Now that she'd told him to go, however-
Before he had time to follow that snippet of thought to a conclusion that didn't involve him being one of those stubborn don't-tell-me-what-to-do kind of idiots, they'd reached the stage.
It was like walking into a room you believed empty only to have someone flip on strobe lights and crank up the sound to ear-bleed level. Flashbulbs exploded like the blitz over London, blinding in their proliferation and blue-white intensity. A cacophony of voices shouted questions on top of overlapping questions, all of which seemed to begin with "Ms. Morgan! Ms. Morgan! Is it true that:?"
Blinking against the spots floating across his retinas, he put himself between Peej and the press until they reached a catering table set up at center-front stage. He had originally planned to observe the proceedings from the arena floor until Ben had insisted that he join them at the mics, stating that the press would likely have questions Jared could answer more easily than P.J. Recognizing the truth of it, he'd reluctantly agreed and now he was glad he had. Because the mosh pit swarmed with far more print reporters and TV crews than any of them had anticipated.
They settled themselves at the table and the grasshoppers hip-hopped with increased frenzy when Peej shifted unobtrusively away from him as he seated her. Ben opened the press conference by reading a brief statement.
It didn't begin to satisfy the fourth estate. "Ms. Morgan! Ms. Morgan!" A dissonance of questions peppered them.
Ben, smoother than a White House press officer, fielded as many of them as he could. Most were directed at P.J., of course, and were worded in such a way that only she could respond. She did so with polite composure.
But from the corner of his eye, Jared saw her hands clench in her lap and knew it was costing her.
As Ben had predicted, Jared, too, came in for his share of attention. "So who are you?" demanded one bubble-haired blonde. "Mr. McGrath is Ms. Morgan's manager, but why are you on the dais with her?"
"My name is Jared Hamilton, Ms. Grabowski," he said, reading her press tag. Not about to share that P.J.'s label had hired him to protect their investment in the wake of the bad press generated by her mother, he fell back on the liar's friend and offered up a partial truth. "I'm a security specialist from the Semper Fi agency in Denver. Ms. Morgan began receiving threatening correspondence and Wild Wind Records hired me to keep an eye on her." Not necessarily in that order, but they didn't need to know that.
The woman scrutinized P.J.'s discolored eye and still-bruised cheekbone, then glanced back at him with raised eyebrows. "You didn't do a very efficient job of it, did you?"
"That's very unfair," P.J. said, giving the reporter a look of cool censure. "My label hired one man. How efficient can any one person be trying to be everywhere during every minute of every hour of every day? Mr. Hamilton did an outstanding job with the tools he was given. He's the one who figured out that Luther Menks was my stalker. He's the one who had fliers made up of Menks's likeness and saw that they got passed out to every security team in every venue I played. And if he hadn't arrived when he did I'd most likely be dead."
He turned to stare at her for a second before remembering where they were and jerking his attention back front and center. But Christ on a crutch. She wasdefending him?
Never mind that she still angled herself subtly away from him-that big heart of hers just flattened him like a rockslide. P. J. Morgan was a bigger man than he'd ever be and he didn't deserve her generosity. Because Ms. Grabowski had it right. He'd done a piss-poor job of protecting her.
Despite the fact that his old man had never hesitated to tell him he wasn't worth the space he took up, he couldn't complain about his life up until now. From his seventeenth summer he'd had a family to tell him he had value, people to comfort him when the idiots of the world believed he really had killed his own father. He'd had a strong male influence in John, had plenty to eat, money in his pocket, an elegant roof over his head and access to a first-class education.
P.J., on the other hand, had been dragged from trailer park to trailer park by a mother who'd disdained everything that made her special until Jodeen discovered she could make a buck off Peej's musical gift. But had she turned bitter or self-pitying? No. She was sweet and talented and kind to everyone she met. And she was generous to a fault to give him credit for saving her life when it was his-what had she called it?-his lame game of emotional dodge-'em that had driven her to escape his company in the first place. That had left her vulnerable to a madman's attack.
She'd had every excuse to turn into a stone-cold bitch like her mother, but she'd refused to cling to the past. Instead, putting the ugliness behind her, she had made the best of her present and was heading into one hell of a future.
Which begged the question: If she could put her past behind her, what the hell kind of excuse did he have to hang on to his?
Wonder beginning to suffuse his chest, he turned to look at her.
"Ohmigawd! My baby!" a voice suddenly bawled from the back of the arena. Then, only a shade more quietly, "Let go of me, you ham-fisted moron. My baby needs me!"
P.J. swore softly beneath her breath and Jared didn't need to see the woman slapping at the security guard preventing her from getting near the stage to know that the infamous Jodeen Morgan had come to cash in on her daughter's misfortune.
He surged to his feet, but before he could push back from the conference table to hustle her mother the hell out of there, P.J. leaned into the microphone. "It's okay," she said softly. "Please. Let her go."
He sat back down as the guard promptly stepped back from Jodeen, the man's hands going wide of his body in a you're-the-boss posture.
Jodeen gave him one last slap.
"Mama, stop it. What are you doing here?"
"Oh, my poor daughter," Jodeen crooned, rushing the stage. "I just hadda come see how my darling baby is doing after such a horrible ordeal-even if you did turn your back on your own flesh and blood."
P.J. winced and Jared's ire spiked. So this was P.J.'s mother. She was smaller than he'd expected, which, considering her daughter's petite stature, shouldn't be a surprise. But where P.J. had a softness to her, her mother looked exactly what she was-a hard, self-serving bitch. And he wasn't about to let her just show up and start putting her daughter down.
He leaned into the mic. "I wonder why she would do that, Mrs. Morgan?" he asked in an interested, non-confrontational tone. "Could it have anything to do with the fact that you stol-"
"And you are?" The older woman interrupted with saccharine sweetness even as her eyes narrowed in sour assessment. Then, without taking her gaze off him, she gave her brittle ash-blond hair a little pat and strode through the parting press until she stood in the pit directly below their table. "No, don't tell me. You must be the new manager Priscilla replaced me with when she tossed her own mama aside."
"No, ma'am," Ben said, leaning forward. "That would be me."
"Oh." Hands on her hips, she turned her attention to the New Yorker, taking in his faultlessly tailored suit and patina of sophistication until the flashbulbs going off around her like paparazzi covering the red carpet seemed to recall her to her mission. The hard-edged calculation melting from her expression, she turned a tragic face toward the press. "Then who is this other man?" she asked piteously. "Is he some hanger-on, hoping to get his hands on my baby's money?"
"Interesting question, coming from you," Jared said. "Sorry to disappoint you, but I neither want nor need Priscilla Jayne's money. And frankly I'm not sure why you would assume I'm after it in the first place." She was drunk, he suddenly realized. Not falling down, sloppy drunk, but he recognized the exaggeratedly careful mannerisms for what they were. "However, please allow me to put your mind to rest. My name is Jared Hamilton. Your daughter's record label hired me."