Chapter 3

A/N: My dear friends April and Mist got together to surprise me with this photo of what April invisioned Jake looked like for the beginning of this chapter (minus the dog, of course, LOL). So I had to add the photo here! Love you gals! :D 

Jacob sat on his hotel room bed, in nothing but his boxers, while strumming the guitar Leah had given him as thanks for helping her figure out what had been wrong with the acoustics of one of her stage guitars. She had been amazed with his ability to work on it when he had actually been hired to be the sound board technician, not the guitar technician. She already had a very good guitar technician working with her, but Nick had been just as stumped as she had. Then Jacob had worked his magic and she had been floored.

Leah had kept insisting that he was a gifted son-of-a-bitch even when he’d shrugged and said he just always had an ear for music…or rather, for sounds. Still, they had gotten to talking more and when she found out he could play the guitar too, as well as a bit of piano, she had handed him one of her old guitars she kept on the bus with her and asked him to play something. He had strummed a couple of well-known oldies which prompted her to gift him with the guitar saying he could probably make the thing sound much better than she ever could even though it was on its last legs.

So, he had finally given in and taken the gift which he was now glad to have since it kept him from getting bored. After the concert in West Palm Beach, the crew had packed up, then boarded their bus to head on to Miami where they would be spending the next five nights and four days at. Bella Swan would be giving a concert on the last three nights there which meant he had nothing to really do the first couple of nights except sleep.

Now, since her first concert in Miami wasn’t until the following night, Jacob had an entire day to spend at his leisure but since he had never been to Miami before, he wasn’t about to go get lost without anyone knowing about it. Plus, it was still rather early in the day and he was sure Paul was still sleeping in. He figured he would just mess with his new guitar until Paul called to see what he was up to.

He could hear faint noises coming from the kitchenette part of the suite that he shared with the other four roadies he had been grouped with. He had been lucky to warrant his own room while one of the other techs had the sleeper sofa, but Paul had told him that was the privilege of being one of the higher techies on the tour. As the noises continued, he realized even his stomach was rumbling, letting him know it was time to get up and search for something to eat in the supposedly well-stocked kitchenette.

He got out of bed and set the guitar against a chair before pulling on a pair of grey sweatpants to walk out into the shared area of the suite in. Making his way to the kitchenette, he saw one of his roommates, Aaron, leaving the area. Aaron glanced up at him as he stuffed the last piece of a sandwich into his mouth. He chewed, swallowed, then grinned at Jacob.

“Hey! I was wondering if you were here! Didn’t see you last night, but I was otherwise occupied anyway.”

Jacob nodded. “Yeah, I came here directly from the bus. Not used to this traveling yet, I guess.”

Aaron nodded. “Yeah, a tour like this one takes some getting used to. Be glad you weren’t here for the first part of it. Touring overseas is a headache I tell you! All that visa shit, and papers and crap! Woe be it to anyone who doesn’t have their shit together ‘cause they have to face the wrath of Bella Swan and Rosalie Hale! So, if you do well on this leg of the tour and they ask you if you want to join them on the next tour, just be prepared, okay?”

“Okay, thanks for the heads up.”

“No problem. I’m heading out to meet up with a cousin of mine who lives here, you wanna tag along?”

Jacob shook his head. “No, I’m good. Thanks for the invite though. By the way, is everyone else gone?”

“Yeah, Scott left early this morning and Quil just left not too long ago. Nick didn’t stay here last night, so no idea where he is but that’s not unusual for him. I’m guessing you’ll have the place to yourself ‘til mid-afternoon at least.”

“Right, okay thanks. Have a good one,” Jacob replied as Aaron made his way to the front door.

“You too,” replied Aaron before shutting the door behind him.

Now alone, Jacob went into the kitchenette where he managed to scrounge up a nice sandwich with some chips for an early lunch. He sat on the couch in the living room eating his meal while flipping through the channels on the television. When he was done eating, he took his plate and glass back to the kitchenette and was just returning to the living room when there was a knock at the door.

Wondering just who it could be, he backtracked and opened the door then stood there in amazement. Even though she wasn’t wearing makeup or looked dressed to kill like she usually did, Jacob still recognized Bella Swan beneath the baseball cap and black jogging suit she wore. She had tucked all of her blonde hair into the cap so that almost none of it was visible and simply stood there looking a bit annoyed at him.

“Is anyone here with you?” she asked.

“Huh?” He wondered why she would care if he had anyone with him, he knew she didn’t care what her crew’s private lives were like so long as they kept them private.

She rolled her eyes. “Are you alone? I need to talk to you.”

“Oh! Sorry! Yeah, it’s just me.” He stepped aside, “Come on in.”

Bella looked around before stepping inside, walking to the living room while Jacob closed the door. She was glad she had managed to get this time to talk to Jacob alone without anyone interfering. She was also lucky to have a free morning to do this since her photo shoot wasn’t until later that afternoon.

So, once she knew Michael was otherwise occupied, she had quickly donned one of her outfits she wore when trying to be inconspicuous and made her way down to the room she knew Jacob was staying in. With only Sam trailing her at a very discreet distance, she had hoped to catch Jacob alone. Now with Sam waiting outside somewhere, she was glad her silent prayer had been answered.

“So, what did you want to talk about?” asked Jacob, bringing her out of her thoughts so that she turned to answer him.

Her answer got stuck in her throat, however, when she suddenly realized he was bare-chested, barefoot and wearing a pair of grey sweatpants that only seemed to accentuate his tanned skin and good looks.

Geez, why was he just a simple roadie and sound technician? He should’ve been an underwear model or something!

She silently chastised herself before answering him. “Look, I’m just gonna get right to the point, okay? I need to clear this up and make sure I have all my bases covered before it gets out of hand.”

“Okay,” he said, looking confused again.

“I need to know if you’ve talked to anyone about our night…together.”

He frowned. “Of course not! No one has approached me about it. Why? Did it appear in the papers somewhere?”

Bella noticed his concerned voice.

“I swear I didn’t talk to anyone about it. I’m not into dishing gossip for cash,” he stated.

She shook her head. “No, no. That’s not it. I mean it hasn’t gotten out like that. I just meant have you talked to anyone at all? Like Paul or someone else?”

“No, but…I don’t understand…why are you asking me this?”

She sighed. “Well, I’m not sure what Paul has told you about working for me, but there are certain rules I expect everyone to follow. And…and I even have a set of rules I follow myself.”

He nodded. “Sure. Yeah, Paul has mentioned something about that.”

“Oh,” she bit her bottom lip before looking him in the eyes. “See, the thing is…”

She stopped and looked away. “Um, could you just, put on a shirt or something? I can’t take you seriously when you look…like that.”

He remained where he was, simply staring at her for a few moments. Then, a smirk slowly crept over his features before he spoke in a smug voice.

“Sure, sure. Why don’t you make yourself comfortable while I go change into something more…suitable.”

Bella resisted the urge to make a sarcastic retort, waiting for him to disappear into the bedroom before plopping down on the couch with a sigh of relief. She had a few more minutes to get herself together before Jacob came back out. Now, all she had to do was be her usual strong self when he returned so she could lay down the law. She had to let him know exactly what was at stake for both of them if they couldn’t deal with what had happened.

By the time Jacob returned in a pair of jeans and a blue t-shirt, which didn’t seem to make him any less attractive to her, she had managed to get her thoughts in order. She tried to ignore the fact that he could probably make a burlap sack look good and decided to launch back into the conversation. The faster she got it over with, the faster she could leave his presence.

“As I was saying before, I have rules that I follow and everyone who has worked with me for a while know them well. One of those rules is that I never have intimate relations with anyone who works with me, not even for a night…it just gets in the way of our work and has the potential to create a lot of unnecessary problems that I’m not willing to deal with.”

“Right, Paul did mention that to me when I first accepted the job.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, he told me several things about how I should conduct myself while working on the tour and how you did certain things. I believed everything he had told me until we met at the club.”

Bella frowned. “Wait…you knew me when you saw me at the club? You knew my rules? And you didn’t say anything?”

Jacob held up his hand. “Hold up…I thought you knew who I was! Not long before you approached me, Paul had left me, saying he was going to see if he could introduce me to you! So when I saw you, I thought you were coming to say hi. Then you asked me to dance and I thought maybe it was a test or something…until you asked me to leave with you. At that point, I thought maybe Paul had been lying to me about the rules. It never occurred to me that you didn’t know who I was.”

Bella sighed as she covered her face with her hands. A few moments later, she heard Jacob’s voice again.

“Bella? I swear I thought you knew. I didn’t think it would be a problem. I’m…I’m really sorry.”

She nodded. “I know. Well, what’s done is done. We’ll just have to deal with this now.” She gave another sigh as she looked at him. “I have a few people to talk to, to find out who really saw us together, but I’m hoping I can keep this quiet. I don’t want this to get out of hand, Jacob. That’s why I don’t want you to tell anyone about it. Your job and my job depend on our discretion. Now, I just need to know if you can handle working with me after this has happened?”

He nodded. “Yeah, I understand. It was just one night. No strings attached. I won’t talk to anyone about it.”

“Good. I won’t gossip about this either and I’ll take care of anyone who might have seen us together.”

“Okay.”

Bella stood up to leave. “If it ever gets uncomfortable, you have to tell me right away. I’ll do the same. I need you to understand Jacob, my career means the world to me, so if you can’t handle being around me after what happened, then I ask that you be discreet and find a better solution for yourself. You know I’ll have no choice but to let you go if this becomes a problem for either of us.”

“I know. I get it. You don’t have to worry about me, I’m a big boy. I can handle this, I don’t intend on messing up a good thing.”

“Okay, so from now on, it’s strictly business between us.”

“Yes,” was his quick reply.

She nodded. “Right. Well, I should be going. I still have a few more loose ends to take care of.”

“Fine.”

She walked to the front door, but turned to look at him as she took hold of the knob. “Thanks Jacob, for understanding and for keeping this quiet.”

He nodded, from where he stood near the entrance to the living room. “Sure, sure.”

She gave him a grateful smile then slipped out of the door as quietly as possible, shutting the door just as quietly as she had left.

Jacob remained where he was, simply looking at the closed door, a troubled look on his face. He was glad he hadn’t told Paul what had happened, even though Paul had asked him the next day where he had disappeared to that night at the club. Instead of telling Paul the truth, he said he had gotten a phone call from his dad and had stepped outside to take it. Then when he was done, he came back inside but Paul was nowhere to be found.

Luckily Paul hadn’t pushed the issue and had simply grumbled about how Bella had been too busy to meet with them anyway, so Jacob hadn’t missed anything. Still, he wondered what had possessed him to lie to Paul in the first place. It was almost as if he had known it wasn’t a good idea to tell Paul where he had really been. How strange was that?

Then again, maybe he just didn’t want to share that experience with Paul. The two of them were friends, but they weren’t that close. Sure, they had known each other all through their school years and had often hung out together, but Jacob only had one person other than his parents whom he was extremely close to. However, like his parents, that person was back in their hometown of La Push, Washington where he worked as a computer repair technician for both the La Push and Forks areas.

In fact, Jacob hadn’t even talked to his parents nor his best friend, Embry Call, since he had left to join the tour. That meant he hadn’t told Embry about the night he had spent with Bella Swan, although he already knew what Embry’s reaction would be. Embry was a true computer geek and when Jacob was with him, he even fell into geek mode himself. That being said, Embry would be hi-fiving Jacob for landing the very sexy, singing goddess in his bed.

Yeah, those would be his exact words.

Embry considered Jacob to be every bit as geeky and socially awkward as he viewed himself, so he would consider it an amazing accomplishment for a geek to get a gorgeous babe like Bella Swan in bed with him. Granted, neither Jacob nor Embry had been virgins since high school, but they weren’t exactly Romeos either. At least that’s what Embry thought.

Jacob wasn’t a player, but he knew how to flirt and he knew how to treat a lady. He could chalk it up to it being a natural thing, but really he had watched how his dad had treated his mom and it had made an impression. To this day his father still doted on his mother despite being confined to a wheelchair now.

The smile that had been growing on his face as he thought of his best friend and his parents faded once more as he returned to thinking about the conversation he just had with Bella. She had warned him not to tell anyone and had worried about their tryst getting out to the public. Apparently she was now out trying to tie up any more loose ends to keep it quiet.

He understood her need to do so, especially since he now knew everything Paul had told him was true. Bella was an internationally known musical artist. Her face and celebrity status reached far and wide. Even he had known who she was long before he had found out that Paul was working for her.

Granted, he wasn’t a fan like those who followed her every move and brought every single thing that had her stamp on it, but he did respect her talent. He had a few songs of hers on his iPod, but that was the extent of it. Of course, it was hard to miss anything about her when she was one of the celebrities who seemed to pop up everywhere. Unless you were living under a rock, you knew who Bella Swan was and since he was a sound technician who also fixed certain musical instruments, he heard her name a lot.

He had known about her reputation of never having a serious relationship with anyone. She was always being linked to someone or other, but it never lasted and she never gave any indication of being involved with anything other than her career. That told him that her sexual relationships had to be the casual kind with no strings attached and her recent conversation with him had proven that.

Jacob now knew Bella was married to her career and she wouldn’t let anything or anyone come between that. She obviously guarded her career like a jealous woman and woe to anyone who interfered with her plans for it. It made him wonder if this obsession with her career was just her way of protecting something she had always dreamed of achieving or if it was her way of protecting something else in her past that she really didn’t want to deal with.

No matter the reason, he would do as she asked and not talk to anyone about what had happened. He had never been one to gossip, plus he had known the night she had taken him to her room that it was just about sex. Her actions had told him that right off the bat, even though he already knew Bella Swan was a very sensual person from her music and videos. Oh yeah, he had known he was probably going to end up just another notch on her proverbial belt, but he was a man with needs who wasn’t going to turn down something like that.

So he wasn’t a player, so he didn’t necessarily like women who were easy, but somehow he didn’t think Bella fell into that category either. She had a life, but she was just as human as he was, and sometimes you just couldn’t ignore the itch that needed to be scratched or the need to feel a warm body next to yours. So what if that’s all she had needed, he had been happy to oblige. After all, when a goddess like her paid attention to a geek like him, he would have been insane not to reciprocate the attention, don’t you think?

**********************************************

Bella stepped off the elevator onto the floor where her room was located. She followed Sam down the hall, noticing that Emmett was standing outside her room where they had left him when she’d gone to talk to Jacob. Emmett glanced in their direction, then opened the door and held it open for her as she approached.

Before she reached it, she turned to Sam. “I need to talk to you for a few moments, it’s business.”

Sam nodded to her before giving orders to Emmett. “Maintain your position, I’ll be just inside.”

Emmett gave his nod of acknowledgement as Sam walked in behind Bella.

Bella walked to the plush living room as Sam closed the door, then joined her. She was already pacing, trying to get her thoughts together for what she needed to discuss with the head of her security detail. Sam remained quiet and patient, standing out of her way, yet at full attention. His eyes were the only things moving, following Bella’s figure as she continued to pace.

Finally, she came to a stop, standing across from him with only the coffee table between them. She looked him straight in the eyes and just blurted out her words.

“I need to know if you recognized the sound technician, Jacob Black, before the day Paul introduced him to me.”

Bella knew Sam wasn’t a fool. He knew exactly what she was asking. The words that came next only confirmed it for her.

“Yes. You had already met him the night before.”

Bella didn’t respond to that at first. She had to get her composure back before she could speak.

“Am I to understand that the rest of the security detail knows that too?”

“We haven’t discussed it, but if they are any good at their jobs, they should have noticed.”

Bella removed her cap nervously. “Right.”

“Bella,” Sam’s voice made her look up at him. She had never heard his voice sound that soft and…caring? “You and I both know that I will not speak of it to anyone other than you. The contract I signed when I started working with you made sure of that. However, if you need me to make sure that the other men do the same, I will.”

She sighed as she ran her hand through her hair. “Yes, please do that Sam. I need this to remain a secret.”

He nodded. “Understood.”

“Thanks. Um, do you know if anyone else might have recognized him?”

“No, I don’t think anyone else noticed that he was with you that night.” He paused as if thinking about something, then he asked, “Did you recognize him that night?”

She closed her eyes for a moment. She completely understood why he was even daring to ask that. Sam knew her very well.

“No,” she looked squarely at him, “I didn’t recognize him until Paul introduced us the next day. Had I known, that night would have never happened.”

Sam nodded as if to say “that’s what I thought” but otherwise kept silent.

“He has assured me that he hasn’t spoken to Paul or anyone else about it and he understands why I wish to keep this quiet. Now all I need is to make sure your men do the same and then find out if anyone else recognized us together that night.”

“There wasn’t anyone on the dance floor besides Jared and Emmett was walking around it. Everyone else was upstairs, but Emily and Alice were standing at the railing with you before you went down to him. When you walked down the stairs, Alice went to sit with Jasper, so Emily might be the only one who may really recognize him. She was still looking down at the dance floor when you met him.”

Bella worried at her bottom lip. “Are you sure Alice wouldn’t recognize him?”

“Positive. She was looking around the VIP area when Emily pointed him out to you. She never once looked down at the dance floor. Like I said, as soon as you left, she went to sit with Jasper.”

“What about Michael? He was with us at the railing right before I went down.”

“He never looked down either. When you dismissed him and walked off, he rolled his eyes then went back to where he had been sitting before. I know Paul was trying to introduce you to Jacob, but once Michael went to talk to you about it, Paul got sidetracked by one of the groupies with Collin and Brady. It wasn’t until you were walking off the dance floor with Jacob did Paul go back to Michael. I’m sure it was to find out if the introductions would occur, but by that time I was heading downstairs to join you outside at the limo.”

“And you don’t think they went to the railing and saw us leave?”

“No, you were already outside when I glanced back and saw Michael approach the railing. He missed you completely.”

“Hm, so Emily was still at the railing then.”

Sam shook his head. “No, she left when you left the dance floor, but I don’t think she was watching you the whole time. Still, she is the only one I am worried about.”

Bella nodded. “Okay, thanks Sam. Just ask your men to keep an eye and ear out anyway. I’ll talk to Emily and find out if she saw us or if she knows of anyone who might have. I just don’t want this to get out of hand, especially if Jacob is as good as Paul says he is. It would be a shame to let him go over something like this.”

“Yes, I agree. I’ll be sure to keep an eye on things, as will my men.”

Bella walked him to the door, thanking him once again before he walked out to join Emmett on watch. Closing the door, she leaned back against it with a relieved sigh.

So far, so good.

No one seemed to have seen her leave with Jacob and those that knew about it had kept it to themselves. Now all she had to do was worry about Emily since Jacob had assured her that he understood what had happened was only for one night and he had no problems with working for her. If all went well, he could be a great part of her touring staff…for this tour at least.

Pushing herself off the door, she went to get ready for her photo shoot and began to think of ways she could subtly find out if Emily had seen anything.

Anything at all.

A/N: Yes, Bella's hair is blonde...if you noticed in the banner on the main page. She's a rock star....her hair changes color...at this time...it's blonde ;-)