Hollywood Prince (Hollywood Royalty 3)

She places her hand in mine, and I wrap my arm around her waist while she puts her arm around my shoulder. I bring her hand to my chest, pulling her closer to me, and I dance with her in the middle of my living room. The song tells her she is the reason I’ve changed, she is the reason I want to be a better man, and she is the reason I know what love is now. And one day, I’ll work up the nerve to tell her all these things myself.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Erin

“Cut!” Ivan shouts when I walk into the stage with Jessica beside me.

“I can’t even thank you enough for doing this,” I tell her, and she just nods. It’s been three days since the Grammys, and it’s finally time for his interview with Jessica. For three days, I’ve thought of ways to tell him how I feel.

Every day, he puts a post on Instagram, a picture of him looking straight into the camera. But I know he was looking right at me since I took the pictures.

Does it get better than this? Only tomorrow can tell.

Three days of it being on the tip of my tongue, but something holds me back. Every time I think this is it, I am slowly brought back in, and I keep from saying it. When he danced with me the night of the Grammys, it was there. It was the perfect time, but I couldn’t get over the lump in my throat.

“Scoring an interview with Carter is what everyone is dying for,” she says, holding her purse in her hand. “Especially now that he’s gone from all over the press to being a choir boy of sorts.”

I nod, knowing she will ask the question everyone wants to know, but I also know that she will do it with respect and not twist things around. When the story broke that she and Tyler were dating, she did what everyone was dying to do. She told her own story, and to this day, it’s the biggest celebrity story retweet. I walk to the stage and see that Carter is talking to Ivan, and he is pointing at something on the screen. They both agree on something, and then Carter turns and walks toward me. He smiles when he sees me and then sticks his hand out. “You must be Jessica Beckett.”

“I am,” she says, putting out her hand and shaking his hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

“You came highly recommended,” he says, and then Jessica laughs. “And by that, I mean Erin said I have to do this.”

I shake my head. “Okay, where do you want to do this?” I ask him, and he looks around.

“I think in my trailer,” he says, and I nod, so we walk back to the trailer. Carter opens the door, and I let Jessica go in first, then I follow her. She walks over to the table and sits down, grabbing her phone out of her bag along with a yellow legal pad. I stand by the sink, and he walks over to the table and sits on the bench and then moves over so I can sit. “Jesus, I’m nervous,” he says, rubbing his hands on his pants, and he takes the risk to put his hands on mine. I turn my hands over and squeeze his.

“Let’s get this started,” Jessica says and turns on her phone to tape the interview. She starts off slow, and it’s easy until she gets to the one that I knew was coming.

“The past couple of years, you have built up the reputation as a playboy. A different girl every night, sometimes multiple girls a day,” she starts, and my stomach starts to get sick. “But suddenly, you’ve gone off radar.” I look down and then look over at Carter. “People want to know why the sudden change.”

I wait for it, wait for him to compose his words, but he doesn’t. “I don’t know how I got that reputation,” he says, and I laugh and so does he. “I mean, I know how I got it, but it wasn’t something that I set out to do.” He grabs a water bottle that is on the table and takes a sip. “I guess I’m chalking it up to the fact that I had to prepare for the biggest role of my career, and I didn’t need any distractions.” He puts his hands on the table now leaving mine. “The last time I went out was over three weeks ago, and when I knew I had to get my head in the game, I kept thinking that it was going to be hard, but it’s been the opposite of that. It’s shown me the kind of man I want to be, and it wasn’t the one from before.”