His eyes narrowed. “So Ginny is telling you, a person I barely know, what I want? I would take whatever she says with a grain of salt. Ginny has an angle, you know. There is always an angle.” It aggravated him that someone was talking out of turn about his future, his desires.
“We all have an angle,” Tennyson said bluntly. “Don’t act like we don’t.”
“Sorry, I can’t do it.” He shook his head. “This is about Jolene, not me. I owe that to her.”
“Why?”
There was the rub. Chance took a sip of his beer. “Because that’s what you do when you care about someone. You plan things together.”
“I think that’s shortsighted.”
“I think that’s none of your business.” He raised his beer toward her. “But here’s to a kick-ass album.”
She raised her wineglass. “Cheers.” She took a sip. “At first I thought you were just being discreet, but now I’m starting to suspect you really don’t remember, do you?”
“Remember what?” Chance set his beer down. A pit had opened up in his gut. Something about her tone told him this was going to be bad. Really bad.
“Party at Trace’s house…late June. You and me, in the pool?”
Chance stiffened. “Um, no, I don’t remember that. What were we doing in the pool?”
“Making out.”
His stomach sank. Ah, hell. He’d been afraid she was going to say that. He didn’t remember jack shit. He didn’t even remember meeting Tennyson at Trace’s party. He remembered the beginning of that evening, not the end. It had been a hot night, and there had been a lot of whiskey and laughter and Trace and Dane giving him a hard time about being single, and he did recall a certain brilliant idea to cannonball his drunk ass into the pool. But from there, the night got fuzzy.
As in, he didn’t remember anything before the next morning, when he’d woken up at his rental with a killer headache, still in his wet clothes, his wallet empty after overpaying for a taxi. There was no point in disbelieving Tennyson. If she said they’d made out at a party with a dozen people around, he had to believe her, even if he didn’t remember it.
Chance rubbed his jaw and wished like hell he were a smarter man. He was pretty sure he could feel the whack of Jolene’s temper coming straight down on his balls. And he would deserve it.
—
“Um, Jo, I think we should abort this trip to the grocery store,” Elle said.
Jolene, who had been playing a game on her phone, looked up as the truck came to a stop. “Why?”
“Because at least two cars followed us here, and I don’t know why. Is something going down?”
“Not that I’m aware of.” Jolene sighed. She just wanted some groceries. There was absolutely nothing to eat at either her house or Chance’s. They were on day four of writing with Tennyson, and she had consumed nothing but takeout. It was not helping the shrinking-jeans situation. Half the day her pants were cutting into her gut so hard, she couldn’t carry a note. She needed some vegetables, stat.
“Look on the gossip sites.” Elle, who wasn’t one to get rattled, was looking in the rearview mirror and frowning. “Because we’re being tailed hard-core.”
Jolene did a quick search online and found pictures of Chance and Tennyson out to dinner the night before. “It says that Chance and Tennyson are dating.” She just shook her head, annoyed, but not surprised. “They went out to eat last night. Which I knew about. I encouraged them to get out of the house. The tabloids are just grasping at gossip straws.”
“Let me see.” Elle held out her hand for Jolene’s phone and glanced at the screen. “That doesn’t even look incriminating. What’s the big deal?”
“I have no idea. Let’s go buy some produce.”
They were barely out of the car when three men popped out of two different cars and followed them. Jolene couldn’t hear the cameras clicking, yet she could have sworn she did. It was an odd sensation that she probably would never get used to. The clear sense of eyes on her, watching, judging, taking pictures. She didn’t mind, really, but she couldn’t entirely relax. She turned and smiled and waved, hoping they would leave her at the door if she gave them what they wanted.
“So how do you feel about Chance cheating on you again?” said a man with a shock of white hair.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she told him. “That dinner last night was a business meeting.”
Elle murmured under her breath. “Zip it, Jolene. Let’s just go in the store.”
“So you didn’t see the pictures?” the man asked.
“Of course I saw the pictures. It’s two people having dinner.”
“No, the other pictures.”
Jolene shouldn’t take the bait. She knew she shouldn’t take the bait. It was a disaster waiting to happen. Nothing good could ever come out of letting someone goad her into anything. But she was a control freak, and it killed her to not know what he was referencing. In a move that felt a bit like a slow-motion sequence in a movie, she held out her hand. “Show me what you’re talking about.”
“No.” Elle started to tug on her arm, but Jolene yanked herself free. Screw this dude and his desire to humiliate her and wreck her relationship. People shouldn’t be able to get away with that.