Drive Me Crazy

By Tracy Wolff

Former rivals Quinn Bradford and Elise McKinney are not friends, at least not anymore. In the past all they cared about was psyching each other out before concerts...until everything changed. But when Quinn—now the keyboardist for Shaken Dirty, the hottest rock band on the scene—returns to his hometown and hears about the car accident that shattered Elise's career, he's determined to make things right.

Elise makes it perfectly clear she wants nothing to do with an arrogant rock star, despite how bad she so clearly wants him. So Quinn hatches a plan that’ll keep the stubborn world class pianist under his care…and maybe in his bed. One week together in his house, no chance of escape. But amid pranks both childish and very adult, their secrets come rearing back to haunt them. And it might be more than either of them can forget.

Each book in the Shaken Dirty series is STANDALONE:

* Crash Into Me
* Drive Me Crazy
* Fade Into You

• Language: English
• Publisher: Macmillan Publishers
• Release date: Feb 24, 2014
• ISBN: 9781622665020

Tracy Wolff

Tracy Wolff collects books, English degrees and lipsticks. At six she wrote her first short story and ventured into the world of girls’ lit. By ten she’d read everything in the young adult and classics sections of her local bookstore, so started on romance novels. And from the first page, she'd found her life-long love. Tracy lives in Texas with her husband and three sons, where she writes and teaches at the local college. She can be reached online at www.tracywolff.com.

Book preview

Table of Contents

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

Discover more romance from Entangled

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

Copyright © 2014 by Tracy Wolff. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact the Publisher.

Entangled Publishing

644 Shrewsbury Commons Ave

STE 181

Shrewsbury, PA 17361

[e-mail]

Edited by Stacy Abrams and Liz Pelletier

Cover design by Heather Howland

Cover art from Shutterstock

ISBN 978-1-62266-502-0

Manufactured in the United States of America

First Edition February 2014

To Emily McKay,

because I can’t imagine writing a book without you

Prologue

There were goldfish in her bathtub. Goldfish. In her bathtub. Goldfish. IN. HER. BATHTUB.

For long seconds, Elise McKinney could do nothing but look around the small hotel bathroom she was standing in, as if the pale green walls held a clue as to why—and how—someone had turned her bathtub into a fishpond—two hours before she was supposed to take the stage for the biggest competition of her life.

Not that she really needed any clues to figure out who had done this. No, she thought, as she watched almost two dozen goldfish glide around her bathtub, I know exactly who snuck into my hotel room and pulled this latest prank.

Quinn frickin’ Bradford.

And if she didn’t need desperately to take a shower before she went on stage in front of ten thousand people, she’d probably be impressed with his ingenuity. After all, it wasn’t like she hadn’t known a prank was coming. Not after she’d snuck into his hotel room in Brussels and sown shut the flies of every single pair of his boxer briefs.

With a muttered curse and a promise to herself to get back at Quinn if it was the last thing she did, Elise bent over and stuck her head under the sink faucet. He was so going down for this.

Ninety minutes later, she was repeating that vow to herself as she walked into the greenroom at the performance venue and saw Quinn lounging negligently on the couch, his long, lean body sprawled out like he owned the thing. His hair looked perfect, she noted resentfully, as did his custom-made tuxedo. While she felt like the punch line of a bad joke.

The sink thing hadn’t worked—it was way too shallow to actually wash her hair in it—and she’d been forced to scrape her hair back into a tight bun that made her look like a schoolmarm…or a dominatrix. She was about to go take the most famous stage in Paris to perform the second movement of Schumann’s Kreisleriana, one of the sexiest pieces ever written for the piano, and she looked like she should be carrying a paddle and a whip. The long, clingy black dress she was wearing only added to the look.

It so wasn’t fair. He should know better than to mess with a sixteen-year-old girl’s appearance before she went on stage. Seriously, everyone knew that, didn’t they?

Of course they did.

Narrowing her eyes into the most threatening look she could manage, she stalked toward Quinn with every intention of going for his eyes. She’d just had her nails done and was sure she could do some damage before they pulled her off of him. But he turned his head just as she reached him and she noticed for the first time that someone had beat her to it. Quinn had a dark bruise on his jaw and a cut on his cheekbone, right under his eye.

What happened to you? she asked, concern for him cutting through her fury. They might be enemies of a sort, but they were also friends of a different sort. Hard not to be when they’d been on the performance circuit together for nine years, ever since they were seven years old—two piano prodigies growing up together. This wasn’t the first time she’d seen marks like that on him and though he always had an excuse, in her mind they were starting to wear thin. Especially since Quinn usually blamed the bruises on clumsiness, and he was the least clumsy guy she’d ever met.

Ran into the wrong end of a fist, he said with a wink and a grin that didn’t quite meet his eyes.

Her stomach clenched. I can see that. Whose fist was it?

Some random guy’s. He wasn’t all that impressed with me trying to pick up his girlfriend.

Her concern disappeared in a flood of disgust and something else she wasn’t comfortable analyzing. You got in a fight over a girl?

Can you think of anything better to fight about?

You could have hurt your hands!

But I didn’t, he answered with a shrug. Besides, it’s not like I started the fight.

She rolled her eyes. I swear, I don’t know how you have the time to find all the trouble you do.

Just lucky, I guess. He looked her over then, his eyes lingering in places that had her hands trembling and her breath catching in her chest. I have to say, I like the new look. It’s very—

Don’t even say it!

Say what? His midnight eyes were a little heavy lidded and a lot wicked as they met hers. That I have a sudden urge to buy you a pair of bitch boots and a set of handcuffs? If you ask nicely, I might even let you use them on me.

Don’t even. She was trying to sound annoyed, but her voice was shaking so much that it came out soft and breathy instead. This look is all your fault.

And I am totally okay with that. You look hot.

I look like a dominatrix!

Like I said, hot. Quinn reached onto the floor next to the couch and pulled out a small white bag. Holding it toward her with a completely straight face, he asked, Goldfish? They’re the spicy ones you like.

You asshole! He was taunting her, flaunting his victory in her face.

What? he asked, his eyes wide with fake puzzlement. I thought you liked goldfish…crackers.

Fury pounded through her. No one could get a reaction out of her the way Quinn could—no one—and it irritated her to no end. And though she knew the smartest thing she could do was to not give him a reaction, Elise couldn’t help herself. She ripped the bag of goldfish out of his hands and dumped them all over his gleaming, perfectly styled hair.

As he gaped at her, mouth opening and closing much like a goldfish’s would, she promised herself that the next time she was in his hotel room, she was going to cut to shreds every single pair of pants he owned.

Quinn Bradford was going down and she was just the girl to do it.

Chapter One

Ten years later…

Elise woke alone, in a strange bed in a strange room. A little groggy and a lot disoriented, it took her a few seconds to figure out where she was.

As it turned out, those were the best moments of her day. Because they were blank, empty, and for a little while—a very little while—she was just Elise McKinney, concert pianist. She was in just another hotel room in just another city, getting ready to give just another concert.

But then the occasional beeping from the pulse oximeter next to the bed worked its way into her consciousness. Followed by the throbbing in her left hand. The aches and pains all over her body. And the emptiness deep inside herself that screamed something was very, very wrong.

Because it was. Ellington was dead. And so was her career. She didn’t know how she could have forgotten, even in those first blurry moments.

Using her good hand, she pushed herself into a sitting position, then shoved the hair out of her eyes and surveyed the hospital room around her. Despite the numerous bouquets of flowers that lined most of the available surfaces, it felt empty. Impersonal. Lonely.

Kind of like her life.

Panic assailed her at the thought, had her grabbing onto the side rails of the bed as she fought to calm her racing heart. It worked, but her injured hand protested the movement and she ended up curled on her side in the fetal position, trying to keep her breathing under control.

What was she going to do?

What was she going to do?

A knock at the door distracted her and as she looked up, her first thought was that she’d obviously hit her head harder than the doctors thought. A lot harder. Because she could swear that Quinn Bradford was standing casually in her doorway, smiling like it had been ten minutes and not ten years since she’d last seen him. Like he hadn’t taken her virginity in Brussels and then disappeared—from her life and his own— without so much as a hint of what he was planning or where he was hoping to end up.

Oh, the man watching her with dark, concern-filled eyes wasn’t the same Quinn Bradford she’d spent so much of her adolescence competing against—no tuxedo, no perfectly trimmed hair, no fake smile, no bruises—but it was definitely him. He might look more like the rock and roll star he’d become than the classically trained pianist she used to know, but that didn’t mean anything. She’d recognize him anywhere. As would her heart, which had already started beating fast and frantic in her chest.

Embarrassed by her reaction to him—even after all this time—she glanced at the monitor beside her bed. Hoped he wouldn’t notice the sudden spike in her pulse rate that was detailed there.

I don’t know if you remember— he started.

Of course I remember you, Quinn, she interrupted. His name was an urgency on her tongue, a brand on her soul, this man who had always hid more than he showed, always listened more than he shared. But what are you doing here?

He smiled then, a quick turning up of his lips that had a dimple flashing in his right cheek. She closed her eyes and tried not to think about how many times she’d kissed and licked that dimple when she was seventeen.

I live in Austin now. I heard about the accident on the news. His grin disappeared. I’m sorry about Ellington.

Yeah, me too. Tears bloomed in her eyes—the same troublesome tears that had been hitting her without warning ever since they’d pulled her from the tangled wreck of the limousine—but she blinked them back. Again. Ellington James had never approved of excess emotion, had never put up with the passionate displays other prima donna musicians indulged in on a regular basis. To cry now, here, would just make the death of her manager—and best friend—all the more real. Besides, she’d spent most of her life keeping her emotions under wraps. Now didn’t seem like the best time to change that.

Quinn crossed the room slowly, hesitantly, as if he was afraid she would go hysterical at any moment. That, more than anything else, convinced her she wasn’t having aural and visual hallucinations. Because the Quinn Bradford she remembered had been just as uncomfortable around vulnerability as Ellington had been. As her father had been. The one time she’d cried all over him, he’d looked so freaked out and terrified that she’d forced herself to pull away. To bury the tears, and her sorrow, deep inside herself.

She did the same thing now, but it wasn’t nearly as hard this time around. After all, she’d been doing it for years with such success that most days she managed to forget she had emotions at all.

Her father would have been so proud.

Did they say how badly you were hurt? Quinn asked after a moment, breaking the awkwardness that stretched between them like a particularly discordant note. He eyed the scrapes on her face, the bandages that covered the stitches on her right arm. The cast on her left hand.

Terror welled up inside her as she thought of that cast—and the broken, mangled hand below it.

The broken, mangled future that stretched out in front of her.

I’m fine. Bumps and bruises. A mild concussion. As she had with the tears, Elise swallowed back the fear until she didn’t feel anything but numb. Just the way she’d learned to like it. Then she said the words that had shattered her world as completely as Ellington’s death had. A broken hand.

Broken didn’t exactly cover the mess the accident had made of three bones and several tendons in her hand. Nor did it encompass the horror of the surgery she’d had that morning and the three others they’d explained she still had to get through. But she didn’t want to think about those, let alone talk about them with Quinn. Beautiful, perfect, obscenely talented Quinn.

Besides, if she outlined the damage, he would know exactly how disastrous things were—and what those injuries would mean to her career.

Like Ellington’s death, her new reality wasn’t something she was yet ready to face. Not with an old friend, and definitely not with the stranger who stood before her. Because if she wasn’t a classical pianist, she wasn’t anybody. It was the first of many lessons she’d learned before she was even old enough to reach the piano keys.

And still, he seemed to know, his eyes—those dark, glorious eyes—filled with a sympathy she couldn’t bear to see. I’m so sorry, Lissy. The old nickname combined with his obvious sincerity only made everything more real.

Shaking her head breezily, she flashed a smile she was far from feeling. I’m not complaining. It could be a lot worse, after all.

Again Ellington’s blank face and unseeing eyes flashed into her mind, and again, she blinked the image back. Focused instead on keeping up her end of the conversation. As long as she acted normally on the outside, it didn’t matter how messed up she was on the inside. Another lesson she’d learned in childhood.

Thank you for the flowers. For the first time, she looked at the bouquet in Quinn’s hands. It was a glorious riot of different shades of orange and purple—her favorite colors—and the fact that he’d remembered, after all these years, shook her more than she wanted to admit.

He, too, glanced at the blooms he carried, looking surprised to see them there, in his hands. Almost as if he’d already forgotten he’d bought them. But as he lay them down on the ledge by the window, he said, They reminded me of you.

She opened her mouth to thank him a second time, but what popped out instead was, Wow. I didn’t think anything was capable of doing that.

Shit! The second the words were out of her mouth, she longed to take them back. Yes, she’d been sitting on them for ten long years, but she’d had no intention of ever saying them. Not to him. Not when they made her sound bitter and angry and tied to a past that was long gone. But how was she supposed to keep her indignation under wraps after all these years? The words had festered in her soul like a wound and it was better that she got them, and her anger, out. And that was all she was feeling, Elise assured herself. Anger. Annoyance. Confusion. But not pain. Never again pain. Not after all the years and miles that had passed between them. And definitely not desire. The rock god in front of her was so not her type.

Except…he looked good. She hated to admit it, but how could she not? Even when they were younger—and all her focus had been on beating him in piano competitions instead of dating him—he’d been the hottest guy she’d ever seen. Back then, he’d dressed in expensively tailored tuxedoes or khakis with dress shirts. His hair had been perfectly cut, his shoes shined until you could actually see your reflection in them. And the one small tattoo he’d had on the inside of his wrist—the kanji symbol for freedom— was the only outward sign of his defiance regarding his father’s military-style rule.

That sweetly polished boy was long gone and in his place was a man who exuded sex—raw, primitive, raunchy sex—with every move, every word, every breath. Just being in the same room with him had adrenaline pumping through her, a strange combination of wariness and excitement so intense she could barely sit still.

Shivers slipped up and down her spine with every breath she took, while every nerve ending she had seemed to be standing at attention. Like her careless words, she wanted to blame her response on the drugs, too. On the circumstances, on the pain, on anything but the always present chemistry between them—chemistry that had flared to life the moment she realized who was standing at the door of her hospital room.

Desperate to distract herself from the erotic pull he exuded so effortlessly, Elise focused on all the changes the last decade had wrought in him. And the harder she looked, the more differences she found.

He was taller, more filled out—had the wide shoulders and broad chest of a man instead of the long, lean build of the gangly boy she remembered. He’d never been soft—growing up with his father, he’d never had that chance—but looking at him now, she couldn’t help thinking he was harder than he’d ever been. Even his face was different. Leaner, more closed-off, with the sharp, high cheekbones and cut-glass jaw that spoke of his Native American heritage on his mother’s side.

This new Quinn also had a small silver ring pierced through the left corner of his bottom lip and thick black hoops in both of his pierced ears. He wore threadbare jeans that were ripped in some very interesting places—not that she was looking—and a tight, black V-neck T-shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the top of his heavily muscled biceps.

His arms were covered in full tattoo sleeves—one in beautifully blended shades of gray, the other in stark black and red. The work was gorgeous, stunning, but so intricate and complicated that it would take her hours, if not days, to distinguish all the different images bleeding so seamlessly into one another. Part of her wanted to start right then, but there was more to see. More to savor, though she’d deny she was doing that to anyone who dared accuse her of such a thing.

Deliberately shifting her focus, she took in his wild black hair. Before it had been well trimmed, conservatively styled. Now it was razor cut, sharp-edged, and sexy as hell. While he still wore it cut short in the back, the front was so long that his bangs flopped crazily over his forehead, down his cheeks, and into his eyes.

While she watched, he ran an annoyed hand through the glossy ebony strands, pushing them out of the way for the tenth time since he’d shown up in her room. As he did, it gave her a brief, unobstructed view of his eyes. The realization that they were the only things about him that hadn’t changed was a fist in the gut. Dark—so dark that his pupils blended into the blackness of his irises—they held the same

Reviews for Drive Me Crazy

[bookishthings · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I absolutely love Quinn & Elise’s and story. There were so many times that I was laughing like a crazy person. I told my hubby about some of the pranks played between the two of them, and now he’s worried I’ll do the same things. :P

I love how Quinn and Elise can still shift into their playfulness around each other. It’s fun. There are a few intense moments with them. But they just need to work past that all. I also love the fact that the rest of the band gets along with Elise so well.

Sorry this turned kind of rambly. I don’t want to give too much away, but I still want to sing praises for this book, and series. If you loved the intensity of Ryder and Jamison, you’ll love the fun with Quinn and Elise. You’ll also love the smexy parts! Just sayin’.

[msphotogirl · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This story made me laugh out loud a lot. Loved it!

[mybookaddiction_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Drive Me Crazy by Tracy Wolff is the second book in her Shaken Dirty series, a rock star series. Don't worry though, it stands alone very well. This new rock star series had a fantastic opening book and Drive Me Crazy is actually better.Quinn, keyboardist for Shaken Dirty, wasn't always a rock god. In fact, he started out as a classical pianist. His chief rival was Elise. These two children both had fathers who were less than stellar: Quinn's had a penchant for hitting. His outlet was helping Elise and psyching her out. Their relationship was loving, behind the constant pranking. But when Quinn pulled a disappearing act, the relationship was over. Shaken Dirty is his family now, still a dysfunctional family, but family.Elise, for her part, has just lost the only person in the world who cared about her in a terrible accident. Unfortunately for her, she's also lost her career as a pianist due to the same accident. Alone, scared, hopeless, lost: this is Elise's life now. Or at least, it would have been her life, if Quinn hadn't walked back into it. This is Elise's story more than Quinn's. She's the one who has to move into better emotional space. Quinn's just the man to help her.After the terrible drama and heartache in book one, Shaken Dirty is circling the wagons and those wagons are now encircling Elise as well. She's been spirited off to Quinn's house to recuperate from surgery. This could have been a rather maudlin story given the depth of pain both Elise and Quinn are in. What it actually is, is a fun romp filled with one-upmanship and hilarity. That's not to say that the band drama doesn't impact them at all or that the more weighty aspects of the story are given short shrift. Rather, the bickering, pranking, and gotchas on the parts of Elise and Quinn serve to bring them closer together and to contrast with the deepening crisis for the band. When Elise discovers a new talent, it only strengthens everyone. But like Ryder before him, Quinn needs to learn how to love and be loved.Catch Shaken Dirty's second album; you won't be sorry. I just can't wait to see what's in store for them next.RATING: 4Heat Rating: SteamyREVIEWED BY: Monique NeavesCourtesy of My Book Addiction and More