what he felt in one night with Rosa.
He pushed the memories aside. It was that passion, that uncontrolled connection, that had made him forget the promise he’d made to Gareth after his first close call. Jude had sat beside that hospital bed looking at his best friend—too pale, too lost, so close to being utterly ruined by the drugs and the alcohol and the life it was so easy to live as a band on the road. And he’d made the most important promise of his life—he’d promised to keep Gareth safe from then on. To be the one Gareth could rely on to steer him away from temptation, to remind him how much he had to live for.
But then he’d met Rosa and let that promise slide, too distracted by passion and infatuation to notice his best friend slipping again.
Until it was too late.
Shaking his head, he looked away as he saw Sancia putting an arm around Rosa’s shoulders as she led her further into the villa. He had to stop living in his memories.
He needed to focus on what this meant for his future.
He’d made a new promise, when Gareth died—an echo of the one he’d made him a year before, except this one he’d kept, would keep on keeping. He’d live life for the both of them. He’d have the success that should have been theirs, chase the fame Gareth had always wanted. Live the life Gareth should be there to enjoy.
The Swifts’ success wasn’t his. It wasn’t even Jimmy’s or Lee’s or Tanya’s. It was all for Gareth.
And that was why he could never walk away from it. He owed his friend, for the life he got to live, without him, and for the promise he should have kept.
But even then, he couldn’t stay in New York for the publication of that book.
He’d come to La Isla Marina with a very firm objective in mind—to stay out of the public eye for a few weeks, long enough for all the fuss about The Naked Truth to fade away again, and to give him time to think about his next move, musically.
But Rosa being here...that could change everything. He mustn’t forget that he’d actually met Rosa when she was photographing the band for some British music magazine. What were the chances she was still doing that sort of work? Just because he hadn’t seen her at any of his gigs since didn’t mean she wasn’t still in the game.
And even if she wasn’t, she was a freelance photojournalist. A few shots of Jude Alexander hiding out on a remote Spanish island, when no one else had been able to get a hint of where he was...that would pay big money. Enough for a struggling freelancer to not have to worry about bills for a while, anyway.
Would she sell him out?
Three years ago, Jude could have answered that question without hesitation: never. Rosa wasn’t that sort of person. He might have only known her for four weeks, but he’d learned more about her in one month than he’d known about his own parents in a lifetime.
And maybe it still meant something. After all, she hadn’t used his secrets in the eventual article that had been published about that month-long tour. And there was no mention of Rosa—or any of the secrets only she knew—in That Book. There were whole chapters on Gareth, his death, Jude’s guilt over it, and everything that happened next, but no mention of the part Rosa had played in everything that happened.
Of course, probably the author just hadn’t known to look for Rosa. If they had...
No, she still wouldn’t have talked. She wasn’t that sort of person, he was sure.
But that didn’t mean it wasn’t worth making sure she was on the right side of his hide-and-don’t-seek game with the press, before she let something slip to the wrong person.
The last thing Jude wanted was to have his hiding place uncovered now, just when his last remaining secret had walked back into his life.
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