“Nice to meet you.” Jem sat back down, monster hands on his thighs. Then he glanced at his watch, grimaced, and raised his gaze to look at the clock above the door. For the first time, River clocked how red his eyes were. “Hey, do you have the time?”
River was sure Amanda had screened for drugs. Maybe Jem had really bad allergies? “Yeah, it’s ten to.” Jeez. Amanda had actually gotten him here early.
Jem’s shoulders sagged in relief. “Okay, great. Uh, can I ask a favor?”
Already? River hadn’t even agreed to pay him yet.
Before River could answer, Jem said, “I just—I’m supposed to be meeting someone at four, and I thought I’d be really clever and make sure I was here early, but I rushed through putting my contacts in and one of them is inside out. I can barely see and it’s driving me crazy.” He huffed out a breath. “If someone comes in here looking for me, just let them know I’ll be right back.”
“Sure,” River said automatically, his mind for once shocked into silence. What kind of wholesome parallel universe had he stumbled into?
In his imagination, he heard Amanda laughing at him. River took the opportunity to pull out his cell phone and send a text.Are you absolutely serious.He omitted the question mark. She should recognize the intentional lack of it.
Isn’t he perfect!!!!she texted back, also without a question mark.
River didn’t have time to formulate a reply, because the door opened and Jem returned, face scrubbed pink and eyes already returning to normal. Without the irritation, they were a charming dark hazel, fringed with the kind of lashes people paid good money for. River wondered if he had. Probably not; his clothes were nice, maybe even designer, but not new by any means.
“Thank you so much—” Jem started, and then he looked at River with clear eyes for the first time and said, “Oh God, you’re RiverWild.”
Okay, that was kind of adorable. River smiled in spite of himself. “So you do know who I am.”
The color that had fled Jem’s face a moment earlier rushed back. “Uh, I mean….” He pushed the still open door behind him wider and gestured. “Amanda framed yourRolling Stonecover. With your name in seventy-two-point font.”
Ouch. Right in the ego.
Amanda sure did know how to pick ’em. She probably thought that washilarious.
“Right, okay.” He gestured for Jem to sit back down. “I guess the jig is up. Since you signed the NDA and everything, I might as well tell you it’s me. I’m the client.”
Jem didn’t sit. “Yeah, uh, I did put that together now that I can actually see you.” He ran a hand through hair an inch too long to qualify for clean-cut and offered a wry smile. “Start over, I guess?”
Sure, River thought. Why not. None of this had gone the way he expected. Probably not the way Jem had expected either. “Hi,” River said dutifully, shaking. Jem’s hands had not gotten any smaller. If River had hands like that, he could touch every fret on his guitar at the same time. Jesus. “I’m River Wild, musician and general chaos magnet.”
Jem grinned a typical All-American-Boy grin. River’s publicist was going to send him flowers. River’s publicist was going to send him an entire florist shop. “Nice to meet you, River. I’m Jem, uh, hopeful sugar baby.”
River barked a laugh. This time they did sit down, each in a corner chair so their bodies were half turned to each other. “Sorry,” he said after a beat, when no other words presented themselves. “I’m not really sure what I should be doing. Believe it or not, I’ve never had a sugar baby before.”
Jem rubbed a hand over the back of his neck. “That’s okay, I’ve neverbeena sugar baby before either. I guess we can figure it out together.”
Right. River could do this. He’d interviewed staff before. Well, he’d been present while Amanda or Ted—the Flat Tires’s manager—interviewed staff, and sometimes he paid attention. Amanda had already given Jem her seal of approval, so all River had to do was figure out how he and Jem could fake a relationship in public.
River was good at improvising. “So why now?”
Jem gave a wry shrug. “I like living indoors?” Okay, yes, fair. LA was expensive. “I had to take a couple weeks off work a while back. Emergency fund depleted, decrepit car is on its last wheels—”
“They just don’t make them like they used to,” River said automatically.
Jem raised his eyebrows, and the corner of his mouth twitched in the hint of a smile. “Yeah, I think they’ve been doing it a little differently since they discovered rubber.”
Oh, so he was kind of a bitch. No wonder Amanda liked him. She’d never pick someone River would run roughshod over. “Touché.”
“Same question,” Jem said. “I mean, I heard the official line from Amanda, but I feel like it’s more useful to hear from the horse’s mouth.”
River opened said mouth to make a dick joke, or a riding joke, or both, and then forcibly reminded himself that he should try to be professional for at least part of this meeting. “So when I said I was a chaos magnet, what I meant was I’m a slut with bad taste in men.”
Should River be offended by the way Jem just nodded as though this made perfect sense? Not fazed in the least? “Yeah, that tracks.”
“It’s like I have ‘sucker’ painted on my forehead. And whatever, there’s nothing wrong with having a lot of sex, but it puts me in a creative funk when the guy I’m seeing steals my favorite Gucci belt or hosts an orgy when I’m on tour.”
