Chapter 6
Chapter Six
“Do you want me to find somebody else to do the teaching?”
Seamus and his team were all in the big black SUV heading down to Santa Fe together. He hadn’t exactly told them what Dawson had done. He’d just mentioned that the guy had pissed him off.
He knew he wasn’t some hardscrabble kid who’d always had it tough. He was a nepo baby actor. He also knew a lot of people didn’t have any respect for him, but he was paying the man’s salary. The least he could do was be decent.
So, he figured they would stay at the ranch all day when they were working, but on their days off, he wanted to be someplace where he didn’t to put up with that shit.
“You can talk to Coke about it, or Mr. Dillon when we get back, but I’m sure he’ll be fine teaching. I just don’t want to have to spend time with him when I’m off work.”
“Sure, honey.” Jess gave him a tight smile. “I’m sorry. I really thought this would work out well.”
“Hey, you have nothing to apologize for,” Christopher growled. “You didn’t do anything wrong. If that dickhead can’t do his job, then the school will just have to find someone who can.”
“I’m sure he can do his job,” Seamus said. “I just got my panties in a wad and I wanted out of there. I didn’t want to have to look at those people and know they think I was completely pointless for the whole weekend.”
Nick sucked his teeth a bit. “What the hell did he say to you, anyway? You might as well tell us.”
“It wasn’t even one real thing. It was a bunch of things piled on top of each other. I offered to let you work with him on physical therapy, Nick.” At Nick’s look, he shrugged. “I know, I know, but he seemed like he could use it.”
“What else?” Jess patted his shoulder. “I know that wouldn’t have done it, growling at you about offering.”
“It was the whole thing where he just couldn’t believe my life was my life, and how he acted like I was some big baby because I was happy about it. Then he asked me if I was real.”
“Ah.” Christopher’s low exhalation told him everybody got it now. That was something he was sensitive about, so sue him. Of course he was real. Just because he did playacting for a living didn’t mean he didn’t know how to be an honest, genuine person.
He hated it when people confused him with characters he played, which they did all the time. Not that Dawson had done that or anything, but it pissed him off.
“Well, you can have a nice long weekend here at St. Francis. You can go to the spa at the hot springs. It’ll be great.” Nick gave him a thumbs-up in the rearview mirror. He and Christopher always sat in the front seat.
“I think that’ll be great. Just give me a chance to breathe a minute and not be so sensitive. You know I’ll get my head on right, I’ll go back there, and I’ll be brilliant.” He needed to stop being gutted by some cowboy calling him names.
They pulled up in front of the hotel in Santa Fe, and Christopher rumbled, “Whoa, what the fuck is all this?”
A bunch of reporters—he wouldn’t call them paparazzi because they didn’t have the look of that kind of hungry crowd—stood in front of the hotel. There were also a bunch of people with signs saying things like, Seamus, we love you.
“This is not cool.” Nick turned a hard glance on Christopher. “You need to go find out who tipped them off.”
“Give me a few minutes, guys. Seamus, stay in the car.”
She got her phone and started tapping things out on it, probably looking for another place to stay, while Topher hopped out of the car and locked it behind him, so nobody could step in, and stormed into the hotel, making a path through the crowd, standing on the sidewalk.
“Hold up a minute, Jess. Let’s see what happens. I imagine somebody at the hotel actually tipped off the locals. I can’t see the school doing it, not even that Dawson guy. But if this is how it’s going to be, I’m not going to be able to stay here in town.”
Jess glanced up at him and then sighed. “No, but maybe I can find you something in one of the smaller towns where they’re not quite so used to celebrity sightings.”
He shrugged, feeling completely overwhelmed and let down. He’d really been looking forward to this whole experience. “I can just go back and stay in my guest house for the weekend. Just get them to bring me my meals.”
“That’s not nice. That would suck.”
“Besides, I would cook for you,” Nick said. “I wouldn’t make you eat that stuff.”
‘Yeah.” That came out even more mournful than ever. Honestly, he would love to eat some of the ranch’s food—hamburgers or pie or something with some damn carbs in it. He was running off enough calories every day that he could have that stuff.
“The Inn of the Seven Graces can get you in tonight, Shay. They’ve got a lovely little casita with three bedrooms. It’s private.
They’re very used to having celebrities there.
We can book that, and if we want, I can start looking for a house to rent for us, and we can just drive you in for your training.
It might be easier.” Jess sighed softly and shook her head.
Seamus grinned back at her. “It’s not your fault. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. I was just looking for something fun. I mean, let’s be honest, I did kind of rent this place out for six weeks.”
“You did.” She smiled at him. “And we can just simply demand that you be left alone on your days off, if you want, or we can go into Albuquerque. There’s Taos.
” She was trying so hard, and Seamus loved her for it.
“This hotel here, though? It’s on the oldest road in the country, apparently, and it’s got all this beautiful tile work.
You want to see?” She showed him some pictures on her phone, and he had to admit, it was stunning.
The colors were glorious, and it looked cozy and luxurious, even if he couldn’t use the fireplace this time of year.
“You get concierge service, of course,” she continued. “And they’ll bring us breakfast.”
He chuckled. “Let’s be honest, at that cost, they’ll bring us anything we want.”
“Yeah, that’s part of the deal, right? To get anything you want.”
He glanced out of the window at the fans, thought about driving back to the school in the middle of the night like a spoiled teenager. “All right, book it, and tell them I don’t want any problems. I want someone to just bring us in.”
She nodded. “Let me talk to them on the phone. I can have it booked in two shakes without mentioning your name. Then we’ll just tell them as we pull up and get them to give us some private parking. Fair?”
“Fair, yeah.” He kept his head down. All the people who had kind of gotten riled up when they pulled up had calmed back down, and they were back to talking to each other, looking around trying to figure out where he was going to be coming in from.
Sometimes, this sort of thing was fun, but not very often.
He’d grown up around it, and he knew it was part of being a celebrity. So he wasn’t mad. It was part of the game.
Right now, he was tired, and he didn’t want to play the game. He wanted to chill out and relax. He wasn’t asking to walk the streets and be anonymous. He was asking to be able to go to a hotel room and close his eyes.
Christopher came back out, his eyes hard as fuck, lips in this tight, straight line. He didn’t say anything, didn’t even acknowledge the fans or the press, just walked right up to the car, slid in, and started it.
Seamus knew better than to ask. Christopher would talk when he was ready.
They pulled away, and the temptation to roll down the window and wave was huge.
“One of the clerks found out. She told her friend, so her friend could come sit in the lobby and, apparently, her friend got on the phone to everybody in Santa Fe.”
Well, at least that made sense.
“Where are we going, Jess?” Topher growled.
“The Inn of the Five Graces. We’re getting a casita; it’s got a kitchen and everything.”
“Cool, that’s what I wanted to hear, but wait until we’re sitting out in the parking lot to book it, or better yet, we’ll pull up, and you can go in and book it. That way we don’t have to worry about this nonsense.”
“Perfect. Somebody lost their job tonight, and it wasn’t me!” Nick sounded so cheery that even Christopher grinned.
Seamus had to tease, “Was that a smile? Did he just smile?”
“Nope, that was a baring of the teeth.” Christopher flipped him off in the rearview mirror, and Seamus actually chuckled, feeling so much better. His team had his back, and that was all that mattered.
Seamus would lick his wounds for a couple of days, and then he’d gear up, pull up his pants, and go back to that school and show that asshole bull fighter that he was not somebody to be fucked with. He knew how to do his job. He was good at it.
He was a real boy, no matter what they said about him in the press. And he was going to prove it to Dawson one way or the other.
Dawson bubbled in the hot tub for a goodly bit of the two days that Seamus Givens was gone.
Nate and Dillon had both been a little more concerned and possibly more profane than Coke had been about how Dawson had run the man off. But nobody had fired him, and they hadn’t really even yelled.
It didn’t matter.
The most devastating thing was Coke’s disapproval, and Dawson couldn’t deny it. His mentor, Sterling, who had just retired from working the big tour, thought Coke hung the moon, and Dawson felt like an idiot for making him upset.
So he took a good long hard look at his behavior and decided Coke was right.
Seamus hadn’t given him any reason to treat the man like an asshole.
It was his own prejudices showing. So, he needed to do his job, keep his head down for six weeks, and let Seamus go away at the end feeling like he’d accomplished something.
Finally on Sunday when he knew Seamus was probably going to be coming in the evening, he dragged his ass out of the hot tub and called Sterling, who would be back from traveling with his stock contractor husband and their bucking bulls.