“So you ask her.”
He laughed again. “You make that sound easy. You don’t know Evie.”
“Evie Tice? Yeah,” Hassan said. “I do. Evie recommended me to your tour company.”
“No kidding.” Jay yanked at his seat belt so he could sit forward. “Got any advice about how I play this?”
“Know what you want, respect what she wants, and don’t mess her around.”
That was sound. Also a problem. Kissing Evie like time had no meaning was one thing, but he had no idea what the endgame was. He’d be in New Zealand and then Singapore, Hong Kong and Shanghai and then on to Europe after Australia. After the tour, there was a new album to record. And what did Evie want? He’d never really known.
“Oh shit. You were driving earlier when I was in the car with Mum.”
“I don’t listen in on clients’ conversations.”
Maybe not all of them. “Come on, man, you heard that one.”
Hassan dropped his eyes. Jay got a view of the top of his head for a second. “Yeah, I heard. I don’t know what to tell you except Evie works hard and makes it look like she doesn’t. Her business is expanding. She’s hiring more people.”
“Evie has a business, with people. She’s a boss?” He’d thought she was the wardrobe person. He’d called her Tiny Dancer as if she was groupie who only lived for other peoples’ fame. Christ. He’d been aiming for humorous and landed hostile. There was a husk of him that’d wanted to hurt her for cutting him out of her life. Grip had corrected him, but he’d failed to ask the right questions about what Evie really did besides take pictures and he’d failed to check himself.
She must despise his arrogant arse.
“You need to talk to her,” Hassan said, sternly.
“I don’t think she wants me for talk.” He should’ve made it a condition that they talked it out before they got naked but to what end? “She’s never said she’d rather be doing something else?” He should be asking Abel this. Errol, anyone but the driver he was making work overtime.
“Not to me.”
“Did you know she sings?” Has a voice you can hear frost and fire in. You could hear mountain streams and bellbirds and the crash of the sea in Evie’s notes and tones.
“I didn’t know that. We’re coming up on the hotel. Do you want me to go around again?”
Those people waiting paid for Jay’s success with hard-earned cash. He was being a jerk, hiding out in his luxury air-conditioned limousine. “One more.”
He needed to think and once he got out of the temporary bubble of this car, his reality would come crashing in again. He’d thought the world had ended when Evie let him go. That’s not the story that got told about the band’s name, but it was the truth. Everyone thought it was a comment on the current state of the planet, randomly nihilist, like The Handmaiden’s Tale.
Hassan interrupted his musing. “Tries to hide it, but she has a big heart.”
“And I broke it, even though I didn’t mean to.”
“You’re in a tough spot.”
Wasn’t going to be tough to love Evie’s body and that’s all she was offering. Take it or leave it. What was her logic about not kissing on the lips? She wouldn’t survive it. What if wanting sex without emotion wasn’t part of her hustle?
A better man would recognize this was a problem and leave it.
He’d left her last time to be a better man.
“Yeah, rock and roll and a hard place.”
He got through the wall of fans making them feel he’d been worth the wait, but didn’t make it through the foyer without incident. Errol, who he’d been keen to avoid being alone with, was on his way out. It was the dodged eye contact that told him Errol was just as keen to avoid him that did it.
He stood in the man’s path. “We should talk.” It wasn’t that they hadn’t been talking. Errol had made sure Jay felt welcome without having to work for it in a way his sons had. But it was time for answers.
“Anything you need about the tour?”
“Not the tour. I leave that to Mum.”