Noelle leaned back in his office chair, her long legs stretched out in front of her, black tights covering all that tempting, creamy skin, but doing nothing to disguise the shape.
Turned out she was just as sexy when she was fully dressed. Which he’d known after last night, but when he’d invited her to the office he’d imagined she’d put on something more business-casual. He had discovered that ex-performers didn’t have much in the way of business-casual. What she did have was a brief, black dress, black tights and a pair of gold high heels that glowed from fifty paces away.
And all that pale blond hair, hanging loose around her face like a halo … she was just impossible to put in a corner and ignore. And that was problematic on many, many levels.
“Gets the job done anyway,” he said.
“Is there something I can do?” She straightened, crossing her legs at the ankles. It did not help make her look any more demure.
“You can get out of my chair.”
She turned crimson and popped up. “Okay, done. Anything else?”
“You want to work?”
“Well, I’m here.” She shrugged. “It seems like I ought to do something. Won’t people think it’s funny I’m just hanging out?”
“I don’t think anyone thinks it’s funny at all. I think they assume we’re in here not working.”
“Oh. Really?”
“Really. Did you see the paper this morning?”
“No, I didn’t have the chance to grab it.”
“We’re the new hot couple, you know.”
“Can I see?”
He rounded the desk and leaned over, typing in the web address for the newspaper they’d been featured in. “There you are.”
She leaned in next to him, that sweet vanilla scent teasing his senses, making his body harden with tension and arousal.
A small smile curved her lips. “They know my name.”
“You sound surprised.”
“No one’s missed me much over the past year. Which I actually consider kind of a blessing. I haven’t really been keen on sharing my downfall with the world.”
“What? That your mother stole your money?”
“That she abandoned me because she knew she’d gotten everything she could out of me. Because my sales—album sales, ticket sales—were dwindling to nothing.”
“So what have you been doing then, this past year?”
She shrugged again, her blue eyes fixed on a point somewhere behind him. “Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
She looked at him, pale eyes filled with anger now. “Maybe I haven’t done the best I could with my time. But I didn’t really know what to do. I only know how to do one thing.” She looked away. “My mother made sure I only knew one thing. I tried to … I tried to talk to my old booking agent. Tried to see about playing venues I used to play. I called my label and asked them if they wanted to release a greatest hits album. Turns out, they don’t think I have any.” She laughed, a hollow, bitter sound that made his chest ache. “So in that sense, I did something. But I just … I didn’t know what else to do when all of that was shot down.”
“What about playing piano bars and things like that?”
“Ironically, that’s the kind of thing I am a bit too famous for, and I don’t mean that in a snobbish way, I mean … I didn’t want that to show up in tabloids.”
“That’s not really a great excuse, Noelle. You basically just sat there and let everything fall apart.”
“No. No I did not. Everything was wrecked, utterly wrecked by my mother. She smashed everything to pieces—I didn’t let it fall apart. And yes, maybe I could have done something, maybe I should have, but every night I’ve gone to bed hoping … hoping that somehow in the morning it would be fixed. That things would go back to normal. I tried to force it to go back to normal.” She looked at him, blue eyes intent on his, an impact he felt all the way through his body. “Now … now I don’t even want things to go back to normal. But I just … I felt burned out. I was just so tired. This, having a chance to hold onto something, this at least makes me feel like I can fight. Like I have something to fight with.”
His chest felt strange. As if it had gotten smaller, or his heart had gotten larger. He didn’t like it. “You could learn something else.”
Her frame slumped. “I don’t know if I have the energy anymore. To devote myself to mastering something other than music, I mean. I’ve done that. Practicing, improving, every day without stopping since I was a child. It didn’t really get me anywhere, did it?”
He didn’t know why he felt compelled to try and offer her … something. Comfort maybe? He only knew that he did. “Very few people live their lives that way, Noelle. With drills and practice for eight hours a day, in addition to performing and promoting and traveling.”
“Are you telling me you work any less hard?” she asked.
“No, I work a lot. But I choose to. There are plenty of people who go nine to five, five days a week.”
She looked down, her throat working. “What if I can’t do anything else?”
Everything about his carefully laid plan, her being in the office, her being anywhere near him, suddenly felt wrong. Like he was joining in the queue of people who’d used her.
A bit too late to feel that way.
Much too late. And she was walking in with her eyes open.
“Of course you can. Here,” he slapped his palm on the leather back of the chair, “get in the chair.”
She sat back down, her expression confused. Damn, but she made him feel every inch the Big Bad Wolf to her Little Red Riding Hood. He didn’t really like the feeling.
He shoved his conscience to one side. He’d deal with it later. “Do you type?”
She grimaced. “Not really. Not fast.”
“Well, you’re going to learn.” He pulled out a stack of papers he’d set aside for his PA. “I want you to enter this into the computer. These are specs for different building plans. If you enter the numbers in these cells, the computer will do the math for you. You just enter it in.”
“I can do that.”
“Okay, do that. I’m going to go down the hall and make some phone calls, and I’ll be back to check on you.” Distance was definitely necessary.
He walked out of the office and closed the door behind him, his chest still tight. He didn’t know why it mattered, but he wanted to show Noelle that she could do something. Something other than doing drills every day for a career that had crumbled to nothing right
