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A little thrill went through Ashley at the sound of Nash’s name. She’d had no idea he would be here in Vienna, on the very same weekend she was in town. And she definitely hadn’t realized that Brandon was doing business with him.
Even though he was her secret fantasy man, she didn’t know much about Nash’s life beyond the fact that his music blurred the lines between rock, pop, and country—and appealed equally to each audience.
Though her brother was none the wiser about her fantasies, she found herself fighting to keep from blushing at the thought that Nash was at Brandon’s hotel. If she wanted to meet him, she suspected her brother could arrange it. But since coming face-to-face with him would likely ruin the fantasy for her—she’d surely end up being tongue-tied and awkward and wishing a hole in the ground would swallow her up—she wouldn’t be asking Brandon for any favors on that count.
“Sorry we had to leave before we got a chance to eat, Ash, but since we’re headed to the hotel, if you can wait for me to iron things out with Nash and the police, I’ll have the kitchen rustle you up something to eat and show you around the new hotel.”
“Sounds great,” she said as they picked up their pace. “Did you know Nash before he came to Vienna?”
“I’ve met him a few times over the years. We’ve shared a bottle of beer or two. I know he’s got a bit of a reputation, but he always struck me as a good guy, despite his less-than-upstanding past.”
Again, while Ashley wasn’t up on the comings and goings of celebrities, she was aware that Nash had had a few brushes with the law. She wasn’t okay with people breaking the law, but there was a tiny part of her that found his bad-boy past a little sexy.
“What exactly did he do to gain his reputation?”
“From what I can recall reading in the papers years ago, he did the trifecta—theft, fights, and drugs.”
“Wow.” She’d had no idea. “Sounds like he was into a lot of bad things.”
“Maybe he was. Or maybe he wasn’t, and the stories from when he was younger were blown out of proportion.” Brandon shrugged. “Honestly, who knows what the truth is? Smith, Ford, Nicola, and Tatiana have all been lied about in the press many, many times over the years. I wouldn’t be surprised if the same thing were true about Nash.”
Her brother was right. For her famous cousins, and the celebrities some of her cousins had married, there was a big difference between the truth of who they really were and the fiction of who the press made them out to be.
Ashley wondered what was actually true about Nash.
“Like I said,” Brandon added, “the couple of times I’ve met Nash, I liked the guy. Plus, I got really lucky that tonight’s launch fit into his crazy schedule. After tomorrow night, he’ll be touring for six weeks, and then he goes straight into the studio to record a new album. I’d hate for him to regret agreeing to play at my launch.”
They were still two long blocks from Brandon’s hotel when they started to understand why the Viennese police had received so many calls from upset locals. The noise coming from the street outside the hotel was loud.
Really loud.
Ashley could make out a woman screaming, “Nash, I love you!” A beat later, another yelled, “Nash, marry me!” And then a third chimed in with, “Nash, I want to have your baby!”
Ashley knew she shouldn’t laugh. Not when this was no laughing matter for her brother on the eve of his hotel launch. But despite her own secret fantasies about Nash, she couldn’t imagine ever crying out that she wanted to have his baby.
Nope. She’d been there, done that with another guy who hadn’t stuck around. As far as she was concerned, it would be awful to become pregnant with a roving rock star’s baby.
Okay, so her cousin Mia had married a loving, steadfast rock star, Ford Vincent. And her cousin Marcus was married to Nicola, a brilliant musician who had made Ashley’s cousin the happiest man in the world. But Ford and Nicola were the exceptions.
There couldn’t possibly be another famous musician who would give up everything for love.
“This is worse than I anticipated,” Brandon muttered.
But Ashley was fully confident he’d find a way out of this mess. Brandon was a brilliant problem-solver, he always had been. As children, whenever they were on the verge of getting caught being naughty, he’d come up with a way to get away from the scene of the crime without penalty.
Her brother looked at the size of the crowd with a frown. “Nash is going to need to leave out the back exit. If he can even get away with doing that, considering his fans are bound to scent him from a mile away.” Brandon looked grimmer by the second, which was no wonder, given that the decibel level kept rising as more and more fans joined the crush on the street. “Right now, he’s got to want my head on a platter. Especially after I promised him total privacy.”
