The feel of his warm, guitar-string-calloused hand in mine.
And Josh, sizing him up.
That arrogant asshole. Only he could do something so tasteless. Turning up out of nowhere, injecting himself back into my life and trying to ruin this for me.
But then I did something even more tasteless. I lied right to Jesse’s face.
I said I was going on tour with him, right there in front of Josh, and Brody.
The buzz from the bubbly I’d drank at the party was starting to wear off, and I wasn’t ready for it. Somehow I managed to convince Flynn to leave me at the elevator, and when he was gone, I made a beeline for the hotel bar. As I walked in, I just hoped my sexy red dress was dressy enough. The place was dripping with chandeliers. I’d only been in a more opulent bar once; the one Josh’s dad had booked for our wedding reception.
The wedding reception that never happened.
I went straight to the bar and shrugged off my lucky leather jacket. There were a couple of men in suits at the far end, but the room was emptying out. Wait staff were clearing tables and flirting with lingering customers. Some crazy-sexy slow song was playing and it made me want to go straight back to that party and slither into Jesse Mayes’ lap.
Maybe I should just fuck him and get it over with. It couldn’t possibly make my life any worse.
“What can I get you, hon?” The female bartender came over. “We’re doing last call. You’ve got about twenty minutes. “
“Southern Comfort and amaretto on the rocks, please. Lots of cherries. Make it a double. Actually, since it’s last call, make it two doubles. And two for him.” I gestured at the empty bar stool next to me as if I was expecting a date any second. Drinking eight shots of liquor myself in the next twenty minutes probably wasn’t the best idea, but at least it would help erase this lingering awful taste Josh, Jr. had left in my mouth. And not just with his tongue.
The bartender went to make my drinks. I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirrored wall behind the liquor-lined shelves; at least I didn’t look like the mess I felt. I caught the eye of one of the suits at the far end of the bar. His gaze lingered, but I looked away.
The bartender returned, setting the drinks on the bar on a couple of cocktail napkins—two in front of me, and two in front of my non-existent date. “Thanks.” I started digging my wallet out of my purse.
“No need, hon,” the bartender said. “The gentleman at the end of the bar took care of it.”
I glanced over. The two guys in the suits were looking at me. The younger one, about thirty or so, handsome, maybe a little drunk, raised his glass.
I turned back to the bartender. “Thanks.”
“Cheers.”
She walked away and I picked up my first drink, considering. Maybe it was rude not to thank the stranger who’d paid for my drinks, but I really didn’t want him coming over. I sipped at it, letting the sweet tang of the liqueurs linger on my tongue, the warmth flooding my chest. I closed my eyes and instantly saw him, burned into the black: Jesse, up on stage, rimmed in multi-colored lights.
“Feel like company?”
I opened my eyes but didn’t turn around. I could see him in the mirror, the guy from the end of the bar, standing behind me with a drink in hand.
“I’m here with my boyfriend,” I managed, my tongue finding the words before my brain caught up. “But thanks for the drinks. You really didn’t have to.”
“My pleasure. Having a rough night?”
Was it that obvious?
“Nothing my boyfriend can’t fix.” I didn’t feel up to faking niceties. I didn’t want to owe him anything just because he’d bought me a drink. Or four drinks.
“I don’t see him here.”
But suddenly I did. Over my shoulder in the mirror, approaching from the lobby, his long-legged stride eating the distance between us.
“Jesse…!” I spun around, lost my balance and tumbled off my barstool. Jesse closed the distance, his hand on my arm faster than I could recover, faster than the suit could react.
“Hey, babe,” he said, guiding me back onto my stool. “Miss me?” His mouth quirked in a faint smile. Then he glanced aside at the hovering stranger.
“Always,” I said, doing my best impression of the smitten girlfriend. It wasn’t hard. Pathetic thing was, I had missed him. It had barely been half an hour since he’d kissed me goodbye.
The suit eyed him, then glanced at me. Clearly he was outmatched here, no matter if he knew who Jesse Mayes was or not. He lifted his drink and shrugged. “You two have a good night, huh?” He wandered back to his end of the bar, throwing a lingering look my way.
Jesse watched the man go. He’d changed into a slouchy gray knit hat that covered most of his hair, a gray cashmere sweater and jeans. Moments ago, I wouldn’t have believed he could look any better than he did in those low-slung black leather pants. But he looked so good right now I felt the strongest pull to sink into his arms, let him wrap me in cashmere and his warmth.
Which was definitely the liquor at work.
I looked away. And there was Jude in the mirror, standing just inside the bar, leaning on a tall table, looking slightly pissed off. Hopefully not at me. Or Flynn.
Jesse slid onto the stool next to me, eying the untouched drinks on the napkin before him. The soft sleeve of his sweater brushed my arm, setting off tiny sparks on my skin.
“Expecting someone?” he asked in that low, sexy voice, now a little rough from singing his heart out.
I took a fortifying sip of my drink and summoned my most casual tone. “Just thirsty.”
“Uh-huh.”
“You can drink them, though.”
“I will.” He plucked the plastic sword loaded with cherries off the rim of one of the glasses and set it aside, then raised an eyebrow at me. His dark eyes never left mine as he took up the drink and sipped. His lips quirked a bit at the taste.
“So what’s this?” I reached to finger the wool of his hat and the curl of soft, dark hair poking out beneath. “Disguise?”
“Something like that. Fool you?”
“Nope. You’ve still got that face, you know…” I trailed off, running out of words as his eyes seemed to darken a shade in the flickering candlelight. Which was when I realized my fingers were still touching his hair.
I dropped my hand.
“You didn’t know who I was when we met.”
I laughed, which came out as a kind of snort, which tended to happen when I was buzzed. “But anyone with half a clue does.”
“But not you.”
“Not me. Ask Devi. I’m clueless.”
I grinned, raised my drink to toast that statement, and drank.
Jesse watched me, his dark, unreadable eyes twinkling in the candlelight. “I thought you were going to sleep.”
“I thought you were going to an after party.”
“Yeah, well. Too many people crammed into Dylan’s suite right now, and enough booze flowing that no one will notice I’m gone.”
“I doubt that.” It would take a lot more booze than one could fit in a hotel room to forget Jesse Mayes.
“And I got a little worried when you didn’t answer your phone.”
“You were gonna wake me up?”
“You looked a little rough when you left the party. I wanted to make sure you were okay.”
His gaze left me as he sipped his drink. I would’ve given pretty much anything to know what that smoldering, far-off look in his eyes meant. Then those eyes returned to me, and I felt the answering heat deep in my belly, an unstoppable visceral response to that look.
The man had a pull, like an incredibly sexy magnet, and I could feel myself getting drawn in. I had no way to know if he was turning it on intentionally, or if it was just him. I tried to resist but all I wanted to do was give in. Toss my arms around his neck and crush my lips to his. Taste him again, that ever-present hint of cinnamon.
Stupid.
Reckless.
Not going to
happen.
“Luckily, I saw you from the lobby.” His gaze slid down over my body, briefly. “That red dress is like a beacon.” He glanced at the suits at the end of the bar.
“Well, what good is an arm ornament if she doesn’t sparkle?” I finished my first drink and set the glass aside with a small bang. I sucked the cherries off my plastic sword and cringed at my own words; God, that sounded cynical.
Jesse just sipped his drink, studying me. “Wanna talk about it?”
“About what?”
“Whatever’s eating you. If you’re going to be my girlfriend, I should know what, or who, put that look on your face.”
I finished my cherries and started into my second drink. I didn’t want to talk about it, but the liquor was obliterating my better sense. “Just someone I wasn’t keen to run into. Ever again.”
“Let me guess. Blond guy with the chip on his shoulder and too much of daddy’s money to burn.”
“That would be him.”
We drank in silence a moment. Jesse finished his first drink and set the empty glass next to mine. “What happened between you two?”
“It wasn’t so much what happened as what he did.”
Jesse’s jaw flexed as he considered that. “What did he do?”
“He left me.” I flooded my nerves with another swallow of liquor. “At the altar.”
“Damn.”
“Like, literally at the altar. I was standing up there in a white dress I couldn’t afford with everyone looking at me, and he bailed. He waited until that exact moment.” I glanced away, afraid I’d do something ridiculous like start crying if I had to look into Jesse’s eyes any longer. “I mean, he couldn’t have just told me beforehand?”
“He could have. But then maybe you wouldn’t be sitting here right now feeling bad about it. And maybe that’s not what he wanted.”
“I’m not feeling bad about that. I’m feeling bad about all the time I wasted on him before that. So many years. You know how many?”
“I don’t.”
“Five.” I looked him in the eye again, feeling loose-lipped and reckless with liquor. “You know how many times we had sex in those five years?”
Jesse’s perfect mouth quirked in the hint of a smile. “You kept count, sugar?”
“No, but it was lots. Lots of times. Lots of times that he was this close to me.” Jesse’s gorgeous face had filled my vision, and in the back of my mind I wondered where the rest of the world had gone. “Lots of times he told me he loved me,” I breathed, my gaze dropping to his lips, “and one time he even said ’Marry me, Katie.’ He never once said to me, ’Katie, I don’t love you. You are not the woman I want to spend the rest of my life with.’”
Jesse’s gaze dropped to my lips, and I realized how close I was to him. Leaning on the bar, our shoulders literally rubbing, we were close enough to kiss.
“I’m not defending him,” he said. He licked his lips in the same casually seductive way he’d done at the video shoot, which made me wonder if he even noticed he did it. “Just pointing out it takes courage to say a thing like that. And a man who would leave you at the altar, babe, he doesn’t have that kind of courage.”
“Yeah.”
I turned away and took a breath. Time to get my shit together before I fell on Jesse Mayes’ dick and ended up just one of the many horny drunk chicks he’d probably fucked and forgotten. I needed a libido killer, and Josh would do just fine. Jesse was right. My ex was not a man of courage. Or integrity. Why hadn’t I just seen that sooner?
It’s not as if there weren’t any warning signs.
“It’s not all his fault, though. The truth is that he started walking out on me long before that. And I just let it happen. I never said a thing to him, either. I just kept pretending it wasn’t happening.” Maybe I was ashamed of that most of all. Not the fool he’d made of me, but the fool I’d been long before that humiliating day in his parents’ church.
“Why?”
“Because.” I forced myself to look at Jesse again, wishing he might somehow understand without me having to admit it. “Because I thought he was the king shit. I thought…”
“You thought…?”
“I thought I’d never do better than him.”
Oh, God. It sounded horrendous coming out of my mouth. Mostly because it was true.
“Let me tell you, Katie Bloom, you can do a hell of a lot better.”
I avoided Jesse’s gaze. Why did he have to go saying things like that and being all decent and cool? Why couldn’t he just be a stupid, slutty rock star who was impossible to take seriously?
Why did he have to go and become real?
“I know,” I said softly, trying not to get choked up. “I mean, I know that now.”
“Do you?”
I knew there were tears forming in my eyes because my vision was swimming. I covered it by slamming back the last of my drink. “He doesn’t,” I said. “I guess that’s the thing that still bothers me, you know? I got over the sting of his very public rejection. I got over the humiliation. I even let go of the anger I felt at him, at myself. I thought I did. I learned to live with the fact that we’d both made mistakes. But seeing him tonight… the way he looked at me…” I trailed off in search of the words. I scanned Jesse’s gorgeous face, his famous face, and for a second I saw what Josh must have seen. “At first I thought it just pissed him off when he saw me in that video because he couldn’t stand seeing me happy. But that wasn’t it. He just couldn’t stand seeing me with you.” I blinked back the tears and focused hard on those mysterious dark eyes. “He doesn’t think I’m worth it. He doesn’t think I’m good enough for all of this.” I gestured grandly and a little drunkenly at the exquisite bar. For you, I could have added, but I didn’t.
“And you think he’s right?”
“I don’t know.” Don’t say it, some small part of me that sounded a hell of a lot like Devi whispered, deep down in some tiny back room of my heart. Don’t show him. He doesn’t need to know how broken you are. “Maybe I fear he’s right.”
I really should’ve called it a night. Like, immediately. Gone up to my room and drunk dialed my best friend. The only person who could be trusted to witness me like this and not judge.
By now Jesse Mayes was probably trying to figure out how to rescind the entire offer, kick me the hell off his pant leg and hightail it out of here.
But he didn’t move.
He sipped his second drink, slowly, savoring it. Then he put the empty glass down, stared at the melting ice a moment, and turned to me.
“I’m going to tell you something now and you’re going to wait until I finish so you don’t take it personally.”
“Sure.” I picked up my own glass and busied myself crunching on the ice, avoiding that magnetic stare.
“The guys in the band, both bands, actually, and Brody, even Maggie, don’t think this is a good idea. Me and you. Bringing you on tour.”
I glanced at him. “And this is supposed to help convince me?”
He cocked his head a little, flashing his charming grin. “I didn’t know I was still convincing you.”
I started polishing off my second swordful of cherries.
“If you want out, Katie, I’m not going to hold it against you,” he said. “I’m not gonna twist your arm. I’ll give you tonight to think things over. It’s only fair. There was a lot of pressure on you tonight. All these new people, your ex-fiancé showing up. The media. And you’re looking like you could use some time to sleep it all off.” I noticed he politely omitted my current state of intoxication from that assessment. “So. Here’s what we do.” He leaned in a little, his shoulder nudging mine. “I’m taking you up to bed.”
Heat raced through my blood. I looked up into his eyes. Maybe he hadn’t meant that as dangerously as it sounded, but I really couldn’t tell. The man was impossible to read, unless he was overtly flirting, which he didn’t seem to be doing just now. Still, the butterflies in my stomach did a drunken twi
rl.
“You’re going to sleep,” he went on. “And in the morning, you can let me know what you decide. No pressure. You come with me on tour, or you don’t and we forget about all of this. You go back to your life, and I never bother you again.”
One thing I knew: I did not want that. But it was dangerous to want what I was beginning to want when I looked in Jesse Mayes’ eyes.
“But first…” He took my plastic sword and empty glass and set them aside, holding my gaze. “I want you to know why the guys don’t think bringing you on tour is a good idea, and why I’ll do it anyway. I’ve never brought a girl on tour with me before, Katie. Other than Elle, but we’re in a band together, and even then it didn’t work out so well. My friends aren’t used to me getting serious about anyone so fast, and they don’t see how it will help the tour. They think the only way the media or the fans or the record company will give a damn about the girl I’m dating is if she’s some starlet or supermodel. Someone more famous, more glamorous than Elle.”
I cringed, inwardly. He really didn’t need to spell out for me all the ways I didn’t measure up to his ex-girlfriend. Clearly I was nowhere near as glamorous. Or as talented. Certainly not as famous, even with our steamy video burning up the charts.
“They don’t think anyone will care if I show up on tour with an ordinary girl,” he said. “And by ordinary, I mean not famous. But here’s the thing, Katie. I think they’re wrong about that. And for the record, I don’t think there’s an ordinary thing about you. The world got a glimpse of that in the video. It’s what your ex saw. It’s why that video has been viewed online over seven hundred million times already.”
My stomach did an uncomfortable flip, because I still couldn’t quite digest that fact. “You don’t have to say that.” No matter what he said, I knew it was him and the incredible song that had people watching that video.
The bartender came for our glasses and Jesse told her, “I’ll take the bill.”
“No chance, sweetheart,” she replied. “Gentleman at the end of the bar took care of it.”