The Problem With Heartache (8 page)

Heat rushed to my cheeks and I opened and shut my mouth in my best goldfish impersonation. I’d clearly been caught checking him out.
Well, this is awkward.

“It’s okay. Half the people in the country have probably seen that pic.” Lee shrugged, taking the phone back from my hand, his fingers grazing mine, and placing it facedown on the bed. “Plus, it gets hot when we play. I take my shirt off a lot.”

“And people stare?” As the words came out of my mouth, I started kicking myself.
Idiot, idiot, idiot.

“Some.” Lee shrugged. “Just maybe not as obviously as you.”

The fire in my cheeks continued to rage. I shouldn’t have checked him out. I wasn’t interested in him.

The last guy I’d seen shirtless was Lachlan, lying in my bed, rolling under the covers with me. His skin, so soft, his hair curled in my fists as we made out, our bodies alive against each other.

The morning before he died.

The last day I was truly happy.

I angled away from Lee and straightened my spine, pushing down the agonising pain, compacting it.
When was it going to get easier?

For what felt like the millionth time that day, I rolled my shoulders, trying to push away the hurt and focus on the now. I was here to do a job and help Mum pay for our bills. That was what mattered. Lachlan I could let crush me later. “Let’s get down to business, shall we?”

Lee sat up. “Is everything okay?” His eyes bled concern and his hand rested on my shoulder again. Once more, tingles shot down my body at his touch.

I shook it off. I didn’t need that right now.

“It’s fine. I just want to make sure I nail this, you know?”

Lee’s eyes met mine, and the depth in those icy-blue orbs struck me to the core. “I know you’re gonna be great at it.”

“You don’t even know me.” I shook my head.

He paused. “Wanna know a secret?”

I nodded. “Go on.”

Lee glanced around, as if he were afraid that at any moment someone could come bursting out from behind the bus window curtain. “I’m not really a true musician.”

His words were so quiet I had to think them over before their meaning registered in my brain. “What? You didn’t take singing lessons as a kid?” I raised my eyebrows.

“When I first started, I was tone deaf.” His eyes flashed sincerity at me.

“Bull,” I countered.

“True story.”

“You can’t fix that though, can you?” I scrunched up my nose, and he leant forward and gave it a light tap.

“If you practise enough at anything, you can make it work. And I was lucky enough that my parents supported me, helped me have about a million lessons to learn to hear the notes with ease.”

It was a weird confession to say the least, but it did ease the tension. “I don’t think that necessarily makes you an untrue musician.”

“I think it takes away some of the legitimacy, though. But that’s why I know you’re gonna be good at this.” Lee flashed me a grin. “Because practise will make perfect. Now it’s your turn. You need to share a secret with me.”

I racked my brain, trying to think of something, anything.

Anything that didn’t hurt.

“Well, I …” Come on, brain think of something. “I really, really, really like to run.”

“That’s not a secret.”

“It is, though!” I protested. “Because I never used to do it. Ever. But a few months ago, I started getting up early and just chasing shadows around the block. It helps … helps clear my head, y’know? Focus on the day in front of me.”
It helps me try and escape my thoughts. To wear my body down.
“But Mum and Dad don’t really know I do it, and neither do my friends, so I guess that’s a secret for you.” I nodded triumphantly, arms folded under my chest.

“Is it because you still think about him?” Lee’s eyes drilled into me. It would be so easy to fall apart in front of those eyes, to fall under their spell.

But I couldn’t.

I wouldn’t.

“Can we just get back to work, please?” I said, softening the words with what I hoped was a convincing smile.

Lee paused for a moment, silent, then something flashed in his gaze and he broke into an easy smile again. “Of course.”

He grabbed the papers from behind him once more. “Your main job will be to make sure we are where we need to be on time, and to make sure everyone is ready for us. In here is a list of gigs, hotels, and drivers. Before we are supposed to be anywhere—
anywhere
—it’s important you call ahead and let them know our ETA.”

“So they have security ready?”

“Exactly.” Lee nodded. “It’s also important that probably a few hours before we are supposed to be anywhere, you check in and make sure all band members are present and accounted for.”

“Where else would you be?” I frowned.

Lee licked his lips. His eyes darted to the pillows on the bed. “Sometimes things get …”

I decided to just come out with it. “You guys sleep around?”

“No!” It was his turn to blush, and I couldn’t help but smile. Something about this guy, one of the most famous lead singers in the world, and he was … blushing at the idea of me thinking he had sex with strangers. I’d seen him linked to a few people in the tabloids, but nothing like what I’d seen some other musicians get up to. He was pretty tame, actually.

“I mean, sometimes Xander does, and I …”

“You …?” I pushed.

“I do, and I date, occasionally.”

“Like Inga.” I nodded, remembering the bimbo that Dave had brought to dinner that time. She’d been ridiculously good-looking, legs that went till forever and a gorgeous body. Swiss, of course.

That night, that long night … I’d run home, desperate to escape from it all.

Lachlan had kissed me.

Lachlan had
kissed
me.

My chest heaved as the memory of his lips on mine raced through my brain, and I fought, fought with every cell in my body to keep those tears from flowing from my eyes, those sobs from escaping my lips. Why was this so hard? It was always bad, but this? It wasn’t fair.

But then again, nothing ever is.

“I forgot you’d met her.” Lee picked at a non-existent thread coming loose on the bedspread. “She wasn’t anything—”

“You don’t need to explain it.” I shook my head. Hurt was still rushing through me, reminding me of all I’d lost. “I know you said … you know, you kind of asked me out back at the … the …”

Funeral? Wake? Celebration of Lachlan’s life?
None of the words felt adequate. None of them were
close to it.

“At Sideways.” Lee supplied the words for me, and I flashed him a grateful smile.

“Yes.” I nodded. “And I just wanted to say, I know you were just, you know, being polite. I don’t think you’re holding a candle or anything for me.” I rushed it out all in one breath. I was rambling, and I couldn’t stop the words from escaping, but I wanted him, needed him to know I wasn’t here because I thought he liked me, despite Mum’s obvious suggestions. “I mean, you don’t know me, and even if you did, I probably wouldn’t be your type, and—”

“Yes.”

I blinked. “Yes, what?”

Lee leant in close, so close I could smell the piney, woody scent that it was so unfair for a guy who had just spent close to twenty hours on a plane to have lingering on his body. God knew what I smelt like …

“You are.” I glanced down at his lips. He gently placed his hand on my exposed thigh, and the shockwaves from his touch rippled through my body. The tension between us was strung tight like a rope. “You are my type.”

I swallowed. I’m Lee Collins’s
type
? Was Stacey right about all of this after all?

“But obviously, you’re also my employee, and I wouldn’t cross that line.” Lee cut his gaze back to the paperwork on his lap, and I acted like I wasn’t about to pass out from overexertion. My body had gone through devastated, to turned on, to rocked to its very core, all in the space of ten minutes.
Note to self: do not try to have a business meeting with Lee-
freaking
-Collins on his bed in the bus after a twenty- hour flight.

Then, a devastating thought hit me.
What if Lee was using me as material?
Dave had sung a horrid song about me once; what if I was just some colossal joke to Lee?

I looked at the guy lying across from me. Surely he wouldn’t … would he?

There was one easy way to deal with it. To not be a joke. To not give him the opportunity to make me a laughing stock. To
not
let him fluster me again.

“Okay, so let’s talk about your requests at the shows.” I clasped my hands over my knee and pointed to one of the sheets in front of him with the word “rider” on the top of it.

“We don’t need one thousand thread-count sheets, or only blue M&M’s or anything like that,” Lee said, oblivious to my inner turmoil. He used his hand to emphasise what he was saying, making wild gestures to illustrate his point. “We just have some basics, mostly booze, and some snacks that won’t make me wanna hurl on stage.”

“Hurl.” I giggled. “You’re
so
freaking American.”

“Freaking.” He smiled, and shifted his body that little bit closer to mine again. “You’re so innocent.”

This time, there was no mistaking the danger flashing in his eyes. “You’re travelling with a band.” He swallowed, and his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down. “We say
fuck
.”

I’d never been one for swearing, but that word, the way he let it fall from his lips had layers of sex loaded in it. Parts of my body tingled that I swear never tingled before, and I pressed my lips together. His breath was hot, so near to my lips, and someone must have turned the heat up in the bus because I was suddenly super aware of the line of my T-shirt against my neck, the heat in my cheeks, over my chest, up my legs.

That was when I looked down and saw it.

His hand was still on my thigh.

He caught my gaze and looked down, too, jerking his arm back and running his fingers through his thick, brown hair.

“Sorry.” He shook his head and collapsed back on the bed, staring at the ceiling.

“It’s fine.” I turned my head from side to side, and it was.
I am in love with Lachlan.
Nothing could change that. I felt it in my bones, pulsing through my blood, and in my heart.

“Let’s talk about loading in and loading out.”

And just like that, the moment passed.

Lee talked about music.

I thought about Lachlan.

And I was certain we did not think about each other.

Three days later, as I was doing my morning tour rounds that basically consisted of me knocking on the guys’ doors, then yelling, and sometimes getting a key from reception and waking them up myself, I found a letter. It was sticking out from under Lee’s door, and it had my name on it.

I ripped the envelope open, anxious to read what was inside.

Dear Kate,

I know you’re going through a lot, and I know you’re probably pissed at this whole work situation. I get that you were kind of railroaded into it; really, I do. For what it’s worth, I’m sorry, but I don’t want you to doubt yourself, okay? YOU hooked that tour up, back when Dave & The Glories joined us on the road. YOU organised all their bookings and YOU made it work.

On the bus, you seemed a little nervous, as if maybe you thought you weren’t good enough for this job. Well, let me share another secret of mine with you: If I’d thought you were gonna be more trouble than you were worth, I never would have hired you.

Don’t ever forget that.

Lee