A knock on the door. “Come in,” Marcus said.
It was Serena, harried and tense, a sheath of papers under her arm and an ear pressed to the phone as she sidestepped into the room. “Marcus, can I speak with you for a minute?” She nodded toward the hallway. She knew his schedule, and how important today was for him. If she wanted a private conversation moments before he took off for the airport, good news would not soon follow.
“What is it?” he said, as soon as they’d shut the door of the suite behind them.
“You’re not going to be happy.”
“Serena, just spit it out.”
“I’m so sorry,” she said, wincing as she handed him a tablet. The browser was open to TMZ, where the lead article read, “Troy’s Daughter Confirms Nanny Love.”
Marcus’s stomach lurched. His daughter? Had someone interviewed Charlotte without his knowing it? He scanned this “article,” which was really just a few sentences under a photograph of two people holding hands. It was so blurry that Marcus had trouble even making it out, but after a moment, he realized that it was indeed a picture of himself and Ryan holding hands. This was the photo that Charlotte had snapped on the bus. It had been before that crazy evening, but when, exactly? He couldn’t recall.
He looked for the byline: it was Benjamin Little, yet again.
“Call Cynthia, please,” he told Serena. He felt guilty that he’d barked at her earlier, but if he was nervous before, he was in a full-blown panic now. “She’s going to come down on this guy with a fury he never even knew existed.” If Benjamin thought he could hack into his daughter’s phone without serious consequences, he had another thing coming.
“I’m holding for her right now.” Serena was getting almost as good at her job as Ryan was at hers. “Apparently, her flight got to LA an hour and a half ago, and she’s prepping for the hearing at her hotel.”
As Marcus re-read the text below the photo, he understood what had happened, and for the first time, felt truly frightened. Charlotte had posted the photo on Instagram two days earlier, with the caption, “My dad and his new girlfriend (I hope), Ryan,” and though Charlotte’s account was under a fake social-media-only name, Benjamin had somehow been able to trace it. The photo had been public, there for all the world to see, and the fact that it was illegal for a ten-year-old to even have an Instagram account didn’t mean a damn thing. He and Bianca had discussed it months earlier. Every fourth grader in North America had an Instagram account, apparently, and Bianca hadn’t prevented Charlotte from getting one.
Marcus felt so stupid. Worse yet, he could imagine being just as irate as Bianca was going to be, had she been so seemingly careless. Now, she could tell the judge at their hearing that new tales of Marcus’s irresponsibility were becoming an almost daily occurrence, that Charlotte’s privacy was being egregiously violated, and it would be next to impossible for Marcus to refute the allegations. How ironic that for the first couple weeks of the tour, Marcus had been patting himself on the back for what a great job he’d done with Charlotte and Miles. But now, to all the world it would look like he hadn’t even managed to provide them with the most basic measures of security.
“You’re still holding?” Marcus asked Serena. She nodded. What other client of Cynthia’s could need her more than he did right now? “Two more minutes, and I’m hiring another lawyer.”
Finally, Serena handed him the phone. “Cynthia,” he said. “Talk to me. You saw it, yeah?”
“I did,” she said.
“It’s a disaster, right?”
“Well, it certainly complicates matters now that Charlotte has become an actual provider of content.”
Marcus knew it. He had never screwed up this badly before. Would he ever get to see his kids again? “Any ideas? I could really use one right about now.”
The lawyer paused. “Bring her,” she said. “Bring both of them.”
“Bring Charlotte and Miles? No, I don’t want the kids to get dragged into this.”
“They’ve already been dragged into this. If your visitation rights decrease, Charlotte and Miles will be affected more than anyone, am I right?”
“Of course.”
“So, let’s include their testimony.”
“I don’t know.” They’d managed to avoid pulling the then-six-year-old Charlotte into their original custody hearing, and it was a decision Marcus had been proud of. The last thing he wanted to do was put either of his children in front of a judge or force them to choose sides. That damage would never be undone.
“Marcus, I know what I’m doing here. I’m a discreet person, and I won’t make either Charlotte or Miles uncomfortable in any way.”
“But can you say that for Bianca’s attorney, too? The guy is a bulldog.”
“If you want to make this better, please, just book a flight for your kids and get your ass to LA so we can start prepping.”
“This had better not backfire, Cynthia.”
“I’ll see you in a couple hours, Marcus.”
He and Serena went back into the suite, and Marcus said, “Who wants to take a little trip?”
“Meee!” said Miles.
…
Ryan had five hours before the crew boarded the Bus of Awesome for San Antonio. With her unexpected time off, she figured, what better to do than go out for a nice, long run. If she worked out hard enough, she’d probably be tired enough to sleep through half the drive.
Since her mishap in the woods, Ryan had been staying closer to the hotel perimeter while running. She felt safe circling the towering office buildings of downtown Dallas, but in the bland, I-could-be-anywhere urban setting, she found herself pining for the woodsy trails she knew and loved back in northwest Montana. Reflecting that so much of her experience on tour had become a careful calibration of safety and risk, she yearned for the first time to be home again, back to a simpler existence where her decisions didn’t have so many implications on her life, and others’ lives, too. How did Marcus live like this? How did he take a single breath while knowing that everything he did, every decision he made, had an effect not just on his kids, but on his employees, and his fans?
She hooked a right onto North Pearl Street, and started to build up speed. As her heart rate increased, she remembered the last time it had beat this hard: that incredible, hot kissing session with Marcus last night. I made out with Marcus Troy, she thought, a part of her still unable to stop thinking of her employer as the icon loved by millions. And I did a whole lot more with him, too. But he wasn’t Marcus Troy to her anymore—he had become simply Marcus, the man she could finally admit she was starting to fall for. Was she crazy? Were both of them?
Even that kiss, despite the privacy of Marcus’s suite, had been a dangerously stupid idea. What if Charlotte had woken up, wandered into the room, and taken another incriminating snapshot? What if Bianca or some overzealous reporter like Benjamin Little really had bugged the hotel? She and Marcus were being too careless.
In the hall, as she made her way toward the suite, eager to have a few moments to herself before boarding the bus in an hour, Jacey approached her. “Can I talk to you?” she asked.
Ryan had been doing her best to avoid the girl ever since their dust-up over the room on the first night of the tour. She didn’t have an issue with her—Marcus had told her he had no interest in Jacey, and she believed him—but she had never exactly been impressed with her either, and preferred to keep her distance.
“Sure, Jacey. What’s up?”
Jacey hesitated, and wouldn’t look her in the eye. “I’ve noticed you and Marcus seem to be getting along pretty well.”
Ryan made sure not to hesitate, not for an instant. “We get along just fine. I’m his employee. He’s my boss.”
“That’s not what I meant, and you know it.”
“Jacey, excuse me. I have a job to do.” She tried to push past her, but Jacey sidestepped and blocked her path.
“What job? Thanks to that picture Charlotte posted, you’ve w
on yourself a day off.”
“Come on, the bus is leaving soon. I need to pack.”
“Will you please just listen to me for a second?” Jacey exhaled. Ryan had never seen her look this frustrated before. “You seem like a cool girl, okay?”
“Uhhh, thanks for that.” What a weirdo, Ryan thought.
“Really, I mean it. So, just take this as a warning, okay? Marcus––”
“I really don’t need any advice from you about Marcus, okay?”
“He’s just using you.” She shook her head, her eyes pointing at the ground. “Believe me, I’m one to know.”
Ryan stopped trying to push past Jacey. The girl had 100 percent of her attention now. “You’re telling me you and Marcus––”
“Yeah,” Jacey said. “That’s how I got on this tour in the first place. While Marcus was taking time off the road, Alex tour-managed a couple cross-country trips of mine, and he invited Marcus to my gig in Spokane. Marcus was gushing to me afterward, telling me how great the performance was, how gorgeous I was, you know. He was impressed by how much energy I put out onstage, told me how he loved it when women were in such good shape.”
“I don’t want to hear this.” Ryan hated over-sharers so much. Why did everybody feel compelled to reveal their deepest, darkest, stupidest secrets to each other?
“Which is exactly why you should hear it.” Jacey, clearly on the verge, took a deep, collecting breath. “He spent the entire rest of the tour with me. We spent every night together, from Omaha to Gainesville. It was pretty great.”
“That’s between you and Marcus. It has nothing to do with––”
“Does he call you ‘amazing’ all the time?”
Ryan didn’t respond. Marcus had, in fact, just called her that, but who cared? Just because Marcus was an inventive and original songwriter didn’t mean that he had to reinvent the wheel every time he praised a girl he liked.
But Jacey took Ryan’s silence as license to keep up the divulgences. “He wanted to see you with your hair down, didn’t he, before your first kiss?”
“Were you…spying on us?” Ryan asked, and immediately regretted it. She shouldn’t have let Jacey, who was smiling with satisfaction now, know that she’d hit the target.
“No,” she said. “But it looks like I didn’t need to. He told me the exact same thing.”
Ryan didn’t like confronations, and she’d always been bad at comebacks, but she wasn’t going to just sit here and take this. “He was probably just rehearsing,” she said.
“What are you talking about?” Jacey squinted at her like a twelve-year-old.
“Maybe you were just a warm-up,” Ryan said.
“A warm-up for what?”
“A warm-up for me,” Ryan said. “Don’t you get it? You’re the opening act, and you will never be more than the opening act. But I am the main attraction. I am the headliner.”
Jacey stepped back as if she’d been struck. Stunned, she turned on her heels and headed back down the hall.
But Ryan didn’t revel in the victory. She was pretty sure Jacey was lying about her involvement with Marcus, or at least seriously stretching the truth. Marcus might have hooked up with Jacey, sure, once or twice. He was a guy like any other guy, and Jacey was undeniably pretty. But if he’d had a relationship with her, spent every night of a tour with her, Ryan would have found out about it by now. Her own time in the spotlight had shown her that much. Anyway, that had been long before Marcus had met Ryan, and he clearly wasn’t pining for her now—that much was clear.
No, what was bothering Ryan was that Jacey had actually succeeded in riling her. She’d always prided herself on not sinking to the level of people like Jacey, who wanted nothing more than a reaction out of her. But what had her brief time in Marcus’s world done to her? The headliner? The main attraction? Her put-downs sounded like they should have come out of Jacey’s mouth, not hers.
The pressure was getting to her, it was obvious, but that was no excuse. She couldn’t act out like that again. She didn’t want to become attention-starved like Jacey, or jaded and cold like Bianca. But maybe their time in the spotlight had made them that way. Was it possible for her, for anyone, to be with Marcus, and hold on to her values at the same time? She cared about him, she knew for sure now. But she couldn’t fall for a man if it meant betraying herself.
I need to get back to being myself again, she thought. Back to being plain-old Ryan Evans.
Chapter Twenty-Two
A Performance
Marcus returned to the hotel at 9:30, cradling Miles in his arms, while Serena had to practically drag the comatose Charlotte through the lobby. Poor kids. What a day they’d had.
“Serena, you texted Ryan, yeah?” he asked. “They’ll probably fall right to sleep on me, but Miles could wake up bursting with energy as soon as I put him down, for all I know.”
“Yep, she should be waiting for you in the suite,” Serena answered.
“Great.” Marcus hadn’t had time to call Ryan, or even tell her the news with a text, but she was the only one he wanted to share it with. As he leaned forward gently to swipe the key card, making sure that Miles didn’t shift or stir, he realized that he hadn’t wanted to share news, good or bad, with anyone in years. But now, all he wanted was to see her clap with joy along with him, to share this moment together.
Ryan pulled the door open before he had a chance to. Their eyes met, but as soon as she saw the condition of the kids, she understood right away, merely mouthing hi! to him before taking Charlotte’s hand from Serena’s.
“Serena, thanks so much,” Marcus whispered. The assistant waved to Ryan and her boss and tiptoed away. Marcus would have Ryan alone, any minute now. Just had to get these two tucked in.
In the kids’ room, Marcus cradled his son’s head, putting him into bed in slow-motion. The boy moaned a brief protest, but fell asleep again without a fight. Charlotte brushed her teeth and put on her pajamas quickly enough, and Marcus tucked her in and turned off the light. After lightly closing the door, he turned to Ryan with an excited look. He wanted to take her into his arms. Holding her close would be the perfect ending to this perfect day.
They walked to the far end of the room and sat on the couch. “So, what happened?” she asked.
Marcus started from the beginning. “Well, Cynthia did an amazing job of prepping all of us in her hotel room, which was just around the corner from the courthouse.”
“Courthouse?” Ryan said. “Sounds intimidating.”
“Actually, it felt more like we were in the conference room at an office. The judge didn’t have her robes on, or anything. The atmosphere was actually pretty casual, and the moment I saw her, the judge, I just had a good feeling.”
“Yeah?”
“Well, she was a little older, maybe sixty-five, and she just had a very trustworthy face. I don’t know…I felt like I could trust her, anyway. And it really seemed like she just wanted to make the best possible decision for the kids.”
“Were they with you the whole time?”
“No, thank God. Just at the end. When Bianca was done slinging her mud—”
“Meaning?”
“Well, everything we’d expected: how my relationship with you had crossed a line and become destructive—”
“Ouch.” Ryan grimaced. He’d have to censor himself and leave out some of the vilest accusations. Why hurt her with this completely false depiction of “the bad nanny,” this legal pose that had backfired on Bianca anyway?
“At which point, Cynthia, of course, asked to see any evidence of this sordid, unhealthy relationship beyond the holding of hands.”
“They didn’t make anything up, did they?”
“No. They had nothing. I mean, I agreed with them that the Instagram post hadn’t been something I’d wanted to happen. But under cross-questioning, Bianca consented that she was the one who’d allowed Charlotte to have her account in the first place.”
Marcus put his hand on Ryan’s shoulde
r for a moment. He couldn’t not touch her, not when he was finally free to.
“Tell me more,” Ryan said.
“Well, Bianca’s counsel, this guy Albert Moss—he’s a real bastard—tried to turn my bringing the kids against us, saying it was yet another example of the kind of ethical breach I was ‘notorious’ for.”
“Notorious? Yikes.”
“But the judge had no problem with it whatsoever, and questioned Miles and Charlotte, one at a time, in the sweetest possible way.”
“What did she ask them?”
“She asked them about me, and about you, stressing that they needed to be completely honest. Nobody was going to get into any trouble, she said. The court just wanted to make sure they were being cared for properly, you know…anyway, both of them, but especially Charlotte, were so eloquent and simple and straightforward about the whole thing. It was obvious from the get-go that you and I are both doing an amazing job. Charlotte said, ‘Dad has never spent as much time with us as he had on this tour.’”
“Well, that’s great. But did the judge ask Charlotte about you and me? You know, the picture, and whether we’re quote-unquote involved or not?”
“She sure did. She was gentle with them, but very specific, too. First, she wanted to know what they’d seen—just hand-holding, or more than that? Miles, of course, was clueless; he hadn’t seen a thing. And Charlotte said she’d seen us hold hands, and nothing more.
“That was enough for her. After the kids left the room, she said that our behavior hadn’t been harmful or inappropriate, and that your being my employee had no legal standing in terms of custody, unless harmful or inappropriate behavior had been witnessed. I think I’m getting the language right here.”
“So we’re not being totally irresponsible, then?” Ryan asked, smiling. “We’re not damaging them for life?”
“Just the opposite—they both said they were more comfortable on the road, felt more stable in this environment, than they did at home.”
“What?” Ryan said. “More comfortable, how?”
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