“Okay.” She took a long, deep breath, fully blinking open her eyes. She could just barely focus on Laura’s silhouette in the darkness. “You can hit the lights.”
“You sure?” Laura asked, reaching for the switch next to the door.
She hummed her assent, already angling to look toward the mirror to double-check her makeup.
And she was pleased to see that she’d done a flawless job before her migraine had gotten so intense that she’d had to call it a day. She was still good to go.
Before her triumphant feeling could take over, she caught sight of thatlookon Laura’s face.
The look that said Laura had something to say and Juliet wouldn’t love it.
“What is it?”
Laura’s expression barely changed, but it was in the slightest shift in her eyebrows that gave away that Juliet was right. She’d known Laura for six years now, and even though her assistant was one of the best in the game, she couldn’t completely fool Juliet.
“Ah… nothing much.” Laura shrugged. “We can discuss after the interview and the performance. Maybe on the plane tonight?”
Juliet narrowed her eyes. “Laura.”
“Juliet,” her assistant mirrored her tone, one of the few people Juliet would accept that from.
Though Laura was her assistant, she was nine years older than Juliet was, and she’d certainly been around the block – so to speak – when it came to managing demanding personalities. Juliet thought it made them work very well together.
She locked in on the way Laura’s index finger twitched slightly against the phone in her grasp.Juliet’sphone, whichLaura was frequently in charge of checking when Juliet had a migraine and the screen felt like murder.
Ah. So whatever it was had to do with something she’d seen on the phone. “Give it to me.”
Laura’s grip tightened. “You still have at least ten minutes before you should be looking at a screen. You can look later. Trust me, it’ll be better that way.”
“I do trust you,” she muttered, and despite the sharpness of her tone, it was the truth.
She trusted Laura more than she trusted anyone else in her life, including Robbie. And… well, that was the very short and complete list of people she actually trusted with anything meaningful.
She angled her chin up, defiantly. “Which is why I know that you being all evasive means I amnotgoing to be pleased when I see whatever you’re hiding, and I want to see it now.”
Laura might be the person Juliet would label as her best, truest friend. But at the end of the day, she also worked for her. So, she sighed before giving in and handing Juliet her phone.
“No matter what you see on there, keep in mind that you have to do the interviews with Harrison’s ‘carefully selected journalist’ soon,” Laura advised, rolling her eyes atcarefully selected journalist.
Her stepfather not only had Juliet over a barrel when it came to performing at his elite mega-events several times a year, but also when it came to promoting his businesses. He didn’t want anything to come off as insincere, though, so he always slipped her the talking points beforehand. Juliet was to approach these interviews as ifshehad chosen to do them, promoting her own work, while casually slipping in praise for Harrison and whichever business venture he was working with. She’d done it so many times by now she could do it in her damn sleep.
It took about three seconds to see what Darcy had said on Miles Stanton.
Formulaic. Boring.
Throwing the words around that had been so fucking cutting to Juliet when she’d first read them. Words that had cut so damn deep because it wasn’t as though they’d been said by one or two critics, and then smoothed over. No, those words had burrowed into her psyche, echoing through her mind as she’d worked on her latest album.
And somehow –somehow– Darcy managed to pinpoint them.
“What the fuck,” she hissed, stabbing her index finger at the screen to tapplayon the snippet of the video from the talk show.
There Darcy was, sitting on the couch nestled safely between her sister and her best friend –aw, so sweet –and when she turned to look at the camera –
Juliet knew it had already been recorded. She knew this wasn’t live; she wasn’t an idiot.
But shefelt it. She felt like Darcy was looking right at her, like Darcy had wanted to grab her attention as she echoed Juliet’s critiques aloud.
She wanted Juliet’s attention? She had it.
