Chapter 8
Rooms shouldn’t be circular.
The geometry of it hurt Derek’s head, and his head already hurt plenty.
He’d spent the night tossing and turning on the sofa bed, despite the surprisingly comfortable mattress, playing back all the little sounds he’d heard through Jo’s door.
Sounds he was confident she’d wanted him to hear.
He’d jerked off in the shower—twice—just to take the edge off, but it hadn’t helped.
How the hell was he supposed to get through the next few days when the nanny was such a goddamn tease?
“Here’s your coffee, bossman.” A short, curvy brunette appeared at his side, holding out a cardboard to-go cup.
“I told you not to call me that.”
Kat always did like to push his buttons, but she was the best damn tour assistant in the business and he was grateful she’d agreed to come back to the job to help him lock down this Midnight Storm tour.
He accepted the cup, taking a sip despite the steam spewing from the opening in the lid and wincing as the bitter drink burned his tongue.
“This is fun,” she said, hooking her arm through his and looking around at the crowded event space. “Literally getting the band back together.”
He grunted in agreement.
At least someone was having a good time. Then again, it wasn’t Kat’s job to worry about whatever the fuck was going on with Jackson. She wasn’t the one who needed to sign off on a comeback that would require the label to invest a dollar amount with far too many zeros for his comfort level.
Still, she wasn’t entirely wrong. There was something kind of fun about being back in the same place as the people he’d built his career with so many years ago.
He liked working with the band he’d championed when he was still new to the music industry and the perky assistant who made sure Zach always had his dirty matcha latte with an extra pump of pistachio.
Derek glanced around the ballroom at the tables of celebrities, all slightly past their prime—the woman who’d starred as her own doppelganger on a children’s TV show side by side with the pop star who had been reduced to little more than a gif on the internet.
Enthusiastic fans decked out in overpriced merch crowded around them, snapping selfies and shoving old CD cases and posters under their noses for signatures.
Above each table, a banner hung from the ceiling with a photograph of the celebrity at the height of their fame.
Midnight Storm’s banner was from the photoshoot for Superfan that ran mere weeks before the band broke up, and only days before Kat had asked for reassignment to another band.
To this day, she’d never divulged what had led to that particular request, though it had turned out to be a moot point in the end.
“I'm glad you came back for this.” Derek took another sip of his scalding coffee. Caffeine was worth the burned tongue.
Her smile turned wooden, a sadness pulling at the corner of her eyes. “Didn’t take much convincing. Those are my guys, whether they want to be or not,” she said, watching as the band posed for another photograph with a middle-aged woman in a faded t-shirt from their last stadium tour.
“Still. Thanks for doing this. I know you’ve moved on to bigger and better things.”
“What could be bigger and better than Midnight Storm?”
Derek stiffened at the sound of Jo’s voice, the back of his neck prickling as the scent of her enveloped him, all green apple and fresh rain. How did someone smell like rain? Logically he knew it was her shampoo, not that her skin smelled like fruit and weather patterns—
Dammit, stop thinking about the smell of her skin.
He turned to find his daughter and the nanny, hand in hand, in matching Hotel Bellwether t-shirts, but where Annie had paired hers with pink and purple polka dot leggings, Jo wore jean cut offs that drew his attention to the long line of her toned, tanned legs.
“Is that Annie?” Kat exclaimed, holding her arms out as his daughter barreled into her waiting hug. “When did you get so big? What are you, twelve now?”
Annie giggled. “I’m seven!”
“What’s with the t-shirts?” Derek asked as his daughter chatted happily with Kat.
“She wanted us to dress in matching outfits.” Jo held the hem of the shirt away from her petite frame, the shift tugging the fabric tightly across her chest. “Do you like them?”
“Daddy, I can read Kat’s books, right?” Annie asked, oblivious to the way Kat grimaced and mouthed ‘Sorry’ behind his daughter’s back. When Kat had left the music business, she’d found a second career as a romance novelist. A fairly successful one, if Beckett was to be believed.
“Kat writes grown-up books, peanut,” Derek said.
“But The Phoenix Princess is for middle schoolers and I’m already on the third book in the series.”
“I bet there are all kinds of awesome books in the library here.”
“There’s a library?” Annie asked, mouth hanging open.
“What do you say, kid? Should we check it out?” Jo asked.
“Do you think they have Kat’s books?”
Jo caught Kat’s eye above Annie’s head, clocking the subtle shake of the assistant’s head before turning her attention back to his daughter. “Only one way to find out.”
“Okay, but only if we can still go ghost hunting,” Annie conceded.
“Where do you think ghosts hang out? Libraries are prime ghost hunting territory,” Jo said.
“You're going ghost hunting?” Derek asked.
Jo grinned, the sparkle in her eyes hitting him square in the chest. “We sure are.”
Annie glanced at the Midnight Storm table. “Can I say hi to Nico first? I want to tell him about that brownie thing at the poison restaurant. He’s going to be so jealous.”
“I was just about to say hi myself,” Kat said, holding her hand out for Annie.
Derek and Jo watched as Annie and Kat made their way across the aisle to Midnight Storm. The excited bounce in Annie’s step turned to a full-on run when Nico waved at her. Jo chuckled, a low, throaty sound, like a secret. “She’s so excited to have something to hang over his head.”
He groaned. “I wish she was as excited to spend time with kids her own age. But Nico’s great with her. He has several younger sisters. I used to bring Annie to the studio with me when Nico was working on his solo album, and the only time she wouldn’t fuss was if he was paying attention to her.”
Jo's laughter bubbled over, like champagne spilling over the rim of the bottle. He wanted to keep making her laugh, to lap up every last drop of that champagne sound. “She’s going to be heartbroken the day he settles down.”
“Nico?” Derek scoffed. “He’s a bigger flirt than Jackson. But he knows how to keep it out of the press.”
“Speaking of the press,” Jo said, pulling her phone from her back pocket and holding it out to him.
Midnight Storm’s social media profile filled the screen.
“How come you don’t have someone from the label’s PR team updating their accounts?
It’s all pre-made graphics. There haven’t been any photos or videos posted on their social media since the ones I took in the airport. ”
“Are the graphics not good?”
“The graphics are fine, but people want to see their faces, hear their voices.” She opened her gallery app and scrolled through a dozen or more photos and videos she’d taken on the airplane and in the hotel lobby during check-in.
She clicked on a video of Beckett and Zach in the van on the drive to the hotel, Beckett picking out a sparse melody on his guitar as Zach hummed along.
“This is what people want. To feel like they’re here with them. ”
“How did you get that on camera? That was only a few minutes and you’ve made it look like they’re deep in a songwriting session.”
Jo shrugged. “You only need a handful of moments to tell a story.” She switched to her own account, photo after perfect photo of her smiling face, videos of her dancing in her living room and singing into one of the high heels from her shoe bookcase, each with hundreds of comments, thousands of likes.
“It has to feel like you’re talking directly to the person on the other side of the screen.
Who’s running the account? I can send them the things I’ve taken.
Or I can post them on my own profile and tag the band.
My followers aren’t likely to be your target demographic, though, unless you’re after dude-bros who think negging a woman is the height of flirtation. ”
“Negging?”
“Saying mean things,” she said with a flutter of her hand as though people being rude to her on the internet was in any way acceptable. “Like when boys pull little girls’ ponytails because they like them.”
Something possessive, protective yawned to life in his chest, a wild animal waking from sleep. “Who the fuck is negging you?”
“Will you focus, please? You’ve got to get something good up on their account. How do you expect to get the fans excited enough to buy tickets to a new tour if you don’t give them something to be excited about?”
She had a point, and he couldn’t believe he hadn’t thought of it.
He cupped the back of his neck, pushing past the simmering rage that anyone was being mean to her online and the embarrassment that he hadn’t had someone in the marketing department come up with a better social media plan.
He was supposed to be giving these guys their best shot at getting back out on the road, gathering all the necessary information to prove how big a Midnight Storm reunion tour would be, and he’d completely forgotten to consider a social media strategy that went beyond the graphic design intern still sitting in his cubicle in Manhattan.
“Would you take over the account?” At her startled expression, he hastened to add, “Just during this trip. You can post whatever you think is best.”
She folded her arms over her chest and frowned. “You want your daughter’s nanny to run the social media account for one of the biggest boy bands on the planet?”
“Why not? You could be the best damn bartender-slash-model-slash-nanny-slash-social media manager in the business,” he challenged.
Her lip quirked up. “I do enjoy being a multi-hyphenate, but I don’t know…” She trailed off, her eyes zeroing in on Annie where she talked animatedly with Nico and Zach.
“I’ll pay you double.”
Her attention snapped to him, her response breathless. “What?”
“Four thousand for watching Annie, and another four for managing the band’s social media accounts.”
She spluttered. “What, are you… made of money?”
He wasn’t the richest guy in the industry—not by a long shot—but he made more than enough to keep him and his family living comfortably. Enough that he could take a step back after Midnight Storm’s next tour and never have to spend another month on the road away from his daughter.
But only if there was a tour to go on.
And Jo was right. If they could get the fans online excited, if they could show how many people were waiting for Midnight Storm to get back out there, then he could almost guarantee his partners at the label would greenlight the tour.
Assuming Beckett didn’t reinjure himself, and Jackson kept his head on straight.
But the twins were another problem entirely, and not one he could solve by throwing a few thousand dollars at it. Lord knew he’d tried.
“You can take Annie with you anywhere you need to go to get content—as long as the guys keep it clean around her. Hell, she’d love an excuse to spend more time with the band. You’re a great nanny—”
“It’s been twenty-four hours,” she scoffed.
“You’re a great nanny,” he repeated, wanting to snuff out whatever bullshit thought had her deflecting the compliment the first time, “and you clearly know this social media shit better than the people I’m paying back in New York.
You’re good at this, Jo. So, come on. Two birds, one stone, eight grand. What do you say?”
She stepped closer, a slow smile spreading across her lips. That look was dangerous. Despite his better judgement, he fucking loved it.
He dug his hands into his pockets to keep from catching her around the waist and pulling her against him, from dragging his nose along her throat to breathe in her apple rain scent straight from the source.
“You better be careful, daddy fox. You keep solving all my money problems and telling me what a good girl I am, and I might feel the need to thank you.”
His cock kicked behind the placket of his pants, his own voice a rough growl. “I don’t believe I called you a good girl.”
“Not in so many words, but you’re speaking to my praise kink all the same.”
He scraped his hand over his jaw. This woman was trying to kill him in the middle of a crowded fan convention.
“Will you let me thank you?” she murmured as she reached towards him.
When she was millimeters from touching his chest, he caught her wrist. Her skin was so soft beneath his palm. It made him want to claim all that softness for himself.
Leaning close, his beard brushing against her ear, he grated out, “The day you thank me, little menace, it’ll be because you believe you’re worthy of the praise, not because I’m paying you.”