Free Bassist Instinct (The Rocker Series #2) by Vanessa Lennox Page B

complained. “My only companion was me hand.” Everyone burst out laughing.
    “We tooled around Germany, the Berlin Wall had only just come down and we were welcomed with more vigor than we deserved, I thought. They were so happy to have western influences, it was beautiful,” Connor said with a smile.
    “That’s not where you got arrested, was it?” Piper asked and Connor laughed.
    “Well…Almost, but not quite,” Connor said. “That’s another story for another night. And for the record, we were never formally charged with anything.” Ryan pointed at Connor and grinned.
    “The Berlin story’s quite funny, too, but there was less nudity,” Ryan said.
    “Only because you were dressed, the rest of us weren’t,” Tate said.
    “I was dressed… mostly,” Connor said. Ryan rolled his eyes.
    “The fedora,” he said and everyone laughed. “We get to Amsterdam, and the Americans had just about done with us…with them, and well, it was Amsterdam. They pissed off to find the next free ride,” Ryan said.
    “Ryan, they were lovely, what crawled up your arse?” Tate defended them.
    “It was past time for them to go, they were getting bored,” Ryan said. “They started harassing poor wee Razz.”
    “I don’t remember that,” Tate said. Ryan barked out a laugh.
    “You don’t even remember their names, mate,” Ryan said. Tate grinned.
    “Sure I do,” he said but then suddenly realized he didn’t. “The one with Con was…” he looked at Connor for help.
    “Michelle,” Connor said.
    “Aye, that’s it, Michelle and Barbara,” Tate made a stab in the dark.
    “Brenda, man. She called herself Brenda Starr after the comic strip,” Connor said.
    “It was a long time ago, I’d forgotten,” Tate said.
    Christie clucked at him disapprovingly.
    “I treated her right for nearly two weeks that summer, am I expected to remember everything?”
    “What was the name of the girl who left your bed this morning, Tate-o?” Christie asked. He looked across the room at her. He had no idea what her name was, and Christie bloody well knew it. He considered making up a name, but Christie was not the kind of person to be unkind for no reason, she was making a point, and he let her. They held eye contact for a whole minute while the others sat waiting in the uncomfortable silence. Tate had the unpleasant feeling that Christie was warning him off of wee Fiona Brooks, and that was not something he wanted.
    “So, Amsterdam, you all know it, there’s the one river and a bunch of canals, and thousands of bridges.” Ryan was trying to move them off of the subject of Tate and his myriad of women. “Apparently those bridges are much easier to fall off when you’ve had a skinfull.”
    “And when you’re walking on the handrail in the rain,” Tate said. Everyone looked at him like he was indeed an eejit, but he put his hand up. “I wasn’t walking on the handrail in the rain, the mad Dutch girl was. She got locked out of her flat…naked, so naturally I introduced myself and we hit it off. We finished whatever it was she was drinking, and before I knew it we were both naked and on the bloody bridge in the rain. She was standing on the rail, bending over, balancing herself by holding my hair one minute, the next minute she was gone, vanished, with a handful of my hair, I might add. Then I heard the splash.”
    “As it so often happens, we were coming the other way on the bridge,” Ryan said. “There’s Tate, naked as a rock star in Amsterdam for the first time, peering over the railing at the water. Razz doesn’t swim, but he was the only sober one out of the four of us. Well, he was more sober than the rest of us, I should say. He says: ‘Christ, the poor lassie’s done for if you don’t all go in after her!’ And as we were all shitfaced, it sounded reasonable, so we all strip down and jump.”
    “It’s dark, the water was bloody cold, and we were all right rubbered,” Connor said.
    “We couldn’t