Page 64 of Serving the Maestro

That did have a bit of an impact on the pretty, confident sub still kneeling in front of me, and I smiled, leaning closer to touch her cheek gently.

“It’s nothing personal. I’ve just...met somebody.”

“Oh.” She touched the back of my hand with gentle fingers, a soft smile returning to her face. “Lucky woman.”

She held out her hand, and it wasn’t so awkward anymore as I helped her up. I was even able to appreciate her excellent ass when she turned and walked away.

“You’re really serious, aren’t you? About this woman you met?” Stephen asked, his tone incredulous.

I tossed back half the scotch in my glass before looking at him. “Yeah. I am.”

“I don’t believe it.” He put his drink down and rubbed his hands over his face as if trying to wash away a bad dream. “You don’t do this...meeting people shit. You avoid relationships like the plague.”

“Yeah, well, joke’s on me.” Looking down into the remaining booze in my glass, I swirled it around. “I’ve spent so much of my life just existing, Stephen. Having a good career, landing some decent gigs from time to time and never worrying too much about money, having the club here, and you for a friend? I thought it was enough.”

I finally talked.

I told him about Jazz, leaving out the baby-making part of the agreement. That was personal.

But I told him about how she’d made me feel. How I was missing her.

I felt hollow inside like somebody had cut me open and scooped out everything that made me who I was before stitching me back together and expecting me to be okay.

I wasn’t okay. I couldn’t even successfully get a friend to believe I was okay, much less myself.

“So, what are you going to do?”

Stephen’s quiet question had me looking up.

“What’s there to do?” I asked. “It’s over. I put a two-month time limit on everything, and she made it clear she didn’t want any sort of relationship.”

“Yeah, well, you obviously didn’t plan on falling for her,” Stephen pointed out. “But you did. How do you know she didn’t go and do the same thing?”

I grabbed my glass with a frown only to discover it was empty.

“We’re not ordering another,” Stephen said. “So consider this...do you really want to spend the rest of your life regretting that you were too chicken shit to ask this woman if she felt anything for you?”

He held up a hand when I went to reply.

“Don’t answer now.” He pulled his wallet out, and swiped a card on the digital device. “You can answer tomorrow when I call you, bright and early. And I will call because I want to know if you’re going to listen to reason and fly back to New York and talk to her.”

“You’re a very persistent asshole, you know that?”

He smiled. “Maybe. But I’m not the one hiding from reality.”

TWENTY-TWO

JAZZ

Discomfort woke me. My head hurt, my body ached, and my tongue had a fuzzy coating on it that made me crave a gallon of water, even as my gut roiled, a warning that anything I ate or drank might not stay down.

Groaning, I rolled onto my side and grabbed a pillow. I was so miserable that I wanted to bury myself under the covers and sleep for a week.

A muffled grunt made me freeze. That hadn’t been me. The only other person it could have been, left New York City and was in California.

A long, deep sighing breath came to my ears, and I squeezed my eyes closed. It definitely wasn’t Trent.

Slowly, I eased upright and looked around.

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