Tempt Me Like This

“I love you, too, Dad.” She smiled as she spoke. “And nothing bad is going to happen to me. I’m smart and careful, just the way you taught me to be.” She deliberately tried not to think about the way Drew had been holding her naked body tightly to his this morning on the bus, just in case her father had suddenly developed X-ray vision.

“You’re the smartest person I know, honey, but you’ve also inherited your mother’s looks.” She didn’t bother to disagree with him, even though they both knew she’d never be stunningly beautiful like her exotic-looking mother. “And I know how guys think,” her father added. “You shouldn’t trust a word out of their mouths.”

She couldn’t figure out why her father thought she was such a target for men all of a sudden. But she knew better than to debate the issue with him when he was one of the overseeing professors of the campus debate team, so she simply said, “I have to get going now, but I’ll tell Drew you said hello.”

Since she didn’t want to accidentally walk into the studio in the middle of one of Drew’s performances, after hanging up she quickly checked her email and then walked over to where James had been pretending he wasn’t listening to her conversation.

Doing her research well meant not only learning what Drew did on tour, but also learning from his crew. She’d only just realized how important a bodyguard was. “How long have you been with Drew?”

“Two years. I worked for a real piece of work right before him. Can’t name any names, but let’s just say I’d be happy never to hear the song ‘Love Robot’ again.”

Her eyes widened before she could stop them. James had been Cal Sextin’s bodyguard? She’d never been a huge fan of his music, but he was a big star with a string of hits that stretched back at least a decade.

“When I couldn’t take it anymore, I asked around, and Nicola Sullivan—you probably know her by her stage name, Nico—who I’d done some work for here and there, gave me a reference for Drew. I owe her.”

“Wow, it sounds like you’ve worked with tons of famous people. How long have you been a bodyguard?”

“Twenty-five years.”

“I’m sure you must have a ton of incredible stories.”

“I sure do.”

She was riveted, despite knowing she’d moved way beyond research and was solely in the personal interest zone. “Tell me one, James. About Drew.”

He didn’t look particularly surprised by her request. “One night about a year ago, Drew was feeling a little...well...antsy is probably the best word for it. Just tired of being on the bus and under pressure, you know.”

“I’m sure that must happen a lot,” she mused aloud. After only one night in the really nice tour bus, she could imagine how small it could come to feel. “Especially when it’s hard even to do things like walk into an airport without calling security first.”

“I should have been there at the airport with you guys,” James said with a frown. “Anyway, we were out in the middle of the Australian Outback, and he decided to get a horse and go riding for the day. I can’t ride, so I didn’t go with him. And none of the other guys could keep up. When he didn’t show up at the hotel five hours later, we knew something was up. No cell reception out there, of course, so we got in a Jeep and headed out into the wild, praying nothing had happened to him. I was picturing broken bones and snakes and rabid red kangaroos gnawing at his flesh.”

Even though she knew Drew had obviously gotten back safe and sound, she was still riveted. “What happened, James? Where was he?”

“Turned out he’d been spotted by a couple of teenage girls on their horses doing their chores. They knew exactly who he was, of course.”

“Even in the middle of the Outback, he couldn’t escape his fame.”

“Nope. Although I think there were plenty of other things he was trying to escape that day,” James added in a low tone, and Ashley finally realized the timing worked out to be right around when Drew’s mother had passed away. “He’d been helping the girls and the rest of their siblings fix fences all day. Fit right in, just like he’d been born and raised working on an Outback ranch. Took some ugly threats to drag him back to town that night so he could play his show. It’s the only time he’s ever gone on late. And it was also the last time I ever let him out of my sight on a horse.”

Just then Drew walked out of the radio station, before she had enough time to put her heart back together from the story she’d just heard. She knew what it was like to want to ride off on a horse into the desert and never come back. She’d felt that way so many times when her parents were splitting up. But riding away hadn’t saved her.