Free The Downfall of a Good Girl by Kimberly Lang

politely and clap along, but her insides were melting. She needed something numbing herself. Connor’s voice was whiskey on that low-grade fire, and the heat was building. It just wasn’t fair. She’d picked the wrong night to start thinking about being a different Vivi. Damn Lorelei for putting ideas about being bad in her head. That idea kept swirling around with the other bad thoughts in her head and that was very dangerous.
    She said, “Honey, what you need
,
Is something we’ve got
.
Sit right on back—”
    Vivi tried to make her way to the other side of the room as unobtrusively as possible, but her stupid wings kept bumping people. Thankfully almost everyone was enthralled with Connor’s performance and the interruption was shrugged off.
    Then Connor launched into the chorus.
    She served a little whiskey and honey
.
It goes down real easy when you drink it slow
.
She can stop a heart and free a weary soul
.
She sang a lot like whiskey…whiskey and honey
.
    The whole room was singing now, and Vivi felt a stab of something between anger and jealousy. It was a nice changefrom the earlier confusion. This was Connor’s event now. He owned it as surely as he owned the crowd. She wanted to be angry at him for grabbing the spotlight and making tonight about him, but at the same time she was jealous he was able to do it so easily. And everyone in the room was glad he did. They felt special now: the lucky few attendees at a private concert.
    Think of the positives
. Connor was giving the crowd what they wanted, and in return the crowd would donate money—even more than they’d originally planned.
    She actually wasn’t upset at Connor’s showboating, or jealous of his popularity. He was right to be working the angles he had.
    No, it just made her situation worse. Her personal situation. She was lusting after a man she couldn’t have. Dear heaven, Connor was the one man she
shouldn’t
be lusting after at all. The sound of his voice washed over her, fanning those flames and making it hard to focus on anything else.
    She was pitiful. Pathetic. Insane.
    She pushed open the door to the deck; getting outside would lessen the shock and sensations. The cool air helped some, but not enough.
    One week down. Three to go.
    She wasn’t going to make it.
    Three songs and his hands were burning. He was supposed to be resting them, letting the inflammation subside and heal. So much for that idea. At least he’d been able to leave it at three, turning the stage and spotlight back over to the band.
    Connor held his beer in one hand, letting the cold soothe that hand some before switching and giving the other a little relief. It wasn’t ideal, but it helped and did so in an unobtrusive way. The banker talking to him had no idea—whichwas fair, he thought, because Connor really hadn’t been listening and had no idea what he was talking about.
    He was dripping sweat from his performance, and the heat from the mass of bodies in the room kept him from cooling down. “Can you excuse me? I’m going to step outside and cool off.”
    “Sure thing. Maybe we could talk later about my idea?”
    Damn
. He should have listened a bit more carefully. God only knew what the banker—whose name he didn’t even know—might have in mind. Thankfully he was saved from having to make even the most noncommittal of commitments by the arrival of a slightly drunk woman who stumbled over the banker and spilled her drink onto his shirt. Connor used the distraction to slip out the side door.
    The air cooled him immediately and the breeze off the river helped dry the sweat. It felt good.
    He wasn’t the only one escaping the crowd. Small groups of people lined the railings, but it was much quieter out here. The music inside was muted by the walls, the thrumming of the engines and the splashes of the big paddle wheel. The breeze carried conversations out over the river, making the deck feel more private and isolated than it really was. Meanwhile, the