Page 45 of Jude

Again, I wondered why a man of such immense largesse and cultural power was bothering to risk his own reputation for a stray like me.

The majority of men I knew, apart from my father and brothers, had only cared for their agenda and took whatever they could grab from the weak.

Jude and his stepfather were rewriting my understanding of what a real man might be.

It was clear to me he was most girls’ dream man.

One who’d made it clear he wasn’t interested and claimed I was not his type.

I imagined he went for blondes so graceful and lissome I could never compare.

This was not insecurity talking. I was just pragmatic.

Jude Valenti, with all his fame, had women all over him in every city.

Our arrangement was for my safety, and while I was grateful, I was also acutely aware of the vast distance between his world and mine.

With a sigh, I buried those thoughts deep and swiped past Jude’s concert footage to stream the latest dramatic twists of the soap opera I was following.

We descended into Nashville by late afternoon, the jet rolling to a stop at a private hangar where an obsidian Cadillac Escalade waited on the tarmac.

Jude packed our gear into it.

After helping me to my seat in silence, he took the wheel, navigating the vehicle away from the airport and towards the sloping green hills of Tennessee.

The humidity hit the windshield like a wet towel, but inside the cabin, the air conditioning blew cool air on high.

Jude adjusted his grip on the leather steering column, the inked muscles on his forearm flexing as he negotiated a sweeping curve on the interstate.

‘Welcome to Nashville,’ he said, his deep voice cutting through the quiet. ‘It gets loud, hot, sticky, and the people will try to feed you butter until your arteries clog.’

I leaned my head on the passenger window as the blur of oak trees and distant barn roofs passed us.

‘I can handle sticky and I know how to cook, remember? I don’t think your soft spread action can defeat me.’

A small, rare smile tugged at the corner of his mouth, though his eyes stayed locked on the blacktop ahead.

‘Don’t underestimate Southern grandmothers. They don’t believe in a being thin, they see it as a personal insult. If any of them offers you sweet tea, drink it. Don’t ask how much sugar is in the pitcher unless you want a lecture on hospitality.’

After that, Jude went quiet, his focus shifting to the road.

We drove past historic brick storefronts, through downtown corridors fringed with neon honky-tonk signs.

The urban sprawl gave rise to a series of affluent suburbs.

The vehicle slowed as we reached a limestone security archway guarded by a wrought-iron gate that opened only after Jude pressed his thumb on a biometric scanner.

I also noticed the security guards in a nearby hut.

We wound down a private, tree-lined lane until we pulled up to his residence.

My brows arched at the sprawling, European-style stone mansion surrounded by manicured boxwood hedges and towering oaks.

‘Welcome home,’ Jude drawled as he opened my passenger door, then swung by the trunk for our things.

The house’s architecture was magnificent, yet as we walked through the pair of lofty mahogany front doors, a distinct sense of an unlived-in home hit me.

Everything seemed too perfect, too tidy, too neat, and in its place.