The Rocker That Savors Me (The Rocker...) (5 page)

I used my key to unlock the apartment door and was almost trampled when I walked through the front door.
The first thing I was going to do with my first paycheck was get us all new cellphones so that we could stay in touch. Lucy was pale and Lana had a scowl on her beautiful face. I instantly felt guilty for having worried them. It was after eight, but I had always been home by six, even on my most busy of days.

“Where have you been?” Lana demanded, sounding more like a mother than our own mother ever had. She had taken care of Lucy for the first four years of the little girl’s life, so she was used to worrying about someone other than herself.
Lana was strong and was extremely mature for someone so young.

I pulled the bag of greasy hamburgers from behind my back and offered it to her as a peace offering. “I
come baring food and good news.”

“You got the job?” Lucy was already jumping up and down with excitement.

“I got the job,” I told her, hugging her close and dropping a kiss on top of her sweet smelling hair. Lana must have already helped her with her bath. “Let’s sit down and talk. I have some news.”

We sat down at the little sca
rred up kitchen table, and I handed out the burgers that I knew that they loved but we hadn’t been able to afford often. There was a saucepan with mac and cheese on the stove, so I knew they had already eaten, but the girls would never turn down grease and saturated fat.

I was going to miss this apartment. It had kept me safe and w
orn for the last five years. I liked it’s warn wallpaper and the dull, egg color paint on the walls. It was small, only a one bedroom, and barely housed three females. The girls took the bedroom while I slept on the worn, old sofa that I had inherited from the tenant before me. 

I waited until they had inhaled the first half of their burgers before telling them about my day. I wiped my mouth and fingers on a napkin and took a sip of my bottled water. “So…
I got the job, but they are hiring me straight out instead of through Stan.”

Lana’s brows rose. “Is that good or bad?”

I grinned. “It’s good. It’s really good, Lana,” I assured her. “We’re getting health insurance, and they are paying me triple what I would make working through Stan for a month…in a week.” Lana’s eyes got huge and I nodded. “So it’s a good deal.”

“Where will you be working?”
she asked after swallowing a mouthful of beef, cheese and veggies.

“Malibu.” I didn’t know how she was going to react when I told her about us moving, but I had to do it now. “My boss has a guest house and she wants me to move into it
, so that I will be on call twenty-four seven. She knows that I have you girls to take care of, and she said that it was okay.”

Lana nearly choked on the food in her mouth when she swallowed too quickly. I pounded her on the back a few times to help her catch her breath. Her eyes were watering but she was
able to wheeze out a strangled, “What?!”

“Does that mean we’re moving?” Lucy asked
, her little brow puckered up.

I nodded. “Yes, Lucy. We
are moving, and our new place is right beside of the beach.”

She clapped her hands together. “That’s so cool!”

“But we can’t move!” Lana objected. “I mean that’s awesome and all, Layla. Really. It’s the beach, who wouldn’t want that? But I can’t transfer now.”

“You won’t have to. Lucy is going to have to change schools, but you won’
t. You can use my car and drive to school. I won’t need it.” If her eyes got any wider, I was sure they were going to pop out of her pretty head. And I hadn’t even told her the biggest news yet!

“I don’t care if I change schools
,” Lucy informed me around a mouthful of cow, pickles and ketchup.

“I’m glad, Lucy. I really think this is going to be a good thing for all three of us.” I took another drink of my water. “I just need you girls to do one thing for me, okay?”

“What?” Lana questioned, still sounding a little strangled. I knew how she felt. Today had been one big surprise after another for me too.

“Well, the people I’m going to be working for are really famous.
They need their privacy. We can’t talk about them to anyone. So if anyone asks you who I work for, you tell them you don’t know. And you can’t bring friends over.”

Lana laughed at that. “I don’t have time for friends anyway, Layla. So that isn’t going to be a problem.”
I was a hard ass about studying, but she wanted a good education just as much as I wanted it for her.

“What’s your boss’s name?” Lucy asked.

“Well the woman who hired me is called Emmie. She’s my boss…” I met Lana’s eyes and grinned. “…but the guys that live there are in a band called Demon’s Wings.”

“No way!”
Lana exclaimed. “No way!” She wasn’t a big fan of the rock genre like I was, but she knew exactly who I was talking about.

I laughed. “Yes way!”

“They’re demons?” Lucy asked with fright in her dark eyes. “I don’t think I want to live there, Layla.”

“Oh
Lucy, baby no. They aren’t demons.” I quickly assured her. “That’s just their name, honey. I promised you, they aren’t demons.”

Layla

I found out why Emmie was willing to offer me more money the next afternoon.

By the time I got to the house in Malibu the band was already gone. More time in the studio, Emmie told me. I was glad that I wouldn’t have to worry about running into Jesse. After a night filled of some really naughty dreams about the sexy drummer, I wasn’t sure I could look him in the eye and not jump on him. That wasn’t a good thing. Emmie would probably fire me on the spot for attacking the man.

For the first part of the morning
, I helped Emmie hang pictures. Mostly they were beautifully framed posters of the band. A few had Emmie in them. I’d had seen several of them over the years. I really liked the one with Emmie pressed up against Jesse. She was wearing a pair of jeans and nothing else. Her auburn hair hung free and her breasts were pressed against his side. It didn’t come off trashy like some I had seen in the past were the girl was all skanky. The other guys were all shirtless as well, with the brothers on either side of Jesse, and Nik glaring into the camera from his position just behind them, as if daring the world to say anything.

I helped decorate the living room with things I had never even dreamed of touching before in my life
: Grammys, MTV video awards, platinum records. I was scared to touch some of the awards that Emmie had carefully wrapped in a box, like the crystal guitar that the band had received in London for
Rocker of the Year
just the year before. It was beautiful and I was terrified that I would break it.

After a small lunch that Emmie insisted I share with her in her office
, I got to work on the upstairs. I vacuumed and scrubbed the toilets. I even picked up a few dirty clothes and put them in hampers. It was easy to decipher what bedroom belonged to whom. The bass guitar in one told me it was Shane’s. The drumsticks on the bedside table in another assured me it was Jesse’s. But when I got to the bedroom at the end of the hall, I knew that I was in for a treat. I didn’t need to see the Gibson and Fender guitars against the wall of this bedroom to realize it belonged to Drake.

I smelled it as soon as I opened the door. It was unmistakable, that stench that comes with
vomit and sweat, but I had a very strong stomach. It took me an hour to get the smell out. I opened the window in the bedroom and the one in the bathroom. I scrubbed every surface in that bathroom with bleach and then went back over it with two other cleaners. I smelled like the chemicals that I had used, but at least the bathroom no longer smelled like the men’s room at the club I use to work at.

I put away my supplies in the laundry room before going in search o
f Emmie. I needed to talk to her about that room. When I found her she was glaring at the screen on her laptop with her cellphone pressed to her ear. “I said no. You know how I feel about her. I don’t really give a fuck. Who cares?” She raised her head when I knocked quietly on the office door. “Ax, I have to go.”

She tossed the phone aside and motioned me in. As I walked closer her nose wrinkled. “You smell like a bleach factory.”

“Sorry. I just finished cleaning the bathrooms… Listen I need to talk to you about something.”

Her eyes darkened. “I told you it was going to be bad, Layla.
Just tell me how much more you want.”

I stopped, taken aback. “No. No, that isn’t what I wanted to talk about.”
She frowned but didn’t say anything so I went on. “You said that you wanted his bathroom done every other day, but I think it would be better on us all if I can get in there every day.”

“Oh.” She seemed surprised. “So you aren’t demanding more money?”

“No, of course not. I’ve cleaned worse things than that bathroom.” Much, much worse. “So is it okay?”

“If that’s what you think is best.”

I nodded. “It is… And is it okay if I change his sheets every day too?”

“Layla, I hired you to help me out around here. That doesn’t mean that you have to worry about Drake to that extent.” She didn’t sound irritated, just concerned for me. “I don’t want to overwork you.”

“Please?” I didn’t think I could stand the thought of Drake having to sleep on those sheets every night. They had been tossed every which way and the stench of sweat and fear had been worse than the actual smell of the vomit.

“I…” She was still frowning at me, but she nodded. “Okay. If it means that much
, then you have free reign in Drake’s room. Clean what you think needs cleaning.”

“Thank you.” Her phone rang and I turned to go so that she could get back to doing whatever it was that she did.

“Layla?” she called after me as I started to close the door.

I stopped and looked back at her. “Yes?”

“Thank you. Drake is special…and he needs a little more TLC than the rest of them sometimes.” Her voice was choked and she blinked several times to keep the tears in her green eyes from falling. “So thank you.”

Before I could answer she picked up her phone. “I told you that I don’t want to have dinner with you and the bitch troll, Axton.”

I changed Drake’s sheets and pillow cases and put his comforter in the heavy duty washer. By the time I was done, his room smelled so much better. I didn’t understand what Emmie had meant by him being special, but I was glad that I could make him feel like he was.

It was almost six before I told Emmie that I was leaving. She was in the living room with a bowl of cereal. “Okay
, thanks. Oh, tomorrow I want to show you the guest house. I meant to do it today but things got away from me. Have you talked to your sisters about it?”

“Yeah, they seem excited. Lana was worried about changing schools, but I assured her that she could use my car so that she would
n’t have to.”

“I wouldn’t want to leave my friends either.” She put her empty bowl on the glass coffee table.

“That’s not it. I think she couldn’t care less about all of that. Mostly she was worried about all the extra classes she’s taking.” Emmie patted the sectional beside of her, and I dropped down on the edge. “She’s crazy smart, and I push her hard. She already has enough college credits from all the extra AP classes to start college as a sophomore. Her education is important to us both.”

“W
ow. She sounds like a good girl.”

“She is. Lana has her head on straight.” I was proud of that girl. Even after all the shit our mother put her through she was still so strong and loving.

“Well, I can’t wait to meet her.” The front door opened without warning and in walked the band. She stood to greet them. “Hey!”

“Emmie, I’m starving.” Shane dropped a kiss on her cheek. “Tell me you made something that doesn’t have bacon on it.”

“I thought we could grill out on the patio. Burgers and hotdogs okay?”

“As long as
it isn’t from a fast food place, that’s perfect.” He rubbed his hand over her distended belly lovingly before focusing on me. “Well hello there, beautiful.”

I couldn’t help but grin. I knew all about the reputation of Shane Stevenson. There didn’t
come a bigger horn dog. This man was king of orgies, or so the trash magazines had said. “Hello.”

Emmie muttered something under her breath and shook her head. “Layla, since you are a fan I’m sure you know who this is. Shane, this is our housekeeper Layla Daniels.
Our
housekeeper
, Shane. And her job does not include personal turn down services.”

He looked a little disappointed but still offered me his hand. “I love your name, Layla. I’m a huge Clapton fan.”

“You’re a huge something.” A deep voice informed him, and my heart actually skipped a beat. Jesse shoved Shane from behind. “I thought you wanted a run.”

“I changed my mind.” Shane gave me a wink. “Excuse me, Layla. It was a pleasure to meet you.”

I watched him go because it was safer to look at Shane than at the hulking piece of male perfection standing mere feet from me. “It was nice to meet you Shane,” I called after him.