Decked with Holly by Marni Bates Read Free Book Online Page B

had no idea how I had gotten myself involved in this farce but I had to get out of there before they decided to hit the sheets.
    So I wrapped the blanket around myself once again, hiked up my backpack on my shoulder, and stood on trembling legs. So far so good. Maybe I could slip out of the room without them even noticing. Cautiously, my heart pounding out a fast tattoo, I flushed the toilet, wincing at the loud gush and gurgle.
    Nothing.
    I turned to the sink and washed my hands as silently as I could, fearing that at any moment the bathroom door would jerk open and an irate lawyer would yell about slapping me with a lawsuit for breaking and entering. Or at least entering under false pretences, since technically I hadn’t broken anything.
    But all I could hear was my unsteady breathing. Feeling almost prepared to barrel my way out the same way I had barged in, I opened the door and took my first step toward freedom.
    Freedom was blocked by a boxer-clad hottie. The Hot Guy from the dining room! My jaw dropped open. Yeah, he definitely looked as good without clothing as he had in his collared shirt and business jacket. Better, even. Okay, so maybe I was leering even worse than the skeazoids currently residing in my cabin, but it’s not every day that a geek like me gets such an up-close-and-personal view of hotness. And after the hellish day I’d just had, I figured there was nothing wrong with appreciating what was right smack in front of me.
    But the admiration must not have been mutual since he jerked back, yelled “Zombie!,” and sprayed something into my face.
    That’s when the world dissolved into a sea of pain and everything went black.

Chapter 6
    Dominic
    Â 
    T he distinctive sound of flushing interrupted my improvised drum solo.
    Well, that wasn’t supposed to happen.
    I stared at the closed bathroom door, coffee in hand, wondering if I had lost my mind. I’d heard of other celebrities snapping but I’d never expected it to happen like this. Not to me.
    Maybe this is what it was like to truly crack under pressure.
    Which was shit timing, really, since I was about to embark on a vacation. In fact, I’d have already begun relaxing if it weren’t for Tim’s obsessive need to push our band to greatness. The worst part was how easy Tim made the whole process look. Then again, even Chris had commented on Tim’s unnerving ability to work his ass off and never be caught sweating.
    I had no idea how he consistently came up with such killer lyrics for us. The only words I could think of were: I’m so screwed. I can’t think of anything. My career is over. La, la, la!
    Not exactly Grammy material.
    I was just starting to think that maybe I should call him back tomorrow and admit to needing some help—just to get going—when I heard the flush.
    I’m not a paranoid guy. Or at least I’ve never thought of myself that way. It’s just that when the press hounds you and your best friends and all of your acquaintances on a regular basis, you get real good at looking over your shoulder.
    It’s not paranoia if someone’s actually out to get you.
    And knowing that we do receive death threats . . . it’s more than a little unsettling. Lennon might have been killed a long time ago but that doesn’t mean that the threat of crazy fans no longer exists. Half the threats in our file folder have hearts doodled in the margins. And every time something really weird happens, like a celebrity gets tackled in a mall, I can’t help thinking that it could have been worse and that next time it might be me. No matter how many hundreds of thousands of cheering fans you have, it only takes one nutcase to pull a trigger.
    So paranoid or not, I got out Tim’s pepper spray and crept as silently as I could toward the bathroom. I felt like an idiot, standing sentinel outside my own bathroom when the noise had probably come from a neighboring suite and I had