Free Out of the Shadow by Jl Paul Page A

just take her to a hotel or something?”
    “ Nah,” Cole said. “Throw me one, will you?”
    RJ retrieved another soda and tossed it to Cole. He watched as his friend tapped the top and carefully pulled the tab. “Why not?”
    “ It would seem sort of…I don’t know…cheap, I guess,” Cole said, struggling to explain. “I mean, you see all the movies and stuff and guys take sleazy girls to hotels for a couple hours. I don’t want to make Ally feel that way. I was trying to find some place that she’d really dig but not something that’s all girly, if you know what I mean.”
    “ Yeah, something romantic,” RJ said with another wide grin. “Come on, Cole, you can say it. I won’t razz you….much.”
    Cole ducked his head and smiled, heat touching his cheeks. “Whatever.”
    “ We have to go to sound check shortly,” RJ reminded him as he finished his soda. He ruffled his hair, his slight curls bouncing back into place. “And after that, we have an interview with some sort of music magazine. And then, we have the show.”
    “ I know,” Cole said, frustrated sigh blowing past his lips. He closed the laptop and pushed away from the table. “I don’t know when I’ll have time to set all this up and if I don’t do it soon, I won’t be able to book anything at all.”
    “ Call James,” RJ suggested. “Ask him to find something for you.”
    “ Maybe,” Cole said. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”
 
    ***
    Ally placed her hands on her hips as she surveyed the mess. Neat piles of freshly laundered and folded clothes sat on Jamie’s bed and boxes were stacked in the corner. Most of his books and other supplies had already been packed with the boxes marked. Ally had a sneaking feeling that Gretchen had taken care of that one.
    “ I’ll pack your clothes if you gather all your sports gear and pack that,” she said. “Surely you can handle that.”
    “ Of course, cuz,” he said with a smug smirk. He walked across the room, kicking a box out of the way, and opened the closet doors. He disappeared inside and she fought her jealousy.
    She’d always loved her house – the very one she’d grown up in – and never wished for anything larger, like the house Jamie lived in with his parents and his younger brother, Trevor. Her father had added on and remodeled their house a couple of times and it was very spacious. Plus, they had over thirty acres of land, a lake, and a barn.
    Her room was only a little smaller than Jamie’s and she had to share her bathroom with Alec, her brother, just as Jamie had to share a bathroom with Trevor. She didn’t have a view of the lake like her parents but she did have a view of the lush grounds and the fenced pasture where the horses grazed. But she didn’t have a walk-in closet like Jamie. And of that, she was jealous.
    “ Jamie,” she said, as a nervous flutter struck as she stood in the middle of the room. “Do you suppose we will have the problems that we had we first started at Meridian Valley?”
    “ What do you mean?” he asked from the depths of his closet.
    She closed her eyes briefly and recalled her high school years at the exclusive boarding school she’d attended with her best friends. She’d been so excited to go even though RJ and Cole had both warned her to keep her mouth shut about her father. She’d scoffed at the idea that people would look at her as nothing more than just another student with wealthy parents. Most of the students attending the school had wealthy parents, too – some of them professional athletes and politicians. She hadn’t understood why anyone would find her particularly interesting.
    But they had. Girls in her dorm had flooded her room as soon as they’d found out that Jay Jones from Tight Control was indeed her father and had followed her around. Kids in her classes had clustered around her, nearly stifling her. And crossing campus had been nightmarish.
    The coolness factor had faded somewhat by the time she’d