The Lion’s Forbidden Mate

Chapter 6

The meeting didn’t happen quickly and that was just fine with Lucy. In fact, it took a whole lot longer than she had anticipated before they could even get word to James. Nick and Luke had him surrounded and they were watching him like two wolfish hawks that were hungry and ready to tear him apart at the drop of a hat. It was Justin who told him first that they needed to meet and Lucy learned that Justin’s message had been received loud and clear, but Violet was on to them.

At every turn, whenever they had a chance to get together and to talk, Violet or one of her brothers would interrupt them or stop them from getting together. It was becoming as infuriating as anything else that she had ever experienced and in the vanity of their struggles, all of June evaporated before them. By the time they were facing July, they still hadn’t been able to get word to him. While Becca and Justin wanted her to just write him a letter and tell him that way, Lucy knew that this was something he was going to need to hear from her mouth personally. She was fine with that. She wanted to tell him. She wanted to scream it from the rooftops to him, but they had to wait.

When the time came to celebrate wrapping up another plan, the party was set to be an affair where they took over an entire club in Dallas and partied until the sun came up the following day. It was supposed to be the affair of the season and while they were all gathering around the conference hall in the hotel where they were staying, Violet herself was inviting them all to come and party with her and her friends that were meeting them in Dallas. It was the kind of thing the entire tour crew was excited for and what they lived for. Sexy celebrities, beautiful women, and all the fun they could ever imagine in one place, but as they were listening to the invitation, Lucy watched James standing next to Violet, his hand on her back, smiling; it was all a farce.

That wasn’t his real smile. She knew his real smile. She had seen it in the light of her room, while they kissed. She had seen it in the lounge back in New York where they’d laughed and spent the night getting to know each other. Their bodies had done the talking and as she looked at him up there, practically chained to that beast of a woman, she knew that she wouldn’t be attending the party. She couldn’t put up with that.

When they reached Dallas and finished the concert, she made her usual excuses and went back to her hotel room. Becca and Justin were great sports about all of it and they often would come back to the hotel room and hang out with her, spending the time ordering room service and watching terrible movies. They would laugh and have fun, but there was a tragic tension that hovered over everything. She was trapped in here, a prisoner to the will of Violet. There was no escaping this room so long as Violet was still watching her. Her brothers were everywhere and she was constantly with James now. She knew that there was no way she was ever going to see James. It got to the point that her friends had stopped asking and encouraging her.

So, when they attended the party without her, she didn’t blame them. She didn’t feel betrayed in the slightest. In fact, all she could think about was the fact that she was actually going to enjoy a chance to spend some time by herself and get to watch television and relax. She didn’t stop by the front desk in the lobby and see if there were any messages from James. They were smart enough to stop playing that game before it got out of hand. She just walked down the hallway and up the stairs to her room where she decided that tonight she was going to use the gym.

She opened the door to her hotel room and closed it behind her. She was paranoid and she was always afraid that there was going to be someone coming in after her, Nick or Luke with a lustful hunger for revenge. They were their sister’s minions and she pitied them. Every time the bus moved or they went to a different location or made a simple stop, she could feel both or one of them watching her, their eyes burning against her flesh. She hated feeling like she was being spied on everywhere. She wanted to feel normal again. She wanted to be happy.

Inside her room, she sat down on the bed and tried her hardest not to lose her motivation to go to the gym, but as she stretched out, she realized how tired she was. Her job was strenuous and stressful as she was beginning to have to coordinate with businesses to ship out parts and products to them while they were on tour. Inevitably, things were getting broken or lost along the way and her job was to replace all of it and order things. Make up and wardrobe were the worst right now.

Standing up, she walked into the bathroom and took a quick shower, hoping that she could wash the grime and the exhaustion from the day off of her, but by the time she was out of the shower, she realized that she wasn’t any more motivated to go to the gym than she had been the moment she went into the bathroom.

When she walked out of the bathroom, she noticed the card sitting on the other pillow of her bed. She hadn’t noticed it when she came in, but she knew that no one had come into her room. She walked over to it and she sat down on the bed next to it, looking at her name scrawled across it in the familiar handwriting. He must have slipped it into her room somehow and that made her feel like he was trying his hardest to get to her. Whoever had done it, she was eternally grateful for their kindness.