Trust her to cut through all the bullshit. Trust Haven to ask the one question he least wanted to answer.
Somehow he found himself nodding. “I was naive. An idiot.”
“Or not such an idiot,” she whispered. “I’ve read your life history, too. You were brought up by a single dad, pretty poor, the two of you worked your asses off to get you to Berklee so you could realize your musical dreams, and then, blam, before you even know it, you’re in this manufactured group, touring all over the country, women throwing themselves at you. But you were just a kid. Nineteen, right? So you were naive. It’s not a crime.”
He’d never seen it like that. Back then, from inside the mess, he’d felt like the biggest fool to ever grace the stage. He’d always assumed he deserved every knock his ego got.
Had anyone ever listened to him the way Haven did? He wasn’t sure. Maybe some people went through life without ever feeling heard like this.
“What a crappy place for you to be. With Pete and this tour.”
He frowned.
“What?” she asked.
“I got a call from my dad today and he’s thinking about moving to New York.”
“That’s good? Bad?”
“It’s good. It’s great, actually. Like I mentioned earlier, we’ve been talking almost every day, and he tells me what’s going on and I tell him stuff. Like, I filled him in on how you’re doing the image thing and about the barber and the personal shopper.”
But not about what had happened in Haven’s office—the conversation with Pete. That felt too personal. And certainly not what had happened after.
“I’d like to have him around,” Mark said. “I believe in family taking care of family. He doesn’t want to be sick and alone, and who can blame him? But it’ll cost me a fortune to find a place for him. We’re still figuring out if he should move in with me. I mean, it would pretty much be the end of my having any life of my own, given his medical condition and that he has nurses coming in all the time. Or even if I took care of him on my own—I need to find a place for him, or a bigger place for the two of us. But that’s expensive, and so’s the move itself.”
She nodded, sympathy on her face. He wondered that he’d ever, even for a moment, thought she was shallow or cold. Her eyes were full of warmth and understanding. As if she got it, how kowtowing to Pete Sovereign was both the worst and the only thing he could do. “In short, the tour has to happen.”
“Yeah,” he agreed.
“I’ll make it happen.”
For a moment he felt the purest relief, because he believed her. He knew if she said she’d do it, she’d do it.
And then he realized what she was saying.
“You’re not going out with him.”
“Just once. I think I can persuade him to cooperate.”
It was like an old-fashioned scale, his feelings held in the balance. On one side, the money. On the other, the pointless, irrational protectiveness he felt for her. No, not protectiveness. Possessiveness. Mark closed his eyes. He could picture the expression on Haven’s face when she came. Unleashed, free. His.
How had this happened? How had he let himself feel this much when she was just doing her job? She might be attracted to him, too, but he couldn’t delude himself that there was more to it than that.