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“They here yet?”
By they, he meant the surprise headliners. The ones he’d dispatched a helicopter for just three hours earlier.
Ted, a man of few words, gave a quick nod and continued along his way. His mind at ease, Haggerty headed stage left so he could catch the last bit of Samantha Needles’s performance. The young singer had been riding high since the release of her last album, in part because Axel Mansfield’s touch was all over the songs, and also because of the swirling rumors of romance between the two.
Personally, Haggerty didn’t get it. Samantha was a fine-looking woman and talented as hell, but she wasn’t anywhere near coming into her own. Put ten or fifteen years on her and maybe she’d be someone who inspired a man of Axel’s age to have another look. As for the rumors, he knew Axel well enough to know the man wasn’t serious about the fling. The young woman fed a need and nothing more. He’d seen Axel’s ex, Iris, backstage as well, and he knew the signs. Those two would be under the sheets before the night was done.
He peered out at the massive crowd singing along to one of Needles’s songs, under a blanket of stars on a perfect night. He smiled and thought to himself, just you folks wait. You ain’t seen nothing yet.
Echo Mansfield was a jangle of nerves that had her jumping at every noise and thinking she was going to lose her breakfast or lunch (had she even had lunch?) if she didn’t get her head on straight. She bent over, placed her hands on her knees, and exhaled slowly. Just like her therapist had taught her to do.
Breathe, she thought. If she got that right, everything else would fall into place. As she stayed there, bent over and concentrating so hard, her head ached, she thought back to that night in Boston and what it had felt like to finally open her mouth and sing. To place her fingers along the fretbo
ard of her guitar and speak her truth through music.
It had been liberating. Intoxicating. Spine tingling. But mostly, it had been terrifying. Boyd had gotten her through that night, and every day since then had led to this.
But playing in front of seventy-five thousand people was a hell of a lot different from playing to a room of five hundred. Here, everything was magnified. Hell, her face would be on a screen that felt like it was one hundred feet high. Every emotion she felt, every thought and feeling would be out there for everyone to see.
“Oh God,” she said, yanking her head up. “I can’t…”
But then he was there behind her, his warm hands curling into the small of her back, massaging slowly and methodically in that way that made her melt.
Echo straightened and leaned back into the man who’d won every single corner of her heart and soul.
“Hey,” Boyd whispered against her cheek. “You’ve got this.”
She turned in his embrace and smiled up at him as he gently brushed her hair away from her face. “I can’t believe we’re here.”
“That’s what having the number one song for ten weeks straight and the number one album in the country will do for you.”
She shook her head. “I don’t mean that. I mean us. I mean you and me and the rest of it.”
Boyd brushed his mouth close to hers. “I know what you mean.”
Echo shook her head because she wasn’t getting this right. “No. It’s not just that we found each other, it’s that we…” God, she didn’t know how to articulate what was in her heart.
“Well, technically, I found you in that snowstorm. Actually, I saved your ass.”
She frowned. “Um, I don’t think so. I was perfectly capable of looking after myself.”
“Once I got the cabin door open.”
She laughed and looked up at him. “Okay. I’ll give you that much.”
His eyes changed. They darkened and smoldered, and everything around her faded into the background until there was only Echo and Boyd.
“I love you,” he said, fiercely, touching off a bunch of stuff inside Echo that made her head spin and her body sing. Those zigs and zags? They were still there.
“I know,” she said softly, walking backward and reaching for the door behind her. They were in a trailer that was doubling as a dressing room. She flicked the lever on the door, and it locked.
She was so in love that it filled her up. It fueled every cell in her body and lifted her feet when she walked. It made her smile at the oddest moments and aroused her libido at the most inopportune of times.
Like now.
She reached for the buttons on her blouse.
“What are you doing?” Boyd’s eyes went wide, and he cleared his throat.
