My Beloved: A Thin Love Novella(22)
Keira clutched the bouquet in her hand, letting the heavy scent of the white roses move in and out of her nose. Why the hell am I letting this woman boss me around? And just then, as Rita pulled her down the hall into the lobby next to where the wedding chairs and aisle had been arranged, Keira decided that she wouldn’t act like a flower girl. It was her damn wedding too and she was tired of people leading her this way and that, assuming that she’d be agreeable, that she’d simply gobble down whatever shit they expected her to eat.
“Wait a minute,” Keira tried, finally able to extract her arm from Rita’s death grip.
“Ms. Riley, really…”
“Would you shut up for a second?” The look on the wedding planner’s face confirmed Keira’s suspicion that Rita wasn’t used to a disruption of her intricately laid plans. Keira also guessed that it was rare anyone spoke to Rita with more than a mildly elevated tone.
“Excuse me?”
“I need a moment. I need to take a breath. This is all too much and it’s making me sick to my stomach.” She tried to make the quiver in her voice vanish, but her temper had been stoked and those practiced techniques to control her anger, to prevent her from lashing out, became unfamiliar and unimportant. She closed her eyes, exhaling so hard that her teeth whistled. “I need my son and I need Kona.” She opened her eyes, mildly grateful that Rita wasn’t frowning, wasn’t arguing. “I need them right now. Please.”
“Alright, Ms. Riley, I can do that for you, but please,” Rita waved in front of them, to a room on the other side of the aisle, “take a moment to speak with the media. There won’t be time later.”
A quick nod and Keira walked through the small cluster of wedding guests, smiling at them, listing off the members of Kona’s family, his old teammates she only recognized from their endorsements and news articles. Other than Ransom, Leann and Mark, Keira really didn’t have any guests. That made her frown, it made her ache for Bobby, all alone in Nashville. It made her wish her father was there to walk her down the aisle, that her mother hadn’t alienated everyone around them so the only family they had left would actually want to spend time with them. Being a single mother, then trying to maintain that while working toward success as a songwriter, meant that Keira had never made time for any enduring friendships. She didn’t mind, really. She had Ransom, she had Mark and his Johnny. She had Leann when she’d come for visits and Bobby, of course. But as Keira stepped closer to that open door, to the cameras and lights she knew would be shooting down on her, she wished she’d spoken up, told Kona that what she wanted was simple. Him. Nothing else but him.
Sweat began to collect at the base of her neck as Keira walked into the small reception room. She caught the gaze of a handsome man, a face she vaguely remembered seeing on some sports program Ransom always watched, but she didn’t know his name. He was in a tailored dark suit and his skin looked like smooth, milk chocolate, making his beautiful hazel eyes contrast wildly against that dark complexion.
“Keira,” he said, walking toward her with a wide, honest smile on his face and his hand outstretched ready to shake hers. “I’m Micah Scott.”
Keira’s gaze moved around the room, to the technicians behind the tall lights stretching nearly to the chandelier. The man holding her hand followed her gaze, looked over her shoulder and released a brief laugh. “Kona said you weren’t all that accustomed to media attention.”
“No. Not really.” She took her hand back and he waved her to the center of the room, under those harsh, hot lights and in front of a portal camera set up on a tripod with a large lens staring at her like a shocked eyeball.
“You look beautiful, by the way.”
“Thanks.” Keira usually shied away from flattery, but her mind was too focused on that lens, on the heads peeking into the room from the lobby that she didn’t even blush when Micah complimented her.
“Funny that you lived in Nashville and have been involved in the production of so many popular songs, but you don’t frequently talk to the media. Why is that?”
“Um, I was just never comfortable in front of a camera.”
“But you’re okay on a stage?”
“Sometimes. It’s different.” Her eyes shifted over Micah’s head, to the guy behind the camera as he fiddled with a few buttons. “Can’t… can’t see the crowd from the stage if the lights are bright enough.”
Micah followed her gaze, stepping in front of the camera so Keira had no choice but to look up at him. “Just try to relax. This won’t take long at all. It’s your wedding day and we don’t want to keep you more than we have to.”
Keira nodded, leaned back when a tall man with red hair who smelled of cigarettes and spearmint gum clipped a small microphone to the side of her dress.
“Great. We ready, guys?” Micah looked over to the sound board, the men behind it and then back to Keira when he got a thumbs up.
She saw Micah’s mouth moving and she somehow answered his questions, but she knew she was coming off as stiff and robotic. PR and marketing weren’t things she’d ever excelled at, and her unprofessional, uptight vibe when in front of a camera was reason number one why the label hadn’t expected Keira to do too much media.
Micah kept asking questions and, mindlessly, Keira answered, but her voice was pitched too low, she sounded nervous. The lights above her felt like a raging fire, warming her so quickly that within just a few minutes, Keira could feel the expertly applied make-up melt on her forehead.