“Who the fuck cares!” snapped Jacine.
Holmes put his hands on Jacine’s shoulders, which was a mistake.
“Get your hands off me!” yelled Jacine. And though the scrub and trees of the hills usually sop up sounds, her high voice reverberated against the walls of the slopes of the Santa Monica Mountains.
I groan. There is a reason why you usually can hear a pin drop in the Hollywood Hills. It’s because the neighbors, sensitive to the star-studded antics of LA, keep things eerie quiet. You might hear traffic on the road, or the occasional barking of a dog, but otherwise, you would think you were in the middle of the country, which we were not.
It was suburbia. Oh, decidedly upscale, but Mr. And Mrs. America, just the same. Stars lived here on sufferance.
But do Kane, Dys, and Holmes recognize that? No. And before I know it Holmes pushed past Jacine and shoved Kane, who fell into Dys, who pushed him back into Holmes.
And that’s when the fight starts.
“Stop!” screamed Jacine, but that only made things worse. Giving lie to reports that LA police are slow, on this day within five minutes a police car pulls into the driveway flashing its lights.
It didn’t take long for our worse fears to manifest and the Terrible Trio, bruised, sweaty, and dirty were hauled off to the local lock-up.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Jacine
Hell. I watched Cole, Jersey, and Rory cuffed and placed into police cruisers, and I watch my career drive away with them. Level-headed, Tobias put his arm around my shoulder.
“We’ll fix this.”
“Yeah, right,” I said. Never before in my life did I taste a defeat as bitter as this.
“Jacy,” he said. “If anyone could, you can.”
“This is all my fault,” I groan.
“How’s that?” he said gently. Tobias guided me back into the house, and it was good to have a sturdy shoulder I could lean against. I needed this calm, reliability, stability. Everything Tobias had to offer.
“They. I. Oh, I don’t know.” How can I explain that I crossed the line with not just one but all three of my clients? Sure, shenanigans like this were commonplace in Starland, but not at Alexander and Wells.
“Are you trying to tell me you think you led them on?”
Leave it to Tobias to get to the heart of the matter. I swallowed hard, not able to think a clear path out of this mess.
“Sweetheart,” he said. “These guys are used to getting whatever woman they want at the drop of a hat. The problem is, as I see it, no one got anything they wanted.”
“But I shouldn’t have—it was inappropriate—” I can’t even speak in complete sentences. “When the press—” My voice failedagain. I am a grown woman, used to making multi-million dollar decisions and three overgrown teenagers have stolen my ability to think constructively.
Tobias lead me to the sofa, the scene of my last crime, and I groaned again. He kept his arm firmly around me and it was a comfort to have his strong and familiar shoulder to lean on.
“Jacy, these guys are the masters of inappropriate,” he said. “They knew what they were doing all along. The problem is, Princess, that they don’t know you. They don’t know how difficult relationships are for you since your mother left your father.”
Oh god. Not that again. But he was right. My world crashed and burned when my mother took off with an asshole movie producer. Her overdose at his hands was the icing on the cake. He got ten years in jail. I got a lifetime of doubting my choices in men because any boyfriend I had was just like that jerk—too much glitz and glamour. The words “just like your mother” didn’t play well with me because it held the possibility that I could fail as badly as her. So I had sworn off men and buried myself in my work. But apparently, the magic spell of duty and responsibility had melted under the glitter and tinsel of three rock stars; as it would have with my mother. And I knew better. I fucking did.
“But I should have—”
“Should’ve, would’ve, could’ve. You’ll get on the phone, call your team, and start the next round of spinning things.”
“But if they go to jail—”
“Might be the best thing for them. Maybe I’ll ask the judge to try them together and then ask for work release on the day of the concert. I can see it now. All three of them delivered to the Bowl in their LA county prison garb. We’ll call the concert “Work Release.”
The idea was so ridiculous I laughed through my incipient tears. But it was also genius. I could see the press releases now.
