Harley (West Coast Rock Star #1)(66)
"Tilt your head a bit, Jax," the photographer in a Beatles shirt ordered.
The shoot had taken longer than they had anticipated because of the state of his bruises. Tina and Bruno were present throughout the entire thing. Harley sat quietly in one corner of the room, stretching her head every now and then when a certain pose intrigued her.
"I have an itch under my eye," Jax said, and without bothering to wait for a reply, he scratched under his left eye. At least twenty clicks came from the camera within that second, or so it seemed to him. He signalled Bruno with a curt nod, letting his manager know that he had had enough for the day.
Exhaustion had him waving a white flag. That, and not having Cade around for the shoot and quick interview. The rest of the band had already washed their faces. Marco in particular, wasn't too thrilled to have any sort of makeup applied on his face.
Bruno clapped his hands together. "Let's wrap things up, shall we?"
The reporter from the Rolling Stone nodded at him. "Mathieu, finish up. I think we have enough to work with."
After a couple clicks from the camera, Mathieu straightened and stretched out his hand to Jax. "It was a pleasure." Jax returned the firm handshake and thanked the photographer.
When he was about to approach the reporter, Cade entered the room. Her face revealed nothing to Jax and it irked him that he wouldn't be able to talk to her until after the people from the magazine were gone. They made eye contact, and Jax felt the world spin around them. Just the two of them.
She had said yes. They were going to get married. No one else knew except the two of them and Harley. They'd agreed to talk to his daughter during breakfast. Harley, expectedly, cheered loudly on her chair before launching herself at Cade and Jax. She had asked question after questions regarding the wedding and all Cade could do was plead to Jax to take over the answering round. While he explained to Harley that they had to handle the situation with kid gloves, Cade received a phone call from her grandmother. The eighty-year-old woman requested that Cade visit her for the morning.
Cade hadn't hesitated to say yes and immediately planned her trip to New Jersey even before she finished her breakfast. "I'll be fine on my own, Jax," she promised him. She'd been gone for almost three hours, and there was no sign whether her visit brought good or bad news.
Jax couldn't resist any longer. He didn't care who saw what. He needed to know. After a quick word of thanks to the reporter, he strode to Cade and circled his arms around her waist, and then he kissed her right in front of everyone.
"I missed you," he told her.
Cade had worry in her eyes. "What are you doing?" she muttered under her breath. "There's media here."
"I don't care, Cade. I just want to know if you're okay. You look sad. Why?"
Bruno cleared his throat behind him. "Jax, do you have anything else to say to Miss Potter?"
Cade's eyes widened, but Jax matched it with smile in his eyes. Two beats passed between them, before Jax cocked his head to one side to ask a question without saying a word. Her reply was a slight rising of her chin.
"Yes, yes we do," Jax said as he turned to face the reporter with a grin plastered on her face. It was her lucky day. Her interview with the rock god became even more exclusive. The photographer was set to snap a picture of the couple by the threshold, holding hands.
***
Earlier That Day …
Anxiety wrought havoc in her stomach while she made her way to her grandmother's house. It was good that Jax had agreed for her to be alone. She would have bitten off anyone's head at the moment. The traffic had been horrendous.
Why would Gram call in such a huff? Cade wondered again. If she had spoken to anyone else, they wouldn't have been able to detect the slight tremble in Gram's voice. But Cade felt it through the phone and it reverberated to the tips of her toes. She hadn't wanted to alarm Jax and had kept her own voice steady. Once she'd gotten inside a car, provided by Tina, she rang her grandmother's house phone, only to receive the outgoing message of her machine.
Cade had broken the speed limit and had sworn more times than she'd ever done in her life. She tried calling Sheila, her gram's neighbour, to see if the kind woman could check on her grandmother, but she wasn't answering either. People would normally be at work at that time of the day, and there was no one else Cade could call.
She'd decided to wait until she arrived to the house before she jumped the gun and called 911. Gram is resilient. Gram is a fighter. Nothing was wrong.