The Rock Star’s Fake Fiancee - Kenzie Reed Page 0,2
behind me. Sweat runs down the sides of his face. I can’t blame him for wanting to get in out of the heat. Several people jostle behind me, holding up their press passes.
I came all this way for nothing. I spent money I can’t spare on a plane ticket, a hotel, and a stupid wig. I roped my hairdresser cousin into teaching me how to paint on this disguise, and now I have to tell her about my humiliating failure.
I turn around, and I’m staring into the smirking face of Ms. Lucky Bitch. She’s wearing a press pass that identifies her as Terra Jones, blogger for Make Noize. Ugh. Figures. They’re the National Enquirer of music blogs, always looking for dirt. They’ve broken up marriages, destroyed careers—and they’re proud of it.
Her lips twist up in a triumphant smirk as she stalks confidently up the steps, shoulder-slamming me on her way past.
I hold my head up high, blinking away tears as I walk towards the steps. Then an achingly familiar voice calls out to the security guard, “Go ahead, let her in!”
My gaze drifts over to confirm what I already know. It’s Sebastian. He and the band are walking up the front steps towards a separate door on the right.
He’s easy to spot. There’s a knot of people clustered around him, but he and his brother Magnus, the band’s drummer, tower above the rest.
My heart hangs suspended in my chest for a long, painful beat. I watch him stride by, the wind ruffling his dark hair, the sun bathing him in a golden glow. The rays kiss his high cheekbones, his full lips, his strong jaw. The scar on his left eyebrow—the one he’d never talk about—doesn’t mar his perfection at all. It just gives a sexy edge to all that pretty.
“She isn’t on the list!” the security guard yells at him.
“It’s okay,” Sebastian calls out over his shoulder. And he turns to his brother and says something that makes Magnus laugh, then he waves a card in front of a security camera and the door opens for them.
I suck in a gasp of hot, humid air. He didn’t recognize me.
He was just accommodating me because he thought that I was a reporter. Kissing up to the press. The man who told me that he loved me, who promised me that we’d be married before my nineteenth birthday, just breezed by me like I was a stranger.
I swallow hard. I’m expecting too much. He hasn’t seen me in ten years, he wasn’t expecting me today, and I’m about as disguised as I could be. It’s ridiculous for me to feel like I just got mule-kicked in the stomach.
But he didn’t answer my emails either. Not a single one. I sent emails from CallieAbernathy1, for God’s sake. Am I that forgettable?
I was counting on our past connection to get him to say yes to the favor I so desperately need. It’s a big ask, and I had to swallow my pride to come here begging, but I thought that once he knew who I was, he’d say yes for old time’s sake. Now I’m faced with the possibility that I may be nothing more than a dim past memory.
As I walk up the steps, Terra Jones spins around to glare at me with murder in her icy eyes. “Don’t even think about it.” She bites out each word. “He. Is. Mine.”
And she barrels past the security guard, hurrying after the man who stomped my heart to mush all those years ago.
I swallow hard and follow her slowly. My hands are so sweaty that they slip off the doorknob and the door starts to close again. I grab the doorknob and squeeze hard, yank the door open, and walk in.
I whisper to myself as I step into a cool, air-conditioned hallway. “Failure is definitely an option.”
Chapter Two
Sebastian
“Sebastian! I love you, Sebastian!”
“Look at me! Sebastian! Over here!”
I can’t even count how many women are pressed up against the metal barricades that snake across the parking lot. Most of them are wearing T-shirts with pictures of our band, our album covers, or my face.
They’ve been coming every day since we started working on our new album, waiting for hours in the blazing sun in the hopes of getting a glimpse of us. Last week I made the record company put up a tarpaulin sun shade and set up tables full of bottled water. I was afraid someone might get heat stroke.