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Wow. Just wow.
Lark and Heidi came over to inspect him, walking around him in circles to check out every angle.
“I think this is going to work,” Heidi said.
“I know it will.” Lark’s eyes glimmered in victory.
Julius’s brother grunted. “Now you’ll have to take off your pants and see if the rest of you matches the guy on the tape.”
“Not a match. Trust me.” Julius’s hard tone sent a flutter low through Avalynn’s belly.
Lark came to a stop in front of Julius. “Her PR team will explain that Avalynn’s secretly been dating her bodyguard. The recording is from the night they got engaged.” Lark’s words brought everyone to heel.
Lana and Damon nodded enthusiastically like two bobble head figures. “This could actually work!” Lana exclaimed.
Julius met Avalynn’s stare. The longer he looked at her, the more his eyes seemed to soften.
She pulled in a deep breath. She couldn’t believe what she was about to say. She must be insane.
“We need a ring.”
ChapterFour
Julius knocked on the door between his and Avalynn’s hotel rooms. When he heard her muffled: “Come in!” he entered with her morning cup of peppermint tea in hand.
He stopped in his tracks.
Over the past six months, he’d seen her in various states of exhaustion, but never like this. She lay on her back, unmoving and unblinking, staring up at the ceiling.
He set the cup on the bedside table. “Avalynn, are you feeling all right?”
“Yes.” Her voice came out as a rasp.
“Honey, you don’t sound okay. Is your throat sore?”
“No. Well, no more sore than after any performance.”
A weight had been sitting on his chest all night. When she sang her heart out to a half-empty stadium, it had been hard. But when she rushed off the stage toward him, her face pinched in pain, it damn near brought him to his knees.
Jennings poked fun at him for crushing on his ward, but this had nothing to do with how amazing, talented, smart and beautiful he thought she was. He didn’t like seeing her hurting.
And when he got his hands on that motherfucker who drugged her and recorded himself having his way with her, he was going to wrap his hands around his throat and slowly squeeze the life out of him.
He forced air through his lungs and sank to the mattress beside her. Something he never, ever did before. He always held himself safely on the side of propriety when it came to his wards, but this was different. Avalynn needed a friend.
“Talk to me, honey.”
She closed her eyes.
“Is it about the concert?”
Her delicate throat worked on a hard swallow. “No.”
She had every reason in the world to be upset, but what was bothering her more? He racked his brain and landed on the only other thing outside of her normal routine.
“Is this about ring shopping?”
Her eyes popped open. The chocolatey-brown depths burned with tears. “We can’t evengoring shopping! This isn’t how I pictured my engagement at all!”
