I glare at him, making sure to look directly into the camera at the top of my phone so he gets the full effect. “You’re the one who suggested a coffee date.”
“I didn’t think about the time difference…or the fact that you only have mornings free,” he says with a pout that makes me laugh loudly.
The woman across the lobby of my Dublin hotel looks at me, but she quickly breaks eye contact when I stare right back. Thank goodness I’m wearing earbuds; Sam cannot be trusted in public.
“Well, thank you for deigning to grace me with your presence anyway. I can’t believe you, of all people, aren’t joining JT and Jameo in Australia.”
“Ew. You know I don’t go to places with spiders that size.”
“I don’t think they’re crawling around the stadium.”
“One can never be too careful when it comes to spiders the size of dinner plates and snakes that drop from trees.”
We both visually shiver at the thought.
“Plus,” he continues, “it’s my dad’s sixty-fifth birthday, and my mom is throwing a huge party. I can’t miss it.”
We fall into a natural flow of conversation, and Sam tells me about the new guy he started dating. I fill him in on the tour so far, or at least the parts I can tell him about. Sam, like everyone else in the world, is ahugefan of Jaxon. I remain professionally neutral on the subject, though I have been pleasantly surprised at how good Jaxon is. Not as a musician, I already knew that, but as a human. When I took this assignment, I was worried I’d find out the kid I knew turned into your stereotypical rock star complete with the drugs, women, and temper tantrums. So far, I’ve seen no drugs or temper tantrums. The women, well, it would be a low to normal amount for any single, handsome musician out on tour. Unfortunately, I feel a slight twinge of awkwardness any time it comes through from his personal security detail that he’s bringing a woman back to his room.
I, of course, tell Sam none of this, instead focusing on the information he could find online, like how many people are there, and describing the electric, emotionally charged atmosphere of the crowd each night.
“Okay, but we’ve been talking for thirty minutes now, and you haven’t even mentioned Mr. Dark and Broody,” Sam says, cutting me off midway through a story about a twelve-year-old girl bawling when Jaxon walked out on stage.
“I’m sorry, who?” I ask.
“No. We’re not doing that. Lila told me about your little—or should I say big?—coworker over there, and I’m offended—offended, Kelsey—that you didn’t tell me you were going to spend seven weeks cuddled up with a hunk of handsome man meat? And doing so while the most popular love songs are being crooned at you, live, by Jaxon Steele. Sigh.” He follows up his verbal sigh with a real one, leaning his hoodie-clad elbow on the table and leaning his head on his hand.
“That’s not how it is. We’re just coworkers. We’re actively in competition for the same job.” I’m momentarily pulled back to the conversation I overheard between Carter and Trent in London. The hurt that flared through my chest and into my stomach when he said there was no way they were going to lose to me. The shield of icy calm I’ve kept in place since then. And, the worst part, when I purposefully walked past the empty seat next to Carter on the plane and sat next to Mikayla, Istillturned midflight to tell him my opinion on the movie I was watching, only to realize it wasn’t Carter.
“Oookay,” Sam replies. “But what if—and just bear with me here—you said fuck that and fucked him instead?”
“Yeah, that’s not going to happen.”
“Why not? I know Lila didn’t mislead me about how gorgeous that man is, because despite not being a professional hacker like some people I know—”
“I’m not a hacker,” I cut in.
Sam ignores my interruption and says over me, “—I can cyberstalk with the best of them. So I know he is exactly as handsome as Lila claimed he is, potentially even more.” He pauses. “His hair is perfectly styled, with the short waves on top. He’s your ideal height. I don’t care that Lila and JT are adorable together all big and small, too much over six feet is too tall for you. The man clearly works out, and he doesnotskip leg day. Or arm day.Or chest day. Actually, can you ask him for his chest routine, the pecs on that—no, I’m getting distracted. Where was I?”
I raise an eyebrow, refusing to engage in this line of rapid-fire…truths. Unwanted, but truths nonetheless.
Sam is, unsurprisingly, undeterred. “What is it about eyes that dark that makes me want to dive into them and never resurface?”
Choosing silence seems to be working, so I just stare at my phone.
“So, I expect a full report after you fuck him. And don’t forget to ask him to send me his chest routine.”
“I’m not doing that.”
“Which part?” Sam asks.
“Both. Either.”
“Why?” he gasps as if I just declined to save a kitten desperately hanging from a log in the middle of a river.
“You’re being dramatic.”
“If you don’t tangle your hands in that man’s hair as you kiss him passionately, I will fly over there and do it for you.”
