Hot and Bothered(8)
“That was kind. You’re a good son.”
He waved it off. “I’m not, really. He and I hadn’t spoken for years. He raked me over the coals for being a screwup and—I lost my appetite for getting reamed out every time I had a conversation with him. But when this happened, I realized he’s not going to be around forever. I want a chance to have a father-son relationship with him. And it’s the right thing to do.”
Her eyes softened a little more, and he tried not to like it.
“So you agreed to do the tour.”
“Jimmy didn’t tell you all this?”
She shook her head.
“Did he tell you they were holding a replacement over my head? Someone who looks like me, plays the guitar, can lip sync a hell of a lot better than I can and doesn’t need you to dress him in the morning?”
She bit her lip, another partial smile. “I don’t think you need me to dress you.”
She stopped right there, perfectly innocent, but his dirty brain knew exactly what it wanted to say back.
Nah. I’d rather have you undress me.
The thought got a grip on his dick. Nice work, schmo. Make this even worse on yourself.
“So, they can replace you. That must be weird.” She leaned across the table. Keep your eyes on her face. And it was no hardship. Her nose was long and elegant with a slight upturn at the very tip. Her eyes were greenish, her skin pale and creamy. He wanted to taste it. His tongue tingled.
He needed another beer as soon as humanly possible, but the waiter was nowhere in sight.
He’d lost the thread of their conversation. “What’d you say?”
“I said it must be weird to feel like you’re replaceable.”
Now she sounded like a shrink again.
The truth was, it pissed him off how easily they could drop another man into his slot. Which was stupid because he’d known that pop groups like Sliding Up were just pretty illusions that presented the music some producer dreamed up. And there was nothing—nothing—about the job that he wanted, except the money.
Or so he told himself. But if he didn’t want the job, why was he so pissed? He hated to think he still had the same old craving for fame and fortune that had gotten him in trouble in the first place. The desire to have an arena full of people telling him with their applause and their screaming that his music was worth something...when he knew all too well it wasn’t.
“Whatever,” he said, because she was too much—too pretty, too sympathetic, too easy to talk to. Because he had this feeling that she wouldn’t want to stop with messing with his hair, his clothes, his nightlife. She’d want to open him up and make him over from the inside out. And there was no way she was getting in there. “It’s fine. I need the money, I’ll do the tour, I’ll live with their stipulations.”
He would let the exquisite Haven Hoyt put her hands all over him (metaphorically) and turn him—but only the external him—into some version of himself he wouldn’t recognize.
She was still looking at him as if she could see right through him. He wondered what the hell she saw.
Maybe the truth. How much it sucked that he needed the tour, sucked that the only way to help his dad was to sell himself out—again.