by LJ Evans
The sudden image of Dani being at Brady’s side when shots went off made my heart seize up all over again. That burnt up body part had gotten a good workout today. It was still charred like charcoal, but between the doc and Dani, it was being squeezed out of its hardened state into one cracked with blood and sorrow.
“Is she in danger?” I asked, still trying to keep my voice even.
Mac shook his head. “Nah. It’s all directed at Brady.”
“We all know how that goes. Aiming for one, you might get the other.”
“You never did.”
“I’m a fucking sniper. I’m not some random weirdo with a grudge,” I threw back.
Mac’s face twisted with a look of surprise. “You know, I wasn’t thinking of it from that perspective. Now, I’m going to be worried as hell, so thanks for that.”
I didn’t say anything, because now I was going to be worried as hell, too.
Dani
BEAUTIFUL
“Every day is so wonderful
Then suddenly
It's hard to breathe.”
Performed by Christina Aguilera
Written by Linda Perry
The limousine stood with its door open as Brady, Lee, and I left the airport surrounded by four bulky men. I wanted to roll my eyes at the way his security stood. They were more concerned with looking like they were security than actually being security.
I’d grown up around military professionals. I’d worked around Secret Service for twelve years. This private firm of wannabes had a lot to learn. But then—I reminded myself—I had a lot to learn as well, and no one was kicking me to the curb yet.
Instead, Lee had been nothing but kind and helpful.
I’d met him for the first time in his office in New York City the Monday after Mac’s wedding. Brady hadn’t been messing around when he said he wanted me on board, setting up the meeting on Sunday and all but insisting I find a way to get there.
I’d liked Lee immediately. His smile had been friendly, even though he had to be unsure about me being there. His deeply tanned skin and black hair shouted out the indigenous heritage residing in his DNA somewhere. He was tall and lanky and somehow ageless. Neither old nor young. His perfectly tailored suit flattered him as much as the square glasses perched on his nose. After shaking hands, I’d sat down across his desk and shot an eye at Brady who’d gone back to lying on the couch, pretending not to listen.
“Brady says he’s offered you a job,” Lee said, a frown wiping his smile away, and I couldn’t blame him. He didn’t know me, and my résumé wasn’t exactly filled with music industry knowledge. But it was the words he wasn’t saying that were the real question: Are you sleeping with my client?
“First, I’m not going to hold you or him to that offer,” I tried to reassure him. “Second, no, I’m not sleeping with him. He isn’t my type.”
Brady snorted, and Lee sat back in his chair, assessing me all over. I was in my dark-blue suit that shouted stability and expertise with a mild-yellow shirt with white polka dots, because yellow was both creative and intellectual. I’d wanted to scream success, but many people had a negative reaction to orange, so I’d stayed away from it. I wanted to look professional, smart, but also trendy enough for the music industry.
“Brady is pretty much everyone’s type,” Lee said as he tweaked his glasses back into position.
I laughed. “So I’ve heard, but honestly, he’s not mine.”
“She’s more the dark and broody kind of girl,” Brady shot out from the couch.
Lee and I both ignored him. I wasn’t sure how Brady had pegged me in that manner. Nash was definitely dark and broody, but the previous men in my life had not been. Sure, they were all dark, tall, handsome, but they weren’t broody. For example, Russell had been almost geeky with his Ph.D. and multiple languages.
“Let’s just say we’ll come back to that topic later,” Lee said. “Let’s start with why you’ve decided to transition after twelve years in politics.”
We’d gone back and forth, me often asking more questions than Lee, and finally, after answering about my twentieth question, Lee had held up his hands and laughed. “I get it. You’re smart, professional, thorough. You care about what you do, and you care about Brady without wanting to get into his pants. You’re hired.”
I hadn’t even needed to negotiate on salary or benefits. They’d offered me more than I’d expected for my first civilian job. I quickly found out why. It was pretty much a twenty-four-hour, seven-day-a-week kind of job, which wasn’t any different than my job with the senator. I was usually up at four in the morning, on calls or social media starting at six, and then slugging my way through a whole series of to-dos. Those ranged from organizing interviews, making sure Brady was prepared for interviews, or responding to a host of companies who wanted to sponsor him in some way from cowboy boots to underwear to earbuds.
It was all-consuming, and I was loving every second of it. It was keeping me on my toes, filling my brain, challenging me in a way working for the senator hadn’t done in a long time. I was learning again. Learning people, motivations, and an entirely new industry.
Outside the Miami airport, where we’d all connected, we were ushered into a limousine. I was in my new uniform of jeans, a tailored jacket, and a tank. Lee was in his suit, and Brady was in his concert uniform because we were heading straight from the airport to the venue. He wore his torn-up jeans partnered with a flannel shirt opened to reveal a white tank underneath, like any rock star. With the casual ease of a lion. And he’d have all the cubs and lionesses swooning over him by the end of the night when he was in just that tank with sweat pouring down him.
As the door to the limousine shut behind us, Marco, the security guard I knew best, slid in next to the driver and said into his earpiece, “Ghost moving out.”
Brady and I shared a smirk. Ghost was the name they’d given him after I’d teased Tanner, the guy in charge, about not being up to snuff with the Secret Service. “You don’t even have a code name for him,” I’d said flippantly, and they’d promptly chosen the name of his latest single. It wouldn’t be hard for anyone to figure out.
“This is your first show, so don’t be surprised by the crush of people backstage,” Lee said to me. “I just sent you a list of things I’d like you to do at the venue. Make sure the sponsors all get their shot of Brady with their merchandise. But your number one job is to entertain the VIPs until he can meet with them.”
I opened the list, scanned over it, and sent it to my private folder. I liked that Lee was all tech and very little paper. It made things easier. Especially when I’d spent a considerable part of the first two weeks on the job at home in Wilmington.
I wasn’t quite ready to find a place in New York City to rent. The city was Lee and Brady’s home base, but I wasn’t sure it was for me. Neither of them had made being in the city a requirement, even when Brady had offered me a room at his place when I was in town. I’d declined and, instead, just used the train for the days I had to be with them. The two-hour journey had allowed me to continue to work both ways.
Starting today, we’d be together for a few weeks as Brady kicked off his official tour. It was a trial run for the worldwide tour that really began in January. The goal of these five early stops was simply to work out the kinks in the show. He had dancers, backup singers, pyrotechnics, and the band themselves to coordinate with. I’d been pretty floored with the number of people involved.
At the practices at a sound stage in New York, I’d taken pictures and posted tantalizing hints of what was to come on his social media accounts. Lee said I was single-handedly responsible for increasing their ticket sales by ten percent. I very seriously doubted it, but I wouldn’t know because I was in the dark when it came to the money side of the business.
His last PR manager, Fiona, had been part PR and part business manager, which meant she’d had access to his accounts. It had ended badly, but I still h
adn’t been read in on the full thing. I just knew she’d stolen money and left with the nondisclosure agreement in place that Brady had mentioned at Mac’s wedding. Since Fiona had been gone, there’d been an increase in threats made against Brady, and most of his staff believed they were coming from her. But there was no proof.
Hence the security, which I had very little faith in.
When we got to the stadium, the crowd waiting there went wild. The swarm of people around Brady had been the hardest thing for me to get used to. Senator Matherton had drawn crowds, too, but only when we were out on the campaign trail. Plus, they were planned events with politically like-minded people. Calm, listening. Matherton had never been one to draw the hate crowds. Brady’s screaming fans popped up at the drop of a hat. Like when Brady had literally dropped his hat outside his apartment building the other day, and one person had realized who he was and had started screaming his name. What had followed was a whole host of people scrambling in our direction and the bodyguards hustling us into a nearby building.
It had been disconcerting. The security had been almost as nervous as us.
Now, Brady waved at the crowd being held back by nothing more than ropes. The screaming was at such a high pitch I swore there were only females in the throng. But as we neared the back door of the stadium, a man in a cowboy hat jumped over the ropes and came running at us.
Marco and another bodyguard, Trevor, tackled the fan before he got too close.
“Brady, Brady, I just need you to sign my hat, man. Just my hat,” the guy shouted with his face in the pavement and a knee in his back.
Brady stopped, picked up the hat which had become dislodged when the fan was forced to the ground, and held out a hand to me. I dug in my bag and came out with a permanent marker. I’d started carrying a whole host of them when I realized Brady signed something everywhere we went. He wrote his name on the felt hat’s brim before handing it to Trevor as they pulled the man away, and we continued inside.
“You’re never going to get that to stop if you always do what they ask,” Lee said with a sigh.
“Those people put me here, Lee. I’m not going to forget it.”
Lee gave me an eye roll behind Brady’s back, and I had to stifle a laugh because I was ninety percent sure Lee had never eye-rolled at all until he’d met me. Once Brady was ensconced in his dressing room with his team, I had the venue rep take me to the backstage party which was already in progress for the VIP ticket holders.
Thank God I’d dealt with senators who thought they were better than anyone else and deserved extra special treatment, because the majority of the VIPs weren’t any better. They’d paid a lot of money for the experience and expected it to meet up to every dollar they’d spent. I’d worn my burgundy jacket to balance their perceived sense of power with my own. I still ended up kissing butt and making sure they all had their favorite drinks in hand before I turned to the two families who I’d personally arranged to come. The first family was a single mom with her two children. They’d been following Brady since his initial single had hit number one coming out of Juilliard. The second family had a child who was battling cancer. Making his day come true had been a no-brainer. Good for the family, and good for Brady’s image. But when I’d told Brady, he’d made me promise not to use the second family’s tragedy for his gain.
It was why I already appreciated working for him more than I’d thought I would. He wasn’t just a sexy flirt. He was a good guy, all the way down to his core. It was something I should have known because of the way Ava and Georgie spoke of him, but hearing and seeing were two different things.
I set my shoulders back and prepared for a long night.
♫ ♫ ♫
The crowd in the stadium was still screaming when Brady joined us in the VIP lounge. He was rubbing the sweat from his body with a towel someone in the crew had given him. He handed it back to them, and all I could think was that man needed a raise.
“Thanks, babe,” Brady said.
I hit him on the arm, and Brady smirked. Lee had told me that, even after three years, he was still having a hard time breaking Brady’s casual use of the nickname that some of his initial crew had taken offense to. Brady hadn’t disagreed. He’d only said, “It rarely slips out anymore. Mostly when I’m tired.”
I led Brady over to the most uptight assholes first so they wouldn’t stew and boil over. Then, we made our way around the room until we hit the cancer family. Brady spent extra time with them. I took pictures with all their phones before pulling out the guitar I’d had Brady sign ahead of time. The little boy went nuts at the gift, and Brady took a couple of minutes to show him how to play a few chords. It was super sweet and would have gotten a million likes if he’d let me share it on social media. But it was a hard no.
By the time we made it out to the limousine, it was around midnight. We were just about to enter when I was hit in the back of the head with something hard enough to make me stumble forward in my wedge boots. My hands went out to catch myself against the limousine door. As if in slow motion, loud pops started from right behind me, making us all duck, and Marco and Trevor leaned their bodies over Brady, shielding him.
My shoulder started burning, and I twisted around to find my burgundy jacket smoldering. I unbuttoned it and dropped it to the ground where a rope of firecrackers was going off, sparks, flames, and sounds filling the night. I jumped into the limousine, closing the door for protection, while the bodyguards hustled Brady around to the other side, pushing him in and stumbling in after him. The driver took off, causing me to slam back into the seat, but not before I’d looked back to see two of the remaining bodyguards twisting their bodies through the night, looking for whoever had thrown the firecrackers to begin with.
“Are you hurt?” Brady asked, eyes wide.
My head was pounding, and my shoulder was stinging, but I thought I was okay. I hadn’t recovered enough to be able to talk. But the random attack, the ache in my head, and the adrenaline rush pounding in my veins gave way to images of me staring at myself in a mirror in The Oriental’s bathroom. My cheek had been bright red, and the back of my head had pounded from where it had hit the wall of the elevator with the force of his slap.
My body started shaking.
“Dani?” Brady repeated, his voice full of concern, and it brought me back. I wasn’t at The Oriental. I was in a limousine with the country star, two muscled bodyguards, and a muscled driver. I was safe. Brady was safe. But Lee hadn’t made it into the car with us.
“I’m okay,” I said. I put my trembling hand up to the back of my head, rubbing. It came away clean, no blood. Then, I twisted to look at my shoulder. There was a small welt developing where the spark had sizzled through my jacket and burned my skin.
Brady saw the welt at the same time as I did. He opened the limousine’s small refrigerator, coming up with a soda can he placed on the burn for me. The cold metal brought me further back to the car and the people I was with and away from the last time my body had been pummeled unexpectedly.
Marco and Trevor were talking back and forth into their mics with someone on the other side. Either Tanner, the person in charge on-site, or their boss in their office in New York.
“Well, that wasn’t quite the planned pyrotechnic finale we wanted,” I said, trying to lighten the mood and Brady’s worry. It worked on Brady but not the others in the vehicle.
He leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes. “That was a fucking nightmare.”
It was bad. Pretty damn bad.
When we pulled up to the hotel, we waited with Marco and Trevor while two more guards took off into the lobby to clear the way. They were also in communication with the team waiting at Brady’s hotel room. Everything was calm and quiet.
They hustled us out of the vehicle and into the lobby to where they had the elevator already standing open and ready to go. Alice, the road manager, appeared from nowhere and shoved my keycard into my hand. I noticed that, toni
ght, her hair was almost pink. It had changed almost every time I’d seen her.
Alice and her team had checked us in hours ago, making sure our luggage made it to our rooms. She coordinated and juggled more items daily than I had room for on my checklist. And she never missed a beat. Tonight, with my emotions strung tight, I was grateful for the ability to go to my room and crash.
“Thanks, Alice,” I said. She nodded.
It wasn’t until two bodyguards hauled Brady into the open elevator and the doors shut, leaving me in the lobby, that a new tremor went through me. While tonight’s fireball ending wasn’t what anybody had expected, I should have anticipated this part of the job. I would be traveling around the U.S., and eventually the world, with a country rock star. We would be staying in hotels. Lots of them. Hotels that didn’t like their guests using the stairs as I’d used around The Capitol. I was pretty sure if I opened one of the stairwell doors, an alarm would sound, and these two hulks, Marco and Trevor, would be all over me, hustling us from the building.
As I waited with Alice and the two bulky men for the next elevator, I pulled my earbuds from my handbag with trembling hands and put them in. It took me three tries to open the meditation app I had on my phone, but by the time the doors slid open, I was listening to the soothing sound of the ocean waves. Marco and Trevor held the door for Alice and me, which meant I was not only in an elevator, but I was at the back, trapped behind male bodies.
I closed my eyes and tried to concentrate on the sound of the waves, but my mind kept jumping to my pounding head which matched the pain I’d faced over a year ago in another elevator. My heart rate was not decreasing. Quite the opposite. It was thrashing around in my chest at such a fast pace that my breath was uneven and harsh.
I opened my eyes and saw Marco staring at me, brows drawn.
“You okay?” he asked. This caused Alice to turn and look with a similar frown.