“You did not just ask him that!” I gasped. It was like I had three living chastity belts.
Ryan looked . . . pissed. He cleared his throat. “I’m trying to find an opening act. If you’re not interested . . .” He stood up, and all three of them spoke at once.
“Whoa!”
“Hang on a second.”
“We were just worried.”
Ryan slowly sat back down, then turned his face toward me. “I think your sister is beautiful and talented and funny, but as I’ve repeatedly been told, she doesn’t date musicians. So I don’t think you need to worry.”
As if what he’d just said about me wasn’t enough, that flashing, fiery, intense gaze of his caused my stomach to do flips and my pulse to frantically throb, and I thought my brothers probably should worry.
Just a little.
Okay, a lot.
Fitz, Cole, and Parker climbed into the booth, and both Ryan and I had to scoot down to make room. Fitz told Ryan that we didn’t have the money or the ability to travel around.
“We have over fifty crew members traveling in seven tour buses, and eight semitrucks carrying full production. I have room on my bus. You guys can travel with me and my band.”
Ryan’s gaze flickered back to me, and ice solidified in my veins. I was going to be sleeping near him and traveling around with him and basically living with him?
Other people would be there, including the Dating Police trio, but still.
When Fitz brought up production costs, Ryan offered the use of his touring production crew. They would be able to take care of everything for us, including setup and takedown. “Brad is our production manager. I’ll get you his contact information. I’ll send you Piper’s information, too—she’s our tour manager and will tell you everything you need to know.”
“Is all the traveling done by bus?” Cole asked, and I felt bad for him. He was prone to vehicle motion sickness.
Ryan’s face turned pale, and his mouth became a thin line. “Yes. No planes.”
When I’d been obsessed with Ryan as a young teen, part of what had made him so romantic was his tragic life story. I’d watched a documentary about Ryan once or twice. (Okay, five times.) His mother, Sofia De Luna, was a girl from New Mexico who wanted to be a singer. She kept being told the same thing—because of her name and appearance, she should go into the Latin pop market. Problem was, she didn’t speak a word of Spanish (her own dad had died when she was young). But she quickly learned how to sing Spanish phonetically and became a huge success.
Ryan’s father had worked at one of the biggest American record labels, and he saw her perform at the Grammys. He asked if she’d be interested in crossing over, as so many Latino artists were doing at the time. He’d been excited to find out she spoke perfect English. He had her record a demo and convinced his label to sign her.
They fell in love, got married (at a wedding that ran into seven figures), and had Ryan.
A year later the marriage fell apart. His mother took Ryan on tour with her, hiring tutors when he got to be school-age. Sofia became a massive pop star in America as well, in part due to her relentless touring. Her first English album had four number-one hits.
When Ryan was seven years old, they were on their way to a concert in Puerto Rico when they ran into a terrible storm with hurricane-level winds, and the plane crashed.
Only three people survived, Ryan being one of them. They said Sofia wrapped Ryan in pillows and blankets and then protected him with her body.
I didn’t blame him for avoiding planes.
They all started discussing terms and contracts and agreements. My brothers grilled him like it was their last day on the police force and they didn’t care if they got in trouble for being overzealous because they were about to retire.
I finished my pie and then reached out to slowly slide his barely touched slice toward me. It seemed like a waste not to finish it. As I did so, Ryan shot me one of his patented Ryan De Luna winks that made my knees feel like they were made out of whipped cream.
There had to be a way to stop this. To stop reacting this way, to logically tell myself he was the kind of guy who had to kick girls out of his bed. He didn’t need to chase after someone who had repeatedly told him she wasn’t into him and it wouldn’t happen. Maybe he saw me as some kind of challenge, but he couldn’t really be interested.
If I could just remember that nothing physical would ever happen between Ryan and me, maybe I could control myself.
As I sat and listened to them talk, I felt more and more guilt over how I’d talked to Ryan the night we met. I had been horrible to him, and here he was doing something completely amazing and life-changing for us. He was going to make it so that we could keep taking care of our mom and keep our home. I felt like I didn’t deserve his kindness.
The conversation wound down, and Ryan said he had an early interview in the morning. Fitz got up to let Ryan slide out of the booth.
“It’s been . . . interesting meeting you all. I’ll see you bright and early Friday morning. The bus leaves at eight a.m. sharp, and Piper has no problem leaving anyone behind.”
He looked at me as if he wanted me to say something.
Instead, he got out his wallet and put another hundred-dollar bill on the table to pay for our pumpkin pies. As he headed for the door, I started pushing at Cole. “Move. I need to walk him out.”
Cole shook his head. “He’s a big boy. He doesn’t need you to walk him out.”
“I’m not going to get pregnant between here and the sidewalk. Don’t follow me,” I growled, standing up in the booth and walking across the table. Parker yelled something at me, but I tuned him out.
Ryan must have seen me coming after him because he was waiting outside.
As the diner door swung shut behind me, I suddenly felt shy and idiotic. “Um, hey.”
“Hi. So your brothers seem . . .”
“Overprotective? Completely insane? One banana shy of a bunch? Yeah. That’s them. They’re so annoying. Can’t live with them, can’t dispose of their bodies without drawing suspicion.”
He put his hands in his pockets. “It must be nice to feel loved like that.”
“I feel smothered. Or, more accurately, brothered.”
That got me a small smile, but he fell silent. Where he’d pretty much driven our conversation earlier, now he was waiting to hear whatever I had come out here to say.
Problem was, I had no idea what I should say.
“How did we get here?” I finally asked.
“Well, I drove my car, and I’m pretty sure you came in that thing that at some point was a van.”
As if it wasn’t bad enough that he was literally the most handsome man I’d ever met in real life, he had to be witty, too. It would have been so much easier to ignore him if he’d been dumb and not funny. “No, I mean how did we go from me being horrible to you and yelling insults and now I’m your opening act?”
He took a step toward me, and my body swayed in his direction. Like it wanted to ignore my head and do whatever stupid thing it wanted to.
“I think you and I remember that night differently. You weren’t horrible to me.”
“I was. I apologize.”
Another step toward me. “I’m the one who should say I’m sorry. I thought you were using Diego to get to me. It’s happened before. I shouldn’t have assumed you wanted me or that you were playing some game. You’ve made it pretty clear you’re not interested.”
My confused, raging hormones and I decided it was a very bad thing we’d made him think that.
Now he was so close that I feared slightly for his physical safety, seeing as how we were in full view of my siblings. My chest felt so tight, like all the air in my lungs had turned solid, and I could no longer breathe.
“When you confronted me, I couldn’t remember the last time anyone had ever spoken to me that way. I wasn’t upset. I thought, ‘Here’s a real person who is treating me like a real person.’ You made me feel like a human being again.”
Ryan reached up to tuck a strand of hair behind my ear, and when his fingers brushed the top of my earlobe, I felt the molten lava of his touch everywhere—even in my ankles.
“You’re shivering again.” He whispered the words close to my mouth, and I wanted nothing more than to close my eyes and let him kiss me.
Which was dangerous. “Don’t,” I said, stepping back. “If I’m going to go on tour with you, no more talking about shivering or being beautiful or anything like that.” My voice shook, along with the rest of me. “We have to be professional colleagues. Nothing more. I—I have rules. Important rules. That are important.”
“Okay. If that’s what you want. We should shake on it.” He held out his right hand, but I knew what would happen if I touched him. Spontaneous combustion, most likely.
“No thanks.”
That made him smile like he knew something I didn’t, and whatever he knew was hilarious.
“Good night, Maisy.”
“Good night, Ryan.”
I had just opened the door to the diner when he spoke.
“Before you go, I did want to tell you that I enjoyed our first date.”
“What?” Was this some kind of reverse psychology? Act like we’d already dated so I’d go on a real date to prove we hadn’t?
“I asked you to come eat with me. You showed up. We ordered food. I paid for it. We talked and got to know each other better. Date.”
“That was not a date,” I responded, but realized he was kind of right. He had ninja-dated me, and I hadn’t even known it!
“You’ve already broken your rule. You should try breaking it again.” He turned off the alarm on his car, and it chirped in response.
“That’s a very bad idea.” A very, very bad idea. Although for the life of me, I couldn’t remember why.
He walked backward to his car, grinning at me. “Just because it’s a bad idea doesn’t mean we won’t have a good time. You’ve got my number. Call me if you need anything.” Then he got into his Prius and drove off.
I didn’t even get the chance to figure out how I felt about any of this because my brothers came outside and ushered me into the van. Where I tried very hard not to think about Ryan De Luna.
And failed.
“We’ll have to get a lawyer to look over the contract,” Parker said, and then he and Cole started talking about the money.
Even if I didn’t date Ryan, what if I wanted to kiss him a little? Would that be so bad? “I have a condition,” I announced. “For doing this tour.”
“Like only pink Starbursts kind of thing?” Cole asked.
“No. Like you guys are going to acknowledge the fact that I am a grown woman who can make her own decisions. You won’t intimidate anybody who speaks to me or threaten any guy who looks my way. I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself, and you’re going to respect that.”
I was met with a deafening silence.
“Promise me—a Mom promise—that you guys will do that, or else I’m not going.”
“I promise to back off,” Fitz said, and although I could tell it killed them to do it, Cole and Parker also promised. Cole then turned on the radio, even though we got only AM stations, muttering something about how he was promising only because of the money.
“Will it be enough?” I asked Fitz. “The money? Can we keep the house?”
“I don’t know, Maisy.” He put his arm around me and squeezed. “It doesn’t solve all of our problems, but it’s going to help a lot. In a couple of weeks, we’ll be able to catch up on some bills and pay others off. Let’s see how things go before we make any major decisions, okay?”
For the first time since Fitz had told me about the money situation, I felt hopeful.
It was all thanks to the world’s biggest pop star. Who, no matter what I told him or myself, I was most definitely attracted to.
And who might have me possibly reconsidering my stance on Rule #1.
The first thing I did the next morning (afternoon) when I woke up was call Angie. Her side of the conversation was basically a series of shrieks and screams and “Are you kidding me? Are you kidding me?” She promised to take extra good care of my mom. I tried to visit my mother at least once a week, and I wasn’t sure how often I’d be able to see her while we were touring. Even though she wouldn’t remember whether anyone came to visit her, I would know.
I briefly wondered what Angie would have said if I’d told her my initial response to Ryan’s offer was to decline. It probably would have involved some veiled threats about kidnapping me and leaving me on the tour bus. I promised to send Angie lots of pictures. Although she didn’t know it yet, I planned on including quite a few of Fox.
“You also have to tell me every single detail about what happens with you and Ryan De Luna,” she instructed.
“Nothing’s going to happen with me and Ryan De Luna.”
“We’ll see.”
I decided to leave her to her delusions and misplaced optimism.
The second thing I did was go into my current place of employment and tell them I was leaving. Permanently. Nothing in the entire world had ever given me more joy than to say those two beautiful words: “I quit.” Honestly, I hated only three things about my job at the quickie haircut place—the people, getting out of bed to go there, and the work. I had been so miserable I remembered thinking once that if I died and went to hell, it would take me at least a week to realize I wasn’t at work anymore.
Of course none of my now-former colleagues believed me when I said I was going on tour with Ryan, but I didn’t care.
The contracts arrived, and after finding an attorney who Parker had gone to high school with and getting his input, we all happily signed.
Fitz found one of his more responsible friends to watch the house while we were gone. He also chatted with Piper, the tour manager, and got the details of where we should meet the bus, and she told him to get there early so she could show us around. The expression on his face after that phone call was kind of goofy and endearing. It made me hopeful that he might be ready to move on with his love life. Because it occurred to me while he was talking that if Fitz had someone to focus his attention on, he might be less inclined to worry about me.
When early Friday morning rolled around, I was completely packed and too excited to sleep. With nothing else to do, I went into the kitchen to try and re-create my mother’s brownies.
My mom’s famous brownie recipe, the hit at any gathering, was handed down to her from my grandma and from my great-grandmother before that. Mom always promised me she’d give me the recipe when I graduated from high school. I’d turned the house upside down looking for it, but if she’d written it down, she’d also hidden it really well.
After spending so much time trying to figure out the ingredients, brownies were basically the only thing I could make. I was useless in a kitchen; Cole was the baker of the family. He’d half-heartedly tried a few times to help me in my quest, but he said it made him too sad.
So it was left to me to figure out how to carry on this family legacy. I kept downloading recipes for brownies and chocolate frosting, ever hopeful that I’d find the right mixture of taste and consistency.
This batch turned out like all the others. Delicious, but not Mom’s.
Eventually my brothers got themselves out of bed, and our Uber arrived to take us to a nearby shopping mall. At seven in the morning, the parking lot was empty except for the buses covered in Ryan’s latest album art and the name of the tour—Moonstruck. How did I not realize this before?
“He named his tour after a word his fans use?” I asked.
“He did. And the fans love it.” A young woman appeared on my right. The first thing I noticed was her bright-purple hair, pulled back into two buns at the base of her head. She was about my height (five feet eight) and very pretty. She sported black glasses, a headset, and a big smile. “Hi, I’m Piper. The tour manager. You guys must be Yesterday.”
She was a lot younger than I had expected. Early twenties, definitely. We introduced ourselves by name, and I saw that same goofy look in Fitz’s eyes when he shook hands with her.
Piper didn’t seem to notice. “Thanks for coming early! Whatever equipment and instruments you want to be packed up, leave them here, and I’ll have one of the crew grab them. If you’ll come with me, I’ll show you to your home away from home for the next few months.”
We followed behind her toward the huge, shiny buses. There were dozens of people milling around, talking and laughing. I saw Fox and waved to him enthusiastically. He gave me a slight head nod in return.
I wondered if that meant Ryan was nearby. Just thinking his name set me off, like some kind of conditioned response. My heartbeat elevated, my stomach dropped down to my toes, and breathing became complicated.
If that was from just thinking about him, what would it be like when I saw him again? What if he kept flirting with me and then tried to kiss me? What if he still wanted me to break my rules?
Would I be strong enough to resist him for weeks and weeks?
I suspected the answer was no.