Page 82 of Rescue

Chapter Fifteen

Lennon

I’m sitting at a little bistro table in London, lost in my thoughts, when Haylee appears in front of me. “Lennon? Hey, Len?”

I shake my head to clear it, wondering how many times she called my name. “Sorry. Daydreaming. How’d it go?”

She tries to hide a smile by ducking her head as she joins me. We had arranged to meet at this restaurant a half hour ago, but Haylee had to postpone slightly when Louis assigned her an interview with an entertainment website back home. When she looks up again, she’s still smiling.

“That good, huh?”

“It’s just weird,” she says, the smile turning to a grin. “I’m doing a phone interview. InLondon.”

“You’re a hit. I knew you would be.”

She shakes her head. “Soweird.”

“What does Louis say?”

She rolls her eyes. “He says we need to pounce on our momentum.”

“He’s not wrong.”

“Yeah, but what else can we do, besides what we’re doing? I mean, we’re on tour.”

“In Europe,” I point out. “And a lot of this interest is coming from back home.” Again, the attempts to hide the smile. It’s pretty cute. She’s been like this ever since the live Paris concert aired and Intrigue starting getting a lot more attention.

From the first time I heard her sing, I knew that all it would take for her to make it big was a little exposure. And it looks like that concert, airing in a record-breaking number of households in North America, has had that exact effect. Suddenly Intrigue is getting a lot more interview requests and radio play back home. It’s pretty fun to watch. Especially if she’s going to keep smiling like that.

“So what’s next on the agenda?” I ask, pouring some water from the carafe on the table and passing it to her. “You guys have time off before the next show?”

“For now. I should probably get the hell out of London before Louis books us for something else.”

“Don’t tempt me. I’d love to get out of here.”

She sits up straight. “Yeah? Where would we go?”

I think about that. “I’m still bummed we didn’t get to Italy on this trip.”

“Ooh, Italy.” She sighs. “But that’s probably too far away for just a night. You know what we should have done?”

“What?”

“I was reading that book you got me, the one about the water lilies?” On our last day in Paris, Haylee and I spent an afternoon alone at the Orangery, a small museum that housed six of Monet’s famous water lily paintings. Each huge canvass took up an entire wall in the gallery. And since she also loved the Monet at d’Orsay so much, I bought her a souvenir book on the artist.

“Yeah? Are there any paintings you want to see here in London?”

She shakes her head. “Not that I saw. But it did talk about Monet’s house. Did you know you can visit it? And see the actual pond where he painted the water lilies? It’s in Giverny, which I guess is pretty close to Paris. We totally should have gone. I wish I’d read it sooner—Lennon? Hey, are you okay?”

I try to make myself breathe normally, try to unclench my jaw. She has no way of knowing about Giverny. How could she possibly when my own brothers don’t know?

“Lennon?”

“I’m fine,” I say quickly. “You’re right, we should have gone down there. I should have thought of it.”

From the look she’s giving me, I’m not doing a very good job of proving that I’m fine. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing. I—”