Page 42 of I Need You Tonight
Chapter 15
Mason
I entered the living room to find Nolan, Jared, Kirk, and Aaron taking up all the available seating—leaving me with no choice but to stand. On the mantel, the antique clock counted down the seconds until they would deliver my sentence. Tick. Tock. Tick-you-are-royally-screwed. Tock.
“Did I miss anything while I was gone?” I asked, doing my best to buy time before the shit hit the fan.
Nolan’s gaze jumped from Jared to Kirk, then to Aaron. They nodded for him to speak. “You didn’t. But apparently we did,” he said. “What’s this crap about you hiring your friend’s sister without consulting us first? This band is a democracy. Which means we all get to vote on the person we want to hire—not just you.”
Knowing I wouldn’t be able to joke my way out of this, I held my hands up, surrendering to my fate. “Look, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about Nicole sooner. Her brother is overseas, serving with the navy. He was worried about her when he couldn’t get hold of her, and asked me to see if she was okay.”
“I gather she was fine,” Jared said, sitting next to Kirk on the couch, his arms folded across his chest. “So why did it take you so long to get back?”
I snorted. “I would’ve thought you’d be too busy screwing your new wife to notice I was gone. Obviously you’ve got your priorities fucked up.”
He huffed a laugh. “Don’t worry about me, Mas. I’ve got my priorities figured out just fine. Kirk filled me in on your absence.”
“So if Nicole was fine,” Aaron said, “why not return to L.A. as soon as you figured it out?”
“Because I needed a break before we started touring again, so I decided to stay there for a few days.”
“What you’re really saying”—he leveled his gaze at me—“is that because you were too busy fucking your friend’s sister, you couldn’t be bothered to return until today?”
Ouch.Guess I deserved that…mostly because it was true. “Actually, that’s not the reason. She needed help fixing things around the house, so I stuck around to help her out.” At least it wasn’t a complete lie. “She and her friend own a floral business, but there was a fire in the building a few days ago. Their store suffered major smoke and water damage. It will be a few months before they can open it again, and since we’d already agreed to hire someone to handle our social media, I thought Nicole could do it in the meantime.
“And she is a great choice,” I added. “She does the social media for her business and has a marketing degree. She knows what she’s doing.”
“So the only reason you hired her was because of her qualifications, and not because she’s a nice piece of ass?” Aaron asked, one eyebrow raised.
Tick. Tock.
“Her being pretty has nothing to do with it.” It didn’t hurt, though.
“And where’s she going to sleep while we’re touring?” Nolan asked, still not looking thrilled about the situation. None of the guys did.
“The same place as us. On the bus.”
He leaned forward in the armchair, elbows on knees. “Our bus?”
“Of course. How’s she going to pretend to be us on social media if she’s not around us?”
“What Nolan is asking,” Kirk said, “is where are you planning for her to sleep on the bus? If she’s our employee, that means you can’t be fucking her.”
Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.
I bit back what I had planned to say, because that wouldn’t help the situation. Besides, I didn’t want them to believe that was the real reason I’d brought Nicole back with me. I also didn’t care to admit that something about her had gotten under my skin and I wasn’t ready to walk away from her just yet.
“She can stay in the back room.” In addition to the narrow bunk beds in the middle of the bus, there was a small back room with a larger bed, where Hailey and Callie stayed whenever they visited Nolan and Jared. But other than that, the room remained empty. And because of that, it had become an unofficial storage room.
“And what happens when Hailey or Callie join us?” Kirk asked.
“Then Nicole can bunk on whichever bed is vacated when that happens. It’s not like Nolan and Jared stay in their bunks whenever Hailey or Callie visit.” Although in Jared’s case, Logan usually took over his bunk so his parents could spend some private moments together without the four-year-old. Not that he knew it.
“And she’s okay sleeping on the bus with us?” Aaron asked, sounding somewhat doubtful a woman would want to do that if she wasn’t involved with one of us…unless she had other motives. Like when the last girl Aaron had hooked up with had joined us on tour with the goal of exposing us in ways we didn’t wish to be exposed.
“Why wouldn’t she be? It’s not like we’re going to hurt her. And she’ll be our employee, which means we have control over what she can say. It will be in the contract.” The same confidentiality clause all employees of Pushing Limits and Endless Motion had to sign. Anyone who violated the agreement would be facing a lawsuit.
“All right,” Nolan said. “I’m fine with it if everyone else agrees to hiring her. But”—he gestured at me with his finger—“like Kirk pointed out, if she’s our employee, then you can’t fuck her. At all.”
