Free Follow My Lead by Lisa Renée Jones

than would last one night.
    “Hello?” she said in that soft, ever-feminine voice, her tone making it more of a question than a greeting.
    “How was dessert?” he asked, lying back on his pillow.
    “Better without dodging your bullets at the table,” she said. “What’s with the ‘deal’ talk and the ‘truce with benefits’?”
    “If I’d have known it would have gotten me kicked,” he said, chuckling, “I would have controlled myself.”
    “So not true,” she accused. “The ‘truce with benefits’ comment came after I tried to kick you.”
    “So you admit you tried to kick me then?”
    “Absolutely.”
    “You’re big on the ‘absolutely’ statements tonight.”
    “You bet I am. You do remember Meagan saying she didn’t like scandal, right?”
    “It’s only a scandal if someone else knows about it, and they won’t.”
    “We could have been seen,” she said. “I shouldn’t have taken a risk that we might be seen together.”
    “Translation. I’m absolutely not coming over tonight, am I?”
    “Not a chance.”
    “Ouch,” he said. “I wasn’t coming over anyway.”
    “Good.”
    “Good, huh?”
    “Yeah. Good.”
    “You aren’t going to ask why I wasn’t planning to come over?”
    “No.”
    “First of all, you have a big show tomorrow and you need sleep. If I come over, you won’t sleep, and then if things go wrong tomorrow you’ll blame me. They won’t go badly, by the way. You’re going to rock the house. But the bottom line is that you doing well matters to me, which brings me to the second reason why I wasn’t planning to come over. I want to come over. And by that I mean I want to come over more than I should. Too much, Darla.”
    Silence, until she said, “I don’t know what that means.”
    His voice lowered to meet hers. “Yes. You do.” More silence. Okay. That wasn’t good. Or maybe it was.
    “I have no interest in being in tabloid headlines,” she said. “That’s not how you build a lasting career. At least, not the kind of career I’m building. Not the kind of career I want.”
    “It’s not the kind of career I want, either, and my actions both past and present support that as accurate.”
    “Tonight, you—”
    “Got carried away. You’re adorable when you’re feisty and I couldn’t resist teasing you. But I would never have gone too far. What happens between us, Darla, is between us. I told you that earlier and I meant it.”
    “Blake—”
    “Go to sleep. You have an early morning. I’ll see you then.” He hung up and then sat there, half expecting the phone to ring again, wanting it to ring again. But it didn’t. She didn’t call back and he had a bad feeling she was far more happy he was leaving tomorrow than he was. Which was exactly why he should go home and not look back. He wouldn’t, though. This was new territory for him, that his younger, very happily married brother would find amusing. Blake wasn’t laughing but he wasn’t running, either. And he had to figure out why, even if that meant taking a few darts from Darla in the process. Hopefully, he could convince her to lick the wounds.

8
    Y OU KNOW WHAT I MEAN. M ORNING came with Blake’s words repeating in Darla’s head. And no. No, she did not know what he meant, but she’d darn sure spent the entire night trying to figure it out. No wonder she didn’t have one-night stands. Apparently, she was really really bad at them—hauntingly so. She managed to spend the night in bed with the man and he wasn’t even there. Darla just hoped she didn’t fail the awkward morning greeting as bad, because she was about to see him again.
    With that thought in mind, dressed again in sweats, with no makeup on, and her hair freshly washed for a stylist to work magic on, she dragged herself to her door. She’d see him on the 6:00 a.m. shuttle to the audition site and she looked like crap—and why, why did she care about seeing him, or that she was seeing him premakeup artist? She