Rock Hard Love

~1~

I stopped by my cubicle, as I did every morning, turned on my radio and grabbed my coffee cup. Sunny 107 was on a commercial break as I wandered off to fill my cup and wish Peter a good morning. I didn’t find him in his office, which was unusual, so off I went to the coffee room to fill my cup with some wake up juice. I returned to find Peter standing in my cubicle with a serious look on his face. I had no idea what was up but it looked important. Little did I know I was about to set in motion a series of events that would change my life forever and meet the man that would turn my world upside down.

“There you are,” Peter said.

“Good morning to you too,” I replied. Peter was my boss and mentor, a good guy and usually not wound up like this so early in the morning.

“
Sorry. Good morning, Simone. I need you to bring the Battery files to the conference room ASAP. Victoria is on the warpath,” he told me.

“
Great. I’ll be there in a minute,” I replied as Peter smiled to let me know he wasn’t upset with me and left. I took a sip of my coffee and listened to P!nk sing “Raise Your Glass” for a moment before I sighed and abandoned my coffee. The files Peter wanted were for the heavy metal band Battery, one of the agency’s biggest clients. I hadn’t had the pleasure of meeting James Turner, the band’s lead singer and rhythm guitarist, not to mention the brains behind their success. Honestly, I’d never even heard their music to my knowledge and really had no desire to. All that heavy metal sounded like horrible noise to me.

I was Peter’s assistant at the Roland Talent Agency, a job I’d only had for three months.
Peter was my boss but Victoria was his boss. She was the daughter of the founder of the company and now the CEO after her dad, a sweet and caring man by all accounts, died about five years ago. Apparently, Victoria took after her mother, or the milkman or maybe Satan, because she was anything but sweet and caring. In fact, she was a raving…we’ll if you can’t say anything nice don’t say anything at all, right?

I grabbed the files from my desk, a
six-inch thick stack of them, and carried them to the conference room. Battery had been with the firm since they were discovered back in the late eighties practicing in a garage and playing dives around Southern California. I’d heard rumors they were becoming increasingly unhappy with the representation they were getting since Victoria took over. I don’t blame them. Peter says a lot of clients left the agency when Victoria’s brand of bottom-line first management replaced the client-first creed of her father. However, the agency still had its share of clients, many loyal to the Roland name, and was still a powerhouse in the industry.

Peter waited nervously
in the conference room clicking his pen repeatedly. I walked behind him, set the files down and stole the pen from him as I took a seat. He looked over and smiled. “Sorry. I hear that Mr. Turner is…,” Peter began to explain when Victoria walked into the room talking to someone, James Turner I assumed, in that phony voice she used to imply she actually cared about more than money and power.

The man that followed Victoria was tall with cinnamon streaked blond hair cropped short to his head and a wild, bushy goatee.
His eyes were a deep golden brown, bright and full of intelligence. He wore a plain black t-shirt that failed to hide his broad chest or the deep v of his torso, faded jeans with a tear across one knee that looked one size too small stretched around his strong thighs and big, black leather boots. Tattoos of all kinds covered his strong, muscular arms. In short, he was the kind of guy I was sure, up until that very moment, wasn’t my type.

“Pete! Thanks for coming on short notice,” the man said taking Peter’s hand and shaking it roughly as
his eyes settled on me.

“Morning, Mr. Turner,” Peter replied and the man cocked an eyebrow and pulled his penetrating gaze from me and shifted it
back to Peter.

“Pete,
it’s James. My father is Mr. Turner…for the millionth time,” James said and laughed as his eyes found me again. “And who might you be?” he asked as he walked around Peter and took my hand. His hand was rough and calloused, the result of playing a guitar for a living, I assumed, but his touch was warm and inviting. I realized suddenly that I hadn’t taken a breath since he had walked into the room. I looked up at him to introduce myself but Victoria beat me to the punch.

“That’s one of our new assistants, Simone Navarro.
We all know she’s very cute James but let’s stop pawing the help and get down to business, James,” Victoria said with barely concealed contempt. Her father respected musicians, actors and performers, however, Victoria seemed as if she thought they were all beneath her. James knit his brow and growled almost imperceptibly, a rumbling groan that both frightened and excited me.

“Whatever you want,
love,” James turned with a sudden smile as phony as the one Victoria wore. He marched around the conference table and sat opposite me, dropping into his chair like a bratty teenager and looked at me with a crooked smile as he propped his big boots on the table.

“So, what’s the problem now, James?” Victoria asked in a condescending manner that made even me want to wipe the smug grin off her face.
James seemed to take it all in stride but his displeasure was evident as he clenched his fist and his knuckles turned white.

“You know damn well what the problem is, Vic
ky. The record company is insisting on forty-two tour stops and I told you no more than thirty. But somehow, the draft contract now shows thirty-six. Thirty was my final offer not my starting point. I thought I made that clear,” James said with remarkable restraint.

The vein above his temple twitched as I stared at him.
I didn’t find men like him appealing, or so I tried to tell myself. Nevertheless, I couldn’t take my eyes off of the man. I was completely captivated by the rock star and the warmth between my thighs only confirmed it. His rough looks and aggressive manner would have normally turned me off but instead I found myself attracted to this James Turner in a way I’d never felt before and couldn’t begin to understand.

“I don’t recall you specifying that, James. I did what I thought was best for all the parties involved,” Victoria said and suddenly I remembered something I’d read in the files.
I began digging through them and yes, there it was. However, James was already talking.

“Well, Victoria, I don’t pay you to represent all the parties.
I pay you to represent Battery but that could always change,” James answered with a thinly veiled threat. I hesitated for a moment, but Victoria was trying to railroad James and whether it was just my sense of right and wrong or the fact I was weak in the knees over James, I had to set the record straight.

“If I may, I’ve got the meeting minutes of the pre-negotiation meeting last month.
James did say that thirty tour stops was the maximum the band would agree to,” I said and felt all the eyes in the room turn towards me. Peter wore a look of warning as daggers flew at me from Victoria’s eyes. However, James looked at me with a look of appreciation and something else that made me want to blush.

“Thank you, Simone, for clearing that up.
Any other issues James?” Victoria announced, her voice dripping with sarcasm. James pointed out several other issues and each time Victoria acquiesced, she looked at me and raised her eyebrows as if daring me to contradict her again. I hardly noticed. My eyes were on James again but this time my imagination got the better of me.

I wondered what his calloused hands might feel like cupping my breasts, what that wild goatee might feel like between my thighs and what I might find in those way too tight blue jeans.
I felt hot and breathless. I was chewing on the pen I’d taken from Peter when James caught me staring at him. I turned away and when he diverted his attention back to Victoria and the contract, I shook my head and admonished myself for acting like a smitten schoolgirl.

I stared at the back of Peter’s chair focusing on the mechanism used to adjust the backrest to avoid looking at James again.
What was I doing? I had never looked at a man as I looked at him, never had thoughts like that. That’s not how I was raised and it’s not how I preferred to act. Nevertheless, his presence called to me, tempted me. I looked up for just a moment and found his eyes staring back.

I held them for a moment but his stare was too intense and I looked away.
My mind was scattered and I felt out of control. I wasn’t myself and I couldn’t wait to get out of the room and back to my cubicle, my coffee and my morning ritual. Just one more look and that’s all, I promised myself, and found James staring at me still. I quickly looked away again as Victoria apparently had enough and excused herself from the meeting. She ordered Peter to handle the balance of James’ issues with the contract that she referred to as minutia.

The room felt lighter
the moment Victoria left, or would have if I wasn’t still fighting the urge to stare at the rock star across the conference table. Thankfully, five minutes later we were finished. Things always went faster when Victoria wasn’t around. As James and Peter shook hands, I pretended to ready the files for transport back to my office, as if they needed any such thing. Peter left and James made ready to leave himself. I walked around the table with the files hugged to my chest looking at the ground when I saw two big black boots between me and the door.

“Excuse me,” I said
weakly and then dared to look up. I found James looking down on me from more than a foot above, his height increased by the soles of his scuffed leather boots.

“I want to say thanks for sticking up for me.
I was bluffing. I wasn’t sure I’d ever said thirty was our final offer but I’m always looking for an excuse to hassle the Fraulein. I’m James Turner,” he said and took a step closer to me. I hugged the stack of files tighter against my breasts.

“You’re welcome, Mr. Turner.
Nice to meet you officially. I need to get back to work,” I stammered and tried to step around James. However, he blocked my path.

“Whoa, little girl.
It’s James and what’s the hurry? If you’re going to be working for me, we should get to know each other. How about dinner or maybe something more intimate?” he asked. My eyes had drifted from his, with great effort on my part, but my gaze returned to James after his torrid implication.

“Excuse me?” I asked not believing what I just heard.
Part of me was appalled at his lurid suggestion but that part was overwhelmed in short order as I imagined what he might mean by intimate. James laughed softly at my nervousness and I told him again hoping to avoid my own scandalous thoughts, “I need to get back to work.”

“Or Fraulein Victoria will fire you?
I wouldn’t worry about that. Even though she acts as if we need her, it’s the other way around. If it wasn’t for Samuel, God rest his soul, Battery and a lot of other acts would be ghost. So, we on for dinner or should we just skip to the dessert?” he said.

“No, sorry,” I said
as I scurried around James leaving him in the conference room. I fought the urge to indulge my baser thoughts knowing exactly what he was insinuating. I didn’t like guys like James Turner I tried to tell myself. I liked nice men that didn’t come on too strong like James was. As I walked briskly away, I heard James chuckle softly and under his breath, he said, “Nice ass, little girl.” I blushed shamelessly and walked towards my cubicle even quicker.

~2~

I ducked into my cubicle after leaving James Turner in the conference room. After setting the Battery files on a shelf, I sat down and wished I had a door to close. My hands were shaking and my stomach was doing somersaults, not to mention the tingling in my panties. What the heck just happened? I’ve never been affected like that, especially by a man like James Turner. I took a sip of my coffee hardly noticing it was only lukewarm. I just needed the comfort of my ritual to settle my nerves. Hall and Oates played some song older than I was on my radio but the tune was catchy and it helped to calm me down.