Unsteady Rhythm (House of Archer Book 2)

  The first thought that popped into his head, For the sex, didn’t exactly flatter him. As much as he liked Lily, he wasn’t about to admit that. Just realizing it himself was enough of a kick in the ass.

  “I think you already know the answer to your own question,” Lily said, patting his hand in understanding. “Just some friendly advice if you decide to break things off. Do it while we’re in L.A. It would be the kinder thing to do since she’ll be home.”

  He hadn’t even thought about that. All of them lived in L.A., so they were all returning home for the next nine days. Was Nikki thinking that she’d come over to his place? He wasn’t at all interested in that. His place was his sanctuary. He and Nikki hadn’t once discussed it.

  He supposed that said a lot.

  Lily climbed off her stool as Nikki returned. “Back into the trenches,” she said.

  “Good luck,” Keith told her as she smiled and walked off.

  “What were you two talking about?” Nikki asked as she hopped up onto the chair Lily had just vacated.

  He recognized the telltale glazed look in her eyes all too well. She wasn’t exactly discreet with her “secret” pot breaks. Between that and all of the alcohol she was ingesting, she was bound to pass out the second they got onto the bus to finish the drive home.

  When all he experienced was relief over that thought, he figured Lily was probably right.

  “Nothing much,” Keith replied.

  “Was she pissed about all of the flirting Archer’s doing over there? He isn’t being very subtle.”

  Keith saw Archer flick a glance at Lily as she walked past him to talk to Corey Gauthier from Brewer Street. “Nope.”

  “Oh.” Nikki sounded as though she had expected another answer. “Well, I’m happy that you’re here with me rather than off with a group of other women.” She leaned closer to him and took his earlobe between her teeth. “I’ve been thinking all night about the things I plan to do to you later.”

  Her hand slid down to his upper thigh just as his gaze moved over to the table where Sydney was sitting by herself. She was staring at Nikki. Something about that made him uncomfortable. He wasn’t usually one for PDA anyway, especially at events like this.

  He reached down and moved Nikki’s hand off his lap. She gave him a surprised look, smiling and twining her fingers with his. She had mistaken his effort to move her hand as a romantic gesture.

  Sydney’s gaze, somehow mournful, moved to his. In that moment, he felt no lingering anger towards her. There was just a fleeting, intense connection that he didn’t understand.

  Just as quickly as it happened, it ended.

  She gave him an embarrassed smile and lifted her hand in an awkward wave. Before he could respond, Malcolm O’Dell stopped next to her table, drawing her attention.

  Keith frowned. He didn’t like the way O’Dell leaned close to Sydney as he talked to her. He disliked Sydney’s answering smile even more. Why did they look so friendly? What could they possibly have to say to each other?

  “What’s wrong?” Nikki asked.

  He shifted his gaze back to her. “Nothing.”

  “If you’re upset that I was talking to Mal earlier, it was nothing.”

  Had she been talking to O’Dell? He couldn’t remember.

  “I’m not upset,” he said. “I was just looking around to see what everyone’s up to.”

  “Ah. Who cares?”

  She started to lean forward with the obvious intent to kiss him.

  “Hey, Keith, can I get your autograph?”

  Keith looked over at the female fan holding a T-shirt and Sharpie and put on his professional smile. “Sure.”

  The serendipitous arrival of the fan gave him an excuse to release Nikki’s hand. She didn’t look happy about it, nor was she smiling throughout the few minutes he spent chatting with the fan. Instead, she leaned possessively over his shoulder.

  He found that odd. Nikki was usually more understanding when it came to his band obligations.

  He was actually rather anxious to get the fan to move on himself. Something about the interaction between Sydney and O’Dell bothered him. He knew she wasn’t very experienced when it came to guys. Though it wasn’t something they had discussed, it wasn’t exactly hard to deduce. Unless O’Dell had moved on since the fan arrived at his table, Keith thought he might need to stage an intervention.

  But when he looked up again, Sydney and O’Dell were gone.

  Chapter Nine

  Sydney desperately wished that she could leave the Duet party. If they weren’t all leaving for L.A. immediately afterward, she would have. She was out of her element among the hardcore fans and the rock stars they idolized.

  She also felt sadly alone.

  Lily was off making the rounds with the fans and the media, and Aria was dancing with Xander and anyone else who felt up to it. Sydney wasn’t comfortable on the dance floor and she didn’t drink alcohol. The truth was that she always felt out of place at these things. Up until now, Aria or Lily had kept her company.

  Would this now become the norm? she wondered as she sat by herself at a table with a glass of Diet Coke. If so, staying on the tour just didn’t make a lot of sense.

  She’d given it a couple of weeks now. She had been to places she’d never been before, one of her goals when agreeing to go on the tour. She had met new people, done new things, and even appeared in a scene of the House of Archer trailer. Of course, considering her parents had brought that up on her last call with them and they had been less than happy about it, perhaps that wasn’t such a good thing.

  The main reason she had come on the tour was to be a source of support to Lily, who now seemed fine with Archer. Aria would also continue on the tour, so she could always offer Lily a shoulder if needed.

  Would Sydney even be missed?

  She watched Lily as she crossed the room and walked over to Keith’s corner table. Seeing him, Sydney thought of the tutoring lessons they’d had together. She supposed those could either be seen as a possible reason to stay on the tour since she was helping Keith, or another reason to leave since every lesson had her heart getting more and more involved.

  Despite his initial resistance to working with her, Keith had been surprisingly responsive to their first three lessons. They had reviewed the House of Archer ideas Lily sent everyone and Sydney had typed up an e-mail to Lily with Keith’s responses, using it as another lesson.

  She had asked him how he had previously managed his e-mail with his reading issues. He confessed that he used a text-to-speech program to interpret for him. He did the same thing with texts, though everyone who knew him knew he hated texting, so they didn’t usually even try.

  It was actually pretty clever. Sydney could see how he’d gotten by this long without learning how to read.

  Of course, she’d had to “pay” for that information from Keith by sharing more about herself. Their lessons had become something of a give and take. She didn’t mind. It was nice to get to know more about him and pretend that he actually cared about the things she shared, rather than him just wanting to feel like he had the upper-hand in their odd student-teacher relationship.

  She looked away when Nikki returned to Keith’s table. She tried to catch Lily’s attention, hoping she was about to head her way, but Lily walked over to the Brewer Street table instead. Sydney watched her pull out her phone to capture some footage for social media.

  After another minute or two of wrestling with herself, Sydney looked again at Keith’s table. She saw Nikki nibbling on Keith’s ear and sliding her hand scandalously low in his lap.

  Her heart gave a painful lurch. She couldn’t stand the way watching the two of them together made her feel. She knew it was terribly sinful to lust after a man in a committed relationship, which made the deepest feelings of her heart all the more difficult to bear.

  Maybe she could tutor Keith by video so she didn’t have to endure this anymore. There was no way she could last another month-plus withou
t it destroying her.

  His eyes moved to her as though he heard the thought. She saw his scowl. It was an expression he often wore when he looked at her. She had reasoned out that it was because he considered her a reminder of what he considered his shortcomings.

  Embarrassed about having been caught staring at him and Nikki, she smiled weakly and lifted a hand in a pathetic form of greeting. It was almost a relief when Malcolm O’Dell approached the table and broke her line of sight with Keith.

  “How’ve you been, Syd?” he asked, leaning closer so she could hear him over the loud song playing over the speakers.

  She instinctively leaned away from him, having been trained to respect personal space during her years as a teacher of children with special needs. This wasn’t the first time Mal had spoken to her at one of these parties. He’d asked her to dance and offered to get her drinks multiple times. She had politely turned him down. Having learned from that, he had moved on from those kinds of advances to just chatting with her.

  She got the impression that he didn’t enjoy these events any more than she did. He was a polite and good-looking guy with his nice smile, streaky brown hair, and dark brown eyes, so it wasn’t a hardship to converse with him.

  “I’m all right,” she replied.

  “You sure? You look a little lonely considering you’re surrounded by all of these people.”

  She had to lean closer to hear him. “I think I’m just ready to get home.”

  “What?”

  She repeated herself.

  “Right on,” he said. “Hey, did you...”

  The rest of his question was garbled. She shook her head, tapping her ear.

  “Want to step outside to talk?” he said loudly near her ear.

  She hesitated. Her gaze slipped to the table where she saw Nikki hanging over Keith’s shoulder while he signed an autograph. The twinge in her chest had her nodding at Mal.

  Anything to escape the pain.

  They walked to a side door and stepped into the hallway leading to the green rooms. The sound was mercifully dampened. Sydney was so relieved to be away from Keith and Nikki that she decided to spend the rest of the party in The Void’s green room.

  First she would finish her conversation with Mal. She couldn’t just abandon him after he invited her out there.

  “I was asking if you finished that book you mentioned,” Mal said, leaning against the wall beside her. “The thriller by Jeremy Grant?”

  “Oh, yes,” she said, smiling that he had remembered. “I devoured it. I’m hoping that they have the sequel at our local library.”

  “You go to the library, too?” he asked with interest. “They recently renovated the one by me.”

  “Yeah? Where do you live?”

  “I room with Vic in West L.A. We’re close to the regional public library there.”

  They chatted a little longer about the libraries and some of the books they’d read. Sydney appreciated being able to converse with someone who shared a common interest. After a few minutes, Mal glanced at his watch.

  “Do you need to get back?” she asked him. “It’s fine.”

  “Nah. I was just checking to see how much longer this whole shindig is going to last,” he said with a grin. “I just finished this excellent book by L. G. King and I’m looking forward to digging into the sequel.”

  Her mood brightened. “Do you mean The Stately Maze?”

  “Yeah. Have you read it?”

  “No, but I’ve been meaning to. You enjoyed it?”

  “It’s excellent. Hey, I’ve got the paperback with me. I finished it on the drive in. Do you want to borrow it?”

  “Sure,” she said.

  “Cool. It’s in the green room. Come on.”

  She followed him as he started in the direction of the green rooms. “King’s writing is just amazing,” she said. “Did you read One Last Winter?”

  “Not yet.”

  “You really have to check it out.”

  “I will.”

  They reached the green room. Mal opened the door and walked in first. Sydney followed him. Her gaze instinctively moved around the room as she stepped over the threshold.

  She froze. Right there less than ten feet from her, Vic Crawford was getting an enthusiastic blowjob by a blonde with no top on.

  Sydney flushed and averted her eyes. She tried to tell herself to leave. Her limbs wouldn’t cooperate. Her heart started pounding uncomfortably fast. Her hand felt damp on the doorknob. She could hear her own breath in her ears.

  Turning and seeing her, Mal chuckled and walked back over to her. “Come on, Syd,” he said, glancing over at Vic and the blonde, who continued as though they didn’t notice the two newcomers. “You’ve been on tour with The Void for a couple weeks now. You can’t tell me you’re not used to this kind of thing by now.”

  He reached for her arm and grasped her wrist, giving her a little tug. She tried to speak only to find that her throat had closed.

  She didn’t understand her own reaction. She was twenty-four years old, for heaven’s sake. It wasn’t like she had never seen anything like this before.

  She just absolutely did not want to go into that green room.

  Her hand tightened on the doorknob. It was damp enough that when Mal pulled her again with more force, the knob slipped from her fingers.

  “N-no,” she managed to croak, yanking her arm in an attempt to free it.

  A hand slammed against the door before it closed. Keith shoved it back open. He registered everything in one glance. His eyes settled on Mal.

  “You’ll want to take your hand off of her before I break your fucking fingers,” he said.

  Whatever Mal saw on his face had him releasing Sydney. She stumbled back, rubbing her wrist as she came up hard against Keith. Keith took her by the shoulders and pushed her behind him.

  “So that’s how it is?” Mal said.

  Keith didn’t even reply, merely staring at Mal as he followed Sydney out into the hallway and pulled the door closed with a hard snap. Although Keith looked furious, Sydney found her outrageous fear starting to ease as he guided her with a hand on her back to The Void’s green room two doors down.

  She could finally swallow again. Her knees felt like they had melted though. She wasn’t sure how she made it all the way into the room.

  When they were alone, Keith whirled her around by her shoulders. What were you thinking? he signed.

  Vaguely, she realized he was signing because he was wearing a House of Archer microphone. She lifted her hands to reply. They shook like dry autumn leaves in a brisk wind. The adrenaline that had seized her was running its course.

  His severe expression eased when he saw how distressed she was. Taking both of her hands, he led her to the nearby loveseat and sat beside her. He didn’t object when she pressed herself against his side.

  They didn’t say anything until her shaking had eased. At that point she was left with just burning humiliation.

  Man, she must have looked like an idiot.

  She started to sign, I’m sor—

  Keith grabbed her hands, frowning fiercely.

  She understood. He didn’t want her to apologize. She lowered her gaze and sighed, taking her hands back.

  Thank you, she signed. I was just going to borrow a book that I wanted to read. I’m glad you happened to be coming by right then.

  He showed no reaction to that. Better now?

  She nodded, trying not to look as miserable as she felt. I’m just going to hang out here until it’s time to leave.

  He got to his feet. She figured he was going to head back to the party. Nikki had to be wondering where he’d gone.

  Instead, he walked over to one of the tables in the room and grabbed a deck of cards.

  “You play Poker?” he asked out loud.

  Smiling slowly, she replied, “No...but I can be just as good a student as I am a teacher.”

  “I’ll be the judge of that.”

  Chapter Ten
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  Lily stayed that night with Dane at his house in Beverly Hills. It was a place that never failed to charm her and make her feel at home.

  She still remembered helping him hunt for it when he decided it was time to move out of his parents’ house at the age of nineteen. It was a sprawling mid-century modern ranch home located less than ten miles from the music and television studios where Dane spent so much time. The first impression of it had underwhelmed him, which was fairly understandable since it had been in a sad state of disrepair.

  Lily, however, had fallen in love with it on the spot.

  The security gate and tall privacy hedges kept it largely out of public view, giving the illusion of privacy in a city that afforded very little of it. The full acre of grounds, complete with a heated pool and spa, had been untended, but she had seen enough to know they had amazing potential. There were many elements inside the house that told her the same, from the soaring twelve-foot ceilings to the glorious master suite. The walnut-paneled library had completely stolen her heart.

  What had finally sold Dane on the property were the incredible city and canyon views from the back of the house. Lily had helped paint the picture of opening up the back walls and putting in floor-to-ceiling pivoting windows and sliding glass doors leading out to an outdoor entertainment space, features that Dane had since implemented. The entire house had been remodeled and updated, largely with Lily’s suggestions. In some ways, it felt more like home to her than anywhere she had ever lived.

  Dane surprised her when she woke up on their first morning back in L.A. He let her sleep in and then informed her that they were having an unplugged day. He had taken their phones and her laptop and sent them off with Trey. He had also gotten the House of Archer producers to give them that single day before they invaded with the cameras and microphones they wanted to put in several areas of the house. His housekeeper, Barbara, had stocked the fridge with meals and snacks they could heat and eat whenever they wanted.

  They spent the day together, completely alone and focused only on each other for the first time since they reunited at Magellan’s before the tour started. It was a relaxing, idyllic day. They took a swim in the pool, watched a couple of old movies, and made love whenever and wherever they wanted.