Over the Line (27 page)

Max would cover it somehow. He'd repay it. Little by little from his own salary. Or maybe ... maybe ...

His cell phone rang.

He jumped. Jumped, for God's sake.

"Yeah," he growled after fishing the phone out of his pocket.

"Max?"

Janey.
He took a stab at settling himself. "Hey, snooks. How .. . how's my best girl?"

Okay.
That
was a new low. He was about to steal from her and now he was acting like he didn't have a care in the world.

"I'm okay. How are you? You sound ... I don't know. Funny."

"Can you blame me? I mean, I let you out of earshot for twenty-four hours and look what happens."

Silence. "You know about last night?"

"Yeah. I talked to Wilson earlier. He filled me in on the break-in at your motel. You sure you're okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine. Really. I was a little shook, but I'm fine now, so before you suggest it, we are not canceling the Boston show tonight."

"Janey—"

"No. That's why I called. I knew you'd be thinking about it, but it's not going to happen."

"And Wilson's okay with this?"

"Wilson's not calling the shots regarding my career. Look, I've got to go. We'll be back in plenty of time for sound check."

"You're too stubborn for your own good, kid."
And too trusting,
he thought, guilt burning a new hole in his gut.

"Love you, too, Max. I'll see ya later."

"Janey—wait. I won't be in Boston when you get there."

"You won't?"

"I'm already back in L.A. I had to fly back, deal with that one-point-three mil, remember?"

"Oh. Yeah." She paused. "I actually forgot about that for a minute there. You get it handled?"

Yeah,
he thought grimly. He was handling it all right. "I'm getting there."

"Okay, well, look—I've got to go. John just gave the warning to kill the cell phones. See you in a few days. I'm looking forward to the downtime."

"Yeah. In a few days," he said, and hung up.

Max stood there for several long moments. Hating himself. Hating his habit.

And wondering what kind of a spread he could get on tonight's Dodgers game.

Chapter 15

Janey hung up from talking with Max, then turned off her cell phone as her Gulfstream taxied down the tarmac and got in line for takeoff. She was tired, she was grumpy, and she was sore. After the most incredible sex of her life.

And sex, she'd decided, seemed to be all it had been for Jason Baby Blue Wilson. He sat as mute as a stump beside her; his eyes were closed, but she knew he wasn't sleeping. He was faking it. So he wouldn't have to talk to her.

And it had been more than sex for you?
she asked herself with an uneasy look out the jet's porthole.

No. It hadn't been more.

She stared at her thumbnail.

Okay. Maybe. Maybe it had been more.

All right. Yeah,
she admitted, closing her eyes. Maybe it had started out as sex. She'd been fascinated by him from the moment she'd first seen him.

But she also understood herself well enough to know that casual sex—no matter how common it was in her circle—wasn't casual to her. Never had been. Never would be. And it hadn't been casual with Baby Blue. It had been something... more. Something deeper. An emotional connection. At least it had felt that way.

His eyes. God, he'd be buried deep inside her, and he would look at her with those clear blue need-you eyes and it felt like he was looking into her soul. Seeing her for who she was, not the image she presented onstage or on album covers or in magazines. Seeing her like a man who thought she was someone special, not like a man whose only reason for being with her was because he was being paid to protect her.

He'd been so amazingly sensitive. To her needs. To her pleasure. To how far he could take her until she couldn't take any more. And she'd learned things about him, too— like the answers to several burning questions. He went commando. And he loved it when she was on top.

She fingered the now familiar and somehow comforting weight of her mother's cross and reminded herself of one major factor: All of that was last night. Last night when the only words were urgent whispers and the only world was the one she and Baby Blue created in that motel room. On the floor. In the shower. In the bed.

She clenched her knees together to counter a sharp, electric ache that pulsed through her when she thought of the way he'd touched her. Kissed her. Made dizzying love to her.

Yeah. That was last night. Since he'd awakened her early this morning already showered and dressed and back in bodyguard mode, he hadn't said a word that hadn't had to do with food, transportation, or security.

"I can't take the gun on a commercial flight," he'd said with a grim scowl when she'd asked him to get her to Boston ASAP. "And I'm no longer sure I can protect you without one."

"Then I guess you've got a problem." Angry and hurt and confused by his cool distance, she'd settled herself into the rental's passenger seat beside him. "Take me to the nearest airport, because we're making that concert and that means we're flying."

In the end, he'd called her pilot, John Cummings, who had flown the Gulfstream to Columbia, Mississippi, to pick them up. The drive to the airport had been silent and tense.

And filled with misgivings.

So. Now she knew what the fallout was like with Baby Blue. After everything they'd shared last night, he couldn't even look her in the eye today, let alone touch her.

Like she was a leper or something.

Or the single biggest mistake of his life.

Maybe if she wasn't so tired—he'd worn her way past out—she would have dug a little deeper. Tried to pin him down on what he was thinking.

Or maybe she didn't want to know. Maybe it was best to just let it be. She'd taken a huge leap of faith last night. Crossed a line she'd drawn between self-esteem and self-gratification.

So you made a mistake,
she told herself. Wasn't the first one she'd made where a man was concerned. She'd given herself over to Kevin Larson three years ago, hadn't she?

It had been a match made in music-land heaven—so said the tabloids. The reigning queen of rock and the hen-apparent to the king's crown. They'd been the industry's royal couple. And she'd believed she loved him. Believed he loved her.

She'd been wrong. It still burned sometimes. But it no longer hurt.

She heard the landing gear clunk up into place and settled in for the ride. And a harsh dose of the truth.

Men had fragile egos. Men did things for reasons she'd never understand.

Like leave women.

She thought of the Polaroid from the lockbox that she'd tucked in her purse. Most likely it was a photo of the first man to ever leave her.

And then she thought of Baby Blue and added him to the list of men who had left. At least emotionally. Oh well. Another lesson learned. Trust words. Trust deeds. Don't count on some intangible something she'd thought she'd seen in Baby Blue's eyes last night. Something that
she'd
been feeling at the time. A closeness. A connection. An emotional tug that had been nearly as cataclysmic as the physical pull.

Cataclysmic.

Story of her life lately.

Story of her fricking life.

That night, Boston

"Well, they love her in Beantown, huh?"

Jase kept his eyes on the crowd, not bothering to acknowledge Chris Ramsey's observation but noting just the slightest thread of jealousy in her tone.

He didn't like this woman, and every time he was around her, she gave him another reason not to. She made him edgy as hell. And as he stood in the wings scanning the glut of bodies crowding the stage, the edge grew sharper and keener.

Janey had just started her second set and already house security had had to wrestle half a dozen fans away from the stage. Everyone wanted to get close to her. Everyone wanted to get their hands on her.

Poor bastards. He knew how they felt.

Less than twenty-four hours ago, he'd been as close as a man could get to her. He'd had his hands all over her. And his mouth. And... Jesus. He wanted to touch her again.

And that just wasn't going to happen. He had a rule: one out-of-his-mind experience a year.

Arms crossed over his chest, he repeatedly scanned the crowd as JoJo Starbuck's bass guitar throbbed out a hot, heavy rhythm. Inevitably, Jase's gaze strayed back to Janey.

She stood center stage, her whiskey-and-velvet voice belting out "Take Me, Baby." She looked ... outrageous. And incredible in a black leather bustier and low-riding shorts so short her legs looked a mile long. Four-inch ankle boots made those legs look incredible.

So did the light sheen of perspiration glowing on her skin.

He'd seen her glow like that last night. When he'd gone down on her. When he'd finally tasted that sweet spot between her legs and sent them both soaring.

"Where was a good mind when you needed one," he muttered under his breath, still not believing he'd let himself get so far off track where she was concerned.

He'd screwed up before. But last night—hell. It was the screw-up to end all screw-ups. The mother of all screw-ups. Shit. It was the world championship of screw-ups.

There wasn't a damn thing he could do about it now. Except try to forget it ever happened. Try not to notice the hurt he saw in Janey's eyes every time she looked at him. Try not to let himself go to her, apologize—or, worse, tell her she'd been the most incredible, amazing, excellent thing to ever happen to him.

And she had been. Not just the sex—though, sweet, sweet Lord, the sex had been like nothing he'd ever experienced before.

The thing was, it had been more than sex, he admitted with a defeated breath. Way more than sex. At least it had been for him. But for her—well, she might think it had been more, but he figured he knew what had really happened last night.

She'd needed someone to hold her. Someone to make her forget about all the shit that had been happening in her life.

Always one to volunteer for the tough duty, huh, Wilson?

He jerked his gaze back to the crowd. And forgot all about last night's mistakes when he thought back to the phone call he'd received from No.

He hadn't told Janey—didn't want to hit her with it before she went onstage—but Dallas had discovered that another woman was dead. A woman whose name was on the list with three others they'd found in Alice Perkins's lockbox. Christ. Like No and Dallas, Jase didn't believe for a minute that it was an accident. And like them, he figured the other women were living on borrowed time—if they were still alive.

He scrubbed a hand over his jaw. There was only one thing he was certain of in all this. Janey was not going to die. He was going to make damn sure of it. And to do that, he had to keep his head in the game and his dick in his pants.

The canned spotlights roamed over the audience, from the two tiers of balconies to the floor in front of the stage.