Page 22 of Hard to Love

But then again . . . wouldn’t Finn—good looking, great-kisser Finn—be a much better babysitter than Carson or whoever the fuck else he’d pick to handcuff me to?

This is a no-win situation.

Clearly.

And while I have no one to blame but myself, that doesn’t mean I have to go down without a fight.

FINN

“WHAT’S SHE LIKE?”

“Who?” I ask as I glance up at Greg, my fresh-faced intern, who’s standing in my office doorway as I collect everything I think I’ll need over the coming weeks.

“Stevie Lancaster.”

I stop and stare at his expectant gaze. The kid has a crush on her. It’s written all over his face. While my male clients definitely outweigh the number of female clients I have, few and far between look like Stevie.

“Currently she’s a train wreck, which is why I’m being sent in to fix the situation.”

“Why you?”

“Because of Benji Garrison and Hank Thompson and Jonny Barnes and—”

“So basically, because you deal with troubled clients and turn them around?” he asks, inferring from the list of players I offered. The players who had screwed up their careers majorly somehow, or were trying to, and how I came in and straightened them out.

“Apparently,” I grumble, putting my hands on my hips as I survey my office. The last thing I expected Carson Vega to do during our lunch earlier today was play hardball. Not that I didn’t know it was in him, but not with me, an agent trying to help him out.

I thought he’d say I was to meet Stevie at her next event. Next week. That I was to head back to New York and get my shit in order before heading out on the road with her over the coming weeks.

Little did I expect that her first public appearance was tomorrow afternoon and that he required me to be there guiding it.

I was given twenty-four hours. Twenty-four fucking hours to return home and then back to Vegas ready to play nanny.

I told Carson no. I told him it was impossible. I told him I had shit to take care of.

Then of course, he wrote a six-figure number on a napkin and slid it across the table that had me doing a double take before he said, “That’s how much this kid means to me. Don’t screw it up.”

At least he’s making it worth it. I guess the coffers run deep when it comes to her. The downside of the deal is that I have to spend the next six weeks holding her hand while doing my day-to-day work. The upside? She’s definitely better looking than the rest of the clients I have to work with.

“So?” Greg asks.

“Go away, Greg.”

“Ah, c’mon, man. She’s on my island. The least you can do is let me know if she’s as pretty in person as she is online. If she smells good. If she’s nice. That kind of shit.”

His words have thoughts and images flashing through my mind of Stevie against the wall and my mouth on hers. Her smell. Her taste. Her moans.

Forgetting about the night might be a tad harder than expected when I’ll be faced with it on the daily. But I don’t date female clients. I don’t fuck female clients. I don’t get overly friendly with any clients. That was the first lesson that Carson taught me during my tenure at Vega Management.

Distance is how you keep your nose clean and your reputation stellar.

So as tempting as it would be to finish what the two of us started, all bets were off when she walked in the room and was no longer Scarlett from the bar but was Stevie Lancaster, the athlete Carson wanted me to manage.

“Your island?”

“Like if you were stranded on an island and could pick five women to have on it with you forever type of five. Stevie’s one of my five.”

“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. First off, why would you have only five? Why limit yourself?”