One More Time - Ali Parker Page 0,10
a piece of his soul to only you right there. By the time you realized that he’d given you zip, nada, and nothing, it was too late, and he’d have moved on.
Hey, I bet that’s what all those girls he used to be with thought. Bada bing. I giggled quietly at my internal joke, schooled my features, and listened as he repeated the move with a couple more reporters.
Finally, he slid his dark sunglasses to the tip of his nose to reveal his eyes, sparkling with mischief or maybe dirty thoughts of my sister, and nodded to me. “Ms. Diamond. You got a question for me?”
“Sure thing, Mr. Larsen.” I made sure to place just a smidge of sarcastic emphasis on his name and kind of loved that I could see the laughter he was just barely holding in. He was going to be one hell of a fun brother-in-law. That was for sure.
It sucked that I was about to ask a question that he wasn’t going to like, but those were the breaks.
“You’ve recently become engaged.” Jared’s eyes narrowed in suspicion at where I was going with this question for a fraction of a second before his “Emperor” persona was firmly back in place. “What do you say about the talk that your engagement is affecting the band and that it’s making you lose your edge?”
Alicia shot me a well-deserved dirty look, but Jared stayed smoothly embedded in his persona, laughing the question off and shrugging. “I’d say that’s horseshit and whoever’s talking like that knows it. Every great emperor needs a great empress. I’m better than I’ve ever been before.”
That was exactly what I’d thought he would say, so I came prepared to take the question to the rest of the band. “Anyone else wanna weigh in on this one?”
Matt, sitting directly beside Jared, did a mocking bow with his arms and head on the tabletop in front of him. “If the Emperor’s happy, I’m happy.”
His response got a tinkle of laughter from the crowd. Then they quieted down, and I looked to Nick. To my disappointment, he hid his discomfort behind a trademark smirk, leaned toward his microphone slowly and seductively, licked his lips, and waited a beat before saying, “Pass.”
Dominic was next down the line, running his hand through his long hair and squeezing it together at the base of his neck to offer a curt, “No comment.”
For the first time since the conference started, Caleb looked like he was actually paying attention. In fact, he looked amused by the question, putting his elbows squarely on the table and facing the audience head on as he spoke into his microphone.
“I think the tour’s going to be interesting proof of whether or not love makes rockers weak, don’t you?” he asked.
He turned the full weight of his gaze onto me, and it felt like he could see straight through me, those dark eyes looking right into the heart of my soul. It was completely disquieting and yet completely natural at the same time, like we’d been exchanging meaningful looks our whole lives. And I didn’t even know what this look meant or whether it meant anything at all.
Outside of a few shared glances when his brother and my sister were engaging in acts of PDA so sweet they threatened to make our teeth ache, I’d never exchanged any kind of look with him at all. Yet here it was, as natural and comforting as breathing.
When I finally tore my eyes away from Caleb’s, Jared had moved on to taking other questions, and I took to studiously avoiding Alicia’s gaze. Shortly after the press conference wrapped up, however, there was no more avoiding her.
She appeared at my elbow out of nowhere and dragged me into an abandoned hallway behind the stage area, blue eyes flashing in anger and frustration as she turned to face me. “What the fuck was that all about?”
“Whoa.” I took a step back from her and threw my hands up. “That was me doing my job, in case you’ve forgotten. We talked about this just last night.”
“And this is exactly what I was afraid of, you delving into things that we discuss in private in a public forum.” She dragged a hand through her loose blonde waves.
“I didn’t use anything we talked about privately!” I protested. “You know as well as I do that Jared’s not losing his edge. If anything, you’ve sharpened it. As for the band, doesn’t look like they’re affected by