Javier bowed. “I see you are a man of few words, but I will take that as a high compliment coming from you.”
“Thank you,” Anita said, smiling as she air kissed Javier. “The tux looks great on you, too.” She favored him with a lingering glance and then looked at Javier. “Thank you for always making everyone look so nice.”
“I make it do what it do, that’s all, love,” Javier said. “You kids have fun.”
Zach nodded and then had to remember how to cross the room and open the door. But he managed to do so without letting on just how much her transformation had fried his brain.
“Javier is going to let himself out,” she said as he closed the door behind them. “And the tux really does look great on you.”
“Thank you—”
“Don’t say, ma’am,” she said quickly, finally making him smile.
“Anita,” he said, wondering if she knew just how much her compliment coated him with a new warmth he couldn’t explain.
“Good, finally,” she said, stepping into the elevator in front of him. “You don’t have to wait in the greenroom, you know, or hang in the wings, unless you want to . . . uhmm . . . you can sit in the reserved seating in the front and just dip back to the greenroom during breaks— if you want.”
“I thought the reserved seating was for your guests,” he said carefully, giving her a sidelong glance.
She shrugged one delicate shoulder. “Why can’t you also be a guest?”
He nodded but then caught her gaze as he stopped looking at the elevator numbers descending. “I’m no PR person . . . and I thank you for such a kind offer, but . . . if the paparazzi see me drive you and get out of the limo as your driver and then I show up in the reserved seating, that might look like—”
“I know, I know,” she said, waving her hand. “I have no right to intrude on your private life. Your girlfriend or wife could take things the wrong way, then there’d be drama and what ever.”
/> “No,” he said flatly. “There wouldn’t be drama on my end. My concern is that the tabloids started up some nonsense about your reputation, signifying that you had a limo driver and a paid escort. You deserve to be shown in a much better light than that. I would be a distraction. I think it would be best if I stayed in the background.”
She looked at him with a completely open gaze. “Thank you for that— for caring how things might look for me. I wasn’t really figuring all of that out . . . I guess I just hated the fact that Jonathan Evans would be there flaunting his latest conquest and I’d be sitting there by myself.” She turned to look at the elevator doors. “It’s amazing how alone you can feel even in a room of thousands of people all screaming your name.”
The elevator doors opened and she’d left him speechless. His mind immediately latched onto the task at hand as a diversion. He exited the elevator first, keeping her behind him as he navigated them toward the limo. But what she’d said and the sad timbre of her voice haunted him. So the head of NextStarz was her ex? That arrogant SOB had just cast this woman aside like refuse? What was wrong in America?
Zachary opened the limo door and helped Anita in. He was about to close the door and keep his opinions to himself, but her forlorn expression made him stop and lean in as he held onto the door frame.
“If Evans shows up there with anybody but you— he’s a fool. I hope you win tonight, and I don’t care how many people are there, just because I’m not in the VIP seats, doesn’t mean I’m not watching . . . you’re not alone, all right?”
She rewarded him with a slow turn of her head, an open gaze, and a slow smile that broke on her face like new dawn. “Thank you,” she murmured. “Knowing that will get me through the night.”
“Let’s get you to your big event,” he said in a softer tone than he normally employed. He had to close the door; this woman was fracturing his skull, breaking his concentration, and about to make him cross a line that in the end could cost Lowell a contract, if things went poorly.
Butterflies swirled in her belly and exploded in a cloud of dancing tremors the moment he shut the door. He’d declined because he cared? Wasn’t seeking a front row and the limelight, and actually cared about appearances for her own good? Then there was the way he looked at her, oh, my God. The man smelled so good, too . . . and the tux just set off every chiseled feature in his handsome face and phenomenal bod.
She kept her gaze directed out of the window as the vehicle began its slow egress out of the lot and onto the street, wondering if Zachary Mitchell had someone special in his life.
IT WAS AN experience of a lifetime to be backstage at the famous Apollo Theater, brushing elbows with the glitterati. But his focus was singular as he waited for her in the wings; to be sure nothing happened to Anita Brown. She’d selected one of her soulful ballads from her new album, What Happened to Us, and as the sad anthem dipped and swayed, he watched her move to the lyrics of heartbreak, mesmerized by hers and remembering his own.
However, nothing could have prepared him for her bright expression as she exited and came into the wings breathless, greeting him and blotting her forehead.
“How was I? Was it good?”
He didn’t know what to say for a moment, but found the words before her face fell. “It was . . . beyond awesome.”
Her spontaneous hug blew his mind, almost blew a gasket, and then she left his embrace to dash back to get her makeup retouched. He waited, trying to stay detached in the flurry of backstage activity, and then quickly escorted her to her seat. He felt her tense on his arm as she passed her ex, but remained in character— then gave her a wink and a discreet thumbs-up to make her smile.
Anita kept her gaze forward. She would not even glance at Jonathan and his new conquest. They were becoming increasingly irrelevant anyway. If she could just watch her fellow performers do their thing that was good enough for her. Zachary’s wink, his support, meant all the difference in the world. But that made no sense; she’d just met the man.
Suddenly as they began reading off the nominations for best R&B Emerging Solo Album, she understood why she’d surrounded herself with so many negative people. Her family wasn’t there, her friends were mostly surface people she’d met along the way coming up, and now at a moment like this there was no one to sit on pins and needles with her . . . no one to hold her hand and cheer with her.
When they called her name, electricity shot through her, along with a numbing pang of loneliness. But she held her head high, put on her best star smile, and walked to the podium to accept her award in honor of her late mother.