“Fucking asshole. That’s the same guy from last night.”
Evidently, he owned more than one camera.
Despite being fairly certain that he was the studio intruder, I still got Lucy back in the car without wasting any time.
“Well,” Lucy said, as I started driving home. “You’re going to be famous now.”
“You okay with it?”
She considered it for a moment. “We’ll be on every gossip site by midnight. My publicist is going to call me.” She glanced up at me. “Areyouokay with it?”
“Doesn’t matter to me.”
“It might matter to people in your life.”
I tried to imagine the folks on Red Oak Mountain and how they’d react.
“They’ll survive,” I growled.
The most important thing was getting her home to safety.
If these paparazzi didn’t watch out, I was going to accidentally shoot one of them.
“Can we find out who the photographer is? I want to warn him off.”
I didn’t know if it had been just the paparazzi in the building with us today, or if there had been two intruders.
Butsomeonehad been watching us who had no business being there.
Cal was wrong.
Lucy needed to be in a safe house.
Chapter 4
Lucy
Bronson was on edge again, but that seemed to be his default disposition, even if he put on anamazingact of being my boyfriend in the studio.
He’d almost hadmefooled.
The session had gone great, and I was still carrying the warmth of it in my chest when we pulled out of the studio parking lot and headed back toward the beach.
I’d forgotten what it felt like to sing something that was entirely mine.
And to do it without Jimmy hovering at the soundboard with his opinions was refreshing. No music label reps on the phone listening in. No demands to make it more poppy.
Just Marcus and two musicians who’d listened to my directions.
I felt likemyselfagain.
But Bronson had gone quiet the moment we got back in the car, and I felt the shift the way you feel the weather change, that subtle drop in pressure before the temperature dips.
He was watching the mirrors again, his big hands easy on the wheel but his jaw set tight as he did a constant, sweeping read of everything around us.
“So,” I said, keeping my voice light. “The cheek kiss.”
He didn’t look at me. “Necessary.”
