She tilted her head so her hair fell over one shoulder. “I’m forgiven, right?”
“As long as you promise to be straight with me from now on.”
“I promise.” She made a cross over her heart that was such a little girl move, he wanted to kiss her. “We have three days of interviews in Chicago, then a two-week break while you laze around and I work hard in rehearsals. Assuming I have the voice to show up at rehearsals.” The distress he’d hoped never again to witness clouded her eyes. She combed her fingers through her hair. “But as soon as those rehearsals start, we’re done.”
“Hold on. Once the gala is over, we’re done. It’s our last obligation to Marchand, and no way are you depriving us of those two weeks of sexual bliss.”
“Wrong.” She pushed her hair away from her face. “We have sex the last night in Las Vegas. Sex for those three nights we’re in Chicago before rehearsals start. And then you dump me on Sunday night, right before my rehearsals start on Monday morning.”
“Fine. I’ll compromise. We have the last night in Las Vegas. Three nights in Chicago. And the two weeks while you’re in rehearsal. I’ll have dinner and a back rub waiting for you when you come home. The night of the gala, I dump you.”
“Exactly how is that a compromise?”
Because he wanted it to be.
She pointed a long, elegant finger at him. “There’s no compromise. As soon as rehearsals start, I’m on the job, completely focused, and we’re over.”
“Now, Liv, be reasonable.”
“The only time we’ll see each other again is at the gala. We’ll greet each other like old friends, pose for photos, and go our separate ways. That’s it. We’re history. No dates. No cozy dinners. No lakefront walks. Nothing.”
“You really are afraid of me, aren’t you?”
She shifted her knees. “Do you agree or not?”
“This is like a bad labor negotiation, but I agree.” For now, anyway. Once things unfolded, he intended to revisit the situation.
“Great.” She gave him a bright smile. A smile he had to spoil because he couldn’t stand the knots that had formed in her shoulders, the tension in her neck.
“Liv, you need to get your head together.”
“How do you suggest I do that?”
“Ease up on yourself about Adam. Accept your many imperfections—which I’ll be happy to keep pointing out, starting with your tendency to run off by yourself.” A thread of an idea formed in the back of his mind. “You also have to start singing for me.”
She jumped from the chaise, leaving the towel behind. “I told you. I can’t sing!”
The elderly couple in the hot tub looked over at them. He rose and blocked their view of Olivia. “I didn’t say you had to sing opera. Maybe some blues. Rock. ‘The Wheels on the Bus.’ I don’t care. I’m only a football player, remember? I won’t know if what I’m hearing is good or bad.”
“We’ve listened to jazz together, remember? You know music. And that’s the worst idea ever.”
“Is it? I have to deal with Clint Garrett, remember? A guy with all the talent in the world who still manages to choke under pressure. The two of you have strong similarities.”
“Such as?”
“You’re both a hell of a lot of work.”
What had only been the glimmer of an idea began to take shape.
*
When Thad pounded on her bedroom door an hour before they were scheduled to leave for Atlanta the next day, she politely suggested he go to hell. Unfortunately, that didn’t discourage him, and the next thing she knew he’d barged inside her room, grabbed her hairbrush from the dresser, and held it out. “Sing!”
“No.”
“Don’t mess with me on this, Olivia. We’re going to try a little of my kind of therapy.”
She pushed his arm away and tried withering him with her most condescending look. “Opera singers don’t use microphones.”
He was un-witherable. “Right now, you’re not an opera singer. You’re an ordinary singer. And they use mikes.” Once again, he extended the stupid hairbrush. “I was thinking I’d enjoy some Ella or Nina Simone.”
“Try Spotify.”
His lip curled, but not in a good way. “And you brag about your work ethic. What I see is a woman who’s given up. Instead of fighting the good fight and doing the work to fix what’s wrong, all you want to do is whine.” As if that weren’t scathing enough, he added, “I’m disappointed in you.”
Nobody was ever disappointed in Olivia Shore. She snatched the hairbrush from his hand and gave him Billie Holiday. A few stanzas of “God Bless the Child” sung so badly it was a good thing Billie was already dead, because if she’d heard Olivia’s choppy phrasing, she would have killed herself.
Thad smiled. “You could take that to Carnegie Hall right now.”
She threw the hairbrush at him. She targeted his chest instead of his head—unnecessary, as it turned out, because he plucked the hairbrush right out of the air before it could land.
“I’m that good,” he said at her expression of astonishment.
If only she were.
“And you’re not as bad as you think.” He patted her cheek. “I ordered us breakfast. Strawberry cheesecake French toast.”
She regarded him glumly. “Only for me, I’m sure. While you have an arugula-kale smoothie with a side order of garden grubs.”
“Now don’t you worry about it.”
As it turned out, she never got to enjoy that French toast because she made the mistake of checking her phone before she sat down to eat.
10
Her New Orleans attack had gone public. The mainstream newspapers restricted the item to a few factual sentences, but the Internet gossip sites were all over it.
Police are giving few details about a bizarre attack on opera star Olivia Shore. The assault occurred in a New Orleans alley. Shore was apparently unharmed, but what was she doing in a back alley? And what part did Thad Owens, the Chicago Stars’ backup quarterback, who is rumored to be involved with the opera diva, play in the incident? So many questions.
It couldn’t have looked sleazier.
Thad was still upset as they rode the elevator to the lobby where they’d meet the limo taking them to the airfield for their flight to Atlanta. “They’re insinuating that I beat you up!” he exclaimed.
They were doing exactly that, but she tried to minimalize it. “Not really,” she said weakly.
“Close enough.”
“I don’t understand why we’re getting all this attention.”
“Because I’m a dumb jock and you’re a high-class diva, and it’s too good a story to pass up.”
“The only thing dumb about you is your taste in T-shirts.” His, she happened to know, was a two-hundred-and-fifty-dollar Valentino.
He gazed down at the navy-and-red graphic of astronauts floating in space. “Might have been a mistake.”
“You think?”
Only Henri and Paisley were waiting by the limo. Fortunately, Mariel had left the tour, but Olivia suspected she’d turn up again, like a head cold that wouldn’t go away. She’d probably run off to Uncle Lucien so she could complain about the rubes Henri had hired to represent the company.