Lovely Madness: A Players Rockstar Romance (Players, Book 4)

by Jaine Diamond

  Nice. “I’ll try.”

  “Come in.” He pushed the door open and I felt the cool draft of the AC.

  “Thank you.”

  I gently extracted my feet from beneath his cat and followed him into the house. Once again, he led me over to the couch. He pointed at it.

  “Sit.”

  I sat. What was it about this man giving me orders that made me want to do exactly as he said, like immediately?

  Not good.

  He sat down in the armchair next to the couch, like last time. And the way his eyes remained glued to my face with the same disapproving look he’d given his spread-eagle cat, I really had no idea what he was about to say to me.

  Then he said: “Okay.”

  “Okay…” I repeated. “Like, I’m hired?”

  “Yes. But not by my sister. I make the rules in my own house, and I’ll be your boss, so. I’m hiring you. And I’m paying you.”

  Well. He definitely had a way with words. When he actually chose to speak. Everything he said was true enough, but it was the way he said it that gave me pause.

  I make the rules.

  I’ll be your boss.

  “Okay…” I said.

  “Okay.”

  I waited for him to say something else, but he didn’t. He seemed to be waiting for me to say something. But now that he’d agreed to hire me, I was a little stumped. I’d been prepared for opposition. I thought he’d be more hesitant about the whole thing, or downright disagreeable. I was expecting more of a discussion, a negotiation. I was half-expecting to walk out of here with no job at all.

  “So, you’re okay with this?” I asked him. “Really?”

  “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  “Well, as I understand it… you don’t normally have an assistant.”

  “No, I don’t. But I haven’t always done everything right. So maybe that’s one of the things I’ve been getting wrong.”

  I wasn’t sure what to make of that. Maybe he really was open to a change? Or maybe he was doing this for his sister. Courteney clearly cared a lot about him, and maybe the feeling was mutual.

  But then there was that other thing. That thing in his eyes.

  The way he looked at me.

  I noticed it the first time we met, sure. But sometimes when you met someone for the first time, it was hard not to look at them that way. He was sizing me up, obviously. Wrapping his head around this pushy stranger who’d just appeared in his home for the first time. I mean, I figured that to him I probably seemed pushy. Putting a note on his cat and all, and peppering him with questions in his living room.

  But this was no longer the first time we’d sat here like this. And he was still looking at me that way. Like I was exotic and strange. And interesting. And he was trying to make sense of me.

  Was I looking at him that way, too?

  The doorbell rang through the house. It wasn’t loud, but you could definitely hear it in this room. He made no move to get up, though. He just kept staring at me.

  “Would you like me to get that for you?” I offered.

  “It’s just Rose. My housekeeper. She has a key.”

  “Oh. Okay.”

  It was odd how relieved I felt to hear that. That there would soon be another person in the house, so the two of us wouldn’t be totally alone. Another person to interrupt this strange tension.

  On the other hand… I was kind of wondering how hot this Rose woman was.

  I was starting to wonder if Cary Clarke had a thing for hiring women he was attracted to. Because he was definitely looking at me like that.

  You know, like he liked my face.

  He wasn’t checking me out, exactly. I hadn’t even seen him look directly at my chest or anything. It didn’t feel creepy.

  It just felt like he liked my face.

  I swallowed and cleared my throat a little in the awkward silence. We seemed to be waiting wordlessly for Rose to appear.

  Finally, she poked her head into the room. “Oh! Good morning, Cary.” She looked utterly stunned to find him in here. Rose, to my relief, appeared to be in her sixties and highly unlikely to have been hired for the eye candy she provided. She also appeared to be the sweetest lady in the world. She smiled at me as I got to my feet.

  “Hey, Rose,” Cary said. He was still looking at me, and he didn’t get up. “This is Taylor. She’s my new assistant. You’ll be seeing her around.”

  Rose was still smiling at me, eyes and all. “Nice to meet you, Taylor.”

  “You, too.”

  “Rose is here on Tuesdays,” Cary informed me.

  “How nice,” I said, because I didn’t know what else to say. I wondered what this woman knew about him. What kinds of things she saw, working in his house.

  “I’ll put the groceries away,” she told him. “And then I’ll clean the studio now?”

  “Sure. Thanks.”

  I noticed he wasn’t as bossy with her as he was with me.

  She smiled at me again, nodded, and ducked back out.

  I sat down again. “She seems very nice,” I said. And then, because maybe I was fishing for something, I added, “You hire good people.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “I’ll try not to let that go to my head.”

  He didn’t smile. “The quality of the people in my life is really important to me, Taylor.”

  “Of course.”

  “I’m not used to having an assistant and I don’t know exactly how this will roll. So, I’ll want you here full-time.”

  Huh. Definitely not what his sister said he’d want.

  How had she put it?

  You can work with him part-time, or whenever he needs you.

  He won’t want you there all the time anyway.

  “When would you like me to start? I can start today, if you need me.”

  “I don’t need anything,” he said, his eyes never leaving mine. “Except a few days to get a contract together. And a Non-Disclosure Agreement that you’ll have to sign. If that’s a problem, you need to tell me now.”

  “I hear you,” I said, digging my card out of my purse and handing it to him. “I’m totally fine with the NDA. I’ve had to sign them before. You can just have everything emailed to me when it’s ready. And full-time works for me.”

  “Good.” He held the card between two fingers for a moment, studying it, before placing it on the coffee table. He leaned on his knees, locking eyes with me. “I’m used to working alone. I collaborate with other people, but I do it remotely. I’m not used to delegating. But if you’re willing to figure this out with me, then I guess we can give it a go, like you said.”

  “Great.”

  I almost looked away, just to find relief from the intensity of his eyes, but I didn’t. Why did he still seem irritated?

  “If you want to come by next Monday, you can start then.”

  “Okay.”

  He got to his feet. “I’ll walk you out.”

  And just like that, the weirdest job interview I’d ever had was over.

  “Sure. Thanks.” I got up, quickly, because he was already heading for the French doors. He opened the door and walked right out into the backyard.

  So, apparently he did go outside.

  I hurried to keep up. He wasn’t rushing, but the man’s legs were definitely longer than mine. I followed him around the house, to the driveway, in silence. When we got there, he stopped, so I did too.

  “What time should I be here on Monday?” I asked him.

  “Sometime before ten is good. I usually dive pretty deep into my work in the afternoon.”

  “How about nine o’clock?”

  “Sure.” He looked at the empty driveway. “No car?”

  “I don’t have one.”

  “I’ll get you one,” he said, and pulled out his phone.

  “It’s okay. I usually take transit.”

  He looked at me, and I could tell something was wrong. He looked irritated again.

  “It’s not a probl
em, I promise,” I added quickly. “I’m reliable, punctual, and I can get around just fine. I live right downtown—”

  “I’m getting you a car. I insist. It’s on me.” He was thumbing around, on a taxi app probably, and I didn’t want to make a big deal about it when I’d barely even started working for him yet, so I didn’t.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  When he was done booking the car, he tucked his phone away and walked me halfway up the driveway. Then he stopped by the palm trees, and sat down on one of the big rocks that lined the edge of the driveway. To wait with me, I presumed.

  So I sat down on a rock kind of next to him.

  He didn’t say a word, so I didn’t either.

  After a minute, I pulled out my earbuds and held them in my hand so I was ready to pop them in when the taxi got here. He still didn’t say anything. I wondered if I should make conversation or not.

  About what?

  After the longest silence I’d ever experienced with another human being sitting so close to me, he said, “You really took the bus to get here?”

  “Yes.”

  Had the man been living in his gated mansion with the three-car garage for so long he’d forgotten that regular people did regular things like ride the bus?

  “You listen to music on the bus?”

  “Yeah. There’s not much else to do. Sometimes I read.”

  “What do you listen to?”

  “All kinds of things.”

  “What do you listen to the most?”

  I looked into his eyes. I wondered if this was still part of the job interview process. Like if I got this wrong, would he be changing his mind about hiring me?

  “Well, I guess I’m supposed to say something cool like Billie Eilish or Twenty One Pilots or Halsey. And those would all be true. But honestly, I have a Metallica fetish. And my secret weakness is love songs by female vocalists who I can sing along to in the shower.”

  “Like who?”

  “Like… do you really want to know? I can’t sing, so it’s not like I can pull it off.”

  He considered that. “What are we talking about? Céline Dion and Whitney Houston?”

  “More like Ann Wilson and Avril Lavigne.”

  “Avril Lavigne, huh?” He took that in. Or maybe he was trying to picture me singing “Sk8er Boi” into a shampoo bottle.

  “Hey, when I was ten she was huge.”

  “You like Heart?”

  “I like Ann Wilson. And, if you really need to know, Dolly Parton.”

  His eyes crinkled a bit. It wasn’t exactly a smile, though. “So, let’s see. She likes Metallica and Dolly Parton.”

  “Yup.”

  “You know, I used to try to figure people out by the kind of music they listen to. I’m not sure it works. Especially when you come at me with Metallica and Dolly Parton.”

  “What can I say. I once gave myself minor whiplash from banging my head so hard to ‘Whiplash.’ And ‘Jolene’ makes me cry every time I hear it.”

  A car eased to a stop outside the gate, and he got to his feet. “Your ride.”

  I got up. It wasn’t a taxi. It was a silver luxury sedan. The driver, a strapping, salt-and-pepper-haired man in dark dress clothes, got out and came around to open the rear door.

  He called me a car service?

  And where did it materialize from, his secret Batcave?

  “Uh, that was fast.” I looked at Cary; he was pulling out his phone again and said nothing. “So, see you Monday. Maybe you can tell me about your favorite music.” It seemed like a good topic for him. While we’d talked about music, it was the first time he’d seemed to relax a little.

  “Maybe,” he said. Then he used his phone to open the gate.

  “Wow. There’s an app for that?”

  He smiled.

  And I felt another rush of… something. It was the first time he’d smiled at me.

  He didn’t glow like some people did when they smiled. He didn’t sparkle like Rose did. He didn’t even look happy, like he did in all those old photos I saw of him online.

  It was a small smile, and it was hard-won. And I liked that it was for me. I was pretty sure it was for me, and not for his fancy car-summoning and gate-opening techniques.

  “See you Monday, Taylor.”

  “’Bye.”

  I headed out to the car. And after I slid in and the driver shut my door for me, I looked to see if my new boss was watching.

  He was. He stood under a palm tree with his hands in his pockets as the gate closed, and watched us drive away.

  The driver’s name was Liam. He had two kids, a third one on the way, and he was about as nice as Rose was.

  I asked him if he drove for Cary often. Maybe I was snooping just a little. I didn’t even put my earbuds in.

  “Not often,” he said.

  “You came so fast.”

  “I live close by.”

  “That’s handy.”

  He didn’t offer anything else, so I decided not to press.

  After Liam dropped me off at my building and walked me to the front door—and stood there until the door closed behind me to make sure I was safely inside—I took the elevator up to my apartment on the fifth floor. I put on some music—my vortex playlist; I was still working on it—and made myself lunch. I was just sitting down to eat when my phone rang.

  Private number.

  Hmm. My new employer?

  Or spam?

  I took the risk and answered, quietly chewing a bite of sandwich. “Yes?”

  “Is this Taylor?”

  “Yes. Who’s this?”

  “This is Cary Clarke.”

  Funny, how he used his last name. As if I knew a hundred guys named Cary. But that strange, uncomfortable, torch-sparking-in-the-dark thing happened in my stomach and I sat up. I tried to keep chewing, my bite of sandwich feeling dry in my mouth.

  Why was he calling me?

  “I spoke with Liam,” he said abruptly. “The man who drove you home.”

  “Okay…?”

  “Now that I know where you live, I don’t think it’ll be possible for you to—”

  Work for me. That was actually what I thought he was gonna say.

  “—live there anymore.”

  I stopped chewing. “Excuse me?” Seriously, did I hear that right?

  I washed my mouthful down with Coke.

  “It’s very far from my place,” he pointed out. “I looked it up. You’ll have to take two separate buses, each way, to get here every day.”

  “Yeah. I’m aware of that.”

  “And walk through a neighborhood I’d rather my assistant didn’t have to walk through on my account.”

  “I walk through this neighborhood all the time.” And it’s really none of your business where I live.

  Was he seriously calling me about this?

  “I’d like to make you an offer,” he said.

  “Uh…” I put down the sandwich I was still holding. If he was about to offer me daily car service via Liam, I wasn’t even sure what to say to that. “What kind of offer?”

  “I have a poolhouse. It’s private and comfortable. And it’s much closer to my studio.”

  What the what?

  “I’d like you to move in.”

  “Oh. Wow. Uh—”

  “It would be free to you, of course,” he went on. “I assume you’ll want to keep your apartment, but you can stay in the poolhouse for free as long as you’re working for me. I really don’t like the idea of you taking public transit and walking home to your apartment, in that neighborhood—”

  “Okay, look. You wouldn’t be the first person to diss my neighborhood. But I’m telling you, I’ve lived here for a long time—”

  “I don’t mean to insult where you live,” he cut me off. “I work long hours and I work late at night. I’m not comfortable with letting you head out into the night after work if I keep you late. And having a car service shuttle you back-and-forth on a daily basis is a waste of
time. Wouldn’t you rather spend that time chilling by the pool, listening to Avril Lavigne?”

  I rolled my eyes. And turned down Avril, who was singing her ass off in the background.

  “This way, you’ll be close whenever I want you here,” he added, when I didn’t answer him. “You can still have your own space. And you won’t have to be hauling yourself across the city all the time.”

  “Right…”

  “Think about it,” he said. Or rather, ordered. “I’ll text you my number.”

  Then he hung up on me.

  Wow.

  People skills: desperately needed.

  I put down the phone and went back to my sandwich. And with every bite, I felt a little bit more uneasy.

  I’d like to make you an offer.

  I’d like you to move in.

  This way, you’ll be close whenever I want you here.

  Chapter Six

  Taylor

  The Middle

  After lunch, I did some deep housecleaning that I’d been meaning to do, but hadn’t had enough of a break between gigs to do in a while. And maybe I was preparing to not be here much over the next six months? Just in case?

  Then I went for a run with Our Last Night blasting in my ears.

  Then I took a quick post-jog shower, had dinner, and tossed my feet up. I put on a movie while I painted my toenails. Old School, one of my favorite comedies of all time—and really, best use of a Metallica song in a movie, ever.

  By the time the movie was over, the sun was down.

  I cracked open an apricot ale. I missed the days when my best friend lived right on the other side of my wall and we could hang out all the time. We’d walk to the brew pub or the little dive diner up the street, or we’d sit up on the roof. I could go talk to her anytime, about anything.

  I’d already called Danica twice, but she didn’t answer. I would’ve liked to talk to her first, to get her take on the poolhouse thing, but it was getting late. So I called Cary Clarke’s sister.

  “Hey, Taylor!” Courteney answered, with the enthusiasm of someone who’d been waiting, impatiently, for my call. All day. “How did it go?”

  “Okay. Actually, it went better than I expected.”

  I must’ve sounded really unconvinced of that, or somehow strange, because she said, “Oh, no. What happened?”