Page 31 of Another Postcard

“Yeah, and a report for you from Caroline,” she answered cheerily, tossing the folder his way. “After you look it over, she wants you to have Cooper sign off on the changes.” She smiled and dipped her hand into the bag, tossing out little bundles of mail to each of us one by one. When we were on tour, we forwarded all of our mail to the P.O. Box for the team that collected our fan mail and they would let us know about anything urgent, otherwise, they sent it ahead to all of the cities we stopped at. In order to make sure nothing got lost in the shuffle, we always started the forward several days before we left. So, when we got to Boston, Erin had picked up everything sent there early.

After passing it all out and making sure there was nothing we needed, she waved and hopped off the bus. Simon had a stack of at least ten letters and Sasha smirked at it. “More dirty letters from your harem of collagen and silicone?” she teased. “Material for the spank bank?”

I laughed when Simon turned a little green. I knew who they were from.

“Gross, Sasha,” he spat. “These are from my family.”

Sasha burst out laughing and patted him on the shoulder, somewhat apologetic. Though the sentiment was diluted by her continued snickering. “Sorry, dude. Didn’t mean to put that imagery in your depraved mind.”

“They’re all from family?” Brooklynn asked in awe.

“Simon has seven brothers and two sisters,” I told her, throwing my arm behind her, resting it on the edge of the seat.

She looked at Simon with wide eyes and a dropped jaw. “Nine siblings?” she choked out through her shock.

He shrugged. “Latin blood runs hot,” he deadpanned. “Then again, I try not to think about my parents in relation to any baby-making activities.” He grinned. “Latin storks, I guess.”

Brooklynn giggled and, in what I liked to think of as an instinctive move, relaxed into my side, focusing on her own meager pile. Baylee was her only family and she hadn’t been with us long enough to really start collecting fan mail. But there was an envelope from her sister and she brightened as though she’d received a hundred letters. She glanced up at me, her chocolate eyes sparkling. “Cecily must have had her write the letter and mail it even though I’d be seeing them in Boston. Just so I’d have something from them on the road.”

I smiled softly and kissed her forehead, dropping my arm down onto her shoulders and pulling her a little closer. I ignored the raised eyebrows and sly looks from around the table and was grateful that Brooklynn was too engrossed in her letter to notice them. One handed, I sifted through the correspondence and snatched up one in particular when I caught sight of what appeared to be a postcard among the stack. Laughter bubbled up when I got a look at it.

“Another mash note from your chimp lover?” Matteo chortled. I raised an eyebrow at his old-fashioned term and he just shrugged with a smile. I laughed and gave him a chin lift. I had to give him that one, it was an antiquated term, but an accurate one.

I held it up to show him the front, which had a chimpanzee, dressed like a banana, swinging on a vine, blowing a kiss with big, red lips. Underneath it said, “Swinging by to say, I’m bananas over you!”

On the back was typed out:

Levi,

I hope I get to meet you in Boston, but I know you’ll be busy.

Just know, I’ll be watching and cheering for you!

Again, there was no call sign. “Damn, I wish I’d known they were going to be in Boston, I would’ve liked to meet this one. Eccentric fans are always fun.” I laughed and slid it in under the pile.

Cameron was sitting on my other side and he grabbed my wrist before I could let go of the card. Taking it, he looking at the address and then inspected the stamp. “This wasn’t sent to your P.O. Box, Levi,” he stated gruffly. “It was sent directly to the hotel we stayed at in Boston.”

I shrugged. “We’ve stayed there often enough, I guess. It wouldn’t be a stretch for them to choose that one and hope they were right.”

“Where is it postmarked from?” Noah asked.

“Some tiny town in Connecticut.” Cameron tucked the card into his shirt pocket and stood.

“Hey, I wanted to add that to my bonobo collection,” I grumbled good-naturedly. “They are an endangered species, you know.”

Cameron frowned and turned, walking out the door without another word.

I looked at him curiously for a minute, then mentally shrugged and let it go. It wasn’t worth the brain cells, if Cameron wanted to obsess over it, at least it would give him something to do.

“Bonobo?” Brooklynn questioned with a laugh. “Did you seriously just pull the scientific name for a breed of chimpanzee out of your ass like that?”

I winked at her smugly and tapped a finger to my temple. “You’d be amazed at the things I have stored in this hat rack, baby.”

Sasha snorted. “Sure. Chimps and sex moves he reads about in Maxim.”

“If you want to think of me as an empty-headed rock star sex god, I have no problem with that. As long as you don’t forget the second part.” I wiggled my eyebrows comically.

There was a round of scoffs from the peanut gallery but I wasn’t paying them any attention because Brooklynn’s expression had snagged my eye. She was observing me with a single brow raised. “What?”

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