Chapter 8: The Launch Party

Jax's record label launched in a warehouse in Brooklyn, and I arrived with the husband I had been told to protect.

I had invested in the label, so Phillip came as the family's representative.

Linnea came as Phillip's guest.

She wore a white dress and a limp that had improved considerably since the pearls.

"Smile," Phillip said to me at the door, as the photographers lifted their cameras. "Just for the next hour."

"I always smile," I said.

"You smile at everyone but me."

"You're very hard to see in a crowd," I said. "You stand like a coat rack."

He took that, and said nothing, and offered me his arm.

I took it.

It was the first time his arm had been under my hand in public, and I felt every one of his muscles stop moving.

Inside, five hundred people were holding drinks and pretending not to look for the star.

Jax came out on stage in a leather jacket and no shirt, and the room made the sound a room makes when it has been waiting for an hour.

"This one's for a woman who knows what time it is," he said into the mic.

He found me in the crowd without trying.

"She counts everything," he said. "Minutes. Miles. Men."

The room laughed.

Phillip's fingers tightened on my elbow.

"Don't say anything," I murmured.

"I wasn't going to."

"Your hand is going to leave a mark."

He let go at once.

Jax played for forty minutes, and I watched every one.

Afterward a stagehand tapped my shoulder and said Mr. Rowan was asking for me about the merchandise.

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