Page 8 of Talk Vino To Me

“Hey! That’s cold!” Ian squirms as I carefully dole out a dab.

“Hush you, big baby,” I tease. “Sometimes we have to sacrifice for beauty.”

I gently massage the cream into his skin. As my fingers glide up and down the expanse from his fingertips to those corded forearms, my brain conjures up other, more naked situations where I might rub something on Ian’s skin. I don’t dare make eye contact. I’m afraid he’ll see my every lust-filled thought in my face.

Ian’s hands are tense at first, but by the time I’m done, they are limp in my grasp. I but when I look up, he’s leaning back in the chair, face relaxed. Without the usual tension on his face, he looks a lot like that fresh-faced boy I idolized so long ago.

“Mr. Worthington-Jones?” one of Marta’s assistants calls. “We’re ready for you now.”

Ian stands up, stretching, all his long limbs like a work of art. He smiles down at me, and I immediately think of a big cat. Beautiful and far too dangerous.

“Come on,” he says, in a sexy drawl. “Let’s go make some magic.”

Ian

“I— um — what?”

Dez — I mean, Daisy — who is she even kidding with that utterly adorable name? — looks like a startled rabbit. It’s the first time I’ve seen her flummoxed since she showed up on my doorstep.

I hold out my hand to her. Her eyebrows reach up like they’re doing calisthenics.

“What do you mean?” she asks, looking nervous. “The only magic that’s happening is Marta with her camera.”

I grab her hand and pull her over to the area where Marta’s set up a few bottles of the wine on pedestals of varying heights.

“I’ve been thinking about your concept,” I explain. “It’s good. I like it. But there shouldn’t just be my hands in there. I can probably scrounge up Shredrick and the other guys next time they’re in town. But for now, there should be a soft, girly pair of hands, too.”

“I think you mean feminine?” she automatically corrects. She’s not so flabbergasted by my suggestion that she participate in the shoot that she can’t catch my weird slips of the tongue. I appreciate her being a stickler for detail. I think that means’s she’s gonna do it.

“Wait — you can get Shred to do this with you?” Daisy’s voice goes up about three octaves higher than dogs can hear. “You’re still in touch?”

An irrational spike of jealousy smacks me in the gut. I breathe it out, leaning into my years of doing yoga. I can’t seriously be jealous that she’s into Shredrick (AKA Frederick Jones III). Our bassist was and is a fucking genius. If Prince and John Paul Jones somehow had a love child, it would’ve been Shred.

Every Courage fan on the planet either wanted to do him or to be him. Correction: Do and/or be. Sometimes they wanted to do both.

The worst thing about it is he’s so fucking nice, the wanker. You can’t even hate him. I made it my mission to piss off every human we came across, like the spoiled little fucker I always knew I could be, but Shred, man... he was something else. Totally Zen. After a while I stopped being an arsehole because I couldn’t get a rise out of the guy. I’d try something fierce, but no matter what, he’d just give me this disappointed face. The guilt nagged at me, so I quit.

“Yeah,” I say. “We’re all still on good terms.”

“That’s great. It’s really great. It would be cool to have him come —”

She stops herself, but not before that sweet blush rises along her cheeks. It’s fucking precious to watch her inner fangirl peek out. I didn’t expect Dez to be anything less than the ball buster she started off being. This softer side of her is appealing in ways I shouldn’t think about.

“I mean, there was that six month period where we hired someone else to sit in on the sessions because Shreddie ran off to New Zealand to find himself. But even then, we worked it out.”

“What’d you do?” Marta asks. She carefully positions my hands on a bottle of Rockstar Noir.

“We brought in a session guy,” I reply. Dez frowns. It’s the same thing every fan does whenever that year comes up. If we ever end up making that documentary about Courage, the time we let someone else into the band will be the dark night of the soul for sure.

To be fair, that’s not surprising. It was a very tense time. When Shred left, I voted for the band to break up. But Kyle and JB decided they weren’t ready to give up the rock stardom quite yet, so we hired a sub.

“The guy was decent,” I continue. “Really, really decent.”

Marta snorts in a knowing way. “Is that cocky bastard code for he was good and I felt threatened?”

“Nah. He was a bassist. I play lead. It wasn’t like that.”

One of Marta’s assistants comes over and gently coaxes Dez into the shot. Her deep red manicure is perfect. Her nails gleam against the smoky glass of the bottle.

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