American Diva (8 page)

Once they were inside, Jack checked in with his guys—three of them were taking shifts in the lobby and on Audrey’s floor—and then checked into his room.

He had changed his clothes and was headed for the gym to work off his frustration—and the sudden desire for sex—when someone knocked at his door. When he opened it, the redhead swept inside. “Hey,” she said, obviously in a hurry as she ducked under his arm. “We haven’t formally met. I’m Courtney, Audrey’s assistant.”

“Jack,” he said, extending his hand.

She smiled seductively as she took his hand in both of hers and shook it. “You look like you’re running out, so I’ll be quick. Audrey left the earpiece that goes with her phone on the plane. There’s no one who can go get it, so Audrey asked that you go back for it. I’ll make a quick call to the plane to make sure someone is there to meet you.”

Jack said nothing at first. It took his mind a few minutes to absorb the notion that anyone on this tour thought he was Audrey’s personal gopher. Audrey especially. Courtney lifted a brow; Jack smiled and pulled his hand free of her grip. “I can’t do that, Courtney,” he said congenially.

“Oh, but you have to do it. No one else can be spared.”

“Sorry. No can do,” he said, and still smiling, he gestured to the door.

“Well . . . what am I supposed to tell Audrey?” Courtney asked uncertainly as he opened the door and held it open.

“Tell
Audrey
that I said to remember she hired me to keep her safe, not to pick up after her or walk her damn rat. So if she asks me to do something like that again, she can find other security.”

Courtney blinked with surprise. “
Oh
,” she said uncertainly. “Do . . . do you really want me to tell her that?”

He leaned down so that he was eye level with her. “Word. For.
Word
.” He straightened up again.

“Oh-kay.” Courtney looked at him like she thought he was nuts and slowly stepped across the threshold.

“See you,” he said, and shut the door.

Jack never did make it to the gym. But he did find a bar that was serving tall beers. Buckets of them, fortunately, because he needed a good belt now that he was realizing he might have made the biggest mistake of his life.

The
next morning, Audrey could hardly open her eyes when Lucas shook her. He was dressed, ready to go to the Qwest Center to oversee the setup for the show.

“Hurry up,” he said with exasperation, shoving her lightly as she burrowed deeper under the covers. “You need to rehearse the ‘Take Me’ number and get through a sound check before three.”

“I’ll be there,” she muttered, her eyes sliding shut again. “Just . . . just take Bruno to Courtney and send a car back.”

“Audrey—”

“Just send a car!” she moaned.

She was exhausted, and it was Lucas’s fault. He’d kept her up until almost two in the morning, trying to persuade her to fly to New York at the end of the month to attend some Hollywood muckety-muck’s birthday bash.

Audrey had never met the guy and didn’t want to go, but Lucas was wearing her down. “Mike Senate is like
the
biggest director in Hollywood,” he’d said as he dug through his luggage, looking for his black leather pants.

“That’s great. If I were in the movie business, I’m sure I would be interested,” she’d said as she’d gone over the song list.

“You
could
be in the movie business.”

Audrey had looked up from her songbook.

Lucas had pinned her with a look as he pushed a hand through his golden, highlighted hair. “I’m serious, Audrey. Jessica Simpson made the leap to screen. You could act circles around her.”

Sometimes, she wondered what planet Lucas was from. “I could act
circles
around her? I don’t even act! I’ve
never
acted, and what’s more, I don’t
want
to act. I want to make music, Lucas. Why can’t I just do that?”

“Because sometimes you have to do things to get ahead,” he’d said irritably.

“I
am
ahead. I’m in a place I never dreamed I would be. How much further ahead do I need to be?”

“Jesus,” he’d said, tossing his leather pants on a chair. “I just wish that you would
listen
to me—”

“I listen to you all the time—”

“Well, you’re damn sure not hearing me now, Audrey,” he’d snapped. “Here’s what’s wrong with your little fantasy of having made it. Pop stars die a painful death after the age of thirty. You are twenty-eight. You need to think of the future and what you are going to do when this gig ends.”

But it had been more than Audrey could think of last night. She was stressed from all the last-minute preparations for the show, and honestly, seeing Jack Price yesterday had stirred something in her she wanted to pulverize to a powder rather than acknowledge. And Lucas wanted her to fly off and meet some director?

On top of that, on the way out of town yesterday, she’d gotten a call from her sister Gail, who told her that her brother, Allen, had been missing for two days.

“
Missing?
” Audrey had cried as fear clutched at her heart. “What do you mean
missing
?”

“I don’t mean he’s been abducted or anything,” Gail had said with a snort. “I think he went out on a bender. But his probation officer is pissed, Audie—she says she is going to have his probation revoked this time.”

Audrey had to ask her to repeat the last part, as the party had already begun in the limo, but whatever Gail said was lost. When they pulled to a stop at the tarmac, she got out so she could hear her sister, oblivious to the sheriff’s deputies, or the paparazzi behind her—they were just part of the normal landscape these days—and was hardly even conscious that she was walking, so intent was she on the conversation.

Her heart was beating wildly as she listened to Gail. Allen would never survive in prison—so why did he have to do this? Why did he sabotage every chance he was granted?

“I don’t know what to do,” Audrey said to Gail. “I’m just about to get on a plane. My
tour
starts tomorrow, Gail—my first nationwide tour!”

“Well, I know he’s real nervous about paying a lawyer,” Gail said calmly. “His regular lawyer wants two grand just to show up in court.”

Audrey didn’t know why she was surprised; the calls from her family were usually about money. Just last week, Dad had called asking for money to buy a race car. Audrey had closed her eyes briefly, and when she opened them, she noticed Jack Price standing at the steps leading up to the plane.

Actually, she couldn’t help noticing him—he was fine-looking man. His dark hair was wavier than she recalled, but his blue eyes were still killer, and the man could fit a pair of Levi’s better than any man she’d ever seen.

They fit so well, in fact, that as Gail had cheerfully launched into how much money they needed, Audrey did nothing but gape at Jack through a pair of very dark sunglasses. It was funny—she’d met so many people, so many Hollywood types who landed on every annual beautiful list. But to Audrey, a beautiful man was the kind who had some meat on him, who looked as if he could hold up the globe in one hand and had the calluses to prove it, the kind of man who didn’t mind working for a living.

“Audie, did you
hear
me?” Gail screeched into the phone.

“What? Yes, of course I did!” Audrey said, startled back to reality as she continued her march to the plane. “But I can’t come to Texas right now.”

“You don’t need to
come
here,” Gail said wearily. “Just wire Mom some money.”

Okay, seriously—Audrey didn’t begrudge her family a dime—but could they not act like she was their personal ATM?

“Fine,” Audrey said.

Jack was watching her. That was the other thing about this business of fame—people made no bones about openly staring at her. It always made her feel like she had spinach in her teeth.

“Look, I have to go,” she said to Gail. “I’ll call you later to see what’s going on, okay?”

“Okay. But can you wire the money today?” Gail whined as a slow and sexy smile melted onto Jack’s lips.

“Okay, yeah. Later,” Audrey muttered, and clicked off. Looking at Jack, she felt absurdly nervous, and for no reason, other than being this close to him reminded her of being this close to him once before, on a moon-drenched beach.

And that inevitably reminded her of the way his body felt next to hers, which made her feel confused. Which is why, she supposed, she had come off like a diva. She hadn’t
meant
to be a diva, but she had learned that the only way to get people to back off was to be mean. Lucas kept telling her she had to do it or people would walk all over her.

It was more of a self-protective reflex than anything else that made her shove Bruno at him.

Jack had looked at her like she had just asked for rack of lamb or something equally ridiculous, and Audrey had thought that if he was making a nice chunk of change off her, he shouldn’t be so averse to letting Bruno pee. Needless to say, the flight had gone downhill from there. She’d been completely rattled when he sat across from her, staring at her the whole time with that smug look on his face. She couldn’t think, couldn’t wait to get to the hotel and away from him; she had even left her earpiece on the plane.

But then Lucas had started his crap about going to Mike Senate’s birthday bash, like she needed to add anything else to her schedule right now, like she needed to be thinking of
acting
instead of embarking on a tour that had her on pins and needles as it was.

At two this morning when she’d tried to sleep, it was all running around in her head, and she tossed and turned while Lucas worked on some song.

“What’s wrong, baby?” Lucas had asked.

“I can’t sleep.”

“Let me get you something,” he said, putting aside his guitar.

“No, Lucas, I hate those pills.”

He paused and looked at her. “Do you want to sleep, or not?”

She did want to sleep. If she didn’t get some sleep, she would crash. So she had taken the pills Lucas gave her, chased them down with a drink, and that was the last conscious thing she remembered doing before sliding off into a deep, peaceful sleep.

It seemed Lucas hadn’t been gone even fifteen minutes before he was jostling her again, his hand surprisingly firm on her hip. Audrey felt so heavy, she felt almost dead. She forced her eyes open beneath the covers she had pulled over her head—it took a moment for her to remember exactly where she was. “
Stop it,
” she croaked, the fog in her mouth as thick as the fog in her brain. Her face felt mashed on one side.

“Get
up
,” he growled, his voice unusually low.

Audrey groped for the top of the covers and pushed them back, then rose up on her elbows. She had to push her tangled hair out of her face, and when her head stopped swimming, she turned to look up at Lucas—and screeched.

It wasn’t Lucas towering over her; it was Jack Price, his arms crossed over his big chest, a frown on his face.

“What the hell are you doing here?” she cried, scrambling off the other side of the bed.

“A better question is what the hell are
you
doing here?” he countered. “You were supposed to be at the coliseum two hours ago.”

Oh no—
oh God
. Audrey glanced at the clock just as it turned to 12:36. “
Shit!
”

“Have a late night?” Jack drawled.

“None of your business,” she snapped and realized that she was wearing nothing more than a pair of thong bikini panties and a camisole. She grabbed a pillow to shield herself, but it was too late. His gaze was smoldering.

“I guess it becomes my business when you aren’t where you’re supposed to be. It’s my job.”

No thanks to Lucas. “How did you get in here, anyway?” she demanded as she backed her way to the bathroom.

“I’m security, remember? Of course I have a key to your room. Lucas gave me the okay to come in when you didn’t answer the phone.”

The
phone
was ringing and she hadn’t heard it? Never mind that—when she got ahold of Lucas, she was going to let him have it. Who did he think he was, giving a strange man permission to enter their room? “Okay. Well. You’ve done your job, I’m up, so you can go now,” she said, pointing to the door.

Jack laughed and slid his big frame into a chair. “I’m not going anywhere without you, starlight. I will personally deliver you to the arena.”

“Just send a car!” she snapped at him, which she promptly punctuated by backing into the wall and hitting her funny bone. “
Ouch. Ouchouchouch
.”

He grinned. “I
am
the car, kid. So if you’ll just hurry up and do whatever it is you do, we can both put this ugly morning behind us.” And with that, he propped his feet on the end of her bed.

“Get your feet off my bed!” she said as she slid to her right and into the bathroom, slamming the door behind her. But then she realized she hadn’t brought anything in with her—like toiletries or clothes. Or even panties.