Taking Something (18 page)

“You feeling okay?” I asked when I realized she wasn't being as flirty with me as she usually was. In fact, come to think of it, she hadn't tried to stick her hand down my pants or whisper in my ear that she wanted me to fuck her “six ways from Sunday” lately. It was no wonder my libido was in overdrive. We hadn't so much as fondled each other lately.

My phone chimed halfway through dinner. Sadie's eyes immediately went to the table where my phone was sitting. Despite her curiosity, she never asked who was calling. She just sat there across from me and grinned as if she didn't have a care in the world.

I decided to put Sadie out of her misery. “It's Landry.” I slid my finger across the screen and pulled the phone to my ear. “Hello?” As soon as I heard his voice on the other end, I started to wonder what tone he’d had when he told Gia that he didn't want the baby she was carrying. Had he been sad? Angry? Indifferent?

“Hey, buddy,” he greeted.

“What's up?” It was what I'd always wanted. To rub elbows with the rich and famous. To be friends with them. Here I was, talking on the phone with Landry Westwood, sitting across from Sadie Sinclair, eating some of the finest food I'd ever been served and to top it all off, I had the job of my dreams. Yet something inside of me was disagreeing. Landry proceeded to ask if Sadie and I wanted to meet up with him at a club across town, insisting that there was something going on that we wouldn't want to miss. “Yeah, man. That sounds good. We'll see you in just a bit.”

“Where are we going?” Sadie asked as soon as I was off the phone.

“That new club. You know, the one with the stupid name we were talking about the other day?”

“Hypnotic?” she asked.

“No.”

“Ferosh?” she tried again.

“Yeah. That's the one.” I said, rolling my eyes.
“Landry's said something's going on tonight and we have to see it.”

“Think we'll be out late?” Sadie asked as we were walking out of the restaurant. She wrapped her arms around my waist. “I'm not really up for an all-nighter.”

“Nah.” I kissed the top of her head. “Probably just a couple drinks.” Maybe less.

Now that I knew Gia's secret, it shed a new light on Landry. I wasn't sure how long I could be around him without—at the very least—asking him what the fuck his problem was. Or at the most, knocking him out. The whole scenario had me on edge. I was having a hard time believing that Landry was as big of monster as Gia thought him to be.

Like I'd said before, I was pretty good at reading people, and never once had Landry struck me as the kind of guy who would just ditch a girl he cared about. And then have the fucking nerve to say he wanted to sing with her years later. I could feel my blood pressure rising just thinking about it.

“Okay,” she agreed before driving us to the club. She had parked in the back, careful to avoid any and all photographers. Sadie Sinclair didn't want have her picture taken. I should have pulled out my phone and Googled,
Has hell frozen over?

Once inside, Landry spotted us from the VIP section and waved us over. “Hey, guys! Glad you could make it.” He reached out, wrapping his arm around Sadie, and gave her half of a hug. I waited to see her turn and pull him against her, but she shrugged his arm off and smiled.

“Thanks for inviting us.” Her hand tightened in mine as she stepped closer, pressing her body against me.

“Of course.” Landry smiled, watching Sadie slip under my arm. “Everything all right, Sadie?”

“Yep,” she told him. “Just a little tired. We had a late night.”

“Ahh.” Landry slapped me on the arm and waggled his eyebrows. “Should have known.”

“Can't get enough of each other,” I said, laughing it off. Sadie giggled next to me. Her acting skills were better than I’d thought. Landry thought we'd spent the night fucking, which was far from the truth.

“All right. Let's get to the real reason I asked you here.” Landry clapped his hands together in front of him and flashed his million-dollar smile. “I've got a little surprise for you.” Sadie and I watched as he waved over a security guard standing at the entrance. “We're ready.” The guard nodded and pulled at the little microphone attached to his shirt as he walked back to his post. “Take a seat, friends. Get ready for show.”

We all took a seat on the rounded sofa where Landry had been sitting. As he poured Sadie and me each a glass of champagne, the deejay's voice rang out over the speakers. “All right, people! I've got something special for you tonight!” The club-goers all directed their attention to him, stopping their drinking, flirting, and dancing to hear exactly what he was about to say. A familiar beat started to play behind his voice. “For the first time ever...the newest single from Landry Westwooooood.” He pointed over to our section. Landry smiled and raised his champagne glass in the air. The crowd's reaction was deafening. “Featuring the magnificent and oh-so-sexy Sadie Sinclair!” Sadie's eyes lit up as the crowd cheered for her. She might have been out of it the past few days, but hearing her fans yell for her brought the old Sadie back for a minute. “It's a Nick Kline production! Get on your feet! It's
What I Need!”

“Seriously?” I asked, scooting to the edge of my seat. I couldn't stop the wide smile from spreading across my face. My song was about to play.
My song.
The next three minutes were the greatest three minutes of my life. The dancing. The cheering. The pleased look on people's faces. They loved it.

“It sounds amazing,” Sadie said into my ear. She gave Landry a thumbs-up, and he joyfully nodded in agreement.

This song was going to be a huge hit and my name was attached to it. I couldn’t have explained the type of high it had me on for all the money in the world. And for me, that I was big damn deal.

Pulling a job back in the day had made me feel good. It was a rush, sure. But nothing—
nothing
—like this. This was legit work. Something I’d put serious effort into and it had paid off.

Thoughts of my anger at Landry faded as I tried not to float right off the damn ground.

“What do you think?” Landry asked me, leaning over the low table at the center of the sofa.

“Sounds fucking perfect,” I voiced as the song came to an end. The crowd applauded as the deejay once again announced it as Landry and Sadie's new single. And once again… “A Nick Kline Production!”

All I could do was smile. For few a hours at least.

Then I felt guilty. Guilty for smiling and slapping hands with Landry Westwood, even though he had just done a major solid for my career. Guilty for not believing that he was the selfish bastard Gia thought he was.

But he wasn’t hogging the glory about the song. He was bouncing around, talking me up to anyone who would listen. Pretty nice move for a selfish bastard who didn’t give two shits about his own kid. Or the girl he’d knocked up and deserted so he could live it up.

I didn't know what to believe anymore. So instead, I had another drink.

W
HAT THE
fuck?

That was the first thought I had the next morning. It was the moment of clarity that hit me before I opened my eyes and discovered just where I'd ended up. The last thing I remembered was calling a cab and then asking them to stop by a liquor store before they the delivered me to my destination. Which was apparently not exactly what I’d needed. Hence the uncomfortable sleeping position on the couch in Sadie's living room and the painful crease on my cheek from sleeping on the seam of one of her expensive throw pillows. At least I’d made it back to where I was supposed to be.

After the song played in the club, Sadie had told me that she was going home. Being the new Sadie that she was—or at least the calm, cool, and collected one she'd been playing for the last couple days—she’d told me to stay. “Hang out with Landry. I'm just going to go home and go to sleep,” she'd said, smiling sweetly and kissing me on the forehead. “You boys have fun.” She gave us a wave and was gone.

So I stayed. And we drank. And we laughed. And they played the song a couple more times. Then I drank some more—because let's be honest, who wouldn't be celebrating the fact that a song they’d produced was booming through club speakers and people were loving it? I was on cloud nine.

I flipped over onto my back on the couch, put my hands behind my head, and stared up at the white ceiling, letting the rest of the night’s activities run through my mind.

“You want to hit up this party across town?” Landry had asked when we stepped outside for a smoke. He didn't smoke of course, but I did—a habit I'd been trying to kick for a while. Hadn't been going too well. Especially with the high-stress game of not committing career suicide I'd been playing. No, Landry had come outside because he’d said he needed some fresh air. He'd been too drunk to notice the puff of Marlboro smoke clouding it.

“Nah,” I'd declined. “I should probably head back to Sadie's.”

“Yeah, don't want to wear out your yard pass.”

“Very funny,” I deadpanned, exhaling the last drag of my cigarette. “But yeah. Something like that.” I flashed a half smile, not wanting to come off as a total dick. Sadie had been pretty cool the past few days. Maybe she was changing her ways. I didn't need to fuck that up and have to go back to jealous, judgmental Sadie.

“I'm just giving you shit.” He smiled. “If I was really into a girl, I'd be running my ass home too.”

“So what's the deal with that?” I asked. “What happened with Bridgette? She was cute.”

“Oh, you mean after Sadie scared the shit out of her? Poor girl is terrified that all the people at Westwood Records are going to be like her. Took me the entire car ride home to convince her not to quit and that Sadie is”—he paused—“one of a kind.” He chuckled. “Then I hit it.” He shrugged his shoulders and grinned like the Cheshire cat.

“Of course you did.”

Probably does that shit all the time. Sleeps with a girl then never follows up.

I had to resist the urge to slap the grin off his face. I still couldn't believe I was even thinking about it. Landry wasn't doing anything different from what I did. I used to take all kinds of different women home from the clubs, get them naked, and then
adios
. This was a guy I considered a friend and a very valuable colleague. It didn't matter what he'd done in the past. I needed him for the future. My future. “So you ever been in love, Landry?”

What am I doing? We are not chicks at a slumber party.

“I don't know.” He shrugged. “I don't think so. You?”

“Yeah. Once,” I sadly admitted. “Kinda wrecked me.”

“That sucks.”

“It's all good now. In fact, I'm better because of it,” I confessed. “I think I'm a little bit better of a person.”

“Just a little bit?” Landry bit back a laugh.

“Well you know, I'm pretty fucked up. It's going to take more than one great love to whip my ass into shape.”

“I feel ya,” he agreed. “I've never really had time to fall in love with anyone. It's always been about music. Haven't had time for the whole dating thing. There was one girl that probably could have been love…” He let his voice trail off and I wondered immediately if he was talking about Gia.

“But the music?”

“Yep. Always in the way. My dad had me in the studio when I was thirteen. Never gave me much time for a social life. Guess I'm trying to make up for it now,” he joked. “Get in as many girls and as much sex as I can.”

“Yeah,” I said flatly. The idea of what Landry was saying had pretty much been my motto since I had figured out what an erection was good for, but for some reason it was leaving a bad taste in my mouth. I knew the reason, even though I'd been trying really hard not to think about her.

Landry pulled me back to reality. “I'm totally kidding, Nick.”

“Huh?”

“I'm not really a sleazebag,” he told me. “You kind of looked at me like I was the biggest piece of shit on the planet.”

“No judgment, dude,” I apologized. I had no right to judge anyone. “I'm just spent. I should seriously head home. You sleep with as many chicks as you want to.” I reached out for a handshake. “Thanks for tonight. Hearing the song in the club was awesome.”

“It was pretty cool, right?” He grabbed my hand. “Thanks for hanging out tonight.” I gave him a seriously-dude-you're-Landry-Westwood look. “And for the record, I really would like to settle down with someone. I'm pretty jealous that you found that with Sadie so quickly.”

“Don't be,” I objected. “Things are not always as peachy as they may seem.” I walked over the valet stand and told them to get me a cab. “I'm sure you'll find someone you deserve,” I told Landry as I climbed into my cab. I wasn't sure what kind of girl Landry did deserve. He seemed like a genuine guy. He’d never done anything in front of me to make me think otherwise. But if you asked Gia, he was uncaring and cold. Dismissed her without a second thought. I was more confused now than before.

The only thing I wasn't confused about was how badly I wanted to see her. I wanted to tell her about the song playing in the club and how people loved it. I wanted to ask her when she was coming back to work so I could get up half an hour early to spend a little time with her before Sadie rolled out of bed. It was masochistic, I know. She was my forbidden fruit.