Page 24 of Protecting Mr. Fine

Zane lifted his eyebrows as if asking for an explanation, so I continued. Zane always loved hearing about Ventdestine. He said my stories seemed like fairy tales.

“Asger used to tap his toe on the rug every time he entered his bedroom. Apparently, there was a several-hundred-year-old superstition that had something to do with a previous king who had commissioned a tapestry for the royal chambers and then hadn’t properlypaid the artisan. So, the weaver had put a curse on the royal family. It took years for the curse to be reversed, and ever since then, the king has to pay homage to the weaver when he enters the royal chamber to ward off the curse.”

“How exhausting,” Zane said.

“They still burn a special combination of herbs in the palace every spring to clean out the evil spirits left from winter. And the winds are always whispering fortune, or ill, or love, or loss.” I shook my head. “It was hard, when I first moved there, to reconcile myself to how deeply ingrained these ideas are in their culture. I’m curious if things will change now that Gerhard is on the throne. In some ways, he was as superstitious as his father.”

“You said his wife is super modern, though. She’s from…”

“The Netherlands. Yeah. Gisella. She’s a good influence on him. She’s a big fan of yours, actually. That’s one of the reasons I knew your music. She and the kids used to play your stuff all the time.”

Zane flicked his eyes to the ceiling and shook his head. “I think one of the reasons Violet assigned you to me was because you barely knew who I was. There was practically no chance you’d be weird around me. Sure enough, you acted like I was Joe Schmoe. It was kind of refreshing.”

“It wasn’t until I heard you sing the first time that I realized I knew your stuff; I’d just never seen you or really learned your name. It’s funny, Gisella saw you in concert in Berlin once, but since the king was my principal and he wasn’t there, I didn’t go.”

“Maybe they want to come to the concert in Amsterdam?” he asked. “You know I’m happy to arrange passes and stuff.”

I nodded. “Already offered it. I’m sure they’ll be there if they can get away.”

Zane eventually drifted off to sleep. I watched him and wondered, not for the first time, how I would feel if he ever stopped hooking up with people and started dating someone for real. Whatever he had going with Landry wasn’t serious—they were friends, butZane’s busy tour lifestyle and Landry’s hectic modeling schedule weren’t compatible.

I thought back to last night. To Lou’s observations about Landry hooking up with someone else. To racing into Zane’s bedroom to find Zane wearing the same comfortable lounge clothes he’d put on before his friends arrived. I wasn’t the most sexually experienced person in the world—far, far from it—but I assumed if they’d had the kind of sex I’d heard through the door, they would have fallen asleep together naked. Or at least only dressed in underwear.

Now that I had time to think back, I realized Landry had been fully dressed also. Had they even had sex? If not, then what the hell had I heard? And what had Landry’s weird comments been about after the fact?

Last night hadn’t been the first time I’d had to sit outside of a hotel room door while Zane hooked up with someone, though, and Landry wasn’t the only person he’d been with. He’d had plenty of hookups since I’d been on his detail, and he’d had a reputation for having had even more of them under his previous publicist. Noelle had encouraged Zane to create a bad-boy reputation by indulging in hookup culture as much as he wanted and going out drinking after shows. It wasn’t until he’d gotten rid of her and hired Micki that he’d stopped making such bad decisions.

If only he’d stop hooking up with people altogether. At this rate, I was going to start losing weight from the number of times I’d had to escape and run the stairs at random hotels.

Maybe it was because of the sheer amount of time I spent that afternoon ruminating about Zane’s sexual exploits that my ears tuned in to what happened later that night around the bonfire.

Regardless of the reason for it, I was shocked by what I heard.

SEVEN

ZANE

It’s a little-known fact that bears can end up in some tricky situations. Their relentless pursuit of honey sometimes results in a sticky mess. But bears never get hung up on these awkward moments. They know a little embarrassment is worthwhile when they end up with something sweet.

—Bear Facts for Insomniacs, Episode 11

I felt much better after a nap, and Gran’s big Sunday supper was exactly as amazing as I’d anticipated. The long dining table sagged under the weight of all my favorite dishes, and the sounds of friends and family happily chatting around the table reminded me of countless Sunday suppers when I was growing up.

Not everyone from the brotherhood was able to make it to Barlo, but Landry, Silas, Way, Dev, and Tully showed up that evening for the meal and joined us around the fire pit afterward.

Camp chairs and string lights were scattered around the largepatio, and Uncle Bart had lit a circle of tiki torches all around to provide extra light.

Sure enough, Coot showed up and asked me to join him in playing some favorites out by the fire. I grabbed my acoustic guitar from where someone had stashed it in my room with the rest of my personal bags and took a seat on one of the cut tree stumps in the center of the group.

Pearl’s friend had brought her harmonica, an old friend from high school had brought his elementary recorder and could actually play the damned thing, and there turned out to be several good vocalists among the group. All of them joined in when they wanted to, and we had ourselves a good old-fashioned jam session.

Bear—who, I’d noted with satisfaction, had eaten at least two helpings of cheesy grits and a huge plate of peach cobbler—reminded me to keep drinking water between songs and sent Boomer to bring me a fresh bottle. But even with all of that effort, the smoke eventually caused me to stop singing for a bit. I enjoyed having downtime to ask Dev and Tully about their new house in Majestic and how things were going with their daughter.

People wandered in and out of the house for bathroom visits and to grab a fresh bottle of beer or soda. Old stories from high school resurfaced, and people shared what they’d been up to more recently. More than once, someone asked me to invest in their business endeavors or give them some kind of access to my time, but my closest friends used old tried-and-true distraction methods if I started looking uncomfortable.

I’d gotten used to giving polite refusals, but it still took a lot out of me. I hated letting people down, especially people who’d been important to me at one time.

So I did what I always did and tried to make it up to them by being present with them in the moment and creating a good memory we could share. And maybe that’s why later, when everyone except my brotherhood, my closest cousins, and a couple of their friends had left, I ended up sharing more than I should have.

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