Page 39 of The Show

I just wish he wasn’t staring at me like that; it made it hard to think.

“Sure, okay. Let’s see how we do.”

His face split open with a blinding smile, and he jumped to his feet. “Great, you start today. Your first job is to accompany me to L.A. for a couple of days. We leave this afternoon and we’re staying with Dylan.”

“What? I can’t just drop everything.”

He slowly scanned the room to see what I actually had to drop, which was very little. “Bring your laptop. You can work on your website, and we can discuss everything else on the plane.”

An hour ago, I was wondering how I was going to manage running a company when I couldn’t even get my website working. Now I’d been offered a job with a starting salary of half a million dollars, and I had to get to work immediately. I was trying hard to stop my head from spinning.

“Penn, what’s in L.A.?”

He looked genuinely happy for the first time. “You meanwho. We’re going to see Jupiter Reeves.”

My jaw dropped. Holy crap. Even I knew who Jupiter Reeves was. Not that I’d ever met him, but Beulah and Kit had, and they’d both said that in person he was way,wayhotter, and a hundred times more smoldering than he ever appeared on television. And I’d been sworn to secrecy never to reveal their opinion to any of the boys.

I tried to act cool, but noticed Penn’s frown. “Okay… sounds good.”

His frown deepened at the knock on the doorframe, especially when he wheeled round to find Josh standing there.

“Can I help you?”

Josh pointed to me, appearing quieter than I’d ever witnessed him being, though the steely glare from Penn likely had something to do with why. “Um, I came to see Lowe.”

Penn’s expression had morphed into annoyance for no reason I could figure out. I got up off the floor. “Hey, Josh, it’s been fixed. Penn fixed it for me.”

Josh looked at Penn with the same surprised expression Penn was using to look at Josh.

“You’re the website guy?”

Josh nodded.

“Huh. Your code was messy. There was a bug in your sitemap files which weren’t tagging because the subfolders hadn’t been strung properly, and the links were broken.”

I recognized the words because they were English, but the meaning of them in the sentence he’d structured with them was completely foreign to me.

“What? No way, dude. I checked it.”

“Yeah,dude, it was. But it’s not anymore.” Penn looked back at me, done with the conversation, and Josh was now staring into space clearly trying to figure out what he’d gotten wrong. “Lowe, the car will be by your apartment to collect you at three p.m. We’ll be gone a few days.”

I nodded. “I’ll see you later then, I guess.”

He hesitated a tiny fraction, then smiled softly. “Yeah, you will.”

* * *

At three p.m. true to his word, the car was waiting for me outside.

After Penn had left and I’d shooed Josh out with a promise to let him know if anything else went wrong, I’d rushed home in a panic. Not that I’d really had enough time for that either; I’d barely had enough time to throw some clothes in a bag, quickly freshen up, and change before I’d had a call from the concierge that my ride had arrived.

And now I was on the way to Teterboro, where the nerves were setting in. I wasn’t even sure why. I only knew I’d never spent any time alone with Penn, and now I had two full days ahead of me.

The car shot across the tarmac and pulled up in front of the steps to a sleek, black Gulfstream similar to my dad’s; but this looked shiny, decadent almost. Then I noticed the little logo on the tail and let out a loud laugh which dissipated any nerves.

I rolled my eyes at myself and how ridiculous I was being.

This was Penn, Lauren’s baby brother; one of the three Tuesday Club boys, with their silly Tuesday Club rules, and all I could picture was Lauren’s deep eye roll as if she’d been here to see it for herself.

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