Total pages in book: 117
Estimated words: 109318 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 547(@200wpm)___ 437(@250wpm)___ 364(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 109318 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 547(@200wpm)___ 437(@250wpm)___ 364(@300wpm)
“Yeah.” He sighed. “It would cause a stir.”
“A big one. Us doing anything together would get a lot of attention and . . . I kind of thought we were on the same page about not wanting so much attention. Which is why I wanted to speak to you alone.” She watched his face carefully. Closely. “Why did you want us to take this meeting in the first place, Beat?”
His chin jerked up a notch. When he might have spoken, his jaw only clenched down.
“There must be a reason. We could fill an ocean with the requests we’ve gotten for reality shows and reunion attempts and interviews. Why this one? Why did you entertain it?”
“I’d rather not get specific, Mel.”
That was it. He didn’t continue.
And despite her odd sense of kinship for him, this was where she needed to let the subject drop. Her imagination might be telling her something different, but in reality, they weren’t friends. They weren’t close. Another fourteen years might pass before they even crossed paths again, so she definitely didn’t have the right to press him for an answer.
But she couldn’t seem to stop herself. Maybe it was the sense that he was struggling and doing his best to hide it. Or maybe she had inherited some of her mother’s stubbornness. For whatever reason, Melody took a deep breath and pushed a tad harder.
“There’s only one reason to do this . . . and it’s money.”
He closed his eyes.
Bull’s-eye.
“Okay.” Sympathy tunneled right through her chest. “You don’t have to tell me the finer details—”
“It’s not that I don’t want to, Mel. I can’t.” He shook his head. “And it doesn’t matter anyway, because there is no way in hell that I’m going to attempt to reunite Steel Birds on a live stream, where I can’t control”—he seemed to bring himself even again with a slow breath—“how it affects you. I won’t do that.”
Melody’s entire body throbbed like one giant heartbeat. “I’m . . . I’m the reason you won’t do this. What’s holding you back is . . . me?”
Beat’s chest rose and fell, his hold tightening around his coffee cup.
No. No, she couldn’t be his reason for turning down the chance at a million dollars. It had to be about the media attention, the lack of privacy. Right?
Regardless of his reasons for saying no to Danielle, if he’d come this far, he must really need the money. Badly. Could she let herself be one of the reasons he turned it down?
She might not know this man well, but she knew him enough to be positive that he hadn’t made the decision to take this meeting, to consider this offer, lightly.
Was Beat Dawkins in trouble financially? How?
It wasn’t her place to ask.
She couldn’t simply turn her back and walk away, either. Not on this man.
“What if you said yes? Just . . . hypothetically.”
He was already shaking his head. “Mel. No way.”
“Hear me out.” Visions of cameras chasing them, snapping photographs, calling out uncomfortable questions about her developing body, made Mel squirm in her seat. Still, she didn’t let it deter her. “Let’s say you agreed to do the show. Agreed to reunite our mothers while the world watches . . .” She let out a breath. “You’d never pull off a reunion.”
He started to say something, but she cut him off first.
“Not without me, at least.”
Beat did a double take. “Excuse me?”
“Even with me tagging along, the chances of a reunion are less than one percent. But if we were giving it a real, honest-to-God shot . . .” Here she was, considering an idea she’d long thought was impossible, absurd, so she couldn’t help but laugh. “My mother wouldn’t even let a Dawkins through the front door of her house. Which, by the way, is a commune of no-account called the Free Loving Adventure Club, according to her most recent update. In the by-God wilderness. Imagine trying to reason with a rebellious rocker turned nudist turned possible cult leader who shuns civilization. On a live stream. I mean, you seriously need backup.”
Beat’s hand shot across the table and grasped her wrist, cutting off her amusement. “Melody. I’m not putting you back in front of a camera. You know how shitty they treated you.”
“You made it bearable. You . . . knowing you were out there on my side made it bearable.” She’d waited years to tell him that and it was like releasing a boulder from her chest. “What you said that day changed things. Or it got the ball rolling. And anyway, I’m megahot now,” she deadpanned. “It’s different.”
He didn’t seem to grasp the joke, his forehead only wrinkling in confusion. “I’m sorry I brought you here. It was a bad idea. I’ll get the money . . .” He trailed off with a curse, slowly releasing his hold on her wrist. “I’ll get it another way.”