Tempt Me Like This

“I’m sorry, Dad,” she said, feeling like a balloon with all the air slowly fizzling out of it. “It’s been a long couple of days. I know you just want to make sure that I’m doing okay.”

“Are you?” He asked it much more hesitantly this time.

She couldn’t lie to her father, so she simply said, “I’m learning so much. In fact,” she added, hoping to distract him from asking any other questions about her emotional state, “I just met Smith Sullivan. You know, the big movie star.”

“Of course I know who Smith is,” her father said with a laugh. “He was also one of my students way back when.”

“No way.” How many other famous people had her father taught that he’d never mentioned to her?

“How is Smith?”

“He’s engaged to this great woman named Valentina, and he’s very kind.” She almost told her father about falling into Smith’s pool, but she had a feeling that would only make him panic again when he seemed to be feeling better about things.

“That’s good to hear, honey. I always hope that fame won’t lead people astray.”

“It definitely hasn’t. Not with Smith.” She couldn’t stop herself from adding, “And not with Drew either. They’re both great people.”

“So are you, honey. You’ve always made me so proud.”

His gentle, heartfelt words made her wish she was a little girl again, if only for a few moments, so that he could stroke her hair and tell her what she should do to make everything feel okay.

But she wasn’t a little girl anymore. And she needed to figure things out for herself this time...even if some of the things she couldn’t help but want to experience with Drew would surely upset her father a great deal.

And even if she knew better than to think Drew could ever be the one for her.

“I’ve got to go now, but I love you, Dad.”

Ashley hung up with so many different emotions and desires and questions careening through her. She had always believed she was the straight and narrow, the clear-cut, just like her father. But Drew had insisted that she was more—that she was as exciting and creative as her mother as well. And when she looked at her reflection in the window across from where she was standing, she suddenly saw a likeness to her mom that she’d never noticed before. That she supposed she’d never wanted to notice before.

But then she noticed something that took her even more by surprise: She wasn’t just made up of parts of her parents, put together like pieces of a puzzle. Take her eyes, for instance—they were neither brown like her mother’s, nor blue like her father’s. Instead, they were uniquely hazel. And her hair wasn’t a mass of wild curls like her mother’s, or pin straight like her father’s. Instead, soft waves curled over her shoulders.

And most important, she was starting to see that what she wanted was neither the pure academia that her father loved, nor the total freedom that her mother craved. Because if Ashley had learned anything from being on tour with Drew, it was that carving one’s own unique path was the most important thing of all.

Carving a unique path. The spark that had gone out on the beach in Los Angeles suddenly lit up inside of her. She grabbed her computer and tablet and notebook, and before she knew it, the ideas started flowing so fast that she could barely keep up with them. Ideas that were a full one-eighty from what she’d thought she had come to learn from Drew’s tour. Because instead of going deeper into the standard major-label music system, every new idea she came up with was centered around a completely independent framework.

One where the musician ran the show, rather than the label.

A part of her was scared that so many things in her life had taken a complete turnabout from the moment she’d set foot on Drew’s bus, but the other part of her was so excited and intrigued that she refused to let that fear stop her from fleshing out the new ideas in as much detail as she could. At least where work was concerned, she could make sense of things if she just worked at them hard enough.

Where Drew was concerned, on the other hand?

Well, between saying he couldn’t be with her, but then telling her he dreamed of being with her, and a million other conflicting signs...she honestly didn’t know what to think, or how to feel. Ashley shook her head and refocused on her computer screen, diving back into the work that felt a million times safer than her emotions.

When her stomach started grumbling, she suddenly realized just how late it was. Late enough that she’d not only missed Drew’s show, but he should also be done with the meet and greet.