“You’re a dreadful flirt.”
“I’m aware.”
“And, like I said, I don’t mix business with pleasure.”
“You know where I am when you change your mind.”
Her chest rose on a deep breath, and she shook her head, but her lips tipped up. “You are persistent, I’ll give you that.”
“And I’ll take it.”
Yawning, she stretched her arms overhead. “It’s late, and I have an early flight. As much fun as this is, I gotta get my beauty sleep.”
“Any more beautiful and it’d be unfair to womankind.”
“Good Lord, you have all the patter, don’t you?”
I chuckled, rising to my feet. “What can I say? You bring out the best in me.”
“Or the worst.”
She followed me to the entrance hallway. When I turned to say goodnight, she was right there. Close, so close. Her sweet scent enveloped me, and I breathed her in. I lingered, not wanting to leave but knowing my time was up.
“Goodnight, Joz. I’ll see you at the press conference on Monday.”
“You will.”
Drinking her in for the last time, I risked reaching out to tuck a lock of plum hair behind her ear. I swore she shivered, or maybe that was me.
“Goodnight, Aspen.” I turned around, opened the door, and walked away. The urge to look over my shoulder evaporated at the soft sound of a door closing behind me. Still, I looked.
She’d gone.
The hollow feeling that had made me return here in the first place came back, and by the time I trudged into my loftapartment at almost one o’clock in the morning, I felt emptier than I had in a long while.
Thinking about Caroline often had this effect on me, which was the main reason I tried not to let my mind go there. But sharing even a snippet of my self-hatred with Aspen had opened the floodgates, and I couldn’t find the energy to slam them shut again.
The first fingers of light inched through the curtains before I managed to fall asleep, but even there, rest proved impossible. I woke, drenched in sweat, the familiar nightmare slowly fading. Except this time, it wasn’t Caroline’s lifeless body that had haunted my dreams.
It was Aspen’s.
Chapter 9
Aspen
What a complete and utter disaster.
Pryinginto someone else’s business wasn’t something I was remotely proud of, but after Joz left my suite last week in the early hours of Thursday morning, I’d opened my laptop and began researching.
It hadn’t occurred to me to probe into Joz’s past before I signed him. Presley was different. As an unknown, signing him came with risk, whereas Joz was a megastar with a proven track record, talented, a little sad, incredibly flirtatious. But as I read through the details of what he’d been through, I understood why he’d acted the way he had over the song I’d asked him about.
Caroline Bevan, a twenty-one-year-old model, and Joz’s girlfriend at the time, had overdosed on heroin, leaving behind a one-year-old child with Down Syndrome. The details were scant, and I got the feeling Joz’s team had closed ranks, but it was clear that he blamed himself in some way for what had happened to Caroline. The words of the song said everything about how he felt, although this added context made his guilt even more stark.
From what I’d gathered, they hadn’t been dating all that long before she died. A few months or so. I wondered if he kept in touch with her son. Not that I had any intention of asking him. Privacy was important to my family, and I’d already stepped over Joz’s boundaries, even if everything I’d read was public record. If he’d wanted me to know about Caroline, he’d have told me. Clearly, he didn’t.
I’d put my laptop away at that point and gone to sleep, but my dreams were filled with a guilt-ridden Joz and a motherless little boy who wouldn’t be quite so little anymore.
Even now, five days later, and back on home turf, I couldn’t shake the disappointment that I’d pried. I should have left well alone. Joz’s private life was none of my business unless it interfered with his contractual obligations.
