QT: Nashville (Alpha Rough Draft, Unfinished One-Shot)

Hey Alpha Readers! I took some time this weekend before jumping onto FoF to get some work into this idea for a one-shot story set in the QT-verse. It's one of two ideas I've been sitting on for a while. Please note: It is very much not done, no sex happens in these first 10k words, and to be honest I think it could see major changes before a Beta draft, let alone completing the Alpha draft. Entire characters might (likely should) be cut to trim the cast down to a manageable level. But, it's a lot of words I wrote and a peek behind the scenes, so hopefully some of you will have some thoughts to share!

Cheers,
~Break.

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QT: Nashville (Rough Draft, Part 1)

I had to blow out a long breath before I pressed the call button on my cell, and that still didn’t help with the white-knuckled grip I had on it. It rang three times before he picked up.

“Katie, doll, what can I do for you?” Christopher Frentz answered his phone.

“What the fuck is this email, Chris?” I asked, staring at my laptop screen.

“Oh, I didn’t realize those went out today,” he said. “Look, just read through all the information, sign the forms and send them back over. It’s all in the docs.”

“Yeah, I already read the docs, Chris,” I said. “What the fuck is this ‘Continued employment contingent on acceptance’ bullshit?”

“Katie, please,” Chris said, his smarmy, man-splaining voice shifting into full gear. “I’m just making sure that our Agency remains a family, you know? It’s not a big deal.”

“I beg to differ,” I said. “‘Bonding of vaccine partners is permanent and irrevocable at this time.’”

“So we have a bit of fun off-hours. From what I’ve been told the sex is supposed to be fantastic.”

“I’m fucking married, Chris!” I growled.

“Oh,” he said, and the surprise in his voice almost made me throw my cell across my home office. “You are?”

“Yes. You’ve met Marques at least a dozen times now,” I said.

“...Oh! The convict!” Chris said. “I just assumed he’d be dead by now.”

My dentist had warned me about how I ground my teeth when I was stressed. What he didn’t realize was that during my years working in Investment Banking I hadn’t had that issue - it wasn’t stress that caused it. It was frustration. Angry, near-raging frustration.

Yes, my husband was technically an ex-convict. He’d done a stint for attempted bank robbery when he was 19 and his older brother dragged him along on the ‘job.’ Coming out of prison, he’d long lost his scholarship to Julliard so he went into construction and eventually started his own business before we met. My husband was way more than his three years in Federal custody.

“Well he’s alive,” I said, keeping the rest to myself.

“You know, this is the perfect opportunity to get out of the relationship,” Chris said. “I mean, who would blame you? Convict husband or wealthy executive and access to the vaccine? These viruses are scary, Katie. Seriously.”

“Chris, there is no shot that I’m leaving my husband for you,” I growled.

He tsked on the other end of the call, and I could just picture his smug face as he did it. “Well, I was serious about your employment being contingent on accepting the offer,” Chris said. “So you either need to accept or quit.”

“Is that really how you want to play this?” I asked.

“I’m not playing at anything, Katie. It’s a new world. Men like me, we’re getting it all. Every uppity cunt who thought they were better than us? You’re going to end up with guys like me. So you can either suck the cock you know or risk that you end up with someone you like even less.”

“Go fuck yourself, Chris,” I said.

“So you quit, then?” he asked.

“Fuck. You,” I shouted into the phone and thumbed the end call button.

It took less than three seconds for the door to my office to open, Alicjia poking her head in. “Something wrong?” she asked.

Alicjia had been my assistant for four years ever since I’d switched careers over to Music Management from finance and Investment Banking. I’d taken my time to find the right person for the job before plucking her out of the pool of applicants at the Agency, and my judgement call had been perfect with her. As soon as Covid, and this DuoHalo shit, hit the US and things went into lockdown I’d offered Alicjia one of our guest rooms so she could stay with Marques and I instead of cramped up in her apartment off of downtown Nashville.

“Everything is wrong,” I grunted, leaning back in my chair and slowly dropping my phone onto my desk. “And that’s not hyperbole. The world is literally falling apart at the seams.”

“It can’t be that bad,” Alicjia said, entering the room fully and walking across to take a seat in the chair in front of my desk. She was Polish, a second-generation immigrant, and had the silk black hair and gorgeous Eastern European features to go with it. She was also tall, almost six foot, and had amazing legs. By all rights, she should have been a runway model, except that her bust was larger than the skinny buds that most designers favoured. And at the moment she was showing off a bit of both - all she was wearing for her workday was a long, ivory blouse that was half unbuttoned and showing off a swathe of her milky-white cleavage, with tails in the front and back that only barely covered her and left her toned legs bare.

The perks of working from home.

“It actually, really is,” I said and closed my eyes, thinking quickly. It was all bad, but my job wasn’t to focus on the bad. It was to find the leverage, find the silver linings, and find the pockets of good and lean into them.

I opened my eyes again, not half a minute later, and looked across the desk at Alicjia. “Are you ready to make things official with us?” I asked.

She blinked, frowning a little. “In what way?”

“Me and Marques,” I said. “Alicjia, babe, you’ve been sleeping with us more than in your own bed for the last few months. There’s a vaccine for all the sickness going on out there, but it means you need to partner up with a male counterpart, and every man needs multiple female partners, but it’s a permanent thing for the foreseeable future. Chris just tried to leverage me into making him my partner, at threat of termination from the Agency.”

“Oh,” Alicjia said, then blinked and her eyes widened. “Oh!”

“Yeah,” I nodded. “So are you in this with me, Alicjia?”

“Of course I am,” she said immediately. “What do we need to do?”

“Start locking down assets faster than Chris and the rest of those shits can,” I said. “The world is a mess so the legal battle is going to take time, which means that we need to be rolling fast and hard to establish functional management. The first thing I need is a list of all of our female clients. Sort it by projected income prior to the pandemic, I’m sure that’s how he’ll do it so we need to get to them first. Once that’s done, get me a list of all the female clients from the entire Agency, and start working on finding out who is single now, or might have had a partner die recently.”

“Got it,” Alicjia said, standing from the chair. “Anything else?”

“That’s it for now, hon,” I said. “Wait, no. Before anything else, send me Valentina’s personal cell. We’re going to want her on our team for this.”

“I’ve got it here,” Alicjia said, skipping out to her desk in the other room and coming back with her cell phone, writing the phone number on a sticky note and handing it to me.

“Alicjia,” I said, stopping her as she turned to go back to her desk. I stood and grabbed the collar of her loose blouse, pulling her into a kiss. It wasn’t nearly the first time we’d done that, though it was the first time I’d initiated something like that during the working day. “I’m glad we’ve got you with us,” I told her when the kiss ended. “Just don’t say anything to Marques yet. I’ll explain everything to him once we’re out of emergency response mode.”

“OK,” she agreed, looking down at me with a little smile. I wasn’t a short woman by any means, but those legs of hers still had my assistant looming just a little. I gave her a smirky smile and gave her a playful smack on the ass, discovering she was at least wearing panties under her loose shirt. She laughed and leaned down to give me another peck on the lips before heading out to put together those lists.

I sat and picked up my phone, quickly dialling the number Alicjia had given me.

“Hello?” Valentina answered after only a single ring.

“Val, sorry to bother you on your personal line,” I said. “It’s Katie, and it’s important. Have you gotten an email from Chris titled ‘Vaccination Policy Change’ yet?”

“Hey,” she said. “Yeah, it looks like it just got in a minute ago. What is it?”

I took a breath and let it out. “The world is changing,” I said. “And we need to change with it.”

- - - - -

I knocked on Marques’s office door. We’d never been ‘knockers’ in the house until after the Quarantine had started and we’d both been forced to move into our home offices full-time. Before then, the occasional work-from-home day had always been a solo affair since we were both so busy.

“Come in,” Marques called, and I closed my eyes for a quick breath. It was his voice that had first attracted me to him, and even after fifteen years of marriage it could still give me tingles. Deep, resonant and warm. He could have voiced God in a movie.

Marques’ office was done up to his liking and was almost the opposite of mine. No windows letting in natural light; everything had a golden yellow hue from the shaded lights, and the warm browns of the custom wood furniture and wood panelling on the walls gave the place a sort of lounge feeling. My office upstairs was almost all windows, and my furniture was modern with lots of glass - I also didn’t have the rack of old guitars and amps on one wall.

“What’s up, Angel Eyes?” he asked me, looking up from his desk.

“Are you busy?” I asked him, feeling silly for stalling. This was a big one and I knew it.

“Yes, actually,” he said, leaning back and sighing. “I got a strange request for bids this morning.”

“Oh,” I said with a frown. “I thought everyone was having issues getting anything off the ground right now. And didn’t you say half your workforce got hired out from under you to some out-of-state government job?”

Marques nodded, putting his hands behind his head. He’d made the call at the start of quarantine and started shaving it, his rich, dark scalp now slick and smooth - he’d battled his receding hairline for almost a decade despite my assurances, but I knew he was happier now that he’d made the choice himself. He also still had that wonderfully full, well-manicured beard that made him look so manly. “Government contracts are just about the only thing getting built anywhere, it looks like,” he said. “But I’ve been approached about some sort of big reno job by the Commissioner of Economic and Community Development. I’m looking at numbers that would mean needing to at least triple the guys I still have available.”

“That’s amazing, Marques,” I said, my mind immediately trying to sort that new information into what I knew. “But what about the roadblocks?”

“Apparently my criminal history is ‘no longer considered a detriment to engagement with governmental contracts,’” he said, quoting from an email on his computer. Government contracts had always been out of reach since he’d started his company because of his record - he’d always worked private and hadn’t even bothered bidding on anything City, State or Federal. “There’s more here about the reputation of my work and the industry awards. Honestly, Katie, I think they might be pitching me more than I’m bidding for the work.”

“You deserve it,” I said, coming around his desk and sitting up on the edge of it. His eyes immediately travelled up my legs and made me smile. I was wearing a tight pair of leggings that hugged me like a second skin. Then, however, he frowned as he noticed I was more done up than I had been for the last several months. “We need to talk about something,” I said.

“Alright,” he nodded, leaning forward and wrapping one of his big hands around each of my calves and starting to massage them. His hands were big and I could feel the rough-but-smooth callouses on them even through the fabric of my tights. Years of plucking guitar strings and working construction had given him the kind of hands that were tough and firm no matter how often he moisturized. I loved them.

“Remember how I promised that I wouldn’t make any more unilateral decisions about our life and that you got to make the next one?” I asked.

He gave me a look. Not an angry one, but he knew what I was saying. I’d done it again. Alicjia jumping into bed with us had been my idea - not that she was our first threesome by any stretch. I’d known I was bisexual since high school, and I was admittedly an aggressively A-type personality. I knew what I wanted and I worked to get it - so why shouldn’t I have my beefcake husband and get to share sexy women with him?

But I’d also made the switch to Entertainment Management without really consulting him - he’d known I was unhappy in Finance for a while, and I’d talked through ideas of what else I could do with him several times, I just didn’t really let him know I was pulling the trigger. And then there was the whole thing with Christmas Tree…

“What unexpected surprise am I getting today?” he asked me.

I took one breath and let it out. “I think I know what that bid request might be tied to,” I said. “But I’m also in a hurry here. Emergency Response sort of stuff. I need to know if you’re willing to trust me to do the right thing for us now, without me taking the time to explain it and talk it out because that will take at least a couple of hours I don’t have.”

The corners of his jaw flexed as he processed what I said for a moment, and then nodded. “Alright,” he said. “You know I trust you.”

“OK,” I said. “I promise I’ll explain everything tonight. Things are going to be changing. And when you submit that bid, shoot for the moon - if I’m right, they are going to be looking to throw money at the problem.” I slid down from my perch and leaned in, getting close to kissing him without doing it just yet. My delicate nose brushed her strong, masculine one as my lips just barely touched his. “I love you. Val from my office is upstairs with Alicjia and is going to be staying with us, so don’t be startled if you hear an unfamiliar voice. They’re working on something for me.”

“Is it safe to-?” Marques started to ask, but I cut him off from the question I’d been expecting by kissing him. I knew I was being manipulative, but it was the fastest way to get this done.

“I’ll explain when I get back,” I said. “But it will be fine. And I’ll be safe while I’m out.”

The look in my husband’s eyes told me he didn’t like the idea of my breaking quarantine, but he also recognized the look in my eyes.

“Be safe,” he told me, pulling me a little closer with a hand on my ass. God, I loved that feeling.

“I will,” I promised him. “And I’ll be bringing back some treats.”

- - - - -

“Alright,” I said as I started up the car. “What do you have for me?”

“Alicjia is still organising call times,” Val said over the phone. She’d arrived about twenty minutes after I gave her the short version of things. Other than Alicjia, Valentina had been the single most productive, trustworthy and talented worker at the Agency - so of course she’d been stuck as a secretary. She had the chops to be a full Talent Manager, and I’d fought for her several times in the past few years when we were hiring at that level, but there had always been someone else from outside the Agency who was ‘just perfect’ for the open position. It also didn’t help Val that she was drop-dead gorgeous so every guy, and half the male clients, wanted to fuck her. She had an elegantly aquiline nose, piercing blue eyes paired with a warmly tanned skin tone, and just a little bit of edge from the nose ring she wore. “Ruby Mason is top of the list but isn’t answering texts at the moment. I can get you Alison Chains or Heaven Harlson right now.”

“Get me Heaven,” I said. “Alison is worth more in the future but doesn’t look like it on the official paperwork at the Agency. Chris will try for Heaven first since she’s Country.”

“I’ll get her on the line,” Val said, hanging up.

I pulled out of the garage and down our driveway. It had been weeks since I’d actually gotten out of the house - though, to be fair, our property was big enough that I’d never exactly felt trapped. Between my Finance money and Marques’ contracting, we’d done very well for ourselves. The hit from my switching careers had been significant, but I’d waited until we were settled to do it. Between the pool and hosting area, the garden and the big garage/shed Marques had built we had more than enough ‘extra’ places to go if we needed out of the house.

My cell rang and I thumbed the accept call button. “Heaven,” I said. “How are you coping?”

“God, Katie,” Heaven said from the other end of the call, somewhere down south in Lewisburg. “I’m just so damn lost without him.”

“I’m so sorry, babe,” Katie said grimly, knowing she’d be a wreck if she lost Marques.

“It’s been XXX months but I still feel like he’s just in the other room of the house,” Heaven said. “I tried pouring it all into a song, but it’s too raw. People would think I’m crazy.”

“Have you played it for Jack yet?” I asked.

“Once,” she said. “I went down to the cemetery with his guitar. I couldn’t even get through it and I could practically hear him chuckling in the back of my mind.”

Katie swallowed, biting down her desire to tear up. Heaven’s fiancee had been a sweet boy and they’d made an odd couple - he’d suffered from multiple fights with cancer throughout his young life and his body had suffered from all the surgeries and chemo. Heaven, on the other hand, was the sort of vibrant, gorgeous southern cowgirl that made men trip over themselves trying to catch her eye. She wasn’t a country star yet, but she would be, and she had the looks and acting chops to be a crossover star in television or movies.

“I’m just being a bit of a baby,” Heaven sighed. “We were prepared for it. And thank you again for those beautiful flowers and the letter you sent - honestly, it was the sweetest thing anyone said or sent.”

I’d been waiting for the gate on our property to open and now I pulled onto the street as I sighed. “If I could have been there I would have,” I said.

“I know, and I believe you,” she said. I knew the way she said it too; I was sure she’d heard that sentiment from other people in the industry, and she knew I wasn’t just playing up to her. As a talent manager, I’d taken notes from everywhere I could, and one thing I’d decided early in my career was that I needed to be hands-on - I chose my clients carefully, and once I did I treated them like real family, with love and respect. “But you can’t just be calling to check up on me again,” Heaven continued. “What’s up?”

“Babe, I’m sorry I need to bring this to you while you’re still in mourning,” I said. “But it’s urgent as hell and you deserve the bald-faced truth.”

“Well, this sounds bad,” Heaven murmured.

“Good and bad,” I said. “And complicated. I’m being fired from the Agency.”

“What!?” Heaven shouted into the phone. “Why? What does that mean for us?”

“Like I said, it’s complicated, but it comes down to Chris Frentz trying to use a new vaccine for the virus to leverage a sexual relationship with me and other female employees. I’m sure clients are next on his list,” I said.

There was a long moment of silence on the line. “What the fuck?” Heaven finally blurted out.

“I’ll get you the documentation I’ve seen already,” I said. “But the skinny of it is that women can get the shots, but it’s fatal to men for some reason. They have to get it from a woman like a helpful STD, but for some looney reason it also makes some sort of chemical bond between the man and the women he gets it from, and a woman who does get the shot needs to pair with a man or she’ll have her brain chemistry go haywire or something, not to mention that a man needs multiple women partnered with him to get a decent amount of vaccination. Honestly, I was never a Biochem sort of gal so I need to do a lot more research to figure out all the little details, but this is straight from government documentation - the only reason I even saw it was because Chris sent it to me as part of a package trying to convince me to sign onto him being my partner.”

“But what about Marques?” Heaven asked.

“Exactly,” I scoffed. “Chris seemed to forget I was married, and when I reminded him of that he suggested this was my way to upgrade.”

“What a fucking cock,” Heaven growled.

“I refused, obviously, and he said I’d be fired if I didn’t go along,” I said. “So I’m going private. A boutique agency managing the hottest talent coming up out of the pandemic like a fucking phoenix. He’ll try to fight me on legal grounds but seems to have forgotten I negotiated a clause in my contract waving the non-compete if I left the Agency based on sexual harassment.”

“I’m with you all the way, Katie,” Heaven said. “I’ll call them up and fire them right now.”

“I appreciate that, babe, but it might not be that simple,” I said. “Chris has some sort of connection if he was able to send out the demands he did to me and some of the other staff. This vaccine isn’t on the news and it’s not on the internet. We need to circle the wagons to keep people we care about safe from leverage or demands. I- fuck, babe, like I said, I hate bringing this to you while you’re still mourning Jack, but if you’re open to it I want you to come be part of the group I’m building around Marques. You’re a fabulous woman with great morals and a huge heart - if you want to wait to see what comes out of the government moving forward, I’m sure you can say no to whoever approaches you and I’ll never hold it against you if you say no to me now, but I want you close if we can help it.”

Another long pause. I was zipping down the back streets of Nashville; traffic was extremely light almost everywhere, and other than needing to pull over for an ambulance at one point I was free to drive as fast as I wanted.

“You want me to sleep with Marques?” Heaven asked.

“Only if you’re open to it,” I said. “Heaven, babe, I would never ask a client this under normal circumstances. But if this new world means my husband needs a dedicated group of women around him to be safe from the virus, and I can protect the ladies I care about by sharing my husband with them, I’m all for it.”

“Jimminy, Katie,” Heaven said, avoiding taking the Lord’s name in vain. “This is… a lot.”

“I know,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

“How long do I have to think about it?” she asked.

“On my end? The door will always be open,” I said. “I love you like a little sister, Heaven. I’ll never turn you away. But on the end of the Agency or the Government? I have no idea.”

Another long, quiet pause.

“You know I waited until marriage with Jack, right?” Heaven asked.

“I know,” I said. “You told me that time we got drunk after your first time headlining a gig. I’d let you marry Marques if I could. Hell, if we can find a minister or a priest to do it I’ll let you marry him under the eyes of God even if it isn’t legal. We might need to find a Mormon to do that though.”

She laughed, breaking the tension. “You really want to share your husband?” she asked. “I’d never have been able to do that with Jack.”

“Babe, like I said, I’d never ask a client to sleep with my husband under any normal circumstances. But Marques and I have had some fun with other women in the past. I’m alright with you being with him, and getting to enjoy all the amazing parts of him.”

“OK,” Heaven said. “I’ll do it. I’ll- God, I need to pray this is the right thing to do, but I’ll do it. What do I need to do?”

“Pack up a couple of suitcases,” I said. “Enough for a week or two up here, then drive your pretty behind and Shep up to my place. We’ll set you up in a guest room so that you’re close and no one can argue that you aren’t in our household.”

“You’re sure you’re OK with me and Shep moving in?” Heaven asked. “She’s a big girl.”

I wasn’t, actually. I’d never been a pet person and Heaven’s Great Dane was a bit of a beast in terms of size. “I’ve met her before,” I said. “And you have her well-trained. We’ll make it work.”

“OK,” Heaven agreed. “Um… shit, this really turned my day upside down. What- Or, I guess, who else? You, me, it sounded like you’ll be bringing in other women, too?”

“Alicjia is already with us,” I said. “And I’m not sure if you met her, but Valentina from the Agency came over today after the leverage email as well. I’m approaching some more friends here in town and will be contacting the other clients that I think would be a good fit to give them the option. If everyone says yes, which is unlikely, it would be something like seventeen women.”

Heaven coughed on the other end of the line in surprise. “Seventeen?”

“Like I said, it’s highly unlikely everyone says yes,” I said. “I’m hoping we can reach ten or so. That should keep Marques safe for all of us, and also give us a little commune of artists and artist-adjacent folks who can live and work together.”

“That… actually sounds amazing right now,” Heaven said. “I’ve been so lonely down here all by myself. No gigs, no seeing friends. I’ve been scared to do groceries half the time. I’ll pack up everything for me and Shep - do you want us there tonight, or can I wait until tomorrow?”

“Come up tomorrow morning,” I said. “Take your time getting ready, and don’t respond to any emails or phone calls from the Agency. And keep this on the down-low, babe. No social media posts. We don’t want Chris or anyone else at the Agency figuring out what I’m doing and speeding up their own timeline. I want to give everyone I can a chance to avoid their shit.”

“OK,” Heaven said. “Got it. Katie, I- Thank you. For thinking of me.”

“I can’t wait to see you tomorrow, babe,” I said. “And don’t be afraid to have a good cry too, OK? This is a lot. Maybe go see Jack again this afternoon.”

“Thanks,” she said. “I will.”

We said our goodbyes and I hung up, wiping under my eye to try and stop a tear from messing up my makeup. One down. Heaven didn’t deserve to get rushed into a decision, or a relationship, like that but it was necessary.

- - - - -

“Katie?” Micki asked in surprise when she opened the door. She’d inherited her house from her parents and it was still the gorgeous old farmhouse it had started out as even though a suburb had grown up around it.

“Hey, babe,” I said, grinning behind my mask. “Long time, no see.”

“Yeah, because the world is falling apart,” she laughed, though her coppery-red eyebrows furrowed. “What’s happened? You don’t have bags, so it isn’t something with Marques.”

“Can I come in?” I asked. “Or are you more comfortable sitting outside?”

She hesitated. “We’ll do outside,” she said. “It’s not that I don’t trust you or think you're unclean or something. My AC is on the fritz though and it’s hot as balls in the house. Let me go get some lemonade.”

Leave it to Micki, the professional songwriter, to fall back on ‘hot as balls’ as a descriptor. I went and took a seat on one of the chairs she had on her front porch. Honestly, I loved the rustic feeling of her place. She had a nice, wide porch that stretched the width of the house, ivy wrapping up around the supporting polls for the overhanging roof, and an eclectic collection of outdoor chairs to sit and look over her front yard. The inside of the house was just as warm and homey. She returned with a tray, a couple of cans of fizzy lemonade along with glasses and ice, and two dessert plates with a couple of cookies each.

“Loving the 50s Housewife look on you, babe,” I said with a grin.

“It suits me, right?” Micki asked, posing for a moment. She had her thick, coppery red hair up in a cute little pompadour front with a kerchief tied up around the back and making a bow on top, and she’d paired it with a summer dress that matched the kerchief. Micki was a pretty woman that I’d known for years even before I’d switched to entertainment management, her pale skin and coppery-red hair sometimes making her look fierce, and sometimes like a sweet summer day, depending on how she did herself up. Her Emo phase had been particularly fun and striking.

“It does,” I said as she sat across from me. I lowered my mask when she did and we both cracked our sodas open and poured them for ourselves. “The tattoos hurt the look though.”

Micki burst out with a laugh and then shrugged. “Nothing I can do about that,” she said. Her right arm was covered from shoulder to elbow in a navy half-sleeve of flowers done in gorgeous crosshatching. She also had the chorus lyrics of ‘I Believe in a Thing Called Love’ on the inner forearm of her other arm - not to mention the stars on her hips, though they were hidden by the dress. “So,” she said. “What’s a lady like you doing in a place like this?”

“You mean one of my best friend’s porches?” I asked with a smirk.

“Yeah, I mean that,” she smirked right back. “I love you, Katie, but quarantine is quarantine. You’re breaking it for a reason.”

I sighed, then sipped my drink. “On a sliding scale, how open would you be to fucking me and Marques some more?”

Micki snorted and had to set her drink down as she chuckled. “Are you that hard up? Seriously?”

“No,” I said. “But you’ve joined us a few times in the past and it’s always been fun.”

“Yeah, well, your husband is a good lover,” Micki said. “And you know how to use that tongue like you learned from the devil himself.”

I pursed my lips in an air kiss to her. “Any time you want, babe. But seriously, you’re not still seeing Gunner, right?”

“God, no,” Micki shook her head. “Broke up with him when he thought he should move in here for the pandemic. He could fuck, but he wasn’t exactly ‘move in and play husband and wife’ material. And, for the record, he wasn’t as good as Marques.”

“How would you like to move in and play husband and wife with me and Marques?” I asked.

Micki frowned. “OK, what is this really about?”

I gave her the quick rundown. The vaccine, the leverage, the new management company. Inviting people I cared about to join us. I was also more open with her than I had been with Heaven, telling her about Alicjia living with us for the past few months and how that had gone. Assuring her I was comfortable with the idea.

“So are you here asking me as your friend, or as a potential business asset?” Micki asked once I was done and she’d let the anger at Chris fall to the backburner. There was a reason that we’d become friends in college - it was either that or become enemies. She could see through bullshit just as clearly as I could. It was one of the reasons I’d relied on her to confirm my vetting of Marques’ when we first got together, and why she’d been one of my bridesmaids.

“Both,” I told her honestly. “I can’t ignore the business side of things - you’re good, Micki. Really good. And you know it. Having you on the team, working with the artists, living with them - you’ll make hits. And you’ll teach them so much. You’ve never gotten the industry respect you deserve for helping people launch their careers with killer songs. You’ll get it in spades if you’re part of the family, I guarantee that. But you’re also so fucking important to me, babe. I want you safe, I want you close, and if the world is going to start having groups of women around one man then I’ll be fucked if I don’t have you beside me and Marques. And, I happen to know he’s adored every time you’ve joined us in bed, but also just whenever you come over to hang out or for a dinner party. He’s your biggest fan right after me as a person.”

Micki sighed, looking up at the roof of her porch, clearly thinking. “You know I’m a serial monogamist,” she said. “I’m going to want time with him by myself. With you too. I need individual connection as much fun as threesomes are.”

“You’ll have it,” I promised.

“Are you filling the house with a bunch of young things for you to snack on?” she asked me with a smirk, looking back down at me.

“A few, but less than you’d think,” I chuckled.

“OK,” she said. “I’m in. It’s fucking insane, but I’m in. Tough to turn down my best friend and her stud of a husband. When does this happen?”

“I’m still working that out,” I said. “But I’m trying to stay ahead of that fucker Chris. Right now I’m just trying to get everyone under one roof so it’s harder for someone to argue. Can you be over at our place by tonight?”

“Sure,” Micki said, then grinned lasciviously. “Two secretaries, me, you, and your husband sounds like a good time.”

“I doubt we’ll all be in one bed tonight,” I chuckled. “I’ve got more calls and stops to make.”

“Adelaide?” Micki asked.

“She’s my next stop,” I said.

Micki sighed and shook her head. “You know what’s more fun than a redhead in bed?”

“Two redheads,” I smirked. “We don’t need a replay of my bachelorette party though. You two can fuck without pissing each other off first just to build the sexual tension.”

“But it was so much fun!”

- - - - -

“Heaven Harlson and Micki Olson are in,” I said after Alicia picked up the phone. “What’s the list looking like?”

“Bella Corinth got back together with her ex from that metal band,” Alicjia sighed. “She sounded happy and apologised for not letting us know earlier. She’s sending over a track that she recorded with the boyfriend.”

“That’s on the back burner,” I said. Bella was a great rock singer but hadn’t been able to mesh with a band for a couple of years. Until she got that figured out she wasn’t going to rise above being a small-time YouTube personality. “Anything else?”

“I’m still not getting a response from Ruby Mason. Samira Negar and Alison Chains are both available for a call whenever you’re ready. I also got ahold of Cassandra from Tragedy in Flight. Tabi broke up with her boyfriend, so the whole band might be available. They’re still living together so you can call them all at once later this afternoon.”

“Anything on Lisbet?” I asked.

“She eloped, remember?” Alicjia said. “Two months ago.”

“I know, but are they still safe?”

“As of… a week ago, yes,” Alicjia said. “I’ll connect with her though.”

“OK. Get me Alison now, and also look into Zadie Cunningham. She wasn’t on our roster but she was always very good, and well-behaved.”

“Will do,” Alicjia said. “How does it look out there?”

“Empty,” I said, looking around the streets I was driving through. I was in a commercial area, headed towards downtown. “Eerily empty. I’ve seen a couple of delivery people, but other than that it’s… I really hope it’s that people are home.”

“Be careful out there, boss,” Alicjia said. “You shouldn’t even be out there.”

“These are conversations I need to have in person,” I sighed.

We hung up, and a couple of moments later my phone rang. “Guten tag, Alison,” I said. “How are you?”

“Grϋß gott, Katie,” Alison responded. “I am well. Did you catch my last stream?”

“I did, babe,” I said, her musical Austrian accent making me smile. “That stretch from around 25 minutes to 38 minutes was a banger. Are you doing anything with it?”

“Jo, danke,” she said. “I think I will play with it some more before I try recording some vocals.”

Alison Chains was my dark horse signing. No one at the Agency had even considered her as a viable candidate - DJs were flighty and hard to manage at the best of times, got into ridiculous issues and were horrible at getting new music out on a regular basis. They also had a tendency to overrun their budgets on tour because they partied so hard. And, with the Dance market so flooded for over a decade and a half, the chances of picking one out of the crowd and them becoming the next Deadmau5 or Steve Aoki was even less probable than the rest of the music industry.

I, however, knew something about Alison that most others would overlook. She was a workhorse, yes, and didn’t drink or do drugs, which helped with several of the issues. But most importantly, Alison had graduated summa cum laude from MDW - that didn’t mean anything to most US managers or agents, but it was a big deal to me and to Marques. The University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna, or MDW from the Austro-German title, was the Juliard of Europe. My husband had considered going there, rather than Julliard, before he’d gotten caught up with his brother’s bad decisions.

Alison was a professional-level violinist who could also compose for and conduct a full orchestra, she could play every percussive instrument on a drumline, had perfect pitch, and had dedicated herself to uplifting the EDM genre by mashing it with her formal, traditional training. In my opinion, she was a Beethoven or a Mozart waiting to be discovered for a modern world.

“I think that’s a great idea, Ali,” I said. “Listen, I have something important I need to talk to you about. Do you have some time?”

“Jo, Katie. I always have time for you,” she said warmly. I could picture her sitting with her legs crossed in her comfy chair. She was a tiny blonde woman, cute but not ‘hot’ by influencer standards. She liked comfortable clothing, cosy atmospheres and easy-going people. This was going to be a tough one.

I started by telling her the news about my job at the Agency, and Alison was as disgusted as everyone else. I knew she was also worried about her family back in Austria, and the impact of the virus in Europe, so she was quiet as I described the vaccine and what I knew of how it worked and the effects. She had questions, only a couple of which I could answer while I was driving without pulling up the documents, and I promised to send them to her when I finished the call.

Then came the real question.

“You aren’t as open about your personal life as many of my other clients, Alison,” I said. “So I want you to know, if you do have someone you want to partner with, I will try to make that happen. If you don’t, then my door is open. You and Marques get along-”

“I will join you,” Alison said perfunctorily.

“You will?” I asked, a little surprised.

“Jo, danke,” she said. Her accent always stretched her German a little bit. “Your husband is very intelligent and musical, and you are a very good woman. I would enjoy this arrangement, I think. I will tell my boyfriend I am breaking up with him. He will probably be sad, but he takes stupid risks for no good reason. I was thinking of breaking up with him anyway.”

I had to stop myself from questioning her more. This was, after all, what I wanted. We talked about details quickly. She’d been splitting her time between Nashville and Miami before the pandemic and had spent the last three months down in Miami since she couldn’t connect with musicians in Nashville through lockdown and the weather was better in Miami. It would be a 14-hour drive, and she assured me she would be fine to start driving the next day and arrive the day after.

“Thank you for the opportunity, Katie,” Alison said. “Ich verspreche, Ihren Erwartungen gerecht zu werden.”

I wasn’t sure what she was saying, but by her tone, I knew she was being thankful. “I’ll see you soon, Alison,” I said. “Be careful. I’m sure everyone will be thrilled to meet you.”

“Danke noch einmal,” she said. “I will see you soon.”

We hung up, and I was struck again that Alison was likely just a little on the autism spectrum. The woman was just so decisive that it was uncanny. Even I had to stop and think about things more than her.

- - - - -

“Katie, honey, you do realise that this whole thing is a little unbelievable, right?”

I sighed and nodded. Adelaide and I were sitting in her darkened salon since she’d come down from the apartment she owned above the space. The front was, usually, a busy and popular high-end salon and should have had at least six hair stylists with back-to-back bookings all day. The back area was for Adie’s second business - being a stylist for musical acts. She’d dressed lots of mid-level celebrities for award shows like the Country Music Awards, but she’d always loved helping bands and acts find their on-stage style the most. So much so that her back room featured a small stage so she could literally get clients to pretend they were performing.

“Tell that to my fucking boss,” I sighed. She’d already looked at the documents I’d been sent by Chris.

“Yeah, well he’s fucking nuts, too,” she said. Adelaide ran her hands over her face and then leaned back and sighed. Her hair was a little more copper-red than Micki’s, mostly thanks to the fact that she had all the equipment to make that happen herself. Where Micki had been my best friend from college, Adie was my forever ride-or-die from all the way back in middle school. She had sort of delicate, pretty features with a slightly oversized smile, and where Micki was a little curvy in the hips and bust, Adie was thin.

“Look. I love you, babe,” I said. “You know that. Marques loves you too. You’re my best friend. Sean can go fuck himself - you did the right thing divorcing him when he turned out to be cheating on you. That was two years ago and you haven’t even hooked up with anyone.”

“Other than you,” she pointed out.

I smirked a little. “Does a little pussy licking between friends count when it’s at the end of your Divorce Party?”

“Yes,” she snorted. “We hadn’t done that since prom night.”

“I’ll do it again right now,” I said. “What are you wearing under those jeans? Something sexy?”

“Stop,” she laughed, flushing a little. “You seriously want me to sleep with Marques?”

“I want him balls deep in you, making your eyes roll back as you come like crazy,” I said. “And I’ll kiss all over your face while it happens.”

“This is really real?” she asked me.

“Real enough that Micki is going to join too,” I said, smirking again.

“You already asked Micki?” Adie asked in surprise.

“She was on the way, and was more likely to get reached out to than you by Christopher ‘Fuckface’ Frentz,” I said. “And, by the way, she’s looking forward to playing with you again too.”

“Oh, God,” Adelaide groaned and laughed. “Alright. I love you too, Kate. What do I need to do?”

- - - - -

“Not happening,” Yvette said. “Jesus, I can’t believe you’re even asking me that.”

“Why not?” I challenged her. We were standing in her office - she was the only one in at the PR firm and it was strange. The whole floor, usually busy with activity, was dark and silent. Yet still she had done herself up like it was a normal day pre-pandemic - her black skin looked smooth and polished, her makeup was on point, and she was dressed to the nines in a power suit. The only thing different was that her hair, usually in long braids and styled in an updo, was a natural poof that I thought looked better on her than the braids. From what I knew of the culture, it took a couple of women half a day or more to get those braids in, so I assumed she had to abandon them due to the pandemic.

“How about because you know I’m not into women, for one,” she said.

“You don’t need to sleep with anyone else other than Marques,” I said. “Yvette, you are the best PR person I’ve ever worked with. And you’ve been a good friend, too. How long have we known each other?”

“Seven years, Katie,” Yvette said. “And that’s long enough for me to forgive you for bringing this kind of thing in here. I’m not joining some fucking harem, whether the Government is telling me it’s necessary or not. There’ll be another vaccine; one that doesn’t require me to hump someone else’s husband.”

“OK,” I sighed. “What about business, then? Can I count on you to take my account when I’ve got everything set?”

Yvette sighed and shook her head lightly. “What are we talking about?”

“Boutique Management agency, up to ten acts to start. Not all of them will be in my household, obviously, but enough of them will that we’ll have a bit of a music commune going on so I’m expecting productivity to go up. That means singles and albums to release, new branding, potential gigs and tours to promote when things get moving again. And I’m only keeping acts that aren’t problems, so no emergency services even though I know you love to charge the overtime.”

She grunted and smirked. “No emergencies almost doesn’t make it worth it.”

“Think about how easy your life would be though,” I said.

“Get yourself set up then come back to me,” Yvette said. “I always did like you better than Chris anyway.”

- - - - -

“My father will literally kill me,” Samira said.

I was on the phone with her, driving again. “We can keep you safe from him and your brothers,” I said. “You’ve always just had to say the word, babe. You know that.”

‘The word’ was an actual safe word - Bahama. Samira was Iranian-American, a first-generation immigrant alongside her mother when she was twelve years old. Her mother had fled Iran because her father had started to become more radicalized in his religious beliefs as he rose through the ranks of governmental power there. She’d gotten asylum in the US, taking Samira with her. Samira’s father had followed them to America with her two older brothers, and they had all been a problem for years. If Katie ever got a call or text from Samira or someone who knew Samira with ‘Bahama’ in it she had a plan in place to get the young woman to safety.

“Are you sure you want to deal with that, though?” Samira asked. “I haven’t heard from any of them in a couple of months, but I know they’re out there.”

“I promise, you’re wanted,” I said. “Plus, I’m bringing on some extra security for the house. You will be safe, and have the freedom to be who you want to be.”

“I’ll do it,” Samira said almost breathlessly. “I’ll pack right away.”

“Good,” I said. “It’ll be good to have you close again, babe. And Marques will be thrilled to make some music with you again.”

“Just music?” she asked, and I could hear the little smile on her lips. For all that she was a relatively demure woman most of the time, Samira’s rap had come out of spoken word that delved deep into the repression she felt throughout her life. It was powerful and heartwrenching at times, and gutturally funny at others.

“Oh, babe,” I said. “Marques makes music in the bedroom just as much as he does with a guitar. Get ready.”

Samira’s nervous laugh was pretty and wholesome.

- - - - -

“I’ve got Zadie waiting on the other line,” Val said.

It didn’t surprise me that she’d gotten through to her instead of Alicjia; Zadie’s band had been one of Greg’s clients and Greg had died… Jesus, two months ago now. I should have reached out to her before now.

“Put her through, I’ll update you after,” I said.

“You should know, her brothers have all died,” Val said. “She spent three weeks in the hospital too.”

“Fuck,” I grunted. Partially from frustration that I hadn’t known that already, partially out of empathy for the girl. The Cunninghams had been a sibling band - Zadie was the frontwoman, her brothers were the instrumentals. They’d been making a good run at things and had gotten fairly popular overseas after Zadie got featured in a couple of video game related songs. She was big in Korea and Japan, and Greg had been working to get them more exposure in the US and Europe. That band, and her brothers, had been her entire world. “OK, good call.”

Val patched me over as I pulled off to the side of the road. This wasn’t a conversation I wanted to have while driving.

“Hello?” Zadie asked.

“Zadie, honey, it’s Katie Freeman,” I said. “God, I just heard. I’m so fucking sorry I didn’t know sooner.”

“It’s OK,” she said quietly. “I guess Greg wasn’t really around to give you the news.”

“He wasn’t,” I said softly. “Where are you now, babe?”

“At home. It’s- I took care of most of the… cleaning up already. But now the place feels really empty,” Zadie said.

I scrubbed my hands over my face, frustrated as hell. God, any other time I would hop on a flight to her. But there weren’t any flights right now. “I’m so sorry, honey,” I said instead. “That sounds fucking terrible. Do you have anyone around?”

There was a long silence on the other side of the call, and then a soft sob that sounded like she’d pulled the phone away from her face. My heart dropped. That was the sound of a woman who was very, very alone.

“Zadie, babe,” I said. “Can you hear me?”

I heard a long sniff. “I can hear you,” she finally said.

“OK. Here’s what you’re going to do,” I said. “You’re going to grab a couple of suitcases and you’re going to pack whatever you need for a few weeks of vacation. Then you’re going to grab your guitar and keyboard and pack everything into your car, and you're going to lock up the house. Drive down to Nashville; you’re going to stay with my husband and I for a month. There’s going to be some other artists and industry people as well, so you’ll have lots of people around to help support you or distract you whenever you need. We’ve all lost a few people, babe, but you are in the thick of it and you need people.”

“That’s not safe, though,” she said.

“Zadie, sometimes when the world decides to slap us in the face and spit in our eye, we need to through it a middle finger and tell it to fuck off,” I said. “Everyone is going to be as safe as possible. There’s more to it, but right now the rest of it is backseat to the fact that you need support, babe. Even if this wasn’t happening, I’d still be coming to get you because you need it. I can’t come to you, so you gotta come to me. Please tell me you’ll come.”

There was a pause. “I’ll come,” she finally whispered.

“Louder, babe. Give it some truth.”

“I’ll come,” she said again, a little firmer.

“OK,” I said. “Pack tonight, start driving tomorrow. It’ll take you, what, half a day?”

“Something like that,” she said. “Thirteen hours I think.”

She and her brothers had lived in Jersey, if I remembered correctly, so that was about right.

“Good. Then I expect you to pull into my driveway tomorrow evening, babe. I’ll have a hot dinner waiting for you, and a gallon of ice cream with your name on it, and I’ll hold you all night if you need to cry it out or talk it out or whatever,” I said.

“OK,” she whispered. “Thank you.”

“See you tomorrow night, babe,” I said. “Don’t worry about any other calls or emails that come in. We can handle things once you’re here. Everything else can wait for you to be ready.”

She sobbed again. “Thank you, Katie,” she repeated.

“You’re welcome, honey. See you soon.”

I let her hang up, and then dropped the phone into the centre console and curled up a little, resting my forehead against the steering wheel. I could have sworn I could feel her pain through the phone just by the edge in her voice. My father had died in March, and I’d taken a day to mourn him, but that call made me realise I wasn’t done grieving myself. Too many people I’d known were gone.

But I didn’t have time to mourn now. I sat back up, blinking rapidly to try and clear my eyes, and huffed out a breath. I redialed my home office line and then pulled back onto the road.

“How did it go?” Alicjia asked by way of answering the phone.

“Awful,” I said. “But she’s going to come down. I didn’t tell her anything else, that can come later. She just needs people around her right now.”

“OK,” Alicjia said. “I’ll make sure there is a room ready for her.”

“Good,” I nodded. “Alright. Alison Chains and Samira Negar are both joining us and should arrive in the next two days. Adelaide Fisher is also on board.”

“The stylist?” Val asked in the background.

“Adelaide is my oldest friend,” I said. “It was a no-brainer to ask her.”

“Damn,” Val said quietly, clearly impressed. I smirked, wondering if Val was into women or not - I’d assumed she was straight so far, but was hopefully wrong.

“Unfortunately Yvette Simmons was not on board,” I said. “She’s still willing to work with us on PR, but not join our little family.”

“I don’t know if you can call it little,” Alicjia said with a smirky tone in her voice. “Including myself and Val, you’ve confirmed eight women.”

“And I’m aiming for more,” I said. “What’s the latest on our other lists?”

“You have a call from the Tragedy in Flight ladies at five,” Alicjia said. “We’ve also confirmed that Lisbet and her husband are OK. I took the chance to mention to her about the sexual harrasment issue; she’s on board to jump over to us and will wait for our word to do it.”

“Good job,” I said, ticking that call off of my mental list.

“I’ve started contacting your male clients under the guise of a simple safety check-in,” Val said. “Doesn’t seem like any of them have been approached yet.”

“Christopher will be focused on women first. He’s always thought with his dick,” I said. “Did we hear anything back from Grace? And where is Ruby?”

“Grace is still supposed to be on the yacht, which is scheduled to land in New York for refueling and supplies in three days,” Val said. “They are out in open water, so unless you have their emergency sat phone number we can’t reach them.”

“That’s one thing I don’t have,” I said. Grace wasn’t my client, but she was the Agency’s biggest - a Country megastar embroiled in controversy because she’d come out as lesbian and married her long-time songwriting partner. She’d had ‘big ass yacht’ money and put it to use, living off the coast for most of quarantine, and was exactly the kind of asset Chris would be drooling over if he could convince the lesbian couple they could be safe with him as their trusted vaccine partner as well as business manager.

“I’m getting a call from Ruby right now!” Alicjia said. “Hold on.” There was a brief, muffled conversation that I couldn’t follow, which ended with. “OK, I’ll tell her. She’ll be right there. Don’t sign anything.”

“What was that?” I asked, my grip tightening on the steering wheel.

“Ruby says a car came to pick her up at her house,” Alicjia said, and I could hear the tightness in her voice. “She was brought to the office and is waiting in a conference room for a meeting with Frentz, but she finally checked her phone and noticed all the calls and texts from us.”

“Fuck,” I growled. “Alright, I’m on my way there. Do me a favour and call Ima Gonzalez and ask her to forgive me for pushing back my meeting with her, I was on my way there now.”

There was a quick beat on the other end of the line and I could tell Alicjia and Val were glancing at each other. “Do you want me to ask Ima to meet you there?” Val asked. “I’ve got her personal cell. We talk.”

I bit the inside of my cheek as I blew through yet another completely empty stop sign, heading back towards downtown. “Yes,” I decided. “That would be great. I’ll pay her retainer for the day.”

It was also good to have a little muscle at your back when going into a tense meeting.

- - - - -