The jet touched down in Vegas.

       Dara’s tummy was humming with the usual butterfly action that she was quite familiar with now. Just the thought of Kim Jaejoong would send her hormones into overdrive. It was infuriating, to be assaulted by these weak feelings where the man was concerned but it was reality she had to face and deal with. She’d been trying. Harder than necessary. So far, her hormones had ignored her memo. They only listened to their needs. Needs that had been keeping her nights, sleepless and her days, restless.

       Kim Jaejoong entered her life and turned it upside down within a night and now, she can never go back to what she was before, the Dara Park who controlled everything. Right now, something had taken over her life, her career and it was a growing monster she couldn’t contain, just like the one who spawned it.

       Kim Jaejoong breathed fire into her. She was a driven artist, but her passion was solely directed toward her music, but that was just about the fire she could bring to life. She started believing it too, that maybe she indeed lacked something vital in her to make a man stay with her. No man she’d dated had the patience to stay long enough to bring out her inner fire. They all wanted a piece of her right away. Bragging rights, maybe. They wanted to be the one to claim they’d bedded her first.

       Truth be told, she was okay without a man in her life but her PR team disagreed. She was in the business of entertainment, of looking and acting desirable and sought-after. The competition was tough in her genre and she had to maintain a certain symbol image. She was averse to dating for some time so she’d resorted to just hiring pretend boyfriends.This set up had worked so far and no “ex” of hers had talked about her life anymore as they all signed non-disclosure agreements.

       When she hired Jaejoong, she expected the same routine—get together, do business and split when they’d both gotten what they wanted from the deal. But Jaejoong was different from all the men she’d been with in the past, business or otherwise. JAEDARA was leaving everything else in the dust. It dominated the rags, the gossip blogs, even made it to all the social media.

       She didn’t know what it was that had caused this extreme fascination of JAEDARA. The Daralings had always been solid and she’d never doubted their undying support. They put all her albums at the #1 spot all these years. She’d been with other famous men before but hadn’t stirred this kind of hysteria among her fans.

       JAEDARA was received well by the Daralings. They were all giddy for her. But the Jaeharems were having a different reaction. Half of them hated her for snagging their virtual boyfriend and they’d been taking their disappointment to the social media and the rumor mills were grinding madly 24/7, milking the issue for all its worth.

       That dinner date had broken the internet again. She didn’t think it was possible, but the picture where she was laughing like she had no care in the world while Jaejoong looked at her with a warm smile on his face was scrapbook perfect that even she had sighed with a bittersweet feeling when she saw it.

       Bom had been filling her in on the buzz while she worked with her creative team at the studio.

       The mania over JAEDARA was unprecedented that even she was overwhelmed by it all.

       She finally forced her back to work. She was in the final stages of conceptualizing her music video with Jaejoong . They’d start shooting when he got back home.

       Jaejoong was in Vegas for a week to continue shooting his superhero movie. Her PR team had decided it was time for a new JAEDARA sighting. According to the latest script, she was missing Jaejoong so much she dropped everything she was doing back home to be reunited with him in Vegas.

       And now here she was in Vegas. And she didn’t know what to do. She was an even sorrier mental mess than she was last week. Kim Jaejoong was a situation she didn’t know how to deal with anymore and no amount of self-pep talk and reviewing her Sun Tzu strategies had helped clear and organize the chaos that was her mind. Even learning that CL re-scheduled her perfume launching to avoid being overshadowed by JAEDARA failed to give her a sense of payback.

       She missed the bastard so much she was dying.

       “Dara?”

       She looked up at Bom who was standing beside her.

       “The door’s open.”

       She blinked and noticed her chartered jet’s attendants were now carrying her stuff to the exit where the pilot and her bodyguard were waiting.

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