Chapter 5
“And then Zach put the whole cupcake in his mouth!” Annie danced on the balls of her feet, spinning and twirling and tugging at Derek’s sleeve. “Daddy, did you hear me? He can eat a cupcake in one bite.”
“I heard you, peanut.” He set their bags down on the front step of the cottage at the edge of the Hotel Bellwether property, his head pounding, and patted his pockets. Where had he put the key card?
“And Nico said the hotel is haunted,” Annie said, eyes wide. “I’ve never met a real live ghost before.”
“There’s no such thing as ghosts,” Derek said.
“That’s not what Nico says.”
Derek grunted. “Remind me to thank him for that.”
“Beckett and Jackson were talking about a restaurant that poisons you,” Annie said in a comically loud whisper. “Can we go? Can we go, Daddy?”
He turned out his pants pocket. Still no key card. “Let’s get inside and then we can figure out—”
“Do you think it’s real poison? Lainey McKenna said she got poisoned once but it was really an allergic reaction. I don’t think it counts as being poisoned if you’re allergic to strawberries.”
“Who’s Lainey McKenna? Is she a new friend?” Derek asked, pausing in his hunt for the key card.
“She’s a girl at my school. She doesn’t like ghosts or the Phoenix Princess or anything fun.” Annie clapped her hands together as her thoughts darted on to the next thing. “I bet the Phoenix Princess would love a poison restaurant.”
Derek sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “It’s not a poison restaurant. It’s called The Poison Place because it’s near the poison plant garden.”
“A poison plant garden?” Annie screeched in excitement. “We have to go there.”
“We will. I just have to find where I put the key—”
“I’ve got it.” Jo stepped around him and the little tornado of energy at his side to press a key card to the sensor beside the front door.
The lock whirred and clicked, and she pushed the door open, catching Annie’s hand as she made another rotation around Derek’s legs and seamlessly twirling her through the door.
“What qualifies as poison, do you think?” she asked Annie.
“Chocolate is poisonous to dogs but not to people. Is that poison?”
Annie laughed. “No! We’re talking about people poison.”
Derek dropped the bags inside the door and let it slam behind him.
He winced at the answering bang, his temples throbbing.
A transcontinental flight was always tiring, but this one had been especially brutal.
Between his lack of sleep the night before (not that he was complaining about that), Annie’s boundless energy, and the Midnight Storm band members’ antics—including far too much flirting with Jo in his opinion—Derek was in desperate need of a shower and a good night’s sleep.
“Why don’t we get settled and then we can go check out this restaurant?” he offered.
Annie squealed, bounding across the room to scoop up her backpack before darting down the hall. “I want to pick out my room first!”
“No running, please,” Derek called after her. He glanced at Jo. How did she still manage to be picture-perfect after a seven-hour flight? “She’ll settle down now that we’re here,” he said.
Jo’s eyebrows shot up in surprise at his apologetic tone. “Are you kidding? She’s great.”
Pride bloomed in his chest. “She is.” From down the hall, his daughter’s excited squeak announced that she had, in fact, chosen a bedroom. “I should probably find out if this restaurant has chicken nuggets.”
“Way ahead of you,” Jo said. “I looked up the menu while we were on the plane. Chicken nuggets and personal cheese pizzas are on the menu at almost every restaurant in the resort. And chocolate milk. Annie was very concerned about that part.”
Something warm flickered in his chest knowing she’d taken the time to look up not only the menu for that evening but every menu in the resort, that she’d been concerned about his daughter having access to her beverage-of-choice…
“You’re so good with her.” The words passed his lips before he could think better of it.
Jo smirked. “You sound surprised.”
“Not surprised. Pleased. Grateful.”
She bit her lip and looked away, pink rising in her cheeks, and suddenly that warmth in his chest was sliding down his spine.
“Daddy,” Annie’s concerned voice snapped him out of his rapid descent into inappropriate thoughts as his daughter appeared in the doorway to the hall. “Where’s Jo going to sleep?”
“In a bed, silly,” Jo said. “Want to show me which room is mine?”
“But there aren’t enough rooms.” Her furrowed brow melted into a delighted smile. “Are we having a sleepover? I’ve never had a sleepover before. The bed in my room is ginormous!”
“What do you mean there aren’t enough rooms?
” Derek moved past his daughter and down the hall.
He’d specifically instructed his assistant to change his reservation to one of the cottages with three bedrooms. But as he threw open the doors that lined the hall, his stomach sank, gut twisting.
There were only two bedrooms. Two very large bedrooms, each with its own king-size bed and luxurious en suite bathroom, but only two bedrooms all the same.
“There’s been a mistake.” He pulled out his phone and thumbed through his text messages with Luke.
“It’s fine,” Jo said. “I can sleep on the couch.”
“My bed is really big,” Annie said again, snagging Jo’s hand and tugging her to see. “We can share. I don’t snore or anything and I’m really good at braiding hair.”
“I’m sure you are,” Jo said. “My hair’s a little short for braiding, though.
” She gathered her hair in one fist to demonstrate, tugging on the platinum strands, and suddenly all he could picture was the way he’d done the same thing the night before.
How she’d arched her back and whimpered when he’d slid inside her, how she’d begged for her climax.
Stop. She’s the nanny. No fucking the nanny. No thinking about fucking the nanny.
He dialed his assistant and marched back to the living room, putting enough space between himself and Jo to adjust the traitorous bulge in his pants without her noticing.
Luke answered on the second ring. “If you’re calling about the video from Paris, don’t worry.
I already handled it. The woman who posted it has been served a cease and desist, and the IT team is scrubbing it from the web as we speak. ”
“What video?”
“Apparently Jackson and a woman wearing head-to-toe body paint—”
“Never mind. I don’t want to know,” Derek sighed.
If he was going to get through the next few days without being a total dick to the most famous member of Midnight Storm, it was better that he not know about whatever fresh scandal the pop star had started.
Sometimes being the guy trying to get their careers back on track felt a hell of a lot more like corralling feral cats.
“Why does this cottage only have two bedrooms?”
“Didn’t you see my text?” On the other end of the line, Derek could hear the steady clacking of Luke’s keyboard as he typed, no doubt firing off an interoffice memo letting the other assistants know to avoid mentioning the video to their grumpy boss.
“Hotel Bellwether is packed because of NostalgiCon. There weren’t any open cottages or villas with three bedrooms. I can get you three separate rooms in one of the towers, but they wouldn’t all be together—different floors, and you’d be on the other side of the property from the band.
I figured you’d rather have two rooms in a cottage and stay close to the artists. ”
He pinched the bridge of his nose and forced himself to breathe. It wasn’t Luke’s fault that the hotel didn’t have any empty cottages.
Luke continued, “There should be two king beds and a sofa bed in the living room. I can find something off property if you want, but—”
“It’s fine. Thank you. We’ll make it work.”
“Call me if you change your mind,” Luke offered, still typing.
He knew he’d regret asking, but he couldn’t help himself. “How bad is the video?”
Luke hesitated, and Derek could picture the pinched expression he got when he was weighing two equally shitty options. “Not as bad as Ibiza, but worse than Mykonos.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“Daddy, you’re not supposed to say that,” Annie admonished from somewhere behind him.
“Make it disappear,” he said. “And scan for others that might be out there. Where there’s one video—”
“There’s usually more.”
The line disconnected with a click and Derek slid his phone back into his pocket as the pain in his temples surged. Getting Midnight Storm back on tour was going to be the death of him.
Just one more tour.
All he had to do was ensure NostalgiCon went off without a hitch, get his partners at the label to see they were ready to tour again, and see Midnight Storm through one last stadium tour.
One last tour to make sure the band he’d been with from the start was alright, that his life’s work wasn’t so easily destroyed by a pop star with a self-destructive streak.
One last tour before he could stop spending so much time on the road and be the father Annie deserved.
They were supposed to be halfway done with Midnight Storm’s comeback tour by now, not just getting started, but ever since Beckett’s knee injury had brought things to a sudden halt back in January—after only two cities, no less—the label had gotten twitchy.
And if his partners knew the full story, they’d pull the plug altogether.
NostalgiCon had to go well if Derek had any hope of convincing them the band was ready to pick up where they left off.
And that meant no scandals.
“Everything alright?”
He turned to find Jo leaning in the doorway to the living room, concern crinkling her forehead.
At some point she’d reapplied her makeup, wiped away the smudges beneath her eyes and done something to make her cheekbones look sharper.
His tired eyes skimmed over her curves, the dip of her waist and the swell of her hips, the jut of her collarbone, the soft brush of her hair over the top of her shoulder.
He wanted to press his lips to that spot, to wrap her in his arms and feel her nails along his back, just until the pounding in his head stopped.
“Keep looking at me like that, and I might get the wrong idea,” she said softly, arching an eyebrow at him.
He pressed his thumb and forefinger into his closed eyelids. “Sorry.”
Her laughter was light, husky, and it took everything in him not to drink the sound directly from her lips. “Don’t apologize to me, daddy fox. You’re the one who made the rules.”
He could think of a thousand rules he’d like to break with her, most of which ended with them both too tired to move.
But that wasn’t what they were doing here.
This was a business arrangement, one that could seriously hurt his daughter if he wasn’t careful.
And Derek Owens was always careful. There were too many people who depended on him for him not to be.
“Poison time?” Annie asked as she skipped into the room, catching Jo’s hand and swinging it back and forth. “I want Jo to sit next to me.”
Derek’s heart squeezed. In only a matter of hours, Annie had already gotten attached to Jo. It would be hard for her to say goodbye when they left California in a few days, and he was determined not to make it any more difficult.
Three more days and then they’d go their separate ways.
He could control himself for three days.