“They came on tour after I left rehab and stayed until I was nineteen. By then, I had a good manager and support staff around me so they were able to go back to their lives. They come out for a week or two with me each year now, but they haven’t been with me steadily for a long time.”
PJ looked at Gabe’s intense gaze and wondered if it was inappropriate to fantasize about pulling him across the counter and stripping his shirt off to reveal his chiseled chest…. Would it be wrong to ask to have him for dessert?
So wrong, PJ. So very wrong.
She blushed and focused on her plate before she made a fool of herself. The last thing she needed to think about was sex. She had a lot bigger problems on her plate than a delicious omelet, and the simple fact that her sex life with Kurt would be plastered all over the Internet by now.
Though, for the moment, that seemed a world away; she needed to figure out who had her journal before they sold more of it. Her thoughts must have shown on her face.
“Hey,” Gabe said, his voice soft, “you thinking about that jerk again?”
PJ cleared her throat and shrugged her shoulders.
She couldn’t tell him the other part of the story, the part where her whole world could be torn down around her. The part where her family would be destroyed—they’d be more affected than she would by what might come out in the press ‘reveal.’
PJ pulled her phone from her pocket when the vibrating she’d been ignoring got to be too much. Her mom.
Are you okay?
Not even remotely, PJ thought, but she didn’t tell her mother that.
Yeah. Hanging out with a friend. Talk to you in the morning.
The next text was from Debra, her manager:Got a response out to the media. Do you want to do interviews?
No,PJ answered. She had almost a week off before her next show, and she’d decided to take it off and bury her head in the sand for a bit.I’d rather ignore Kurt and the media for now.
You got it, came Debra’s response a minute later. Debra was a lot less intense than Lydia but just as good at her job. She knew how to manage PJ’s career without managing PJ as if she was a product instead of a person.
It was why Lydia was only her tour manager. She wouldn’t be able to handle Lydia managing her world on the global basis Debra did.
A few seconds passed, and PJ knew Gabe was watching her as he ate his omelet. She tucked her phone back in her pocket and finished the last bite of her meal.
“So what else do you cook? Breakfast food only, or are you more versatile than that?” she asked and was relieved when Gabe seemed happy to go with the light conversation.
“I’m not all that bad with comfort foods—pot roast, meatloaf. I make a mean chicken pot pie,” he said with that grin that made her legs quake.
PJ wondered if maybe she was in some sort of denial. Rather than dealing with the fact someone out there had her very personal and private journal, and she could only assume would be revealing its contents to the highest bidder as soon as they could get a buyer, she was here lusting after a man who probably still thought of her as the nineteen-year-old she was when they met.
She’d been nineteen and he’d been twenty-nine. And of course, he’d seen her as a kid. He was always kind to her, respectful, making sure his hotels provided the highest level of care for her whenever she stayed in any of them.
That was one of the reasons she always inserted a clause in her contract that provided she be put up in a Grand Tower if there was one within twenty miles of her concert site. He’d always treated her the same, and she assumed he still saw her as that nineteen-year-old girl.
And then, a few years ago, they started talking more, spending time together at his hotels, outside of events and fundraisers. She’d discovered she liked talking to him, and he seemed to understand her, to understand her need to have someone to simply listen without making a big deal out of who she was.
She started to see him as more than just a friend, but he’d never given any indication he saw her in any kind of romantic way. Knowing her luck, he saw her as a little sister; someone to be taken care of—not someone to sweep off her feet with a soul-wrenchingly hot kiss that would melt them both to the core like she sometimes imagined.
Not where your imagination should be headed, PJ.
“Hmm. You go from egg white and veggie omelets to heavy, rich comfort foods. What’s up with that?” She scrunched her nose at him and he laughed.
“I try to eat pretty healthy most of the time, but who doesn’t need some good comfort food once in a while? Most of the time I make stir fries or baked chicken and vegetables, but some days are mac and cheese days, right?”
PJ nodded, not able to lose the smile on her face. She really did know all about those mac and cheese days.
This felt good, just hanging out with someone who seemed to have no expectations. No agenda.
He was certainly used to being around people like her in his line of work. And, he had no reason to want something from her. He had his own money, his own fame—and he already knew she loved his hotels.