by KB Winters
“Sunrise?” I cringed, like the proper sunrise-adverse vampire that I was. “Don’t these people have any respect for sleeping in?”
Alissa laughed. “I’ve been up since three. Still had to get my spin on. Thank goodness for twenty-four-hour gyms, right?”
I raised an eyebrow. “You’re seriously asking me that?”
I tended to avoid the gym at any hour. I had a trainer who came to my apartment three times a week to torture me. That was more than enough. If I wanted to look like Alissa, willowy and lean, I would need a hell of a lot more than a twenty-four-hour gym membership. I’d need a team of people that could chase me down the street and slap croissants, pizza, and take out Chinese food right from my hands.
“How’s Baghdad?” Alissa asked, setting the computer back down so the camera re-centered on her sunny face. “Everything you dreamed it would be?”
“It’s actually really pretty,” I said, glancing at the window of my room. The curtains were pulled back now, providing a view of the city. “I actually wish I could go out and explore a little.”
Alissa shuddered. “I’d be staying inside with the AC cranked and no chance of one of those camel spiders carrying me off to its lair!”
I cringed. “Oh yeah…forgot about those things…”
“And scorpions too!”
“All right, all right. No more or I’ll never sleep again!” I wiggled my shoulders as a creepy-crawly sensation slid down my back. A strange smile pulled at my lips before I added, “Although I didn’t get a lot of sleep last night and it had nothing to do with a bug infestation.”
Alissa’s already large eyes went even wider as she leaned in. “Stop it! What happened?”
I laughed at her bug-eyed expression. “I met someone…”
“Oh my gosh, and of course I have like less than ten minutes. Okay, give me the rundown.”
“His name is Derrick. He’s a soldier here at the base. Short version, he’s the perfect gentleman, hot as sin, and we might have gotten a little carried away last night…”
Alissa made a faux swooning sound. “Jealous!”
I grinned at her, resisting the urge to remind her that she could have any man in the city. Hell, probably the world. “I definitely wasn’t planning on meeting someone. I mean really…how insane…but we click.”
“I’m so happy for you! You deserve the best guy after everything you’ve gone through this year.”
I nodded, my smile faltering a little. “Thanks, Lissa. It just feels odd. Like I’m rushing into it.”
“Rushing? Honey, you’ve been single now for nine months. That’s plenty of time! You’re not getting engaged to this guy, you just had a night of fun. What’s wrong with that?”
I didn’t have an answer for her.
“Listen, you were married forever, right? So of course this is new and scary, but you have to let yourself off the hook and give yourself permission to have some fun again.”
I nodded. “You’re right. Besides, it’s not like Roberto hasn’t moved on,” I said, my tone a little terser than I’d intended. “Have you seen the magazines?”
Alissa’s eyes shifted off the camera. A subtle flick but I caught it right away. My stomach plummeted. “What?”
Alissa shrugged. “Nothing. You just have—”
“Alissa.”
She stared at me for a long moment and then dragged in a sigh. “He’s engaged…”
“What?” I belted, rocketing from my seat.
“I’m sorry,” she replied, her eyes downcast. I lowered back to my seat, my stomach rolling in nauseating waves that made me feel like I was in the middle of an amusement park ride. “I saw it on Holly Pepper’s show last night. She had an interview with him and his bimbo. Jackie. Blech. I can’t stand her.”
My finger twitched over the track pad on my laptop, itching to go searching for the whole story. I knew it would only make me cry, but the sick fascination was there all the same. “When did this happen?”
“The day you left. It was her birthday, I guess. The asshole proposed in the middle of her show, on stage, in front of all of her fans.”
What little air that was left in my lungs evaporated, images from the past flooding in faster than I could combat. There I was, nineteen, singing my heart out for a crowd at the Dallas stop on my first nationwide tour. In the middle of the set, Roberto, came from backstage where he’d been with the other dancers, and he dropped to a knee right there. How could he do it again with another woman? Had it all meant nothing to him?
“Liss, I gotta go,” I said, pushing up from my seat at the computer. Without waiting for her reply, I raced to the bathroom and heaved over the toilet. When everything was out of my stomach, the tears raced in, hot and fast, coursing down my cheeks and spilling onto the floor as I curled up on the tile.
How could he? The question rang through my mind over and over accompanied by the image of our engagement playing on repeat.
How could he?
Chapter Eight - Sophia
When I finally scraped myself from the bathroom floor, I had depleted my source of tears and went back into my room, shell-shocked and drained. Alissa wasn’t on the computer screen anymore, but had typed out a long message at the bottom of the empty window. I gave a watery smile as I read her diatribe against Roberto and how I was a thousand times better off without him. She promised to call me back as soon as she finished her shoot.
I closed the window and turned off the computer. I didn’t trust myself not to dive into reading everything I could find about Roberto and Jackie’s engagement. Hell, if I tried hard enough, there were probably videos of the whole thing right there on the internet. That I definitely didn’t need—or want—to see.
When the computer shut down, I gave a lingering glance at my bed, wishing I could crawl under the covers and lose myself to sleep for a few more hours. But there was no point. I’d wake up and still have to sort myself out. Instead, I wandered back to the bathroom and took a long, hot-as-I-could-stand shower and scrubbed away every last trace of my tears.
Roberto wasn’t worth my emotions anymore. I’d decided that a long time ago. The reminder helped some, but didn’t fully take away the sting of imagining him slipping a ring onto the finger of another woman. Especially when we hadn’t even been divorced a year. Granted, he’d claimed to have been mentally and emotionally checked out of the marriage for a lot longer.
“Ugh,” I groaned, forcing myself to abandon the arguments and teary confessions from the last days of our marriage. I toweled off, dressed in a soft cashmere sweater and a pair of black jeans, and a pair of ballet flats. I didn’t bother blow drying my hair, I just wound it up into a messy bun on my head to let it dry into my signature waves for the show later that night.
It wasn’t that I’d been holding out hope that Roberto would change his mind and come back to me. No…I’d given up on that as soon as the papers were signed and he immediately went public with his relationship with Jackie, leaving me and the rest of the world to speculate as to when their relationship had actually started. Another topic I’d marked as off limits in the back of my own mind. I didn’t want to reconcile with him. All I wanted was the time and space to heal and reevaluate what I wanted out of my life.
My problem was that I’d stalled out somewhere in the middle. Time had helped to ease the daily pain and reduced the number of memories that haunted me, but I hadn’t gone on any dates or given much thought to starting a new relationship…at least, not until I’d ran into Derrick. He’d been a game changer from that first meeting.
Maybe this was kismet, as my mother always said. Maybe meeting Derrick, before I knew that Roberto was engaged, was the perfect timing to show me that it was all going to be okay, to help brace me for the impact of the news that was lurking just around the corner.
A faint smile crept over my lips and I nodded. “Kismet.”
I sighed and leaned back against the bathroom counter. The bathroom was still steamy from my shower and I wa
ited for it to clear so I could put on a little makeup to hide my puffy eyes. Sound check would start in a few hours and I didn’t need people asking me what was wrong. Especially when they all followed celebrity gossip and probably already knew…
I pushed the thought aside. The people who really mattered, my family, friends, and now, Derrick, would all be in my corner and support me through the PR nightmare that likely awaited me back in New York. I winced, imagining the swarms of paparazzi and gossip columnists that would stalk me all over the city to try and get my comment on the matter.
It was enough to make me want to look into rerouting my return flight to go to my second home in the Virgin Islands.
Derrick would look sexy-hot in a pair of Bermuda’s and shades by the pool…
****
I spent the afternoon curled up in the same alcove I’d found the day before, huddled on the oversize chair with the paperback book I’d carried onto the plane. The fast moving thriller kept my mind occupied and the steady stream of background noise kept me from drifting back to long-lost memories. Since receiving the bombshell news from Alissa, I’d decided one thing—it was time to move on with my life.
In hindsight, hours removed from the initial shock, I felt a little ridiculous for getting so upset about the proposal in the first place. Why should I care where or how Roberto’d proposed? That was my old life. I shouldn’t care anymore. He’d made his choices and it was time for me to make mine.
Starting with cementing my New Year’s Eve plans with Derrick. If he was willing to trade some of his family time with me, then I was willing to travel to his hometown and split the time so we could still see each other without him disappointing his family.
When I went on stage that night, I poured all the overflowing emotions into my performance, and by the time the final curtain call was over, Roberto was the farthest thing from my mind. As I took my last bow, I scanned the room as best as I could, looking for any sign of Derrick, but with the lights and the sheer volume of people in the room, it was impossible to tell for sure.
I rushed off the stage, eager to get changed and done with the meet and greet portion of the evening so I could get back to my room in time for his promised call. All the while, secretly hoping he would surprise me and show up in my line.
A soft knock on my dressing room door brought a smile to my face. I set down the tube of lip gloss I’d applied and hurried to the door, careful not to trip over the train on my dress. I tugged it open, smiling wide, only to feel it slide right off my face when I found Blake, not Derrick, standing on the other side with a bouquet of roses. Where the hell he’d found them in the middle of the desert was a mystery, but I wasn’t all that interested. I folded my arms. “What are you doing here?” I asked with a scowl.
Blake extended the bouquet and dropped an obvious glance to my overflowing cleavage. I snarled and dropped my arms to not amplify the effect of the low neckline. Blake didn’t stop staring, he lingered another moment before dragging his eyes back to mine. “Sexy as always, Sophia.”
“What do you want?” I repeated, my voice tight as I struggled to maintain control.
Blake set the bouquet on a narrow table by the door. “Jenna told me you were looking for me,” Blake drawled, coming into the room one slow step at a time as I backed up to avoid his grasp.
“She did?”
He pocketed his hands and flashed his signature crooked smile. “She said you had a rough rehearsal and thought you might need a little company tonight.”
I scoffed, mentally reminding myself to have a little chat with Jenna. If she didn’t get it together, I was going to go over her head and take my complaints to Dale, which, as she’d already revealed, would probably land her without a job. I didn’t care. I’d made my feelings about Blake well know, so siccing the fleabag rockstar on me was unacceptable and certainly not how you treat a superstar—especially if she was so worried about her job. “Trust me, I’ll have some company, but it’s not you.”
Blake’s smile faltered. “Why do you despise me so much, Sophia? I bring you gifts—shower you with compliments. What else could you want?”
I narrowed my eyes as they fixed on him like he was in the middle of my crosshairs. “Seriously? You really have to ask that?”
Blake didn’t flinch away. Instead, he offered another infuriating grin. “Is this because you’re still hung up on your ex? You should really forget about him. You know he’s engaged now, don’t you?”
I wasn’t a violent sort of person—at least not usually—but couldn’t stop myself when my hands curled into tight balls. Searing rage flooded my veins and launched me from my seat. “You don’t know the first thing about me, Blake. And that’s the problem. You don’t really even care. I’m just another name on your list of conquests and that was so obviously your intent from day one that you never even had a chance! I know exactly what your game is, Bucko, and I’m not playing. Do you really think a few bouquets of flowers and a few compliments are all it takes to get a woman into your bed? Well, that might work on your little groupies, but I’m not that kind of girl. I’m only interested in real men who realize I have more to offer than a good time.”
Blake arched an eyebrow. “Is that what you told your soldier friend?”
My nostrils flared. How dare he bring up Derrick.
“Word is you gave him quite the night and now he’s already moved on…” Blake’s sickening smile deepened as the horror seeped over my face. “Oh, you didn’t know?” he asked, mocking innocence in his tone. “Yeah, seems he took a shining to our friend Jenna.”
I shook my head. “You’re lying.”
Blake shrugged. “If that’s what you have to tell yourself…”
I crossed my arms again. “Get the hell out of my room!”
Blake waited another minute, smiling at me, before making his way back to the door. “I’ll go, but I can damn well guarantee, if I got a chance with you, I’d make it last a hell of a lot longer than a single night.”
He winked and ducked out into the hall before I could chuck the bouquet of flowers at his head.
Chapter Nine - Derrick
“Lawley, why don’t you get your sorry ass outta here,” Marcus called from his desk opposite mine.
I blinked back into reality, trying to stow away the thoughts of Sophia’s naked body as she straddled me the night before. It was impossible to keep my mind on work when she kept going through my head every few minutes. Apparently, Marcus had noticed…
He flashed me a goofy grin when I turned to face him. “You’re clearly not here. So why don’t you get outta here. I’ll cover your ass if Masters comes through.”
I glanced back at my computer screen. I was in the middle of reading a long document, but it was all turning into a blurry chunk of text, indiscernible as my mind drifted here and there. Before I could force myself to plow ahead, I took Marcus up on his offer. If I hurried I could get to Sophia’s show before the final number. I flicked the button to power down the monitor and hopped up from my seat. “All right. Thanks, man,” I said, shrugging back into my jacket.
Marcus and company waved me off as I bolted from the room.
I raced down to the auditorium and found the doors shut. Music spilled out into the hallway and I recognized Sophia’s crystal clear voice singing the final number. I opened the door and slipped into the back of the room. It was another packed house, not an empty seat in sight. I leaned against the back wall, knowing I was way too far away from the stage to catch Sophia’s attention so I closed my eyes and let her voice roll over me.
As the song reached the climax, someone tapped me on the shoulder, jolting me from the song. My eyes snapped open and beside me I found the woman from the first night Sophia and I had met. Her producer. Who was now wearing a charming smile. She crooked her finger at me, indicating she wanted me to follow her. I shot a look at Sophia on stage and then offered the producer a tight-lipped smile and followed her out into the hall.
“Sergeant La
wley,” she started, once we were out in the hallway, the sound of Sophia singing still soft in the background. “I was looking for you.”
“You were?”
“Yes.” She nodded. “I’m Jenna, a producer on the TV special we’re shooting. Sophia thought you would be a good interview. I’m sure she told you about it?”
I glanced over at the closed door. “She didn’t, actually.”
“Oh,” Jenna replied, flapping a hand. “Must have slipped her mind. As you know, we are doing a TV special that will run for three nights. Nationwide. Prime time. It’s a pretty big deal. As part of that, my team and I are hand-selecting soldiers to interview about their time away and give them a chance to give a shout out to their family and friends back home. Sophia thought you would be willing to give us a few minutes.”
“Right…um, right now?”
“Sure! We could head to a private room and have you in and out.”
I weighed it for a moment. I really wanted to go back inside and see Sophia, maybe find a way backstage to see her as she stepped off the stage. But if she went out of her way to get me a spot on the show, I should probably take the opportunity. “All right, sounds fun.”
Jenna beamed and turned to lead me away. She wrapped her arm through mine. I bristled at her touch but let her continue to hang on my arm as we started back to a series of rooms that had been used mainly for storage as long as I’d been at the base. They’d been transformed into a miniature studio with a camera, special lighting fixtures, and an overstuffed chair and a low profile couch, all set up against a green screen background.
“We’re digitally piping in a background for the show,” Jenna explained as she followed my eyes to the green screen that covered most of the far wall. “It will make it look like the interviewees are in the middle of a Christmas tree farm with snow falling down and lights around the trees.”
I pocketed my hands. “Hmm. What a world, huh?”