“What do you mean there aren’t any hotel rooms? There’s got to be one somewhere,” I hissed into the phone. My hands were balled up at my sides in frustration and my voice was dripping with it, but my assistant-slash-secretary-slash-receptionist, Alexandra, just yawned dramatically at me in reply.

Alexandra never had time for anyone’s shitty attitude, even mine. Especially mine. Her perennially foul mood made her uniquely good at a job which consisted mostly of protecting me from clients and would-be clients I didn’t want to speak with. If someone needed shut down, thrown out, or screamed at, she was the most qualified woman for the job. Unfortunately, it also made her a general pain-in-the-ass.

“Well then you go find it,” she said a moment later. She yawned again and I imagined her rolling her eyes. “I’ve just spent two and a half hours of my Saturday night on the phone, begging every hotel in town. Nobody has anything. It’s South by Southwest. What do you expect?”

“I expect you to find a hotel room. I don’t even care how much it costs.” I’d already resigned myself to the quadruple digits.

“I find my life is a lot easier the lower I keep my expectations,” she replied, parroting back what I’d told her a few months ago when she told me that she expected a five-to-seven percent yearly pay increase. As usual, her voice was as dry as the Sahara Desert. “Why don’t you just have the girl stay in your guest room?” she suggested when she heard my answering unintelligible noise of frustration. “It’s just one night.”

I ground my teeth. I kept my calm, but only barely. I was fairly certain that my boss would not be happy to learn that I’d brought his nineteen-year-old daughter to my place for the night. On the other hand, it meant more time with her. I was supposed to be spending time with her as part of my real assignment.

Of course, there was also the fact that if I was truly honest with myself, I knew that I wanted her as physically close to me as I could possibly manage. Next to me. Right up against me. Under me. Or better yet, on top of me.… I was rarely honest with myself though. I pushed the graphic thoughts away, locking them away for later.

You’re doing this because it’s the only option, I told myself firmly. It didn’t ring true, but what was I supposed to do? I really did have a problem. The girl had to sleep somewhere.

I took a deep breath and looked over to where Rosie was sitting forlornly on the steps of her apartment building. She was staring into the middle distance, totally oblivious to my stare and off in her own little world. I took a moment to just admire her as I approached.

I wondered if God must made her specifically to torture me, and briefly considered what I’d done to deserve such cruelty. She was everything I wanted in a woman, only about ten years too young and totally off limits. Then, I heard her absentmindedly humming, and wondered if it was God who made her at all.

The tune wasn’t familiar to me at first, but a moment later I realized I had heard it before. It was ‘Happy’ by Jenny Lewis. A bit obscure, but not very. Not that it was the tune that mattered at all, it was Rosie’s voice. She wasn’t singing the lyrics, but I knew them:

Light, but with a soft, lilting, melodic quality, I could tell from her humming alone that Rosie was not the talentless dreamer her father had promised she was. Her voice was hypnotizing and beautiful. She was talented.

Crap. Well, one crisis at a time, I reminded myself.

“Rosie?” I asked.

She blinked up at me. “Sorry, I was zoned out. Today has been completely nuts. First my birthday party gets cancelled, then my pet fish died, and now this.” She shook her head and her long hair danced around her face. “What’s up?”

I swallowed my curiosity. “More bad news.”

Her eyes became saucer-sized but she only looked at me for a fraction of a second before staring down at her battered tennis shoes. “How can there be more bad news? I’m already homeless.”

I sat down next to her on the step. “I can’t find you a hotel room. South by Southwest seems to have eaten up every single room in town.”

Rosie bit her full bottom lip. “Oh.” She looked around herself as if a hotel room might be sitting next to her on the other side of the step. “Well, I guess I can call my friends and see if one of them could let me—”

“—I do have a solution,” I interrupted. The idea that she might find a friend’s couch to sleep on should have encouraged me, but the not-so-secret truth was that I wanted her to go home with me. Plus, I didn’t like the thought of her sleeping on someone’s couch like a vagrant. Her father wouldn’t like that, either, would he? “That is, if you don’t mind.” I put on my most winning smile. “You could stay with me tonight. I have a guest room at my house …” My confidence evaporated when I took in her expression.

“With you?” Her eyes, already as round and huge as I thought they could be, improbably widened further. There was now a slim ring of white all the way around her green pupils.

“You’d have your own bathroom.” I’m not sure why that was my response, but it was. I didn’t know how to convince her that I wasn’t a psycho. “I promise I’m not a psycho,” I added weakly.

She blinked. “I don’t think you’re a psycho, it’s just kind of weird. I mean, I don’t know you. You don’t know me either.”

I’d hosted plenty of women I knew less about than Rosie over the years in far more intimate situations. Telling her that, however, would probably convince her that I was not to be trusted and intended on seducing her (which was only true in my fantasies). “I promise I’ll be on my best behavior. Do you want to call your dad and ask him?” I proposed. It definitely wasn’t my favorite idea, but I didn’t want Rosie thinking I was some predatory creep, either. Even if the only thing stopping me from being one was the knowledge that she was off-limits in the extreme.

She shook her head instantly at the suggestion we involve her father. “No. I trust you.” You do? Her expression softened. “I’m sure my dad wouldn’t send you if he didn’t trust you.”

He does trust me, I thought uncharitably. He trusts me to use my position as a talent agent to crush your dreams of being a singer. I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t trust me to bring you home to my place tonight, though. I don’t trust me with that, either.

But no matter my inner misgivings and conflicts, I’d achieved my immediate objective—Rosie was coming home with me tonight. I’d also learned something important. She was much, much too trusting. It was that kind of trusting heart that got people hurt in the music business. Sometimes it got them killed.

Even if Rosie was as talented as I now suspected that she might be, a person who instantly assumed good intentions had no place in the cutthroat music industry. At the very least, she would need a good agent to protect her. Someone who’d look out for her best interests and keep the bad guys away. Someone like me, maybe. The thought—totally unbidden and infinitely unwelcome—stuck in my brain. Genuinely representing Rosie was the exact opposite of what I was supposed to be doing.

“Ok then,” I heard myself saying smoothly. My all-too-human brain might be traversing dangerous paths, but my lawyer mouth still knew what to say. “Let’s go before either of us gets hit with any more bad news. It’s getting late.”