now I can’t help but puzzle over what you see in Logan.”
Flustered by his compliment, Toni pushed her glasses up her nose.
“He’s fun and caring and considerate,” she said.
“Logan Schmidt is caring and considerate?” Max asked, his eyebrows arched high. “Are we talking about the same guy?”
“He is to me. He brought me dinner last night. I didn’t even have to ask.”
“I guess you bring that out in him.” He smiled softly. “John Lennon.”
She blinked at him. “Huh?”
“I’d spend a day with John Lennon.”
“Oh!” She’d forgotten she’d asked him that question. “Why?”
He lifted an eyebrow at her. “Because he’s fucking John Lennon. I met the rest of the Beatles at various charity events and award shows. I’d dreamed of meeting the band since childhood and, well, John was murdered before I got the privilege.”
“You couldn’t have been very old when he died.”
“I was in elementary school. I didn’t take the news well. I refused to get out of bed for days. My mom was so worried, she took me to a psychiatrist.” He tilted his head at Toni. “I’m not sure why I’m telling you this. I’ve never told anyone that before.”
“Do you mind if I include it in the book?” This was exactly the kind of thing she wanted to include. Scraps of their lives that had never been shared with the world before.
“You could leave the part about the shrink out.” He worried his wrist brace again, avoiding her gaze.
“I’ll leave it out,” she promised.
She read the next question on her list. “What’s your favorite part of being a rock star?”
“Being interviewed by pretty journalists.”
Of all the amazing things that touched his life on a daily basis, that was his favorite? After gawking at him for a moment, Toni realized that he was teasing her. Flirting with her? She dismissed that thought as soon as it occurred. There was no way Maximillian Richardson was flirting with her. The man dated supermodels and A-list actresses.
“I was under the impression that you didn’t like to be interviewed.”
“Depends on who’s doing the interviewing.” The smoldering look he offered would have sent her panties flying across the room under normal circumstances, but she’d given control of her panties to Logan, and she wasn’t about to lose them so easily this time.
She narrowed her eyes at Max. He wasn’t flirting, she realized. He was trying to redirect her questions by being distracting. And the man wrote the book on distraction. She’d have to word her questions cleverly if she wanted to milk real answers out of him.
Her next question was supposed to be: Where do you see yourself in five years? She could only imagine how he’d twist his response to that one. But she didn’t want to lead his responses by having her questions be too precise. She wanted her questions to be open-ended. And she wanted his answers to be insightful. She just had to figure out how to keep him talking freely.
So instead of asking Susan’s questions, Toni set the legal pad aside.
“You come across as a man who likes to have things all planned out,” she said.
Max stared at her discarded pad for a long moment. “I do?” he asked, still looking at the bright yellow paper.
“Pretty much Logan’s exact opposite,” she said, grinning indulgently. “If you prefer, I’ll give you the list of questions and you can plan your answers. We can reschedule the rest of this interview for a later time.”
Max released a sigh. “You’d do that?”
“Why not? I don’t want to make you uncomfortable.”
“I’d appreciate it,” he said, his shoulders sagging for the first time since he’d sat down beside her. She’d thought he just had really good posture.
Max leaned forward to rise, but Toni placed a hand on his knee. “Could you help me figure out what to ask your bandmates? I’m afraid I botched my first interview pretty badly.”
“Nah, you did fine. It isn’t you, Toni. It’s me.”
She chuckled and pushed her glasses up her nose. “That’s what they all say.”
He sat back against the sofa cushions, making every posture-stickler mama on Earth proud once again.
“I’m interviewing Steve next,” she said, consulting her notepad. “Is there a reason no one calls him Stevie? He seems like a Stevie to me.”
“You should ask him,” Max said.
“Do you think he’ll answer questions about his ex-wife?”
“Which one?”
Toni shifted her gaze to his. “He has more than one?” She hadn’t run across that in any of her research. Maybe Max was messing with her. But if he wasn’t,