Hide (Lakefield Book 2)

by Jennifer Vester

  I laughed and pushed at him. “No, I have to put my makeup on.”

  “You’re going to miss out.”

  “It’s that big of a show?”

  He smirked. “Well its big.”

  I narrowed my eyes at him. “I’m aware. I’ll make you a deal. If you can go the afternoon without doing anything, including in the shower, then we can play later. No cheating.”

  “Change your shirt and it won’t be as much of a problem.”

  “Now that I can’t do. We’re here to get some attention.”

  He sighed. “I don’t like it. You don’t have to do this. I can get him.”

  “Yeah, I do, he’ll make a mistake. Besides,” I grinned, “you’ll be there with me. I’m hiring you as my bodyguard today. Payment in sex. Lots of it.”

  He chuckled. “Fine. Aiden says I’m on extended leave anyway. He says I need a vacation.”

  “You do. You can’t always be on the job. You shut down, and yesterday you just disappeared. Speaking of which, I’m still mad at you.”

  He gave me a serious look. “Woman, someone like Roger is stalking you for over a year, and insinuates he intends to play bondage games once he has you. I’m not messing around with that. The only person that gets to play with you is me.”

  I poked him in his chest with my finger. “Okay, but you also told me that I have to get used to the media. If that’s the case, then you’ll probably have to get used to random threats. It happens.”

  The corner of his mouth tipped up. “We’ll agree to disagree for now.”

  I arched my eyebrow at him. “Meaning I’m right and you’re wrong?”

  He chuckled. “Meaning, I’m letting you get used to the idea.”

  “Go take your shower. No touching,” I huffed.

  His laugh was mischievous. “Okay but it’s going to be your demise later.”

  I arched an eyebrow at him. “Using your word a day app again?”

  He walked toward the door. “Claws won’t save you, angel.”

  * * *

  We had all arrived a little later than I had expected.

  Kate had been vacillating between wearing the green dress or a pair of jeans. Wearing dresses, was apparently not something she did often. Then, she had been nervous about wearing more makeup. She looked gorgeous by the time we left, but it had been a long hour of watching her change her mind several times, and finally deciding she would take my advice. She really didn’t know how pretty she was.

  Allie was waiting for us when we got to the hotel. She eyed Holden and turned pale.

  Before she could speak he said, “Let it go. Don’t do it again.”

  Her mouth half open, then she closed it and nodded.

  My husband was awesome.

  “Hey Allie, where are we set up?” I asked.

  She scrunched her nose at me. “Is that what you’re wearing?”

  “Right?” Holden responded.

  “Guys, it’s fine. Full affect here. We’re going for maximum impact. If I was taking this stuff seriously today I would have worn something else.”

  Allie arched her eyebrows and rubbed her hands together. “Okay then, what’s the plan Jules?”

  I shrugged. “Uhm. Open questions, then announce the performance?”

  She eyed Kate. “And what about the entourage?”

  “Holden is our security today but he can answer questions if he wants.”

  He shook his head. “Eh, not my thing angel. I’ll be watching the crowd.”

  “Kate is here for moral support. She can help you or she can sit with me. Whatever.”

  Kate beamed. “Oh, I can help with watching the crowd too!”

  Holden rolled his eyes. “Just help Allison and I’ll do the rest.”

  She clapped her hands a little. “This is so exciting!”

  Holden and I both laughed. Kate was like a kid in some ways. I wondered if she had led a sheltered life. Holding a water bottle for Allie would probably be the highlight of her year. For some reason though, her smile was infectious. Even Allie was smirking.

  “Stick with me kid, and you look sensational,” Allie said. “Speaking of which, Julia, you have a change of clothing for tonight in your hotel room upstairs. Room 409. There’s also some food in there.”

  She handed me the key and started walking down the hall toward the meeting room. Kate ran to keep up with her in her heels.

  I smirked and handed the key to Holden, who took it and smiled with a glint in his eye. He then then wrapped his arm around my waist and started following Allie, while dragging me along.

  “Hmm. We could have a quickie. We have ten minutes.”

  I swatted at him. “No, we can’t have a quickie.”

  We reached the entrance to the room and stopped. I could hear the steady chattering of multiple people and the clicking of cameras.

  Allison started giving a small statement and spelling names for the media so they wouldn’t report it incorrectly.

  Holden grabbed my arm and pulled me to the side of the door. He pressed me up against the wall and took possession of my mouth. His tongue worked in and out. My arms were around his neck pressing him further into me. His hands slid slowly up to the bottom of my breasts and cupped them.

  “You are beautiful babe, but you’re also trouble,” he mumbled as he bit my lip.

  I giggled.

  Kate interrupted by calling my name. “Allison announced you. Oh sorry, sorry!”

  She turned toward the other hallway, trying not to look at us, then she disappeared back in the room.

  Holden’s grin was half mischievous and half darkly amused. “Oops.”

  I threw him a scolding look over my shoulder as I entered the meeting.

  Lights and cameras started clicking. Several reporters were already asking questions, a couple were even clapping. I took my seat at a long table where Allison directed me to go.

  Glancing over, I saw Holden assume a standing position on the opposite end of the table from Allie and myself. His mask was firmly in place and he was looking at everyone. I forgot that he had probably done this sort of thing for Aiden more than once, since he was such a high-profile person.

  Holden turned to me suddenly and gave me a full smile. Not one of the tight ones that no one would be able to see, but a full genuine smile. His eyes looked deeply into mine, and for a moment, it was like we were the only two people in the room.

  It was the first time I had seen him smile in public, while doing an official job, and the gesture stunned me.

  I blinked a few times and laughed.

  The cameras went nuts and started clicking away while one question after another was thrown in my direction. I didn’t hear a single word they were saying for that short space of time.

  I turned back to the crowd and tapped one of the mics to see if it was on.

  “Has everyone met my husband?”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Holden was pacing around the hotel room on his phone. I watched him as he went back and forth in front of me. His face was tense but a lot less angry than earlier in the day right after the press conference.

  After a one on one with the reporters, which was a little more intense then I had predicted, Allie had announced our intent to have a concert.

  The crowd had asked several questions regarding my business intent with Bansham. We had both emphatically said the relationship was severed due to artistic differences.

  I had wanted to say Roger was a psycho stalker fan, with possible sociopathic problems but I had played it cool and followed Allie’s lead.

  My restraint had been amazing, even to me.

  With regard to Holden, they had asked several probing questions about the rumors of a love child with an unknown woman. To Allie’s credit, she had immediately dismissed them as false rumors and celebrity slandering which could lead to legal action. I hadn’t thought about that angle, but that’s why she was my PR person.

  Kate had stood and smiled in the background. What her
presence meant to the reporters was anyone’s guess, but it was nice to have at least one more ally in the room with me.

  The reporters had seemed like sharks circling around a wounded animal more than anything. They were looking for sensationalism and something dramatic. My sudden return to Lakefield and my concert announcement seemed to be less enticing to them as I ran through their questions without embellishing my answers.

  Toward the end, Holden, who seemed far more relaxed by the time the interviews were wrapping up, ducked out the side door for a minute. Which prompted me to get on with my original plan for a “shock and awe” press conference.

  When Allie finally said her last statement, I stood up, ripped my shirt off and yelled, “This birdie is ready to sing!”

  That’s when things had gotten interesting. Half the room hesitated for a fraction of a second with their mouths open. The other half scrambled for their cameras and several people nearly lost their equipment altogether when there was a mad rush of bodies scrambling for a closeup.

  Allison was so shocked she knocked the entire contents of her water pitcher over and nearly lost her balance trying to get out of her chair. Kate on the other hand, started laughing so loud that she nearly drowned out the shouting. My new friend apparently had a sense of humor.

  Holden had come running back in the room looking alarmed and only took a second to analyze the situation before his jacket was off him and on me. I was thrown over his shoulder and immediately evacuated from the room.

  The elevator ride up to the hotel room had been uncomfortable to say the least.

  I laughed. He twitched and didn’t say anything.

  He hadn’t put me down until we were in the room, at which point, he dropped me on the bed, produced a pair of handcuffs, and shackled me to the bed post.

  His jaw had looked like it was permanently fused in a grimace and twitched noticeably for several minutes. His eyes had burned into mine and he ran his hand over his head several times in a frustrated manner.

  He had opened his mouth once to say something, then clamped it shut and pulled out his phone. He had been yelling in it for the last half hour while I lay cuffed and topless.

  “I don’t know what she was thinking! The problem now is how we deal with the open invitation to Roger,” he said to someone on the other end of the phone.

  He listened for a minute.

  “Sir, I promise you, your daughter will be very well aware of her boundaries from now on.”

  He hung up, turned and glared at me. “Your dad.”

  I just rolled my eyes. Of course dad would side with Holden, and wouldn’t see the value in causing the most dramatic scene possible to catch Roger.

  Holden looked like he wanted to choke me.

  He dialed another number and put it on speaker phone.

  “Hey there, Julia still alive?” Brock answered.

  Holden growled, “For the time being.”

  “I have to say, that was quite the performance. Very,” he paused, “titillating.”

  “Shut up Brock! I will kill you if you say one more thing about it. I need to know if you can pull down all images off the web or shut down the stories running.”

  Brock coughed, “Man, that would take a year or more. Your wife is all over right now.”

  “Fuck!” Holden yelled, then glared at me.

  “Yeah, I can start but it’s going to be in circulation for a long time.”

  Holden growled.

  “On a positive note, it is going to do what she intended from the beginning, which is get Roger to come running. I especially liked her reference to being a birdie. Very clever.”

  Holden rolled his eyes and ran his hand down his face. “Please don’t encourage her.”

  Brock chuckled. “Well, I knew she was going to do something spectacular, but not in my wildest dreams would I have imagined that. It was very inventive.”

  “You knew she was going to pull this shit and didn’t say anything?”

  “Well, I didn’t know everything but given her personality what else were you expecting? I thought it might be strippers but no such luck. Who was the hottie in the background?”

  Holden rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Kate, asshole. She works with Logan.”

  “Hmm, I might have to meet her.”

  “Forget about it. So, about my wife, what can we expect here?”

  “Besides millions of men looking at your wife’s tits for years to come?”

  Holden punched the hotel wall. Chunks of plaster flew in several directions.

  I flinched.

  “Fuck you Brock! Just give me the analysis of the situation we’re facing with her security. Aiden has me on fucking leave and there is NO WAY she’s going to that concert tonight.”

  I frowned at him. “I’m going! I didn’t just do all that to sit in the hotel room and pretend everything’s okay. That weirdo is going to show up and then your team can catch him.”

  Brock interrupted, “I don’t want to get into the middle of this, so I’ll tell you what I know and you two work it out on your own. I have the local airport scanning facial identity. Don’t ask how I got that software but it’s extremely useful. Anyway, we have some people in the airport with all local law enforcement aware of the situation. He hits the terminal, he gets picked up, and no more problem.”

  Holden was in deep thought and asked, “What if he lands somewhere else and drives in?”

  “We can’t predict that or prevent it. So, we have your teams set up at the hotel and at Medusa for that situation. If he gets to the bar, someone recognizes him, and he gets picked up.”

  Holden sighed, “Anything else?”

  “Uhm, yeah. So, there’s the FUBAR scenario.”

  I piped up, “What’s FUBAR?”

  Holden answered. “Fucked up beyond all reason.”

  I nodded.

  Brock continued, “That situation is the one we can’t predict. He slips by everyone and then he gets to you. Roger doesn’t seem like the brightest bulb though. He’s persistent and he does help run Bansham but he left a messy trail of things in his personal life all over the place. I mean, when we started looking into him we found transactions, subscriptions, and various other things that would have pointed to him eventually. That rose in the hospital with all those cameras pointed at him was sloppy.”

  Holden sat down on the edge of the bed, just out of reach. “Okay, so FUBAR situation. We have her basically covered by a five man team. I’m on her. So, we wait?”

  “Unfortunately,” Brock said. “However, that’s a lot of men and a lot of eyes. He’ll fuck up eventually.”

  “Yeah.” Holden said quietly.

  “No worries man. We have this under control. In the meantime, you two discuss and let me know what you decide.”

  “Thanks Brock,” I responded.

  Holden hung up the phone and tossed it on the bed.

  We sat there for a while in silence. There were comfortable silences between people. It happened between friends and lovers every day. This silence felt like a punishment to me. I knew he was mad and frustrated. It was something that I had thought about and taken a chance on to save him. If having him mad at me was the consequence of having him pull back from his one-man campaign of hunting Roger, then I had to accept it.

  He shifted around and crawled up the bed toward me. Pulling out the keys to the cuffs he hesitated, then set them down beside his discarded phone. I looked at the keys, then back at him.

  I apparently hadn’t earned my freedom yet.

  “Not going to lie to you angel. I’m seriously contemplating kidnapping you and taking you right back to the mountains. Maybe even spank the shit out of you, then kidnap you, and then head to the mountains. You have to make some choices here.”

  I pulled at the cuffs a little and said, “You never lie to me. What choices?”

  His eyes slid over my face. “It’s the same choice you’ve always had in front of you. Obscurity or fame. If you want fame, I’m in. I�
��ll quit my job today and we’ll go as far with this as you want to go. If you want obscurity then we’ll figure something out.”

  “You’re not leaving?” I asked quietly.

  “Fuck no. Either way you’re mine. I’m not wasting another minute of my life without you in it. I’m in this, whether you want to be or not. If I have to lock you up in a cabin in the mountains and wear you down until you agree, I will. But there are some ground rules here, Julia, that are non-negotiable.”

  “Okay.”

  “You’re wild. Untamed, and babe, I love that about you. But this shit with the tit flashing will never happen again. None of that shit, ever again.”

  “Holden I—”

  “I’m not stupid Julia. I may have a word of the day app on my phone, but I can figure out things pretty clearly.”

  “I knew it!”

  He chuckled, “Yeah, okay. So, no more tits in the wind. No more ditching security. No more crazy ass schemes that could get you killed. I understand why you did it but there’s acceptable risk and then there’s just risk. You doing all of this, was just risk.”

  I narrowed my eyes at him. “It was worth it to get you back here. Where I know you have backup, and where I know there are a ton of people that can help. Instead of the other outcome, that involves you getting killed because you’re on your own hunting down Roger.”

  “Are you wearing the superhero cape now?”

  I poked my tongue out at him. “Touché”

  “We’re two of a kind, love. You hide, I hide. We both want to save each other. Frankly, I want to go on a small killing spree right now because of that shit earlier but I would rather be here with you.”

  He crawled closer to me and slid his hand up my side. His fingers tickled slightly as they ran across my ribs. His eyes drifted from my face down to my breast then back again.

  “Are you going to unlock these?” I said while rattling the cuffs.

  “Hmm, eventually,” he said as he leaned forward and licked one of my nipples.

  I gasped and yanked at the cuffs again. An intense jolt of desire went through me and I arched my back, pressing my breast further into his mouth. He sucked on it and licked the peak again.