They passed another room that looked like a tastefully decorated high school gymnasium. The highly polished wooden floor gleamed beneath modern-styled chandeliers. A huge, fully stocked bar took up the majority of the far wall. Some chairs were stacked against one wall, but the rest of the room was empty.

When Reagan paused and gaped through the spectacular archways, Dare said, “The ballroom.”

“We have a ball in there, all right,” Logan said.

“Parties?” Reagan asked.

“A few,” Dare said.

“Will I be invited to the next one?” she asked eagerly.

Dare chuckled. “I’d say so.”

The other band members continued down the corridor and entered the next room, talking and laughing about various party memories. Reagan caught movement out on the expansive patio outside the floor-to-ceiling ballroom windows. Everything in this house was huge. She wondered if Dare lived here alone. Seemed a waste of space for one person. She had no doubt that he had an easier time forking out millions of dollars for this place than she had coming up with mere hundreds for rent each month.

The man outside the windows pulled his shirt off over his head and tossed it on the ground.

“Is that Trey?” she asked breathlessly.

Trey pushed something on the ground with his toe and a huge Jacuzzi set into the slate patio began to bubble.

“Helping himself to my hot tub again,” Dare said. “I keep telling him he might as well move in. He says he doesn’t want to impose. The dipshit imposes all the time.”

Reagan looked up at Dare and was momentarily dumbfounded to find she was having a conversation with one of the most famous guitarists on the planet. One of her idols. “I think I said something back in the studio that upset him. Does he really care that Bait-n-Switch broke up? We weren’t very good, to be honest.”

“I’m pretty sure he’s never heard of Bait-n-Switch,” Dare said. His hand slid up into his long, silky hair and he scratched his head before tucking the black strands behind one ear. “No offense.”

“None taken. Do you have any idea what I said to set him off?”

Dare smiled at her. “He has a lot on his mind. Brian Sinclair’s wife had a baby this morning. What you said about kids causing bands to break up—”

“Oh shit! I didn’t mean Sinners.” She tore her gaze from Dare to watch Trey kick off his shoes. He looked entirely too depressed. “I’m going to go talk to him. Can you give me a couple minutes?”

“Sure, we need to get our instruments tuned up anyway.”

Reagan had completely forgotten that she was still carrying her guitar strapped around her neck and shoulder. She looked down at it wondering if it was wise to take it out near the rolling hot tub water.

“Do you want me to take that into the practice room for you?” Dare asked.

Reagan was dumbfounded by his thoughtfulness. Weren’t rich and famous rock stars all assholes? “I’d really appreciate that, Mr. Mills.”

Dare laughed. “Oh please. No one calls me Mr. Mills besides my lawyer. Call me Dare.”

She smiled wondering why he would need a lawyer. “Thanks, Dare.” Reagan lifted the strap over her head and handed her guitar to him.

He held it in one hand and wrinkled his nose at it as if it had an infectious disease. “You know, since Max won’t need his guitars anymore, he’ll probably give you a few high-quality instruments to use until you find something more to your liking.”

Max played custom-made Gibson Les Paul guitars. Expensive custom-made guitars. “Are you serious?” she blurted.

Dare chuckled. “Completely. I bet you’re a little overwhelmed at the moment. Go talk to Trey. Put a smile on his face for me. Just don’t take too long. My band can be sort of diva when you make them wait.” He winked at her and carried her guitar down to the practice room where various clangs and twangs were being produced.

As soon as she recovered from Dare’s flirty wink, Reagan rushed across the polished floor of the ballroom and slid into the bank of windows. Trey stood with one toe in the hot tub water. The rest of him was completely exposed. Completely. He turned his head at the sound of her graceless crash and offered her a crooked grin before slipping into the water.

In those five seconds that his naked body had been in view, she’d snapped enough mental pictures to get her through several nights of adventure with her favorite vibrator. Trey’s body relaxed into the water and he sat there facing the windows, staring at her with the most unreadable expression she’d ever encountered. He obviously thought she was a total idiot, a klutz, and an embarrassment to the human species. Oh well. She’d made worse first impressions in her life.

She opened one of the French doors and heard a faint beep. She glanced around looking for its source.

“I think you just triggered the alarm,” Trey said.

“Shit! What do I do?” Panicked, she slammed the door shut behind her.

“Now you’ve triggered the alarm and locked yourself out of the house.” He chuckled and hauled himself out of the hot tub. Naked, gorgeous, and dripping, Trey padded to a different door that led into some sort of changing room. Reagan scarcely heard the beeps as he entered some code into a touch pad on the wall. So much blood was rushing through her ears she would have had difficulty hearing a jet engine. As he crossed the enormous patio in Reagan’s direction, she couldn’t take her eyes off him. She prided herself on keeping her head when it came to men, but this one… Must be all the excitement of the day catching up with her and making her giddy with duh-ness.

Trey made things worse (better?) by coming to stand before her instead of returning to the concealing water of the hot tub. Displaying no signs of self-consciousness, Trey stood there and waited for her eyes to drift from his bare feet to his thickening cock to his flat belly to his… thickening cock. Why was he getting excited? Surely not because she was there. She glanced around looking for the typical bikini-clad, sexpot supermodels these rock stars spent most of their time with. She found she actually was the only female in attendance. Weird.

“Do you want to join me?” he whispered close to her ear.

He didn’t touch her, but her entire body responded with electric jolts of lust that converged between her thighs. His low voice did jittery things to her already frayed nerves and she laughed. She laughed at Trey Mills instead of shedding her clothes and jumping into the hot tub with her ankles behind her neck. She bit her lip, suppressing the urge to slap herself in the forehead repeatedly.

“I’ll take that as a no.” He turned and started back to the hot tub.

She caught his well-muscled arm and scarcely stifled an excited gasp. He paused and glanced over his shoulder to melt her into a puddle of Reagan pudding with those maddeningly sexy green eyes of his.

“I…” she shrieked. Shrieked? What in the fuck was wrong with her? Keep it together, Reagan. Keep it together. She cleared her throat. “I didn’t come out here to join you in the hot tub. I came to challenge you to a guitar duel.” What? No, not that. She’d come out there to console Trey about Sinners. To tell him there was no way Brian would ever leave the band. But what did she know? She didn’t know Brian. She was just a hopeful fangirl.

His eyebrows lifted with interest. “A guitar duel?”

“Yeah. I have to go practice with my band.” She sucked in a breath of pure terror. She was certainly running through a wide gamut of emotions this morning. “My band… Exodus End,” she mumbled. “Oh my fucking God!”

Trey laughed.

Reagan took a deep steadying breath. “After we’re done practicing, I want to duel you, Trey Mills.”

“At high noon?” He whistled the theme to some old spaghetti Western.

“After you’re done with your soak in the hot tub.”