Page 143 of Hard Rock Tease

Even though Neilhad been the one to choose the location, I still had to wait for thirty minutes before he arrived. I watched the ice in my drink slowly melt and tried not to check my phone for the time more than once every minute or so. He looked frazzled when he arrived, hair sticking up even more than usual, a pinched expression on his face.

“Sorry,” he said briskly. “One of our cameras got busted and I needed to find a replacement, stat. This town is so small, there’s no way we can just buy one locally. We’ll have to get one shipped to us, but we’re in a different location every day.” He blew out a sigh and rubbed the bridge of his nose.

“Don’t you have a director of photography for that?”

“Well—” He looked taken aback. “We do, but I needed to make sure we got the right camera.”

“Isn’t that his job?”

Neil gave me a bemused smile. “I just needed to make sure they did it right, that’s all.”

I decided to drop it. “It’s good to have some time alone, isn’t it?”

“Yeah. It’s been pretty crazy lately, hasn’t it?”

Maybe for Neil, the workaholic.

“I actually think things have gotten a lot less hectic. We’re hitting our stride. You still seem pretty busy, though.” I took a sip and eyed him over the rim of my glass.

Neil grimaced and ran a hand through his hair, messing it up even further. “Yeah, sorry.” I expected him to make more excuses, but he didn’t continue.

I put my glass down. I had made sure to schedule my social media posts ahead of time so the content would still go out while I was on the date. If I could make time for us, why couldn’t Neil?

“So, how is your work going?” he asked. “Any good news online?”

“Yeah, there’s been a lot of chatter about the tour. People are getting excited about the new album.”

“That’s great.”

“I don’t want to talk about work, though,” I added. He readily agreed and changed the topic to a new movie coming out soon, some artsy piece he said he wanted to take me to. It sounded like fun. We were in the middle of making plans when his phone pinged. He checked it and frowned.

“Sorry, I have to respond to this.” He typed furiously as I suppressed a sigh. And people saidIwas addicted to my phone.

After a few moments, he looked up and gave me an apologetic smile. “So, where we were?”

“We were trying to decide when to check out that new movie. It’s probably only showing in big cities. We’ll have to wait at least until next week. We’re scheduled for smaller shows for the next five or six days.”

“I might be able to get a preview copy from one of my friends. We could watch it together on my laptop by ourselves cuddled up on my hotel room bed.”

“Sounds romantic.” I smiled.

His phone pinged again and he groaned as he checked it.

“I’m so sorry. Things are blowing up back at the concert hall. Do you mind if we cut this short?”

My shoulders slumped in disappointment. Was this how it was going to be? Always fighting to make time to see each other and being interrupted in the few small pockets of time when we did? I eyed Neil. He looked disappointed, too, but not enough to stay and finish the date.

“Neil…” I started, trailing off.

“Yeah?”

“Look, it’s fine if you can’t make time for me. Your work is important. You just need to come out and tell me and not string me along.”

“Ailey, that’s not—”

I looked down at my glass. “Maybe it’s better if you don’t have any distractions.”

Neil froze. “What are you saying?”