Commitment (29 page)

“
It’s just that
. . .
” H
e buried his face in her neck and lowered his voice
, suddenly serious
.
“I want you to have everything you want.
No matter what it
is, n
o matter what it
costs.”

g

W
atching Shawn from a distanc
e when they were out in public
was still so strange
.
The
way people reacted to him made his celebrity
status
more
real
than it had ever been before
.
He wasn’t
just
her
s
anymore
.
L
eaning against the check-in counter with Brendan
now
,
he was
waiting for the hotel clerk to bring the key
card
to their room, impatiently cracking his knuckle
s and looking about
the lobby.
Brendan was talking to him, probably going over the schedule for the day
and Shawn was nodding absently
.

Even if you didn’t kno
w who he was, you had to stare.
He had that certain thing that people called star-quality but it was more than that – there was something about the way he carried himself; demanding attention r
ather than merely accepting it.
When she was apart from him like this,
Riley
tried to
view
him objectively.
Six
-foot-one
and well built, though not overly muscular
, he
had
an
amazing
burnished gold complexion
, square-jawed good looks
and
intense chestnut
eyes
that
sometimes looked almost hazel
, depending on the light
.
And of cour
se, the famous lips.
Photographers for his album covers and music video directors alwa
ys seemed to make much of them.
Fu
ll, pillowy and extremely sexy.
But it wasn’t just that he was good-looki
ng – there was something more.

Riley
leaned back into the armchair and looked about the lobby, taking in the tourists and business travelers; people with varying degrees of enthu
siasm about being in Manhattan.
Most occupied themselves with their luggage and keys and
travelers’ check
transactions, but a romantic few stood near the glass
revolving
doors, staring wis
tfully out at the city streets.
Oth
ers stared unabashedly at Shawn
or excitedly pointed
him out to friends or family
.
A few took his photo surrepti
tiously with their cell phones.
Riley looked away.
They’d only been back from Jamaica for
two and a half weeks
and his other life
had already
aggressively
reasserted itself
.

Yellow cabs and Lincoln Town Cars at the curb competing for room to pick up and drop off passengers
and
valet whistles screech
ed over
the general din of the city.
Riley
spotted her reflection in the coffee table in front of her a
nd grimaced.
She looked tired.
She’d barely had time to shower before they l
eft the apartment this morning.
Brendan had called at a quarter to six insisting that Shawn get up and come into the city even though his
promotional
appearance wasn’t until two
that
afternoon.
Since it was a Saturday, she had no excuse not to tag along
, though to be fair, a couple nights in a hotel with Shawn was always something she’d looked forward to before they were married
.

Riley
had run her fingers through her hair and thrown some things into an overnight bag, pulling on a pair of jeans, a
H
enley
and hiki
ng boots.
There was n
o time for make-up or
try
ing
to look cute because
Brendan was outside
honking the horn by six-twenty.

Brendan, who
m
she’d always loved, she had come to view as the
unwelcome
ambassador for
K
Smooth
–
Shawn’s other identity.
As far as she could tell, ninety percent of his job consisted of reminding Shawn of K
Smooth
’s career maintenance needs and making sure he followed through on them
which was no small feat since all
Shawn care
d about was performing onstage;
the rest of it was
background noise
as far as he was concerned. Brendan made sure he did it all anyway and as a result
undoubtedly
helped make him the star he was.

Riley
leaned closer and
looked at her reflection again.
Her pleasantly darker complexion from the honeymoon had faded, and
her
skin now
looked blotchy and sickly, particularly
this early in the morning. 

“
Riley
.”

She
yawned, shoving
herself up
to go to
front desk where
Shawn
was finally getting a keycard from the clerk.

“
T
hey only have one keycard
for
the suite,” he said.
“So we have to leave
it at the desk when we go out.”

He looked at the cle
rk again.
“This is my wife
, Riley
.
Don’t let anyone get the key except for
her and this guy – Brendan Cole,
” he inclined his head in Brendan’s direction.

His wife
.
He’d
mentioned her name
almost
as an afterthought.
They’d been married
less than
a
month, and already she was just “my wife”.

“Yes sir.
And again, we a
pologize for the inconvenience.
As soon as
the
program
mer is functional,
we’ll
send up another
keycard
.” 

The clerk scribbled
something
on a piece of paper.
She was
somewhere around
Riley
’s age,
maybe twenty-three or
twenty-four,
and had her hair swept away from her face, fastened in a ne
at bun at the nape of her neck.
The nametag she wore said
‘
Lisa
’
.
She
avoided
look
ing
Shawn in the eye as she spoke to hi
m
as though afraid she couldn’t trust herself not to flirt.
R
iley had watched this scenario play out countless times before, and by far preferred it to those where women threw themselves at him as though she wasn’t even there.

“
We’re just here for the w
eekend so it should be a’ight.
But n
obody else can get in
in
the meantime,
right?”

“No, no,” she said hastily.
“
No one else can get in
except for housekeeping and security.
”

“Okay.
Good.”

Shawn pointed out their bags to the bellboy who gathered everything on his cart, following them toward the elevators.

“I told you you’d want to check in early,” B
rendan said as they stepped in.
“See how crazy it is already?”

“I know, B.
But
six
in the morning?” Shawn said.

“You
’re all the way in Queens, man.
I wasn’t taking any chances you got stuck in traffic trying to make it to the
venue
later.”
 

Riley smiled.
Brendan and Shawn talked about Queens as though it was at the far end of the earth
.
She
leaned back against Shawn, who wrapped his arms over her shoulders, his chin resting on top of her head.

“
Excuse me.” It was the bellboy.
“
Smooth
?”

“Yeah.
What’s up
, man
?
”

Riley
knew without looking, precisely the
expression
Shawn had on his face right
at that moment
.
A half-hearted smile.
Not encouragi
ng, but not off-putting either.
He didn’t enjoy being approached, but felt guilty about it, since he knew full well that
he owed everything to his
fans.
In private time he wanted to be able to shed his image like a coat but
unfortunately,
it
just
didn’t work that way.

“I was wondering – if it’s no problem, man – c
ould you sign something for my girl?”

Guys always said that.
I
t was always “for my girl” or “for my little brother
.”

“Yeah.
No problem.”

Riley
leaned instead against the elevator door while Shawn took a pen and paper Brendan handed to him.
             

“What’s your girl’s name, man?”

“You could just sign it K
Smooth
,” he suggested. 

Shawn ob
liged and handed him the paper.
“You
check out
the new
CD
yet?”

“
Nah
man,” the
bellboy seemed excited that Shawn was actually
having a conversation with him.
“
But I heard that joint is
the
sh
. . .
” He
cut himself off, realizing it would probably not be appropriate to use profanity to a guest.
Even if the guest
in question
made a living with profanity-laced lyrics.

Shawn turned to Brendan.
“B, you got any product in the car?”

Brendan nodded.

“Hook ol’ boy up,” Shawn said.

“Thanks, man
!
”

The bellboy offered Shawn his hand and they executed one of those complicated homeboy handshakes that
Riley
c
ould never quite keep track of.
When they got to the suite, Shawn tipped him fifty bucks and reminded him to look for Brendan downstairs in a few minutes to get the CD.

“He’s already a fan,”
Riley
teased when
the door shut behind him
.
“You didn’t have to buy
the guy
off.”

Shawn narrow
ed his eyes at her and grinned.

“It’s all about giving back the love they give to me,
Riley,
” he said.

“Yeah, yeah,”
she
laughed.
“Don’t feed me the lines you give
Vibe
magazine.”

Riley
did a thre
e-sixty, surveying the layout.
The suite looked familiar.
She could almost swear they had stayed in this exact room before, which wasn’t impossible or even unlikely given
their
history
with hotel rooms
.
When Shawn shut the door
Riley
immediately stretched out on the king-size bed, kicking her boots off and pulling back the covers.

“Damn, girl.
You that tired?” Brendan said.

“Yup.
So if you two need to talk
about work
you might want to take it back downstairs
.
”