She was the damnedest woman he’d ever met. He grabbed her shorts before she could pick them up. “What am I getting in return for the humiliation of being used?”
The sneer reappeared. “You’re getting me. The object of your desire.”
He pretended to think it over. “Add a few more dinners like today, and I’m in.” He snaked a finger under the leg hole of her panties. “In all the way.”
Jack pushed his chair back from the cottage’s kitchen table and began tuning his old Martin. He’d recorded “Born in Sin” with it, and now he wished he hadn’t been so impulsive about giving it away. Those dings and scratches represented the last twenty-five years of his life. But finding out that Marli wouldn’t let Riley near any of her guitars made him crazy. He should have been aware of something that important, but he’d kept himself in deliberate ignorance.
Riley pulled up a chair, sitting so close their knees nearly touched. Her eyes filled with wonder as she gazed at the battered instrument. “It’s really mine?”
His regret evaporated. “It’s yours.”
“This is the best present I ever got.”
Her dreamy expression made his throat tighten. “You should have told me you wanted a guitar. I would have sent you one.”
She mumbled something he couldn’t make out.
“What?”
“I told you,” she said. “But you were on the road, and you must not have heard.”
He had no recollection of her mentioning a guitar, but then he seldom gave their strained telephone conversations all his attention. Although he frequently sent Riley gifts—computers, games, books, and CDs—he’d never picked out any of them himself. “I’m sorry, Riley. I guess I missed it.”
“That’s okay.”
Riley had a habit of saying things were okay when they weren’t, a practice he hadn’t noticed until these past ten days. He hadn’t noticed a lot about her he should have. As long as he paid her bills and made sure she attended a good school, he’d figured he was doing his fair share. He hadn’t wanted to look beyond that, because getting more involved would have interfered with his life.
“I know most of the open chords,” she said. “Except F is hard to play.” She watched intently as he tuned, soaking in everything he did. “I looked up stuff on the Internet, and, for a while, Trinity let me practice on her guitar. But then she made me give it back.”
“Trinity has a guitar?”
“A Larrivee. She only took five lessons before she quit. She thinks guitar is boring. But I’ll bet Aunt Gayle will make her start again. Now that Mom’s dead, Aunt Gayle needs a new partner, and she told Trinity they could be like the Judds someday, except more beautiful.”
He’d seen Trinity at Marli’s funeral. Even as an infant, she’d been irresistible, a rosy-cheeked cherub with blond curls and big blue eyes. The way he remembered it, she’d seldom cried, slept when she was supposed to, and kept her baby formula in her stomach instead of turning it into a projectile as Riley had. When Riley was a month old, Jack had left on tour, glad to have an excuse to get away from a moonfaced, screaming baby he didn’t know how to comfort and a marriage he’d already discovered was a big mistake. Over the years, he’d sometimes thought he would have been a better father if he’d been given a charmer like Trinity, but the past ten days had enlightened him.
“It was nice of her to lend you her guitar,” he said, “but I’ll bet her cooperation didn’t come free.”
“We made a deal.”
“Let’s hear it.”
“I don’t want to tell you.”
“Tell me anyway.”
“Do I have to?”
“Depends on whether you want me to show you an easier way to play the F chord.”
She stared at the spot under the sound hole where his fingers had worn off the finish. “I told Aunt Gayle that Trinity was with me when she was really with her boyfriend. And I had to buy them cigarettes.”
“She’s eleven!”
“But her boyfriend is fourteen, and Trinity’s very mature for her age.”
“Oh, yeah, she’s mature all right. Gayle needs to lock that kid up, and I’m going to tell her so.”
“You can’t. Trinity’ll hate me even more.”
“Good. Then she’ll keep away from you.” Since he didn’t have the details worked out, he stopped himself from telling Riley she wouldn’t be seeing much of Princess Trinity anymore. He knew now that he could never put Riley under Gayle’s dubious supervision. Riley wouldn’t like going to boarding school, but he’d plan as much of his travel schedule around her vacation dates as he could so she didn’t feel abandoned. “How did you get cigarettes?” he asked.
“This guy who worked at the house. He bought them for me.”
Riley, he’d learned, had turned bribery into a survival technique. It made him ashamed. “Did anybody ever watch out for you?”
“I know how to watch out for myself.”
“You shouldn’t have to do that.” He couldn’t believe he and Marli had denied her something as basic as her own guitar. “Did you tell your mother how much you wanted to play?”
“I tried to.”
In the same fumbling fashion she’d tried to tell him. How could he blame Marli for not paying more attention when he’d been even worse?
“Could you show me that F chord now?” she said.
He demonstrated how to bar only the top two strings, which was easier for small hands. Finally, he offered her the guitar. She wiped her hands on her shorts. “It’s really mine, right?”
“It really is, and I couldn’t have found a better person to give it to.” Suddenly, he meant every word.
She cradled the guitar against her body. He held out a pick. “Go ahead. Give it a try.”
He smiled as she slipped the pick between her lips, just as he did, while she repositioned the instrument. When she was satisfied, she pulled the pick from her mouth and, gazing intently at her left hand, struck an F the way he’d shown her. She picked it up right away, then played the other open chords. “You’re doing that pretty well,” he said.
She beamed. “I’ve been practicing.”
“How? I thought you had to give Trinity her guitar back.”
“I did. But I made one out of cardboard so I could work on my finger positions.”
His lungs constricted. He pushed himself out of the chair. “Be back in a minute.”
When he got to the bathroom, he sat on the edge of the tub and put his head in his hands. He had money, cars, houses, rooms filled with platinum records. He had all that, and his daughter had been forced to practice on a cardboard guitar.
He wanted to talk to April about it. The woman who’d once driven him crazy now seemed to be the only person he could turn to for advice.
Chapter Twenty
June, with all its heat and humidity, began unwinding over East Tennessee. Every night, Blue let Dean in through her balcony for their secret trysts, sometimes appearing only minutes after he’d politely escorted her to the front door from dinner at the Barn Grill. Resisting him had proved to be hopeless, even though she knew she was playing with fire. But now that she wasn’t dependent on him for a job, money, and a roof over her head, she’d decided she could take the risk. After all, she’d be gone in a few weeks. She gazed at him sitting naked against the bunched pillows. “You look like you’re getting ready to talk again.”
“I was just about to say—”
“No talking, remember? All I want from you is sex.” She rolled to her side, taking the sheet with her. “I’m every man’s dream woman.”
“You’re a nightmare of mythic proportions.” With one clean motion, he whipped the sheet off them both, pulled her facedown across his lap, and gave her bottom a firm smack. “You keep forgetting that I’m bigger and stronger than you.” Another smack, followed by a lingering caress. “And that I eat little girls like you for breakfast.”
She looked up at him over her shoulder. “Breakfast isn’t for at least eight hours.”
/>
He flipped her to her back. “Then how about a late-night snack?”
“You might think twice about crossing me, Miss Blue Bailey,” Nita said a few days later when Blue announced she intended to work on finishing the portrait instead of baking the chocolate Bundt cake her employer demanded. “That so-called carpenter? Do you think I’m stupid? I knew who he was the minute I set eyes on him. Jack Patriot, that’s who. As for Dean’s housekeeper…Any fool can see she’s his mother. If you don’t want me calling my friends in the press, I suggest you get into that kitchen and start making my Bundt cake.”
“You have no friends in the press,” Blue said, “or anywhere else, except for Riley, and only God knows what that’s about. Blackmail works two ways. If you don’t keep your mouth shut, I’ll tell everybody about those papers I stumbled over when you made me clean out your desk.”
“What papers are you talking about?”
“Records of the anonymous money you sent to the Olson family after they lost everything in that fire, the new car that mysteriously appeared in some woman’s driveway when her husband died and she had to support all those kids, the drug bills that are mysteriously being paid for at least a dozen needy families. I could go on, but I won’t. Do you really want everybody to know that the wicked witch of Garrison, Tennessee, has the heart of a charred marshmallow?”
“I have no idea what you mean.” Nita stalked out of the room, her cane punishing the floor with every step.
Blue had won another battle with the old bat, but she baked the cake anyway. Of all the women Blue had stayed with over the years, Nita was the first one who wanted to keep her around.
That night, Dean sat crossed-legged at the bottom of Blue’s bed, her calf draped over his bare thigh. As they recuperated from a particularly kinky round of lovemaking, he massaged her foot, which was sticking out from under the sheet she’d pulled up. She moaned as he rubbed her instep.
He stopped. “You’re not going to throw up again, are you?”
“That was three days ago.” She wiggled her foot, encouraging him to get back to work. “I knew there was something wrong with Josie’s take-out shrimp, but Nita kept insisting it was fine.”
He pushed his thumb into her instep a little too hard. “And you ended up spending the night alternating between hanging your head over the toilet and crawling down the hall to take care of that old biddy. Just once, I’d like to see you pick up the phone and ask me for help.”
She didn’t acknowledge the bite she heard behind his words. “I had everything under control. No need to bother you.”
“Are you afraid you’ll have to give up your jockstrap if you ask for help?” He dug into the ball of her foot. “Life doesn’t need to be an individual sport, Blue. Sometimes you have to rely on the team.”
Not in her life. That was a solo game from beginning to end. She fought an uneasy mixture of foreboding, despair, and panic. It had been nearly a month since she and Dean had met, and it was time to move on. Nita’s painting was almost finished, and it wasn’t as though Blue would be leaving her helpless. A few days ago, she’d hired a terrific housekeeper, a woman who’d raised six kids and was impervious to even the most blatant insults. Blue had no reason to stay in Garrison much longer, except that she wasn’t ready to leave Dean. He was the lover of her dreams: imaginative, generous, lusty. She couldn’t get enough of him, and for tonight, she shut out everything else.
She eyed his jet-black End Zone briefs. “Why did you put those things on? I like you naked.”
“I’ve noticed.” His touch grew lighter as he discovered a magical spot in the sensitive nook behind her knee. “You’re a wild woman. This is the only way I can get a little recuperation time.”
She dropped her eyes to the real end zone. “Obviously, Thor God of Thunder is fully recuperated.”
“Halftime is definitely over.” He pulled the sheet away. “And I’m calling the next play.”
Jack pulled his overnight case from the trunk of his car, which he’d parked near the barn. It had been a long time since he’d had to carry his own luggage, but he’d been doing it for the past couple of weeks whenever he left the farm for a quick trip to New York or a longer one to the West Coast. The tour was shaping up. Yesterday he’d approved marketing plans, and today he’d done some prerelease publicity for his new album. Fortunately, the county airport was large enough to accommodate a private jet, so he could get in and out fairly easily. With his pilot running interference, he’d even managed to get to and from his car without being recognized.
Dean had agreed to let Riley stay at the farm until he left for Stars training camp a month from now. That meant April was putting off her return to L.A., something he knew Dean wasn’t happy about. All of them, it seemed, were making sacrifices for his daughter.
It was nearly seven o’clock, and the workers had left for the day. He set his overnight case by the side door and walked around to the back to see whether the electrician had completed the wiring for the porch’s overhead fans. The walls were up, the roof on, and the smell of new wood welcomed him. Out of nowhere, he heard a faint female voice, so innocent, so sweet, so perfectly pitched, that for a moment, he thought he was imagining it.
“Do you remember when we were young,
And we’d awake just to see the sun?
Baby, why not smile?”
He forgot to breathe.
“I know that life is cruel.
You know that better than I do.”
She had the voice of a tarnished angel, dewy innocence tinged with disillusionment. He imagined pristine white wing feathers battered at the tips, a halo tilted ever-so-slightly off center. She improvised with the final chorus, moving up an octave, hitting the heart of every note, her range exceeding his rough rocker’s baritone. He followed the music around the back of the porch.
She sat propped against the foundation, her legs crossed, his old Martin cradled in her lap, the dog curled at her side. Her baby fat was melting away, and a shiny brown curl brushed her cheek. Like him, she tanned easily, and despite the sunblock April made her wear, her skin had turned nearly as brown as his. She’d fixed all of her concentration on hitting the right chords so that her sublime singing seemed almost like an afterthought.
The final chords of “Why Not Smile?” trailed away. Still not seeing him, she spoke to the dog. “Okay, what do you want me to play now?”
Puffy yawned.
“I love that!” She shifted into the opening chords of “Down and Dirty,” one of the Moffatts’ biggest hits. But in Riley’s hands, the silly country tune had an edgy groove. He heard traces of Marli’s bluesy purr and of his drawl, but Riley’s voice belonged only to her. She’d taken the best qualities from each of them and made them her own. Puffy finally got around to greeting him with an obligatory trio of yips. Riley’s hands dropped from the guitar in midchorus, and he saw her dismay. His instincts warned him to be careful.
“Sounds like all your practice is paying off.” He stepped around a pile of wood scraps nobody had gotten around to cleaning up.
She tucked the guitar tighter against her chest, as if she were still afraid he’d take it away from her. “I didn’t think you’d be back until tonight.”
“I missed you, so I came back early.”
She didn’t believe him, but it was true. He’d missed April, too, more than he wanted to. In some perverse way, he’d even missed the stab of pain he felt watching Dean playing with Riley, laughing with Blue, or even sparring with the old lady. He sat on the ground next to the one child he did have, the little girl he’d been falling so ineptly in love with. “How are you doing with the F chord?”
“Okay.”
He picked up a nail that had fallen into the grass. “You have quite a voice. You know that, right?” She shrugged.
Out of nowhere, Marli’s words came back to him from one of their brief phone conversations last year. “Her teacher says she has a wonderful voice, but I’ve never heard it. And you know how
everybody sucks up to you when you’re a celebrity. They’ll even use your kid to get close.”
One more mistake on his part. He’d blindly assumed Riley would be better off with his ex-wife than with him, even though he knew exactly how self-involved Marli was. He rolled the nail between his fingers. “Riley, talk to me.”
“About what?”
“The singing.”
“I don’t have anything to say.”
“Don’t give me that. You have an incredible voice, but when I asked you to sing with me, you told me you couldn’t. Didn’t you think I’d be interested?”
“I’m still me,” she muttered.
“What do you mean?”
“Just because I can sing doesn’t make me anybody different.”
“I don’t understand what you mean.” He tossed the nail toward the scrap pile. “Riley, I don’t get it. Tell me what you’re thinking.”
“Nothing.”
“I’m your father. I love you. You can talk to me.”
Unvarnished skepticism clouded those eyes that looked so much like his own. Words weren’t going to convince her of how he felt. Holding the guitar close, she jumped up. The shorts April had bought her dropped down on her hips. “I’ve got to go feed Puffy.”
As she scampered off, he leaned against the porch foundation. She didn’t believe he loved her. And why should she?
A few minutes later, April came jogging out of the woods in a crimson sports bra top and body-shaping black workout shorts. She was only comfortable with him if other people were around, and the rhythm of her steps faltered. He thought she might keep going, but she slowed and came toward him. The strength of her body, the way her bare midriff gleamed, made his blood rush.
“I didn’t expect you until later,” she said, trying to get her breath back.
One of his knees cracked as he came to his feet. “You used to say exercise was for losers who didn’t have more creative ways to waste time.”
“I used to say a lot of crap.”
He dragged his eyes from the trickle of perspiration sliding into the valley between her breasts. “Don’t let me interrupt your run.”