Page 18 of Her Ruthless Protector

“You’re saying stopping some woman from posting on her Twitter account was more difficult than finding fifteen hay bales in the desert?” Kane asked as they continued to walk across the field.

“It’s Amber,” Asher said. “In fact, she was voted the world’s top Diva last year.”

“Amber who?” Kane asked.

A.J. grinned when she saw Kane’s confusion. “Supposedly it’s just Amber, but some of us know that her real name was originally Amber Dick. The only way I can cope with her whiny, bitchy idiocy is to remember that she once was a kid on the playground with the last name of ‘Dick’.” It helps me keep my cool.”

“You’ll have to point her out to me,” Kane said as they came up to the first rehearsal stage. Nobody was performing now. It was a quarter of the size of the main stage. A.J. watched as Kane and Asher both easily lifted themselves onto the stage that was five feet from the ground. They turned to her in sync and held out their hands to help her up. They easily swung her up on stage, and their easy strength made her feel very feminine. She liked it. She definitely needed to start spending time with the military instead of the Hollywood types that she’d been working with for the last few years. If she had, she might have found someone decent to date.

“Show us around,” Asher encouraged.

A.J. peeked into the wings and saw Troy Van Dyke, who was a very talented young solo artist who would be performing. Troy was staring intently at the phone in his hands.

“Hold on, let me make sure we’re not interrupting before I do a walk-through with you both,” A.J. said. She headed on over to Troy.

“Is everything all right?”

He started speaking wildly in Dutch. “Hold up,” she put her hand on his forearm. “Troy, I need you to speak in English.” She gave him a kind smile, trying to calm the young man down.

He shoved his phone at her, and she scrolled through the on-line tabloids.

“I don’t understand, why should it matter that they are saying you’re getting married? I thought you were?”

“But not to her,” he groaned. “The papers are saying they saw me coming out of Brandy’s hotel room and that we are getting married. You know, the lead singer for Heaven’s Demon Dream, but I didn’t. Now Fleur is going to think I’m cheating on her.”

“Honey, Just tell her how the tabloids are always making things up. Fleur’s smart, she’ll understand.”

“I would, but I think it’s Roger who gave this story to the papers. If he’s spreading these lies, he’ll go home to Fleur and say the same thing.”

A.J. thought about it. She’d never really liked Troy’s manager, in fact, he was an asshole. “Is he trying to move in on your turf?” A.J. asked Troy.

“Turf?” Troy looked at her confused. “What is this meaning?”

“Does Roger have a thing for Fleur, is he trying to break up the two of you because he wants her?”

“That is my suspicion, yes.” He looked around, obviously searching for Roger. “The three of us grew up together in Rotterdam. We were friends since childhood, but it wasn’t until last year that Fleur and I fell in love. I have to go home to her. I can’t work with Roger. I need to leave the competition.” He held out his hand for her to return his phone.

“Wait, don’t do it. This competition could be the big break you need. Don’t you need this for your career?” A.J. asked.

“Fleur is more important than my career,” the young man said vehemently.

“I get that,” A.J. responded. “But Troy, you’re twenty-one? Twenty-two?”

“Twenty-two,” he answered.

“Sweetie, besides music, how else are you planning to support a life together with Fleur? Do you have another skill set to fall back on?”

“No,” he admitted slowly.

“Absolutely, you need to fight for her.” A.J. looked him in the eye and squeezed his shoulder. “But you also need to stay in the contest.”

“I have a ring that I bought her,” he pulled a small black box out of the front pocket of his jeans and thrust it at her. “If I can get her to believe in me, and she stays with me, it will take a few years before I can support us both and a family if I am not a singer.”

A.J. gave the box a quick glance, but then focused on what was important. “You need to stay in the competition and shut down the tabloid garbage. I’d suggest you fire Roger, but he’d just run his happy ass back to Rotterdam and steal her from you. Is there any way that you could get Fleur to come to Oman and stay with you? Then she could see what was really going on.”

“Roger would try to poison her thoughts.”

“Roger’s an asshole, you can’t think of him. I’ll help you. I can be here when you introduce her to Brandy. Then she’ll see there’s nothing between the two of you. She needs to be able to see this for herself. You can’t let Roger get between you.”