A couple of hours of being next to him in a room with a locked door? That couldn’t possibly be a good idea. "Maybe some other time," I responded nicely. "Right now, we’ve got more important things to do."
"More important than the greatest film of all time?"
I broke away from my paperwork and looked closely at the screen, but all I saw was two men on a train car. I shrugged. "I don’t think I’ve ever seen it."
"I’ll give you a hint. It’s from the director so great I named the band after him."
Ah, right, The Hitchcocks. "And here I thought the band name was just an excuse for innuendo," I said remembering how I’d first mistaken the band’s shorthand for its real name.
His eyebrow scar moved almost imperceptibly upward, and the corners of his mouth turned up. "You should know by now," he said, each syllable making my heart beat faster, "that I don’t need an excuse for innuendo."
I had to steer the conversation back to safety. "You know, I’ve never seen one. A Hitchcock movie, I mean."
"Not even Psycho? The Birds?"
"Nope," I said grinning. "Guess our tastes are incompatible. Ready to talk business now?"
"Exactly the opposite. I’m ready for you to watch," he said, but he wasn’t smiling back. "You need to know what you’re missing." I tried to interrupt, but he continued, "If you don’t watch Strangers on a Train, I won’t talk expenses with you and that’s final."
I felt myself bristling. "Hey! You promised in the hot tub you’d make the expense cuts."
"That’s true. But I didn’t promise I’d make them in the middle of my favorite movie. Now, are you staying or going?"
"Just so we’re clear, if I stay for the movie, we can talk expenses right now. No bullshit, no tricks."
He nodded once. "No bullshit. No tricks."
I sighed. It didn’t seem likely, but it would be far easier to talk to him now and watch the movie than to try to catch him later when he could come up with some other excuse to be "unavailable." I also kind of found myself almost looking forward to a break from work. "Oh, what the hell," I said.
As soon as I plopped onto the bed with my laptop, my eyes went wide. The mattress was the exact kind I liked best—supportive, but with enough pillowy softness at the very top to keep it from feeling like a board. Given what I slept on last night, I couldn’t help letting out a soft, comfortable sigh.
Jax’s dark eyes twinkled. "I knew I was good, but I didn’t know I was that good."
"Get over yourself." I shot him a wry smile. "It’s this bed."
"Strange," he said, scratching his chin in mock mystification. "It’s never had that effect on me."
"It’s definitely the bed, and not you," I reiterated, not wanting to feed his ego. "At least it doesn't plant fake female fans in the audience to come on cue."
"There aren't any planted fans," he said with amusement. "It's real."
"Really?" I rolled my eyes. "Let me guess, the Jax Effect at work."
He rubbed his thumb against his chin, smirking. "The Jax Effect." He laughed, sending a tingle of warmth suffusing through me. It was the first time I’d heard him laugh. It displayed a warm, human side of him I hadn’t seen before in our interactions. "I like it. Sounds like an album title."
I started laughing. "Maybe we’d better talk about those budget cuts," I said. Even though Jax was playing nice for now, I couldn't let this conversation get too far off track.
A dark cloud passed over his face and just like that his voice became cold and pure business. "What’s my easiest route to keeping the label off my back about money?"
I knew that I’d messed up. The brief glimpse of the warmer side of Jax had disappeared so quickly that I wasn't even sure if it was real. But then again, talking business was exactly what I wanted to do. If he wanted to keep things professional, that suited me just fine. "I’ve noticed one of the most expensive discretionary spending items you have is pyrotechnics. It’s literally burning up your money."
He looked skeptical. "Pyro’s an important part of a good rock show. It’s something that separates us from bands that aren’t doing as well, and bands that aren’t willing to go the extra mile."
"I’m not talking about getting rid of all of the pyrotechnics," I said hastily. "But I don’t think you understand the kind of financial trouble you could be in."
"Explain it to me then." His response seemed like he was genuinely interested.
Does he really not know? I’d heard band members were often kept in the dark about finances, but I’d never seen it in person. "So, to start with, your spending money isn’t really yours," I told him. "It comes from the label, and it’s an advance on your future album sales."
"I know that much."
"Well, you’re selling a lot of albums right now, but you only make a small percentage from each one. Every show you put on, every firework blast you set off, is coming out of that percentage."
He looked mildly annoyed. "So we wait for the money to come back to us through the tour receipts and merch table. No band really makes their money on album sales. That’s why we have accountants, to keep the cash flowing."
"But that’s exactly what I’m trying to tell you," I said. "You’re spending so much that your tour will be lucky to break even. Look at this page, here."
Jax squinted at the columns of numbers. "What am I supposed to be looking at?"
"This means that right now, given how much you’ve brought in and how much has gone out . . ." I thought for a moment about how to best express the band’s financial situation. "You can think of your concert budget for today’s show as coming out of your album sales from next week. But if you keep going at this rate, soon, all of next week’s money will be spent. You’ll be spending more and more in advance, a month, then two—"
"And then we’re playing low-budget shows in dive bars just to avoid bankruptcy."
"Exactly."
He stared at the wall, seeming lost in thought for a moment. "Fine," he said at last. "We’ll cut the huge pyro scenes from ‘Glass Brick’ and ‘Find Your Way.’ Those songs are probably off the set list once we’ve got new material, anyway."