Dillon laughed along with her because Sid deserved apunch in the nose a long time ago. “Are we terrible for laughing at him?”
“No. I should have punched him for all the shit he gave me over the years.”
Sid had often been out of line with Lizzy. Zach wasn’t much better. Dillon had come to her defense in the early days, but it had pissed her off. She had said that she didn’t need anyone to fight her battles, and she was right. She had a sharp tongue and could take on both Sid and Zach without pausing for a breath or blinking an eye. She was a tough chick. “I don’t know how the hell you put up with them.”
She pursed her lips to the side and shook her head. “Neither do I sometimes, but what choice did I have? I couldn’t walk away from the band.”
Dillon slid closer to her, and she glanced down at the narrowed space between them. “Do you want to get a drink or something to eat when we get back to the hotel?” he asked.
Lizzy sat back, and her dark eyes caught a glint of the light from the passing traffic. She tossed her hair over her shoulder. “If you’re looking for a hookup, forget it.”
“Just a drink.” He held his hands up to proclaim his innocence, but he knew she didn’t buy it.
She accepted anyway. “One drink. I don’t want a repeatof last night.”
The bartender poured two glasses of Jack and Coke and placed them on cardboard coasters atop the mahogany bar. Security stood on either side of Dillon and Lizzy, sandwiching them together like bookends, while several more bodyguards stood behind them. A large group of fans were trying to enter the hotel bar, but additional security at the entrance turned them away and told them to come back later.
Dillon held up his glass. “To the future. Whatever it brings, I hope you’re in it.”
Lizzy clinked her glass against his and paused with it against her lips. She was hiding a smile behind the cocktail. “What are you going to do when you get back home, Dillon?”
“Home? For me, home has been on the road bouncing from city to city for as long as I remember.” The thought of staying in one place for more than a few weeks sounded monotonous. He was used to traveling and living out of a suitcase. Each day brought a new city with a new adventure and new people to meet. It was going to be a big adjustment to be back home for more than a few weeks at a time. “I have a couple of prospects lined up.”
“Please don’t tell me you’re going to take a job as a judge on one of those talent competition shows.”
“Hell, no. I need to play and perform. I love being on tour.”
She swirled the ice around in her glass and took a long sip. “Not me. I want to be home for more than a few weeks at a clip. I bought this huge mansion five years ago andhaven’t spent more than a couple of months there. I haven’t even finished decorating the place.”
“Why didn’t you hire an interior decorator?”
She looked at him as if he were crazy. “Because it’s my place. I want to be the one to decorate it.”
“Lizzy Stone, homemaker. Who would have ever guessed?” He began to like the idea. Settling down in one place could be advantageous, as long as there was someone to settle down with.
She leaned her elbow on the bar and swiveled her stool to face him. “Why are you gazing at me with those puppy dog eyes?”
He could never hide his emotions. They were written all over his face like lyrics on paper. There was no use trying to hide his smile or his intention, so he slid off his barstool and took a step closer to her.
She drew in a deep breath, and her eyes grew wide.
“I want us to be together,” he said in a soft whisper. “It’s a new world now. We can be in it together without the pressure and ridicule of other people.”
Slowly, she let out the breath she’d been holding and momentarily closed her eyes. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. We’ve been through too many hard times. We have too much baggage. Too much history. It’s better if we just leave the bullshit behind and move forward with our lives.”
“That’s exactly what I want to do—move forward with our lives. Together. We finally have a chance, Lizzy. I knew that it would never have worked before. There was too much hostility all around us. Too much pressure. We only gotsucked into it because everyone was at odds with one another.”
Her raised brows challenged him. “Really? You think the only reason we fought was because everyone else was fighting?”
He gave her a crooked smile because they did bicker ridiculously, and there had been some major fallouts between them over the years, but they got through it. There was never any real hostility between them. “For the most part, yeah. It was all bullshit, Lizzy. You know that.”
“Dillon . . . it’s not a good idea.”
He felt the hesitation behind her words, and he couldn’t blame her for being leery. They didn’t need any more bad press and speculation about why the band really broke up. Rumors had been circulating for months, citing everything from an alleged band member’s terminal illness to a mental breakdown. The simple truth was too ordinary. The paparazzi wanted something to sensationalize.
She stared down at her glass and then took a big gulp, swallowing half its contents. “Look around. We can’t even have a drink in public together without being flanked by bodyguards. Is that how you want to live?With all our personal business on the front page of every gossip rag?”
He turned toward the entrance to the bar, now totally blocked off by security, and saw that the small number of people already in the bar when they arrived were relegated to other areas, so they had a wide birth of privacy. There was a small army of fans and paparazzi waiting outside. One drink together, the first time anyone had seen two membersof Blind Fury socializing on a personal level in years, alerted every pair of eyes in the immediate vicinity. “We gave up privacy a long time ago.”
