Cole asked, “Still have that glove and baseball I gave you?”
“Yeah!” Toby darted around the sofa and down the hall before Cole could say another word.
Lindsey and Cole burst out laughing. “You don’t mind me stealing him for a little while?” Cole asked, because he knew how precious the boy’s time was to his mother.
“Course not. He needs to have fun.”
Once Toby and Cole exited to the yard, Sloan felt awkward. Perhaps sensing it, Lindsey patted the sofa cushion. “I know I flaked out on you earlier, and after seeing the scrapbook and hearing about our daddy, you must have questions.”
Sloan edged onto the sofa, unsure of where to begin. Certainly not with Where’s your proof?
“Would you like to see the scrapbook again?”
“That’s all right. I—um—I was just wondering how you ended up in Windemere from Memphis.”
“That’s an odd story too. Mine and Bo’s marriage hadn’t been good for some time.” Lindsey dropped her gaze. “After my diagnosis, things got worse. I couldn’t be the wife Bo wanted. I also think when Bo married me, knowing Daddy had been a recognized musician, he thought that I’d have money.” She shook her head, forced a sad smile. “I stuck it out for a time, but when Bo started picking on Toby, I left and moved in with my parents. Daddy drove me to and from my chemo treatments, three times a week at first. Toby was barely three, and my treatments could take a while, so Daddy stayed with him in a playroom at the hospital. One night driving home, with Toby asleep in his car seat, Daddy says to me, ‘You know, princess, if you decide to get out of this big city and away from Bo, check out Windemere, not too far from Nashville.’ I told him I’d never heard of the place, but he said it was a real nice little town, small and friendly, and that it would be a good place to raise Toby.”
Sloan’s pulse quickened. “Why would he pick Windemere?”
“At that time, I had no idea. But he said it to me more than once. Between chemo and being sick, taking care of Toby and leaving Bo, I was a mess. But after the accident, after his and Mom’s funerals—” Her voice caught. Sloan waited patiently. “They left me all their worldly goods, including their house, which I sold. Bo was starting to become a problem too. I had to get a restraining order to keep him away and—well, I remembered what Daddy said about Windemere. I came and bought this house. Got lucky, getting Cole for a neighbor.”
“And Gloria?”
“A dear friend who didn’t want me moving here by myself. She may be a little rough around the edges, but her heart is pure gold. She takes good care of me and Toby too. Plus…” Lindsey paused, toyed with a tissue she held. Sounds from outside, the crack of a bat and Cole yelling, “Run, Toby! Home run!” floated through the screen door. A ceiling fan moved stuffy air above the sofa.
Lindsey said, “Plus I want to give you something, Sloan, because I believe it belongs to you. When I cleaned out the old house before selling it, I found this envelope. It looked like it had been opened many times.” Lindsey reached into the pocket of the housedress she wore, withdrew a folded paper envelope worn thin, and yellowed with time, and handed it to Sloan. “Daddy had it hid in a shoebox. As you can see, he wrote the word Windemere on it.”
Sloan saw the scrawl of the town’s name in faded ink. She lifted the flap, pulled out a very blond curl of baby hair tied with a silky pink ribbon. “You—you think this is my hair?”
Lindsey closed Sloan’s hand around the curl. “It’s not mine. I had dark hair like my mother….A piece of it is in my baby book.”
Tears filmed Sloan’s eyes. LaDonna had never saved anything from her infancy that Sloan knew of.
Lindsey raised her fingers as if to touch her head covering, today a bright cotton scarf of red, yellow, green, and white, but she paused, then lowered her hand. “Sometimes I forget I have no hair.” A rueful smile crossed her face. “Wigs are hot.”
Sloan opened her hand and stared at the soft tuft of fine baby hair. In her palm the hair lay weightless, the ribbon limp from its long bondage in the envelope.
“Oh, Sloan, when I saw you on that TV show, when I heard you sing, when people started buzzing about Sloan, one of Windemere’s own, being a contestant…I knew. I just knew you were the baby Daddy left behind. I see him in your face. I hear him in your voice. Jerry Sloan is our father.”
Sloan felt as if the room were shrinking, the air suffocating. The emotional side of her brain wanted to believe, but her skeptical side pushed back. Everything Lindsey had told her was speculation and circumstantial. There were no photos, no notes between LaDonna and Jerry, no letter to a long-lost baby girl….Nothing to see here. With trembling fingers, she tucked the envelope into her nearby purse.
The screen door clattered open, and Gloria hurried inside. “Oh, thank goodness you’re still here, Sloan. I rushed home and”—she panted—“and I’m so glad I did.”
Sloan was startled, but also grateful for the interruption. Gloria was breathing hard, her face red from exertion.
Lindsey looked alarmed. “Gloria! Sit down, girl, before you have a heart attack! Sloan’s not going anywhere yet.”
Gloria flopped into a recliner that had seen better days, and fanned herself with her hand. She plunked her purse and a shopping bag on the floor. “Oh…I was afraid I’d miss you.” Her bright eyes glowed. “The women I work with didn’t believe me when I said you were here in town, and that you knew Lindsey and that I’d met you.”
Sloan gave Lindsey a sidelong look.
“I’ve told Gloria that our friendship goes way back.”
Sloan appreciated the little white lie. She didn’t want rumors all over town about her being Jerry’s “love child.” She’d endured enough gossip growing up just being LaDonna’s daughter.
“Well, I’m just gonna prove to those crows at work that you are real and I wasn’t lyin’.” Gloria reached down into the shopping bag. “They’re gonna be so jealous when I bring in autographed CDs.”
She held out two jewel cases, and Sloan saw her own face smiling out from the covers, along with the song titles. The sight jolted because Sloan had left LA before seeing the finished product. She took the cases from Gloria. “Where’d you find these?”
“At Target.” Her self-satisfied smile stretched from ear to ear.
“Let me see.” Lindsey eased the cases from Sloan’s hands, beamed a knowing smile.
“Can you sign inside on your picture?” Gloria asked. She hefted up her purse, fumbled for a pen. “Make sure you say To Gloria Harrold….I want to wave it under their snooty noses! That’ll teach them to call me a liar.”
Lindsey returned the cases, and Sloan opened them. She dutifully wrote per Gloria’s wishes, signing her name with a flourish. She was capping the pen when Toby and Cole burst through the old screen door.
“Look, look what I got!” Gloria waved the CDs. “Sloan’s music.”
Cole took the CD and squatted so that Toby could see also. The two of them smelled like Tennessee red clay dirt, sweat, and the leather of a baseball glove. “That’s you!” Toby looked astounded.
Cole’s gaze found Sloan’s, and he winked. “That’s her, all right.”
Onstage performing, Sloan relished attention, but now in this small setting, she felt unnerved, and the sexy twinkle in Cole’s eyes wasn’t helping her to settle. The walls seemed to be closing in on her. Sloan stood abruptly. “I should go. I owe my agent a phone call.”
“But I was gonna call for pizza!” Disappointment spilled from Gloria’s voice. “Pizza Palace has the best in town.”
“Please stay,” Lindsey said from the couch.
Cole rose, said, “Tell you what. I’ll be on duty for the next twenty-four hours, but I’ll have a cookout for all of us at my place day after tomorrow. How’s that sound?”
“Thanks, but I return to LA day after tomorrow.”
Everyone looked disappointed. “Will you come visit again?” Lindsey asked.
Against her better judgment, Sloan sa
id, “Sure.”
Cole gestured toward the door. “I’ll walk you to your car.”
The afternoon sun was low when they went outside, and Sloan felt that the spring air had turned cooler. She crossed her arms against the chill. Cole opened the driver’s door, leaned down when she’d settled behind the wheel. “Sooner or later you’re going to have to break bread with this crowd. May as well be over my grill. Next visit, okay?”
Sloan steeled herself against his dimpled smile. “There’s still no solid proof, Cole, no hard evidence. I…I just don’t want to get her hopes up if it isn’t true.”
As he watched her drive away, he said, “Too late for that.”
In her hotel room, Sloan took a shower, slipped into the suite’s oversized terry cloth robe, and ordered dinner from a room service menu. Her head was spinning with all Lindsey had told her, and all she wanted tonight was to watch a movie on TV and sleep until noon the next day. She had just fluffed king-sized pillows against the bed’s generous headboard, when there was a knock on her door. She wondered how room service could have come so quickly. She crossed to the door and opened it, but no waiter greeted her. Instead she looked into the cool gray eyes of Terri Levine.
“May I come in?”
Shocked to see her agent, Sloan stepped aside. “What are you doing here? I—I mean…is everything okay?”
Terri stepped into the room, and the door automatically closed behind her. “You tell me, Sloan. What’s really going on with you? I want the truth.”
Terri commandeered the suite’s brightly patterned love seat, and Sloan eased onto a matching club chair, her heart thumping. Terri had arrived from LA without even a mention to Sloan in a text or voice mail. Sloan was unsure how to interpret the sudden visit. Had Terri come to deliver bad news? “What makes you think something’s going on?”
Terri drilled her with a cool-eyed stare. “I have other business in Nashville. You’re not my only client, you know.”
“I—I told you I needed a break. I’ll be home in two days.”
“I’m well aware of your schedule. And that you haven’t checked in once since you’ve been gone. Seems odd. Your EP’s in stores, and most clients get all excited about that. They usually call to tell me how excited they are.”
“I am excited. I saw it in a Target store.” It was a half-truth but all she had to offer. She’d been so absorbed in her trip to Windemere and the people there, she’d missed the jump start of the EP, the progress of iTunes downloads, the publicity schedule Terri had arranged. “Sorry.”
“Think back to that day in my office when you signed your contracts, and how I told you once your music dropped, we’d have to hit the ground running. Established artists and new artists…all scrambling to be heard. And bought by fans. You’re up against some big releases by big-name artists, Sloan, and we want to get you seen and heard. Loyal, die-hard fans are your bread and butter. We don’t want to give them any time to forget how much they loved you on the TV show. Kiley’s been hitting on social media on your behalf. But we need your undivided attention and efforts.”
“What can I do to make it up to you?”
Terri steepled her fingers, heaved a sigh, gentled her stern expression. “You can start by telling me why you really came back here on the verge of jump-starting your career. Not to relax, I’m thinking. To reconnect with an old boyfriend? The guy you wrote and sang about in ‘Somebody’s Baby’? Is he still hanging around and poisoning the well of your attention span?”
“No, no…nothing like that.” Sloan closed her eyes, gathering herself while considering the best place to start. She was granted a brief reprieve when room service rapped on her door. It had been a long time since her pasta lunch with Cole, and she was hungry. Or she had been before Terri had appeared. The waiter pushed in a rolling cart draped with white linen. She signed for the meal and he left.
“Please, eat. I’ve got all night,” Terri said. “My room’s just down the hall.”
Sloan had ordered chicken fingers and fries, but the food went untouched as she weighed the best way to explain things to Terri. “I came to Nashville in order to return to Windemere, about fifty miles away. It’s where I grew up.”
“I’ve always known about Windemere, Sloan.”
“You have?” A revelation she hadn’t expected.
“Background checks are run on all contestants once they make the cut. We have to be careful. One year a guy made it through auditions with an outstanding drug warrant against him. Another had posted some pretty nasty photos on the Internet. So it’s policy to do routine checks.” Terri massaged her temples with her fingertips.
Sloan went very still. “What did you learn about me?”
“I learned you were raised in Windemere by a single mother, graduated high school under the name Sloan Quentin, and that you never had so much as a parking ticket. We only look for bad stuff, Sloan, criminal actions, inappropriate photos and rants on social media. As I’ve told you, digital input lives forever. Relax, you passed.”
“I changed my name.” Sloan’s heart was thudding hard, banging inside her chest. She was grateful some things from her past were still guarded.
“Lots of artists do that. Nothing wrong with the name you chose either. It worked for Peter Gabriel.” Sloan knitted her forehead, and Terri sighed. “Before your time, but he was big in the eighties. My point is, you won one of the biggest career-launching contests in the country, but for reasons I can’t fathom, you wanted to return to Tennessee before your EP launched. You could have relaxed in Los Angeles. Plenty to see and do there. So tell me, what’s really going on?”
Sloan nibbled on a limp french fry, wondered if the background check had turned up LaDonna’s history of drunk and disorderly arrests. She tossed the half-eaten fry onto the plate. “My single mother never told me who my father was. LaDonna gave me her maiden name when I was born, and I grew up without any family. After my win, I was contacted by a woman in Windemere who claims we’re half sisters.” Terri rolled her eyes but held her tongue. “I came because”—Sloan stared into her hands, open in supplication on her lap—“because I wanted to know…had to know if it’s true.”
“Sloan, didn’t I discuss this with you after you won? I told you about scammers—”
“Stop! Please, I’m not stupid. I know about fakers and liars, and dipshits. I’ve met plenty of them.” She felt the sting of hot tears, blinked them away. “Just hear me out.” She didn’t mention how Lindsey’s letter had come to her, only that when Sloan hadn’t been able to make phone contact, she’d decided to personally confront Lindsey to catch her in a possible lie. “What I discovered instead was a woman sick with cancer, convinced that we share the same father.” Sloan repeated Lindsey’s account, offered names and dates, and parallel time lines, pausing only to take tastes of chicken turned soggy. She gave every detail, every assumption and similarity that Lindsey had given to her.
Terri listened, her expression neutral. When Sloan wound down into silence, Terri said, “I remember Jerry Sloan. He was real. What do you think about Lindsey’s story?”
“I don’t know. I understand how she could have made the connections. Windemere’s a small town, and Jerry told her to move here more than once.”
“Has Lindsey asked you for anything…like money?”
Sloan shot out of the chair. “No!”
“Calm down. It’s my job to protect you and the label.” She also stood up. “You need some rest tonight. But here’s the bottom line. I need you back in LA. I’ve got a lineup of radio station interviews, local TV shows, and two mall appearances booked. We need to promote you…keep you out front in the public’s faces. And most of all, we need an album from you.” Her tone was all business. “I don’t want you hanging here another day. There’s a noon flight tomorrow, and I’ve booked us seats. I understand about you wanting to know your roots, but you’ll have to sort it out later.” Terri walked to the door, where she paused, hand on the handle. “One more thing. If you wa
nt positive proof of Lindsey’s claim, do genetic testing. A swab from the inside of both of your cheeks takes seconds. Results come in days. It’s done in paternity suits all the time. It’s the only way to know for sure.”
Cole and his crew had been called in as emergency help for a seven-car pileup on the interstate about an hour after Sloan had driven off. Once the accident was cleared, Cole and his crew had their duty roster adjusted, and now they were crowded into a booth in a busy restaurant, downing nachos and beer. He raised his bottle. “Good work, people. Nobody died tonight.”
The team clinked bottles with his. After ordering, he checked his phone messages. One from Lindsey saying good night, two from his family in Indy just to say hello, one from a store about the arrival of his special-order hiking boots…nothing from Sloan, but even though he hadn’t expected a message he was still disappointed.
He liked being around her…wanted to be around her. He’d downloaded her CD, and through his earbuds had heard the power and complexity of her voice, had felt an intimacy that had sent ripples through him. She was the most interesting woman he’d ever met, not to mention one of the most beautiful and talented. He admitted he was starstruck, but it went deeper than that. She intrigued him. She’d set up walls and barricades around herself. He saw them in her eyes, her posture, the tone of her voice. Stand back…don’t come too close.
While waiting for food, Cole absently glanced at other tables and booths. His gaze halted on a couple sitting near a window, holding hands and deep in conversation. Well, well. “I’ll be right back,” he told his team. He walked to the couple’s table, stopped, blasted the couple an affable grin, and said, “Hey. It’s Dawson, isn’t it?”
Dawson looked up. His eyes widened with recognition. His body tensed, and his eyes turned guarded. “And my girl, Alana Kennedy.”
“Cole Langston.”
“Everyone calls me Lani.” Her friendly smile lit up her large brown eyes.
“Cole’s a paramedic. He took care of the man who fell that I told you about.”