Page 47 of Rock & Roll Nights: The Lila and Rivers Edit
“Why are you so excited?” I asked.
She huffed. “Because it’s time to get up, rock star. It’s time for breakfast. Taylor texted and said she wants to meet with us.”
That got me up to the sitting position. I might not want to get out of bed—or face the real world, or another day where Rivers ignored me. But if Taylor wanted to meet with us, it meant she had news. Andthatwas worth getting up for.
24
LILA
Iwalked into the restaurant feeling like I’d already had three cups of coffee.
I hadn’t. But the thought of a meeting with Taylor—which Taylor herself had called for—had me getting all sorts of excited, and the depression of having woken up without anything from Rivers faded into the mists of the early morning. I’d spoken with Taylor quite a bit over the last two weeks—and more over the last week, when Rivers had started making himself scarce—but she’d never actually called a meeting with me.
With us.
I reached down and took Anna’s hand, squeezing as hard as I could. “I can’t believe we’re being called into a meeting with a Real Live Agent,” I whispered. “I think I’m going to be sick.”
Anna snorted in typical Anna fashion. “Lila. This is an agent you’ve seen every day for the past two weeks and talked to at least 103 times. This girl asked a favor of you on your first day here. What’s the big deal?”
I yanked her to a stop and turned her so I could stare into her eyes. “What’s the big deal?What’s the big deal?Taylor Jamescalled us at 5 in the morning for a meeting. Amee-ting! How could you think that wasn’t a big deal?”
She shrugged and gave me a sly smile. “I don’t know, Liles, you’re the girl who evidently has a direct line straight to God. You ask him for favors and he delivers. I’m just surprised you’d get so jittery about a little old agent like Taylor James.”
Okay, well I had to give her that much. I didn’t actually have a direct line to God—at least I didn’t think I did, and if I did, I certainly wasn’t using it enough—but I had sent a thought up into the ether asking for a sign about what Anna and I were supposed to do for our music careers. And the DJ on the radio had announced that Olivia Johns and Connor Wheating were essentially taking auditions on the road. Then no one else had turned up for said auditions and we’d essentially waltzed in as the only act in town. So to speak.
Coincidence?
Probably.
But still.
I grinned at her. “Okay, well when you put it that way. I guess compared to God, Taylor James should be easy as pie.”
“Even easier. Considering you’ve already been doing her favors and she owes you.”
Another point on Anna’s tally. My mind went back to that first morning, when I’d stupidly decided to get up on a stage in a café and do some performing. She’d cornered me afterward and asked me—pretty bluntly—to play Rivers Shines’ girlfriend. At that time, the standing opinion was that he was too broody and damaged to be good for Olivia and Connor’s reputations, and that he needed a shine up. Taylor had taken one look at my bright, red-headed look and decided it was exactly the one that would add more shine—if you’ll forgive the pun—to his persona. I’d been hesitant, because hello,Rivers Shine, but when she’d thrown in a guaranteed contract, I’d said yes.
Guaranteed contract.
God, please let that be what she wanted to meet about, and not Rivers. Because he was well and truly out of my reach at this point, and I wasn’t sure what else I could do to help him or his reputation. I might have buffed it up a bit that first week, but he was now doing everything he could to tarnish it again.
And I didn’t think I could stop him. No matter how much Taylor might want me to.
I’d barely had the thought when I looked up through the restaurant, taking in the size of it, and noticed a familiar set of dark eyes staring at me. Ruffled, dark hair. Wide cheekbones. Impossibly lush lips.
Lips that looked like they’d been built for kissing.
I happened to know exactly what it was like to kiss those very lips.
My eyes dipped to them and then shot back up to the eyes—smoldering and shadowed, as usual—and I gasped. Rivers looked like he was going to burn me up with his gaze. Like he wanted to eat me up right here and now. Devour my mouth and every other piece of my body and leave me begging for more.
He also looked like he hadn’t slept in a week, and if he had, the sleep had been filled with nightmares. Shadows crept beneath his eyes and his skin was even paler than usual. He looked sick. I felt my heart reaching for him, trying to find that connection we’d had, trying to ask what was wrong and what I could do to make him?—
A hand appeared out of nowhere, grabbed my arm, and yanked me to the side, breaking my eye contact with Rivers, and I jerked my gaze over to see Taylor James herself dragging me toward her table, her mouth already moving a mile a minute and her eyes intent on me.
Right. Okay. Forget about Rivers and him wanting to eat me alive or how I might save him from whatever was wrong. It was evidently time for our meeting with Taylor.
“The plan is,” she was saying, “to shift the publicity away from Rivers a little bit. Sure, he’s great and everything, and you two are so good together, but people are way more interested in you than him at this point. They’ve already done all the stories on Rivers Shine. The tattoos. The drugs. The booze. They want something new to talk about. Something bright and pretty and...” She gestured vaguely in my direction, indicating everything about me, from my auburn hair down to my flip flops. “Something that doesn’t make them depressed,” she ended wryly.
