Assure Her (Assured Distraction Book 1) (3 page)

The black-haired woman sitting behind the reception desk left Chandler trying not to gawk at the striking beauty. Her heavily-tatted 50’s pinup girl-look was working for her, all the way down to her vintage style polka-dot dress. Deep red lips turned up in an infectious smile that, set against her lily-white skin, lit-up the room like a thousand-watt light bulb. Chandler, half-stunned, couldn’t help but return it as she wondered if the girl’s skin ever saw the light of day in Austin. This city was hot as hell, like over one-hundred-degrees-hot on a daily basis in the summer. Covering up wasn’t an option, so Chandler was sure this girl didn’t venture outdoors in daylight.

“You look a little lost,” Red Lips offered.

“Yeah, I don’t think I am. I’m here to audition with Assured Distraction.”

The look Chandler received was almost comical as the receptionist’s dark eyes grew bigger then roamed down Chandler’s body and back up before they landed squarely back on her face. She really was a Betty, personified.

“Yeah, right. Did someone actually line-up this audition, or did you read they might be looking for someone?” Betty’s body language made plain that the first impression Chandler was going for when she’d chosen her clothes for the audition may have missed the mark.

Chandler had auditioned so many times in her life she could do it blindfolded and blow the audience away every time. Her all-black outfit, from starched blouse and knee-length skirt, to her charcoal hair pulled back into a tight, neat bun had been perfect for all of her auditions before. She wore just a little mascara so that her aqua-blue eyes stood out and some light pink lip gloss so her lips wouldn’t be dry. When she got nervous, she tended to run her tongue over her lips often and that could be distracting during an audition.

“So, let me check-in with a few people before I send you back to the wolves. Have a seat over there, please.” She pointed to the bank of chairs in the corner of the lobby.

“The wolves?”

“Yeah, ‘cause they are going to eat you for lunch.” Betty busied herself with dialing a few numbers and having some hushed conversations behind the high-top counter of her desk, her back turned to Chandler. Obviously, she had no intention of letting Chandler hear a single word of her conversations, which was fine with Chandler. She was nervous enough, for some reason. Adding Betty’s comments to her frantic brain right now was not going to help.

Rounding her desk, the receptionist approached Chandler and stuck her hand out. “Hey, I’m Peri. I think I might have been a little offensive with my comments earlier.”

Chandler looked at her and shook her head, a little surprised at the about-face this lady made in a matter of minutes.

“I really didn’t mean to offend. It’s just that AD has been holding auditions for over a week now, and no one of your uh, type...no wrong word...no one of your caliber, has shown up. Did that sound any better? No, maybe not...sorry. I’m just trying to say that you look, so, uh... formal, for the kind of music that AD plays. I’m sure you are awesome, though, or they wouldn’t let you in the door. Wow, that sounded even worse. OK, I’m just going to shut up and tell you where to go...no, I mean where to take your guitar and... Shit, I am so not doing a good job of this today. Look, take your guitar down to the last door on the left. And just so you know, I was told fabulous things about you on the phone, and I am so sorry if I came across as rude. You just really caught me off guard this morning.”

“No problem, Peri.” She didn’t know how to respond to all the girl had just spewed from those red lips so quickly. Picking up her Strat, Chandler made her way to the door Peri had indicated and stopped for a deep breath to mentally prepare herself. She had no clue what she was going to find waiting for her on the other side of that door.

Turned out, it was nothing. She was the only person in the room.

Chandler breathed a sigh of relief. Now she could get her shit together and be ready for them to come to her. The keyboard in the room was the same one she played often in the productions at school. She preferred the full sound the piano made but she could rock this keyboard like no other, so she felt comforted and a surge of confidence shot through her.

She sat down on the bench in front of it, and allowed herself a minute to just breathe and think. She sometimes thought it was sort of like doing yoga. She would sit at the keyboard, close her eyes, center herself, breathe deeply and then do what was second nature to her: play the beautiful sounds that were in her mind and soul, the way she had since she was a small child, and when she just played for her own pleasure and enjoyment. And she reached out and touched the keys without opening her eyes.

After running through a few of her favorite pieces and finishing with one of the songs that AD sometimes closed their shows with before the encore, she stopped. She hadn’t opened her eyes the entire time. She didn’t need to; she felt the music rather than played it.

Loud claps and wolf calls from behind her shocked her out of her music coma. She turned slowly and found four band members talking all at once with praises for the music she produced from memory. Chandler didn’t know how to respond. Peri said the wolves were going to have her for lunch, but she didn’t think that was a literal statement and these particular wolves took her breath away.

“Damn dude, that was fan-fucking-tastic,” KeeMac was the first to speak up. “Do you know all of our songs like that? Can you make them all sound that way?” He made his way over to her in what seemed like one giant leap which made her lean as far back as she could get without falling off the bench. His size alone was enough to send her running but his looks made her want to melt off the end of her seat in a puddle of boneless goo.

“Yeah, that’s the fucking sound we’ve been missing since dumb ass Jacoby got himself laid-up,” Carter added, leaning in behind KeeMac with a smile that took her breath away. They were both beautiful. She didn’t have time to linger on the gorgeous faces before another body entered her personal space.

“Hey, I’m Ryan,” said the friendliest looking guy in the bunch. He had a bit of Texas twang in his accent, from East Texas maybe? “I damn sure hope you’re Chandler, because I really don’t wanna to have to audition another fucking person.” Ryan stuck his hand out to her for a get-acquainted handshake.

“
Do. Not. Drool.”
Was the only thing that came to mind as her gaze travelled up the muscular arm to his face. The long, dark hair and ultra-green eyes staring at her, hints of ink stuck out from under his t-shirt sleeves, and one good look at this fine specimen of man sent a shot of lust-fueled adrenaline straight through her. Without risking an obvious full-body scan, she could tell he was over six-foot by the way she had to look up at him. No musician she had ever been this close to had ever sent her body into a rush of heat like this.

Bobbing her head up and down in response was about all she could manage. She had been around hundreds of musicians, but this room, full of gorgeous testosterone-charged pillars of masculinity all shouting at once, had her brain on a temporary hiatus. At least the part that connected to her vocal chords.

“So, I’m Gunner, the best bad ass drummer AD has ever had.” He broke the stunned silence in Chandler’s head when he stuck out huge hands connected to arms that looked like guns Dave Grohl would be jealous of.

Finding her voice finally, she stood up. “Aren’t you the only drummer AD has ever had?” She knew in her mind that sentence had to sound so lame but it was all she could get out of her mouth.

Carter snorts in laughter. “Exactly, jackass! Frickin’ drummers... I’m Carter, by the way. Bass, the
real
talent of the rhythm section. Hey, do you know what you call a drummer that just broke up with his girlfriend?”

Chandler smirks at him, a little baffled that he seemed to be breaking into a joke in the middle of introductions. “No, what?”

“Homeless,” and then he erupts in a fit of hysterics as he punches the perturbed drummer in the arm and steps away, clutching his side and slapping his thigh.

“Oh, I’m sorry. Did you just break up with your girlfriend?” she asks him in earnest, sympathy crossing her face as she looks back at the hurt on Gunner’s face.

His eyebrow raises and he cocks his head to the side a little as he steps forward to shake her hand. “Maybe, are you offering to console a broken-hearted man in his time of need?” She placed her hand in his to shake but when he took her hand in his massive paws, he didn’t shake it or let go. He turned her hand over and studied her palm and fingers. She guessed being a drummer that he had a thing for hands. Gunner looked it over carefully, and still holding her hand in his, stroked her palm lightly, he looked up into her eyes, and asked, “What’s your name, sweetheart?”

His intimate study of her hand and fingers had sent some strange electricity through her, and she felt temporarily stunned, staring back at them all like a deer caught in headlights. “Hi. I....I’m Chandler Chatam. And I’m here to audition for Assured Distraction,” she finally managed to choke out over her frozen vocal cords as the charismatic drummer finally releases her hand, letting her recoil it back closer to her body.

“Is that really your name? Your parents must have a shit sense of humor to stick you with the whole rhyming-name thing?” Gunner smirked. “So, you know one of our songs, and you obviously have the fucking keyboard mastered. How many of our songs do you think you already have down?” He doubted too many after he got a good look at her.

KeeMac stood back, observing her, looking her over from top-to-toe. She was young, and attractive, but how could she possibly know rock music by an Austin band? In his mind, she was simply too crisp, too stiff, and he was sure she would never fit in on stage. Her hair pulled into that tight bun and her bland ballerina flats were out of the question, too. Her prim and proper, virginal look would, in no way, work for them. She belonged in a library where they still shushed you if your shoes squeaked on the marble floors.

He did notice her shockingly aqua-blue eyes, though. Who wouldn’t? They were such a contrast to her black-as-night hair... that looked completely natural? He wondered if the eyes and hair were really hers, or if they were fake. Personally, he thought the contrast was stunning, and he loved it. But the package was just too tightly-wrapped and stuffy to ever work in a rock band.

“
Oh, God, I am so out of my league with this bunch! But I’m not backing down now.”
Chandler had auditioned and played for some of the toughest judges and musical groups while at Juilliard. A bunch of tatted-up, street-wise guys were not going to get the best of her so quickly. She would not tuck tail and run - at least, not just yet.

“Yes, I do, in answer to your question about your songs and my ability. Not only do I already know most of them, but I am a quick study when it comes to picking up music.” Her tone was a little more arrogant than she was trying for but the way he posed the question to her, she wanted to wipe that smirk off his face and replace it with the shock she’d seen on the faces of all the non-believers before him. He was sizing her up based on just a single glance, and she was having none of that either.

“OK, then, let’s see what you got. We’ll play and you join in, assuming you know the music well enough,” KeeMac suggested, knowing that if she could perform this way, with just the music for pickups, then she really did know their music. They were willing to work with the new person to teach the quirks about their live music that couldn’t be done the way it was on their recorded music, but if that person didn’t already know most of their music, it was never going to happen in the short amount of time they had.

When the band was in position, Gunner raised his heavily-muscled arms above his head and hammered his sticks together, counting out the beats to the initial song on the play list for their first set. Carter’s deep bass came in next. When Ryan and KeeMac’s guitars began the melodies that started the song, Chandler jumped in with the keyboard. She knew music. It was built into her soul like nothing else. Playing was the only time she felt complete, and the universe moved around her like it was supposed to. Her life wasn’t floundering when she was in the midst of a melody; she was at home and where she belonged. It didn’t matter if it was on a stage, in a music hall or alone in her apartment. If she was involved with the playing of music she was good. No, she was perfect.

The band progressed through the play list for the next hour, and she only had a couple of spots that she felt were a little off and needed tweaking to be perfect. Overall, though, it was a good first round of an audition, at least in her mind. She was anxious to hear the members’ reactions though.

“Damn, girl. You fucking know our music!” KeeMac altered his earlier comment, recognizing she was, indeed, not a dude. He looked around at the other guys before saying any more. The silence in the room from the other three was surprising as obviously meaningful looks were being exchanged between them. It appeared they were having a private conversation amongst themselves, without an audible word in the room. This added to Chandler’s earlier anxiety, which was coming back with a vengeance.

“Yeah, so, I guess I’ll just head out and let y’all talk or whatever.” Chandler knew it sounded lame but she couldn’t get a read on any of the others after KeeMac’s comment. Turning off the keyboard, she quickly picked up her guitar and started for the door. It killed her to not look back over her shoulder, but the silent conversation left the air in the room too thick for her liking. She needed to escape.

“So, uh, Chandler Chatam, thanks for coming in. Someone will be in contact with you, one way or the other. We won’t leave you hanging.” KeeMac was at the door before she could get it closed. By the time he finished his statement, she was already at the end of the hall. She just waved over her shoulder because looking back wasn’t an option for her at that point.

––––––––

“H
oly fuck, that girl can play! I’ve never seen anything like it. She even added some flair to make it her own,” Ryan raved at the other three who were staring at the door dumbfounded. “Why the hell didn’t you just have her wait outside for a few damn minutes so we could vote and then really get down to rehearsing with her like we need to? Shit, it’s getting to the final hours before we load in and go, man.”