She was prepared for his question, just like I was starting to learn she was prepared for most things when it came to her job. She even humored me and answered my unasked questions when I went to see her the other day.
“We’ve already opened lines of communication with them, and they’re writing about the fact that you’re back in the studio, that you will be releasing a new album in a couple of months’ time, and I’m in the process of lining up interviews.”
“You gonna lecture us on what to say in these interviews?” Matt asked. Brad’s coaching had been one of his pet annoyances.
Alicia laughed softly and ran her hand through her loose, blonde hair before answering. “You’re media-trained superstars. I’m sure you can handle a few short, promotional interviews. If at this point, you don’t know what the off-limit topics are or how to deflect questions on them, I’m afraid there’s no hope for you.”
Matt fist-pumped the air while Nick started a slow clap. Even Dom and Caleb were smiling. I had to give it to her. She was doing a great job at winning them over. As she had with me, until she started bringing up all that shit about me ruining my career. That was the one thing that really got to me. That felt like a punch to my stomach every time we were asked about after Destitute. We had enough money to last us at least this lifetime, possibly half the next if we played it safe, but it wasn’t about that for me. If I were to lose the music, my dream, I might as well lose my life at the same time.
“Speaking of which,” Alicia was saying. “Are there any new scandals that I should know about that the press might be digging for? If there are, you need to tell me now so that I can start heading them off and getting out ahead of them. We don’t want anything diverting the focus from the new album release.”
“Whatever do you mean?” I asked innocently, pressing my hand to my chest. “We’re never involved in any scandals.”
My bandmates laughed, Gerry glared at get me, but Alicia indulged me. “Okay, well let’s see. In my experience, I’ve dealt with everything from the ordinary, like a client knocking someone up, to the absurd.”
I leaned forward, elbows on the glass top of the conference table as I steepled my fingers thoughtfully. “You’ve got to tell us more about these absurd situations you’re referring to. You know, just to let us know what qualifies as an absurd situation that we should let you know about.”
Alicia’s eyes grew contemplative before meeting mine, serious determination mixed with amusement in them. She touched her two index fingers together. “One, driving a Rolls into a public pool was a pretty entertaining incident to have dealt with.”
Her index finger moved to her middle finger as her eyes narrowed in thought. “Another one was when it got leaked that a client had called a hotel manager and demanded that something got done about the wind, because it was keeping him awake.”
Even my jaw loosened a bit at that one. I could imagine that once fans saw you as that much of a brat, the music might be a bit ruined for them. “Is that the worst you’ve got? Because that’s spoiled, but it’s not the end of the world.”
Alicia’s eyes flashed. Apparently, she’d heard my unspoken challenge. “That’s on the tame end of the spectrum of the absurd. I’ve had to deal with a client marrying a self-proclaimed witch, another giving a Nazi salute during a press conference, excrement from a tour bus being illegally dumped in the Thames, a married man with three young children at home asking a very famous actress to fuck him on live TV. In his very meager defense, though, he hadn’t realized that the camera was still rolling before he did it.”
“Now we’re getting to the good stuff.” Matt laughed gleefully, shifting forward as he urged Alicia on. “You know, I’m still not completely clear on these scandals you refer to. Tell us more.”
“Well,” Alicia said, a faint smile playing on her lips. “We only have time for a few more, I think. Do try not to run off to join a sex cult, and if you get caught going at it while wearing a seven-foot alien costume, don’t even call me because I am not dealing with that again.”
By the time she was done, we were howling with laughter, while Gerry looked mortified. “All of those were things that your clients have actually done?”
Alicia nodded with a wry half smile tugging at the corners of her lips as she remembered, and I thought that she’d just won the respect of every man in that room. “Tell me about you guys. I need to know about your habits. Alcohol consumption?”
There was a brief pause before Caleb asked, with a hint of disbelief in his voice, “Are you actually asking us if we drink?”
She shook her head. “I’m asking how much you drink.”
Shoving my hand into my hair, I considered her question, giving her the only answer I could. “Too much.”
Nick, Matt, and Caleb nodded their agreement, and Dom motioned around the table. “We all probably drink more than a little too much, and that’s not going to change.”
“I’m not asking you to change,” she assured us. “I just need to get a sense of what I’m dealing with. Okay, so all of you drink, and all of you admit that it’s probably too much. Sex?”
“I’m assuming that you’re not asking us if we have it?” Dom asked flatly, then waved a finger around the table once more. “None of us are in a serious relationship at the moment, and all of us fuck around.”
“We’re all completely honest with the girls we sleep with, though,” Nick said. “They know what they’re getting into before anything happens with anyone. That’s the deal.”
“I tell every woman that I sleep with beforehand that it’s a one-time only deal. You only get one shot at the Emperor.” I winked, but I was also being straightforward. She asked me to be honest with her, and I was. I knew she’d find out sooner or later anyway, and this was all about her being prepared to deal with our shit. I had to be as honest with her as I’d been with Brad, even if my dick hadn’t wanted into Brad something bad.
Accepting what we told her as the truth, Alicia moved on. “What about drugs? Any of you on them?”
We shook our heads in unison. That was the one part of the sex, drugs, and rock and roll lifestyle that we didn’t partake in. We’d seen too many great musicians ruined or dead because of it, and we’d made a pact early on that we wouldn’t fall into that trap. None of us wanted into that club.
“We changed it to sex, booze, and rock ‘n’ roll a long time ago,” Nick said, bringing Alicia into our inside joke.
“It’s kind of like our anti-drug. We get so wasted that we forget drugs even exist.” I was joking, but her eyes were serious when they cut to mine.
“Okay, I think that wraps it up for today then. Thank you all for your time. We will see each other shortly, I’m sure.” The others shot up, clearly grateful that the meeting had been shorter than we’d all been expecting. Brad often made us sit there for hours.
I stayed behind, though, wanting to talk to Alicia before I left. “Tell me something about your personal life.”
It wasn’t a question, and she didn’t look thrilled by my demand. She folded her arms and turned slightly so that she would be facing me head on, curiosity and defiance sparking in those blue eyes. “Why?”
“Because I just spent the last half hour telling you about mine. And that’s over and above everything that you already knew about me. You know all about my personal life. It’s only fair that I get to know about yours.”
“Let me know when it’s your job to know about mine, and then I’ll tell you,” she snapped and started to collect her things.
I wasn’t letting it go. I hated that we’d been drilled about our lives, been honest with her, and she hadn’t given me anything in return. “Come on now. Don’t be embarrassed. You’re a tigress in bed, aren’t you? You can tell me. I won’t tell anyone.”
“You won’t tell anyone anything, because I’m not telling you anything.” She pressed the button on the projector’s remote, and the screen went dark behind her.
Turning her back to grab her
laptop bag from the floor, I came up right behind her, my chest close enough to her back that I could smell the heady sweet and spicy scent of her shampoo, or maybe that was a perfume. “Pretty please.”
When she spun round to find me standing right there, her lips parted in a soft gasp, and she took a step back at the same time. “No. Not even if you say pretty please with a cherry on top.”
I smirked. “How about whipped cream and a cherry?”
Irritation crept into her eyes and tone as she shouldered her laptop bag and slipped past me, looking over her shoulder when she got to the door. “Grow up, Jared. Would it kill you to be mature?”
I found myself staring at that ass again as she retreated down the hallway, mumbling to myself in the now-empty room. “It just might, yeah.”
CHAPTER 10
ALICIA
My eyes were burning, and my feet were aching in my heels. There was certainly something to be said for power heels, but it wasn’t necessarily that they were comfortable. I’d been running around all day between my office and Gerry’s, and I was definitely ready to call it a day.
Carefully rubbing my eyes so that I wouldn’t get makeup smeared all over my face, I powered down my computer and got my things together to go home. I’d been given an office in Gerry’s building since I was working on Destitute alone as a client, and he insisted on having it that way. Having the whole team together was one of Gerry’s quirks.
While I wasn’t a fan of the traffic and nearly hour-long commute, the view from his building was definitely worth it. My office was on the ocean side of the building, filled with natural light, and it had a stellar view of the Pacific Ocean.
In keeping with the rest of the building, the floors and walls were a light wood, and my desk was a glass monstrosity with a state-of-the-art computer sitting on top of it. After clearing and storing all the paperwork that had been strewn across it from working on it all day, my heels clicked as I crossed my office and shut my door behind me. I headed into the elevator.
It had been a long week, and I didn’t feel at all guilty for leaving a little earlier than usual. The press and the fans alike were starting to go gaga for the new Destitute album, and while that meant that my hype campaign was going well, it also meant more work. A lot more.
A dull, digital ding signaled the arrival of the elevator car on the parking level of the building, and the doors slid open soundlessly to deposit me in the garage. I was very much looking forward to getting home, pouring myself a nice glass of wine, and spending the evening relaxing.
All was well in the world of Destitute. I just hoped that it stayed that way and that the boys didn’t mess up my plan to relax a little. My first meeting with them had gone surprisingly well, and I was already starting to get a good feel for each of them, but that didn’t mean that I trusted them not to make my life difficult this weekend.
My little red Audi was parked on the far end of the lot, near the exit. She’d been a present to myself when I landed my first big client, and although she was a couple of years old now, she still represented success to me.
When she came into full view, my heart sank and beat faster at the same time. I picked up my pace and rushed over to her. The smell of eggs permeated my nostrils, and sure enough, the concrete around my car was littered in shells.
What the hell? Someone egged my car?
My hands were trembling as I walked all the way around her. There was no permanent damage, for which I was grateful, but her gleaming body was covered in goo, and fury was grabbing hold of my veins and shooting through my body.
I didn’t know who would do something like this. It was both immature and unwarranted, and I couldn’t think of a single thing that I’d done that could have elicited a reaction like this.
My tired eyes and aching feet were forgotten as I hurried to the security office situated in the lobby, determined to get to the bottom of this. I knew that every inch of the building was covered by security cameras, and I would soon know who was responsible for the minor act of vandalism to my car.
Once I knew who it was, I hoped that they were ready for a serious tongue lashing and to live with the consequences of what they’d done because I was calling the police for sure. I wouldn’t have if my time here hadn’t been so short still, but I knew that if I let this go, then the possibility existed that people would think I was soft and that they could mess with me.
They couldn’t. And I was going to make sure that they knew it.
By the time I reached the security office, I was seeing red and buzzing with rage. I swiped my key card, waited for the green light to flash, and the lock to click before bursting into the office.
“Miss Diamond?” a security guard with arms that resembled tree trunks and a shaved head that shone under the harsh lights asked, a confused frown marring his features. “Is there a problem?”
“Yes, there’s a problem,” I snapped, then tried to control my temper. It was highly unlikely that he was the perpetrator, and he didn’t deserve to have my anger taken out on him. He wasn’t a bad guy. His name was George, and he’d helped me get set up with my access cards when I first started.
After taking a deep breath to control my tone, I told him what I needed. “I’m parked in space number twenty nine, and I want to see the security feed for the last few hours.”
Crossing the trunks over his broad chest, his adamant, obsidian eyes met mine. “I’m afraid I can’t do that. You’re not cleared to give that order, our policies say—”
I tapped my foot in irritation, and my hands flew to my hips. “I don’t give a damn what the policies say. I want to see that footage, and I want to see it now.”
“You might want to, but that doesn’t mean that I can allow it,” he said, not moving or giving an inch.
I took a step closer to him and jabbed my finger in the air, my eyes narrowing. “You can allow it, and you will, because my car got vandalized on your watch, and I’m pretty sure that those precious policies of yours won’t protect you from getting fired under the circumstances. You’re responsible for the security of this premises, and you’ve failed dismally in that task today.”
George took one more look at my reddened face which, from the feel of the heat in it, was about the same shade as a traffic cone, but I didn’t care. Then he wheeled his chair over to the bank of screens housed on the other side of his office.
“What happened?” He started tapping on buttons, and soon, the center screen showed my vehicle. I breathed a heavy sigh of relief. I had no idea whether he would actually have gotten fired here, but I knew that he would at some of the other places that I’d worked. Now that he was cooperating, I worked hard to let the rage boil back down to a simmer.
“My car got egged, if you can believe it,” I told him, walking up to stand behind him where I would have a good view of the incident.
George frowned and sped up the footage of the last few hours. “Are you serious? Here?”
“Yes, George.” Why else would I have been asking to see the footage? He might not be a bad guy, but he definitely wasn’t the sharpest tack in the box.
“Okay, there.” Pointing to a tall figure, dressed in all black and wearing a ski mask of all things, George glanced at me a couple of minutes after we’d started searching, and we both turned our attention to the screens.
The figure on screen was carrying a basket of sorts and walked right up to my car before it started flinging the eggs at it. There was no hesitation, no targeting of any other car, and it was clear that the vandalism was aimed at me from the deliberate movements of the figure.
It hadn’t been an accident that it was my car that was egged. An exasperated sigh escaped me. I still couldn’t think of anything that I’d done to deserve this. I was confused as hell as I stared at whoever that was. A hoodie was pulled up over their head, and the ski mask completely hid their face.
All that I could see was that the person was lean and tall.
About Jared’s height, actually. I
shoved the thought away to deal with later.
“Please, don’t call the police,” George begged, his eyes wide as he stared up at me. “I’m certain to lose my job if you do.”
Frustration, irritation, and confusion mingled and formed nauseating knots in my stomach. “What do you mean? This might only have been a minor infraction, but it’s still a crime, and crime needs to be reported.”
“I understand that, and I respect the system, but like you said, it was a minor infraction, and it doesn’t look like there was any lasting damage to your car. It’s just that getting them involved means I get fired, and I really need this job.”
“It’s not like you’re the person who did this, George. I’m sure you’ll only need to give a statement to the police, and then we’ll both be done with it.”
George shook his head, his eyes pleading for my understanding. “No, it’s not that simple. A guy I know was contracted by a recording label once, and one of the client’s cars got vandalized. Shaving cream had been wiped all over it. My buddy got the police involved, and long story short, he ended up getting fired because of the negative attention that was drawn to both the label and the star.”
Hands on my hips, I sucked in a deep breath and exhaled a long sigh, contemplating my options. Sure, I didn’t want to appear soft, and I didn’t want to open myself up to being the target of more incidents like this, but I also didn’t really want George to lose his job over it.
At the end of the day, the reality was that his livelihood by far trumped my paint job. I could get my car detailed to protect it. George would have a much harder time finding a new job. Mind made up, I let my hands drop to my sides.
“Fine, I won’t call the police, but I want you combing through the footage of every inch of the building, and I want to know if you find anything that shows the perpetrator before the hoodie and the ski mask came on.”
My One and Only: A Bad Boy Secret Baby Second Chance Romance Page 62
