What He Bargains (What He Wants, Book Nineteen) (16 page)

They’d witnessed a magical moment and everyone knew it.

The applause lasted for a long time and Courtney’s cheeks flushed as it went on and on. She gave a cute little curtsy to Jake and then handed her guitar back to Aki.

Aki knelt down and put her guitar back in its case.

Jake clapped for her too. “I think you outdid yourself, Courtney,” he told her.

“You bring it out in me, Jake. What can I say?” She raised an eyebrow knowingly. Then she spun and walked off, her hips swaying as she went, her dress showing all of her curves perfectly.

Jake turned to Raven, his smile disappearing. “What do you think you’re doing?” he said, low enough for only her to hear him.

“I’m doing my job,” she said innocently.

“That’s not your job.” His eyes burned at her.

“I’m in charge of your social media, I couldn’t possibly miss a moment like that and be considered competent.”

He was about to say something else, but Bruce came over with a huge smile on his face. “Courtney Taylor’s a true star, isn’t she?”

“I told you she was good.”

Bruce looked at Raven. “I noticed you got some of it on video.”

“I got all of it,” Raven said, lifting her chin, despite the cold look she felt coming from Jake’s direction.

“Nicely done,” Bruce said. “We need to put that up online immediately. That’s going to go viral.”

“Send that video to me,” Jake said to Raven through a clenched jaw. “I’ll take care of it.”

“No,” Raven told him.

“No?” His lips formed an angry smirk.

“I’m your social media—“

“Knock it off, Raven,” he growled. “I have a show to put on. I’ve got a million things to do and I’m not going to waste my time arguing with you about your fake job.”

“It’s not going to be fake,” she said, glaring right back at him. “Because I’m really going to do it.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Jake said, shaking his head. “You’re not really going to be in charge of my social media.”

Bruce cleared his throat. “Jake, she has a point.”

Raven couldn’t believe someone was actually agreeing with her. “Thank you,” she whispered.

Jake ran a hand through his hair. “She has a point, Bruce? Please enlighten me.”

“We really should have someone besides you doing this stuff. It’s way past time that we have someone take over those duties.”

“You know what? Fine,” Jake said, waving his hand in the air. “Get her the damn passwords. Just leave me out of it.” And then he stalked off and was gone, pushing his way through the people and disappearing down the hall.

When he’d left, Raven looked at Bruce, who smiled softly at her.

“He’s just stressed,” Bruce said. “Don’t let it get to you.”

“It’s okay,” she said. “Even though I think he might hate me now.”

“I think he likes you a lot more than either of you realize,” Bruce said. “But anyway, don’t worry about that right now. Let me get you the passwords to his accounts and you can start posting the video. Just remember not to say too much, Raven. He’s got millions of fans and one wrong word could spark a firestorm of controversy.”

“I don’t have to do it,” she said, suddenly nervous with the pressure of it all. “I’ll send the video to you, Bruce. I was just being silly.”

“No,” Bruce told her, his expression serious. “You do it, Raven. I have a good feeling about you.”

And then she finally smiled, because even though things with Jake were a mess and there was a beautiful pop star that he might be falling in love with, someone actually had taken the chance of believing in Raven. And it felt good.

D
uring sound check
, Raven took pictures and then posted some of the best ones to Jake’s Instagram account, after first checking in with Bruce. Bruce agreed with her on all the ones she’d chosen, and even told her that she was a “natural” at the job.

If Jake was still fuming about her turning the tables on him, he didn’t show it. He was far too busy getting every detail right for the performance. There were some lighting problems and both Jake and Kurt were clearly upset about it, having to huddle with the lighting team after nearly every song.

Jake was like the performer and the director all rolled into one, and Raven had to admit that it was sexy the way Jake controlled everything with ease.

Even though he was tense and maybe things weren’t organized perfectly, Jake always seemed like he could do the job in his sleep. Even when others messed up, Jake was flawless, never missing a cue, never screwing up a dance move, never botching a single note that he sang.

Raven stood by the stage and took pictures and he acted like he didn’t know she existed.

She sat down in one of the thousands of empty seats and logged onto YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to post her different photos and videos.

She’d already put up the video of Courtney serenading Jake, and in the short time since it had been posted, there were already hundreds of thousands of hits. People were going crazy, just as Bruce had thought they would.

Everyone loved the song and already people were saying that the two of them must be falling in love.

Before a couple of hours had passed, news stories were already circulating on the various celebrity tabloid sites about how Courtney had fallen for Jake, who was still grieving over his dead fiancé, but now she had cracked his shell and he was perhaps ready to love again.

It hurt Raven to think that maybe what the tabloids were reporting might actually come to be true. Maybe Jake really was falling for Courtney, and who could blame him? The girl was talented, sexy and extremely charismatic.

At the same time, Raven felt a strange kind of pride at having had the wherewithal to capture video of the improvisational performance, and that she’d now created a viral video that would likely go on to get millions and millions of views.

Nothing Raven had ever done in life could have prepared her for that feeling.

Jake Novak had tried to give her some phony job title so that he didn’t have to be bothered by people questioning Raven’s role in his entourage. But she’d found a way to make it the truth, and she was proud of that too. She really was doing his social media, and she was doing it well.

During a lull in the action, she went and grabbed a soda from the catering area in back, and then when she was returning, heard Kurt on the phone. He was pacing the hallway and speaking angrily in a low voice, but he may as well have been shouting for how clearly infuriated he was.

“You don’t understand,” Kurt said. “I’m telling you that we need more money. We’ve got Courtney Taylor on tour with us now and we’re opening ten more dates on the schedule. We’re not doing it on the same damn budget.” His back was to Raven as she rounded the corner, and his head was bowed as he spoke into the phone.

“I already explained that,” Kurt continued. “Listen, asshole. We are in debt on this goddamn tour right now. Do you know how much we have to outlay in advance? So I’m asking for more support from…no, no, no. You just get us what we asked for, unless you want to see your biggest star go into fucking bankruptcy.”

Kurt hung up the phone, then turned and saw Raven standing there.

He’d never paid her so much as a passing glance until then, didn’t even acknowledge her existence before that moment. But suddenly, Kurt seemed to realize she was a real person. He cleared his throat. “Fucking record labels,” he said, shaking his head with dismay. Sweat shone in his crew cut.

Raven smiled, holding her soda awkwardly as they stood alone in the hallway, facing one another. Kurt was watching her closely, and she got a sudden piercing anxiety through her chest as he looked at her. “Must be frustrating,” she said softly.

“Yeah.” Kurt grinned. “Maybe don’t mention what you heard to Jake, okay? He’s already tapped out as it is.”

“I…I didn’t really understand anything you were saying,” she lied.

“It was just dumb business stuff,” Kurt told her. “Hey, I heard you did a kick ass job with the video. I keep hearing things about it. Impressive work.”

“Thanks!” she said. But still, even with his compliments, the piercing anxiety didn’t stop pulsating in her chest until she walked away from him and out of the hallway, back to the main stage area.

As she got further from the troubled tour manager, she wondered just how such a successful tour could be in so much financial difficulty. Maybe the guy was just exaggerating for effect.

But somehow she didn’t think it was that simple.

T
he concert was
over before Raven knew it. The whole thing just flew by, and she got to see everything from a bird’s eye view, right off stage.

The fans were cheering so loud that her ears still rang from it all—thousands and thousands of people absolutely freaking out the moment that Jake hit the stage.

Everything went perfectly, nobody would ever have known that there were all kinds of little issues with lights and sound in the rehearsal just a few hours ago.

And then Jake was coming off stage, bathed in sweat after his final encore.

People were surrounding him, patting him on the back, asking him what he needed, while Raven stood nearby and took pictures.

He broke free from his handlers and walked straight to Raven, surprising her.

He looked at Raven, his expression tight with barely concealed emotion. “In five minutes, you’re going to meet me in my dressing room. I need to speak to you privately.”

Her heart fluttered in her chest. “Did I do something—“

“You know damn well what you did,” he said. And then walked away from her and once more was surrounded.

She checked the time on her cell phone and then went and had a drink near the catering area, where everyone was in full-fledged party mode. Courtney Taylor was even there, drinking champagne and looking flushed with success.

Courtney saw Raven and her eyes narrowed. “Hey, you’re that...you do that…What did you call yourself?”

“Social media coordinator,” Raven said.

“Yeah, that,” Courtney said, snapping her fingers, her words a tiny bit slurred. “I can tell you like him, you know,” she continued, as if it wasn’t an odd thing to suggest.

“You can tell I like who?” Raven asked innocently.

“You like Jake,” Courtney said, grinning. “I can’t blame you. Everyone likes Jake. But he’s got a really bad rep in the industry. He’s a total womanizer. Like, he fucks anything that walks. Hires girls just to fuck them and then fires them the next day.”

The cutesy blond singer had lost all her charm suddenly, and Raven was taken aback. “I’m not sleeping with him,” Raven said, her voice guilty and defensive.

“Not yet anyway.”

“Obviously you were just pretending to like Jake,” Raven said.

“I do like him,” Courtney said, totally seriously. “But it’s different for me. I’m on the same level as Jake, so he wouldn’t treat me like he’d treat you.” She sipped her champagne. “Just something to keep in mind.”

“Yeah, thanks for the tip,” Raven said, then walked away from Courtney Taylor as fast as her legs would carry her.

Raven thought about what Courtney had said about Jake. Was any of it true? Was he perhaps going to fire her already?

Maybe he’d decided that enough was enough. Maybe now that he was interested in Courtney, he would eject Raven from the tour so she couldn’t embarrass him in front of the girl he was chasing.

Or perhaps he would fire her for going against his wishes and filming Courtney Taylor’s impromptu serenade of him backstage.

There were plenty of reasons for him to get rid of her, and she knew that it was probably for the best. She didn’t really belong on tour with Jake Novak. She didn’t really belong anywhere near him.

Courtney Taylor had made that much very clear.

Raven knocked on Jake’s dressing room door, still rattled from what the young pop star had said to her.

“Come in,” Jake called out.

She opened the door slowly, seeing Jake stripping out of his sweaty shirt and throwing it into a hamper in the corner of the room. His back muscles rippled as he turned and gestured for her to come inside.

“Close the door behind you,” he muttered.

Raven did as he said, closing the door and then standing just inside the room, hesitant to come any further in. Once he fired her, it would be that much easier to just open it and walk out again.

Jake straightened, turning towards her now. His chest muscles flexed and his abs tightened as he walked in her direction. “What do you think you’re doing, defying me in public?” he asked, his voice a challenge.

“I—I was just…” she stammered. Now that she was alone with him, her confidence had deserted her.

“What were you just?” he said, coming even closer.

Raven heard her phone starting to buzz in her purse, but she ignored it. She swallowed hard as she met Jake’s intense gaze. “I wanted to be useful. I don’t want to be some kind of prop.”

“You’re supposed to be exactly what I pay you to be.”

“You would say that,” she mumbled, thinking of what Courtney had told her. In fact, Raven almost repeated it to Jake right then and there, but something stopped her.

“And if right now I tell you to bend over and put your hands on the wall, you’ll do it,” Jake said darkly. “You’ll obey me.”

“What if I say no?” she said impulsively.

“If you say no, you’re breaking our agreement.” Jake held two fingers up to her face. “Twice a week, I get you. Whenever I say the word. And then you do the
real
job you were brought here to do.”

Raven took a deep breath. Jake’s chest was almost pressing against hers, and his face was very close to her own. She backed up, her buttocks hitting the door as she did so. Jake stepped even closer now, although he still didn’t touch her.

“I’m well aware of our agreement,” she told him. “I don’t understand why you’re reminding me of it.”

“Because you’re not acting like you’re aware of it,” he said, and he put an arm out and pressed his hand against the door, right next to her head, and then he leaned towards her.