Not About Love (This Love Book 2) (18 page)

Attached was a picture of me, asleep on my belly, with my crazy hair splayed out across the pillow.

Damn you, Boyd Rivers. Why did you have to get under my skin like this?

MY PHONE BUZZED, BUT IT
was buried under a pile of papers on my desk. I looked at the time on the screen of my computer and stifled a yawn. It was ten in the evening. I hadn’t realized how late it was.

Dammit
.

Where had the time gone? I reached for the empty carton of Chinese takeout and tossed it in the trash. I had been working late nights all week.

I had forgotten how much time you could waste when you had a man around.

Well, I had wanted to take advantage of the situation, and I had. We’d had fun.

But now I inevitably had to catchup.

I searched for my phone under the documents that covered my desk and when I looked at the screen, I did a double take.

It was a text from Boyd.

I miss you, Bertie.

Aww, that’s sweet.
And completely unlike him…

Then I saw the next text.

Send me a picture of you. Naked, pls.

Now
that
was more like him.

I unlocked the screen and replied.

Absolutely not.

He replied right away. I smiled and shook my head.
Perv.

Send me a picture of your gorgeous tits, Red.

No! Do you know what time it is?

Hmmm, ten at night? What are you doing?

Working.

Still? Shit, I’m sorry. Don’t work so hard, Bertie.

Well, it can’t be helped.

Send me a picture of you, Red. I miss you. How much more are you going to make me beg?

You can beg as long as you want, I’m not sending you a picture of my boobs.

You can send me a picture of your pussy if you’re more comfortable with that.

I groaned.

Or your ass.

Negative. It’s not happening.

I didn’t know you could be so heartless, Red.

Believe it.

I said I miss you.

Yeah…and?

Ah, shit. You wound me, woman.

He missed me—big deal. I was not going to read more into this. He just wanted to jerk off looking at my pics. As flattered as I was by the request—I was sure he had plenty of other candidates to choose from, but he wanted one from me—my answer was
no
.

I saw the ellipses appear again, but a moment later they stopped. Good, maybe he was giving up.

I put the phone down on my desk, and as soon as I did, it started ringing.

Good lord.
The man was nothing if not persistent.

Frustrated, I answered immediately.

“Boyd, I’m not going to send you nude pictures of me!”

“Ally?”
Crap.
It didn’t sound like Boyd at all.
Oops.
I moved the phone away from my ear and looked at the number. It was a Tennessee area code and the voice sounded…familiar…but I really wanted to be wrong.

“Hello?” the voice said.

“Yes? This is Alberta Ferris. With whom am I speaking?”

“Ally, sorry to call so late—well, I know it’s late over there. It’s me, Shane. I need your help.”

* * *

“Hold on, hold on…let’s start from the beginning,” I said as I scribbled furiously in a notebook. “Shit. What was her name? I-L-S-E? Cause of death?”

“Ecstasy,” Shane answered.

Grant, his younger brother who was studying here in Amsterdam, had gotten in trouble with the law.

Big trouble.

This wasn’t a simple marijuana charge. He was being accused of possession of ecstasy, and more importantly, accidental manslaughter.

“I got to talk to him on the phone. He didn’t buy the drugs, she did. He doesn’t know where she got them from.”

“A toxicology report might help him out, but it will take weeks to get the results. Does he know if she used anything else that night?”

“He doesn’t know. They were both drinking and had taken some pills…he can’t remember much. He got sick and was hospitalized, too, but he got better after a couple days. She didn’t make it.”

“I’m sorry, Shane…this is awful. It sounds like Grant got himself into quite some trouble, but I have to be honest with you…this seems beyond my capabilities. I’m not a criminal attorney. I don’t think I can help you.”

“We already hired a criminal attorney. He’s from there, and he speaks English well enough, but I want someone I can trust one hundred percent. I’m flying out to Amsterdam, but I can’t stay for long and I need someone who can keep me up to date. I know I’m the last person in a position to ask you for a favor, Ally…but if you could please do this, I would be forever grateful. If not for me, do this for my brother Grant. He always liked you.”

“And I liked him,” I said absentmindedly, still wrapping my head around the fact that the little boy I’d once known had gotten himself into the worst possible scenario, while studying overseas.

Ah, shit.
Getting yourself in this kind of trouble required a special kind of talent.
Dammit, Grant. What the hell did you do?

I let out a sigh. “I don’t know, Shane. I have so much work as it is…not that I don’t want to help…” Well, part of me
really
didn’t want to help. Shane didn’t deserve my time or my help, but it still felt wrong saying no.

“My mother would be eternally grateful if you helped us out.”

“Your mother, huh?” The same woman who hated me. The same woman who whispered under her breath that red hair was the devil’s making. The matriarch who thought I wasn’t good enough for her son.

“Yeah, I know she wasn’t very nice to you in the past…”

“You can say that again.”

In the end, I caved.

I was usually good at saying no, but not when it was a favor for someone I knew. I had even gone over some legal documents for Boyd while he was in town to make sure everything was in order—and he hadn’t even asked!

The reason I wanted to help Shane went further than that, though. The girl who had gotten blindsided and dumped wanted revenge. No, I wasn’t going to fail his brother. I was going to get Grant out of trouble, and then the Lightfoots were going to owe me. The spawn of the devil was getting her payback.

When I got off the phone with Shane, I found about twenty messages from Boyd. I read them and started laughing. The first few were still asking for naked pics and were quite graphic, going as far as proposing a trade of some sort. I started laughing even harder. Why did men think a dick pic was appealing in any way? As I skimmed through the messages, I noticed the apologetic tone of the last few texts. He thought I was pissed.

Come on, Red. I didn’t mean to make you mad.

I really do miss you, and you know I don’t say this kind of stuff lightly.

Dammit, Boyd Rivers.
What was I supposed to do with that piece of information? He missed me. Yes, he wasn’t the type of guy to say such loaded words to a woman, but so what? What did he want me to say? What did he want me to do?

I’m not mad. I was on a work call. Sorry, but I have to decline your generous offer. I guess when it comes to trading pictures, I’m a bit old-fashioned.

I added a winking emoticon and pressed send.

* * *

Ding-dong, ding-dong, ding-dong, ding-dong.

I stopped typing on my computer. I knew only one person who would ring the bell four times. I smiled and shook my head. She was here. I hadn’t seen her for months.

I missed her.

“
Hedwig! Kun je de deur open doen
?” I yelled, asking her to open the door.

“
Tuurlijk
,” my assistant replied, getting up from her desk.

When Hedwig opened the door, I heard my friend stumbling through trying to introduce herself—it sounded like she had forgotten some of her basic Dutch skills.

I got up from my desk and went to the hallway to greet her.

“
Danke je, Hedwig
.”

“Ahhhh! I’m so happy to see you!” Ella squeezed me, nearly knocking the breath out of me.

“I’m happy to see you too, but you’re suffocating me with your hair!” I laughed. I meant the words as a joke, but when she released me, I really did feel out of breath and a little lightheaded.
Gahhh, that’s weird.

It must have been because I hadn’t had any breakfast that morning.

I had been feeling under the weather for a few days, but that wasn’t surprising. The weather had been so moody lately, everyone around me seemed to be getting sick.

Even Hedwig hadn’t been feeling too well.

But why was my stomach still upset? I had been queasy and had already been throwing up for a couple days; I thought my stomach flu should have gone away by now.

I refused to believe I was still sick. I must have been feeling queasy because I had had too much coffee and hadn’t eaten all morning. On top of everything else, work was stressing me out. I would feel much better once I got caught up with my workload.

“Gahhh! You’re always such a brat! Can’t you just say you missed me?” Ella stepped back and put her hand on her hip, giving me a sassy look. “By the way, since when do you have an assistant?” Ella frowned.

“I told you about her. You completely forgot. I had to hire somebody. I was drowning doing everything by myself after that little stint as your manager. Plus, I can afford it.”

“That’s thanks to that fat check I cut for you.” She winked.

“Someone has gotten
cock-yyy!
”

“Come on! I’m just teasing! By the way, how weird is it that your assistant’s name is Hedwig? Isn’t that the name of Harry Potter’s owl?” Ella whispered.

I scowled. “Bless your heart, girl, I hate when you go all millennial on me. Hate to break it to you, but Hedwig was a name wayyy before it was Harry Potter’s owl.”

“This is the first time I’ve ever been called a millennial. Coming from you, it feels like a double insult.”

I nodded. “You’re right about that,” I fired back, dead serious.

This silly exchange was our relationship in a nutshell. We fought like sisters, but we had each other’s back at all times. We were both only children. We both had wild curly hair and were stubborn as hell.

I wondered if that was part of the reason our bond was so strong. Even though she had been gone from Amsterdam for almost a year, we still spoke daily, mostly via text and Skype. She had told me she’d be coming back for work, but I hadn’t expected her so soon.

“I didn’t expect to see you until next week—what happened?”

“Oh, you know…just bossypants Hans wanting to start on the new album early,” Ella said, referring to her high-maintenance producer.

“You’re already recording a new one? Isn’t that too soon?”

“Oh, it won’t be out until next year, but he said it’s better if we start laying the foundations for it. Those were his exact words.”

Hans Koll was her producer and the founder of Koll Music. The man was quite the legend around Amsterdam. He was a very private person, and rarely left the city. If I had to describe him, I would call him a reclusive Giorgio Moroder. As a producer, he was just as famous, but he definitely preferred to stay away from the spotlight.

He was a peculiar man, but so good at what he did. Hans Koll was part of the reason Lou ended up in Amsterdam to begin with; Lou had come so they could work together on his album. The producer and Ella hadn’t really gotten off to the best start. At first, he criticized her choices and her lack of decisiveness. They met again months later when he was teaching a class at the school Ella was attending, and after that, they ended up working together. Months later, he signed Ella as the first artist on his brand new label, Koll Music. She had been touring on and off for months, and now she was back to start work on her sophomore album.