“Not much.” Grant signaled to the waitress and asked for a beer. “How many more nights are you guys playing here?” he asked as she filled up a mug from the tap.
“Tonight’s the last night. We head back to Nashville tomorrow. You know Delaney is gone, right?”
His heart flinched a little. He nodded and was glad the waitress was fast with that beer. As soon as she set it down, he picked it up. “Yeah. She sent me a text. Said she was on her way to LA. Good for her.”
“You don’t really think she leaked that video herself, do you?” Humphrey asked him, eyebrows pinched together and his usual grin noticeably absent. These guys were pissed at him. She was the one who’d lied. How did he get to be the bad guy?
“I don’t know what I think. She sure wouldn’t be the first woman I’d known who worked an angle. My last girlfriend dumped me for Blake Rockstone because he promised to make her a TV star.”
Even as he said it, the words felt hollow. Calling Miranda his girlfriend sounded ridiculous after what he’d shared with Lane. There was no similarity to the intensity of those feelings. It was like comparing a flashlight to the sun.
Finch shook his head slowly and stared down into his beer. “She didn’t call those reporters, Grant. That woman didn’t want anything to do with that.”
“For sure,” Humphrey said, his tone clipped. “Thank goodness Finch and I were there to pull her out of the crowd before things got worse.”
Grant choked a little on his drink. “Pulled her out of—what are you talking about?”
Finch and Humphrey exchanged glances, then Finch turned to Grant.
“I guess you wouldn’t know, would you, since you sent her back to the hotel alone. Sweetness got back here yesterday and the lobby was swarming with reporters. They pretty much mobbed her, but Humph and I happened to be in the right place at the right time and whisked her away,” Finch said.
“Actually,” Humphrey added, “we were sitting right here drinking a beverage just like we are now.”
Finch nodded. “Yes, sir, and we heard the ruckus and went out to see what the fuss was all about and there she was, in the center of it all, white as chalk.”
“Those reporters were aggressive too. Shouting rude questions. It’s no wonder she passed out,” Humphrey said.
Grant’s glass hit the bar harder than he’d intended. “She what?”
“Passed out,” Finch said. “Fainted dead away. Scared the crap out of me. Little bitty thing but, damn, she’s heavy when she’s out cold. Can I get a whiskey?” he asked the waitress, as if the memory required a little self-medicating.
Grant drank down his entire beer and signaled for another. She’d fainted? Because of reporters? That didn’t seem like a woman seeking attention and publicity. He felt a plunging sense of remorse just then, and a fervent desire to retrieve those phone messages he’d deleted without listening to.
“Then what happened?” he asked.
“We all went up to the suite and Humphrey got her a soda pop,” Finch said.
Humphrey nodded sagely, listening. Concurring.
Grant’s head spun from this news, and probably from chugging that beer.
Lane had fainted, and he wasn’t there. What if Finch and Humphrey hadn’t been there either? What if something worse had happened? His mind spiraled through a list of possibilities, but he tried to shake it off, that sense of obligation. She wasn’t his problem, but he felt it anyway, that need to watch out for her.
It might take a while for that sensation to wear off, but it needed to, because he wouldn’t be there for the rest of it either. It’s not as if her trials with the media were over. She was going back to Los Angeles where things would only get worse.
“When did her plane leave?” he asked, his throat feeling parched in spite of the drink he’d swilled down.
The waitress set down a shot glass in front of Finch and he twirled it slowly in front of him. “Not sure what time. They snuck out the back way this morning because a few pesky reporters had camped out in front.”
“They?”
“Yeah, Reggie took her to the airport this morning. We expect him back anytime now,” Humphrey answered.
Finch’s eyes narrowed as he looked over at Grant. “Now, don’t be getting that jealous face going, sweetness. In spite of how he acts, Reggie is not after your girl.”
Apparently it would take a while for that sensation to wear off too. He had no claim to her or anything she did. She was, for all intents and purposes, a stranger.
“She’s not my girl,” he said quietly. “I don’t know who she is. I’m not even sure what we had going.”
Humphrey hung his head low. “Looked damn fine to me, whatever it was.”
Grant shook his head, as if he was trying to deny it as much to himself as to them—because he was. “I didn’t even know her name. I thought she was a soap maker from Miami.”
“A soap maker?” Finch finally chuckled.
“Yeah. I guess if I couldn’t see through that story, well, maybe I deserved what I got.”
Finch nudged the shot glass of whiskey toward Grant with his fingertips. “Here, Cameraman. I think you need this more than I do.”