Did I?
“What can I do to fix this?”
“It’s no longer yours to fix, Angeline. You didn’t tell me you met with Johnny O’Reilly last night.” And there it was, in her tone; an accusation. She thought I’d betrayed her somehow?
“Yes, I did.”
“This morning,” she clarified. “You didn’t tell me when it happened. I had to find out from Twitter first.”
“I told you I talked to him at the fundraiser.” I’d gone with Flynn and my sister, and a bunch of my sister’s friends, while Danielle attended another event. She knew that. “If someone Tweeted about it—”
“You talked to him,” she echoed. “Presumably, while representing me and my company.”
“Of course. Isn’t that what I’m supposed to do?”
“What did he say to you?”
“He said we should talk about his new album coming out. He’s a prospective client. So, I listened.”
“And you sat at his table for most of the night.”
“He kept talking,” I said softly, realizing how bad it sounded in retrospect, in the context of this conversation. “There were a bunch of people at the table…”
Danielle sighed quietly, like I was a very dumb little girl. “Did it not occur to you that he might be trying to make his date jealous?”
My stomach sank. “I thought he was there alone.”
“Did you not see the Tweets?”
“What Tweets?”Shit.What was she talking about? “I didn’t see anything.”
Did Flynn?
“Your name wasn’t on the photos,” she informed me. “Yet. You’re officially the ‘mystery sweetheart’ who dined with Johnny O’Reilly last night. But as far as the wide world knows, the photos say it all.”
“But… we weren’t ‘dining’ together! It was a music industry fundraiser. People came and went from the table all night.”
“And yet, you sat.”
“At a table with a prospective client who invited me to sit with him.”
“At a table with a rock star who was there with another woman.” Danielle very briefly rolled her eyes. “A woman who, incidentally, is dating the lead singer of his band.”
I had no idea what to say to that.
Brianna was dating them both??
How was this my problem?
As the brother of one of my best friends, I’d known Johnny O’Reilly for many years. Like my sister, he was a rock star, and I often ran into him at events and parties. I didn’t always talk to him. The last three years, I didn’t talk to him at all if I could avoid it.
But the fundraiser was a work thing, and I was there representing Danielle. I’d sensed an opening when Johnny casually asked about my job at Danielle’s company. He’d never done that before. He never really talked to me about work, or about anything at all.
Ever since that mindfuck of a night when he’d kissed me out of nowhere, we weren’t exactly best buds. Last night, I’d even put aside my general loathing of the man to get him a drink and listen to him talk about himself, because I wasn’t just me at that fundraiser; I was work me.
But I had no idea he was there with a date.
“I thought Johnny was single,” I said, in my defense. Not that it mattered, really. Because I was not “emotionally involved” with him.
