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Killian stiffened beside me as we walked up to the doorway. “Don’t answer them. You don’t owe them a damn thing.”
A tall woman with shaggy red hair and a fiery attitude stepped right up to the photographers. “You’re on private property. I expect you to either pay the cover charge and come inside or leave. If you don’t, I’m sure our sheriff will be happy to escort you to the local jail for a short stay.”
“Come on, Frankie,” one of the guys said.
She turned on him like he was a fly in her soup. “Oh, no. You don’t get to call me by my first name. You can call me Ms. Silver. Or better yet? You can leave, and I never have to see your face again. I’ve already told you paps. I don’t want you here. Not when the show is filming and not when the season is over. Don’t make me break out the big guns.”
I leaned into Killian. “A show?” I mouthed.
He leaned closer. “Saddle Up, the Ryker’s reality show. As soon as it became a hit, paparazzi started crawling out of the woodwork. People trying to catch glimpses of contestants and sometimes the Rykers.”
I stepped up to Frankie. “Thank you for your help. But I got this.”
She nodded. “Suit yourself.”
Facing off with the two paparazzi, I said, “Listen, fellas. I’ll give you this exclusive if you leave us be.”
“You got it.” Eagerness flashed in their eyes.
“Killian and I are writing a song together. That’s it. Nothing else is going on between us. But he did bring me out here in order to help me find…” I hesitated dramatically. “My muse. And I don’t know if you saw any of the ladies that walked through that door, but there are quite a few potential muses out tonight. It being Ladies Night and all.”
“That’s not an exclusive. We knew you were writing together.”
“Did you know it’s going to be an entire album? Not just one song.”
Again, their eyes brightened. “When’s it going to drop?”
Killian cleared his throat, a warning.
“That I can’t tell you, but feel free to print that Lorde and Wilde are the hottest new duo in music right now.”
Killian stepped up next to me, tossing his arm around my shoulders as they snapped photos of us standing together. Appeased, they left, and as Killian and I walked inside, he leaned down, whispering in my ear, “That’s gonna piss off the label. They haven’t greenlit us yet.”
“No. But now they’ll have to, or someone else will snatch us up. Because Lorde and Wilde are the hottest new duo.”
“How do you know?”
“Oi, you. Have a little faith. I’ve been at this a long time, Killian. I know a good thing when I hear it. And we are a good thing.”
We joined his brothers at a table just as Frankie brought us both a pint. I couldn’t keep myself from watching the man take a long swallow, my body reacting to the sight of his Adam’s apple bobbing. God, help me, but I wondered, not for the first time, if that’s what it would look like as he swallowed me down as well.
Fuck. I had to get myself under control and stop thinking about him so I could think about our future instead. Because there was no future for Lorde and Wilde if I ruined everything between us before it even got started.
Chapter Nine
KILLIAN
I thought it would be easier to be around Jameson with other people acting as my buffer. Somebody to keep us each occupied or at least distract me from his sexy smolder that he exuded all the damn time. But I was wrong. In fact, it might have been harder to be around him with all of Sunrise, Montana, crammed into the small bar. Because everyone and their mother paid attention to him.
Try as I might, I fell right into my old broody ways. I sat there, frowning into my pint glass, pretending not to notice him. Except, I noticed every-damn-thing. The way he gave everyone a piece of him when they asked. The way he smiled for selfies and signed shirts and cocktail napkins. And I especially noticed the way women raked their gazes over his body, hunger in their eyes. That was something I was far too familiar with. I understood exactly what they wanted. I understood how they coveted him because I did the same thing.
It didn’t help that he’d come down the stairs dressed like he’d stepped right off the pages of a photo spread for Rolling Stone. How could a simple T-shirt make him look so hot, and why was I letting myself think about it? He clearly wasn’t interested. He shot me down, couldn’t have gotten away from me faster, and I still sat in the corner watching him like a lovesick puppy, ready to let my fantasies take me away.
He, on the other hand, flirted with every woman who came up to him.
God, it drove me wild in the worst way. I wanted him to be flirting with me, not them.
“Who pissed in your cheerios?” Luke asked, elbowing me as he passed me a fresh pint.
