Smiling, she picked it up from the pile of papers on the bedside table. Blank sheet music, she noted absently, then realized not all the pages were blank. The one partially sticking out at the bottom had notations made in the light blue ink of the hotel pen that had rolled to lie against the lampstand.

She touched her fingers to the notes, feeling as if she’d glimpsed a secret. She’d known Fox had written a number of Schoolboy Choir’s songs, the majority in concert with David, but she hadn’t realized he had formal musical training. It simply made him more fascinating, made her wonder how many more facets of him she hadn’t glimpsed… would never get the chance to know.

She only had him for three more weeks, a blink in a lifetime.

Breathing past the melancholy thought, she tidied up the pages, then walked back into her own room, leaving the door open. Since the flight had only been a quick three hours, she wasn’t tired, and the idea of sitting in her hotel room didn’t appeal. She was considering heading down to grab a coffee at one of the harborside cafés when there was a brisk knock on the door.

Opening it, she found herself facing not a member of the hotel staff but a bearded man dressed in a Schoolboy Choir T-shirt, the black fabric stretched over a significant beer gut and tucked into faded blue jeans. On his head was a battered New York Yankees cap, and around his neck hung a nametag that identified him as part of the band’s crew.

“You Molly?” He grunted, then looked down at his clipboard. “Yep, you’re her.” With that, he thrust a lanyard and attached nametag at her. “Make sure you don’t lose that. It’s your passport backstage—without it, security will throw you out.”

Molly placed the lanyard around her neck, the photo on it a shot Fox had taken with his phone one night after dinner. “Got it.” She turned and grabbed the small backpack she’d carried on the plane.

Grunting again, the man scratched at the salt and pepper of his beard, then nodded at her to follow him. “So, you actually know any shit or are you just here to fuck Fox?”

His tone was so matter-of-fact that Molly answered before embarrassment could steal her tongue. “Fox must trust you a lot.”

A narrow-eyed look. “Hmm. Brains.” He stuck out his hand. “I’m Maxwell. Don’t call me Max.”

“Nice to meet you, Maxwell. Are you the roadie in chief?”

“Roadie in chief?” He let out a deep laugh, slapping his beer belly. “Yeah, that’s me. I think I’m gonna put that on my business cards. Maxwell, Roadie in Chief.”

Laughing along with him, his amusement good-natured rather that mocking, she said, “Where are we going?”

“Out to where the band’s performing tomorrow night.” He stuck his pencil behind his ear, scowled again. “Never done anything this big this fast before, but it’s sick babies. Whattaya gonna do?”

“You flew down for this?” Molly had expected the band to just turn up on a temporary stage with borrowed equipment… but of course not. They had a reputation for the caliber of their concerts, would certainly not shortchange the charity or their fans by putting on a mediocre show.

“Boys flew our whole team down,” Maxwell told her. “Impossible to set up a show this big with a new crew, even with things stripped down to the basics.” Adjusting his cap, he led her out through a side entrance that exited into an open-air parking lot. “Today’s all about fine-tuning things, making sure the setup will work with the boys when they get going.”

Molly paused when Maxwell slid open the back door of a van and placed his clipboard on top of what looked like electronic equipment. “You know,” she said after he slid the door shut, hoping he wouldn’t take offense, “I don’t really know you and you want me to get in a black van with tinted windows.”

Booming laughter. “Yep. Brains.” Pulling out his phone with that pleased statement, he brought up the band’s website and took her to the Photos section. “Here.”

There was Maxwell with his arm around a sweaty post-concert Fox. Underneath were the words: Fox and Man-In-Charge-of-Everything, Maxwell, after the Chicago show.

“Convinced I don’t plan to drive you into the outback and feed you to the kangaroos?” Maxwell asked, a twinkle in his pale blue eyes.

Grinning, she said, “Can I look at the other photos?”

“Sure.” He handed her the phone. “If it rings, answer it for me—and by the way, you’re meant to be the roadie version of an intern, so nobody’s going to expect you to know much anyway.”

Molly waited until she’d belted herself in and Maxwell was pulling out before saying, “That’s clever.” She thought she’d kept her voice light and nonconfrontational, but Maxwell shot her a sideways look.

“Yeah, Fox’s clever.” A short pause. “Hasn’t ever used that brain of his to get a woman backstage incognito before though. Never snuck around with any woman, as a matter of fact. Always liked that about him—he doesn’t mess with women who aren’t free to play.”

Molly wanted to squirm and avoid the issue, but the fact was, she was the one who’d put Fox in this position with someone who was clearly important enough to him that he’d trusted the other man with the truth, and she had to own up to it. “I’m free,” she said quietly. “I just don’t want to be famous.”

Maxwell nodded. “Fair enough. Can’t escape being famous if you’re with Fox, though, so you better get used to the idea soon.”

Molly didn’t say anything to that—it was obvious Maxwell thought this was a long-term relationship given the effort Fox had gone to for her. Her fingernails dug into her palms, the idea of having Fox as her own a powerfully seductive one. It didn’t matter that she knew the relationship would never last in the hothouse atmosphere of a rock star’s life; this was her fantasy… at least for a short while longer.

It made her stomach hurt to imagine opening a magazine one day in the future and seeing him in the arms of another woman. A woman who would be right for him because she could survive in the environment in which he thrived, the roar of the crowds and the glare of the lights electricity in his blood.

Staring out the window until she could breathe again, she finished going through the photos on the band’s website. They told a story—of friendship, camaraderie, music, and parties. So many parties. So many beautiful women. All of them in skimpy clothes worn over taut, toned bodies, bodies that were usually draped over one member of the band or another.

Including Fox.

She closed the browser and put the phone in the cup holder. The photos hadn’t shown her anything she hadn’t already known—the fantasy was wonderful, but the harsh reality was that their lives and worlds were poles apart, would never again intersect after this month was over. Again, that stabbing in her abdomen, sharp and brutal, her throat thick.

“Here we go.” Maxwell drove through metal security gates after waving at the guards, and into what appeared to be a massive playing field or park with an unexpectedly solid-appearing temporary stage set up on one end.

Hopping out once they’d parked, Molly put on her fake glasses and helped Maxwell carry some of his more delicate equipment to the electronic nerve center of the concert, all of the audio and lights controlled by technology Molly had as much hope of understanding as she had of flying a fighter jet. That was when she saw Fox—he was on the stage with one of his bandmates. The blond one.

Noah.

The other man had recently been featured in a magazine article about the world’s most beautiful people, but it was to Fox alone that her eyes were drawn. Even dressed in one of his ubiquitous black T-shirts and a pair of old jeans, he exuded strength and a lazy sexuality as he and Noah apparently tested the sound system using electric guitars. She’d known he played one but had never had the chance to watch him perform live, was fascinated by how he held and moved with the instrument.

The guitar was gleaming red, of course.

Her lips curved.

“Don’t watch him like that if you want this to work.”

Coloring at Maxwell’s low-voiced warning, Molly turned away… just as Fox glanced at her. Her body responded to the touch of that smoky-green gaze as it always did, but aware of how many other people moved around them, she pinned her eyes to Maxwell’s back and became his shadow for the rest of the afternoon. While it was difficult to keep her attention off the man for whom she’d come here, she didn’t have to feign interest in the work it took to set up a big show—even a “stripped down” one.

There was the big stuff like setting up the stage and any pyrotechnics, but all that had been done already. Today, it was about going over the myriad tiny details, from making dead sure each of the speakers around the grounds was functioning as it should, to checking the individual lamps in the light system, to ensuring catering staff knew what to bring in for band and crew both, to confirming that there was a fridge backstage for the water and sports drinks.

Maxwell had every one of those thousand-and-one things on a mental checklist and he used Molly like she was a real intern.

Dropping her bag to the floor when she returned to the hotel room, Molly took off the black-framed glasses she’d worn for the past hours and flopped down on her back in bed. “I hope you pay Maxwell what he’s worth,” she said to the half-naked man who’d come to lean in the doorway between their rooms.

“Why do you think he’s still with us?” Prowling over, Fox straddled her supine body, the top button on his jeans undone to reveal a hint of dark hair.