You Really Got Me (Rock Star Romance #1) by Erika Kelly Read Free Book Online Page A

in seeing her naked at all.
    She just saw a guy who genuinely wanted to know why he’d been rejected. “He said you don’t know who you are yet.”
    Frowning, he gazed out at the elephant ears. Then, he reached for her towel, shook it out, and held it open for her.
    “I’m not getting out of the pool with you standing there.”
    “What does that mean? We ‘don’t know who we are yet’?” He looked so contemplative, like the comment ate away at him. “What does that mean?” He turned away from her, still holding out the towel, so she hoisted herself out of the pool, water streaming down her naked body, and quickly snatched it out of his hand.
    The moment she’d finished wrapping it around her, he turned back and said, “We know exactly who we are. People
like
us. You see them. You see the response we get.”
    She didn’t want to tell him her thoughts yet, so she just lifted the bottom of the towel and wiped her face.
    “What did he mean?”
    “I can’t speak for him. He didn’t say anything else, so it wouldn’t be fair for me to guess what he meant. He doesn’t explain. He’s intuitive. He just knows.” She shrugged, feeling the water from her hair saturate the back of the towel.
    “Do you agree with him?”
    She almost smiled. Slater didn’t seem like the kind of guy to value her opinion. Or to care what someone thought of his demo. “I have some thoughts, but I’d rather not talk about it until I’ve seen the show a few more times. Besides, you know how subjective it is. Everyone has his own taste. Just because—”
    “Don’t bullshit me. I know who Irwin Ledger is. And I know you know what you’re doing. Is it my songs? Because I know I have a lot of variation. I thought that was a strength.”
    “No, it’s not the songs. Your songs are great.” In fact, she couldn’t quite understand how his songs could be so good. That level of songwriting came from years of studying music theory. They didn’t just have catchy tunes and hooks, which in themselves made careers. They had polish. Only a very serious musician could arrange songs of that caliber. “Let me see you guys a few more times before I say anything else, okay?”
    He nodded curtly, turned, and walked back into the house. The sliding door rolled, and she felt the thud of its closure like an insult.
    She stood alone in the backyard, naked under a towel, and she’d never felt so utterly sexless in her life.
    It wasn’t like she thought he’d ever be attracted to her—obviously—but he hadn’t even taken a peek. It was like she wasn’t even a woman to him.
    How
humiliating.

FOUR
    Emmie set the tamale pie on the table. She hoped the guys liked chili. She didn’t know how to feed six people as cheaply as possible. So, other than chicken, pasta, and chili, she didn’t have a lot of interesting ideas. But she’d look up recipes online and come up with some good meals.
    The guys tore into the corn bread she’d put in the center of the table and then took turns spooning the pie onto their plates. Slater piled salad on his—he was the only one besides her who ate it, so she’d learned to make a small one.
    “Okay, so we only made ninety bucks at the merch table last night,” Derek said. “And we can’t afford to get new T-shirts made until we make another grand. So—”
    “Just take some money out of the studio fund.” Slater poured dressing on his salad. “We’ll pay it back when we sell some shirts.”
    “Not touching the studio fund.”
    Slater looked at Derek like he was slow. “Well, you’re not going to sell T-shirts if you don’t have any to sell.”
    Emmie couldn’t help noticing the way Slater distanced himself by talking about
Derek
selling shirts. She hadn’t lived with them all that long, but Slater was unquestionably an essential—if not
the
essential—element of the band. Why did he distance himself like that?
    “Nothing’s more important than making a new demo,” Derek said.
    “What about the