“Why do I think you’re talking about more than the food?”
He laughed heartily. “A guy can dream, can’t he? You were dynamite onstage tonight. Crowd was feeling it, and so was the band.”
“I was glad to be a part of it.”
“Been hoping you and me can carry some of that good feeling forward.”
Behind them people chattered, laughed. Bartenders mixed and poured drinks, and servers whisked away used plates and glasses. She nibbled on a shrimp from the plate, glanced at him through thick eyelashes, realizing they’d been on this path moving toward this moment for days. “What feeling would that be?”
He set the plate and his glass on a cocktail table, put her margarita glass next to his, and leaned into her. “Let me show you.”
Tate kissed her, lightly at first, and when she didn’t pull away, the kiss deepened. She tasted the smoky flavor of whiskey on his tongue. Blood rushed hot in her veins. It had been a long time since she’d been with a man. Her arms encircled his neck, every nerve end throbbing.
He broke the kiss. “Lordy, you taste good.” He pressed her closer, and she felt the hardness of his body. Desire burned through her like a forest fire. He trailed kisses along her throat, nuzzled her ear. “Come back to my room with me. You won’t regret it.”
What could it hurt? One night, and then both of them going their separate ways.
The last time she’d spent the night in a man’s arms, Cole’s arms, she’d been a blubbering mess, dumping some long-ago fears and hurts on him. There would be none of that tonight with Tate. Just heat and passion, and pleasure. “I have to grab my purse.”
They waited for the elevator, him bouncing on the balls of his feet. She rooted for her cell phone on the ride down. “I haven’t checked messages since this morning.”
“No problem.” The elevator dinged its arrival on the ground floor, where a lone security guard called a cab for them.
While they waited, she scanned the list of text messages…several from Terri and CC, one from Cole. Her heart kicked up a beat. She tapped the phone’s surface and opened Cole’s message.
Lindsey passed away tonight, 10:40. Funeral on Thursday. Come if you’re able.
Cole was standing at the front window in Lindsey’s living room when a black town car drove up the driveway. Sloan exited the car, wearing a scarf and large round dark sunglasses that covered half her face. The driver followed with her bags. She had texted Cole at seven in the morning that she was on her way. The sight of her never failed to lift his spirits—even now in his sorrow over Lindsey. Sloan faltered at the front door, but he quickly crossed the room and flung it open. “Come on in. I’ve been waiting for you.”
Earlier she’d showered, thrown on an old pair of jeans and a tee emblazoned with the word Nashville and stuffed everything she owned inside two roller suitcases, including the thousands of dollars’ worth of new costumes. She had washed her face clean of the stage makeup, hadn’t bothered to do anything more constructive than put on lipstick, and paced until the bellboy had arrived to take her luggage to the lobby, where a car and driver waited curbside. Of all the things she’d been thinking of the night before, Lindsey’s dying had not been on her radar. Now all she wanted to do was throw herself into Cole’s arms. Instead she stepped into the silent house, tossed off her sunglasses, and gave him a repentant look. “I didn’t get your message until two-thirty this morning, and by then it was too late to schedule a car.”
Her eyes were red, puffy, and swollen from crying. He longed to take her in his arms. “You’re here now. That’s what matters.”
The house smelled of bacon and eggs, burnt toast. Sloan’s stomach went queasy. He opened his arms, and she caved into him with a gush of tears. “I should have…been here….” Sloan hadn’t slept well in more than twenty-four hours, not the night before the concert—too hyped before her performance—not in her hotel, not on the long drive from Atlanta. She felt light-headed from exhaustion and sorrow. “I’m so sorry, Cole. So sorry I didn’t know…sooner.”
“It wouldn’t have mattered. Believe me, Lindsey would have wanted you to perform, and me too. She slipped into a coma and never woke up. Last night she left us, gently and without pain.” In his job, Cole had seen enough people die to know Lindsey’s death had been a “good” one. “I hated to send you the news in a text that should have been communicated personally with a phone call, but your phone just went to message every time I tried.”
“My phone was turned off, and I didn’t look at it until I got back to my hotel room. You did the right thing. I wouldn’t have wanted you to wake me up this morning to tell me she was gone. I want to be here.” Sloan couldn’t confess that the text also had stopped her from making a big mistake with Tate. When she’d burst out crying, and saying that her sister had died, Tate had hastily put her into the cab and sent her to the hotel alone. And now, with her ear pressed to Cole’s chest, listening to the rhythm of his heart, strong and steady, her jangled nerves calmed, as if a balm had been spread over an open wound.
Cole could have held her forever, but she stepped away, and reluctantly he let go. “Would you like anything?…Coffee? Food?”
She had eaten nothing since the lone shrimp the night before but wasn’t hungry. “I had a cup of coffee on the car ride.” She took a ragged breath. “Cole, can I see her room?” She thought maybe the room would bring her closer to Lindsey’s spirit.
He led the way, and when she entered, fresh tears filled her eyes. The bed had been stripped to the bare mattress, all the pill bottles swept from the dresser, everything made tidy. Made as hollow as the feeling inside Sloan’s heart. Empty…vacated…gone.
“Gloria and the hospice worker did this last night. Gloria said that’s how they do things at the place where she works…strip beds and pack up everything. She was about to squirt air freshener, but I told her no. I didn’t want Toby coming in here, with every trace of his mother erased.”
Toby. “How…? Where…?”
“He and Gloria are at the florist, choosing flowers for the funeral. Gloria thought it would be good to involve Toby, and I agree. As soon as they return, we’ll go to the funeral home and choose a casket.”
She shuddered. Caskets came in every color. And in every size. A wound in her heart reopened as she remembered another’s casket, small and ice-blue in color. “Cole, let Gloria buy anything she wants. Don’t compromise.”
“Understood.”
Sloan shook off memories, said, “Now tell me more about last night. I want to hear everything.”
“Gloria, Toby, and I were in the room, sitting around her bed, talking to her, watching her breathing stop and start. Toby held his mother’s hand until she took her last breath, and even then he wouldn’t leave.” Cole patted the mattress. “He curled up like a puppy at the foot of her bed, and once he fell asleep, I carried him to his bed. After he was tucked in, I called a funeral director I know and he took over. This morning Toby refused to come into her room, but kids grieve differently than adults, so I think that will change over time.”
Sloan struggled to block a haunting memory of herself once opening a bedroom door and peeking inside to see rumpled bedding and clothes on the floor, and scattered drawing paper, a room where the air was stamped with the scent of wax crayons and candy mints and fruit-flavored gum. She shut the door on the image, whipped around to face Cole. “I think we should make up Lindsey’s bed with her coverlet and her pillows. The room should smell like her for Toby. He—he needs to feel her presence, not her absence.”
Her suggestion surprised Cole, but he liked it, well aware that mourners often found comfort in familiar things. Gloria’s training might have been all right for a care facility, but not for a child’s home. “Fresh linens are on the closet shelf.” He swiftly walked to the closet’s accordion door. “The coverlet’s in the laundry room waiting to be laundered.”
“I’ll get it.”
They swiftly worked in tandem, and in no time the be
d was neatly made. Cosmetics long banished to a drawer to make room for pill bottles were replaced on the dresser top, and Sloan found a dog-eared Bible inside a bedside table drawer and put it where Lindsey had always kept it. In a final act of bringing the room back to life, Sloan spritzed Lindsey’s favorite perfume into the air and onto the pillows. “There,” she said with a satisfied look. “This is better.”
“Remarkably better.” Cole took the perfume bottle from Sloan’s hand and put it atop the bureau. He cupped her face with his hands. In this moment she wasn’t a star. She was a soft and amazing woman he wanted to kiss, needed to kiss.
She read the intention in his eyes. And now he wanted to kiss her? When she looked frightful, puffy-eyed and burdened with grief? “I—I look—”
“Beautiful,” he finished, and kissed her softly, then more deeply, his tongue exploring, tasting, absorbing her essence into himself. He took his time, never moving his hands, letting the kiss rise and fall to the rhythm of her beating heart and his every breath. The kiss coalesced inside her, reaching deep into her core, transforming from tenderness into desire and then into something else entirely. She wanted to soak into his flesh, become a part of him, the skin and bone of him. He was fire and ice. Life and breath. And when the kiss broke, they were both left shaken, her trembling, him wordless.
He touched his forehead to hers and took in gulps of air like a man coming to the surface of the water after a near drowning. He had wanted to kiss her for the longest time but hadn’t expected the avalanche of emotion pouring through him now. You can’t have this woman, his mind warned. Loving Sloan was folly, a burden too heavy for his heart to carry.
She felt dizzy, faint. What had just happened? Her legs felt rubbery. Her heart skipped beats. She had erected walls all her life to keep others out, and this man had breached her barriers with the touch of his lips. She told herself that it had to be lack of sleep and food that had made her vulnerable.
“Sloan? Are you here? Where are you?” Toby’s voice.
She remembered leaving her bags just inside the front door, quickly stepped away, her eyes locked on Cole’s, and called, “In your mama’s room.” It had been a kiss, a simple kiss. Move on.
The boy skidded to a stop at the doorway. “Me and Gloria picked out pretty flowers for Mama.”
Sloan swept to the doorway, knelt in front of Toby. “Tell me about the flowers.”
Toby cocked his head, glanced past Sloan and Cole to the things within the room, and finally back to Sloan. “It’s pretty. Like Mama used to have it before she got sick. Did you fix it up?”
“We did it together.” She gestured to Cole, who’d come to stand behind her.
“I like it.”
Gloria joined Toby in the doorway, peeked into the room. “Oh, it’s so nice! Just like—” She stopped herself.
Sloan stood, hearing what Gloria had almost said….Just like Lindsey was coming back. She offered Toby her hand, and the four of them walked into the living room. Gloria looked ready to collapse, and said, “Cole, we should go now.”
“I’ll stay here with Toby,” Sloan said, and as soon as they were alone, she smiled and stroked his cheek. “Hey, you know what? I haven’t eaten all day and I’m really hungry. Could you make me one of those awesome grilled cheese sandwiches of yours? And while you cook, please tell me all about the pretty flowers.”
On the day Lindsey was buried, the promise of coming autumn turned into threats of summer rain. Low gray clouds held the sky hostage, and the air felt thick and smothering. The vases of flowers at the gravesite seemed drained of color, and the cemetery grass was a smear of brown. The only pop of green was the fake grass surrounding Lindsey’s casket. The graveside gathering was small, only immediate family. And Lani and Dawson.
Sloan hid behind big round dark glasses, eyes forward, afraid that Dawson might catch her eye and she would break apart, shatter like glass. She wanted to run, but couldn’t. She refused to sit, so she stood, stiff and unmoving, forcing herself to stare at the jumble of vases and flowers, most from neighbors and medical people, her record label, and Terri’s firm. Rick and Kathryn had sent a small tree to plant in Lindsey’s yard. After.
Toby and Gloria sat in chairs facing the casket draped with white and pink and yellow roses, Toby, glassy-eyed, in a tan suit a size too small, Gloria in a shapeless black dress, weeping into a wad of tissue.
Cole, wearing a navy-blue suit, stood beside Sloan, acutely aware of her rigidity. He didn’t miss the way she and Dawson went out of their way to avoid one another, even eye contact. A weeping Lani had spoken to Sloan, offered condolences, a squeeze of hands, but not Dawson. And during the service Lani kept her arm looped through Dawson’s, like a tether grounding him. Cole had witnessed grief many times on his job, and certainly burying Lindsey was sad, but deeper shadows hung around these three, like dark smoke in a conspiracy of silence. Caught in the turmoil of his thoughts, Cole missed the minister’s “Amen.”
Sloan nudged Cole. “I’ll wait in your truck. Let Toby and Gloria take their time.” She darted off, and he watched her flee, feeling defenseless against an anguish that he knew existed but could not fathom. The ghost of their kiss days before ravaged his mind, tormenting him. She was vapor. Now he saw her…now she was gone.
Sloan hurried toward the truck parked on a gravel path behind a line of pine trees. Today in the breathless air, their needles couldn’t whisper. She needed to get as far away as fast as possible from this place. She was nearing the pines when a man stepped from behind a tree, startling her.
“Excuse me, ma’am.”
She tried to sidestep him, but he moved with her.
“Are you Sloan Gabriel, the singer?” He was dressed in a black Western shirt, black jeans, and black cowboy boots, and he spoke with a thick drawl.
What the—? “Please go away! I’m at a funeral. Leave me alone!”
He ignored her plea, grinned. “I just come by to say thank you.”
Confused, she measured him. “Thanks for what?”
“Let me introduce myself.” His grin turned wolfish. “I am Beauregard Ridley, but everyone calls me Bo, and I’ve come to fetch my son.”
Sloan stepped backward. “Get out.”
“Not gonna happen. That woman”—Bo pointed toward the casket—“she stole my kid from me, run away with him, and I been lookin’ for him ever since.”
“I doubt that,” Sloan snapped. “Lindsey saved Toby and herself from you. She had a restraining order against you, something the courts don’t just hand out for no reason.”
An angry Bo moved toward her. She stood her ground, dared him with her eyes to touch her. He never got a chance, because suddenly Cole was standing on one side of her, and Dawson on the other. “This guy bothering you?” Cole asked. They must have looked intimidating, because Bo backed away, glaring.
“He says he’s Toby’s dad and wants to take him with him.”
“Toby’s not leaving with you,” Cole said.
Gloria rushed up, breathing hard from exertion. “You get out of here, Bo Ridley. Right now!” She grabbed Cole’s wrist. “Make him go away, Cole! Please!”
“Well…if it ain’t Gloria.” Bo made the name sound like a dirty word. “You ran away with her….I thought as much when I couldn’t track you down either. You cow.”
“Shut up,” Cole said through clenched teeth.
Gloria’s face flamed, but she didn’t move. “I see you’re the same charmin’ jerk you always were. Leopard don’t change his spots. Why’d you come here today?”
“You askin’ how’d I find you after three years? Four years if you count the time her daddy, Jerry, run me off.” He pointed at Sloan. “Her concert—that’s how I found my boy. News was all over the Internet ’bout how she’s raising money for some sick woman named Lindsey. I just followed the music.”
Sloan flinched. Bo finding Lindsey was on her?
“Then when I read Lindsey’s obituary, I got in my car and come to get my son.”
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The news had reported that Lindsey had died, because that was how the media worked—broadcasting everybody’s business, no matter how personal. Sloan felt Toby squeeze between her and Cole, and wrap his arms around Cole’s leg.
Bo’s eyes darted to him. “Would you look at that. My boy’s half grown! She took him! That bitch took him from me! I’m your dad, Toby, and I’m takin’ you with me. Come here!”
Toby cowered, and Sloan knew the boy had little memory of the man. If any. She put a protective hand on Toby’s head. “He’s not going anywhere, except with me and Gloria.”
Dawson stepped forward, his jaw clenched, his body coiled spring-tight. He gave Bo a shove that made him stagger and almost fall. Lani had told him about Lindsey’s troubled marriage and Bo’s abuse. Bo showing up today to snatch his little son was unacceptable. Fathers should love and protect their children. “You heard the lady. Leave before I make you.”
The threat was a low growl, and Bo moved farther away but clenched his fists. Cole unwound Toby’s arms from his leg, stepped beside Dawson to present a united front. “You don’t want to go there, Bo. You can’t take both of us, trust me.”
The menace must have seemed believable, because Bo unfisted his hands and let them drop to his sides. “This ain’t over. Lindsey’s dead and I’m Toby’s father. I got rights.”
“We’ll see about that. Our attorney will be in touch,” Sloan bluffed. They had no lawyer, and she certainly had no idea about his parental “rights.”
Gloria said, “And she left me guardian of Toby before she died. She had a lawyer draw up the papers naming me his guardian, and told me I was to take care of him till he’s all grown up. That’s got to count for something.”