Phone Calls From a Rock Star (40 page)

And it suited me just fine.

“
You’ll be a little farther
away from me next year, angel,” Jake mused as he navigated through
traffic.

I took his hand and squeezed. “I’ll come see
you every weekend.”

He brought my hand to his lips and kissed
it. “You’d better. But you know, we’ll probably start touring again
after this new record is released.”

“
I know,” I sighed, leaning
back in the seat.

“
Hey. We made it this far,
we’ll make it all the way.”

I smiled. “It’s not that. I worry about you
guys trashing more hotel rooms.”

He threw his head back and laughed. “We
never trashed a hotel room, Iz. It was all staged.”

“
Huh?” I asked as my brows
pulled together.

“
We’d been touring for a
while and spent an entire week sleeping in the bus. Finally, we had
a show at a hotel in Boise and nothing scheduled for the next day
so Doc, our manager, booked us rooms. We were all exhausted so once
we finished the show, we all went to our rooms and crashed. It was
actually the crew on the floor below us who had a little party but
they didn’t trash anything either.”

“
So how was this staged?” I
asked, a little confused. I mean, really, who would want people
thinking they destroyed a couple hotel rooms? I
wouldn’t.

“
Doc found out about the
party because I guess the guys were loud and drew some complaints.
He had this brilliant idea to leak it to the press that we threw a
huge party and trashed the rooms. He talked to the manager and
convinced him that the news would attract tons of people to the
hotel, wanting to stay in the rooms we’d destroyed. The manager
agreed, and it worked.”

He grinned a nostalgic smile. “We were
labeled as bad boys and our CD and ticket sales skyrocketed. Doc
said the manager called him and told him they had a waiting list of
people wanting to stay in our rooms.” He shrugged. “Worked out for
everyone I guess.”

I giggled. “Clever.”

“
Sure,” he agreed. “But do
you know what’s smarter?”

I twisted so I could face him properly.
“What’s that?”

He cupped my cheeked and glanced at me
briefly before his eyes returned to the road. “Going to Burger
Kastle in the middle of the night for something to eat and ending
up carjacking the love of your life.”

I could only smile at him because, hey, he
was right and who was I to argue?