9. Rae
9
RAE
W hen your requests don’t get a response, it’s a good idea to escalate.
Sure, doing that with Echo Entertainment and Harrison King landed me an unplanned gig with an unwanted billionaire that sent my world spinning, but that was an anomaly.
Once I saw a social post announcing two new headliners at Wild Fest when I got out of bed at noon after last night’s show, I knew I was running out of time.
Despite my verbal jousting matches with Harrison to date, I’m not good with confrontation. But I tracked down one of the Wild Fest organizers and am following her down Santa Monica.
I catch up to Victoria Ames at a stoplight where she’s riffling through her handbag, cursing. She knocks it to the ground, and I bend to help pick up the contents.
“Thanks. I have a meeting in an hour, and this wasn’t on my schedule.”
“Victoria? Don’t freak out,” I go on when she stiffens. “I’m Little Queen. I was talking with the cofounders about playing Wild Fest but haven’t heard from them in awhile.”
She relaxes a degree. “I know who you are.”
I hold out a lipstick, the two pieces of which have come apart. She frowns.
“Five-second rule?” I suggest.
Her mouth twitches, but she takes the tube from me and recaps it. “Everyone wants to play this festival. We have the best acts in the world lined up. Why are you the right fit?”
“Come to a gig I’m playing in town next weekend and I’ll show you.”
“Post the details on your social and I’ll take a look,” she counters.
“I’ll send them to you.” I pull up the graphic and DM it to her account that I found earlier. I call after her, “You notice anything about the headliners you’ve announced so far?”
She slows her steps but keeps walking. “They’re all top-100 DJs?”
“They all have dicks!”
I shout it loud enough the entire block looks over.
* * *
“A donut break was a good idea,” Callie says as we head out the door of the place a few blocks from the charity, our small paper bags in hand, later that afternoon.
“I was in the neighborhood.”
“This is LA. No one’s ever in the neighborhood.”
“I had a meeting about this huge festival, Wild Fest, at Santa Monica and Sepulveda.”
“What’s there?”
“Nothing, I mean actually on the street corner. I chased down one of the organizers and made her talk to me.”
She laughs. “And how did it go?”
“I think she’s going to come to my gig in Long Beach next weekend. Which reminds me, I need to confirm specs with them.” I frown and make a mental note because I haven’t heard from them since returning from Ibiza.
“Well, if Wild Fest doesn’t want you, they’re nuts. Do you remember when we were in high school? The first gig you played?”
“You held my hand.”
“Literally.” Callie’s lips twitch. “You were shaking.”
I’d been mixing my own music for a year when I got the chance to play a party. A friend of a friend—at least a friend of one of the girls who had been my friend at the time.
It had been dark, and I was alone in the back.
Until I took over the booth.
There I could be anyone. I didn’t need to justify myself or defend my feelings. All I had to do was play.
“I’m surprised you chased that woman down. You must be desperate. Lurking is more your style than full-on attack.”
“Maybe my style is changing.” I’m changing , I realize as I cut her a look. “I’m opening a club for Harrison King.”
My cousin’s smile falls away. “What?”
“It’s in Burbank. He’s not a bad guy, Callie.”
“He’s a billionaire who lives in the tabloids. Yes, LA is full of people like that. But not ones we hang out with. At least, not who we hung out with growing up,” she amends.
“Harrison’s intense. He pushes, and with anyone else, I’d tell them to fuck right off. The reason it works is I don’t have to live in the past with him.”
“Because he doesn’t know your past?” she counters.
“Because I don’t have to get into that shit. We can have fun.”
“Fun?” She arches a brow as I grab her arm.
“Yes. He’s fun.”
She rolls her eyes, and I laugh.
“You mean the sex is fun.”
I pull my donut from the bag, swipe a finger through the icing, and lick it off. “The sex doesn’t suck.”
Last night at his place was beyond hot. The first time we were together in Ibiza, the sex was desperate and hurried. This time, I got a taste for how he’d be in bed if we were together.
Not that we made it to the bed.
He demanded I fall in line the way he does when we’re clothed. The difference is when we’re naked, I’m tempted to give that power up to him. Probably because I know I’ll benefit from it in the form of orgasms I could never give myself.
I’ve never wanted to trust a man with my body or my heart.
That’s why when he texted me a few hours ago, I didn’t rush to reply. It’s not about pretending I’m unavailable. It’s about reminding myself I’m not available, in the sense that I’m not going to start jumping every time my phone goes off thinking it’s him like a teenager with a crush. I want more, but there’s a big difference between wanting to christen every surface of his penthouse condo and letting him into my deep, dark secrets.
“I guess I’m protective,” my cousin goes on. “This guy dates models and buys clubs and owns yachts?—“
“He charters yachts.”
“—and you’re my cousin. We used to watch South Park and make fun of the preppy snobs and talk about how much better life would be when we didn’t have to deal with those people.”
“We’re having fun,” I insist, although my heart beats faster. “I’m not marrying him.”
Even if he intended to go there again with a woman, it would probably take the rest of her life just to read the prenup.
Callie nods after a moment. “Speaking of weddings...I’m still surprised you didn’t open up to Kian back then.”
My fingers tighten, and I drop my donut. “Motherfucker.”
“Sorry.”
I pick it up and toss it in a nearby trash can. “Kian wouldn’t have wanted me to tell him what happened. He’d only feel like shit about it.”
The past dredges up feelings of weakness, of powerlessness, and the people who never noticed.
“Maybe he should feel like shit about it.” I shake my head. “I know I was giving you a hard time about Harrison, because I can’t see you with a guy like that. But if you don’t let anyone in, you forget how. It’s a different kind of pain. A slow one, a subtle one.”
I squint into the sun. “You know what’ll be a slow, subtle pain? Watching Kian deliver a romantic speech at the wedding.”
Callie’s laugh almost makes me forget her words.
* * *
Harrison: Need your take on some new equipment.
His text is imperious, but since I agreed to play opening night in exchange for an exorbitant fee, it makes sense I’d do it.
So, it’s before noon the next day when I head to Burbank.
Despite the dozen trucks in the lot, when I head in the side doors, only a handful of tradespeople are working. There’s no sign of Harrison or Leni—until a roar goes up from the office, the door half open. I head that way and see nearly twenty people gathered around a television screen.
“Wrong time of year for an Oscar party,” I comment.
Harrison crosses to me, doing a slow, thorough sweep of my figure. “It’s Ash’s first match of the year. They refused to keep working once I put it on, and I don’t have the heart to kick them out. You’re out of bed before noon. Are you unwell?”
His firm mouth tips up at the corner, and I shake my head at his mocking expression.
“I’m fine.”
It’s not entirely true. Since talking with Callie about the wedding, I’ve been spinning over the idea of confronting my past there and what she said about letting people in.
A roar goes up again, and I snap my gaze to the screen. “Who scored?”
“No one,” Leni comments. “It was close though.”
“That’s the noise you make when someone almost scores?”
Harrison chuckles, and Leni offers a wry smile. Though I’m not a sports fan, I can tell Ash is really fucking good. He moves the ball easily up the field, passing effortlessly.
“Where’s this equipment?”
Harrison brushes a thumb down my cheek before I can stop him. “I’ll show you tonight over dinner.”
I look around the room. “I thought you wanted me to come look at gear on-site.”
“The equipment will be custom order, Raegan,” he says as if I’m being deliberately slow. “You inferred I meant here.”
“You say jump and I say how high?” I return his stare because, dammit, he could’ve sent me a link rather than waiting for me to drag my ass down here.
Harrison tugs me to the back of the room. “Let me be clear. I enjoy you. Naked and under me, but all the other ways too. I won’t apologize for wanting to see you.”
“Being seen together in LA is serious, Harrison.”
“Then maybe I’m serious.”
His smoldering blue eyes pin me in place, but it’s his earnest tone that leaves me speechless.
Images of TMZ and ET articles splash through my mind. People speculating exactly why we’re together. The career I’m trying to build being subordinated to an online dialogue about whether it’s a hot affair or whether we’re in love. Who I am reduced to a ranking on the “Most Unexpected Couples” list.
I turn away, shoving a hand through my hair before stepping out of the office. He follows, pulling the door after him.
“Whatever you think you want,” I say, “it isn’t that. Maybe it’s companionship. Someone to share your bed who also has your back?—“
“Just go the fuck out with me, Raegan.”
My chest tightens. There’s a question I’ve been needing to ask, but one that exposes me more that I can stand. “Why me?”
If I expect him to hesitate, he doesn’t. “Because under the layers of doubt and questions, you’re a woman who knows what she wants and how to get it. The day you see it, I want to be there.”
Would it be so bad to fall for Harrison King?
Would he even be there to catch me if I did?
A roar goes up from the other side of the door, and Harrison leans in.
“Now someone scored,” Leni calls.
I poke my head in too, and my gaze finds Ash on the screen, a huge grin on his face as teammates carry him up the field.
Something nudges my foot, and I glance down to see Harrison’s dress shoe leaning against my sandal.
“What’s with the heels?” he murmurs.
“I’m breaking them in to wear for my brother’s wedding next month.”
His gaze sharpens. “I’m partial to weddings. We met at one, if you recall.”
“I chewed you out.”
“I loved every second of it.”
Part of me blooms, a tiny flower in my chest that’s never dared look for the light.
“Wear those tonight when I take you for dinner. I want to fuck you in them.” He brushes his lips over mine, and heat streaks straight to my core, settling into a low ache between my thighs.
“Dinner doesn’t lead to sex,” I say when he pulls back.
“I would never make such a basic assumption about two people as complicated as we are, Raegan.”
“Good.”
His gaze traces my lips, the same path his mouth just did. “But dinner will lead to fighting. And fighting will lead to sex.”