he was partially to blame for keeping his true feelings bottled up inside himself for so many years.
“I wouldn’t be so sure,” she said. “Now, about Daniel . . .”
“He can have the money.”
“I don’t want you to just give him the money, Logan. You make him pay you back.”
Logan traced the rim of his coffee cup with one finger. “Oh? What made you change your mind?”
She rubbed a hand over one eye. “I’m scared he’s going to do something crazy,” she whispered, “and I didn’t want to set him off by not siding with him.”
Logan scratched his forehead. “But it’s okay if I set him off?”
“He expects you to be tough on him, Logan. Just don’t be too tough, okay? He idolizes you.”
Sure. That’s why he never called.
“So what am I supposed to do, Mom? Stretch out his payments for decades and don’t charge him any interest?” Logan asked.
“If you’re okay with that.” She smiled at him hopefully.
Logan nodded. “I’m okay with that.” Hell, his current feelings of happy contentment were well worth a hundred grand to him. But if Logan started giving Daniel free rides now, he was sure to come back for more.
“So what’s this about a tabloid?” Mom asked, reaching across the table to draw her untouched cup of coffee toward herself.
Logan shrugged. “Don’t worry about it. Someone got a hold of personal information about the guys in the band and smeared our names all over the tabloids. All the hoopla will pass in a few weeks.” And by then hopefully Toni would be back on tour with them. He already missed her terribly. “I know it’s rude, but do you mind if I make a quick phone call? I’m starting to worry about my girlfriend. She should have called by now.”
Logan wasn’t sure if it was the idea that he had a girlfriend or that he was capable of worrying about someone besides himself that had his mother staring at him in wide-eyed shock. She waved a hand to indicate she didn’t mind his rudeness, and he pulled out his phone.
Logan was smiling, anticipating hearing her voice, when after a few rings his call went to her voicemail. Strange. Was she rejecting his calls? Why would she do that?
“You have a girlfriend?” Mom asked.
“Well, I did. But I think she just rejected my call.”
“Is her ringtone ‘Milkshake’ by any chance?”
Logan went still, and then turned his head to offer his fidgeting mother an inquisitive stare. “Yeah. How do you know that?”
“I kind of answered your phone while you were in the shower. And I might have said something she probably took the wrong way.”
He dialed Toni again, and this time the phone barely rang once before he was sent to voicemail again.
Logan growled in frustration and slammed his phone on the table. “What did you say to her, Mom?”
“I didn’t realize you were serious about her. What kind of man sets ‘Milkshake’ as his girlfriend’s ringtone?”
“The kind of man you gave birth to.” And Toni wouldn’t let him use the sound of her climaxing with his cock in her mouth, so this had been their compromise. He dialed Toni for the third time. This time he didn’t even hear a ring; his call went directly to voicemail. Which meant that either her battery was dead or she’d shut off her phone to avoid talking to him. He had a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach that it was the latter. He knew he should have gone after her the night before. “Toni,” he said to her voicemail. He hated leaving messages, so he kept it as brief as possible. “Please call me as soon as you can. It’s important.”
He hung up and scrubbed his eyes with both hands before trying to smear the gloom from his expression by drawing his hands down his face. “Please tell me what you said to her, Mom. She’s very sensitive.”
“She asked me who I was,” his mother said. “And all I said was I was your entertainment. I figured she was one of your fangirls and I was doing you a favor by suggesting you were with someone.”
“You told her you were my entertainment?” Well, Toni would definitely take that the wrong way. Hell, was there even a right way to take such a claim?
“She went completely silent for a minute or two. I thought she hung up.”
“She’s obviously upset,” he said. “She won’t even answer my calls.”