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  “What happens if we cross that threshold, love?” he asked. “The first time I say something which angers you, are you going to walk out because now our relationship is personal and not just professional?”

  “I haven’t walked out yet, Nick,” she answered. “And you have said lots in the past six months which angered me.”

  “Maybe, but that was boss to employee. Not lover to lover. Or,” he hesitated, ‘husband to wife.”

  Kate’s heart started beating a little faster. “Did you just propose marriage?”

  “Kate,” he started. “I love you. Watching you for the past three days has more than made it clear to me. I still have this crazy boss/employee hang up and being married would eliminate the problem.”

  “This is nuts,” Kate countered. “I know the last thing you want to do is get married.”

  “You probably think I’m crazy.”

  Kate stood and went over to Nick. She was wearing one of his silk shirts and it was having an effect on Nick as she stood there. Kate put her hand on his chest. “I don’t think you’re crazy, Nick,” she said softly. “I only know this.”

  Nick watched Kate stand on her tiptoes to kiss him. He growled as he picked her up and set her on the bed. He took a second to close the door and lock it, turning back to her as she was slowly unbuttoning the shirt. He watched as she finished and she pushed it off of her shoulders. Once completely naked, she got off the bed, walking over to him. She pulled his shirt loose from his pants and started to unbutton it. He watched her intently, devouring the sight of her and helped her finish with his clothes, leading her back to the bed. Sliding into bed, Nick pulled her on top of him.

  Theirs was a time of loving and learning. Each touch, each kiss, learning everything about the other. Nick wanted to prolong it out, learn every inch of her, but his patience was limited. He had wanted this from her the first time he saw her but it was a feeling he had kept to himself; until the night she had told him about her ex. After New York, Nick still tried to stay away but he just couldn’t stop himself. Those kinds of feelings had been dead since his divorce and he had been angry with himself in the beginning they were back. What happened in Chicago more than told him he needed Kate, and he wrestled with the fact she worked for him. To simply get her into bed was akin to a manager trying to bed his secretary. It didn’t matter they both were not married; it was the principle of the idea. But after seeing her so sick, he knew he didn’t want to lose her. And he knew he didn’t want to be alone any more. This was the last thought in his mind as he surrendered himself to her.

  * * *

  They went downstairs and made sandwiches to eat. Consuelo had left after Nick returned home from the studio, so they had the kitchen to themselves. Kate assured Nick she was feeling well enough to come down with him and they had fun teasing each other as they ate the simple roast beef sandwiches. It was a feeling of ‘home’ Nick hadn’t felt in a long time and he smiled at Kate, dressed in one of his shirts, since she only had one outfit there – the one she had been wearing in the studio on Monday. After dinner they went back to his bedroom. They made love again – more poignant and with less haste than the first time.

  “Can I ask you something,” Kate asked as she lay draped on Nick’s chest.

  “You can ask me anything, love,” he answered.

  Kate paused a few minutes, getting her words to together. She looked squarely into his eyes. “Nick, you are the most confident, outgoing, outspoken, organized person I have ever met. Everything you do is on a level with perfect, and I know it’s from hard work and lots of years. But when you start talking about relationships, us specifically, I sense an insecurity which doesn’t fit with the rest of your demeanor. I suspect it has something to do with your ex-wife. Tell me what happened?”

  Nick was amazed at how perceptive she was. It was almost like she could read his soul. “I don’t know there is much to tell. She burned me badly and I have been cautious ever since.”

  “When you hired me, I did some research about you,” she said, blushing as he raised an eyebrow at her. “I wanted to know as much as I could since we were going to be spending a great deal of time together. I know it’s been over twenty years since then. Maybe cautious isn’t the right word. Misogynistic may be closer.”

  “That’s harsh, love. I never stopped liking women, I just wasn’t interested in getting burned again,” he defended himself. “I’ve had a couple of other relationships since then, but being gone ten out of twelve months a year was hard on them. I’m here more, since I bought into the studio, but there was always the fame thing – everyone wants to say they were sleeping with me.”

  “So tell me anyway?” she asked quietly. She knew he needed to tell her this, even if he was denying it. “I’m sure it’s a story I will hear at some point.”

  Nick made a silent decision, slipping out from under Kate, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. He turned on the lamp and pulled a cigarette from the pack next to it. Lighting it, he took a large drag and blew the smoke out slowly. “We were childhood friends, Sharon and I. She lived two doors down from me growing up. Her brother, Aaron, and I were best friends, so I was always over at their house since I didn’t like being at mine.”

  “She was younger than you both?”

  Nick smiled. “No, she was Aaron’s twin. They were always together and eventually we three were always together. We officially started dating after I left school and moved out of my parent’s house at sixteen to pursue my music. She was my fan club, always there to say things to make me feel better about myself and encouraged my music. We got married when we were twenty, mere days after I signed my first record contract - it was a real rough time. We probably should have waited to get married, but I was on cloud nine and thought we were on easy street.

  “I was gone a lot of the time, recording, and then going with the studio folks to various television appearances, radio interviews, as well as my first tour in Britain. I was home maybe two weeks in a nine-month span. But at Christmas, I got to be home with her for two straight weeks and I think all we did was stay in bed. After the first of the year, I was off on a new tour, starting to hit some of the other European countries, France, Germany, Italy, and I got a call from her one night, excited to tell me she was pregnant with our child. It was a huge shock because I hadn’t been thinking about having kids, at least not yet - I was totally wrapped up in my music. But we both knew I wouldn’t let her abort it, so, in late August, Arianna Marie was born. And she was the image of her mother – brown hair, brown eyes.”

  Nick paused. He took the last drag off of the cigarette before stubbing it into the ashtray. “One of the rare times I was able to spend at home, we were watching television. Arianna, who was almost two, came running into the room, tripped, and fell into the glass coffee table, shattering it. She got a cut on her arm which wouldn’t stop bleeding – it was really deep, so we rushed her to the hospital to have it stitched up. In the process, because she had lost a lot of blood, the doctors were talking about possibly doing a blood transfusion. They had her blood typed just in case. Out of curiosity, I asked one of the nurses what it was. I’m A-positive and Sharon was O-positive. The nurse looked at the chart and told me O-negative.”

  “Arianna wasn’t your daughter,” Kate whispered. She watched him light another cigarette.

  “I didn’t say anything to Sharon at first; I was trying to digest what I had heard. Because if she wasn’t my daughter, then whose daughter was she? I stayed calm until we got Arianna back home and in bed before I confronted Sharon. After about an hour of lies, denials, and excuses, she finally owned up she had been sleeping with someone while I was gone. She tried to blame it on me for not being around but I was too angry to hear it. I didn’t contain my temper then as well as I do now – I yelled and ranted at her for a good hour. I packed a bag, left in the middle of the night, and filed the divorce papers the next day. I gave her the house and her lawyers managed to get a stake of the money I had made wh
ile we were first married, but it was a one-time settlement and she had no claim over anything I did after. And, because she didn’t want people to know we divorced due to her being unfaithful, Sharon didn’t say anything to the press when they came knocking. She just cited irreconcilable differences, same as what I had been saying. She married Arianna’s father shortly after the divorce was final and had a couple more kids, the last I knew.”

  “I’m sorry, Nick,” she said softly, drawing light circles on his back with her fingers. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

  “It doesn’t hurt as much as it used to,” he said. Putting out the cigarette, he slid back into bed and pulled Kate back to his chest. “With the other failed relationships, knowing they were all after my name and not me, I decided when the right woman came around, I would know. And you came walking into the studio set with Mickey and I knew. I wasn’t going to act on it, but I knew.”

  “You never let on,” Kate answered. “You were as cool as they come.”

  “I was frustrated out of my bloody mind is what I was. I was on day three of the auditions and there was nothing out there. I’d honestly thought I would have found my replacement the first afternoon.”

  “I walked out of the waiting room three times,” she admitted to him. “I have never been scared to play in front of anyone, but my nerves kept telling me to leave.”

  “I probably wouldn’t have auditioned you on the first day,” he said honestly. “I didn’t like to screen women for the simple reason I don’t like the press which seems to go with it. I try very hard to keep a low profile so the tabloids have nothing to report about. “

  “I can see why,” she said, teasing him. “Look where it got you.”

  He smiled, lifting her chin to kiss her. “No complaints here, love. It’s just been strange for me to be feeling this way.”

  “Me too,” she said. “I am probably as relationship-phobic as you. At least you were getting something out of your failures – I didn’t get past the first date on most of them.”

  “As pretty as you are, love? I find that hard to fathom.”

  “Never said they didn’t try to share my bed, Nick. I wanted more than simple sex. I wanted something comfortable and close – not simply a wild time on a Saturday night.”

  “How do you know this isn’t one of those?” he asked, his eyes dancing.

  “You’ve had plenty of opportunities in the past six months if sex was all you wanted,” Kate answered. “You didn’t have to propose. And we don’t have to get married, Nick – I won’t force you into it.”

  “I’ve never felt this way about anyone. Including my ex-wife,” he told her seriously. “The thought of not having you close invokes a terror I’ve never felt before.”

  Nick pulled her into his arms, holding her against him. With little effort, he swapped places with her, looking into her eyes as his mouth came down to meet hers. She returned his kiss and there was no more talking. The language of love was what they spoke for the rest of the evening, before falling asleep in each other’s arms.

  Chapter Seven

  Kate drove into the city with Nick in the morning when he left for the studio. Her car was there from Monday; she wanted to get it and go out to her house. She followed him into the building and they rode up together in the elevator to his office, as he’d put her purse in his desk drawer for safe keeping. Nick’s office was on the fifteenth floor, at the top of the building. It was supposed to be Jerry Santini’s office – Jerry was Nick’s partner with the studio – but Jerry said the view from the floor to ceiling windows gave him vertigo. Nick’s office and a couple other meeting rooms were the only spaces on the floor. Terry, Nick’s secretary, said she liked the view and had no problem working there. Nick introduced Kate then ushered her into his office, closing the door.

  Nick pulled Kate’s purse out of his desk drawer and handed it over to her. “Sorry, I didn’t think to bring it to you, love. I was a little shortsighted on Monday.”

  “It’s all good,” she told him. “Wasn’t like I needed it.”

  “What are you going to do today?” he asked.

  “Run a few loads of laundry, maybe go by my mom’s house and check in, since I’ve been gone for six months.”

  Nick paused for a moment. “Come back to the house later?” he asked, hesitantly. “We can have the weekend together.”

  Kate nodded. “It would be nice.”

  Nick wrote a number on a piece of note paper and handed it to Kate. “Here’s the code for the front gate.”

  Kate folded it up and put it in her pocket. “Call me when you leave?”

  Nick came around his desk to stand in front of Kate. He pulled her close to him and kissed her. “I’ll call,” he promised. “It’s going to be a long day.”

  * * *

  Kate left the studio and drove home. Once home, she retrieved both of her suitcases from her bedroom and took them into the laundry room. It took her fifteen minutes to sort everything into the proper loads and she started the first one in the washer. There was a nice breeze blowing outside and Kate opened the windows in her living room, letting the sea air permeate the stuffy room. She heard her cell phone buzz and saw she had a text message from Nick.

  It’s official – it’s going to be a really long day.

  That bad? Kate asked.

  The soundboard in studio three caught fire –that was entertaining. And if the fire wasn’t enough, the drummer and bass player for the group Mark Three got into a fist fight over a woman this morning. Bass player got his nose broken.

  Kate started to laugh; she could picture the look on Nick’s face right now. Sounds like you are having a fun, eventful day.

  Any more fun and I’ll be in a nut house.

  Once the laundry was finished, Kate called her mom to confirm she would be home, before driving out to Westwood where they lived. Kate pulled her car into the driveway behind her step-dad’s, glad he was home too. Allen had been more of a father to her than her own dad and she enjoyed spending time with him. She got a big hug from him when she came in the door and her mom whisked her away into the kitchen. Kate sat down at the breakfast bar, watching her mom pour two cups of coffee, and setting one in front of her.

  “We missed you, baby,” Nancy, Kate’s mom, started. “Six months was a long time to be gone.”

  Kate nodded. “It was a long time. But it was good – hard work, though.”

  “So you’re going to continue working for Nick Marshall?”

  “For now,” Kate confirmed. “It was a challenging experience. Nick’s a perfectionist and it shows when he’s on tour.”

  “You didn’t have any problems did you?” Nancy asked.

  “Nothing major. It took me about a month to get used to the pace. Sometimes I would hit the bed so tired at night.”

  “But you like the job, right?”

  “I do,” Kate answered, and paused for a moment to gather her thoughts. “Nick and I are starting to see each other.”

  “You mean like boy-girl kind of seeing?”

  Kate laughed at her mom’s description. “Yes, Mom, boy-girl kind of seeing. We didn’t start off this way – we’ve just found we’re attracted to each other.”

  “Isn’t he a lot older than you?” Nancy asked.

  “Not so much. Thirteen years – Nick’s forty-six.”

  “He’s your boss.”

  “I know,” Kate confirmed. “Nick’s having the same issue. He sees it not much different than a manager dating his secretary – we are working through the pieces slowly.”

  Allen stepped up behind Kate. “I asked Michael Grayson about him when you first took the job. See what kind of man he was, reputation. He has a powerful name and tons of money.”

  “They work at competing studios,” Kate said. “Did he have anything nice to say about Nick?”

  “A lot actually,” Allen replied, surprising her. “He said it’s been Nick turning Empire Records around. They were starting to see a lot of losses and it w
as looking bad for a while. And his own popularity hasn’t diminished. Michael said you don’t see that often in singers who have been in the business a long time.”

  “Most places were completely sold out. Nick even added a bunch of extra shows to try to meet the demand. And, the crazy thing is, most of the fans there are girls between seventeen and twenty-five, screaming his name like he’s some young teen idol,” Kate told them.

  “Michael also said he didn’t know how Nick was able to juggle both. The studio business is demanding on its own.”

  “He spent a good portion of his time on the phone with them when we were touring, so I think he’s pretty engaged. He was funny on the phone this morning – seems it’s been one of the ‘everything goes wrong’ kind of days.”

  As if on cue, Kate’s cell phone started to ring. She saw it was from Nick and excused herself, walking away into the living room to answer it.

  “Hello.”

  “It’s me, love. I am heading home now – almost to my car.”

  “I’m at my mom’s house. She lives in Westwood, so I’ll be a few extra minutes,” Kate told him.

  “No problem. I’ll leave the front door unlocked – got a key made for you this morning.”

  “Want me to bring anything? Pizza, Chinese?”

  “I never turn away good Chinese takeout,” Nick said. “Just don’t get anything too spicy.”

  “I’ll be there soon.”

  Kate walked back into the kitchen. “That was Nick. Need to go get some food and then meet him.”

  “Come for dinner on Sunday?” Nancy asked. “You can bring Nick if you want.”

  “Let me ask him and I’ll let you know,” Kate said, moving to kiss her mom on the cheek then giving her step-dad a hug. “If not, I’ll be here for another two weeks. I’ll make sure to come by again before I leave.”

  Kate left and stopped by her favorite Chinese food place in Long Beach. She had been going there for the past six years, ever since she started working at Satellite Records. Some of the studio guys recommended it and now it was the only place she liked to get takeout from. She opted for fried rice, beef and broccoli, and chicken chow mein. She also ordered some wontons and a couple of egg rolls. The biggest reason she liked this place was they packaged their food in the little boxes, rather than the styrofoam containers many restaurants like to use. Despite her age, Kate always found it more fun to eat it from the little boxes.