Read Online Hot Shot by Susan Elizabeth Phillips - Free Book Online Page A

Jason was on bass, Benny at the drums. Mike played the keyboard while Conti sang lead, banging his Gibson and thrusting his hips to the rhythm.
    I can't… get no… satis… faction
    Conti dug his fingers into her buttocks, tilting them higher to receive him, plunging deeper. She let her mind slip away from what was happening, to a beautiful, pure place—
    a country garden with hollyhocks and larkspur and an old iron pump in the center. She imagined the sound of birds and the scent of honeysuckle. She saw herself lying back on a homemade quilt under a shady old tree. And at her side a plump, rosy-cheeked baby kicked happily and batted the air with its fists. Her baby. The baby she had lost when she'd had her abortion.
    I can't… get no…
    I can't… get no…
    Conti let out a low, strangled moan and buried his mouth in her neck. As he shuddered, he seemed so vulnerable to her that she felt a foolish need to protect him. She stroked his back, giving him a sad kind of comfort. How many men had shuddered over her like this?
    More than a dozen. A lot more. Her friend Roxie said a girl wasn't really promiscuous until she'd hit triple digits, but Paige had felt promiscuous ever since she'd been raped.
    When Conti had calmed, he drew back and gazed down at her. "I love you so much, doll."
    Tears glistened in his eyes, and to her surprise she felt her own eyes fill. "I love you, too,"
    she replied, even though she knew she didn't. But it seemed unspeakably cruel to say anything else.
    Their bedroom romp had made them late, and they had to hurry. All five members of the Doves waited tables at a club called Taffy Too, named after the original owner's dog, who presumably had been Taffy One. They received no salary and only half their tips, but the Doves put up with it because the owner let them play a one-hour set at eleven o'clock each evening.
    Taffy's was a third-rate club located in the heart of one of San Francisco's less picturesque neighborhoods, but occasionally some big shots slumming it would end up sitting at a front table. Conti thought the Doves might get discovered that way. In Paige's more depressed moments she thought that perhaps Conti was the only member of the Doves talented enough to perform any place better than Taffy Too's, but generally she repressed such thoughts. She might not be the world's best singer, but somehow she was going to make a success of herself and rub it in her father's face.
    They had almost reached the alley that led to the back entrance of Taffy's when Conti lifted his arm and yelled out, "Yo, Ben, my man!"
    Paige winced at the loudness of Conti's voice. Benny Smith, their drummer, approached.
    He was small and thin, with a short Afro and light brown skin.
    "Hey, Conti. What's happenin'?"
    Conti slid his hand up under her hair and wrapped his fingers around the back of her neck like a high school jock with his cheerleader girlfriend. "Nothin' much. You hear anything more about that dude from Dee-troit Mike was telling us about?"
    "Dude's disappeared," Benny replied. "But I hear some dudes from Azday Records showed up at Bonzo's last night."
    "No kidding? Maybe they'll come over to Taffy's."
    Paige didn't think that was too likely. Unlike Taffy's, Bonzo's was a semirespectable club that booked better acts. She listened as Benny and Conti continued to trade rumors, acting as if each day held a golden key that would open the door to their success. She no longer remembered what that sort of optimism felt like.
    They had a thinner crowd at Taffy's that night than normal, so the latecomers who arrived in the middle of the Doves' third Stones number were even more noticeable. Paige, wearing a cheap blue sateen jumpsuit with flashy metal studs, was beating her tambourine against her thigh when the two men took their place at the front table. One of the men was in his early fifties, the other younger. They both looked prosperous. Their suits bore the unmistakable sheen of silk and she caught the