Page 9 of The First Deal

My phone rang as I began to type back a single response to all of her ranting. Her name lit up my screen and I sighed heavily and leaned back on my lounger before answering. It was never worth ignoring her.

“Lyndy-Lou,” I boomed.

“Don’tLyndy-loume, Shane,” she snapped. “He’s crossed a line.”

“I presume you’re talking about your delightful little lad, the kid isn’t ready for the big bad world yet.” We were talking about Leo, and quite frankly, I was tired of repeating myself to her.

Lynda’s biggest downfall was her inability to back down. After all, Lynda knows best.

“But you know whoisready for the world?”

Lynda growled down the line. “I said no. We’re not signing him.”

The woman could read me like a book, and I could her. This conversation was surprisingly one of the longest we’d had in a while, quite often the tone of a sigh, or the sharpness of a single word was all we needed to communicate with each other.

“Yet,” I muttered, then put on my most upbeat voice. “Do you want me to drop in on Leo?”

“He listens to you.” That meant yes. Lynda’s least favourite word, she avoided it at all costs. Stubborn bitch.

I sat back up, opened up a new note screen on my laptop and started to type. “I’ll need the—”

“Jet. I know. I’ve already made calls.” Of course, she had.

“I’ll head out on Saturday, I have…” I didn’t finish my sentence. Lynda knew what my plans for the rest of the week were. “I’ll call Alice and make arrangements.”

“Keep your phone on,” she said, then hung up.

I could try to convince myself that I chose my hours, but the truth was, I never really stopped, even when I had plans away from work. I liked to think that if my phone rang, I’d ignore it, but that rarely happened. Usually only when Lynda had irritated me, or when things were going well enough for me to not worry about any of our artists.

Thankfully, I love what I do.

By the time I had made my calls, finished replying to the other emails in my inbox, and drafted a simple plan of hoops to make Nate jump through if I wanted to get him in Lynda’s good books, I had finished my drink. I glanced at the time on the bottom corner of my screen, it was just gone midday. Swirling the tiny balls of ice in my glass I decided that it was probably too early for a drink, but—

“It’s five o’clock somewhere, Hudson,” a raspy, female voice said.

I looked up to find the owner of that voice and smiled wide. “Violet, you’ve got to stop letting yourself in whenever you want.”

My best friend of thirty years was standing at the top of the stairs, hand on hip, short, blonde bob not moving an inch, even as the gentle summer breeze made the skirt of her floaty, turquoise dress flutter around her tanned knees.

“If you wanted your privacy, you should never have given me your spare key,” she said with a laugh as she made her way to the bar and grabbed a wine glass.

“I gave you that key for emergencies, like if I got locked out.” I joined her at the bar, swapping my tall glass for a smaller tumbler. Violet poured herself a glass of crisp, white wine, then pushed a bottle of bourbon my way.

“This is an emergency.” Violet’s brows raised high as she went to sit on the lounger that I had just vacated.

Sitting on the rattan chair beside her I rested my elbows on my knees and swirled the dark liquid in my glass as I watched her down her entire glass of wine.

“We need to have a very serious conversation,” she announced.

“Clearly.” I raised my brows and took a sip of my own drink. “I’ve not seen you throw back a drink like that in years.”

She grimaced, then straightened her spine, placing the glass down on a table beside her. “Tomorrow, as you know, is my birthday.”

“Yes.” I nodded, hiding my own grimace over the fact that I may or may not have actually forgotten all about her big day. “The big five-oh.”

She glared at me.

“Not that you look a day over thirty-two,” I quickly added, earning myself a playful swat on the knee. “Don’t tell me that your big emergency is a midlife crisis. Vi, if you want to fuck a twenty-year-old and buy a sports car, just do it.”

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