“Your groupies and your fan club and all your famous friends will make sure to fill your coffers so that you win.”
“But that’s what this is about, right? Raising money?”
“Of course that’s what’s important,” she conceded through a jaw clenched so tight it had to be painful, “but you have an unfair advantage when it comes to the actual contest. No one could compete with you.”
He grinned at her. “I’m glad to finally hear you admit it.”
“I meant,” she gritted out, “that I’m a hometown girl and you’re a freakin’ rock star. You have a bigger fan base by default and that’s an unfair advantage.”
“Your title is ‘Saint’, Vivi, not ‘martyr’.”
Vivi’s knuckles turned white, and Connor expected the stem of her wineglass to snap at any moment.
“Just eat your dinner.”
He shot her a smile instead. “You could just concede now, you know.”
She choked on her wine. “Hell has not frozen over.”
“So it’s on?” he challenged.
“You’re damn right it’s on.” Grabbing her fork, she speared her lettuce with far more force than necessary.
Vivi could never turn down a challenge. It didn’t matter what it was, Vivi went after everything in her full-out, take-no-prisoners style. He actually respected that about her. It was one of the few things they had in common. Everything else about her, though, drove him insane. Always had.
He really shouldn’t let Vivi get to him. He was an adult, for God’s sake. Vivi might not like him, but plenty of other women did, so her holier-than-Connor attitude shouldn’t bother him. There was something about her, though, that just crawled under his skin and itched.
Would he have agreed to do this if he’d known up front that Vivi would be a part of it? Or would he have just sent another check and let it go?
No, he’d been thinking about home for a while now; this was just the nudge he’d needed to get him here. It gave him an excuse to do some damage control, make some new headlines that didn’t involve paternity suits or sexual activities. He could take a step back and maybe take a deep breath for the first time in years.
He hadn’t realized how truly tired he was. Getting everything he’d ever wanted in life was great in theory, but he hadn’t known he’d be left feeling like a well-dressed hobo. He had accepted that at first: he couldn’t have gotten this far if he’d been tied down to any one place or thing. There was a great freedom to it. But it came at a cost, nonetheless.
Being home—really home, not just the place he slept between shows—made him feel like the earth was solid under his feet again. The ideas that had been swimming unformed in the back of his mind seemed to be taking shape now that he was here. New Orleans was good for his mind and soul, and he could use the next few weeks to really refocus and figure out what was next. Or what he wanted to be next.
He heard Vivi’s deep sigh of irritation and it brought him back to the present. Right now he had a contest to win. It felt good to come home; even better to come home to a warm welcome and the opportunity to do something good for his hometown.
Annoying Vivi while he did it was just a bonus.
Vivi chewed each bite a dozen times and then immediately put another bite in her mouth to keep it full. She couldn’t control her thoughts, but this was one way to guarantee she would not take Connor’s bait and end up saying something she’d regret later.
This just sucked. She’d headed enough fundraisers to know that Connor was a gift from the fundraising gods. The money would pour in and the publicity would be unreal. The rational, reasonable part of her mind applauded Max Hale’s choice and envied his ability to get Connor to agree to participate.
But Connor Mansfield? Argh. If she had to be paired with a musical superstar, why couldn’t they have picked any one of the other dozens of musical legends who called New Orleans home? But, no, they had to get maximum mileage by bringing Connor in, especially since he was very much the biggest Sinner in the media right now.
From the top table she had an excellent view of the entire ballroom. The guest list was a Who’s Who of New Orleans’ rich and powerful, and she knew every face in the crowd. And everyone in the room knew damn well that they hated each other.
Hated was the wrong word. People liked to toss it around, but she didn’t hate Connor. She disliked him a hell of a lot, but hate implied more energy than she was willing to commit. She and Connor were just not meant to occupy the same time-space continuum. Connor was the one person who could make her blood boil just by breathing. Any conversation was just asking for an anger-induced stroke.
She felt a headache forming behind her left eye.
From the looks being tossed their way, every person in that room knew exactly how much she hated being up here with Connor and found it endlessly amusing. There were probably bets being taken right this second that they’d witness a repeat of that ball ten years ago when the Queen had slapped the King ten minutes after their coronation.
Connor had completely deserved it, but it had taken her forever to live that down nonetheless. It had even come up a few months later, in her interview during the Mississippi River Princess pageant, with the implication that she had a penchant for making unseemly scenes that would be detrimental to the title. She’d learned quite a bit about handling herself and her image after that, so in an odd way Connor had helped fuel her pageant success. Still, that night had pretty much been the final straw, and she and Connor had kept a healthy distance from then on unless forced otherwise by circumstance.
But then Connor’s music had started to take off, and he’d spent more time out of town than in it. Within a few years he’d become a rising superstar and their paths had ceased to cross entirely. Bliss.
She would console herself with the knowledge that Ash Wednesday was only four weeks away, and Connor would go back to Los Angeles or New York or wherever his home base was now, and her life would go back to normal. It was a small consolation, but consolation nonetheless.
Could she put up with him for that long? Without blowing her top? They were adults now: older, wiser, more mature. Maybe things could be different. She risked a sideways glance.
Probably not.
Everything about Connor projected smug arrogance. He was overly sure of himself, always seeming to have that mocking smile on his face as if he was laughing at her. Even sitting there, dressed like Lucifer on his way to a Pride parade, he still managed to look confident and cocksure.
Ms. Rene had put him in black leather—not only the pants she’d mocked him about earlier, but also a black sleeveless vest and motorcycle boots. Strips of studded black leather circled his biceps, drawing attention to the powerful bulges no one would expect a piano-playing singer to have.
It was a nice contrast to her all-white satin and feather combo. But where her costume veered to the demure and saintly, Connor’s screamed sex: the leather fit him like a second skin, leaving little to the imagination. While Ms. Rene had covered every exposed inch of her skin with body glitter, Connor’s skin had been oiled to give him an otherworldly sheen.
He was tall, dark and dangerous personified—from the dark hair that hung a little too long to the goatee that framed his mouth…She swallowed hard. Her love of art gave her an appreciation for beauty, but this was not just male beauty. There was virility, strength, passion. It was hard not to appreciate Connor on that level. Connor looked up, caught her glance, and grinned a lady-killer smile that