So by the time we made it back to the hotel and Walker was in full big brother mode, I knew I was going to be spending the night by myself, with only the memory of Walker’s hands trailing across my skin, his lips against mine, his mouth bringing me to the highest pleasure…
“Scarlett Lane!” I jump out of my trance, mind orienting itself back into this moment, where there is still someone currently banging on my door. I’m shocked no one has called in a noise complaint yet.
I walk a few steps across the room, grabbing a large hoodie on my way over and pulling it over my head, leaving the hood over my head to hide what has got to be a tangled mess before I peek through the peephole and swing the door open to Vik.
She’s looking powerful this morning, as usual. A black and white pinstripe suit with gold accents mold perfectly to her strong frame, pixie cut freshly bleached white blonde. She holds a coffee cup in one hand, which she extends to me the moment I open the door, and her phone in the other.
“Answer your phone next time please.” She walks in, not bothering to wait for me to invite her inside. “I’ve been trying to get a hold of you all morning.”
I glance at the alarm clock next to my bed.
“It’s 7:45 am…that’s hardly enough to constitute an ‘all morning’ exaggeration,” I say, taking a sip of coffee and letting it warm my hands.
“Have you looked at your phone yet?”
“No,” I answer, and for the first time since she’s arrived, I look at her face, really look at it. Something is up.
“What is it?” I feel my heart sink, gut twist, and reject the coffee trying to make its way down.
“Nothing tragic!” she rushes to reassure, sensing me jumping to worst-case scenarios. “Boone’s fine, the tour’s fine, your family is fine.”
I wonder if she notices that my family is the third thing on her list to reassure me of. And honestly, I don’t know if I’d even reorder them myself.
“Then what’s going on? National tragedy? Plane crash?” I wave my hand as if flipping through the various occurrences I can think of that would warrant an early morning visit like this.
Vik unbuttons her suit jacket before taking a seat at the desk chair in my room, turning it out to face me while she talks. “I didn’t mean to alarm you, so I apologize. But I did want to catch you before you had a chance to get online this morning, as this is something that you haven’t had to deal with so far in your career.”
That doesn’t really settle my nerves. My mind is still racing as I take a seat on the edge of the bed, almost knee to knee with Vik.
“Now before you start getting too concerned, this isn’t a bad thing. It could actually be beneficial for you. But I need you to be completely honest with me,” she continues, calculating eyes boring into my own. “I’ve always kept it straight up with you, so give me the same in return, yeah?” she asks with a raised brow.
“Of course.”
“There were photos of you taken last night at Indigo.”
My head rears back a bit, eyebrows drawn together. “Ok?”
“Photos of you on the dancefloor. With James Walker.”
Ah.
All right then.
Is that cause for an emergency morning meeting…?
“You two looked quite…close,” Vik says, the innuendo clear.
My mind immediately flashes back to last night, trying to think if there was anything compromising on the floor. Sure, we were definitely handsy but who isn’t when dancing with someone in a club. It’s hardly anything to wave a finger at.
Unless you’re my parents. I’m sure they would’ve choked on their morning tea at the thought of me out at a nightclub, with a man I’m not married to on top of that. But thankfully, gossip sites and social media is not something they browse on the regular.
Or ever.
“Are they bad photos?” I ask, still not quite understanding her tone.
“Not anything to bat an eye at. You two are obviously dancing in them, entangled in each other. A few of them include you two kissing and then him dragging you off the floor and up a set of stairs until you’re both out of view.”
Thank god for the VIP bathrooms or this could’ve been a different conversation…