The doors open and we could see the crowd pushed to the side outside the front doors. The bellhop, Danny, was standing inside next to the entrance and looked frustrated, then suddenly relieved that we were there.
“Mister Garcia sent all of you down?”
“We volunteered,” Nelson said. “If there’s three of us, we might be able to get them out of here pretty quick.”
“Thank you,” he said. “I like this job and Mrs. Dunbriar was threatening to take me to the condo board. I tried to explain to her, but she’s not exactly willing to listen to me. I’m just the help.”
That made my blood boil, but I didn’t say anything. I’d report that back to Chase and Marcus and let them deal with Dunbriar and her attitude.
Walking out ahead of us, Danny held the door open and let us into the crowd. Rowdy was a good word for them. The majority were Maddox’s fans, and all of them knew who Nelson was. There was a small group of women who were there for me.
Still weird, to think that these women wanted me to just scribble my name on a sheet of paper for them. They acted like they had won the lottery.
Maddox’s fans were quick and polite, and most of them had albums he could sign. They all had Nelson signing the back of receipts and envelopes—and someone did pull out a Starbucks napkin.
Nelson glanced down the street and grimaced. “Shit,” he whispered.
“What?” I asked, signing a trading card of myself that someone had offered. I’d forgotten about the UDLR trading cards we’d had in Korea.
“Valerie Boyd.” Nelson ground out the name.
Maddox hissed under his breath. “Shit, where
“Coming up the street with her camera and assistant,” he said.
I glanced at the crowd around us. While it had diminished, there were still enough of them that we couldn’t bow out gracefully. That meant facing the Muggle equivalent of Rita Skeeter down.
Not what I was up to dealing with after my emotional trash fire in the bathroom earlier.
“Someone blabbed we were here,” Maddox said. “Now our names are going to be all over the Daily Quibbler.”
Nelson and I snorted. Clearly, I wasn’t the only one thinking like that. We ignored her until we just couldn’t anymore. she was shoving her way through the thinning crowd.Rude.
She moved her assistant closer, and handed her the camera. She held out her phone, and I could see the voice notes already running on the front. “What are you three unlikelies doing out here? Do you live here?”
“We were visiting a friend,” Maddox answered.
“So, Maddox, Nelson, and Austin all hang out together?”
“It’s a friend’s house.” Nelson repeated what Maddox had said. I caught on.
“Anyone we might know?”
“Nope,” I answered. Though she would totally know half or more of the people up there.
She zoomed in on Nelson first. “Any truth to the rumor to you being Jennifer Li’s baby daddy?”
Nelson laughed. “No, Val. Not even close. You know damn well she was seeing Crash Thompson for the past two years.”
“There was a rumor you were seen at her place.”
“We broke it off on good terms, of course I’ve been to her place.”
“So, you could be her baby daddy.”
“Uh, no,” he said, rolling his eyes. “Try Crash.”
“Do you want to go on record—”
