I felt bad for Alejandro, and I wished I was conning George instead. Elle's team would love to take that guy down. But I had a job to do, so I tried to focus.
"Should I worry about George when I sell my mother's guitar to him? Will he cheat me?"
"No, he won't cheat you if you do an honest deal. But if you ever tell anyone you sold a guitar to me, he'll come after you, and I promise it won't be pleasant. He hates it when people use my name to their advantage."
"How can that be? You're famous-people must use your name all the time."
"They do, but not without permission. Let me give you an example of George's handiwork." He shook his head with a downturned mouth. "Last year, George noticed a beauty salon that had my picture in their window. The photo was a popular one that showed me with Talia Dare." He looked at me to see if I'd respond to his name-dropping. I kept a straight face, so he explained. "She's a famous rocker."
"I know who Talia Dare is."
He widened his eyes. "You've heard of Talia Dare, but not me?"
That made me laugh. "I never said I hadn't heard of you. Just that I didn't know your music. I'm not sure I could recognize a Talia Dare song, either." Another lie-I had nearly all of her music.
"Right." He grinned. "Anyway, that photo made the rounds back when the two of us were on tour together. So it had been published everywhere. But the beauty salon had edited the photo. They'd removed Talia's face and replaced it with some other woman. That bothered George.
"He went in there and asked about the picture. They told him it was part of a 'digital makeover' system where customers could see how they'd look with various hairstyles, in this case, Talia's. And the picture was perfect because women love to imagine themselves with me." He winked and grinned, then his face fell. "Well, some do, anyway."
I flushed lightly, embarrassed to be one of the few women alive who didn't claim to want his body. "So I'm guessing he sent them a cease-and-desist letter to force them to stop using your picture."
"Yeah, right." Alejandro shook his head. "That would have been the proper thing to do. But not George. He came at them with both guns blazing."
I frowned. "What did he do?"
"He hired thugs to go in and intimidate the owner. They started by ripping up all of the posters, including the pictures of me, Talia, the Fiery Boys, and a few others. Then they trashed the shop and actually roughed up the owner."