All Fired Up (26 page)

Authors: Madelynne Ellis

Tags: #Fiction, #Romance, #Erotica, #Contemporary

BOOK: All Fired Up

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Spook scratched his biceps. ‘He probably didn’t see the point, since Luthor was with Xane and it seemed questionable whether he was even going to make it.’

‘I’m here now,’ Xane muttered. ‘As is Luthor.’ Their newest roadie had just walked through the door, someone having obviously run to find him.

‘What is it?’ he asked, looking around at all their eager faces. ‘Is there trouble with the kit? Liam said he’d had to replace some bits.’

‘The kit’s fine, it’s someone to bang it we’re missing.’ Xane handed him a set of drumsticks. ‘Are you up for it?’

‘You’re joking?’

Xane shook his head, making his jet-black waist-length hair sway.

‘What about Iain?’ Luthor asked, turning his head to look for him and failing to spot him in any of the dark corners.

‘Forget Iain. Let’s just get out there and play.’

* * *

Ash went on stage that night with a severe case of butterflies. He didn’t know what to expect. Until this point, Luthor had simply been a roadie and a bit of a nuisance as he was obviously attracted to Xane, and Xane, being his typical self, couldn’t keep his hands off, even though it made his girlfriend uncomfortable. However, after a couple of minutes on stage with Luthor, Ash was praying that relationship issues weren’t going to cause problems, because Luthor was a damned fine drummer and they needed to sign him up for the rest of the tour immediately. The guy rocked the hell out of ‘Fatal Error’, the track they’d had to drop from the set back in Paris. In fact, Luthor seemed to pump extra zest into their whole performance.

The gig passed crazily fast that night, one song seguing into another, so that, before he knew it, Ash was backstage grabbing a quick mouthful of water and swallowing one of Xane’s bananas before they rushed back out to perform the curtain call.

They needed more nights like tonight, where everything came together and went right instead of wrong.

Really he ought to have known better than to have called anything over before it was over.

Ash’s fingers started disobeying part-way through the first encore. At first he put it down to the bruises and swelling across his knuckles. After 90 minutes of intense playing it was hardly surprising they were protesting the effort. A little shake and some flexing seemed to sort them out, at least for a moment or two.

Then numbness spread up his arm like frostbite. By the time it nipped at his shoulder, he’d lost all sensation in his fingers, and his guitar was hanging loose on the strap around his neck. He tried to shake it off, but the cold spread up through the back of his neck and into his brain, making his visual range contract into two white-sided tunnels.

‘Ash,’ he heard somebody say, before he drowned in white noise.

Chapter 28

G
inny took a taxi to the hospital the moment Dani called, but the staff wouldn’t let her in to see Ash until Spook had confirmed her identity. When the nurse showed her into the room Ash had been given, there weren’t nearly as many familiar faces around the bed as she’d expected: only Elspeth, Troels and Spook rather than the whole of the band. ‘Where’s everyone else?’ she asked.

Elspeth turned her watery gaze towards her. ‘Down the hall, being checked out. As if this guy taking a dive wasn’t crazy enough, all hell let loose in the carpark. Iain turned up with a vendetta to settle.’

‘The police picked him up,’ Spook reassured her. He looked haggard, deep worry lines scoring his brow. ‘Everyone’s fine, or at least almost fine.’ How could he even say that when Ash was lying between them covered in wires, his eyelids cemented closed?

Ginny stared at Ash, her heart breaking. She’d known it was a bad idea to delay that confrontation. Why hadn’t she done something, been more insistent on sorting it out right away? She ought to have kept Ash safe by her side.

‘Hasn’t he come round? Why hasn’t he come round? What have the doctors said?’ she asked, moving to the side of the bed to lean over the rails and gently touch him, just to make sure the monitor wasn’t lying and he was still warm.

‘He’s drifting in and out,’ Spook informed her, while reaching over to stroke the hair back from his friend’s sallow face. ‘He has a couple of lucid moments, and then he blacks out again, but he has called out for you. Here.’ He rose from the chair he was occupying. ‘You come and sit by him. I’m sure he’d rather see your smile first when he wakes up properly than mine.’ As she perched on the edge of the vacated chair, he rounded up the other two visitors and ushered them out. ‘Let’s give them some space, eh, guys.’

The seriousness of the situation hit her hard as the door closed. ‘Oh, God, Ash, what has that bastard done to you?’ Bruising marked the bridge of his nose and his temples. There was a gash in one cheek, she assumed caused by his guitar, which had apparently smashed beneath him, but at least there were no bones broken. ‘I knew I shouldn’t have let you go. I sensed something bad would happen.’

‘Ginny,’ he croaked, a few minutes later, trying to raise his hand to reach her.

‘Ash, I’m here.’ She clasped him as best she could. ‘How are you feeling? Do you know where you are?’

‘Heaven.’ He slurred. ‘Feel so damned sleepy, and my dreams are weird. Cold too.’

His teeth chattered, but his hand was burning hot, so too was his forehead. ‘I’ll get the nurse.’

‘No,’ he insisted, holding on to her. ‘Please stay here.’ His eyelids fluttered, and closed. ‘Ginny bear … Ginny …’

‘All right.’ She dragged the chair closer, so that she sat as close to him as she could get. ‘I’m right here, and the guys are around too. You’re safe now, Ash. Everything’s going to be OK.’

Tears welled in her eyes. She blinked them back, but it was obvious that he wasn’t OK and the future was going to entail a long hard fight.

* * *

At some point during the small hours she lost track of the time. She stood at the vending machine in the hallway, failing to make a choice. She wasn’t even sure if she had the correct currency to buy a drink, but she was so tired, and needed something to help keep her alert, so that Ash wouldn’t be alone if he woke.

‘Can I get you something?’ She turned at the sound of the voice, to find Spook a few steps away. His long blond hair was bound at the nape of his neck, and he was still wearing his stage leathers. He moved closer, smiled and shook his head at the Euros in her palm, then fed the machine kronor from his own pocket. ‘Coffee?’ he asked.

‘Tea. White and sweet, please.’ Maybe the sugar boost would pick her up off the floor.

The tears she’d stifled while sitting with Ash began to trickle down her cheeks as Spook hit the buttons and brewed her tea for her.

‘Here.’ His expression darkened at her dismay. Instead of passing her the drink he opened his arms and allowed her to make a mess of the front of his T-shirt as she snuffled and made stupid sobbing noises that didn’t help anyone. ‘It’s all right, Ginny. He’ll be fine. The doctors have assured me of that. It’ll just take a few days before he can stand up again, when his system’s clear of the junk Iain poisoned him with. They know what to do, and they’re doing it. It’s just going to involve some heavy detoxing.’

‘Don’t lie to me, Spook,’ she said, peeping up at him through her wet eyelashes. Ash was a very long way from all right. ‘He’s slurring every word, and he can’t feel anything down his entire righthand side.’

‘I’m not lying, Ginny, just having some faith. The doctors are confident it’ll only be temporary and that once the rohypnol is out of his system he’ll improve. They treated him with charcoal, I understand.’

‘And if he doesn’t?’

‘He will.’ Spook kissed the top of her head. ‘Come on, sweetheart. Do I need to buy you chocolate too?’

She straightened, wiping her eyes clear of tears and no doubt smearing mascara all over her face, just as she’d smeared it over Spook’s T-shirt. Spook rubbed a smudge of it from her cheek. ‘If Iain’s damaged him permanently, I’ll … I’ll …’ Her throat felt too tight to squeeze the words out. ‘… fucking kill him.’

‘You’ll have to beat me to it,’ he insisted, curling her fingers around the paper cup of tea. ‘But it’s not going to be necessary. The police have him in custody. He’ll get his comeuppance, and not just for what he’s done to Ash, but what he did to you and Dani and Xane, and the rest of the band too.’

Ginny sipped her tea and tried to convince herself that was the case, and he wouldn’t just get off with a warning and a stupid fine.

‘What will happen about the tour and the band?’ she asked, determined to sound calm.

Spook sucked his lip a moment, then got himself a cup of tea. ‘Luthor’s going to step in as our new drummer, but all the gigs are going to have to be postponed until Ash is well again. Xane could play, but I don’t think any of us welcome that possibility.’ He sighed. ‘It’s going to create a right organisational and financial mess, but we’ll get through it. We’ve battled worse, and at least we’re all speaking and getting along again.’

‘What will you all do?’ Ginny wondered aloud. She didn’t picture them living in the tour bus for weeks. ‘You’ll stay here with Ash, won’t you?’

He nodded and squeezed her knee. ‘I will, but I don’t know about anyone else yet. They may decide to head home.’

‘This is your home, isn’t it?’

He gave a weary sigh and rubbed his brow and his tired eyes. ‘Not really. Not any more. It hasn’t been for years.’

‘But your family still live here?’

‘Yeah, they’re still here, but I’m closer to the guys these days. My sisters all have lives and families of their own. My parents died a while back.’

They sat quietly for a moment and finished their tea. ‘I’ll probably hire somewhere nearby,’ Spook said as he gathered the cups and put them in the wastebin. ‘Somewhere quiet around Lake Vänern where we can get some peace once Ash is ready to leave here.’

‘With space for me?’ she enquired quietly.

‘For definite. He needs you, Ginny, far more than he needs me, plus he’s crackers about you.’ He grasped her hand and squeezed it tight. ‘If anyone can help him pull through this it’s you.’

She bowed her head. ‘I hope you’re right.’

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