She felt something else, too. The strength she’d been searching for all day. It hadn’t disappeared forever, it was just hiding for a while. Licking its wounds while it thought about its next move. She felt her spine straighten. Not enough for it to be visibly noticeable, but it was there.
She was sick of moping and being the victim. That wasn’t her. Not any more.
“Can I get a raincheck for the movie?” she asked her sister. “Because I have something else to do first.”
“What?” Ashleigh smiled, bemused.
“I need to book a ticket. I’m going to L.A. to meet Gray.”
* * *
“Okay, so let’s go over this one more time,” Angie, his PR consultant said, looking down at the notes she’d made on her phone. “We’ve agreed that you’ll talk about the upcoming album, your hand, and of course about you and Maddie, but there’s to be no mention of Brad Rickson and his involvement in the tape. Not while the record company is still consulting their lawyers.”
“And if Dan O’Leary asks me about him?”
“He’s agreed not to. It’s only a five minute segment. When it’s complete, you’ll perform Along the River.” She smiled at him. “Without your guitar, of course.”
“We’ve got a great lead guitarist to play for you,” Marco told him. “Alex Drummond. You know him, right?”
“I’ve toured with him.”
“Excellent. You guys will have some rehearsal time before the show starts. You need to be at the studio by six.”
“And before that, you’ll meet Rich Charles from Rock Magazine,” Angie told him. “He’s joining you for an early dinner. That gives us an hour. Shall we go through some questions again?” she asked, smiling brightly. “I could record us and we can watch you back if that helps?”
No, it wouldn’t help. Not one little bit.
The fact is, he didn’t want to be here. He wanted to be in a little town about two-and-a-half thousand miles away, leaning on the counter of a diner that served the worst eggs in the country. He wanted to be watching the pretty woman behind it. To be catching her eye.
He wanted what he had. Now that he was back in L.A., he felt the loss keenly.
It hadn’t helped that when he arrived at LAX last night he’d been greeted by a throng of paparazzi. Flash bulbs had momentarily blinded him as he pushed his way through to the exit, aware of the bodyguard the record company had hired standing right behind him. Gray wasn’t a small man, not at six-three, but the protective giant had dwarfed him.
And he hated that he needed that protection.
He checked his phone to see if Maddie had replied to the text he’d sent earlier, but the message was still unread. He frowned, then tapped out a message to Becca asking if everything was okay in Hartson’s Creek.
Her reply came back fast. Yeah. Most of the press have gone. Murphy started threatening to cook them breakfast – I think that’s what finally scattered them.
“You okay?” Marco asked him.
Gray sighed. “Yeah, I’m okay. I just wish this would go away. That the press would leave me alone.”
“It’s the price you pay,” Marco reminded him. “It’s never worried you before.”
“Maybe I’ve changed.”
Marco forced a smile. “Let’s hope you haven’t changed too much. Your fans like you the way you are. By tomorrow you’ll be yesterday’s news. Just go on the O’Leary show, say what we agreed, and Angie will do the rest.”
And then what? That was the question. Ever since that video had gone viral, he’d had a griping pain in the pit of his stomach. He only had to think of Maddie’s face when she looked at her phone to know how devastated she was at her secret getting out. Even if the press stopped talking about it, the good folks of Hartson’s Creek wouldn’t. Thanks to him, Maddie was going to have to live with that.
There was another thought going through his head. One that made that gripe turn into actual pain. What if this was all too much for her? What if she decided she didn’t want to be in the spotlight? That she’d rather keep under the radar than be with him?
He gritted his teeth at the thought of it. These few weeks with her, they’d been life-changing. She’d shown him another way of living. One that didn’t involve constant touring and paparazzi and meaningless relationships. Maddie was the real deal, and she was the only one who saw into his soul.
Losing her could kill him.
Marco’s phone buzzed. “Your car’s here,” he told Gray. “We’ll head over to the restaurant a little early. It’ll give us a chance to catch up.”