Page 21 of Country Road Romance

Rebecca finally turned her attention from whatever she’d been staring at on the ceiling and fixed him in her gaze. Somehow that was even worse than if she’d actually started yelling at him.

“As we talked about last night, this is definitely a very, very bad thing, and we’re going to be very, very busy making sure that we get a handle on this.” She brandished her phone. “As I’m sure you’re abundantly aware, this is all over the news, and it’s already threatening to derail all of the hard work we’ve done for the festival.”

“Go on,” he said, dreading what was coming next.

“So, after consulting with Sheri, we’ve decided that Charlie is going to go with you to your parents’ house this weekend.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

Jared had expected many things to come out of this conversation, but he definitely hadn’t had “take Charlie to his parents” on his Rebecca’s-going-to-punish-Jared Bingo card.

“I’m not, actually,” she said, giving him a stern look over the rim of her glasses. “I gave you one thing to do–keep Charlie Garrett out of trouble–and you went and did the exact opposite. Now you’re going to have to fix it. And don’t even think about yelling at me,” Rebecca said, reading his mind in the way that only she could do. “And you might be fooling some people, but you’re not fooling me. I can already see that you’re getting feelings for Charlie. So maybe this’ll give you a chance to work through your complicated feelings about him.”

Now that was something he wasn’t going to let pass.

“I am not,” he said flatly. “I don’t know why you would say such a thing.”

She didn’t need to know that he was quickly–too quickly–starting to find his assumptions about who Charlie really waschallenged by the truth he was seeing in front of him. He knew that Rebecca loved him, but he also knew that she could be a bit judgy when it came to his romantic escapades.

“Because I know you better than you know yourself,” she said at once. “And I can always tell when you’re falling for a guy, particularly when it’s one that you know you should be staying a mile away from. I don’t think you need me to tell you all of the reasons that getting together with Charlie Garrett would be a monumentally bad thing, but in case you do, here’s the big one: he’s a star, and he’s going to go back to LA when this is all over, and he’s going to break your heart when he does so.”

“You think I don’t already know that?” he said, trying to stay calm. “You think that hasn’t already gone through my head a thousand times?” He immediately realized what he’d said and tried to backtrack it. “I mean, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t have feelings for Charlie Garrett.”

He was well aware of how weak that sounded, and he was rewarded with one of Rebecca’s trademark knowing smirks. Jared hated those, usually because they were the preface to her telling him why she was right about something and he was wrong.

“Mhm,” she said.

“And so what if I have a crush on him ?” he asked. “It’s not like there’s going to be anything that’s going to come out of it. Like you said, he lives in LA, I live in West Virginia, and I’m still right about what I said, you know. He does seem to have forgotten the rest of us living back here.” He shook his head, though he wasn’t sure whether he was trying to convince Rebecca or himself. “Nope. It’s not going to happen.”

“Do you mean that you’re not going to get with him or that you’re not going to take him away for a few days?”

“Both.”

“Well, if you don’t, then the festival is almost certainly going to get canceled, and you’re going to have that on your conscience. Is that really what you want?”

Jared really hated it when Rebecca tried to blackmail him, and he hated it even more when it was effective. He knew how important this festival was to her. Hell, he knew how important it was to him, too. They’d worked on it for months, and if spending the rest of the weekend with Charlie was the cost of getting it to work, then wasn’t it worth it?

Besides, there were other good reasons to want to spend the weekend with Charlie. Perhaps he could dig a little deeper, find a little bit more about him and the past that he seemed determined to keep hidden…

“Fine, fine, fine,” he said, finally giving in. “You probably knew from the beginning that I was going to give in, didn’t you?”

She smirked again. “I generally get my own way in the end.” She clapped her hands once. “I’m sure that your parents are going to love having Charlie Garrett in their living room. Isn’t your mom a big fan of his?”

Jared sighed. “Yes, unfortunately.”

“Don’t be like that. You’re a fan too, even if you don’t want to admit it.”

Now that he really had to think about it, Jared realized that Rebecca and Sheri had decided on this literally without any input from him at all. Or from his parents, for that matter.

“Wait a minute,” he said. “What makes you think that my parents are going to be okay with this? And why their house of all places? And for that matter, what makes you think thatI’llbe okay with just thrusting a very famous stranger on them? What happens if a bunch of reporters find out where we are and show up? My mom’s going to be upset enough that I’m dropping someone off on her without giving her a chance to clean up. She’s going to have a cow when she finds out who it is.”

There. That should put Rebecca in her place.

It didn’t.

“How you wrangle your parents is entirely up to you,” she said. “If I know them, they’re never going to turn away a guest, and they’re going to be happy to see you, in any case. As to why your parents’ house…well, that was kind of my idea. It just sort of occurred to me, so I ran with it. It’s the one place where no one will think to look, since no one knows who you are. They’re also far enough away that Charlie should be safe there for a few days–we both know that they’re not exactly in the middle of a bustling metropolis, and you’ve complained enough about how hard it is to get cell service there.” She shrugged. “It just seemed like the perfect place, Sheri agreed, and here we are.

“And as for the news hounds, you just leave that to Sheri and me. We’ll take care of shielding the two of you. You just make sure that you keep Charlie out of any further trouble. I don’t want to hear about any confrontations on TikTok or Twitter, and I most certainly don’t want to hear about him getting into any further fistfights. Do I make myself clear?”

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