TJ wanted to touch her, but instead sent her to set the alarm for four-thirty a.m. Less than four hours. He enjoyed watching her walk around in nothing but the clingy shorts. He begged her to dance for him, and she did, just a little. That was all he could handle before he removed the last of their clothes, pulled her down into the sheets, and pushed into her.
Afterward they clung together, knowing he’d leave shortly, and she fell asleep there in his arms. He re-set the alarm for three-thirty then, wanting to make love to her again before he left.
The alarm buzzed at him almost instantly, waking him as the sound switched to radio. It just had to be his voice coming out at him. TJ whacked at the clock, making himself stop crooning to them, then he grabbed it with two hands and re-set it for four-thirty before rolling over and kissing the back of her neck. Her head rested on his curled arm and she’d spooned in tight against him, and he intended to take every advantage of that.
She was blinking from being rudely awakened by the buzzing. “Do you have to go?”
He kissed her jaw and her shoulder. “In an hour.” He kissed down her spine, and moved his hands up her sides, brushing against the swells of her breasts and charging his lust from he-wanted-her to he-had-to-have-her. Norah tried to turn to face him, but he held her in place while he touched her and made certain she was ready for him. In a few minutes she was arching back against him, and he wanted to take longer but he couldn’t.
He pushed into her from behind with a groan at how good she felt, hot and wet against him.
“Shhhh!” The shushing turned into a moan in her mouth as he reached around and used his fingers to encourage her to move against him more. Norah obliged, and TJ found himself fighting back loud sounds as he came with Norah bucking against him.
They made love one more time before he left. She kissed him at the front door in the glow of the yellow porch light. Everything beyond was dark, and it felt wrong to be leaving her like this. “You just clear your calendar when I get back, okay?”
“Oh, all right.” She laughed.
“Listen, this is what happened when I missed you for eight hours. I’m going to be gone for twelve days.”
She nodded at him. “The planet may crack in half.”
“It just might.” He grabbed the back of her neck and kissed her soundly again before forcing himself to get in his car and drive away.
He had about twenty minutes to get from the farmhouse to the studio and without traffic, who else was up at this ungodly hour? It only took him fifteen.
Craig was already there, his luggage probably already on the bus. TJ squinted at his friend, the easy comfort on Craig’s face something he was only just now understanding. Craig and Shay had been up and down for a long time before they figured things out. TJ hadn’t understood—until now.
JD was the one who was late. He appeared, looking sheepish and freshly showered, and offered a half-assed apology. TJ made a point to keep his mouth shut. His brother had been up to the same business he had. Only this time it made him happy. Happy for his brother, and happy to see that in seven years he and Norah might still be after each other.
They were all ushered onto the new bus. Their money from album sales had bought them a better bus, but it was still a bus, still taking him away from Norah. Feeling maudlin, TJ tucked himself into his room at the far back and passed out.
When he woke up, the first thing he did was miss Norah. So the second thing he did was call her, but he only got her voicemail. When they’d started touring, they had sometimes done two and even three shows a day, playing festivals and county fairs during the afternoons and opening for bigger groups at night.
But there were no more corn dog fairs, Wilder was too big, and often it was their name headlining the night shows. So they were often still on stage at midnight. Unless he called late, he was going to miss Norah today.
He scraped himself together and went out and put on a good show. It wasn’t great though—he could do better.
His cell phone contained a message from her when he got back into his room, but it didn’t say he could call late, so he didn’t. Eventually he slept.
The next morning, he tried several times to make sure he got a hold of her, and then went around with a goofy grin on his face for the remainder of the day. He didn’t care until just prior to that evening’s show, when he still wasn’t paying much attention, and Craig came up to him, bass guitar slung over his shoulder. “You ready?”
Shit. It hadn’t been about Norah before. Not when things weren’t going according to plan, but now, when she loved him, he’d almost stopped caring about his performance.
He was the front man. He had to talk and connect with the audience; the others were hidden behind instruments.
Rubbing the heels of his hands to his eyes, TJ tipped his head back and tried to let his brain settle into his current reality. Norah was waiting for him when he got home. Here he was obligated to perform. If he didn’t, Wilder’s touring days were going to go downhill real fast. It was already his fault that half the year was lost.
He had to get his head in gear. He had to set Norah aside and focus.
He also latched onto his previous thoughts about connecting with the audience. He’d managed to connect with sections of it really well. Recently his performances had been about what he was thinking and feeling, and there was only minimal connection to the people out in front of him. He needed to combine the two and, like at the Troubadour, get beyond those first clusters, find the people along the back walls.
With his brain firmly in his head, TJ made his way out on stage, and put on one of the best shows of his life. He even had a good time doing it.
Norah called the next day, but he didn’t listen to the message. He had to keep his head on straight. She called the next day as well, and he let it ring, thinking it would be saner to listen to the message and leave her one in return than to get lost in a real phone call. So he listened to the two banked messages that night and left one in exchange when he was certain she would be at dance.
She didn’t call the next day. And just the feeling of let-down he experienced was enough to convince him that he had to wait it out. The following day he got another call that he again let ring through, even though he gritted his teeth to do it. He listened to her sweet voice telling him she missed him and she wished she could actually talk to him. His heart turned over.
Chapter 58
Norah suffered through not talking to TJ. Now there was a wall of time and real distance between them.
She was counting days until he returned and praying things would be the same. Norah wasn’t foolish enough to believe in guarantees of the heart, and he’d made her none. He’d come close, insinuated a lot, but she couldn’t say for certain that he even knew he was talking in long-terms a lot of the time.
The last message she’d left him, she’d jokingly said “If I didn’t know better I’d think you were avoiding me.”
Now she didn’t think she could go in and teach class. A text message had popped up on her phone; basically, he was avoiding her. He said he couldn’t keep his head on straight when he was thinking about her. He loved her, but she shouldn’t call.
What the hell was that about?!?
Norah sat with the phone in her hand and looked through the abysmally long message again. The ‘I love you’ was clear, in exactly those words. So was ‘don’t call.’
Somehow she made it through her classes. At least she’d done this often enough she could function on autopilot. Then she trudged home to her father who was watching TV. He put the program on pause the instant he saw her. “What’s wrong, honey?”
She shrugged. It was all she could think of.
He tried again. “Want to talk about it?”
Yes.
“No.” She’d promised. It was the right thing to do. TJ hadn’t cut her off completely, he had said that he loved her. Besides, her Dad would probably tell her it was her fault and what she could do about it.
So she showered and went to bed, and thought about crying herself to sleep but couldn’t quite muster it. She was just too puzzled.
Somehow the next days passed. She did as she was asked and didn’t call. Questions rattled around in her head, causing headaches. Had she been such a horrible conversationalist? Too clingy? Was it all just overwhelming to him? He always talked about the time before his accident as though he’d been some teenager until just recently. He couldn’t have been that immature; he had a house and bills and amazing career that had taken some serious work without any promise of payoff.
Norah, who considered herself usually sane and steady, wandered the days not knowing what to do. She got worse as TJ’s arrival into town neared, and she was supremely grateful when Mark showed up just as planned.
The knock on her door was a welcome distraction.
She opened it, amazed to see a buff, ripped man standing on the other side. “Mark!?”
He grabbed her and swung her in a huge circle. “Oh, baby, we both look better. You’ve gained some weight, too.” He set her back and looked her up and down. “It looks good on you.”
“Wow!” She had to put her hands up and feel the muscles in his arms. He’d always been strong, he had to be to spend his days lifting women over his head, but now it had some bulk, not just whipcord lean strength.
He looked around the farmhouse for a minute. “Is your Dad here? I remember him.”
“Of course you do. He came all the time after Jeff and Jordan died.”
Mark quit looking at the house and tilted his blonde head at her, his short hair perfect like his creased pants and clingy shirt. “You said it.”
“Yeah, I can now. And, no, Daddy’s out with his girlfriend tonight.”
His arm came out around her shoulders. “I’m proud of you, you know.” He led her back out to his gold Lexus, graciously handing her into the passenger seat in a move that harkened back to the days when they danced together. “So, tell me about your dance studio.”
She laughed, “It’s kids. The youngest are in pre-school and the oldest in high school. It’s a double pirouette crowd. But I like it. I have a small company that performs locally.”
Over lobster, he told her about his school in L.A. No performances, but he’d sent a handful of dancers back to audition for the Houston Ballet and two had made it, a few more had gone on to other companies. It was clear that he was moving in higher circles than she. Norah braced for the envy or acid that she expected to taste in the back of her mouth. But none came. At some point it had become okay to not be competitive. She finally realized that she liked her school. She liked helping the high school girls learn to stick their turns, even if none of them would continue with it after they left her school.
Mark told her about his love life and asked after hers. Norah put the napkin down and started at the beginning of the summer. She didn’t finish the story until they were seated in the front of the theater with champagne glasses in hand.
“Really?” Mark was fascinated. “Wilder’s lead singer?”
Norah had to laugh, and she sipped the champagne attempting to stay clear of the bubbles. “It’s not like that, I’ve known him since we were kids. We had Sunday dinner at each other’s houses.”
“Yeah, but it doesn’t change the fact that teenage girls have posters of him on their wall.”
Norah almost spit the champagne. She didn’t know whether to laugh or just be stunned. That thought had never occurred to her. And Mark saw it.
“What? He’s just good ole TJ to you?”
“No, he’s just TJ with women throwing themselves at him while he’s on tour.”
That brought raised eyebrows. “And you trust him?”
“Yeah.” She didn’t mention the phone messages or that she hadn’t spoken to him in days. He was due back tomorrow morning. Norah was grateful when the lights went down.
As she suspected, the performance was more than riveting enough to keep her brain out of TJ-mode while she watched. After the show she had to deal with the fact that, while she’d been sipping, Mark had been throwing back drink after drink, and asking questions about dating a rock star.
Norah had laughed and said he was a country star, while she slipped the valet ticket away from him. She paid for the car and tipped, and slid into the driver’s seat, listening to Mark while he tuned up a local pop station and yelled “ha!” when Wilder was the third song they heard.
Chapter 59
TJ sat in the car with the window cracked, he wanted to hear when she pulled up. He was sitting, waiting, just beyond the glow of the porch light. Initially, he’d parked back here because he wanted to surprise her.
He’d seen her car in the driveway and raced up the front steps to knock excitedly only to get no answer. He persisted, knowing he was early: Norah wasn’t expecting him until tomorrow morning. The theater where Wilder had been scheduled to play tonight had suffered an electrical fire, and the show was postponed. It was yet another tour date to tack onto spring, but right now he was glad to be home early.
He had to explain about the phone calls, about how his head wasn’t clear when he was thinking about her. He’d knocked on every door, looking for his chance to talk to her and been disappointed by every silent answer.
TJ had the key in the engine and was cranking it, ready to give up and leave, when he remembered that she’d invited him out to see some dance company with her friend. The name of the dance company hadn’t stuck, but ‘Mark’ sure had. Why couldn’t this friend have been ‘Melissa’?
He realized ‘Mark’ must have driven and they’d left Norah’s car here, so TJ decided to wait her out. Out of the light he dozed a little off and on, waking when cars went by down on the road, but none of them turned into her driveway.
He considered the possibility that her father would be the first one home, and figured there was no explanation like the truth. It was eleven, and he dozed again. This time the headlights did swing into the driveway, and TJ sat up with anticipation, trying not to think how disappointed he’d be if it were her dad.
Stopping right at the front porch, the sedan swung in a perfect arc to back up against the house. It stood aimed and ready to go.
He was surprised to see Norah pop out of the driver’s seat, laughing. Her head went back and her throat was exposed to the moonlight, her hair falling in sweet waves over her shoulders. Her blue dress clung to every curve and wrapped across the front, revealing what he knew to be perfect cleavage. The fabric swirled around her legs in a slight wind he hadn’t noticed before.
She so distracted him that he was surprised by the blond man, handsome and sharply dressed, coming around the front of the hood. The voice was like honey and he approached very close to her. TJ heard every word through the space he’d left at the top of his window. “Norah, baby, do you have any wine? And will you drink it with me?”
Her smile was wide and genuine. “I believe I do!”
The end of her sentence was lost as the man scooped her up in a dance move that only a professional could accomplish, lifting her high overhead. Norah hit form, moving with him and laughing as she clung to him.
A shot of jealousy pierced him straight through. And his hand flew to the door handle, ready to leap out and protest.
He looked at himself for just a moment, dark where this man was blonde. He was rumpled and sloppy where this man was sharp and creased. And there was no denying that this man was very good looking. Norah seemed to have eyes only for him.
She was on her feet again, but they had their arms around each other in a way that spelled familiarity. TJ froze. He didn’t get the door open. Her words from so long ago came back to haunt him. I’m a slut. He hadn’t believed it, thinking that she had slept around, but not that she’d cheat on him.
His brain worked far too fast for his own good. Jeff and Jordan had died right after she joined the Houston Ballet, she had said a year later she found sex to console herself. Wouldn’t that mean with some of her fellow d
ancers?
As TJ watched, the man’s hand slipped down to her hip, in a gesture that he himself had never done on a woman he wasn’t already sleeping with or very close to it. Norah did nothing to discourage him as they headed up the steps.
Norah’s voice carried back to him soft and sweet.
“You should stay tonight. You can have the other side of my bed.”
TJ felt it hit him like daggers.
Norah looked at her watch, it was past noon and she’d expected TJ in around ten. She’d gotten a sub for this morning’s company class, thinking that she wanted to be available when he got in. Now she was glad she was available because she was getting mad and bewildered and wanted to ask him what the hell he’d been thinking.
He hadn’t called. Hadn’t said the band was running late, and she wasn’t going to call, as he’d asked her not to. Mark had left around eight to hit his hotel room to shower and make his plane on time. He’d stood on the front porch in rumpled clothes, finally sober, and told her how wonderful it was to see her again.
So she was sitting on the couch in her jeans and flats and a long sleeved tee, with her keys in her hand trying to decide what to do.
Norah eyed the keys, realizing she’d already made the decision. She went out the front door, seeing her Dad turn in at the bottom of the drive. She waved to him as she pulled out, putting her window down.
He climbed out of his car, “Going over to TJ’s?”
She nodded.
Her Dad smiled at her. “Just call if you aren’t coming home tonight, okay? I’ll see you when I see you.”
Norah nodded again, not sure what words she could say. She had a sinking feeling that something had gone wrong, but she didn’t know what. She’d suffered through the I-love-you-but-don’t-call message and all the waiting. Her chest felt like her eyes did right before she cried.
She managed to stay calm enough to get to his place. She waved at the guard, and he immediately opened the gates for her.
Love Notes Page 32
