by Price, Sarah
“I . . . I think it’s best if you decide for me, Alejandro,” she said reluctantly. “Whatever you want from me, you know I will do.”
Immediately, she thought back to South America, the one time she had not done what he had wanted her to do. Instead, she’d left, tired of the travel and the women who threw themselves at her husband, not to mention her husband’s change in attitude after Isadora became their responsibility. And what about Isadora? Could she just leave her in Lititz with her family indefinitely? Was that fair to Isadora? To her family? To herself?
If she agreed to what the record label requested, from a legal perspective she would have no choice but to do everything the record label wanted. There would be no last-minute flights from Argentina to return home to Miami or Lititz just because she felt like it. If she agreed to this, she would be an employee with responsibilities to not just Alejandro and his fans but to the record company.
“You have time to think about it, Amanda,” Alejandro said.
“Actually, no, she doesn’t,” Geoffrey contradicted. “We’ve been sitting on this since Mexico. As I said, they’re getting—”
“Anxious.” Alejandro finished the sentence for him. “Sí, sí, comprendo.” He sounded irritated. “She needs to understand what they want from her, G. I will not have her sign something blind.” He stood up, a scowl on his face. “Now, I’m going to sleep for a while. I’m suddenly more tired than I thought.” He headed toward the back of the plane, where there was a small private cabin with a bed and private washroom. He paused at the doorway and turned back, staring at Amanda. “You are coming, no?”
Obediently, she rose from the sofa and handed the paper to Geoffrey. Then, she followed Alejandro into the bedroom.
She shut the door behind herself and looked around the room. Alejandro unbuttoned his shirt and slid his arms free, tossing the shirt on a small chair next to the door. He was frustrated, that much she could tell. She bit her lower lip and tried to decide how best to approach him so that he would forget his bad mood.
She walked toward him, reaching out to help him unbuckle his belt. “Alejandro, you know that I trust you. If you want me to do this,” she said and looked up at him, “I’ll do it. I just don’t understand the wording in that document.”
He was silent for a moment as he watched Amanda struggle to remove his belt from the loops of his pants. She could tell from the way his breathing slowed down that his mind was shifting from his irritation with Geoffrey to focusing on her. He reached his hand up to rub her shoulder, his finger trailing down her arm.
“I suppose I just worry about Isadora,” she said as she freed the belt and gently placed it on the chair with his shirt. Before unbuttoning his pants, she let her hands brush across his chest. She wondered if she would ever lose the feeling of wonder and excitement she felt whenever she touched him. His skin seemed to ignite her longing, and she felt that familiar yearning to be with him as a wife should be with a husband. “But I worry about you, too,” she added as she lowered her hands to his pants, starting to unbutton them.
He grabbed her hands and held them for a second.
Once again, she looked up, searching his eyes.
He pushed her back onto the mattress and stood at the edge of the bed. The shadow of his razor stubble covering his cheeks and chin plus the furrow in his brow made him more handsome than ever. Amanda reached her hand out for him to take. She pulled him toward her and moved onto the bed to give him room. He crawled over her, one knee on either side of her legs, his hands by her head.
“You worry about me, sí?”
“Sí,” she said.
“You worry about many people.”
She nodded her head, never once breaking his gaze.
“Who worries about you, Princesa?”
“You.”
It was his turn to nod. “Correcto. I worry about you.” He shifted his weight and placed one of his hands on her leg, gently moving it higher and pushing up her black skirt. “I worry about you all the time, Princesa.”
“All the time?” When he nodded, she bit the corner of her lip. “That’s a lot.”
“Sí,” he breathed, his eyes beginning to droop as he leaned back and pulled her into a sitting position. He tugged at her blouse, pulling it over her head and throwing it onto the floor. “So very much.” He wrapped one arm around her, practically scooping her against his chest, and lowered her back onto the bed. “I worry about you. About making you happy. About pleasing you.”
She shut her eyes as she felt his hands touching her bare skin. “Pleasing me . . . ,” she echoed.
“I want to please you now,” he murmured, his breath hot on her neck.
“Yes,” she whispered.
His lips met hers, and as they kissed, their bodies pressed together at thirty-thousand-feet altitude. The plane headed west while Alejandro and Amanda forgot about everything for just long enough to remember what was most important: each other.
Chapter Twelve
The four men sat in the business meeting, each one wearing slacks and a collared shirt, and stared at her as she sat next to Alejandro, Geoffrey, and Alejandro’s lawyer. Amanda felt small and insignificant, still jet-lagged and weary from the plane flight over from England. With the eight-hour time difference, she barely knew whether it was morning or evening. All she knew was that her body wanted sleep.
Ever since they’d arrived that morning, they had been on the go. Although they stopped at the apartment to freshen up and the bed beckoned to her, Amanda kept her complaints about being so weary to herself. She knew that Alejandro kept a full schedule and arriving in Los Angeles meant meeting after meeting for the few days they were there.
The fast pace with which Alejandro moved continued to amaze Amanda. A few cups of coffee or a quick shower was all he needed to bypass sleep.
“People say that they want to live?” he had said to her as he stepped out of the shower shortly after they’d arrived at their LA apartment. “I say just wake up!”
She wished that she had that energy. Her body felt worn out and battered. She had slept most of the way from Birmingham to Chicago. When she awoke, it was to Alejandro gently rubbing her bare shoulder and whispering for her to prepare for the landing at the airport. They would need to go through customs prior to boarding for the final leg of the flight into Los Angeles International Airport.
Somehow she had found the energy to get dressed. When she stepped outside the cabin door, she saw Alejandro seated at a table, his laptop before him and scattered papers on the table. It dawned on her that while she had slept on the plane, he had been working.
It was almost seven in the morning when they finally arrived at their apartment, and by eight o’clock they’d left in a black SUV for his first meeting of the day at the recording studio to listen to his latest tracks. Many of the songs had been recorded in hotels while Alejandro was traveling in South America and Europe. The song mixer had pieced together the different elements and finally had some product for him to listen to. Amanda had gone along—both to keep him company and to avoid crawling into bed, where she feared she might sleep so soundly she would never wake up.
By two in the afternoon, Amanda sat in the large conference room at the record label’s management offices, feeling out of place in the plush black leather chair. Around the table sat a group of men, most of them wearing suits, although a few wore slacks and crisp button-down shirts. The men looked at her as if assessing or studying her. Several times she saw one of the men scribble something on a piece of paper and slide it to one of his colleagues. Amanda did not doubt the note was about her. Their obvious—and poor!—attempt at secrecy made her wish she’d never arisen from the bed on the plane. Besides being tired from traveling and the time difference, she felt as though she were on display, a feeling she disliked.
“We need more time to discuss the contract,” Alejandro’s lawyer said. “At this time, you’re asking for more than we can commit.”
One man, who�
�d been introduced to her as Richard Gray, tapped his pen against the side of the table, still staring at Amanda. He leaned back in his chair and shook his head, his eyes narrowing as he tore away his gaze to address Alejandro. “No,” he stated in a level voice with a sharp edge to it. “That’s just not good enough, Viper.”
“What do you mean, Richard, that it’s ‘not good enough’?” Alejandro said, leaning forward in his seat, the leather chair squeaking under his weight.
Out of the corner of her eye, Amanda saw Geoffrey touch Alejandro’s leg under the table. Alejandro leaned back in his chair, but his eyes still shot daggers at the man. It had been a hostile meeting so far, and despite her best attempts to understand why, she hadn’t been able to follow the discussions over the past hour. Several times her mind wandered back to Pennsylvania as the men on the other side of the table droned on about points and reach and other terms she didn’t quite comprehend.
This time, it was the man sitting to the left of Richard who spoke up. “It’s been several months since the revisions to the original contract were sent over. We need an answer now before the entire negotiations are thrown out and we start all over again.”
To Amanda’s amazement, Alejandro’s lawyer cleared his throat and spoke. “Since that time, her value has increased. These numbers are no longer acceptable.” He pushed a file folder across the table toward Richard Gray and, as he did so, a piece of paper slid out of the side. Amanda knew it was a page from the contract that she had seen the previous night.
She looked at Alejandro, wanting to ask him what the lawyer meant. This was the first time she’d heard anything about value increasing or unacceptable numbers. But Alejandro stared straight ahead, his eyes riveted on Richard Gray.
“So it’s about more money, is that it?” The man seated next to Gray said, ignoring the folder that was now in no-man’s land.
“Easy, Eric,” Richard said. For a long second, as he tapped his pen on the side of his notepad, he seemed to contemplate Alejandro. “What we are offering for the promotions and merchandise is more than any other label would give.” His gaze swept from Alejandro to Amanda and then back again. “You’ve done a lot of business with us, Viper. To bail out now over percentages . . .”
Alejandro shrugged. “Either you get less or you get none, you decide.”
Another man mumbled something under his breath to Richard, and Amanda realized that it was probably better that she hadn’t heard him.
“I don’t believe this,” Eric said as he leaned back in his chair. He tossed his pen onto the table and ran his fingers through his thinning hair. “We’re offering almost five million dollars for something she’s already doing! This is ridiculous!”
Alejandro did not look impressed. “Be that as it may, if you want exclusivity—and someone will, Eric, you know that—then we want more points for Amanda.”
“Three months, Viper,” Eric snapped. “Three months of waiting and now this? More delays at the eleventh hour?” He glared across the table at Amanda. “Is this your doing?”
She caught her breath at the viciousness of the words, but Alejandro was faster, lunging across the table at Eric. His chair tipped backward as he grabbed the shirt of the stunned man and pulled him forward, not caring that Geoffrey was tugging at his arm. With his face just inches from the other man’s, Alejandro lowered his voice to what Amanda knew was a very dangerous level and hissed through clenched teeth, “You want to play, chico? You need to cock back and reload! Aim it in a different direction. That’s my wife, you hear!”
“Let go of me!”
Immediately, Amanda stood up and reached for Alejandro’s arm. “Please, Alejandro. Stop!” She felt the reluctance in her husband as he loosened his hold on the lawyer and shoved him back into his seat. “It’s not worth it,” Amanda continued. “Frankly, while I do not pretend to understand all that is asked of me in that contract”—she pointed to the file folder—“I do know this is not a company I wish to be associated with.”
When Alejandro sat back down, she kept standing and turned to look at both Eric and Richard Gray.
“I will do whatever my husband asks of me,” she said calmly, “as long as it is not with someone as ungodly as either of you.”
From somewhere within, she found the courage to step around the chair and walk to the door, not looking back as she exited the room, shutting the door behind her. Uncertain what to do, or where to go, she merely sat down in one of the chairs in the outer room. Her heart beat rapidly as she found herself feeling anger well up inside her chest. How dare that man accuse her of trying to manipulate the contract! She didn’t understand any of this, and she certainly didn’t care one bit about the money. What she did care about was respect, and clearly that man did not have any for her or for Alejandro.
She waited for what seemed like an eternity, her mind reeling as she realized how horrible the people were that Alejandro had to deal with. Such an ugly industry, she thought with a heavy heart. Surely God must weep when he looked down upon his creations and saw such black hearts within them.
Finally, the door opened and Geoffrey stepped into the waiting area. He walked over to her and knelt down, taking her hands in his. “Amanda, will you come back into the conference room?” he said.
She shook her head, fighting the urge to cry. If Alejandro had sent Geoffrey to her and not come himself, certainly he was angry. She simply could not go back into that room.
“Listen to me,” Geoffrey said in an even tone. “They are willing to negotiate.”
“I don’t want to be obliged to people like that,” she whispered so that the woman at the desk didn’t hear. “They are not nice people.”
Geoffrey did not argue with her. “No, Amanda, they are not nice people. But they are rich people, rich people with power.” He glanced over his shoulder at the closed door. “And I do not believe there are many people who would stand up to them and walk out of a room like you just did. They are willing to up the ante.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means they are willing to pay you, Amanda, just for doing what you love to do.”
She tried to understand what he was telling her. Such an amount of money was unheard of, at least in the world in which she’d grown up. “For interacting with fans? For giving out free tickets and doing interviews? That just doesn’t sound right, Geoffrey. It’s too much money and wasteful.” She wiped at her eyes, hoping he didn’t see her tears. “And it still doesn’t make them people that I’d like to be associated with.”
He stood up, still holding her hands. “Come, Amanda. This is what Alejandro wants,” he said. “Think of what you can do with so much money. You can help people all around the world.”
She hadn’t thought of it that way. “It wouldn’t be my money,” she said slowly. “It’s Alejandro’s, too.”
Geoffrey nodded. “True, but it’s because of you. He’ll let you do what you want with it. Start a school for children. Help the needy. Whatever you want.”
How could she tell Geoffrey that, while that sounded good, all she really wanted was to be with Alejandro and raise his child. She wanted a life with the man she loved, and she wanted to be a mother to Isadora. Nothing in that contract spoke of anything that related to her role as wife and stepmother. Instead, it focused on one thing: increasing their revenue as it related to Viper.
Still, if this was something that Alejandro wanted, she knew she could not refuse.
“I won’t go back into that room,” she said. “But I will agree to whatever Alejandro wants.” He was, after all, her husband and head of their small household. Who was she to go against God’s command when he told his people: Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body. Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in every thing.
Geoffrey nodded his head and gently patted her hands
before releasing them. “Sit here then, Amanda. I’ll go back and speak to them.”
As the door shut behind Geoffrey, Amanda did her best to ignore the inquisitive stares of the woman behind the desk. A tear fell on her cheek, so Amanda wiped it away, angry with herself for having permitted herself to react in such a way. Whether or not she was right in standing up to the men, she knew better than to speak in such a sharp manner to anyone. How many times had her mother instructed her to be quick to listen and slow to respond? But seeing Alejandro defend her and lunge at that man had upset Amanda almost as much as hearing the awful man’s words. It was a side of Alejandro she had never witnessed. And the man, that Richard Gray, had no right to speak to her in such a manner. While Amanda increasingly understood how ugly the music industry was, she certainly did not have to subject herself to such ugliness.
Twenty minutes later, the door opened again and Alejandro stepped into the waiting room. He looked at her and grimaced, crossing the room toward her. “You are all right, Amanda?” he said. “You’ve been crying, sí?”
She nodded her head and then shook it, uncertain what to say to him. “I . . . I’m so sorry,” she finally said, looking up at him through tear-filled eyes. “I didn’t mean to ruin your meeting. I just couldn’t sit there with that man a moment longer.”
Alejandro chuckled and pulled her to her feet. He wrapped his arms around her and gently rocked her back and forth. “You did the right thing, Amanda. And they are willing to sign a very lucrative marketing contract for the rights to use your name and image. Six and a half million dollars, to be exact.”
For a moment, she didn’t believe that she had heard him properly. She pulled away from him in shock. “What?”
“Sí, mi amor. Over six million dollars because of you!”
“Six and a half million dollars? Just for using my name?”
Laughing at the stunned expression on her face, Alejandro tried to explain it to her. “All of these concerts, the fans want merchandise. Richard will contract out to merchandise providers, Amanda, and they’ll create products to sell at the concerts as well as online. Posters, shirts, princess crowns, anything that people will buy with your name or image on it! We’ll get back-end points on sales. He’s also talking about a perfume and cosmetic line. It’s an unprecedented deal, Amanda!”
