He tugged lightly on her hair, making her look at him again. “I’ll remember you too.”
Their eyes locked. But the sound of his mobile phone broke the connection. Reaching to take it off the bedside table, he read the caller ID. Mike. With the time zone differences, they kept missing each other’s calls.
“Sorry, I need to take this.”
He quickly put on his boxer shorts, gave one last, longing glance at Jade, then left the room.
“Hey, man,” Nate said.
“Finally,” Mike answered. “You’re a hard man to catch.”
Nate chuckled. “I can say the same thing about you.”
“Are you sure you can’t get back sooner? You staying in the land down under is not making things easy for the band.” Although Mike said it in jest, Nate could hear an underlying tone of resentment.
“Sorry, mate, I’ve got things to do here.”
“I thought you were taking time off to relax?”
“I’m helping a friend out.” Mike would crack a rib from laughing if Nate told him he was teaching a bunch of primary school kids music.
“You like the new songs I sent?”
They were typical Harvey’s Territory stuff. Mike did a great job. But did Nate like them? No, because they didn’t move him when he listened to them. He didn’t feel the emotions in the lyrics.
“The songs are awesome.” It wasn’t a full-blown lie. They were awesome, just not what he yearned to play.
“I’ve been talking to Temp Rock magazine, and they want to do an interview with you about the next leg of the tour.”
“Okay, when I’m back in New York we’ll set it up.”
Mike was silent for a beat. “Umm, they don’t want to wait that long. I told them you’d do a Skype call.”
Nate pinched the bridge of his nose. “When?”
More silence and then, “Now.”
“Now? What the fuck, man? I’m not ready to do this shit now. And what if I wasn’t available?”
“I took a chance. And I know you have your gear with you, it won’t take you long to slap it all on. The interview will only take twenty minutes, tops.”
“Why the hell can’t you do it?” Nate asked.
“I am, but they want you too or it’s not happening.”
“Then it’s not happening.”
Dorito was meowing and rubbing his body against Nate’s legs. He went into the kitchen, opened a can of cat food he’d picked up that morning, and dumped it out into the bowl he’d also bought. He needed to feed the animal on something, and the dishes he ate from were not for cats.
“Come on, man. I already told him we’d do it. If we back out now, we’ll look like dicks, and he’ll no doubt write that about us.”
Nate didn’t care what the journalist wrote about them, but his band mates did, and he couldn’t let them down. Shit. Now he had to suit up and play Nathan Harvey.
“Fine. I’ll call you when I’m ready.” With that, Nate hung up.
He strode into the bedroom, intending to tell Jade he had work to do. He knew he’d seem like an arsehole asking her to leave, but he couldn’t stand for her to see him dressed up as Nathan Harvey. It never brought out the best in him. She’d already witnessed it firsthand.
But she was fast asleep, curled up on her side with the sheet pulled up to her chin. He didn’t have the heart to wake her. Hopefully, the interview would be quick and he could get back into bed with her and wake her in a more pleasurable kind of way.
