SEVENTEEN

 

"Don't you know who I am? Closed to the public doesn't mean closed to me!" a familiar, plummy female voice blared as Jason reached the door of the building the charter pilots used for a passenger waiting room.

He peered through the glass, swearing as he recognised Gaia. "Let me just go through the gate to the carpark," he said to Shou. "If she's trying to get to the resort, I don't want her to see me."

Shou smirked as if he knew all about the things Jason and Gaia had gotten up to. Jason doubted he had any idea that the bossy billionaire adored being abased in private. Jason had tried, but the kinky billionaire thing just wasn't for him. Especially as it made him feel like an obnoxious arse, ordering her around and being called 'sir'. Now, if it'd been the other way 'round, with a different woman, maybe he'd have been happy to offer up a, "yes, ma'am" as he did his rock star best to give her a good time. Gaia, though...no. Just no.

He hailed a taxi, but he didn't manage to close the door before he heard, "Mr Felix! Wait for me!"

He ordered the driver to head off as fast as possible, making sure they weren't followed, until taking him to the brewery for a drink. He needed one to banish the thoughts of Gaia from his brain before he did the last minute Christmas shopping he was in town for.

Once he was safely inside the brewery, he ordered a pint of beer and the first item off their lunch menu. Drink in hand, he scanned the room for an out of the way place to sit. Even if Gaia did follow him here, he didn't want her to be able to find him. He found what he wanted in the beer garden outside, tucked behind a tree. Jason strode to the table, only to find it already occupied.

"I'll give you a hundred bucks if you pick another table," he said, throwing the money down.

"I won't accept your money, Jay," a familiar voice replied.

Thank fuck, it wasn't Gaia.

She'd cut off her blonde curls, leaving a sort of pixie cap of hair, but Jason still recognised her. "Flavia?"

She flashed a brief smile that died all too quickly. "Don't say it too loud. Your bitch of a fiancée is out there and if she hears, she'll probably try and set reporters on me again. Are you trying to hide from her, too?"

"She's not my anything, and...maybe. Can I sit here?" he asked urgently as he spotted Gaia on the street outside.

"I should say no and leave you to her, but that wouldn't be fair. Sit down. We can hide here together." Flavia pushed a chair toward him with her foot.

Jason hesitated. "Last time we talked, you weren't this nice."

"Last time we talked, I was in the middle of a media shitstorm that I thought you'd called down on me. It wasn't until later, when I had time to consider everything, that I realised you weren't in any of the stories. They knew about me and the auction, but none of the media companies knew about you. So it couldn't have been you who tipped them off." Flavia's eyes narrowed. "My friend Violet worked it out. The billionaire bitch did it. I can't believe you agreed to marry that woman."

"Didn't you see the TV show?" Jason demanded. "Everyone knows I'm not marrying Gaia!"

"What TV show? The only job I could get where people didn't know about the auction was as a tour guide, doing remote outback tours. Kakadu, Uluru, the Gibb River Road, Karajini...everybody's too busy looking at the landscape to notice the tour guide. Especially when we're all dusty and dirty from camping." Flavia took a long pull from her drink, which looked like one of the brewery's ciders.

"Oh, I signed up for a reality TV dating show. They usually find brides for farmers, but they agreed to help me find one," Jason said.

Flavia choked. "You actually believed they could? And I thought dating that billionaire was stupid!"

Jason frowned. "It was worth a shot. I'd tried everything else. And even if they didn't, I figured it'd squash the rumours about me and Gaia. There was never anything between us. You and me, well, that was...we really had something, didn't we?" He couldn't keep the desperation out of his tone. He hoped she didn't hear it.

"We did," Flavia said slowly. "While it was just us, we did. Until every reporter in Australia got wind of the auction and made my life hell. What would they do if they knew about us?"

"I can protect you," Jason insisted. "You could stay at the resort or at any of my houses. You could hide from the media as long as you have to."

Flavia shook her head. "Forever? I don't think so. They hacked my email account. They would find out one day, and it would start all over again. I'd get called a whore again, and all your fangirls would join in, hating me for having you. Just like that TV anchor when you were younger. You dated her for a bit, and she got death threats all over her social media. You'd have to protect me from the whole world, locking me away without any access to the internet. I can't do that, Jay."

Though he didn't want to, Jason understood. He'd heard Angel and even Jo complain about the band's constant media attention, so he'd taken it on himself to steal the spotlight as much as possible. It had worked for the girls in the band, but it wouldn't work for any other woman in his life. Not once the media circus found out who she was.

"Fuck," he said finally.

"I'll drink to that," Flavia agreed, raising her drink to clink it against his.

Jason drank deeply, not stopping until he'd drained his glass. It would never end. He could never have just one woman, or the media would eat her alive. Not as long as he wanted to be a rock star.

Maybe that's why Angel had broken up the band. Not because she was sick of music, but because she wanted to settle down to a normal life. Or as normal as life could be for someone like her, with the man she intended to marry.

"Another one?" he asked. "I'm buying."

Flavia nodded, and Jason waved over a waitress to order two more drinks. Lunch arrived not long after, and it occurred to him that Flavia was a tour guide who'd seen places in the Kimberley where he hadn't been.

"So, the Gibb River Road and Uluru," Jason began. "Worth seeing, or just something we sell to tourists?"

Flavia smiled mischievously. "You really should see them for yourself. Uluru's awesome, but Mount Augustus is bigger. Everyone wants to see Uluru, though, so that's where the tours go. You should see it in the wet season. The waterfalls..."

Jason sat and listened, caught up in the wonders of places he planned to visit. Next year, he promised himself. After the wedding and everything was over. Before he signed the recording contracts and had to get back to work in the studio. But not with Flavia.