Dropping The Ball - A New Year’s Billionaire Romance - Weston Parker Page 0,3

talking about?” I offered when the limo Jules and I were in slowed outside the trendy bar where the party was being held. “Would that buy me another week of peace?”

“Oh, good. We’ve moved onto bargaining,” he replied, his dry sense of humor apparently intact even though we were about to face a scene we both thought we’d left behind. “That’s one step closer to acceptance. You have approximately two more minutes before we’re up. Think you can move this process along just a little faster?”

“I love how even you equate what I’m going through with the stages of grief. Why are we doing this again?” My stomach felt like I’d eaten rocks for breakfast, lunch, and dinner for two weeks straight. “I feel like you’re about to drop me into a tank filled with hungry sharks.”

“That might not be the worst analogy you’ve ever come up with.” His milk-chocolate eyes shimmered with amusement in the low light of the limo. There was sympathy in them too, though.

Reaching out to take my hand in one of his giant ones, he wrapped his fingers around mine and squeezed. “Just remember, honey, they’re your peers. Navigating Broadway might feel like swimming in shark-infested waters sometimes, but you’ve got this. Hell, they’re not even just your peers. You used to be their reigning queen. Just take a deep breath and remember to smile.”

I smoothed out the satin skirt of the extravagant dress he’d picked out for me to make my big comeback to the social scene in. “That was two years ago, Jules. It was before. All they’re going to want to talk to me about is why I took a break and when I’m coming back.”

“We’ve been over this.” He tightened his grip on my hand before releasing it. “Everyone knows about that fall you took onstage. All you have to say is that you had taken on too much and you needed some time off.”

“Two years is a long time to take off.” I fidgeted with the shiny beading on my corset, distracting myself by marveling once again at how unlined his rich cocoa skin was. Jules had been my manager for the entire time I’d been in New York, and he hadn’t aged a day.

He and his boyfriend Chad, along with Tani, one of my former co-stars and best friends, had absolutely carried me through these last two years. My parents had been wonderful too, but there was only so much they could do all the way from Conroe.

They’d flown up after my legs had given out on me while I’d been performing, and they’d been here when I got diagnosed, but eventually, they had to go back home. After begging me for a solid week to leave the city behind and come home with them, they’d accepted it wasn’t going to happen.

Jules slid a long finger beneath my chin and tilted my head up until I met his warm brown eyes. “Your MS is doing great, Ry. The doctor said your accident was just sensory overload and he’s cleared you for all this, remember? Two years was a long time to have taken off, but you did what you had to do. Your health comes first. Always.”

I filled my lungs with the vaguely vanilla-scented air of the limo just as the wheels stopped turning. “I know. I’m ready to evade the questions and answer them eventually, on my own terms, just like we talked about. I’m just nervous. I haven’t really seen any of these people since it happened, and it’s weird to think about it like that.”

“Then don’t?” he suggested with a slight smile. “Now, suck in that stomach, push out that chest, and let’s go rock your re-entry into the world, okay?”

“This isn’t really my re-entry. It’s just a mixer,” I muttered, but he was already straightening his impeccable jacket and opening the door.

Apparently, these parties were supposed to be casual get-togethers for those of us in the industry. If that was how they’d started, the original organizers would be spinning in their graves to see the spectacle they were now.

Everyone was dressed as if they were attending an awards show. There was an actual red carpet to walk to get inside, complete with reporters lining a velvet rope. Just about everyone who was or might become someone was invited.

Excited chatter went up in the ranks of the press when they saw Jules climbing out of the limo, and it blew into my personal version of pandemonium