* * *
So it made him a pussy. He didn’t give a shit. He’d tried to talk Emily into sleeping in his bed that night, but she wasn’t having any of it. “Mary will find out,” she’d said. Yeah, he knew she was right, but he was close to not caring anymore.
He was starting to feel more for Emily than he should have.
And that was fucking stupid. He knew it was a bad idea. There were a thousand reasons why he should just let her live her life. She herself had named one earlier. She had goals and dreams based on her job. Clay wasn’t convinced she knew what she wanted, but really he had no right to try to talk her out of it. And what if he managed to? Would she resent him later?
There was the educational gap too. Clay had finished high school. That was it. His music teacher had tried to talk him into attending a post-secondary music school, but Clay knew he couldn’t afford it. He’d felt like he was good enough for what he wanted to do. It turned out he was right…and wrong. He wasn’t good enough to begin with, but after playing plenty of live gigs, he got much better. And he challenged himself continually to improve. Emily had two degrees. She was smart. He’d never admit it, but she would once in a while use a word that he didn’t understand. He’d been able to figure them out in context, but the woman was amazingly intelligent. He felt privileged to have her as his PA.
Then there was what was his biggest downfall and probably the clincher—she was young. She might be twenty-five, by Clay’s estimates, and he was now thirty-two. She found him exciting now, but what about a year from now, five years from now, ten?
What the fuck? Why did he feel the need to worry that far in the future? Why couldn’t he just enjoy the here and now like he always did?
It was because Emily was more to him than just another fuck. She was becoming so much more.
* * *
When Mary arrived Thursday morning, Emily was glad she’d turned down Clay’s offer of sleeping next to him. He was tempting, but that was also a no-no. Bad enough she’d decided she wanted to have more fun with him.
Her dad would flip out if he knew she was dating—or, uh, fucking—a rock star. Well, he’d freak out if he’d known about some of her past relationships anyway, but for his daughter, he wanted stable, secure, respectable.
Her dad loved Bryce.
There was more, though. Yeah, Clay was a super sweet guy, even when he tried to act all tough playing Jet. She could see right through him, and she loved that about him. And he was hotter than hell. She didn’t know that she’d ever been with a guy quite as sexy as Clay, and she’d been with some mega-hot guys. But that was part of the problem. Those kinds of guys were not stable or reliable.
Yeah, Clay had plenty of money. That wasn’t the problem. The issue was that he didn’t have a necessarily steady income, and he was a rock star, for heaven’s sake. Right now, he might act like he was all eyes for her, but how long before he’d grow bored of her and need some other woman to keep him excited? She’d been there with guys before. She didn’t want to do it again.
That thought, too, brought her back to Bryce. The guy who was supposed to be the right guy, the good guy, had already screwed around on her, and they were barely engaged. Maybe no man could be trusted.
No…surely, there were guys out there who’d never do that, but her fiancé wasn’t one of them.
Was he still her fiancé? She hadn’t decided yet. She hadn’t officially ended it. She was going to have to communicate with him soon. Based on his last email to her, she knew her dad had told him to give Emily some time—but she was beginning to wonder if time would change her feelings.
She’d email him sometime today, but she had work to attend to first, so she got a cup of coffee and thanked Mary for making it (Emily was convinced the woman was either a saint or she was a reformed sinner doing penance, because she was one of the most thoughtful people she’d ever met, paid or otherwise). Then she headed to the office to hunker down to work. Her goal by week’s end was to get the social media stuff underway.
The emails presented a problem, though, because the second one she opened was from Clay’s accountant, reminding him that quarterly taxes were due on the fifteenth of July…just a few days away. Emily chuckled. Even his accountant knew he needed help. She imagined the forms needed would be around the office somewhere. She’d organized most of his files already, but maybe it was in one of the piles on the bookshelf that she hadn’t finished going through yet. It didn’t take her long to sort through all that paperwork, though, and she added taking care of the rest of it soon on her list. Where the hell did he keep his tax information, though? If he paid quarterly taxes, there would have to be a lot of paperwork.
She’d heard the doorbell ring at the front earlier. Before she left the office, she heard Clay and, she thought, Brian enter the music room and close the door. She decided then, that instead of asking Clay where he kept his tax stuff, she’d ask Mary. If Mary didn’t know, then Emily would have to bug Clay, but she hated to bother him when he was working on his livelihood.
She couldn’t find Mary at first, but then she called her from the living room. “In here.”
Her voice came from Clay’s room, so Emily walked in. She hadn’t been in there since the morning she’d awakened in his arms. It still didn’t feel like a place she belonged, so she stayed near the door. Mary was making his bed. “Mary, I didn’t want to bug Clay, because he’s busy doing music stuff, but I wondered if you knew where he kept his tax paperwork.”
Mary tilted her head. “What do you need that for?”
“We got an email this morning as a reminder that his quarterly taxes are due soon.”
“Oh. It’s not in the office?”
Emily shook her head. “Not that I can find.”
Mary frowned, smoothing the sheet with her hand. Emily felt guilty just watching her work, so she came in and got on the other side of the bed—the side she now thought of as Clay’s side—and started smoothing it out there. “Did you look in all the drawers and through all the papers on the shelves?”
“Yep. Nothing.”
Mary started pulling the comforter up the bed, but Emily could see that the woman was pondering. She continued helping her make the bed, and she got lost in thought, imagining Clay lying there. Mary finally said, “Actually, I cleaned up a lot of crap in the office. I put it in boxes. It was right before the interviews, because I didn’t want to horrify any of you.”
Emily started laughing. “Well, you did with that stupid piece of pizza.”
“I wanted you to know what working for him could be like so you’d be prepared. I didn’t want to scare you away for good. Actually, it’s stuff you should probably sort through anyway.”
Depending on how much was there, she might have to postpone her social media plans until next week. “Okay. So where is it?”
Mary frowned again. “I made Clay carry them. There were two or three of them. I can’t remember, because I was trying to consolidate them. I might have just kept what was left in the third one. Anyway, I told him to take care of them. They were kind of heavy. But where did he take them?” All Emily knew was she hadn’t seen random boxes anywhere in any of the rooms she’d been in. There were a few boxes on shelves in the garage. Maybe that was where they were, and she was getting ready to suggest that when Mary said, “I think he took them downstairs. He has a storage room down there. Why don’t you go look there and see if you can find them? They’re those file storage type boxes—white with lids, almost the size of a box of paper you’d by at an office supply store. You know the ones I mean?”
“Yeah.” Emily made sure she helped finish putting the comforter over the pillows, and she slid her hand over Clay’s pillow, as if she were touching him. “Thanks, Mary.”
Well, this was going to be interesting. She’d never been in the basement before, hadn’t had a reason to go down there. She made her way back to the kitchen and then went to the door to the basement. She opened it and was going to flip the light switch
, but she saw that there was a lot of natural light down there, so she just walked down the wooden stairs. As she got further in, she noticed it was a large space—huge. Just past the stairs were a washer and dryer against the wall, and there were two windows behind them. They were at and below ground level, and Emily could see some kind of well, for lack of a better word, that dipped below the level of the lawn and so there were full-sized windows. The sun was streaming in the room. There was also an ironing board hanging on the wall, and Emily wondered if Mary ever actually had to do any ironing.
She turned away from the washer and dryer and saw a vast empty space, but beyond that were four doors—one right in front and then three on the right side, the last one nearest her. She started with the one directly in front—it would be the largest room, since the door faced forward and seemed to take up the rest of the space.
She opened the door, and it was pitch black in the room. She felt around for a light switch. As her eyes adjusted to the space, she gasped. It was a mini movie theater, and it had the feel of an old cinema. There was a long table to her left against the wall with a laptop that she figured played the movies. She looked to the ceiling and saw that there was, in fact, a projector. To her right was a large popcorn machine in glass, just like she’d seen in an occasional convenience store or, yes, at a movie theater. There were two rows of plush velvet seats and she counted—sixteen in all. How cool was that? She felt like she was seeing a secret side of Clay and wondered why he’d never shared this with her. She was still smiling when she turned off the light and closed the door.
She walked to the next room, the door on a different wall. She opened it and saw that it was a large closet. There weren’t just three white boxes with lids on the floor. There were lots of boxes, some on shelves, most not. This was a storage closet and, she knew, the room Mary had told her about. But she wanted to look in the other rooms, because maybe she’d get another cool surprise about her secret lover. She just couldn’t help herself.
She was disappointed, though, because the next room was a small guest bedroom, nothing exciting, and the other was a bathroom that appeared to never be used.
She went back to the closet, still smiling about her little discovery. She opened the lid of the white box nearest her and saw that there were lots of papers, some that looked important. This would go upstairs then. She could shred the stuff they didn’t need, but there was no sense keeping it otherwise. She dragged it into the open expanse of the large room. Then she opened the lid of the next box and concluded it was the same thing, so she dragged it out with the other one.
She returned to the closet and opened the next box. It was full of a bunch of crap, but nothing that looked like important documentation. If she couldn’t find the tax files in any of the boxes she would take upstairs, she’d keep this one in mind, but for now, she’d pass. Maybe the two boxes she already had were it, but she wanted to look in a couple more just to be sure.
The next box she lifted the lid of gave her pause. It took her a moment to realize what she was looking at. They were DVD boxes, but not anything she recognized. She took one out of its neat stack to be sure, and it was confirmed when the front had a blonde’s tits front and center. A tiny picture in the corner showed said blonde on her knees holding a big guy’s cock in her hand and slapping her own face with it.
Emily let out a breath. Okay…so guys like porn. Yeah. She got that. But she had to know. She took out enough of the cases to see the ones underneath, and they all appeared to be porn. Wow. That was some serious stuff.
She shook her head and put the lid back on, wondering why they hadn’t labeled it with an X or three. She pushed it under one of the shelves and grabbed the next box. When she lifted the lid, she felt her mouth—and spirits—drop. Another box of what appeared to be all pornography. Next box, same thing.
She didn’t have the heart to keep looking. And then, suddenly, she felt dirty. What if that little movie theater was just for some sick fantasy of Clay’s so he could jerk off in a porn movie theater without getting arrested?
She couldn’t bear to think of it anymore and turned off the closet light and closed the door. She leaned against it, disheartened, trying to think of her next move.
Chapter Twenty-two
“SURE YOU DON’T want to stay for dinner?”
“No, man. Didn’t I tell you I have a date?”
“What? You dog. Then get the hell out of here.”
Brian paused at the door. “What about you? Scored lately?”
“Aw, you know…”
“What? Last skank give you crabs?”
Clay started laughing. God, if Brian only knew he was banging his PA.
No…that wasn’t true. Banging made it sound so cheap, and Emily was anything but. She was so much more, and if she didn’t have that cocksucker boyfriend of hers just barely out of the picture, he thought he might actually have a chance of convincing her to try him for real. No matter what she said, he knew she wasn’t feeling anything serious about him. Oh, she liked what he did for her, and they had a growing friendship…but that was it. There was nothing else there.
Still, he wasn’t going to tell Brian. For multiple reasons—not just to keep it secret from Mary—he wanted it kept under the covers, so to speak. He shrugged. “Just don’t feel like it.”
“Yeah, well…” Clay knew what his friend was saying. His porn collection had been the topic of many Last Five Seconds conversations. He was happy letting Brian think that, so he just nodded.
Brian looked confused. “Or…?”
Clay tried to look half-angry, something he wasn’t good at. “Or maybe you worry about me too much. Get the fuck out of here. You’re starting to sound like a woman.”
Brian started laughing and turned to grab the doorknob. “Fuck you.”
Clay laughed too and slapped his friend on the shoulder blade. “Tomorrow?”
“Sure.”
“Your place this time?”
“Nah. Here’s good. I keep hoping to get another look at your assistant.” He lowered his voice. “Goddamn, is she hot.” He grinned. “You’re a dumb ass if you don’t tap that.”
Clay felt something stir inside him, something primal, and he couldn’t believe he wanted to rip his friend’s head off. Still…how could Brian know if Clay hadn’t said a word? He tried to look casual and rolled his eyes. “Get the fuck out of here, man.” He’d have to find a way to do more music writing sessions at Brian’s and he’d also have to make it quite clear that Emily was off limits. Maybe he’d mention her fiancé next time.
He closed the door and let his thoughts become buried in her. God, he would have loved to tell his friend how much she meant to him. She was a beautiful soul in and out, and he was lucky to have her in his life.
He’d barely seen her earlier when Mary was there, but now he could go take her in his arms and maybe talk her into spending some time with him. If he knew her, though, she’d tell him he had to wait until five o’clock. He’d never told her she had to work until five every day, and yet she did most of them time. Sometimes she even worked later. He knew she did things for him on the weekends too.
So he was going to the office where she was sure to be. He practically sprinted down the hall. When he got close to the door, though, he slowed down to his Jet gait and swagger. Couldn’t look too eager. When he walked in, though, she was nowhere to be seen. There were two big file boxes on the desk next to the computer but no sign of Emily.
He walked back to the kitchen and peeked in there but struck out. He walked back down the hall and the bathroom door was open, so he concluded the only other place she might be would be her bedroom—unless, of course, she’d left the house for some reason. When he got to her door, he tapped on it. “Emily? You in there?” He thought he heard her say something. “Emily?”
“I don’t want to talk right now.”
Oh, Christ. More boyfriend problems. What did that asshole do this time? “Come on, Emily. Come out. I’ll liste
n.”
Sounding more angry: “I’m not ready.”
That was weird. He’d never heard that tone from her before. “Okay. Well…I’ll be out here when you are.” If he didn’t know better, she almost sounded angry at him. Strange. He decided to go work more on the new music he and Brian were creating. Several of the songs were ready for drums and vocals, but a couple were still a little rough. And he felt like he had one more song in him for now, but it wasn’t quite ready to come out—not yet, anyway.
So he grabbed a can of Coke and headed into the music room. He lost track of time when he worked on his music, so he wasn’t sure how long he’d been in there when Emily came in the room. She was not happy, and he couldn’t tell if she was upset, angry, sad, or all of the above. “Hey. Ready to talk?” He hoped his voice sounded sympathetic and supportive.
She nodded. “Yeah. Can we talk in the kitchen? I just made some coffee.”
At night? Well, he wasn’t going to question it. “Yeah, okay.” He set the guitar in its stand and then stretched. That was how he could tell he’d been sitting for well over an hour, maybe two.
When they got to the kitchen, she poured herself a cup of fresh java. “Want some?”
He shook his head. “No. I’m good.” She finished doctoring her coffee and then sat down at the table next to him. “So what’s going on?”
She blinked and he noticed that her jaw looked tense. “You…have an awful lot of porn.”
“What?”
“Downstairs…boxes and boxes. And not just plain old porn. You have some whacked-out shit. Lesbian porn, some hardcore kinky stuff, some weird blowjob ones, a bunch dealing strictly with anal. I mean…what the fuck, Clay? Why the hell do you have so much porn?”
Fuck. He wanted to ask her why the hell she’d been downstairs snooping in the first place, but that didn’t matter. Maybe he could just make light of it, and they could have a good laugh. “God, Emily, how much dust did you have to blow off those DVDs? I haven’t watched those in years.”
Feverish (Bullet #3) Page 16
