Page 95 of Sweet Temptation

I’d worked with Brody and Jude long enough, though, that I knew they didn’t take advantage of their clients. And Brody was savvy as hell. He knew what Summer could afford, and he wanted her safe. In dealing with her, he was the same calm and focused businessman I’d always perceived him to be. The man juggled a lot; he’d been doing this on a grand scale with Dirty for more than a decade. But he definitely didn’t seem to be relegating Summer to second-rate attention.

He was treating her like a VIP, and I was glad to see it.

There was nothing worse than knowing your client needed more security than she—or her manager, or her spouse, or whoever—was willing to agree to because of financial concerns or other issues.

After we’d wrapped up and Brody left the meeting, Pam said to Summer, “Look, I’ve been wanting to ask you, hon. I’m wondering if you might have to let me go, since you’ll no longer be working with Yancy.”

“Aw, babe,” Summer said. “I don’t have any plans to do that.”

“Okay.” Pam seemed relieved. “That’s good to know.”

“I’ll keep you in the loop, sweetie, okay?” Summer assured her. “Take care, and let Yancy know I’m looking forward to seeing him in Montreal.”

“I will, hon. Thanks.”

When Pam was gone, I told Summer, “You handled that diplomatically.”

She sighed. “The thing with ‘moving forward’ and ‘going big’ is you have to leave some people behind.”

“Are you going to let her go?”

“For now, no. But in the future…” She got up to put on a fresh pot of coffee. We were just finishing up our lunch. “The bigger things get… and they will get much, much bigger once I’m releasing an album with the Players and going on tour with the band… my career and the daily demands on me will get bigger. My team will need to get bigger. Brody and I have already discussed it at length. He’s got a really clear vision of how this is all going to build. This is not his first rodeo. And he’s already prepared me that there will come a point, probably before the tour, when I’ll need a full-time assistant who lives here. So, unless Pam wants to uproot her entire life from Los Angeles, including her husband and children, and ditch her other clients, I’ll likely have to hire someone local.” She shrugged. “That’s just how it goes. I’m sure Pam will understand.”

I studied her. “You feel bad about it.”

“Letting her go? Yes. I sent Yancy like five hundred gifts since I told him I wouldn’t be renewing our contract because I was signing with Brody.”

“How did he take it?”

“The gifts? Oh, I’m pretty sure he enjoyed them. I give great gifts.” She smirked. “But the rest of it? Not so well. There were a few pleading phone calls. He’s been threatening to come up here to see me in person, but he’s busy in L.A.. Anyway, this is Brody’s turf, and honestly I think Yancy’s a little wounded. I don’t blame him. But it’s not his fault. There’s really nothing he can do here, and he knows it. The Players are a rock band, and rock isn’t Yancy’s game. He’s managed my career as a DJ for the last few years, sort of, meaning he was the closest thing to a manager I ever had before Brody. But he’s not a band manager at Brody’s scale. Yancy is more of a booking agent. He booked my gigs and he made me connections. But Brody has a vision for the Players that no one else could bring. I mean, he manages Elle Delacroix, for fuck’s sake, and that woman is a superstar. I feel incredibly lucky to have Brody Mason on my team, helming the ship.”

“I doubt luck has much to do with it,” I told her. “You work hard. You know what you want. You deserve what you’ve achieved.”

She shook her head. “Other people work hard, too. Other people are as talented as me. Maybe more. And they’re definitely as deserving. And yet some people never break out of playing the local clubs. I say there’s always an element of luck to it. Like, if I never met Ashley and we never fell in love, and he never introduced me to Dirty… who knows what my life would look like right now.”

“It would look just like it does,” I said. “You don’t give yourself enough credit.”

“No, I just don’t give myself all the credit. I know when people have helped me. Ash helped me. Yancy helped me. Elle definitely helped me. All of Dirty helped me. Brody is helping me, and Pam is helping me. Sledge, too. I can’t count the number of times that man worked gigs for me in shit conditions, in the rain, in the dark, in a farmer’s field…”

“Don’t tell me you played a hoedown,” I said dryly.

“There were some really curious festivals in the early days.”

“Ah.”

“Sledge was always there. He came through for me, with way too little pay and always with a smile on his face, when I was pretty much no one. The list of people who’ve pulled through for me over the span of my career goes on and on.”

“Well, you’ve got a solid team and people who believe in you. And there’s a reason they believe in you.”

“You know something about that,” she mused.

“I may.”

My company had an excellent retention rate because we treated our guys well, but also, they believed in us—me and my partners—because we always had their backs. Loyalty was a two-way street.

At least, it should be.

I got up and picked up my laptop. “I have some calls to make before we head out.” She had a hair appointment this afternoon, followed by a fitting, and obviously, I was going with her.

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