Her mouth twisted. “I don’t belong to you. If I decide I want to do something, I don’t need your approval. And no. I don’t want you to be jealous. We’re not married any longer, we’re supposed to be having fun with each other. I don’t need you to be throwing your weight around.”
“You don’t go anywhere without me.” He jammed his hands into the front pocket of his jeans. “That’s the deal, remember? I’m your security.”
“Well, in that case, you can fetch my jacket and meet me at the car. We’ll be following the boys.” She walked away without a backward glance.
There were two ways he could play it. Go caveman, and cause a scene, or let her play things her way and deal with it later. But she could fetch her own damn jacket.
*****
Thank god she wasn’t a maudlin drunk. She could count the times she’d been drunk before on one hand, and every time she’d been told she was the life and soul of the party.
Tonight was no different. Every single thing she said must be witty, if her companions’ responses were any indication. They laughed, leaned close and looked at her as though she was the most beautiful woman in the room.
And she felt like it. Until her gaze fell on Adam, who sat glowering in the corner.
Killjoy. His thundercloud expression made her flirt harder, lay her hand on Liam’s sleeve and gaze into his starstruck face. She was being a bitch. She knew it, but couldn’t stop acting as though he didn’t mean anything to her. People weren’t to be trusted. Getting close to someone meant handing them the means to destroy you.
He’d only offered fun, not a long term relationship with love and happy ever after attached, but somehow she’d let it become more in her head. She’d given Adam a scalpel to eviscerate her heart. It was time to snatch it back and strap on her breastplate.
The waitress came over again, with her notepad at the ready. She cleared the table, and jotted down their orders. Then she stopped in front of Adam, and fluttered her eyelashes.
His deep voice cut through the background hum. “Can you bring me some coffee?”
The waitress chatted, jutting out her hip a little and flashing him a flirty smile. As though he was a particularly delicious unattached male she might like to meet later.
Adam grinned at whatever the blonde was saying. The top couple of buttons of his shirt were open, revealing the tanned column of his neck, and the color emphasized the blue of his eyes. He looked damned good, and the waitress obviously noticed.
“Adam,” Stacy said loudly so he would hear.
His head turned her direction. “Stacy?”
She pointed to a door at the back of the room. “Join me for a moment?”
With a grin at the guys, she stood, wavering on her high heels for a moment before feeling steady enough to make it across the room. She took a deep breath, and put one foot in front of the other, cutting through the crowd.
“Did you want me for something?” Adam took her elbow.
“I thought you should accompany me to the ladies room.” She stopped and rested her hand on a door marked fir. “As you’re my security, and all.”
He crossed his arms and the corner of his mouth quirked up in a smile. “Okay.”
Damn, what would it take to get a reaction from him? “So you’ll wait here? I won’t be long.”
“I know.”
She pushed open the door.
Four unzipped men facing urinals turned her direction on hearing her gasp.
“Next door, love,” one said, zipping himself up and walking to the hand basin. “You want mná.”
Face burning, she turned around and somehow made it out of there without falling over.
Adam was just where she’d left him, leaning against the wall.
“I suppose you think that’s funny?”
He grinned. “It was pretty funny.” He waved at the next door. “Be prepared for a wait; three women have just gone in.”
She brushed past him.
When she exited fifteen minutes later he was still waiting, sipping from a mug of coffee.
“I thought you were supposed to be guarding me, not wandering back to the table for your coffee.”
“The waitress brought it over. She didn’t want it to go cold.”
“I bet she was trying to keep something else hot too,” Stacy mumbled under her breath. “Like the flirtation.”
Adam drained the mug and placed it on a table nearby. Then he stepped so close only a piece of paper could fit between them. “I’m tired of this. Aren’t you?”
It was late. The alcohol flooded her bloodstream, building a headache at her temples. All around them people were talking, laughing, having fun, but she couldn’t ignore the bitter taste in her mouth, in her soul, any longer. She nodded. “I want to leave.”
Chapter Eleven
The following morning, Stacy’s cell phone rang while Adam was downstairs making a bacon sandwich and reading the papers. Eventually she answered it, and after a while she walked slowly into the kitchen. She looked worse than he’d ever seen her.
Her hair was flattened on one side where she’d slept on it, and she squeezed her eyelids closed, blocking the sunlight streaming through the window.
“Coffee?” He gestured to the full coffeepot.
She grimaced. “Aspirin?”
“I left it out for you. Next to the toaster.”
She shot him a smart-ass look, and dosed herself. “That was the head of Star Records.” She poured coffee and sat. “Demanding I make a statement about Lester.”
“Saying what?”
“That I’m distraught that my manager and friend is in hospital.” She held the side of her head with a grimace. “He even thought it would be good if I fly out there, and appear at his bedside.”
“What the hell? Doesn’t he know what that snake did to you?”
“He knows. But the world doesn’t. Clint reckons it’s important that I take control of this, that I tell the least damaging story possible and provide the right ‘optics.’ He says that we’ve been lucky so far that the investigation hasn’t come to light, and that the last thing we need is bad publicity. He says we should do a deal with Lester and retreat with my reputation intact.”
“What do you think?”
“I think he’s full of shit. Lester is a goddamn parasite who doesn’t deserve to get off the hook for what he did.” She dropped her head into her hands. “Clint wasn’t happy. He went on and on about how his artists don’t create bad headlines, only good ones. He reminded me that he calls the shots and he has to deal with me direct, now I don’t have a manager any longer. I told him I had more songs written, and he shut me down like I was a troublesome kid explaining why I’d missed a curfew.” She swallowed a mouthful of coffee. “He told me his songwriter had reworked my songs to make them fit my style and that he’d send them over for me to approve.” Her hands shook. “I couldn’t get through to him. It was as if what I thought didn’t matter.”
He wanted to help. To make her worries go away, but even if he’d ever had the right to interfere, he didn’t have it any longer. Dealing with yet another dominant male in her workplace was something she’d have to do alone.
“There must be some PR firm spinning Lester’s story.” He read from the headlines: “Stacy Gold’s manager attacked while on holiday in Bali. His condition rated critical. Country star yet to comment.”
Stacy reached for the paper. “Condition critical?” She scanned the newsprint until she found the entry. “I guess he may not live long enough to get justice.” Her eyes were cold. Her mouth squeezed together into a tight line. She glanced over. “You think I’m hard for not caring.”
“I think you’re in denial of the fact you do care.” He placed his hand over hers. “There’s nothing wrong with caring. You’d have to be inhuman not to.”
“I’m inhuman then.” With restrained force, she pushed back from the table and stalked to the window. “I can’t believe you of all people are defending him. He des
troyed our marriage.”
“He had a part in it, but you’re the one who refused to talk to me.” Anger compelled him from the chair to stand behind her. “We could have repaired our relationship if you hadn’t written me off. We had something. Something real.”
She spun and stared at him, anger and recrimination blazing in her eyes. “It wasn’t just me. You were to blame too.” She pushed at his chest, forcing him to take a step back. “I know you were angry because I wouldn’t talk to you after you accused Lester. I get that. And I’ve tried to understand why you thought screwing someone else was the answer to your frustration. I haven’t brought it up. But when you did, that signaled the end of our marriage to me. That’s why I filed for divorce.”
She meant every word. The raw hurt in her eyes couldn’t be disguised. But her accusations were ludicrous.
“I never so much as looked at another woman while we were together.”
Her hands curled into fists. “You’re lying about it? Why would you even do that? I told you I’ve worked though it.”
“It didn’t happen.” He gripped her upper arms and shook her—not hard, just enough so she looked at him again. “It didn’t happen,” he muttered urgently. “If Lester told you I did, he lied to you.”
She wriggled from his grasp. Hugged her arms around herself as if building an impenetrable barrier that he couldn’t breach.
“Lester was having you followed.” Her eyes glittered with tears. “You met a blonde, took her to a motel, and stripped her clothes off. I’ve seen the pictures.”
“You can’t have seen pictures, because it didn’t happen.” His mind was everywhere, trying to puzzle out how she could have been fooled—how she could have believed he was capable of doing such a thing. The answer, that Lester must have doctored photographs of him somehow, made no sense. “Tell me what these pictures showed.”
“You, leaning close to a woman in a bar. You, kissing her neck. You and she entering a motel room. A picture taken through ratty blinds of you both half-naked.” Her voice broke. “I didn’t want to believe it, but pictures don’t lie.”
It struck him then, looking at her tearstained face, that this was always going to be more than a casual affair between them. He cared enough to fight for her. To make her see the truth, to put himself on the line and risk getting his heart broken again, because damn it, they needed to try again. Loving her was painful, but losing her again unthinkable. No matter what the cost, she was everything.
He grasped her chin and forced her to look at him. “Pictures lie,” he insisted. “It takes money, but a skilled manipulator can make anything look real. I never met with a woman while we were together. I never kissed her, or took off her clothes.” A sour taste was in his mouth. He’d pushed her to show leniency to a man who had been so determined to keep them apart, he’d constructed an elaborate web to force them apart. To destroy their marriage.
“Do you have any of these pictures?” The only way she’d believe him was if he could somehow prove his innocence.
“Lester had them in the safe in his office.”
He strode to the table and snatched up her cell phone. “Call that FBI guy.”
*****
Stacy didn’t know what to believe, except that she had to get away. “I need some air.” Without a backward look, she escaped into the back garden, striding across the grass to lean over the low back wall. Could Adam be telling the truth? He was an intelligent man, and when those photographs surfaced, if he were lying, he’d be caught out instantly. The possibility that Lester had gone so far to break them up was stunningly callous.
And the fact that she’d let him, without confronting her husband with the evidence, damning. Adam kept telling her that the way she handled things—by running away, by building walls around her heart to protect herself—was wrong, but the urge to run, to avoid everything and escape was so strong her palms flattened on the long flat stones at the top of the wall, as if considering vaulting it.
She breathed in and out, commanding her body to calm. A month ago, she’d been on tour. Confident about her career and looking forward to returning home. Now, she had neither. The persona so carefully constructed over the past decade was crumbling, and there was nothing to replace it. Without her music, who was she? Events were conspiring to fade her into nothingness, were stealing Gold.
“I need a plan.” Speaking the words aloud took her one step back from the precipice of panic. Everyone was telling her what she had to do, but the only voice she should listen to was her own.
She turned away from the view, and went back inside.
Adam had disappeared, and the door to the room he used as an office was shut.
Good. Right now she didn’t feel she could face him, didn’t want to talk any longer until she had a solution to some of her problems. She opened her laptop and constructed a detailed email to Agent Black, explaining that Lester had photographs in his safe that she believed may form part of a blackmail scam. Because it was blackmail, if they were faked in some way, and asking for access to them.
He may not be able to crack Lester’s safe. Her mind picked at the problem. How else can I find out? The answer came to her in remembered fragments. Apollo had dated Lester’s secretary for a while. The same secretary whose last salary check had bounced, and been finally settled from Stacy’s bank account.
She opened a new email to Apollo, explaining what she needed, and why.
Now, music. Only one thing soothed her when she was in a state, and listening through the tracks she’d already sent Clint at Star Records and the new songs she’d written might help.
She plugged in earphones, found a notepad and pen, rearranged the cushions behind her back, and pressed play. She scrawled ‘1’ on the page, and listened to the first song. When she’d listened to all of them, a new melody teased, and she reached for her guitar and started to play in fits and starts, until she had the bare bones of the song.
She recorded the melody into the computer. Tried lyrics, singing them softly, teasing out the form of the new creation. Too fast. She recorded a slower version, mentally composing keyboard and bass guitar parts to add, then scribbled music notation.
Eventually all the different aspects twisted together into a song full of emotion. She recorded the lyrics, and listened to it again.
The door cracked open, and Adam took a step into the room. His fingers tapped against his jean-clad leg as he listened, his eyes never leaving her own. When the song drifted away into silence, he walked over and sat next to her. “I like it. You wrote that today?”
She nodded. “I have eight tracks now, I’ll need twelve for the album. I hope these will be enough to get them to sign me to a new contract.”
“Does it matter so much to work with Star Records? Couldn’t you switch labels?”
He looked tired. His usual bright and happy demeanor had taken a beating, and even the smile he’d given her earlier held a hint of sadness about it. He’d never lied to her, even when it would have been to his benefit to do so, and if those pictures were manipulated somehow, if they didn’t really show her husband making love to another woman, she’d thrown away their relationship for nothing.
“I don’t know. They’re the biggest. And the best. Being one of their artists has always been a cachet in the industry.”
“You’ve been one of their artists, and you’ve been working for them, but have they been working for you?” He rubbed the back of his neck, and the desire to reach out and touch him welled out of nowhere, impossible to ignore, impossible to deny.
She rested her hand on his knee.
His gaze drifted to her eyes, flickered to her mouth. “It’s safe to go back to them. Safe, and comforting. Because you know them, and they’ve been in control of your career since you had one. But things are changing. Things have changed. You have to make your own decisions now. You have to be true to the person you are.”
I will make my own decisions. She pressed her hand to his jaw, feeling the wa
rmth and strength there. If she chose Adam again, and then learned he’d lied it would destroy her. But her mind and her heart were resolute, set on a path which might lead to happiness, might lead to destruction.
She leaned close enough to touch her mouth against his.
*****
One brief brush of her mouth. Hardly enough. But the accusations and misunderstandings between them lay like a cold stone in his chest, tainting the taste of her.
So when she eased a breath away, he didn’t follow. “Did you call the FBI guy?”
A swift intake of breath, and the air between them shifted. “I emailed him. It’s Sunday, he’s half the world away…” Her hand slithered from his hair to her lap to entwine with its partner. “There won’t be an instant answer. I think on the scale of desperate world matters, whether or not Lester faked photos will barely register.”
“It matters to you. It matters to me.”
It mattered more than anything. In the hours since she’d told him, it had been necessary to reevaluate everything. There had been a reason she’d ghosted him. A good reason, if it had been true.
And even believing he would do that to her, she’d started something with him again. Not because she didn’t care, but because, like him, she couldn’t avoid the heat, couldn’t break the connection between them.
“I want to go to bed with you.” He stroked the full swell of her bottom lip. “I want to forget all this shit, ignore the rest of the world, and build a cocoon with only us inside.”
Her mouth curved. “Like Vegas.”
Back when all that mattered was feeling each other’s skin, tasting each other’s mouths.
“I want that too.” Her voice was low and husky. “I don’t want to think any more. Tomorrow we have to walk out that door, and face the world. I have so much to do.” She breathed in deep. “But tonight, I want what you want; more than that, I need it.”
“So let’s go.” Screw listening to the voice in his head. Screw everything but being with her right now. Tomorrow could take care of itself.
In the bedroom, her dress was unzipped, and eased it from her shoulders. Every strokeable inch was lightly tanned—warm to the touch. The navy bra fastened at the front, so he unclipped it and cupped her breasts. Old, unspoken lies had festered for months. But new truth, was written in every touch they shared. At her urging, he stripped, and in moments joined her on the bed.
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