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“Ready?” Chad asked, almost in my ear, and I startled. The man was like a ghost, so quiet and unobtrusive for a giant.
Rhett gave a nod. He looked out over the Chicago lights one last time before sending me a smile and walking away.
I had the intense desire to give the man a hug. Not only because I wanted it—trust me, I always would—but because the sad hollowness in his gaze needed to be filled.
What demons was Rhett facing?
Chapter Seven
We landed in Boston lateat night and shuttled to the hotel in a caravan of dark-tinted SUVs. I sat on the plush leather seat beside Adalyn and looked through the windows at the Boston nightlife while she tapped relentlessly on her screen.
I pulled my gaze away from a woman tottering on too-high heels and stumbling into a man on the sidewalk. It had looked too contrived to be a real stumble, and I wanted to roll my eyes at the extent some women would go to just to fall into a man’s arms. Okay, so I might have contemplated doing that very thing when I was getting Rhett ready forBreakfast with Juliana. But that was just daydreaming. I wouldn’t have actually done it.
“Uh oh,” Adalyn breathed.
“What is it?” I asked.
Adalyn sighed. “Rhett’s ex wants to be approved as a bidding party.”
“Naomi Price?” She was the woman most recently found on his arm before he and Sunny Nash were considered a thing.
“No, before that.”
“Karina Bier?”
Adalyn looked at me in surprise. “You know your stuff.”
My cheeks warmed, and I was grateful the darkness in the car kept the color hidden. “I follow celebrity relationships.”
Likeonecelebrity’s relationships. But he’d had so many of them that the plural use of the word wasn’t a lie.
“Yeah, Karina Bier,” Adalyn confirmed. “She’s in town for a concert, so she wants to come bid for the date.”
Rhett’s popstar ex-girlfriend wanted a date. Had she read the fine print about no kissing too? I doubted it. “What will Rhett think of that?”
“He’ll probably be annoyed by the PR stunt. This one’s on Bridget. I don’t have the authority to answer it.”
“What do you think she’ll say?”
Adalyn tilted her head to the side. “Probably yes, and Rhett will hate it. We need to hope some East Coast money shows up and outbids her.” She laughed. “Karina probably plans to pay a ludicrous amount and say it’s only for the charity, but that girl was crazy about Rhett.”
I couldn’t blame her. “So...notjusta PR stunt. She still has feelings for him?”
“With Karina, it’s always been a little of both.”
I’d heard about stars dating for the extra publicity when they starred together, and I’d also seen stars get married after starring together. It was hard to know which ones were fake and which ones were authentic. Kind of like Rhett’s smiles—though I hoped I was growing more adept at discerning between the two types of expressions he wore.
Our SUV pulled into the garage beneath our hotel first, and we slid out of the car, Chad hopping from the front seat and moving around the vehicle, likely to check the immediate perimeter. Jax went straight for the sliding glass doors that led into the underbelly of the hotel—it looked like we were taking a service entrance of some sort—and I went to retrieve my makeup cases from the trunk.
Rhett slipped out of the car parked behind us. “You know they’ll bring your bags up, right, Frenchy?” His amusement never ceased to spill a little warmth over me.
“And break all my cakes? No, thank you.”
He sent me a look of mild confusion.
“Makeup cakes,” I clarified. “I don’t have German chocolate tucked away in here for a midnight snack.”
“Pity. Though it would make more sense to order German chocolate directly to your room than to lug it on a plane.”
