Page 35 of Kiss & Collide (Racing Hearts #2)

V iolet’s heels rapped on the marble lobby floor of the boutique hotel Reece was staying in as she strode toward the elevators in a fury.

Tonight was big for Chase. She should be at the Arrow Beverages party with him, helping him navigate his new reality.

The GQ profile had just dropped to huge buzz.

Crowds of fans now materialized at the track entrance every day of the race weekend, and they’d needed security guards to get him inside unscathed.

But no. Instead, she was here to babysit some asshole .

His own private party. Motherfucker. The fact that the guys in the garage were talking about it meant it was as private as the queen’s bloody jubilee.

Beside the elevator, a sign on a silver stand indicated that the party was at the rooftop bar.

Renting that place out had to be costing a fortune.

She rode the elevator up to the roof, fuming.

Carter Hammond could more effectively rein in his Fail Son if he cut off his allowance now and then.

As soon as the elevator door slid open into the small lobby upstairs, Violet’s stomach contracted with panic.

That song …

She knew it. She had been there when it was written. Fucking Ian had even told her it was about her, which was probably just another lie.

But this wasn’t Spotify piped through the bar’s sound system. This was live . Which meant …

She rounded the corner and the room opened up in front of her. Dark, half full of people, lots of purple neon light, and on the far side of the room, up on a stage, Revenant Saints was grinding out “Love Like a Drug . ”

Ian looked good. He always did when he was in his element, up onstage with every eye fixed on him.

He gripped the mic with one hand while his other glided suggestively up and down the mic stand as he growled out the bridge, all performative angst. Behind him, Astrid wailed on the guitar, her face twisted up with tough girl rage.

Ben was still on bass, and Kiz was there, too, on drums. Kiz had always been her favorite—gruff, no-nonsense, and thoroughly unsentimental, like her.

He was the only one she’d stayed in nominal contact with after the breakup, at least until recently when Ian and Astrid had insisted on inserting themselves back into her life.

How the fuck had this happened? She found Reece up near the front, doing his embarrassing dance again. A couple of attractive women danced with him, and Violet wondered how on earth he’d convinced them to show up.

When she tapped him on the shoulder, he spun around, scotch sloshing out of the crystal highball glass he was gripping.

“Hey, it’s Vi!” he half shouted, slurring slightly. God, she hated it when he called her “Vi.” The squinty eyes and flushed face indicated he was already drunk and/or stoned.

“Reece, what the bloody hell are they doing here?” She hooked a thumb at the stage.

“Surprise!” He tried to do jazz hands but only succeeded in spilling more of his drink.

“It is a surprise. What did he—” She paused, squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, then regrouped. “How did this happen?”

“I met your boyfriend at Silverstone—”

“My boyfriend?”

Reece gestured at the stage. “He said he’s your boyfriend.”

The fucking nerve of him. “He’s not my boyfriend.” Had Ian been lurking around the race that day? She’d only seen him at the hotel, but if he’d crossed paths with Reece, he must have spent the whole fucking day trying to track her down.

“Anyway, he said they could play parties and I liked their stuff, so I thought I’d give them a chance.”

She pressed her palm against her forehead in exasperation.

Maybe Revenant Saints wasn’t quite selling out stadiums, but she doubted they needed to play private parties for rich assholes to make ends meet.

This was just Ian trying to insert himself into her life, pure and simple.

Which meant she needed to put an end to this bullshit.

“I didn’t know you were planning a party in Vegas,” she said to Reece, once she’d gotten a handle on her temper. “You should have run it through the PR office.”

“I tried. You said no. So I did it myself.” He shrugged petulantly. “Besides, this party is better than anything Pinnacle would have thrown. I can do it my way.” He turned to leer at the two women he’d been dancing with, who smiled back at him with far too much enthusiasm.

As Violet pieced it together, her stomach sank. Fuck. No wonder his party buddies seemed unaccountably thrilled to hang out with him.

“Reece,” she hissed under her breath. “Did you hire these girls?”

He grinned, unashamed. “It’s Vegas, baby. Everything’s for sale here.”

“Good lord, if word gets out that the Pinnacle team principal hired a couple of sex workers, we’ll never hear the bloody end of it. If your father finds out—”

“Relax, Vi.”

“I can’t relax! I’ve got to clean up your mess, and then I have to deal with that !

” She stabbed a finger at Ian, who’d just launched into “Bloodstream.” If they hadn’t changed up their set list too much, that meant they were going to take a break soon.

And that meant she’d have to deal with Ian.

But not until she’d dealt with this brand-new problem. “Give me your wallet.”

Reece blinked blearily. “Why?”

“Because I don’t carry cash! Just hand it over!”

Reece fished his wallet out. She snatched it away and rummaged through the contents. Thank god Reece’s ego was fragile enough that flashing wads of cash was still important to him. She cleaned it out and thrust it back at him, just as his phone started ringing.

She waited impatiently as he fished it out. “It’s Dad!”

Her stomach sank. Oh, god, not here, not now.

“Here, I’ll put him on speaker so you guys can hear,” Reece said.

Violet gestured wildly to stop him, but it was too late. Carter Hammond’s voice boomed through the phone, audible even over the band and the crowd.

“Reece.”

“Hi, Dad!”

“Hello, Mr. Hammond,” Violet said quickly. “You’re on speaker.” Just in case Carter Hammond was poised to say something scathing to his son.

“Ms. Harper. Are you at a party?”

Violet glared at Reece. “Reece is just entertaining a few of our sponsors,” she lied smoothly. Reece owed her so big for tonight.

“Did you watch the race today?” Reece asked. His desperate need for his father’s approval was almost sad. “We didn’t win, but we placed tenth and everybody here says that’s really good.”

“You know I didn’t watch it,” came Carter’s brusque reply. “I’m calling about this GQ interview with one of our drivers.”

“You saw that?” Reece’s eyes shot apprehensively to Violet’s. That little fucker. The article was fantastic, but if his father didn’t approve of any part of it, she had no doubt Reece would fling her straight under the bus. Violet held her breath, ready to hear if she’d still have a job tomorrow.

“That was quite a coup. The team came off looking very good. And this driver … Chase Navarro … came off looking even better. It was well done.” Violet got the distinct impression Carter Hammond rarely gave out praise and that was as close to it as he was liable to get.

Reece visibly relaxed. “You like that, huh? Let me tell you, I had to hustle to make it happen, but it was worth it.”

Violet didn’t betray her reaction with so much as an eyelash twitch. She’d hustled to make that profile happen. It should have been an impossible get, but she did it through sheer determination. Worse than getting thrown under the bus, the fucker had just stolen her hard-earned glory.

Reece was still talking as he started wandering off through the crowd, puffing up more and more, preening before his father’s scant approval.

All she wanted to do was go slink away to some quiet bar and drink a very full glass of ice-cold vodka. Instead, she took a very deep breath.

She turned to the two women who were standing patiently to the side.

“Ladies, can I speak to you for a minute?”

She herded the two women back through the crowd and into the vestibule by the elevators.

“You can have all the cash in his wallet if I’m assured no one will ever hear a word about tonight. No one knows you were here. No one knows about this payment.”

One woman, the dark-haired one, nodded quickly and held out her hand. “Deal.”

“So …” the other one, a petite blond, said uncertainly. “You don’t want us to stay?”

“I want you to go home, change into your pj’s, spend the rest of the night watching Netflix on my dime, and forget this ever happened.”

“You got it,” the brunette said, folding the wad of cash up and stuffing it down her cleavage. “Come on, Brook. We’ll split up the money in the car. Pleasure doing business with you,” she said to Violet.

“But Savannah—” the little blond protested.

Savannah grabbed her arm. “You heard the lady. Let’s go!”

Once Savannah and Brook had been packed into the elevator, Violet took a deep breath. Disaster number one dispatched. She turned back to the bar, where Revenant Saints were just finishing their set.

Now on to disaster number two.

As she made her way toward the stage, she noticed Kiz and Ben over at the bar.

For a brief moment, Violet regretted not being able to join them.

She missed those two, and hanging out to catch up over beers would have been nice.

Instead she had to talk to Ian, who was chugging a beer onstage between sets.

“I need to speak to you,” she said without preamble.

He turned toward her slowly, grinning with that seductive promise she remembered so well. “Hi, Sunshine.”

“I’m going down to the lobby. You have five minutes to join me there, or I come back up here and we have this conversation in a really loud, public, embarrassing way. Your choice.”

Before he could reply, she turned around and stormed back across the club.