Page 6 of Guarded Hearts
When I hung up, I stared at the phone in my hand and then sighed as I stood to examine my appearance in the mirror. Smeared mascara under my eyes, pale skin, tangled hair. One too many bad decisions last night. At twenty-seven, I should know better, about a lot of things.
Backstage, while we waited for our cue, I avoided Jazz, but I could sense I was being watched.
“Did you fuck him?” Jazz blurted out when she appeared beside me.
Fortunately, we were the last two dancers waiting for our cue. I hated talking during this time in case I missed my entrance window. Mia forgave a lot of missteps, but a missed entrance was a big no-no. “I don’t see how that’s any of your business.”
“You let it be Amy’s business when you bet her you could do it.”
I held up a finger but refused to look at Jazz. Truthfully, I didn’t like her very much. Gossipy and a try-hard in the worst way.
“Nope. I bet her I could get him behind the privacy curtain.” I smirked. “I never said I’d have sex with him.” That much was true.
I told Amy wagering on sex was vulgar and establishing proof would be gross or impossible.
“He’s quite a conversationalist.” Why had I slept with him? A test drive, maybe. Or perhaps just to see if it was possible. Stupid and irresponsible.
Last tour and for the majority of this one, he’d been glued to Mia’s side. Maybe they’d had a thing before Tyler came along. It was the only logical explanation for the puppy love on Pasha’s part. The feelings among the three of them were mystifying.
Butoursex had been hot. Maybe Mia, Tyler, and Pasha were into three-ways? He knew his way around a woman’s body with a lot more confidence than I expected, given that he didn’t sleep around on the tour. Who’d been keeping him satisfied?
The music swelled, and Jazz burst out onto the stage, nailing her entrance, leaving me behind, consumed by my thoughts. I’d done enough shows to fake my way through a missed cue, but it pissed me off that I was so lost in my own head I screwed up. To have Jazz best me was even worse. Any of the other women wouldn’t have fazed me, but Jazz set my teeth on edge.
At the end of the show, Amy looped her arm through mine and leaned in close. “He’s watching you.”
“What else is new?” I smiled. A snarky comment but also true.
I’d caught him watching a few times on the last tour, more so on this one. Before I made those bets last night, I knew he was interested. In what? Well, I hadn’t been completely sure. His relationship with Mia was puzzling. But he was a man, and men were simple creatures.
Amy laughed and squeezed me tighter. “You’re brutal.”
“Brutally honest,” I agreed.
“Did you hear Mia and Tyler got engaged last night? He sang her a song he wrote.”
I frowned and tried to remember any time Tyler had seemed musically inclined. “A song? And he sang? Can he sing? Does he even know how to play an instrument?”
“Rumor has it he cannot sing. At least not very well. But Mia’s been raving to everyone who’ll listen about how romantic the whole thing was.”
A proposal. The closest I had ever come was with Ricky, the scheming runaway. Maybe we weren’t that close. I’d been blindsided by his betrayal, or at least the financial part of it, and I was trying to figure out how to trust my instincts again.
“Do you think Mia’s ever slept with anyone who worked for her?” I asked.
“Doubt it. Not after what happened to her with that producer and then the new HR contract she makes everyone sign.”
“People are hypocrites.”
“Sure, but does she seem like that to you? I don’t know. Maybe I’m not reading her right. We’ve been on tour with her more than once. She seems genuine. Kinda demanding and detail oriented but fair, mostly.”
Why was I speculating about Mia’s private life? She gave me a job, a chance to keep treading water under the crushing financial weight. Whether she slept with half her male staff or just one of them was none of my business. Gossip didn’t normally appeal to me, one of the reasons Amy and I got along so well. All I’d had since last night were gossipy, shitty thoughts that I couldn’t properly explain or justify.
I glanced over my shoulder just before I went into the dressing room. Down the hall, outside Mia’s room, Pasha stood. He glanced in my direction, and our eyes locked.
Amy passed into the room ahead, but I hesitated at the doorway. Like always, I couldn’t read the expression on his face, but the memory of our encounter last night surfaced in a rush. His rough hands, his soft lips, the way his biceps had contracted with each thrust, those words he’d mumbled in my ear. Russian, I assumed. They hadn’t been English. He nodded ever so slightly, an acknowledgement, a remembrance, and that tiny movement caused my stomach to clench.
There was no denying his attractiveness. Close-cropped sandy hair, angular face, piercing blue eyes, built wide like a football player but leaner. All the dancers had noticed him at one point or another, but he rarely acknowledged anyone but Mia and now Tyler and Victoria too.
It still amazed me that Mia had been pregnant on the last tour. Superhuman, that was what Mia was. The kind of woman who didn’t let anything get her down. I wondered what it was like to have such a perfect life.
