She went back to reading her menu, looking pleased and entirely too beautiful. “Maybe that’ll teach you a lesson. I know your mom. She must have told you at some point not to say anything if you can’t say something nice.”
“I wasn’t saying anything rude!” I protested. “I was just observing that—”
Another quick blow to my shoulder, with Olivia arching one eyebrow like she was daring me to say anything else.
“Ow!” I shouted.
She tipped her head. “You don’t learn quick, do you?”
I went back to reading my menu. “I learn plenty quick. I think you just like hitting me.”
Olivia let out a very unladylike snort and shook her head. “If the situation requires it. Now what were you saying about me not being able to eat here?”
“Oh no,” I retorted. “I’m not that stupid. I don’t want to get hit again.”
She nodded. “Good boy. I think, though, that you were claiming I couldn’t eat anything from this place because it was all too big.” She slammed the menu shut and looked at me with expectation written all over her face.
“Could be,” I said, one eye on her hand to see if she was going to hit me for admitting it.
Instead, she just nodded. “Challenge accepted. You might be interested to know I’m getting a double cheeseburger. Extra bacon.”
She waved to get the waiter’s attention and ordered that exact thing, and when the food arrived, she gave me one more challenging look—like I’d be stupid enough to question her again—and then sat there and ate her entire cheeseburger while we talked about high school and who we still talked to. Parker and Avery and what they were up to, and what we thought about them hitching up with my best friends, Dev and Jackson. We laughed at the idea that Parker and Dev had actually managed to agree between them about how to run their ranch, and that Jackson had become Avery’s biggest groupie.
And by the time Olivia was finished with her cheeseburger and I’d eaten most of mine, we were laughing like we were the old friends I wished we were.
And I was reminding myself—again—that I couldn’t afford to think we were anything more than two people thrown into a situation where we had to get along for a while. I’d made the mistake of letting this girl into my life before.
I wasn’t going to do it again.
No matter how cute she was holding a cheeseburger nearly as big as her head.
CHAPTER 7
Olivia
Two days later I walked into the studio for our last day of practicing and recording, my heart… conflicted.
Yes, that was the only word for it. We’d been having pretty good luck in the studio and had several co-written songs under our belt at this point. What was more; they were pretty damn good. As much as I hated to admit it—loathed to admit it—Connor and I were good at writing together. I’d thought so back at Christmas when we did that first song and the last week had confirmed it. We knew what the other was thinking before they thought it, and knew how to put together music that worked well for both of us.
We thought in the same chords. The same lyrics.
And that was going to be inconvenient on a tour where I had already promised myself I was going to maintain my distance and keep from feeling anything more for him than just the partnership the studio had forced on us.
Hell, we should be hating each other out of principle, just to annoy the studio. Standing on our ethics and such. And maybe we would have been able to pull it off. If we didn’t both need those contracts like we needed the blood in our veins.
As it was, we were going to have to play by the studio’s rules and keep our mouths shut to reach our dreams. For one month.
Then we were going to go our separate ways.
Today, though, was about tying up loose ends. Finishing the two songs that weren’t quite there yet and recording them, and then putting together our set list—though I supposed that last bit could wait until we were bored on the bus or something.
I groaned softly to myself as I swung through the doors of studio. One full month with Connor Wheating. A month of performing together and spending who knew how many hours stuck in the bus with only the other to talk to. It would be like sharing a room with my little sister times one hundred.
With the guy I’d slept with and ditched at Christmas.
Yeah. This was going to be hell on earth.
I turned my mind to the details of the tour itself, trying to think of something else. I’d always been an organizer and living with Parker had made it even worse, so details like where we were going and how we were getting there were like candy to my brain. The problem was, the studio hadn’t given us many of them yet. I knew when we were leaving and what our flight number was. I knew we were starting in Billings, Montana, and that we were hitting a number of smaller towns while we were on the road.
And that was pretty much it.
Evidently Atomic didn’t think we needed anything as minor as details for our own tour.
Honestly I wouldn’t have minded that much, either, if they were giving us some backup, but the execs had told Taylor that Connor and I were going to be essentially on our own out there. We weren’t allowed to take Taylor or Danny, Connor’s agent, and Parker was busy with Dev on their ranch right now, so she was out. Avery was on her own tour. Also out. I hadn’t heard yet about a tour manager or roadies, so I assumed those were additional details that just hadn’t been passed on.
Hopefully they’d be waiting when we arrived in Billings. And hopefully they knew more than I did about where we were supposed to be going. Or Connor and I were going to end up performing at the side of the road with our guitar cases open for donations.
My stomach turned at the thought and I put the tour out of my mind. Thinking about that was nearly as bad as thinking about Connor.
And speaking of the devil.
He was already practicing when I walked in, his back to me and his guitar in his lap. He was wearing loose jeans and a tight t-shirt, and I paused and let myself actually admire him. Born and bred for the ranch, he was your typical cowboy: broad shoulders and narrow hips, skin tanned by the sun and blond hair always a little bit too long. Just long enough to curl against his neck.
My fingers twitched at the memory of how those curls felt against my skin and I bit my lip. If he turned around, I’d see white-blond hair swept off his forehead and shockingly blue eyes, set wide in a face that was so traditionally handsome that it made your heart hurt. Wide cheekbones. Sharp chin. Dimples if he was giving you a real smile. He’d always had that face, in case you were wondering. He’d been handsome as a boy and become more so the older he got. Every girl in high school had thought he was the hottest thing since the sidewalk in the middle of August in North Carolina. He was the one they’d all talked about in the girl’s bathroom.
Of course no one would touch him. He was a rancher’s kid and we’d been born and raised in town. There was a line there that none of the girls would cross.
That hadn’t stopped me from thinking about it. Too much. He’d come across a bunch of boys bullying me once and stepped between them and me, playing hero even when the other boys outnumbered him, and I’d never forgotten it.
He had, though. He’d never talked to me again after that.