knocked on the office door, then ushered us inside the huge office, which looked out over the water. Trey’s desk was on one side of the room, half-facing the view. He was reclined behind it, and Brody sat in one of the guest chairs.
I wondered if they’d been talking about me before I walked in.
Of course they had.
They stood up and Trey’s assistant left, shutting the door. “Cary,” Brody said, “good to see you.” He said it casually, like he saw me all the time, and I appreciated that. He looked good, as always, in his leather motorcycle jacket and designer jeans, his short brown hair a little more dusted with gray at the temples than the last time I’d seen him. Fucking years ago.
Brody was the same age as I was, but it just reminded me how much time had passed, and that we were all getting older.
“Hey, Brody.” I shook the hand he offered first, because he was closest, but he really wasn’t who I was here to see. I had no issues with Brody. He didn’t even need to be here, technically, but I was glad he was—so Trey knew that the Players had multiple sets of eyes looking out for them.
Then I shook Trey’s hand, as he came out from behind his desk. “Cary Fucking Clarke. It’s a goddamn honor,” he said, giving me a solid handshake, and then a quick chest-to chest hug and a back slap.
“Hey, Trey.” I took off my sunglasses and looked him solidly in the eye. I wanted him to know I had skin in this game. I wasn’t some hermit holed up in my castle, to be manipulated over passive-aggressive emails, and placated over phone calls when I wasn’t in the room to see the eyes rolling.
Been there before.
Didn’t love it.
But I’d never worked with Trey before, and I figured as two men from the same scene, we could come to an understanding. We’d hung out as kids. Ended up on different paths, career-wise, but we started out in the same place.
Then I watched him shake Taylor’s hand. “The lovely Taylor,” he marveled, and kissed her cheek. He held her hand a little too long, and when he smiled at her his dimples popped. His white teeth flashed.
And I realized I’d almost forgotten that Trey Jones was also a model, not so long ago.
He probably could’ve still been a model, if we wasn’t full up with running his record company, buying up real estate and investing his wealth in building more wealth. He was tall, athletic and charming, one of those guys whose sex appeal just oozed off him—which was also one of those things I’d forgotten since I hadn’t been in a room with him in so damn long. Kinda like Xander, but in a very different way. Xander was all muscles and tattoos and dirty thoughts, and I’d definitely seen way too many girls get drunk on him. But if Xander Rush was a row of tequila shots, Trey Jones was a bottle of wine. Would get a girl just as fucked, but she’d probably be more inclined to savor it.
I knew Xander had changed. Matured. Settled down, so to speak. He was with my sister. But even at the height of our fame with Alive, and the height of his bed-hopping phase, I never saw him as competition for women.
Maybe because the women I wanted usually didn’t want him.
If I had to choose a man to compete with for a woman’s attention, it definitely wouldn’t be Trey Jones. I didn’t enjoy losing, for one. And if Trey and I went head-to-head for a woman, obviously, these days, I’d lose. He was just way too confident. Totally at ease in his business tower, and probably just as at ease hanging out with a girl like Taylor in her old apartment, drinking beers while she blasted Metallica and sucked him off.
I realized they were all looking at me. They’d all sat down and I was still standing there, just staring blankly at Trey. I was barely fucking breathing.
“Cary?” Taylor said softly. She started to get up, and I sat down.
She sat back, but kept watching me.
I took a deep breath. What the fuck was that? I got my ass all the way up here, then fucking froze, nanoseconds after we walked into the room, because I watched her shake Trey Jones’s hand?
Yeah. Because you know he’s normal, and you’re not.