“Is that a problem?” she asked, looking at me when I hadn’t said a word.
“No.”Yes.I wanted to take her out for dinner tonight, to wine and dine her, like I would have if I wasn’t so… messed up. I wanted to spend endless hours learning everything about her over her favorite bottle of wine, hold her in my arms and dance to her favorite song, hear her sing for a crowd the way she’d sung for me, but I couldn’t do any of that, and it was killing me.
“Good.” She set her phone aside and said, “If you can just get me the passwords I need, we can get started. I imagine we have a lot of ground to cover, since you’ve been without an assistant so long.”
I set the bottle of water on her desk and she muttered a thanks before I claimed the seat beside my desk so I could produce the information she needed.
“About social media,” I said, glancing at her. “Are you comfortable managing my accounts?”
“Of course.” She reached for a notepad and pen. “I should have brought my tablet in to make notes, but this will do for now. I’m sure you have tech support on your team. Is there someone managing your social media presence now?”
“Uh, yeah. Someone the label assigned. I post stuff too, but I’d like to have more control than I do now. I just haven’t had the time to get it together.”
“Understood,” she said, making notes. She pulled a pair of black-framed tortoiseshell glasses out of her shirt pocket and slipped them on.
I was completely done. I thought she’d looked sexy before, but every dirty librarian fantasy I’d had as a teen just reared its ugly head as I watched her draw her lush lower lip between her teeth as she continued making notes.
“Something wrong?” she asked, looking up at me.
You look hot as hell and I want to throw you down on that desk and...I quashed the urge to tell her what was really on my mind as I muttered, “Just thinking about all the ground we need to cover.”
“Then I guess you should get to work, huh?” she asked, gesturing at my computer screen. “The sooner you get me that info I need the sooner we can get started.”
I closed my eyes as I turned away. I had a feeling Charli would be the best assistant I’d ever had. She was smart, seemed organized and efficient, and I knew her salary with me would probably be twice as much as she’d earned freelancing, so she’d work hard to keep it. But how the hell was I supposed to handle seeing her every day, wanting her and knowing I couldn’t have her?
I printed off the information she needed and passed it to her. “Give me your email and I’ll send you all this info too. Probably should have done that in the first place.” If my brain had been firing on all cylinders.
She rhymed off her email as she scanned the pages I’d given her. “I do some website design too,” she said. “So, if you need me to update events or add pics to your site, that’s not a problem.”
“Great.” Was there anything she couldn’t do, to make my life easier? How the hell was she fitting so seamlessly into my world, like she belonged here, even though I knew she didn’t? “I’ll uh, get you an email address too, for professional purposes.”
“Sounds good.” She looked up and smiled. “I see you’re doing a cruise with your fans next month. That should be fun, huh?”
“You should come.” A week on a cruise ship with her, in the Bahamas? I could think of worse things. “Maybe you could sing a few songs with me.”
Her eyes were wide as she shook her head. “What? No way. I’m not polished enough to sing with you. Your fans are paying a lot of money for that experience. I wouldn’t want to do anything to ruin that.”
“Ruin it?” I chuckled. “Honey, you don’t give yourself enough credit. You’ve got a killer voice. My fans would love you.” Love. Damn it, that was the last word I needed to be throwing around right now.
“Thanks, but I don’t think I’m ready for that. Maybe when I have more practice playing in front of a crowd.” She shrugged. “But if you need me to come as your assistant, of course I will.”
I’d just wrapped up a tour, but I was headlining plenty of music festivals over the next year while I retreated to the studio to work on my next album, so there would still be plenty of travel. And I wanted her with me.
“Good, and if you have a look at that line-up,” I said, gesturing to the schedule I gave her, “you can assume I’ll need you for those dates too. I usually fly in a day before and leave a day after, depending on what else is going out at the time.”
“Dade,” she said, sounding hesitant. “We talked about this being a temporary gig, right? Don’t you think we should give it a month or so, make sure it’s gonna work before we start making any long-term plans?”
I didn’t know why it bothered me that she had an exit strategy in mind. She was right, we’d talked about this being a temporary gig. An answer to her immediate problems. But I suddenly wanted to be the guy who helped solve all of her problems.
“Let’s just assume, as long as this works for both of us, we’re committed.”
We’re committed.I imagined what it would be like, to be committed to Charli. My hand drifted to her bare left hand and I imagined my ring there. Not the huge gaudy diamonds I’d bought for other women. Something beautiful, but understated, like the girl herself.
What the hell was I doing, thinking about engagement rings again? I must be losing my mind!
“As long as it doesn’t involve a contract,” she said, “I’m good with that.”
“You don’t want to sign a contract?” Most of my employees did. Non-disclosure and privacy was a requirement and she would be dealing with a lot of sensitive personal information. “Why?”
