, but even at nine I was too big to die from it. Not that I knew that at the time. I thought I was done for. And I definitely could have lost part of my leg.”

  Beth turned down the radio. “Go on.”

  He had her now. This was a good story, so he’d give her the long version.

  “We lived south of San Antonio, bordering on the desert, and there are a few different kinds of rattlers in those parts. I’d seen them before from a distance. They like to live in old buildings, and one day me and my buddy were prowling around an abandoned shack a few miles from home. I pulled a board away from the wall and bam, I got bit.”

  “What did you do?”

  “Well, shit. I started to cry, of course. Told my friend Juan to go get my dad, then sat down on the ground, convinced I’d be dead before anyone came back for me. I saw my short life pass before my very eyes.”

  “So what happened?”

  “Well, I lived, obviously.”

  Beth swatted his arm. “Come on, give me all the details.”

  “I started to feel sick, like all dizzy and nauseous, and then my dad was there, skidding to a stop near me in our shitty car. Juan was staring out the window, and I could see tears streaming down his face, too. He must have run like hell, and it was a couple miles back to our house.” He was feeling oddly emotional remembering Juan’s face and his own fear. He rubbed the spot where the snake had bit his wrist. “We were an hour away from the hospital and my dad held my hand the whole time and talked to me, asked me questions to take my mind off my fear, told me and Juan stories about when he was a kid.”

  “He sounds like a great dad.”

  Jesse smiled even as his heart contracted thinking about him. “He is. I gave him plenty of trouble, but he’s a good man. Works way too hard with not too much to show for it.”

  She was quiet for a minute as if sensing where his mood had gone.

  “So what happened the second time?” Her voice was softer now, the teasing edge gone.

  “I was making out with a girl named Maria on a pile of hay in a friend’s barn and I felt something bite my ankle. I looked down and saw the snake slide away, but I knew from the first time that it wouldn’t kill me, and we were closer to the hospital than I’d been before, so I didn’t say anything.”

  “You got bit by a rattlesnake and you kept kissing a girl?”

  “Hell, yeah. I wasn’t sure I’d get another chance with Maria, and it was the first time I’d ever gotten to second base. I wasn’t going to let go of her breast voluntarily, I can tell you that.”

  He could feel Maria even now. Her warm skin, the way she squirmed under him and breathed his name…

  “Hello, Earth to Jesse.” Beth was smirking at him like she knew where his thoughts had drifted.

  “I did get a few more seconds of kissing out of it,” he continued, “but then Maria saw the snake and screamed. It was pretty clear the making-out was over, so I told her I’d been bit, got in the car and drove myself to the hospital. Maria told her girlfriends about it and within a day everyone thought I was a total stud. Maria came back for more, too.”

  “You’re shameless.”

  “Hey, I earned it.”

  Beth shook her head, but she was smiling.

  “So in answer to your question,” he went on, “the tattoos remind me that I can survive anything, no matter how scary it is.” He examined the tattoo on his left arm, remembering the bite of the needle, how it had felt to open up to the pain. “They remind me that most things seem scarier than they really are. But they also remind me not to be a fool. Just because something won’t kill you doesn’t mean you should do it.”

  “Huh. That’s quite a story,” she said, sliding him a look. “Lucky for you, you were bit by something cool. You could have ended up with rabid skunk tattoos.”

  “You’re a riot,” he said, swallowing his laugh. Thank God he had a pretty healthy ego. This woman was not to be trifled with. “Any near-death experiences for you?” he asked.

  “Not unless you count almost marrying my cheating ex-fiancé. That would have sucked the life right out of me.”

  Jesse looked at her, surprised by the turn the conversation had taken.
She didn’t look upset through, just distant and thoughtful.

  “You mean if you’d stayed with him, knowing he’d cheated on you?”

  “That was never an option. No, I mean even if everything had gone as planned, I’d have been unhappy. I was already frustrated. Marrying him was going to rule out all sorts of possibilities. I wanted to leave Ohio some day, and he refused to consider it. When I talked about going back to school he argued against it, even though I’d helped support him through med school. It was nothing awful, just sort of …I don’t know, like all the doors were slamming shut on me.” She sighed and gave a rueful smile. “I convinced myself I was over-thinking it, and that all couples make compromises. But looking back, I can see I was the only one compromising.”

  “I guess you dodged a bullet then,” he offered.

  She smiled and looked out the window, settling deeper into the seat. “I guess I did.”

  They drove for a while without talking, the music filling the air between them. He jotted down ideas for songs –words and phrases, chord progressions – but remained completely aware of her.

  He glanced up when Beth started to hum along with Shania Twain. She seemed lost in thought, maybe even unaware of what she was doing, and soon she was quietly singing along. He said nothing, afraid she’d stop if he called attention to it. He just let her sing them down the long stretch of highway, amazed at how fast the time flew with her.

  ***

  Beth let Jesse drive the last stretch and almost immediately regretted it. It was only her squeal of protest when he hit ninety miles an hour that made him slow down to a semi-civilized eighty. She tried to relax and let the motion of the car lull her as it usually did. It worked, sort of, but mostly she was too aware of Jesse. Jesse and those sinuous snake tattoos winding around his truly fabulous forearms. They would have overpowered most men, but Jesse had enough charisma that they served him rather than the other way around.

  Lucky little Maria, kissing Jesse in the hay. She was even commemorated in a way by the tattoos.

  It was ridiculous, but she was actually turned on by the idea that he’d kept on kissing that girl even after being bitten by a rattlesnake. Even the playful attention he’d paid her so far had her entire body humming. Imagine being with a man who thought kissing you was more important than anything, even toxic venom coursing through his body.