by Lori Ryan
He couldn’t make out her face, but he knew it was her. Her coppery red mane of hair and tiny body would register with him anywhere. Register and make him hard as a rock in an instant, though he’d learned how to control that reaction around her. They were friends and nothing more.
Gabe growled and picked up the hotel phone that sat on a side table near the balcony doors. Whenever he stayed in one of his suites, his line was directly routed to the general manager of that location or to the manager-on-duty when the GM was out. He didn’t know who picked up and at the moment, he didn’t care.
“Get more security out front. PJ just arrived and she only has one bodyguard with her. Get some of our guys out there,” he ordered before hanging up and going back outside. As he watched, someone with a camera reached right past the useless man in a suit trying to block access to PJ. The camera man yanked PJ around as he held his camera up in her face, snapping off shots the whole time. It took her bodyguard too damn long to get the guy off her.
Gabe watched as his staff poured out the front doors and surrounded PJ, whisking her into the lobby and away from the crowd.
He had only minutes before PJ would step off an elevator. He hoped she’d remembered his invitation and headed to his tower instead of going up to her suite. Two years ago, he’d told her if she was looking for privacy or a friend to talk to, she could come up to his penthouse when he was at the hotel at the same time that she was—which was often. Over time, they talked more and more frequently because they were both night owls.
He hoped on a night like this, when she had to be feeling angry and hurt by the betrayal of her privacy, she’d come to see him.
He grabbed his keycard and slipped it into the back pocket of his jeans, then drew a shirt over his head before stepping onto his rooftop garden and charging down the circular stairs to the private elevator entrance. He knew within minutes she was on her way up. Only he, his secretary and PJ had the key fob that would allow them to enter the elevator.
Gabe paced until the elevator chimed her arrival, and smiled slightly when PJ’s glance fell on him immediately.
“Pru,” he breathed out, using her first name rather than the initials the world used to address her. She always laughed at him for that, but he liked her full name. Prudence Jane. No one other than her family used it any longer. When she’d been ‘discovered’ she had been using the nickname PJ and that was part of her branding to the world.
She blinked those long, sexy eyelashes his way and he saw she was fighting back tears.
“You saw?” she asked. He didn’t know if she was asking about the video or what had happened with the photographers down below, but he nodded.
“You holding up?” he asked, but he wanted to kick himself. He knew she’d say yes, even when it was clear she wasn’t okay.
“I’m okay,” she said but her bottom lip caught between her teeth and he knew she was anything but okay. He wanted to reach out and hold her, comfort her. But they’d never had that kind of relationship, though at times he felt so close to her it stunned him. They had spent hours talking on the rooftops of his hotels, and it hadn’t been that long ago that Gabe had started to feel a lot more than friendship toward her, but Pru, so much younger than him, had never indicated she wanted more from him.
For whatever reason, Gabe Sawyer—a man who routinely dated models and actresses and other people in the spotlight—froze up a little when he got around Pru Cantrell. He was sure he came across as some stiff CEO, and he didn’t blame her for thinking that. He was ten years older than her and was usually wearing a suit or a tux when he saw her. He glanced down at his jeans and bare feet and cringed. Well…until today.
“I just wasn’t really up to going to bed,” she said with a little laugh, and Gabe’s mind immediately filled with images of her in his bed. He pushed them aside as he always did when he was with her.
“Come inside?” Gabe asked, gesturing over his shoulder to the stairs that led to his suite. He’d never invited her in before. They’d always sat in the rooftop garden and talked. Would she think he was trying to take advantage? Or would she accept he just wanted to be there for her after the night she’d had?
Gabe felt his heart kick as she nodded yes and followed him up the stairs.
***
PJ gulped and stared at Gabe’s bare feet as he led her into his suite that was an exact duplicate of hers, but located on the opposite tower of the hotel. She was in Gabe Sawyer’s hotel room. And, good lord, why couldn't she take her eyes off his feet? How were feet sexy?
They’re not.
Except those particular bare feet topped by those soft, faded jeans were distinctly sexy. Those were somehow hot as hell. But she’d always appreciated his good looks…. Everything about Gabe was hot as hell, from his deep-brown eyes to his almost-black hair that sometimes got a tiny bit messy late at night—when PJ itched to comb it back into place with her fingers. Sometimes the attraction she felt made it difficult for her to talk coherently and PJ just clammed up around him. She felt like a teenage idiot around Gabe, not a grown woman with a career that demanded she regularly make small talk with all kinds of people. Around Gabe, she just couldn’t think of any intelligent thing to say.
Conversely, Gabe didn’t seem to have any issues around her. He tossed his keycard on the table by the entrance and nodded toward the couch in the living room.
“You hungry, Pru? I was planning to make an omelet. I do mine with egg whites, but I can add whole eggs to yours. Have a seat and I’ll whip up something for us.” He didn't seem to care that it was two in the morning, and he sure didn’t seem to be obsessing over her presence in his suite the way she was.
“Um, thanks.” She lowered herself to the couch, but then quickly got up and followed him into the kitchen, looking over his shoulder as he leaned into the fridge. “You cook?”
Gabe stood, pulling a carton of eggs and an armload of veggies out of the fridge. When he spun around to answer her question, it put them almost toe to toe. PJ’s breath caught.
His gaze met hers with an intensity that made her mouth drop open in an involuntary plea for him to kiss her. OMG. PJ blinked and stepped back, realizing she’d put herself much too close to him. Much closer than he probably intended to get to her.
He’d always treated her like a friend, a kid sister even. Nothing more. With most men, that’s what she wanted—friendship. With Gabe? Well, she’d known for a few years that she knew she wanted a lot more than friendship from Gabe.
What am I thinking? Someone has my journal, and all of my secrets could be shared with the world at any moment…and I’m lusting after a man who’s utterly unreachable.
Gabe cleared his throat and dumped the ingredients on the counter.
“Yeah. I got tired of having room service about….” He raised his eyes to the ceiling as if calculating something in his head. “Oh, eight years ago.”
The grin he threw her way made her panties melt. PJ slipped onto one of the bar stools that lined the counter separating the kitchen from the spacious living room. Still, he continued to affect her, and she pressed her legs together to douse some of the heat she felt.
“Mmm. I tried cooking for a while for that same reason,” she said. “It g-got more than...complicated,” she stuttered. What an idiot.
Gabe raised his eyebrows at her as he whisked the eggs together and then tossed the vegetables to sauté in a pan on the burner.
PJ felt her cheeks burn as she tried to figure out how to explain herself without sounding like an arrogant, spoiled celebrity. Gabe helped her out.
“Complicated? Oh, right, shopping. I guess going to the grocery store can be a bit tough.”
She nodded and shrugged. “My mom and I used to cook together when I was a kid. I loved it. When she was with me on tour, in the early days, she would shop and we could still cook together. But now she doesn’t go on tour with me very often. I tried having Ellis get stuff for me, but it’s weird having someone else do your shopping. You
know? And grocery shopping online isn't really the same.”
Gabe nodded and turned his attention back to the stove. The smell of the melted butter and onions made her stomach growl, and she realized he really knew his way around a kitchen. Her suspicions were confirmed when Gabe placed a plate in front of her a few minutes later and she took her first bite. She may have groaned a little more loudly in appreciation than she intended, but the omelet melted on her tongue and the sound just slipped out before she could censor herself.
Gabe stilled, his laser eyes on hers, but then quickly moved back to plating his own omelet. Had she imagined his reaction?
“Good?” he asked, grinning again. “When did your parents leave the tour?”
“They came on tour after I left rehab and stayed until I was nineteen. By then, I had a good manager and support staff around me so they were able to go back to their lives. They come out for a week or two with me each year now.” PJ looked at Gabe’s intense gaze and wondered if it were inappropriate to fantasize about pulling him across the counter and stripping his shirt off to reveal his chiseled chest…. Would it be wrong to ask to have him for dessert?
So wrong, PJ. So very wrong.
She blushed and focused on her plate before she made a fool of herself. The last thing she needed to think about was sex. She had a lot bigger problems on her plate than a delicious omelet, and the simple fact that her sex life with Kirt would be plastered all over the Internet by now. Though, for the moment, that seemed a world away; she needed to figure out who had her journal before they sold more of it. Her thoughts must have shown on her face.
“Hey,” Gabe said, his voice soft, “you thinking about that jerk again?”
PJ cleared her throat and shrugged her shoulders. She couldn’t tell him the other part of the story, the part where her whole world could be torn down around her. The part where her family would be destroyed—they’d be more affected than she would be by what might come out in the press ‘reveal.’
PJ pulled her phone from her pocket when the vibrating she’d been ignoring got to be too much. Her mom.
Are you okay?
Not even remotely, PJ thought, but she didn’t tell her mother that.
Yeah. Hanging out with a friend. Talk to you in the morning.
The next text was from Debra, her manager: Got a response out to the media. Do you want to do interviews?
No: PJ answered. She had almost a week off before her next show, and she’d decided to take it off and bury her head in the sand for a bit. I’d rather ignore Kirt and the media for now.
You got it: came Debra’s response a minute later.
A few seconds passed, and PJ knew Gabe was watching her as he ate his omelet. PJ tucked her phone back in her pocket and finished the last bite of her meal.
“So what else do you cook? Breakfast food only, or are you more versatile than that?” she asked and was relieved when Gabe seemed happy to go with the light conversation.
“I’m not all that bad with comfort foods—pot roast, meatloaf. I make a mean chicken pot pie,” he said with that grin that made her legs quake. PJ wondered if maybe she was in some sort of denial. Rather than dealing with the fact that someone out there had her very personal and private journal, and she could only assume they would be revealing its contents to the highest bidder as soon as they could get a buyer, she was here lusting after a man who probably still thought of her as a nineteen-year-old.
That’s how old she was when she and Gabe Sawyer first met. She’d been nineteen and he’d been twenty-nine. And of course, he’d seen her as a kid. He’d always been very kind to her, respectful, making sure his hotels provided the highest level of care for her whenever she stayed in any of them. That was one of the reasons she always inserted the clause in her contract that provided she be put up in a Grand Tower if there was one within twenty miles of her concert site. He’d always treated her the same, and she assumed he still saw her as that nineteen-year-old girl.
And then, a few years ago, they’d started talking more, spending time together at his hotels, outside of events and fundraisers. She’d discovered she liked talking to him, and he’d seemed to understand her, to understand her need to have someone to simply listen without making a big deal out of who she was. She’d started to see him as more than just a friend, but he’d never given any indication he saw her in any kind of romantic way. Knowing her luck, he saw her as a little sister; someone to be taken care of—not someone to sweep off her feet with a soul-wrenchingly hot kiss that would melt them both to the core like she sometimes imagined.
Not where your imagination should be headed, PJ.
“Hmm. You go from egg white and veggie omelets to heavy, rich comfort foods.” She scrunched her nose at him and he laughed. “What’s up with that?” she asked.
Gabe glanced up at her. “I try to eat pretty healthy most of the time, but who doesn’t need some good comfort food once in a while? Most of the time I make stir fries or baked chicken and vegetables, but some days are mac and cheese days, right?”
PJ nodded, not able to lose the smile on her face. She really did know all about those mac and cheese days.
This felt good, just hanging out with someone who seemed to have no expectations. No agenda. He was certainly used to being around people like her. And, he had no reason to want something from her. He had his own money, his own fame—and everyone already knew she loved his hotels. There wasn’t anything she could give him besides what he seemed to be asking for: her friendship. Even though, at times, she wanted more from him than that, there was something liberating about knowing he wasn’t trying to get something more or to use her for his own gain. She could be herself with him in a way she couldn’t with anyone else.
“Ice cream’s my weakness,” she said. “I keep the freezer stocked with these salted-caramel ice cream bars. They’re covered in chocolate with chunks of pretzels in them. They’re amazing.” PJ was a little mortified to realize she moaned again while talking about her ice cream bars. She let her eyes glance up to Gabe’s and caught the heated intensity of his look.
Then, with the blink of an eye it was washed away.
What was that about?
“So, tell me,” he said as he picked up his now-empty plate and grabbed hers before heading to the sink. “Do you think it was Kirt who stole your journal and leaked it to the press? More publicity for him? Maybe he meant to let those words slip out. When did you have it last?”
PJ’s stomach dropped. She’d forgotten about her journal for one blissful minute.
“No. Well, maybe. I don’t really know.” She felt even more stupid, not knowing how someone got her journal or who might have it.
“Where did you keep it?” Gabe asked the question gently, as though he wanted to be sure she knew he was only asking the question to be supportive.
PJ shook her head and felt the telltale prick of tears behind her eyes. “That’s the thing. Nobody knew I kept a journal. And, I mean nobody. I never wrote in it in front of other people. Only when I was by myself at night after everyone had gone home or after I’d gone into my own room. I kept it on a USB drive that I hid in a tear in the lining of my purse. The drive even looked like an old lipstick so anyone who did find it would just think it was makeup.”
“It’s not on a cloud or backed up on your computer or anything?” he asked.
“No. I should have just deleted it after each entry, you know? I mean really, what’s the point of saving all that?” She shrugged. “I just got in the habit of it in rehab and never stopped.”
He raised an eyebrow at her. “That’s a lot of years. You were what, sixteen when you went to rehab?”
“Fifteen. I wanted to get that whole addiction thing out of the way early in life. Call me an overachiever.” The comment got the laugh she was looking for.
Gabe grabbed two bottles of water and tugged her toward the couch, settling down on one end while she sank into the other.
“Someone knew it was there,”
Gabe said returning the conversation to her journal.
PJ bit her lip and nodded. That was the worst thing about this whole mess. Whoever took it had to be really close to her. She kept her purse with her all the time. If she didn’t have it with her, Lydia or Ellis carried it. Maybe one of them had gotten lazy and left it where a fan or stagehand could access it backstage—but she didn’t think that was likely. They were as protective of her privacy as she was. They might not have known they were protecting her journal, but they knew her cell phone was in there, and they wouldn’t have left that lying around for anyone to pick up. Whoever did this was someone she trusted or someone her family or team had trusted.
Chapter Three
Gabe couldn’t believe they’d been up all night talking together. When PJ had looked so sad talking about her missing journal, he changed the topic to something lighter. They’d spent the last five hours talking about books, music, movies, pets they’d had when they were young—pets they wished they could have now but didn’t have the time for—and food. They talked a lot about food. PJ’s eyes lit up, and she became animated when she talked about the things she loved.
She told him about her writing process and how song ideas seemed to build in her mind, until it felt like she’d explode and she had to write them down. If he tried to explain that to someone, it would sound stupid. Coming from her, it somehow seemed magical and otherworldly.
Wow, you’re a sap.
He was, though. He was a total and complete sap where PJ was concerned. She smiled weakly at him now, the exhaustion clear in her face. It wasn’t just that she was tired from staying up all night talking. It was a real, bone-deep exhaustion from the weight and the pressure on her. He could see it. Her life was filled with pressure on a good day, given her tour schedule and the demands of recording new material. Add to it the additional stress of the missing journal, and it was obvious she was at a breaking point.
“I should probably head back to my room,” she said, looking at the door…but her voice told him she didn’t want to.
