Kiss Across Time (Kiss Across Time Series) Read Free Page B

force for those guys.”
    “’coz when I said I can’t afford concert tickets,” Andy told him, “I mean all concert tickets except scalper prices, which go about five times the door price.”   He shook his head.
    “I’ll pay,” Taylor told him.   “I’ll buy them.   You want to go, Andy?   Would you like to see Nocturnal Rain live?   Take me with you and I’ll buy you a ticket.”
    Andy’s eyes widened.
    The girl in Graham’s arms snorted.   “Yeah, she ain’t gonna stand out at all ,” she said and laughed, muffling her face in Graham’s shoulder.
    Taylor looked down at her silver-grey suit and tugged at the hem of her jacket.   “I’ll even get rid of the suit,” she promised Andy.
    His relief was as easy to read as newsprint.   “Deal,” he said.
* * * * *
     
    “And blood-dipped spears waved beyond thy doors
    Foretelling thy doom to me this day of days.
    I knew of thy love before thee spoke of it to me
    Say not of what is in thy heart for it must not be spake.”
    Taylor shivered as she listened to the poetic words, sung at a fever pitch, thundering out of dozens of speakers ten feet high, accompanied by the screech of heavy metal guitars, while fifteen thousand screaming fans pummeled and thrashed around her.
    She really was here listening to this, she reminded herself. She really had heard the words. It hadn’t been her imagination. She gripped Andy’s arm even harder.
    “Told you,” Andy yelled in her ear. “Can we go now?” He was anxious to get her the hell out of here before he was spotted with his uptight, anal and not-cool history professor neighbor.
    At least he could give her brownie points for trying to dress the part. She’d squeezed herself into a lace-up leather miniskirt and black leather bustier she’d borrowed from a Goth ex-student, poured on the black eye makeup and slid into black stiletto ankle boots. But she stood out like a flamingo in the Sonora desert here. Mentally, she’d shrugged. At least she hadn’t worn her business suit and put her hair up.   Andy would have been horrified.
    “Are you kidding?” she yelled back at Andy.   She had no intention of giving up now. “How do I get backstage?”
    He looked like he was choking. “Are you fucking kidding?” He waved a hand toward the stage. “This is Nocturnal Rain ! You don’t just wander backstage!”
    “I have to talk to them!” she screamed in his ear. “I have to find out where they got those lyrics!”
    He shook his head, mulish. “Not unless you fuck one of ’em, Taylor! It ain’t happening. Not with their security.”
    Taylor gripped the railing of the first tier balcony and stared down at the stage in pure frustration. She had to find a way to speak to Brody Gallagher, because he’d had access to the works of Inigo Domhnall and that made him her new best friend.
    The lead singer, Gallagher, was gyrating at the crowd and the mosh pit was going crazy. From where she stood on the second balcony, most of the pit seemed to be women and those women were showing a dazzling amount of cleavage.
    A couple of wranglers were on the stage now, working on something behind the singer.
    “Shit…damn.” Andy turned to Taylor. “Stick your chest out, Taylor,” he yelled in her ear.
    “What?”
    “I forgot about this. Look as fuckable as you can manage.” Andy lifted his hands as if he was going to arrange her clothing to add to the fuckable quotient, then he dropped them, as if the task was beyond his capabilities. “What about just smiling, then, huh?” he suggested.   When he was sober and straight, Andy was smart and quite good company.   Since she had barged into his apartment yesterday morning, she had come to like his quiet intelligence.   He was not in the slightest dazzled by her academic credentials, or his lack of them and that impressed her a lot.
    “Thanks,” Taylor said, gritting her teeth and smiling. She turned to face the stage.
    The singer had been attached to a pair of