made him want to break something.
Wrench's drumstick-thin forearms would work.
He halted in front of the two, but they were so absorbed in each other it didn't appear they realized he and Germaine had arrived.
It pissed him off. "I'm not paying you to make out with the talent."
She froze, and Wrench's scrawny arm slid away. With a frown between her brows, she turned to him.
A delighted smile broke over her face as her attention shifted to his left. "Germaine! How's Kojak?"
"Wonderful. Thank you so much again."
Lucy leaned in for a quick hug, then introduced the older woman to the lead singer. Next, she gestured toward Carlo with a careless hand. "I don't believe you've met this charmer. My boss, Carlo Milano."
He was forced to shake hands. "Wrench," the man said.
No last name. Figured.
"You should probably let Lucy get back to her work," Carlo said, trying to sound pleasant.
Apparently he didn't pull it off too well because Lucy glared at him. "What? Now you don't trust me to do my job?"
He wanted to groan. Damn it, what was wrong with him? He was different. The old Carlo, while not particularly friendly, wasn't bad tempered. The old Carlo could be perfectly civil, even to a rock star named Wrench, no matter what woman he was touching - even his own.
No! Lucy was not his woman.
He tried to make amends. "Sorry, sorry," he said to them both. "This close to the big festival, I get a little edgy."
Wrench nodded. "Lucy, too. I was just persuading her that tonight, after we wrap up the first evening, that she needs to relax. I'm having a big party at my hotel suite. There's a private whirlpool tub and we'll have music, eats, the whole works. You two are welcome to come."
His gaze included Germaine, which meant that he assumed Lucy was already on board with the plan.
Oh, yeah, Carlo thought. He was different now. Really, really different. Because the idea of Lucy in a private whirlpool tub with the tool-of-the-moment was not something he could accept, even if it meant he was leaving his safe, comfortably dark corner.
"Sorry," he told the singer, grinding his back teeth through a fake smile. "But Lucy and I already have plans for after the festival tonight."
At 2:00 a.m., Lucy was still moving around the spacious McMillan & Milano security trailer, afraid that if she stopped, her legs would freeze up altogether. Gathering half-empty water bottles and disposing of stale baskets of pretzels and crackers gave her mental processes time to unwind after the hours of intense focus.
One night at the Street Beat festival required more of her brain than a week in an accountant's office at tax season. But her mind was downshifting now that the night was concluded, leaving her in a pleasant, zoned-out state of tired satisfaction.
She heard the trailer's door open and close but didn't look up, hoping whoever it was wasn't looking for any intelligible conversation from her. After the last few hours, she couldn't give one more opinion or make one more decision. Unless the new person in the trailer wanted to silently gnaw on some leftover crackers, they were out of luck.
Better yet, maybe they'd be content with taking a dented half-full bottle of water and going away.
"Lucy."
At the sound of that voice, her hand tightened, crackling the plastic in her hand. Carlo. Oh, she was much too tired to figure out how to play him tonight.
Did he want the sympathetic friend? The lighthearted lover? The easy-to-please employee who wouldn't ask for any more than he was willing to give from the distance of his dark corner?
"You don't have to do that cleanup. Let it wait until tomorrow."
Without looking at him, she continued her tidying. "My volunteers are responsible for at least some of this mess."
"Your volunteers did a great job tonight."
Her head lifted and she found the energy to smile. "They did, didn't they?"
He nodded. Though he'd spent more time on the site than she had, the only signs of his long hours were the evidence of dark whiskers on his face and his loosened tie. But his shirt was still a pristine white, and his navy blazer looked as if it had just emerged from a dry cleaner's plastic.
Lucy, on the other hand, felt as wilted as the daisies someone had placed in a glass bowl on the trailer's kitchenette counter. She tossed the bottle in her hand into the trash bag at her feet and then ran her hands along her jeans,