“Trust me, I know,” Jude said with a teasing purr.
Nally had just started swallowing his bite and nearly choked on it. It was exactly what Jude needed to shake himself out of the weird feelings that were chasing him. He laughed and hauled Nally away from the wall to bang on his back, like that was helping him not to choke. Nally started laughing instead, which only encouraged Jude to tumble around with him a little more, and within seconds, they were sprawled on the floor laughing.
“Alright, alright, enough silliness,” Jude said at last, mostly because the urge to pull Nally over top of him and to make out with him was far too strong. “Enough of this. We need to get to work.”
He pushed Nally off and stood, lurching back into his desk chair.
“You’re right,” Nally said, breathless and pink-faced. “What should I be doing, though? I thought you said you wanted me to play the piano or something?”
“Yeah. We can go downstairs to the conservatory and I’ll film you playing.”
It was a good idea to get out of the bedroom. Even though they weren’t in the part of his suite that contained the actual bed, just knowing one was nearby, one that had cameras pointed at it, was doing crazy things to Jude’s head.
In the end, going down to the conservatory was the absolute best thing they could have done to put a damper on anything even remotely sexual.
“Is that Nally’s playing I hear?” Jude’s mum said as she walked into the room in the middle of Jude filming Nally playing one of his new compositions.
Nally stopped and Jude sighed and turned to his mom. “We were recording,” he said.
“Oh, I’m so sorry dear,” she said, though the “dear” was directed at Nally, not him.
“It’s alright, Mrs. Cranleigh,” Nally said, smiling up from where he sat at the family’s grand piano. It was a sunny day, and Jude had positioned the piano and the curtains just right to get a gorgeous shot.
“It’s always a pleasure to have you in our home,” Jude’s mum said, walking over to the piano to greet Nally with a cheek kiss.
“I always feel so welcome here,” Nally said in return, scooting over so Jude’s mum could sit on the piano bench with him.
“What were you playing just then?” Jude’s mum asked.
“Something I wrote recently,” Nally answered.
Jude sighed and moved to sit in one of the plush chairs off to one side of the room. His mum adored Nally, and Nally was so polite that he would let her talk his ear off. From the look of things, that was exactly what she intended to do.
It didn’t really matter. There was always work to do. Jude had captured enough video of the practice to whip up a short clip for all of Nally’s social media accounts. While the twobesties talked, he edited and posted the clip, and when that was done, he scrolled through Nally’s DMs to see if anything needed answering.
He stopped cold when he saw the message from NallyFanNo1.
“I saw you at Tesco on Monday. You didn’t even say hello to me. I saw you at Broadcast Hall just a few hours ago, too. Why don’t you ever acknowledge me anymore? Don’t you know I love you?”
The message sent shards of ice down Jude’s spine. He glanced up from his phone. Nally was still chatting away with his mum and playing a couple bars of his work for her. Neither of them glanced his way.
Good. Jude wasn’t sure he’d be able to mask the worry on his face. He didn’t want Nally to know something might not be right.
He let the DM go and scrolled through the rest of the messages. A few others were from people who said they loved Nally and his work. Maybe there was nothing unusual about NallyFanNo1.
If only that was the truth. Jude moved on to post the video to a different platform, and when he checked the DMs on that one, NallyFanNo1 was there, too.
“You’re so beautiful when you’re racing to catch a train. I know you take the train often. You don’t see me riding the train, too, but I’m there.”
Jude swallowed hard and glanced up at Nally and his mum again. They were laughing over something else now. Nally really was a good sport where his mum was concerned.
He looked at his phone again and took a deep breath. He could handle this. It wasn’t the first time he’d encountered an overzealous fan. He’d had a few himself, a few guys who asked him out repeatedly and didn’t like being told no. This wasn’t anything different, or so he told himself.
He switched back to the first platform, which had an easier messaging interface, in his opinion, and clicked on NallyFanNo1 again.
“Thanks for your support, but let’s keep it professional. Have a great day!”
He clicked send on the message, then closed the app and put his phone down, breathing hard, as if he’d run a marathon. With any luck, that would be the end of that and they could all move on to brighter days with Nally being a big star and him riding on his coattails.
