“I knew it was you,” the guy enthused, showing off a rather crooked set of teeth. “I knew it. Didn’t I say it was him, Gail? I said that is fucking Brian Master Sinclair right in front of us. Didn’t I, Gail?”
“Yeah, that’s what you said,” his very tall, very thin, very blond companion said.
“Are you on vacation? Going to Aruba? I heard about the bus crash in Canada. Glad no one was hurt.”
“Our sound board operator is now paralyzed,” Brian said tersely.
“Well, glad no one important was hurt. So why are you going to Aruba?”
Dave was very important and not only because he was an amazing sound engineer. He was an all-around good guy. Myrna took Brian’s arm and tugged him toward the woman checking IDs against boarding passes.
“Delayed honeymoon,” Brian said. He turned, trying to put the guy out of his head. Brian had wanted to get away from just this kind of thing, and damned if it wasn’t following him onto the fucking plane.
“Oh. Is that your wife? I thought she was your secretary or something. I figured a rock star like you would be married to some hot nineteen-year-old blonde with big ol’ titties.” The dude laughed hysterically, ending with a loud snort.
Myrna bristled, and Brian suppressed the urge to punch the guy in his prattling mouth. Unfortunately, the dude continued to yammer at the back of Brian’s head all the way down the jetway and even inside the plane’s cabin. Brian pressed a finger to his forehead, hoping to stave off a threatening headache.
“Me and Gail are getting married this week,” the guy said. “On the beach in Aruba.”
“That’s nice.”
“We’d love for you to come. And you could even bring your wife if you want. Hey, do you guys swing, by any chance?”
“No,” Brian said, shoving their carry-ons into the compartment over their seats. He chanced a glance at Myrna, who had taken the window seat and was trying to glare a hole into their tag-along’s throat.
“That’s too bad. Gail likes to bang guitarists.”
Gail giggled shrilly at this, which turned Brian’s threatening headache to full-out pounding throb behind his right eye.
“That’s nice,” Brian said.
“We really would like you to attend our wedding, though. Will you come?”
“We have other plans,” Brian said with as much cordiality as he could muster.
“Oh,” the guy said flatly. “Well, I’m Kev. It was really awesome meeting you in any case.”
“Nice to meet you too,” Brian said, giving Kev’s moist hand a shake to finalize their interaction.
Brian flopped into his seat and turned to Myrna, striking up a meaningless conversation in hopes to deter Kev from camping out in the aisle beside him.
“He’s gone,” Myrna said after several tense moments.
“I hate to be an asshole to a fan, but I am not in the mood to be pestered this week.”
“He was rather insulting,” Myrna said, putting her hands under her perfect breasts and giving them a fluff.
“I can go punch him in the mouth if you want.”
She grinned. “As much as I’d like to see that, you’ll just get us kicked off the plane as a terrorist threat.”
“Maybe later then,” he said.
“Did you let the guys know that we’re leaving the country?” Myrna asked.
The band was in a kind of crisis mode at the moment, so they would probably want to know where their lead guitarist had wandered off to.
“I called Trey. He threatened to join us,” Brian said with a smile. Part of him missed the good ol’ days of getting into trouble and under skirts with his best friend, but most of him was deliriously happy to give it all up so he could spend the rest of his life with the woman who’d stolen his heart, his soul, and his undivided attention.
“How did you talk him out of it?”
“I told him we were leaving tomorrow.”
“Brian.” She shook her head at him.
“Did you want him to tag along? I’m all for it. You know I’m still waiting for you to agree on another threesome.”
“When I’m off birth control?”
Brian’s body jerked. “Yeah, with my luck, he’d get you pregnant in an instant.” He scowled at the direction of his thoughts.
“I don’t care how good it feels, Brian. I don’t want him in our bed again.”
“Yeah, I heard you the first twenty times.”
He still didn’t understand why Myrna was so against another threesome. She was completely open to anything in the bedroom—anything—so that particular hard limit surprised him. It was almost as if she was jealous of Trey. But that made absolutely no sense to Brian. What did she have to be jealous of?
Hadn’t he proven to her time and again that she was the most important person in his life? Fuck, he’d been so wrapped up in her when they’d first gotten married that he hadn’t even noticed that Trey had gotten himself addicted to painkillers. Brian hadn’t recognized the danger until Sed had practically kidnapped Trey to dry him out in some sleazy hotel room. Brian was still pissed at Sed for strong-arming the situation instead of getting Trey proper professional help, but he was even more pissed at himself for being more interested in fucking his wife than supporting his best friend. Trey had needed him, and Brian had failed him.
Myrna had been perfectly fine with Sed being the one who’d helped Trey out while he was in crisis. Brian sometimes wondered if she truly understood how important Trey was too him. Other times he wondered if she actually wanted him to distance himself from his longtime roommate. Brian could feel the gulf between himself and his best friend widening with each passing day, and he didn’t know what to do about it. He understood that him being married meant that he and Trey would never be as close as they’d once been. Now that they no longer lived together, they scarcely saw each other when they were off tour. Especially since Brian ended up spending most of his time in Kansas City, where Myrna still worked.
He just hoped Trey found someone to love soon. The thought of Trey haunting their once-shared apartment alone made him feel guilty. Guilty enough to ask Myrna if Trey could move in with them. They planned to buy a house after Myrna quit her job and they settled in Southern California sometime within the next year. Brian was sure they could find a place large enough for the three of them. Yet she’d squelched that idea immediately. “He has to find a life without you at some point,” she’d said. “You hanging on like this isn’t fair to him. Let him move on.”