The Man You Need (Love on Tour #4) (7 page)

“Oh yeah? Which one?” I asked.

“Don’t know yet. He has to look at his schedule.”

“Models.” Hank rolled his eyes.

“Rock stars.” Mike rolled his eyes back.

The door to Baby and Sean’s room opened, then slammed hard. We all turned to look. Baby had tears in her eyes. She glanced at us, sobbed, and ran down the hall toward Bell and Hank’s room. Bell didn’t hesitate. She moved fast, catching up with Baby and ushering her into their room. She closed the door behind her.

“I got this,” Hank said, heading for Sean’s room.

I wanted to go to my brother. But I knew that Hank was actually the better person right now. When Sean was pissed, Hank was the best person to talk to him. They would shove each other around and scream at each other for a minute, then they’d calm down and have one of their man-to-man talks. I could get my brother to open up, too. But I had to wait until he was ready to talk. Hank could
make
him talk.

“Come on, Stacey. Let’s get some breakfast,” Mike said, putting an arm around my shoulder and pushing the button to the elevator.

“Um, maybe we should see if Jack wants to join us.”

Mike gave me a weird smile. But he didn’t say anything other than, “Sure. Let’s go harass him,” as he gently took my arm and lead me down the hall toward Jack’s room.

8

As soon as the waitress had taken our order and left, I leaned over the table and gave Sean my best ‘spill it’ look. “What were you and Baby fighting about this morning?”

He ran a hand over his hair, which was tied back in a tidy ponytail at the moment. “I was a complete ass.”

“No surprise there. What did you do?”

Sean leaned his arms on the able. I was so used to his arms that I didn’t think much about them. But in addition to being thick with muscle, they were almost completely covered in colorful tattoos. A lot of people were taken aback by them. But I knew every tattoo on them and the story behind it. They were like old friends to me. And I loved the two new tats, one on each wrist, ‘Baby’ in a loopy script on his right, and ‘Henry’ in fun outline letters on his left.

“Do you remember a guy she was talking to at the strip club, probably for a long time, one of the strippers?”

I did. But I hadn’t thought much of it at the time. Leave it to Baby to talk to the guy instead of ogle him. “I guess so, yeah.”

“Well, he called her cell phone.”

“What? She gave him her number?”

“I guess you didn’t know.”

“No. Jesus! I would have stopped her.” Baby could be a little naïve sometimes.

“Well, she did. He called. And I flipped out.”

“Sean, he was probably in some kind of trouble and she was offering him help.” Baby was a major bleeding heart.

“Yeah, that’s what I figured, too. So she gives this guy her cell number? Holy shit, that’s unsafe.”

Of course, he was worried about her safety. “So you weren’t jealous?”

“No. Of course not. I may not have been happy about the strip club, but I trust my wife implicitly.”

“But you didn’t tell her that, did you?” I guessed. “You just started freaking out on her.”

“Yes. And she got pissed. She jumped to the conclusion that I didn’t trust her. It wouldn’t have mattered, though. She would have been just as pissed if she knew I was being overprotective.”

“But you made up?”

I had missed the whole thing. Mike and I had indeed convinced Jack to join us. The three of us had gone to brunch and then we’d gone shopping while Hank and Bell had intervened and helped Sean and Baby figure their shit out.

I’d been worried about them. But I knew they would work it out eventually. And I’d had a blast being the center of attention. Mike and Jack were all about letting me choose what we did. I’d dragged them through a series of adorable little shops and boutiques followed by a decadent chocolatier. When I’d gone to get Sean for dinner, he and Baby were making out in their hotel room. So I knew there had been a happy ending to their fight.

“Yes.” He smiled.

“So what was the real deal with the dude?”

“Apparently, he’s a budding author and he wanted her to narrate his audio book. He’s pretty strapped for cash, so she told him to call her first so she could negotiate the price with the studio for him.”

Baby had started making audio books a couple years ago. She was good at it, too. The studio she worked with, which was the same one Sean and Hank recorded their albums at, was demanding a pretty hefty fee for her services these days.

“Figures. Instead of staring at the mostly-naked dudes, your wife is making a business deal.”

Sean grinned. “Yep.”

I shook my head. “You guys are stupid for each other.”

“Yep… Speaking of which, I noticed you’ve been hanging out with Jack an awful lot.”

“Oh, please. We’re just friends.” Were we friends? My relationship with Jack was nothing like that of my other friends. I was never open and honest with them, the way I was with Jack. I had friends and I had family. There wasn’t any in between. Jack was someone who crossed that line.

Sean took a drink of his beer, straight from the bottle, leaving the fancy chilled glass beside it untouched. It didn’t matter how much money he had, he’d always be a middle-class guy from Michigan.

“Maybe you should be more than friends.”

“What?!” I was stunned.

“He’s a great guy, Stac.”

“Wait, I think I’m having an out-of-body experience here. Are you actually suggesting that I date someone, someone who is isn’t obviously gay?”

Sean shrugged. “Yeah, I guess I am.”

“And why on earth would you do that?”

“Like I said, he’s a good guy.”

“He’s not my type.”

“Exactly.”

“What does that mean? ‘Exactly,’” I imitated him. It was something I used to do a lot when we were kids.

Sean looked me in the eye, his face serious. “Stacey, you like assholes.”

I couldn’t deny it. “Yeah, so?”

“So, for years now I’ve been wondering about something.”

Sean took a deep breath, and I knew that he was about to talk about his feelings. This was a very rare occurrence for him. It had taken him forever to admit to Baby that he loved her, it had taken even longer for me to get it out of him. He was a closed book in many ways. I could relate. So I knew when Sean was about to reveal something.

I leaned forward. “Tell me, Sean.”

“You know how that shrink told Sam that he had a ‘me problem?’”

Years ago, when a terrible thing happened to me, my mother made us all go to shrinks. Sam’s shrink had insisted that he was all twisted up inside because he was living in his brother’s shadow. He called it a ‘Sean problem.’ But the guy was full of shit and we all knew it. Sam had always been his own man.

“Yeah. And?”

“And I know that was a bunch of crap, but I always wondered if maybe the reason you picked such shit guys was because of me.”

I felt the overwhelming urge to get up, round the table, and hug my brother. The poor man had been living with this for God knows how long. He hated my choices in men. And while I resented that, I also felt bad that he thought it was his fault. I reached out and put my hand over his, instead.

“Sean, that’s ridiculous.”

“Is it? I was talking to Baby about this. And a lot of psychology says that women are drawn to men like their fathers, right?”

I was so regretting Baby’s Psychology degree at that moment. Why couldn’t she have majored in Liberal Arts or something?

“I know some women that have married guys with traits in common with their fathers. So what?”

“So, what if I was such a pain in the ass when you were growing up that you decided to find guys who were the
opposite of
me
?”

It might have sounded arrogant coming from anyone else. But it was just the truth. Sean hadn’t always been the loyal husband he was today. He’d had his share of casual hook ups and flings. But he always treated women well, even the ones he didn’t love, which was all of them until Baby. He was also quiet and reserved, whereas my boyfriends were usually loud and obnoxious. Sean had never even tried hard drugs and he rarely drank to excess. My boyfriends tended to be pretty serious addicts of one kind or the other. Finally, Sean was as emotionally stable as they came, until someone tried to fuck with someone he loved, that is. My men were always a hot mess in that department.

“I guess I can’t deny that they are the opposite of you. But, Sean, my taste in men has nothing to do with you, or Dad, for that matter. It’s not your fault.”

He looked at me with naked concern. He really blamed himself for this, didn’t he?

“Okay, I’ll tell you the truth. Here’s my real ‘Sean problem.’ When we were growing up, I always wanted your attention. So I got it by being a pain in your ass. I bugged you until you noticed me. And even though that attention was negative, I still craved it.”

All that had changed when I was a teenager. Sean and I had become very close. We hadn’t really ever fought since. I might get annoyed with him for being overprotective, but Sean absolutely doted on me.

“Then, later,” I said, referring to what we both knew, but didn’t need to be said aloud. “I got your attention in a positive way. And I loved it, Sean. I loved having your attention. I still do,” I admitted. “My ‘Sean problem’ has always been jealousy.”

“Jealousy?”

“Yeah, until you were sixteen you were just a tall, lanky, music-obsessed geek. Then all of a sudden you filled out, joined a garage band, and the girls came out of the woodwork. You stopped paying attention to me. You paid attention to them, instead. I was jealous. The girls were always an annoyance to me. I hated that they were trying to get you to look at them and ignore me. I felt that way about all of them, until Baby. If Baby and you and me are sitting at a table having a conversation, I’m there, and you’re there. It’s like, she doesn’t try to compete with me for your attention. But the other girls, they all do it. Even the damn fans, they want you to give them one hundred percent of your focus. They don’t care that I’m sitting right here, needing your attention, too.”

Sean stared at me, as if he were having a revelation.

“I know Baby feels the same way,” I pointed out.

“But you always have my attention, and so does she.”

“We know, but they are trying to steal it. It might not make sense, but,” I shrugged, “that’s just the way it is.”

“Wow. What am I supposed to do about that?”

“There isn’t anything you can do. It’s not your fault.”

As if our conversation had conjured her up, the waitress, who earlier had been making serious eyes at Sean, approached the table with our plates.

After setting them down, she turned to him. “Can I get you anything else, Mr. Rush?” She asked just him, as if I wasn’t there.

There were three ways women usually treated Sean. Some were terrified of him. Others wanted him, but knew he was taken, so they just looked at him with sad longing. Then there were the girls who wanted him and didn’t care that he was taken. He was a piece of delicious meat to them, and they would do whatever it took to get a bite. The waitress fell into the latter category.

“I could get you more drinks?” She moved her body closer to him, so that her legs were almost touching his arm.

Sean looked at her, then at me, and back to her again. “This is my sister,” he said, gesturing to me. “She’s in theater.”

Without ever looking my way, her eyes got wide. “Wow, that’s amazing.”

“Yeah, she’s been in eleven off-Broadway plays and three Broadway shows. She’s very talented.”

“Yeah?”

“But she has shitty taste in men. Do you have shitty taste in men…”

“Kacey.”

“Kacey, do you like assholes that treat you like shit or something like that?”

“Definitely not.”

The bitch had the nerve to put her hand on Sean’s shoulder. Sean never talked this much to strangers and I wanted to see where this would lead. But I also had the intense urge to grab her grubby little paw and take it off of Baby’s property.

“No?”

“No. I like men like you.”

“Oh, see, that would fall in the bad taste category.”

“Why’s that?” she purred.

“Because I’m married.”

“That’s not always the case. I mean, it’s not always the case that being attracted to a married man means you have bad taste in men.”

“But it is in this case, because I’m happily married, and no woman in the whole world could turn my head away from my gorgeous wife, so it’s bad taste.”

Kacey paled. She dropped her hand and ran off quickly.

I laughed my ass off. My brother turned to me with a wicked grin.

“I had no idea you could be so…”

“What?”

“I don’t know. Hank-like, I guess.”

He chuckled. “I think I might have spent too much time with that dude.”

****

I had been comfortable with Jack pretty much from the beginning. I behaved around him like I did with my family. Which was very unusual for me. But it was also nice. He was my friend, and it was pleasant to have a friend I didn’t have to hide from. However, Sean’s comment at dinner, coupled with whatever the hell had happened between us at the loading dock door the other day, made me uneasy. What if Jack thought there was something more between us, too? The last thing I needed was for him have a thing for me. There was one was one sure way to find out.

“So who do you think is hot?” I swung my feet from the rafters and looked down at the crowd.

Jack looked over at me. I’d brought him up here a few minutes ago. He’d been running around the venue like a madman making sure everything was in place. But it was. And now Sean and Hank were at the meet and greet with Mike, and Jack needed to chill out. So I’d dragged him up to this little perch above the crowd.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean,” I said in an exasperated tone. “I’m trying to figure out what your type is. I already know you like sweet and kind and someone who loves animals. But what’s your physical type? I need to know this if I’m going to try to set you up.”

“You
do not
need to set me up.”

“Come on, play along. What’s your type?”