Page 1 of Bend

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Mars

Eli Warner. That fucker. He slid past me in the sliver of space left between me and the tour manager where we stood in line at the train’s cafe car, a smirk on his face as his shoulder bumped against my chest.

“Pardon,” he said, as if he was some old-world gentleman and hadn’t done it on purpose to rile me.

I grunted in return. Eli was no old-world gentleman. And even if he wasn’t technically a reporter—the whole lot of whom I considered the scourge of the earth after the last clusterfuck with Porter & Graves’ PR group and that prick writer Adam Slade—he still fell into the category of people capitalizing on others’ creativity, which made him just another leech. One with an unfortunately nice, tight ass in those jeans. I wasn’t in the mood for the sparring today, though. We’d been on the train for a solid two days between cities in Arizona and New Mexico, chasing Les and Evan’s harebrained scheme to take three bands along with them and tour the half the country by train.

I shuffled forward a step after Eli passed and whisked toward the door that connected the cafe car to the observatory car, and I sure as hell ignored the look he tossed back over his shoulder at me. Probably seeing if I was checking out his ass. I waited until he wasn’t looking, stole another quick glance to confirm that yep, it was still tight, and faced forward again just as Les sidled up to me—as much as one could sidle when the ground beneath us swayed every so often and rumbled constantly.

“Will you grab me a Coke and a Snickers, pretty please?” Les batted his lashes at me.

I glanced down at my T-shirt and jeans. “There something about my outfit today that says I’m your butler? You seeing a tux and tails that I’m not?”

Les considered, his mouth twisting up prettily. “No, but thereissomething about my name on your paychecks that says you’ll make an exception.”

Little shit. And even if he wasn’t right, it was damn near impossible to say no to Les Graves. Only his bandmate and boyfriend, Evan Porter, managed it. Sometimes me if the moon hung just right in the sky.

“You can’t stand here three minutes and wait?” There were two people ahead of me, and it wasn’t like the train would be stopping anytime soon.

“Nope. And I need you to bring it to me out in the lounge ’cause we’re about to jam on something new with Sam.” Samson Finley, the lone solo act traveling with us. Good, too. I had to hand it to Les and Evan for assembling an all-star lineup. Every stop we’d made on the Rambling Hearts tour so far had sold out. Byron, Porter & Graves’ manager in Nashville, had told me folks were paying insane prices for scalped tickets.

And they’d probably pay all over again when Eli Warner’s documentary capturing it all came out. If he lived long enough to produce it, because he was driving me fucking crazy. Somehow I’d become the impromptu coordinator for interviews and soundbites. And I was a poor choice because of said dislike for people who wanted to horn in on my boys’ life.

Except I didn’t hate Eli as much as I wanted to. Or at least certain parts of me didn’t.

I gave Les a bright smile that was as false as my Grandma Mary’s front teeth. “Fine. At your service. Dr. Pepper and a Mounds bar coming right up. Extra coconut.” Les hated both. I rolled my eyes at his grin as he took hold of my shoulders and squeezed, locking his gaze to mine. “You love this train. You love this tour. It’s the most fun you’ve ever had in your life.”

I blinked away his attempt at mind control. “Nope, need to work on the Jedi mind trick thing more. Back’s still telling me it hates the tiny fucking beds.” I was a huge guy. Tall and stacked, but heading toward extra fluffy the longer we were on this tour, and I didn’t belong on a train where everything was meant to fit neatly into compartments. My hand was twice the size of the sink basin in my sleeper. It was like sleeping on dollhouse furniture.

“I’ll practice some more on Ev.”

I wrinkled my nose sourly at Les’s wink, but I was happy for them, and they knew it. Happy they’d finally fucking realized what had been glaringly evident to me almost from the moment I’d become their tour manager years back: they belonged together. It’d just damn near destroyed them to get there.

“Oh, and Eli said something about doing a recap of the Phoenix show later tonight. I wasn’t sure what time ’cause I know we’re doing that call-in radio thing, too, so can you handle that with him?”

I sighed. Just the sound of his name sent a sliver of heat through my gut and stuck a thumbtack in my nerves. “Yeah, I’ll handle it.”

“You’re the best worst who ever lived.”

“Theonlybest worst who will put up with you.” Never mind that little bit of fondness that crept into my voice at the end. Les wisely ignored it.

He trotted off and I nudged the back of the Dirty Five’s tour manager’s leg as he stood in front of me, eyeing the tiny menu like he was standing in front of a smorgasbord while the attendant stared at him boredly. “Shit or get off the pot, Cason.”

I chuckled as Cason flipped me off over his shoulder. “Fine. Hot dog.” He put his back to the counter as the attendant stepped away to retrieve it. “I’m ready for some kind of food that’s actually come out of the earth in the recent past,” he grumbled.

“You and me both.”

We were on a luxury train, but the food was all processed Southern grub or hot dogs and burgers. Usually I wouldn’t complain, but after days on end of it, my insides were starting to feel like they’d been soaked in a vat of fryer grease.

Once I had my popcorn and Les’s stuff, I headed for the lounge car where all the bands tended to converge at intervals to hang out. Inevitably someone would pick up an instrument and all the chatter and horsing around would morph into an hours-long jam session. And for all of my grumbling about the miniature size of everything on the train, this was my favorite part. I’d loved music all my life. Couldn’t play or sing for shit, but I loved being around it, listening to it, and I was good at keeping things running smoothly. Huh. Guess that made me a leech in a way, too.

The lounge car was old-world style with gleaming dark wood paneling, leather couches, and club chairs. Not overly swanky, but comfortable, and the chairs were actually full-sized. Jared, the promoter who’d helped Les and Evan put together the tour, had managed to locate a fully restored vintage locomotive. I didn’t even ask how much it had cost, but once Evan had seen it, it was a done deal.

Sam, Evan, and Les were already going at it with their guitars, so I set Les’s stuff down on one the side tables, found myself a seat, and kicked back as Janie, one of the Dirty Five, jumped into the aural fray with her violin.

I didn’t get esoteric about much. Didn’t believe in ghosts or the afterlife, and I thought yoga was a fucking excuse to make people with stiff joints feel like shit—in spite of how much Les would disagree—but listening to a bunch of chart-topping artists come together and riff off each other, well, there was a transcendence to it I couldn’t explain. It was a tongue I wasn’t fluent in but sure as shit loved listening to.