Free One Night with Sole Regret 01 Try Me by Olivia Cunning

her
ear. “There’s still time to turn back.”
    “I’m cool,” she lied.
    As the hostess directed them into a private dining
room, Melanie prayed Nikki was already at the table for backup. No
such luck.
    Three members of the band and two other guys were
seated in one of four enormous booths in the room. There were
dozens of additional square tables and chairs, each with neat white
table cloths, forest green napkins, and silver-trimmed place
settings. Even if the entire crew joined them, they wouldn’t need
this much space. A dance floor took up the far half of the room.
She was pretty sure the place was used for wedding receptions.
Melanie wondered if the hotel staff kept the rockers separate from
the main dining room so people didn’t trample them as they tried to
get autographs or because said rockers were so noisy that they were
sure to disturb the other, more conservative, hotel guests. Perhaps
a little of both.
    “Do you want to sit with them or on our own?” Gabe
asked, nodding toward the occupied booth.
    “We can sit with them.” She wanted to prove to
herself that the rest of his band didn’t make her a nervous
wreck.
    So far, not so good. Her stomach was working on a
new gymnastics routine.
    Gabe rested a hand against her lower back as they
stopped next to the table. “Did you already order?” he asked the
guys.
    “Not for you,” one member of Sole Regret said.
    He had a shaggy, spiked arrangement of jet black
hair that went quite well with his all-black attire. Melanie knew
he was the lead guitarist, but could not for the life of her
remember his name. His steel-gray eyes swept over Melanie’s rumpled
clothes and tangled hair before settling on her face. “Your sexy
sweetheart can sit next to me.” He scooted over in the booth and
patted the seat beside him. Melanie hesitated before sliding in
next to him.
    Gabe sat on her opposite side, and she had to shift
closer to the guitarist. He wore enough chains to tow a truck. His
spicy aftershave had her wanting to bury her face against his neck
and inhale repeatedly.
    “Aren’t you going to introduce her?” the guitarist
asked.
    “Melanie,” Gabe said flatly.
    She glanced at Gabe and found him examining a menu.
He seemed to have lost all interest in her. Why? Was she not cool
enough to hang out with his rock-star buddies?
    She turned her attention to the guitarist. “Hi,” she
said, “you would be . . . ”
    He laughed and slid a hand over his face. “Where in
the hell did you find this one, Force? I didn’t think there was a
woman under sixty who didn’t know my name.”
    Another rock-star type reached across the table to
shake her hand. “I’m Owen,” he said. “Don’t judge the rest of us by
Adam’s giant ego.”
    “You play bass,” Melanie said, as if she were on a
quiz show and was pretty sure she was going home empty-handed.
    He nodded. “That’s right.”
    He had the prettiest blue eyes she’d ever seen. And
the bone structure of a movie star. And the tattoos and face
piercings of a side-show act.
    “Most people know him as Tags,” the ego named Adam
informed her.
    She vaguely remembered Nikki telling her that the
band’s pretty boy went by the nickname Tags. Though in all honesty,
it was hard for her to look past the tough-guy accessories to the
gorgeous face beneath. She was working on it. Her heart rate had
almost returned to normal. She had almost convinced herself that
she had nothing to fear from these guys.
    “Do you prefer to be called Tags or Owen?” she
asked, noticing the beat-up set of military dog tags on a slender
chain around his neck. Was that how he’d picked up the nickname?
She was much too intimidated to ask.
    “He’ll answer to anything,” the other guitarist in
the group said. He grinned at Owen and then turned his attention to
Melanie. “Cuff,” he said, shaking her hand. He was wearing a thick
cuff on one wrist that looked like something out of a bondage
convention. “Or Kellen,” he