Page 18 of Hold Still

She sighs. “Here, I poured you one.”

She gives me a glass of bubbly. My hand slides over hers, causing electricity to scream up my arm. Her eyes widen, so I know she felt it too.

With a shaky voice, she starts, “Don’t you want to put something on?”

My hand falls to my waist and cinches the towel wrapped around it. “Why? It’s nothing you haven’t seen before. And tasted. And—”

Her hand flies up. “Stop it. I get it. But I’m not here for sex.”

I take a swallow of the prosecco and hold her gaze.

She puts her glass down on an ottoman and wipes her hands on her legs. Ones that could be put to much better use wrapped around my shoulders.

“I need to talk with you about your new songs.”

My fingers tighten around the stem of my glass. To prevent me from hurling it—again—I cross the room and deposit it next to hers, collapsing down on a chair facing her. “There’s not much to say.”

“Last night you said you don’t have anything new written.”

I nod.

“At all?”

I nod again. This is getting tiring. Restless, I stand and tower over her. “If you came all the way over here to yell at me to write more or faster or whatever, you wasted your fucking time.” I start toward the main hallway and the stairs. Might as well as end this farce before it escalates. One thought stops me short. I turn to face her. “How did you find out where I live?’

She worries her bottom lip. “I really need you to get writing.”

So does my bank account. My residency at the Jade is up in a month—and with it, my paycheck. “Yeah, well, telling me to sit down and take out a pencil isn’t doing it for me.”

We stare each other down.

“Can I talk with you?” She motions toward the living room. “Please?”

Fuck. She looks so sincere. Without saying another word, I return to the living room and sit down. “Talk.”

Sitting opposite me, she starts, “You know I was one of the graphic designers who the Artist Adventure Avenue Project hired to do the new designs for the music show.”

This again? I nod.

After a beat, she continues, “You also know you’re the final artist I need to work with before my presentation is completed.”

Nothing new here. “Okay?”

She reaches for her glass again but stops and drops her hand to her lap. “I need to finish this project, Ozzy. It means a lot to me and for my firm. The Project is a part of the national consortium of charities that raise money to foster youth programs for art. If my submission is the Project’s best, they’ll enter it into the national competition. Going on, and hopefully winning, the nationals has the potential to change my life.” She swallows. “I’m not like you. I’m not independently wealthy, living with private planes and humongous houses and my name in lights on the Strip. I need this project to make a name for myself.”

As she’s talking, it’s all I can do not to snort. Yeah, right. Independently wealthy, my ass. More like that bitch of my now ex-wife took me to the cleaners and if it weren’t for having prepaid my rent through the end of the year when I took the residency, I’d be living in the suite at the Jade. And private planes? Platinum let me use it so I would get back here for my concert tonight. And as an incentive to write more songs. But I’m not about to share all this with her.

“Listen, McKenna, I’m not holding out on you. I really don’t have any new stuff.”

Her eyes turn to slits. “Have you really been partying it up so much that you haven’t bothered to sit down and write?” She looks away. “At least your cock has been getting a workout.”

“Who I sleep with is none of your concern.” I finish off the rest of my drink.

Neither one of us speaks.

When McKenna and I hooked up before, she was a good listener in addition to being a standout sex partner. Maybe she can help me get through this block? If I want to turn this train around, something has to change. What have I got to lose? “For the record, Ihavebeen trying to write.”

She stares into my soul. “You have writer’s block?”

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