Rock Star Romance: Dan (Contemporary New Adult Rockstar Bad Boy Romance) (Hard Rock Star Series Book 4) (80 page)

“So, hopefully, with
this feature, we’re going to see a real growth in new accounts at IQID, and
thus be able to start building toward our goal of being able to tailor
responses to client need. And remember, we need more clients for more capital…
So what are we focusing on?”

The room was too warm
to be productive for this kind of meeting, he realized. When the eleven men
before him responded with “more clients!” it was not only less hearty than he
would have liked, several of them looked genuinely confused as to what the
meeting had actually been about. Damian couldn’t talk to anyone about turning
up the air conditioning without being reminded that their planet was being
destroyed because of their need for ultimate comfort—at least, that was the way
Brian in HR put it every month when Damian went to complain.

“Okay,” he continued.
“Let’s all look forward to tomorrow’s recap email; you can shoot back any
questions—”

“I’ve got a question,”
said Jamie in his jagged baritone. He leaned back in his chair, his lids
drooping as he spoke. “Is the retreat still going to be catered?”

At the mention of the
quarterly retreat, every man in the room straightened up. This year, they would
be in Maine in a luxurious resort where they could request more types of
massages than they could possibly have time to receive. It was one of the perks
that many higher-level employees signed on for exclusively, partially because
of the parties Damian tended to fund while they were there—Damian Wyles’s
parties had
always
been worthwhile in Silicon Valley.

 Jamie was still
speaking. “Those salmon rolls were divine last year. Most perfect things ever.
I’ve been dreaming about them every night since the last one cleared my
system.”

“With Lola next you?”
Gary said, leaning across the gleaming table to show Jamie his roguish wink. “I
wouldn’t be able to sleep at all.”

Damian closed his
eyes, resisting the urge to roll them. “Guys, can we keep things professional
here?”

Jamie snorted. “You wouldn’t
be so eager to jump behind the wheel with Lola if you’d been on the rides
I’ve
been on,” he said darkly.

Gary’s expression
turned curious. “What do you mean?”

Jamie shrugged. “My
tastes are a little more vanilla, I guess. Once I start bruising, I’m out.
There’s a reason Lola has so many private tennis lessons—better him than me.”

“Okay, gentlemen, it’s
nearly eight,” Damian said hastily, waving his arms toward the door. “We should
all head out. We can talk about the retreat as we get closer to the event.”

The men finally
started to stand, but now they’d all broken out into various shades of lewd
conversation. Damien pulled his blazer on and walked through the long, mirrored
conference room, thankfully slipping out before Jacob could finish telling Miles
about the time he and his girlfriend went skinny dipping in Majorca and nearly
got arrested for indecent exposure. Someone near the door called his name
before he closed the door, but they were pulled into another conversation
before they could even finish addressing him, so he turned out and completed
his exit uninterrupted.

The dim fluorescent
lights told him it was past eight o’clock now, so the silence of the hall
wasn’t at all out of place. His footsteps were completely swallowed by the
plush blue carpet, the fibers reaching up to sweep the top of his gleaming
black loafers. Damian caught sight of himself in the glass door of his office
before he unlocked it, and he was shocked to see that his skin was far paler
than usual, his wavy black hair making him look more vampire-like rather than
camera ready. His legs were aching as he closed the door behind him, and he
took solace in the fact that it was Friday—meaning he could sleep in as late as
eight or nine if he wanted, though his body surely wouldn’t let him lay around
that long.

Damian’s office sat in
the corner of the thirtieth floor of a slate gray building on Palm, two blocks
from the center of Mountain View’s downtown area. He could see the bay, and the
windows that stretched from the floor to the ceiling of his back wall also gave
him an incredible view of a good half of the city, and even parts of Palo Alto
if the fog wasn’t pressing against the glass. He remembered the first time he’d
seen the view from his window, four years before; IQID had just begun to come
into its own, with its first televised commercials rolling out around Labor
Day.

“IQID is
Identification protection—that’s the
ID—
that works smarter to keep you
safe—that’s the
IQ!”
Chirped the bubbly young woman in front of her
laptop. The letters floated above her as she spoke, and Damien was so shocked
at seeing his company name in glossy, computer-generated letters on his flat
screen that he had been momentarily convinced that someone was actually
pranking him. By the fifth time he’d viewed the commercial, things were
starting to feel real, and his half a million subscribers went a long way
toward helping that feeling solidify. Then Damian got the news that they could
buy three floors of the huge building on Palm he’d strolled past a million
times while he interned at Intracode, and his dream-like sensation sharpened
and receded at the same time, somehow—like he was trapped in limbo, or that
strange space between sleep and waking where thoughts and words drifted away
and were never heard from again. He got that feeling every time he looked out
the window for nearly two years; after that, the reality of the relentlessly
gray life in the tech capital of the world started to dull his reactions to
everything else. Damian kept his shades drawn during the daytime, especially.

A soft chime filled
the room, and the cool voice of his assistant followed. “Will you be needing
takeout ordered, Mr. Wyles?”

“No, Alexis,” Damian
answered, “and hey—go home. Have a good weekend.”

“Yes, sir,” Alexis
said, and he could hear the relief in her tone, though she tried hard to hide
it. “You, too. Don’t forget to find your dress shoes tonight.”

As the intercom fell
into silence again, Damian felt confusion tint the words tumbling around his
skull.
Dress shoes?
What did he need dress shoes for?

Damian’s eyes rose to
the LED calendar he kept on the wall at the exact moment he remembered his
gala. Despair flooded his weary bones, and he collapsed into the chair behind
his desk as his visions of a relaxing Saturday evening at home were dispelled.
He’d forgotten he bought a $20,000 table at a charity gala a month ago, and not
only did he invite friends to fill the seats, the chairman of the Lupus charity
was expecting him to show. That would mean a minimum of three hours of rubbing
shoulders with men who would kill their own trophy wives to be able to steal
his youth and vigor, and women who would smother their lauded husbands for a
weekend with him—every one of them climbing all over themselves to impress or
undermine him with every word. He got enough ass-kissing in his school days;
he’d done enough ass-kissing, too, come to think of it.

A crowd of voices
moved down the hall toward the bank of elevators around the corner from his
office. His inner door was open, so their words were just clear enough to make
out as they went by.

“Yeah, I’d like that
too,” someone was saying. “But we already know that doesn’t work.”

“Those women went
about it all wrong,” said a second voice. “You have to be accommodating and
transparent every step of the way—or at least appear that way.”

“For the
shareholders?”

“No,” the second voice
said mildly. “For the public. That was their downfall—the public can and will
affect your success, even before you open the doors on your product.”

“How do you even call
a people tracking app a product, anyway?” the man said, who sounded a lot like
Gary.

“Don’t call it
tracking, for one,” said the other man, who was probably Miles. “It’s
surveying. Curating. Recording.”

“Stalking,” said a
third man. “You can’t have an app where you review people, period. I know you
want this to work, Miles, but it’s going to fail. Hell, the boss tried to do it
before you did—you think you have a better shot?”

Damian rose from his
seat and closed the door to his inner office before he had the time to catch
Miles’ indignant reply. His face was burning, and he was struggling to contain
his shame at the mention of his old project, even though the name hadn’t even
been uttered aloud.
A people reviewing app.
Damian smiled, bittersweet
memories rushing back as he recalled his time only seven years before.

The app had begun as a
way to alert vulnerable people about abusive men in their area, aptly named
Lookout4. Damian’s younger sister June had a habit of attracting men who were
as violent as they were good looking, and he wanted a way to warn other women
before they walked into the same trap. After a year, the app had a respectable
presence on college campuses, and the then 24-year-old Damian Wyles was riding
high on his own success. He felt that he’d done his duty to make sure the app
was stable and functional, so when a buyer came forward with a price tag far
higher than the app’s worth, he jumped at the chance. Suddenly, he had enough
money to start a new business while the app he founded spiraled into a bloated
platform for advertisements and pointless features that turned Lookout4 into
more of a social media hangout than an alert system.

“They added aesthetic
ratings,” Damian told June over the phone one night. “And stickers. You can
slap on a cherry stamp or a sparkly birthday cake next to Richard Banks’ long
list of domestic offenses, if you want.”

“Good thing you got
out,” June said calmly. “Sounds like it really changed.”

“It changed
because
I left,” Damian replied. “If I hadn’t sold the company, who knows what it would
have been.”

This wasn’t how the
rest of the world saw it, however; because of media spin, the world thought
Damian Wyles’s pet project tanked after a year, only to be rescued and then
eventually mercy killed by Johnathan “Jack” Summers, the  investor whose
managerial and operational tweaks often rescued a project that should have been
dead. Worse, Jack Summers didn’t deny this rumor at all—it was better than
letting people know the truth, which might lead them to realize that his
success rate wasn’t as high as it seemed. Damian didn’t push the issue, because
Lookout4 was long gone—plus, he really hated dealing with Jack Summers. Jack
loved riding his old friends’ coattails to his destinations and then throwing
them under a passing bus if it felt convenient, so they were closer to enemies
than former business partners; still, Jack’s acquisition of Lookout4 made IQID
possible, so Damian tried not to harbor too much animosity toward him.

Damian realized the
hall had been silent for quite some time. He put away his notes and locked the
drawers on his desk, pulling his phone off its charger before switching off the
overhead light in his inner office. His outer office was already dark, but he
knew how to locate the door handle from five years of making this exact trek in
various states of darkness and daylight. This office had been his home more
than the apartment he owned had been at first; Damian remembered his long
nights of coding and correcting with a mixture of fondness and joy—he’d never
be so young and energetic ever again, but he also was far more confident now,
and his success was undeniable. He might get nostalgic, he decided, but he was
definitely happier now. 

The elevator doors
showed him his face again in their reflective surface as they slid closed, and
he was struck by the depth of the circles beneath his eyes—they were soft and
purpled, like two impressionist black holes beneath twin pools of crystal blue
water. He closed his eyes again.

I need a drink.

****

Damian hesitated
before pulling the royal blue door of the bar open, noticing the strange
coolness of the metal handle as he pressed his palm against it. He could feel
all of his nervous energy getting transferred to the chipped paint, and he
wondered if his hand would come away with blue when he pulled it back, the
colors warmed and runny from his heat.

Just go in,
he
told himself firmly.
You’ve been to bars before. So this one’s sketchy?
You’ve been to sketchy bars before. Just go in, don’t look at anyone, and head
toward the bar.

The gloom upon
entering didn’t surprise Damian. Circular lamps hung from the high ceiling,
dangling fifteen feet above their heads like huge fireflies without wings,
punctuating the dark every ten feet or so with their soft yellow glow. He
wasn’t surprised to find the jukebox playing a country song he couldn’t name or
even recognize as five or six patrons sat in chairs near the center of the
room, seated around each other but not in a way that suggested they were
sitting together. Damian was surprised to find the bar almost completely
deserted except for two women and a man who appeared to be sleeping, unless
corpses could snore.

The stool was softer
than it looked, and Damian was only seated for a second before the bartender
appeared before him, the cleanliness of her uniform somewhat ruined by her
unkempt chestnut-colored bun.

“What’ll you have?”

“Uh, Fat Tire,
please?”

The bartender nodded
and shuffled away to pull out a glass from under the bar. Now that his eyes had
adjusted, Damian could see that there were a few more people present than he
realized—and more of them were women than he’d first noticed, as well. As the
waitress came back with his beer, he could feel more eyes turning toward him
and climbing the fabric of his slacks and blazer—and doing more than just
studying the carefully muscled body filling out the all-black ensemble; Damian
knew from experience that many women who approached him in bars knew the price
tags of his clothing better than he did.

His eyes turned to the
two women at the other end of the L-shaped bar, giggling together with their
heads almost touching above their drinks. The one with her face turned away
from him had short, curly black hair and a low, sultry laugh, but the one he
could see was laughing loudly and in such a high-pitched tone that it almost
seemed like the call of some jungle bird—sharp and lilting and echoing through
your body so as to almost be alarming, but commanding, so you could do nothing
but listen. She had thick red hair softly curling inward just above her
collarbone, and the deep blue of her collared button-down shirt brought out the
warm tones of her chocolate brown eyes. Her heart-shaped face was alive with
delight at something her friend was saying, and as she lifted her drink, the
deep pucker of her lips sent a violent shiver down his spine.

Damian turned away,
suddenly conscious of his staring. He took a long drink of his beer,
uncomfortably aware of every fiber in his blazer as he fought to sort through
the storm of emotions prohibiting his train of thought.
Drink,
he
thought desperately, and his hand was halfway to his mouth again before he
clarified to himself:
Send her a drink. You should send her a drink.

Damian waved the
bartender over with a twenty between his fingers and noted that she moved much
faster this time. “Would you please send another of what that lovely redhead is
drinking over to her at the end of the bar? And keep them coming. Let her know
she doesn’t owe me a thing.”

He ran a sweaty palm
through his hair and glanced at his reflection in the dusty mirror over the
bar. Pushing his hand through it had given him a pleasant bed-head look, but
his eyes were still worryingly bagged. Should he call it a night after this?
Damian looked over at the young woman, whose eyes were trained on the bartender
as she explained where the new drink had come from. The curly haired woman
looked over at him curiously, but the redhead stared at the martini in shock
for a few moments before looking up and smiling at him—wide enough to show
dimples on both of her cheeks.

She lifted the drink
and nodded, and Damian forced himself to do the same, just to be in motion so
the fine tremble in his body wouldn’t be evident from across the room. A wave
of energy slid across his skin— slow and bone meltingly-hot, like lava—and the
burn lingered even after she finally tore her eyes away from his.

Good job,
Damian congratulated himself as he drained the last of his beer.
Now don’t
screw it up. You should probably leave ASAP, in fact.

His eyes finally
noticed the television in a high corner near him, and he glued his eyes to the
screen as a slow smile slid across his face. He had no idea what he was looking
at, because the redhead’s dazzling grin was branded into his vision like an
afterimage, so the moving pictures before his eyes might as well have been
static. He felt like a stone had been sitting on his heart, and the lift in her
cheeks had tumbled it over.
You sound like you hit your head,
he told
himself sternly.
It’s definitely time to leave.

Before he could motion
to close his tab, the bartender thunked down another frosty glass of Fat Tire,
smiling faintly at his surprise. “From the… ‘lovely redhead’ drinking martinis.
Says you’re a true gentleman.”

Damian’s gentle smile
was spreading when another voice spoke at his side, “Should have just told you
that myself.”

He turned and had to
fight to hide his surprise to find the redhead standing before him. She
laughed, and Damian realized he hadn’t hid it well at all.

“I’m Rebecca—or Becca,
if you like.” The woman gestured to the empty seat beside him. “May I? My
friend has had enough, and I hate to drink alone.”

He nodded and looked
in time to see her friend stumbling out on coltish legs on the arm of a rotund
man he hadn’t seen at the bar. “I’m Damian...wow. It’s before ten and she’s
already had…
enough
?”

Becca shrugged, and
Damian realized she was nearly a foot shorter than him just before she settled
onto the stool, which made her around five-two. “We’re celebrating. Well,
she
is.” She wrinkled her nose and shot a dark glance toward the now closed
door, scratched and covered in faded stickers from chain restaurants and now
defunct bands and brands.

Damian didn’t say
anything, but his raised eyebrows provided all the permission Becca needed.

“She got a promotion
at work, but it’s not for a good reason,” she said carefully, sipping her drink
as she paused. “The boss—you saw him with her—did a favor for her once, and now
he’s holding this over her head so she’ll do one back… if you know what I mean.”

Damian was
shocked—that it was happening, and that Becca was telling a man she’d just met.
The shock must have shown clearly on his face, because she laughed again—the
same hard, almost braying laugh that compelled him to lean closer rather than
further away from the noise.

“I’m sorry,” she said.
“I’m screwing with you. It’s her thirtieth and she got a little too saucy on
her birthday shots. Her husband is taking her home.”

Damian laughed, but
shock was still coursing through him, but for a different reason now. “Do you
normally play jokes like that on strangers who buy you drinks? Or just ones who
are clearly stuck-up tech guys like me?”

Becca’s eyes widened
with remorse, and Damian regretted the sharpness of his words. “No, oh god, no!
I’m sorry, I just have this horrible sense of humor—I mean, my friends like it,
and so does my mom, but that doesn’t mean you should, too.” Her cheeks were
rapidly turning from cream to rose quartz to satin red, and Damian took pity on
her. “I’m sorry, I’ll just…I’ll just go—”

“No,” he said, and it
cut off her speech immediately. “No, it’s fine. I can be a little stuffy at
times. It was funny, I’m just…” he trailed off, wondering if he should tell the
truth. Damian looked into Becca’s contrite eyes and saw nothing but warmth in
their depths, so he decided to plunge ahead.

“I kind of hate my
job,” he said at last. “I used to be passionate about it, but now it’s all
about the money. Just money. And now, I’m always bored and angry,” Damian said,
taking a swig of his beer. “It’s terrible. I’m miserable, even though it seems
like I have everything I could ever want.” He paused. “I lost all my friends
building this wall around me until I became…
this
. And I know it probably
seems like I’m some rich jerk feeding you lines so he can get off and put
another notch on his bed post, but that’s not the case.”

Becca’s frown had been
neutralizing as he spoke, and now she smiled at him, her lips curving under her
wonder. “Well, I’m a newspaper journalist who also hates her job, and who took
it because she thought it would lead to nobility and prestige. I do alright for
myself, but I’m certainly not in your tax bracket,” she said, her eyes rolling
at him over the rim of her glass. “So even with all that money, you’re still
not happy, Mr. Silicon Valley Millionaire?”

“That’s right,” he
admitted. “Although technically, I’m a billionaire.”

Becca’s eyebrows shot
up, and she laughed. “Billionaire, then. Gosh. And to think I almost didn’t
come over here and talk to you.”

Damian smiled. “Why
did you decide to?”

Becca leaned in as the
bartender replaced her drink. “This is embarrassing, but my best friend
pressured me to do it.”

He laughed, but
kindly. “Peer pressure?”

“We live thirty miles
away, in Daly City,” Becca explained, her eyes shining. “Her husband wanted us
to relive the nights we used to have in college…and we kind of did,” she said,
chuckling. “Laura always ended up puking, Jeff danced on tables…that’s probably
why none of us drink anymore.” She shook her head. “Anyway, I was always the
wild card, and I’d do anything on a dare. Laura dared me to come over and talk
to you, so I was bound by the laws of best friendship.”

Damian smiled and took
a drink of his beer. “It’s sweet that you still adhere to that code. A lot of
people let that kind of thing go as they get older.”

Becca leaned a little
closer to him and shrugged again. “I’m only twenty-eight. Not old enough to use
age as an excuse to be a bad friend.”

He felt his smile grow
sad before Becca’s frown told him it did. “Sorry,” he said hastily. “You
reminded me that a group of people I used to think were friends did exactly
that five years ago. But don’t let me put a damper on things.”

Becca looked curious
now. “No, tell me about it. I want to know about you.” She smiled, and the heat
beneath it sent a bolt of lust through Damian mid-sip. “That’s the real reason
I came over here, after all.”

So he did. Damian told
her all about how he, Jack Summer, Roger Wolf, and Ian Rivers had all been
roommates throughout college, sharing goals and ideals as well as toothpaste.
Then Jack and Ian started to get money-hungry, buying tiny tech businesses and
flipping them on the side for profit. Then Damian’s company got involved, and
when Jack flipped it, he took credit for the surge in stock while also distancing
himself from both Damian and Ian. Roger assumed they’d all been colluding and
pulled out, forming an angel investment group and spreading dirt about all
three of them so that their reputations were tarnished before they knew it.

He told Becca all of
this, and about his lingering pain over losing his best friends. She told him
about growing up in Maine and nearly drowning in the river because her brother
convinced her that she was a mermaid. They told each other secrets and stories
for hours, until it was past midnight, and both of them were flustered and
giggly from drinking and talking with their dizzy heads close.

“Okay,” Becca said at
last. “Okay…wow, I put away five of these things,” she slurred, leaning a hand
on Damian’s thigh. “I really am reliving those wild college nights.” She
giggled shrilly, and the sound was just as charming as her squawking laugh.

Damian felt an odd tug
on his heart, and he smiled. “I’d be studying if that were true for me,” he
said, his voice louder than he realized. “And a fox like you would have never
spoken to me while I was driving my daddy’s car.”

Becca laughed and
leaned against him harder, her breath smelling of gin and mint. “
Fox?”

Damian blushed, but he
met her eyes, his heart pounding now that he saw how close her lips were to
his. “Yeah,” he said brazenly, covering her hand with his. “Fox. A stone cold
one. What of it?”

When Becca laughed
this time, her breasts brushed across his arm, and he noticed, for the first
time, how full and heavy they seemed against the front of her shirt. Her thighs
were shapely, perfectly filling out her black pencil skirt; he reached under
the table and stroked her knee, slowly inching his hand toward her hip.

To his surprise, Becca
leaned closer, brushing her lips across his jawbone before she spoke. “Are you
a lazy dog, or do you wanna jump this fox?”

Becca turned toward
him again, and Damian leaned forward and pressed his lips to hers as she did. A
tide of last crashed over him, and he felt it roll over her as she shivered and
strained to be nearer to him. He reached out and scooted her stool closer, and
she made a soft moan of surprise, but wrapped her arms around his neck as he
gently nibbled on the flesh of her bottom lip. Becca’s right hand slipped down
his chest and lingered on his belt loop, and Damian’s heart nearly exploded as
it finally drifted south to squeeze on the growing bulge in front of his
slacks. His hands rested on her thighs, then slid slowly up until they forced
up the fabric of her skirt, his fingers digging into her curves until she cried
out into his kiss.