Free In the Heat of the Spotlight by Kate Hewitt

of water. Somehow she managed a breezy smile. ‘That sounds fine,’ she said again, knowing she was being inane, but then he was too. This whole conversation was ridiculous. And a desperate part of her still craved something real.
    ‘Fine,’ Luke said, and with one more nod he rose from the chair. Aurelie rose too. She hadn’t finished her water but neither was she about to sit in the bar alone. So that was it. Yet what had she really expected?
    Even so, she could not keep a sense of desolation from sweeping emptily through her as Luke strode away from the bar without a backward glance.
    * * *
    That went well. Not. Luke tugged his tie from his collar and blew out his breath. He knew he didn’t possess the charm of his brother Chase or Aaron’s unending arrogance, but he could definitely have handled that conversation better. He’d been trying to keep it brisk and professional, but every time he looked at her he remembered how she’d felt in his arms, how much emotion and desire she’d stirred up in him, and business went right out of the window.
    Maybe it wasn’t actually Aurelie who was doing this to him. Maybe he was just out of practice. He hadn’t had sex in a while, and he’d always been careful with his partners. A relationship came first with him, always had, because he’d never wanted to be like his father, going after everything in a skirt and ruining his mother’s life in the process.
    But maybe if he’d indulged in a few more flings, he wouldn’t be feeling so...lost now. He’d gone over their encounter—was there really another word for it?—far too many times in his mind. Wondered when it had started to go wrong, and why. Had Aurelie been setting him up, the way he’d believed? Proving her damn point that he’d only come there to get into her bed? It seemed obvious, and yet a gut-deep instinct told him it wasn’t the whole story.
    He remembered the raw ache in her voice when she’d spoken to him. I like how you say my name. The way her fingers had trailed down his cheek, eager and hesitant at the same time, the tremble of her slender body against his. She’d felt something then. Something real.
    And then she’d gone so horribly still beneath him and he’d felt as if he were... attacking her. He’d never felt so repulsed, so ashamed.
    The best thing to do, he told himself now, the only thing to do, was to avoid her. Easier for both of them. He’d only suggested this meeting as a way to clear the air, draw a firm line under what had happened. And that at least had been accomplished, even if he still felt far from satisfied in any way.
    As he headed back up to his suite, Luke had a feeling the next ten days were going to be a whole new kind of hell.
    * * *
    Aurelie stood to the side of the makeshift stage in Bryant’s lobby and tried not to hyperventilate. A thousand people mingled in the soaring space, all modern chrome and glass, so different from the historic and genteel feeling of the New York store.
    She’d spent the morning with Lia, touring all ten floors of the store on Ayala Avenue and then running through sound checks and getting ready. And trying not to think about what lay ahead.
    What was happening now , with the crowd waiting for her to walk out and be Aurelie.
    Fear washed coldly through her, made her dizzy. At least she’d checked her blood sugar. If she passed out now, it would simply be from nerves.
    ‘Thirty seconds.’ The guy who was doing the sound nodded towards her, and somehow Aurelie nodded back. She was miked, ready to go—and terrified.
    She peeped out at the audience, saw the excited crowd, some of them clutching posters or CDs for her to sign. They were, she knew, expecting her to prance out there and sing Take Me Down or one of the other boppy, salacious numbers that had made her famous. They wanted her to sing and shimmy and be outrageous, and she was going to come out in her jeans, holding her guitar, and give everyone an almighty shock.
    What had she