“How’s it going?” he asked, snagging a pickle off the charcuterie board and popping it in his mouth.
“All right,” I said around the bite of cheese. “Nice spread, huh?” I nodded toward the table before I glanced up at the industrial-looking clock hanging prominently at the far end of the room. I imagined business people would spend a lot of time watching the second hand tick as they listened to CEOs and accountant-types droning on, wishing they were anywhere but at their boring business meeting.
It made me think of my dad, but only fleetingly, because a second later, Max said, “It is. I like the Havarti,” he said, reaching for a pale yellow chunk.
“Oh, is that Havarti?” I asked, grabbing a piece for myself and popping it into my mouth. It was only then that I realized maybe eating a pile of cheese before a planned make-out session wasn’t the wisest thing to do.
Without the time or the supplies to brush my teeth, I followed the cheese with a strawberry, and then chose a piece of papaya, speared with a frilly toothpick.
“The fruit’s good, too. Try some of the papaya.”
“Good call,” he said, plucking his own piece of papaya off the tray. “That is good.”
“See?” I said, glancing at the clock again. Two minutes to go. “Nice and ripe.”
“Sandy?”
I slid my eyes from the clock over to Max’s face, lifting my eyebrows in question.
“This is the lamest conversation I think I’ve ever had.”
It seemed so unlike him to comment on a conversation when normally, he wouldn’t even engage in one, that I just sort of stared at him for a second. Then it sunk in. That he was easing up, finally unclenching around me. It was a big deal, and I couldn’t help my smile, especially as I allowed myself to take a little credit for it.
But like I was in front of a deer just poking its head out of the woods, I didn’t want to spook him. “Same here.”
His mouth widened into a grin. “I was about to ask you if you wanted me to go get your knitting off the bus.”
“Don’t you joke about my knitting, mister, or you won’t get your scarf for Christmas.”
He snorted.
I hated dragging myself away from him when we were actually starting to genuinely have a good time together, but another quick flick of my eyes up to the clock told me it was time to go meet Ted.
“So, I’m going to go get some air,” I said sort of abruptly, my voice sounding odd to my own ears. Or maybe it was that I didn’t really want Max to know where I was going and felt a bit paranoid about making an excuse. A lame excuse.
“I’ll come with you,” Max said, grabbing another piece of cheese. “I could use some air, too.”
Oh, now that wouldn’t work at all. And this was my only night with Ted. It was now or probably never.
I waved him off. “Oh, it’s okay. I’m just going to duck out for a minute. You don’t need to come.”
Max looked at me sideways. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing,” I said, thinking about how it was definitely not going to be nothing. Which meant, just to make it super-awkward, my face heated up as I stumbled on my words. “I mean, I’m just warm. My face is red, I bet, huh?” I pointed at my hot cheeks and then fanned my face with my hand. “It’s hot in here, right?”
“Uh, no, it’s pretty cool in here, actually.” Max looked concerned, like he was probably wondering if I was having a stroke or something. He cocked his head and said, “Are you okay, Sandy?”
“Oh yeah, I’m good. Just...” I shrugged as I edged toward the door, doing my best to not cause a scene because the last thing I needed was anyone else noticing I was leaving the room.
Except Max seemed to be following me. Which was going to ruin everything.
You’re a fixer, Sandrine! I yelled at myself inside my head. You can fix this!
“You know what?” I said, putting a palm on his chest to stop him from following me. “Maybe I’ll just go to the ladies’ bathroom.” I emphasized the ladies’ part so he wouldn’t get any weird ideas about following me. “I’m really warm. Maybe I just need to get some water. Hormones, you know. Though I’m too young for hot flashes. Weird, right? Ha ha!”
“Here, just take one of...” Max started to say.
But as he reached for a bottle of water on the buffet table, I completely panicked and ran out of the meeting room.
Had I just blamed hormones? Had I seriously just mentioned hot flashes? Really?
Oh.
My.
God.
The Hotel Bathroom
Even though the five minutes were up and Ted was waiting for me, I needed a moment to sort myself out, especially after that stunning performance. Also, I hadn’t looked at myself in a mirror in, oh, maybe a zillion hours, so a quick check was definitely in order.
I ducked into the bathroom down the hall before the lobby and strode up to the sinks, cursing inside my head as the girl who looked back at me from the mirror looked half-crazed. At least her hair and makeup still looked pretty good, considering.
I forced myself to take a bunch of deep breaths, my hand pressed to my breastbone, willing my heart to slow. Why had I let Max get me so worked up? What did I care if he knew I was going to hook up with Ted? It’s not like I was worried he was going to run back to tell Tony or spread gossip about me.
But for some reason, I felt I’d had to keep it from him. Maybe I didn’t want to shove it in his face that I was getting some while he was still torn up (understandably) about his girlfriend. Yeah, that was probably it. I was being considerate of his feelings. Kudos to me, being a good person.
Except, as I looked in the mirror, the girl staring back at me didn’t quite buy it.
Whatever. I have a cowboy to go kiss, I told her. No time for psychoanalysis. I leaned down to turn on the tap so I could wash any residual cheese smell off my hands, when the door behind me swung open. Glancing up in the mirror, I saw the smiling face of a girl, maybe my age—definitely a teen—wearing a Wiretap shirt. It was one of the new ones that the merch guys had just put out that day, so I knew she’d been to the festival.
Cool. I loved getting spontaneous opinions about the guys.
“Hey,” I said as I pumped some soap into my hand. “Have a good day today?”
Her eyes went wide as she looked at me in the mirror. “The best day. I was at the music festival. A-MA-ZING.”
“Is that a new band?” I asked, glancing down at the shirt.
I hadn’t thought her eyes could get any wider, but they did. “Yes! They’re brand new, and they—” she broke off mid-sentence and then frowned and cocked her head at me. “Wait a minute. I saw you with the band. Weren’t you videotaping?”
Busted. I gave her a contrite look. “Guilty. Sorry, I just like to get unbiased opinions,” I explained.
She seemed a bit put out but then got all excited again. “But that means you work with them?”
“Yeah, sort of. I have a vlog series on YouTube, and I also do social media for them.”
“Whoa, seriously?” she asked, clearly impressed. “Like, they pay you to follow them around and tape them?”
I nodded. She didn’t need to know I wasn’t officially on the payroll. “Yep.”
She looked around, although it was just us in the bathroom, and leaned in before saying, conspiratorially, “They’re just as hot in person, right? They’re really all that?”
I laughed. “They are really all that. Maybe even more than on stage.”
“Wow, that is so cool,” she said. “I’m, like, their biggest fan.”
I’d heard that more than once in just the few days on tour, but I nodded, not wanting to burst her bubble.
“Do you post for them, too?”
“Sometimes,” I said, not wanting to let on that most of their posts, even the ones from their personal accounts, were very carefully manufactured. “But m
ostly they do their own stuff. I only help if they’re really busy.”
“That’s so cool. You’re the luckiest girl in the world.”
I smiled at her, not about to deny it because I sure felt like the luckiest girl in the world since the second I’d first gotten on the bus.
I turned off the tap and shook my hands out in the sink before I reached for a paper towel. The girl was just sort of standing there like she was waiting for me.
“You, uh, going to use the bathroom?” It was weird to ask, but so was standing there watching me.
“Oh. Um, no, I just came in to check my makeup.” She took a cursory glance at herself in the mirror and then looked back at me.
Okaaaay.
Tossing the paper towel in the trash, I headed toward the door, her falling in line behind me. That’s when I clued in to what she was doing.
“I can’t take you to the band,” I said, turning back toward her and almost bashing into her because apparently, she didn’t understand personal space. “I’m sorry. In fact, I’m not even going to see them. They’re not here, actually.”
“Oh.” Her face fell, and I suddenly felt better about my lie because my instincts had been right on. This girl was totally clingy groupie material.
“Sorry. Anyway, it was nice to meet you. Check out my channel—lots of behind the scenes stuff about the band.”
She nodded, and I turned back toward the door, reaching for it and stepping back as I pulled it open, only to find myself pushed against her. I let out a surprised grunt and glanced over my shoulder at her. Had she seriously not anticipated that I might need some space to open the door? And why was she so close?
“Sorry,” she said, stepping back away from me. “Just...sorry, it’s been a long day.”
I sure understood that and gave her a smile, even though I wasn’t really feeling it. “No problem. See you.”
I held the door open for her and waved her through, relieved that she turned down the hall in the opposite direction of the meeting rooms. I didn’t want to have to head her off and do a whole song and dance to try to keep her away from the bands, especially since I had places to be; Ted was still waiting for me.
I almost felt bad for her, the girl who wasn’t on her way to a secret hookup with a rock star.
All Hats Are Off
I watched the girl walk down the hallway, thinking I should have asked her what she was doing in the hotel because it seemed odd that she was alone and milling about so late. But then I realized I didn’t care that much and pushed her out of my mind.
I power-walked as quickly as I could, hopefully without looking like a lunatic, all the way through the busy lobby that was, of course, filled with guests, even as late as it was—although looking at them and how they were dressed, maybe this hotel was filled with festival-goers from out of town. I glanced around to make sure none of them were Max, because the way I’d run from him felt undone, and the last thing I needed was him following me. I was relieved to see he was not in the crowd in the lobby.
Not making eye contact with a soul, even the ones I had to dodge my way around, lest anyone else recognize me and my affiliation with the band, I finally pushed my way out the revolving door.
“Hey, hey,” Ted said, grabbing my arm as I emerged from the door like I’d been shot out of a cannon. I was always so paranoid about getting caught in revolving doors but also the more I thought about Max and our exchange back in the hospitality suite, the more I felt I was outrunning a demon. The demon that was my ridiculous mouth that had started spewing out stupid things when I hadn’t been able to come up with a plausible excuse under pressure. Why couldn’t I have just said I had to use the bathroom and leave it at that? Why did I have to pile on the excuses until it looked like I was completely crazy?
Max had to think I was nuts now. Downright certifiable. Ugh.
“What’s wrong?” Ted asked, tugging me over to the side of the walkway, out of the bright lights of the hotel entrance. “You came out of there like an angry steer out of a chute.”
“Nothing. I’m fine,” I lied. “It’s nothing. Just...It was tougher getting out of there than I thought it would be. Trying to avoid the third degree, that’s all.”
“From Tony?” he asked, looking over my shoulder and I had a moment of panic that now I was being followed.
I glanced behind me, glad to see I hadn’t been, and waved him off. “No. It’s nothing. Don’t worry about it.”
He looked at me for another very long moment. In the silence, only filled by the buzz of nighttime insects and far-away traffic noises, I felt something bubbling up in me. More stupid excuses, surely. Thankfully, before it rose to my mouth and got out, he nodded, and I swallowed it, whatever it was, back down. “So, where should we go?” he asked.
I looked around and shrugged. “Well, I’m not here for the scenery, cowboy,” I said, forcing a laugh as I willed myself to do a mental one-eighty to shake off thoughts of Max.
When I looked back at Ted, the right corner of his mouth had quirked up in a way that made me want to pull him into the bushes and kiss him like crazy. But a tiny part of me recognized that was a bad idea.
He either read my mind or was having similar thoughts. “Come on,” he said, grabbing my hand again and pulling me along with him as he walked down the path beside the hotel. “There’s a courtyard over here that’s pretty quiet.”
“I like that you scoped things out,” I said, loving the feel of his warm (but not sweaty) hand enveloping mine. It felt big, strong. Which made sense, since he not only played guitar but rode horses. I wondered if he’d ever ridden bulls. Was he that kind of cowboy? I snuck a sideways peek over at him and was about to ask when he glanced over at me.
“What?” he asked, smirking.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I was just wondering if you’re like a real cowboy. Like one who wears chaps and does rodeo and yells out yee-haw in contextually appropriate situations.”
He snorted. “I assure you, I am a real cowboy. I have worn chaps, and I competed in junior rodeo. And I may have yelled the odd, contextually appropriate yee-haw a time or two.”
“Wow, the real deal, huh?”
He squeezed my hand. “I guess. You make me feel like a cliché.”
I frowned at him. “Cliché? No. Type, maybe. But you knew that when you signed on to be in a boy band, didn’t you? They had to tell you that your cowboyishness was part of the appeal.”
And how he looked in jeans with an oversized belt buckle was also a big part of it, but I wasn’t going there. Yet.
He rolled his eyes. “I suppose so. I mean, it seems weird to me. I’m just who I am, and it feels odd to take that and make it a role. When I’m back home on the ranch, I’m not playing a role, I’m fulfilling one.”
I looked over at him, and something in my chest lurched because his confusion over being a bona fide sex symbol was sexy as hell. He was along for the ride and was clearly a great musician, but he seemed to not get the appeal.
“Girls love working men,” I said. “The more hard-working and rugged, the better. It’s in our genes.”
He just gave me an amused look and tugged my hand. We rounded the corner and, as promised, there was a small courtyard adjacent to the concrete deck that surrounded the pool. The deck was well-lit and surrounded by a wrought-iron fence. The pool was empty, the surface of the water rippling gently under the lights; it looked locked up for the night. Still, the water looked good, especially since, while the evening had cooled down a little, it was still sticky.
Not that we were going to climb the fence and sneak into the pool or anything. I currently had activities other than swimming on my mind.
Ted led me over to a semi-secluded bench under a tree that ran parallel to the wall of the hotel. My heart raced as we sat down together, close, almost touching. I slipped my hand from his, worried that mine was going to get sweaty and clammy, especially as
I got more nervous because this was happening.
“So,” he said, pressing his knee into mine.
“So,” I echoed, twisting my fingers together, wondering which one of us was going to make the first move. Hoping it was going to be him. And soon.
He chuckled and then said, “Does...does it feel like maybe we did a little too much talking—too much building up to this?”
I exhaled in relief and turned fully toward him, our knees pressing together. “Ohmigod, that’s what I was just thinking. Like, it’s this big weird thing we’ve created in our heads—all the expectations, right?”
He nodded. “Yeah.”
“I mean,” I said, my eyes lowering to my hands. “It’s not that I don’t like you, it’s just...”
“There’s this sudden pressure we put on ourselves,” he finished for me. “Making it awkward. What’s going to happen? Will it be what we built it up as?”
“Exactly.” My shoulders slumped in relief as I blew out a long breath. “I’m so glad it’s not just me.”
“No,” he said, and then I felt his finger on my chin, lifting my face, so I had no choice but to look at him, into his eyes. “It’s not just you.”
God, he was gorgeous. Why did it keep surprising me that the guys I was surrounded by, who were chosen for their amazing looks along with their musical talent, were so damn hot? It was like a punch to my gut (heart?) every time I turned around.
The corners of his eyes wrinkled, and I suddenly hoped he wasn’t a mind-reader because that would be embarrassing. But he must have known I was thinking about him. “What?” he asked shyly. Seriously: shyly.
“Nothing,” I said and then looked up above his eyes at the brim of his hat, the one that could potentially become a weapon if he got much closer. And I was really hoping he would get much closer. “Can you take that off?”
He screwed up his face as though I’d asked him to remove his arm. “I don’t know, we’re outside. The hat doesn’t come off outside.”
The Rosewoods Rock & Roll Box Set Page 53