I handed the paper to him as we walked into the office. But before he could unfold it, we were immediately greeted by the large and handsome former Navy SEAL known as Phantom.
By my guess, Michael Coleman was every bit of six-foot-six and two hundred plus pounds of sculpted muscle. His kind, hazel-brown eyes always seemed to hint at humor and never failed to make me smile. Coupled with his dark brown hair and the trimmed beard covering his chiseled jaw, he wasverynice to look at.
But what I loved most was flirting with him. From the first day we’d met, it had become our thing any time we saw each other; the cheesier the better.
Phantom made it difficult to look away from his sexy grin.
“Hey, how’s it hangin’?” His sexy southern drawl never failed to send a bolt of desire to my dick.
“Pretty good, and a bit to the right.” I grinned and looked up into his warm brown eyes. “How much do you weigh?”
Phantom flashed me an amused smile with an equally sexy laugh. “That was random. Why? Are you trying topick me up, Rockstar?”
I’d walked right into that one. So I rolled my eyes as dramatically as possible and tried to stifle a laugh. But I failed. That’s the effect he had on me. “You’re so corny! I just wanted to know if anyone asks. I suck at guessing that kinda stuff.”
The dark-haired hottie folded his arms across his defined chest, stretching the limits of his black t-shirt. He smirked after giving me the once over. “Well, I suck too, but not at guessing weight. Just so you have accurate information, should someone randomly ask you for my vitals, I’m six-foot-four, and two hundred forty pounds.”
Cole let out a dramatic sigh of his own as we exchanged grins.
“Good lord, you two. Save the flirting for after the interview. Let’s go,Rockstar,” Cole mocked, giving me a little push towards Aidan’s office.
I looked back over my shoulder at Phantom. “I was only off by two inches.”
He chuckled, and that beautiful smile reached his eyes. “I bet you were.”
After we sat down across from Aidan, I noticed Cole was still holding my paper. I took it back from him and flipped it open to put his mind at ease. We didn’t want my imaginary cat to get out.
The smile dropped from my face as I read it. I quickly folded it up, then shoved it into my jacket pocket.
“What’s wrong?” Cole questioned softly, looking at me with concern. “Is that what I think it is?”
I pasted on a smile and shook my head. “No. It’s nothing.”
Cole narrowed his eyes at me. “I don’t believe you. Let me see it.”
“No,” I laughed. “It’s just about turning the water off to work on the hot water heater.” He quirked a brow at me. He knew I was lying. “We’ll talk later. We need to focus on the interview.”
Cole studied me a minute before finally relenting, but I knew it was far from over. “What did you decide?”
I’d been trying to come up with a way to explain the song to the media. We knew they were going to ask. The problem was when I’d originally put it on paper, I was still raw from the breakup, and you could tell from the lyrics. And as it turns out, unleashing all that pain into a song was just the thing to get the attention of the music world outside of Seattle.
Evidently, people related to it more than I thought.
“If you’d written it about Patrick, would you answer the questions honestly?”
Cole laughed humorlessly and ran his fingers over his chin. “You know, with the mood I’m in, maybe I would. I’m so sick of hiding. The whole fucking reason we came here—”
Cole stopped, shook his head, and threw up his hands. It was obvious he was frustrated with their situation. “Never mind. That’s not important right now.”
Seems like we both had something we didn’t want to talk about, so I nodded and looked over at our agent. I needed his advice on how to answer that question if it came up.
Aidan Hayes had an exclusive list of clients that included his brother, Alex Hayes, the quarterback, and his husband, Marcus Monroe, Portland’s All-Pro Wide Receiver. He also represented several other players from the team. Most of his clients were queer, and also included Cole’s longtime boyfriend, Patrick Griffin.
We all wished that a person’s sexual orientation wouldn’t be such an issue in the entertainment industry, but we knew how it really was. That’s why having management with that experience on our side was such an advantage, and one of the reasons we decided to go with EHM.
That and the new security team made up of four Navy SEALS. They were nice to look at. Especially Phantom, the flirt. I had my own nickname for him.
Aidan was on the phone, laughing at someone on the other end of the line. Since the discussion involved baby formula and cereal, he was obviously checking in on their babies.
