Chapter 12 #3
Ashton woke with a sense of dread, knowing he had to leave Jill and get back to work.
He’d already been gone a day longer than planned, and there was no postponing the inevitable.
In the faint early morning light coming in through the blinds, he could see her gorgeous face and her dark hair on the pillow.
He’d never get tired of looking at that face. He ran a finger over her cheek, reluctant to disturb her but wanting her to know he was leaving.
Her eyes fluttered open, blinking several times. “You’re awake early.”
“I have to go to work.”
“Oh.”
“The party had to end sometime.”
“I suppose so.”
He wondered if she knew that the knitting of her brows gave away her worries.
“Just because the vacation is over doesn’t mean this is.
” With an arm around her, he brought her in snug against him, loving the feel of her skin pressed against his.
“This,” he said, kissing her neck and then her lips, “is just getting started.”
She put her arm around him and caressed his back, sending shivers of sensation skittering over his skin. She stirred him like no other woman ever had, like no other woman ever would.
He held her for a long time, hating that he had to leave her even for a few hours. “See you for dinner tonight?”
“That sounds good.”
“What do you have on for today?”
“I’m not sure, exactly. I guess I’ll wait for Kate to get home so she can tell me this big plan of hers.”
“Whatever it is, you can handle it. I know you can.”
“I guess we’ll see.”
He drew back so he could look into her eyes. “Last night was amazing.”
She nodded. “Very much so.”
“I don’t want to go.”
Her fingers skimmed over his chest and down to encircle his straining erection.
“I can tell,” she said with a small shy smile.
As she stroked him, Ashton forgot all about work and about the nine o’clock meeting with Buddy that had been on the calendar for weeks.
His world was reduced to her soft hand on his hard shaft.
“Jill…”
She tightened her grip, stroked him harder. “Hmm?”
He shuddered. “God.”
Her soft laughter filled his heart to overflowing. She knew exactly what she was doing to him, and she loved it.
“You’d better stop,” he said, though that was the last thing in the universe he wanted.
Apparently, she knew that because she added her other hand, working him over until he filled her hands with his release.
“There,” she said, kissing his chest and then his lips. “Now you can go to work without that pesky thing bothering you all day.”
He released an unsteady laugh. “That pesky thing, as you call it, will bother me all day because I’ll be thinking about that. And you.”
With one last kiss, he reluctantly got out of bed and headed for her shower, where he was unable to find soap that didn’t smell like her. Oh well, he thought, as he rubbed it all over his skin, smelling like her wouldn’t be any more torturous than thinking about her all day.
He emerged dressed and ready to go to find she’d fallen back to sleep. Leaning over the bed, he kissed her cheek and smiled when she murmured in her sleep.
“I love you,” he whispered in her ear.
Driving away from her was one of the hardest things he’d ever done.
“You’re being totally ridiculous,” he said to himself as he drove down the long lane that led to the main road.
As he drew closer to the gate that kept Kate’s property sealed off from the rest of the world, he stopped when he saw the road lined with satellite trucks and a horde of reporters.
“Shit.” He banged a U-turn and returned to Jill’s place. When he got to the door, he realized he’d locked it on the way out and uttered a curse. He pulled out his cell phone and called her, hoping the ringing phone would wake her.
“Hey, miss me already?” she asked in a sleepy, sexy voice that stirred his recently satisfied libido. Everything about her stirred him.
“Absolutely, but we have a little problem. The press is camped outside the gate.”
“Shit,” she said, sounding much more awake.
“I said the same thing.”
“I need to warn Kate. They’re on the way home.”
“Come down and let me in.”
“Oh, you came back?”
“Yeah, I came back. I don’t want to leave you here by yourself with this.”
“I thought you needed to go to work.”
“I do, but I was thinking maybe you should come with me. You could stay at my place in town until this blows over.”
“What about Kate? She’s going to need me.”
“If they’re smart, they won’t come anywhere near here when they hear about the press invasion.”
“True.”
“So you’ll come?”
She opened the front door for him as she ended the call. “Give me ten minutes to grab a quick shower and throw some clothes in a bag.”
“That’s about all I’ve got.” He’d already accepted that he wouldn’t have time to go home and change. Good thing his meeting was only with Buddy, who wouldn’t care if Ashton met him wearing jeans. Buddy’s mantra was the more casual the better.
True to her word, Jill came running down the stairs ten minutes later, wearing a sweater and jeans tucked into boots. Her hair was contained in a ponytail, and she carried a backpack. She stopped short when she noticed him smiling at her. “What?”
“You look like an eighteen-year-old coed.”
“I was in a rush.”
“I didn’t say that was a bad thing, darlin’.”
“Oh, that’s right. The men in your family like them young.”
“That’s not nice,” he said with a laugh as he ushered her out the door.
“Sorry,” she said with a sheepish grin. “That was a softball.”
He held the door to the truck for her and then walked around to the driver’s side. When he was in the truck, he reached into the backseat for a jacket he kept there. “Want to put this over your head so they don’t recognize you?”
“You really think that’s necessary?”
“Unless you want Kate to find out we’re together before you’re ready to tell her, I’d say it’s necessary.”
As he pulled up to the gatehouse to punch in the code she’d given him the day before, Jill squirmed down in the seat and pulled his jacket over her head. The instant the gate swung open, Ashton hit the gas, propelling the truck forward too quickly for the reporters to react.
He glanced in the rearview mirror and saw a few of them giving chase, but they drove quickly out of range. “It’s safe to come out.”
Jill popped up and ran a hand over her hair, glancing back at the mob scene outside the gate. “Wow,” she whispered. “So much for the story dying a natural death.”
“You need to warn your sister that she’s coming back to a hornet’s nest.”
Jill withdrew her phone from her bag. “Damn, it went right to voice mail,” she said. “Kate, it’s me. The media is camped at the gate. You might want to avoid the house for the time being. Call me when you get this message.”
“Let me try my dad,” Ashton said, dialing as he drove. “Great. His went right to voice mail, too. Dad, you guys might want to avoid Kate’s place. I heard it’s crawling with reporters. Call me when you land.” He glanced over to find Jill staring out the window, nibbling on her thumbnail. “Hey.”
She turned to him.
“Don’t worry. I know it’s easy for me to say, but this’ll die down eventually.”
“Will she have a career left when it’s over? What if all the mothers of those devoted teenage girls won’t let them listen to her music anymore?”
“I don’t think it’ll come to that.”
“It could if she doesn’t address the fact that she made a mistake.”
Since Ashton couldn’t argue with that, he didn’t try.
Rather he reached for her hand and held it all the way into town.
When they were getting close to his office, he said, “What do you think about coming to my meeting with Buddy? Maybe between the three of us, we can figure out a next step for Kate.”
“You’d do that?”
“Of course I would. Buddy’s label has a lot invested in her. It behooves all of us to figure a way out of this.”
“Oh.”
Ashton pulled into the parking lot next to Buddy’s Escalade. “What does that mean. Oh?”
“I thought maybe you were doing it for Kate and not because of business.”
“I’m doing it for you, silly.” He leaned over to kiss her.
“Oh.”
“There’s that word again.” Tugging on her ponytail, he said, “She’s second only to Buddy in terms of sales for Long Road Records, which makes her problems Buddy’s problems—and mine. But more than anything, I want to see that worry line between your brows disappear.”
She reached up to feel for the line in question. “I don’t have any lines.”
“Yes, you do. Let’s go see what Buddy has to say about all of this.”
Inside, they exchanged greetings with Ashton’s assistant, Debi, who sent him a secret smile when she saw him with Jill. Debi had helped to arrange the car to pick up Jill before their trip to Malibu and had called him out about his crush on her months ago, urging him to act on it.
When Jill wasn’t looking, Debi gave him a thumbs-up.
Ashton rolled his eyes at her and ushered Jill up the stairs to his office where Buddy Longstreet was sitting in Ashton’s chair, feet on the desk, like he owned the place.
“Comfortable?” Ashton asked his godfather.
“Very.” Buddy watched as Ashton held a chair for Jill and waited until she was settled before he sat in the chair next to hers. “Fine mess your sister’s gotten us into.”
Jill winced. “Yes.”
“When’s she coming home?”
“Today.”
“Good. She needs to get her ass out there to defend herself.”
“That’s what I told her,” Jill said. “But apparently she’s got other plans.”
“What other plans?”
“She hasn’t shared them with me yet.”
“Huh.”
“This is all your fault,” Ashton said to Buddy.
“How’s that?”
“You told her where to find my dad.”
“So what if I did? I never told them to get it on outside where anyone might see them.”
Buddy’s indignant tone made Ashton laugh.
“How was Malibu?” Buddy asked.
Ashton glanced at Jill to find her staring at a picture on the wall, her face blazing with color. He hadn’t told Buddy who he was taking on the trip with him, but his arrival with Jill, both of them in unusually casual attire, was a dead giveaway. “Fine.”
Buddy’s golden eyes danced with delight. “I bet it was.”
As he resisted the urge to clobber Buddy, Ashton’s cell phone rang with a call from his dad. Saved by the bell. “Hey, are you back?”
“Just landed. Where are you?”
“At the office with Buddy and Jill.”
“We’ll meet you there.”
“Sounds good.” He ended the call and told Buddy and Jill that Reid and Kate were on their way.
“Well,” Buddy said with a guffaw, settling into the big leather chair, “this is about to get mighty interesting.”