Strummin' Up Love

by Erin Wright

  Just then, a small argument broke out amongst the riders and all three of them looked up. Thankfully, it wasn’t Juan and Skyler, who were at the other end of the arena, working on their cantering. Dr. Whitaker let out a sigh. “Better go see what’s going on,” he said over his shoulder as he headed for the squabbling children.

  Zane looked at Louisa with hope in his eyes. “Do you want to go out riding?” he asked. “You don’t have to if you don’t want to but…I’ve never ridden before and have wanted to ever since we got here.”

  “You’ve never ridden a horse before?” Louisa just gaped at him, her mind blown. “But you’re a country music star!” she protested. “Isn’t that some sort of prerequisite?”

  “You and my publicist would have a mighty fun discussion together,” Zane grumbled. “She told me once that I’d have an easier time explaining away robbing someone at gun point than I would not knowing how to ride a horse.”

  Louisa paused for a fraction of a second as that sunk in, and then let out a howl of laughter. “I would love to meet your publicist,” Louisa gasped, wiping away the tears in the corners of her eyes. “She sounds like my kind of gal.”

  “She really is,” Zane said, and then headed briskly for the barn. “C’mon, before the herd descends.”

  They walked into the cool of the barn – oh, that was nice – and began saddling up the two remaining horses, both swaybacked and a bit long in the tooth. “At least we know the horses won’t run away with us,” Louisa said dryly. She rather doubted either of them could run, let alone with a rider on their backs. Louisa only knew marginally more about how to saddle and bridle a horse than Zane did but luckily, their horses appeared perfectly content to munch on hay and never move again, so they didn’t get pissy about being saddled backwards.

  When Louisa spotted the mistake, she helped Zane turn his saddle around with only a minimal amount of smirking. The way she figured it, she was operating at saint level and about to move into angel territory.

  Finally, they were both on their horses and headed for the barn door. They stopped by the arena for a moment, watching Skyler and Juan trotting together, Juan clearly in his element and Skyler clearly not, and then headed out for their ride, Dr. Whitaker calling out a few last-minute tips as they rode away.

  Skyler would be fine without them. She didn’t need to worry about him.

  But, would she be okay without Skyler’s buffer between her and Zane? That was the bigger question, because at the moment, she was quite sure the answer was no.

  Chapter 19

  Zane

  Zane clung to his saddle horn, trying to move with the sway of the horse. Become one with the horse, Adam had called out to them as they’d started to ride away from the arena.

  Zane wasn’t sure he wanted to be one with a swaybacked ancient mare, but he was also sure that he presently looked as ridiculous as he felt. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he remembered how part of his impetus for coming to Idaho instead of just sending Skyler with his aide to the camp like he had the music camp and art camp, was that he would finally be able to learn how to ride a horse. He’d had vague visions of becoming an expert horseman and wowing the journalists with his comeback story in the riding arena and music arena.

  As he gripped the saddle horn tightly, absolutely sure that he looked just as comfortable in the saddle as his son had, he could only count his lucky stars that in a fit of hubris, he hadn’t invited a whole gaggle of reporters along for the ride. Not even the kindest of reporters could fail to note his complete lack of mastery in this department, and reporters weren’t exactly known for being kind.

  Zane made a mental note to never ride a horse in front of a reporter. Ever.

  With a disgruntled look, Zane noticed how comfortable Louisa appeared in the saddle. She looked like she was born in one and had never moved again. Actually, now that he thought about it, maybe she was an accomplished horsewoman. God only knew she was accomplished at everything else that she did.

  “Can you sing?” he called out to her, the words slipping out before he’d quite realized it. He hadn’t meant to ask her that. He just…

  He had to be better than her at something.

  “Not a note,” she called over her shoulder cheerfully. “My whole family is tone-deaf. Not a drop of musical talent among us.”

  Zane admitted, if only to himself of course, that this piece of information cheered him right up. Maybe he was only good at one thing, but he was at least damn good at it.

  Finally, they got into the cool shade of the pine trees and he heard Louisa let out a sigh of happiness. He could only imagine how hot she got during the summer with her dark, long, thick hair.

  Her dark, long, thick hair that he’d had visions of unraveling the braid she’d had it worked into, and running his fingers through it…a vision that he promptly and ruthlessly squashed flat. No matter how much his fingers itched for it, there was no getting around it: Louisa was the one woman he never got to touch.

  And wasn’t that just the shittiest pickle to find himself in.

  Chapter 20

  Louisa

  “Want to take a little break?” Louisa asked over her shoulder as she spied the stream Dr. Whitaker had said would be there. Although Zane was behind her, making it difficult for her to keep an eye on him, he kept making little grunts and groans under his breath. She didn’t figure he was enjoying this ride one little bit, and thus, a break might be useful right about now.

  “Sure,” Zane called back, sounding a little happier about the suggestion than could strictly be considered normal, and Louisa grinned to herself. So, Skyler took after his father when it came to riding, eh? She wondered for a moment how his former wife had fared in the saddle. She knew so little about Tamara, now that she thought about it. Was it a verboten topic? Or had she just never happened to come up? Was it healthy for Skyler to never reminisce about his own mother?

  She swung down from her horse and tied it up to the lowest tree branch, and then turned back to see Zane sort of half-fall, half-slide off the horse. She stifled a laugh. Somehow, she didn’t think Zane would appreciate her laughing at him. He walked stiff-legged over to the branch and tied his horse next to hers. Not that they really needed tying up – they didn’t look like they were liable to run off, or even work themselves up into a canter any time soon.

  “It’s beautiful here,” Zane said, looking around appreciatively. “And to think that all of this is just in Adam’s backyard.”

  Louisa slipped off her socks and shoes and then began wading into the cold mountain stream, sucking in a sharp breath at the water’s icy temperature, and then began to feel her feet get used to the cold and knew her brain could start working again. “What’s it like in Tennessee?” she asked, sitting on the bank of the stream, wiggling her toes in the clear water, watching how the water distorted them as it flowed ceaselessly forward.

  “Lots of people. Concrete. Horns. Tourists. Live music all the time. Even a few skyscrapers.”

  “In Tennessee?!” Louisa asked, astonished.

  “In Nashville? Yes. I was born and raised in Nashville proper.” He toed off his boots and then peeled off his socks as he talked. He began rolling up his jeans. “People don’t realize that it’s bigger than Memphis. Bigger than Atlanta. It’s no New York City, of course, but when you grow up in the middle of it, it’s just concrete and stoplights and blaring horns as far as you can see. My parents weren’t much for getting out into nature, so…” He shrugged as he sat down gracefully on a smooth rock next to her and slid his feet into the water. He sucked in a quick breath. “Damn, that’s cold.”

  “I keep waiting for miniature icebergs to float by,” Louisa admitted cheerfully. “But, at least I can say truthfully that my feet don’t hurt at all. They don’t feel anything at all, but that includes pain.”

  Zane laughed. “I know it’s better to be an optimist than a pessimist, at least according to the headlines I see at the magazine rack, but I think you’re taking
this a little too far.”

  She shrugged. “It isn’t any harder to look at things positively than it is to look at them negatively, so why not choose the positive, right? So, what was your wife like as a mom for Skyler?”

  She could’ve died.

  Right there, she could’ve just sunk into the ground, pulled the dirt over her head, and never no never come out again.

  She hadn’t meant to ask the question. They’d been talking about being positive and icebergs and then, the topic she’d been wondering about for ages was just rolling off her tongue like she actually had any right – any right at all – to ask a question like that.

  Zane froze mid-splash, his hand hovering over the stream, an almost comically surprised look on his face. “Tamara?” he asked blankly. “How was she with Skyler?”

  Automatically, Louisa nodded but internally, she was trying to figure out how to best extricate herself from the situation. She could jump onto the back of her horse, thump her heels into the flanks, and ride like the devil back to Dr. Whitaker’s place.

  Okay, fine, she could trot painfully back to Dr. Whitaker’s place, if her horse even got up to that speed.

  Or she could put her shoes back on and just run back. And then, she could…

  She sputtered to a mental stop. Nothing intelligent was coming to her – as if sprinting back to the Whitaker’s place itself were an intelligent idea – when Zane started speaking, yanking her attention back to him. He spoke quietly, deliberately, as if carefully thinking through everything he was saying as he said it, maybe for the first time in his life.

  “Tamara loved Skyler more than she loved life itself. I didn’t really get it at the time. This marks me as the worst father on the planet, I’m sure, but I didn’t want Skyler. Not really. I was busy with my career – touring, recording sessions, creating, parties, rehearsals…it never stopped. Tamara was the big star when we first met. Did you know that?”

  Louisa shook her head mutely, just listening. A part of her – a very large part of her – still wanted to make a run for it, but she’d started him talking and it seemed awfully rude to run now, when he was only partway through the story. She’d let him finish and then run for it.

  “We were just kids. I met this gorgeous girl; she was a country music star, at least regionally, and at first, we couldn’t get enough of each other. We had so much in common. I understood her drive to win at all costs, because that was me, too. It took me years to realize that we had so much in common, and almost all of it was shitty personality traits. We were toxic for each other. But there in the beginning, we just didn’t know…

  “Then A Honky Tonk Life blew up the charts and I’d made it big-time. But she still hadn’t, and it drove her crazy. She was no longer Tamara, an up-and-coming star. She was Tamara, wife to Zane, who was a star. It killed her. We fought endlessly. She was never meant to be the person in the background, working to make sure the other person succeeded. That just wasn’t her. She was supposed to be in the spotlight, but…it never happened. Then she starts talking about wanting to have a kid, and I agree to shut her up, basically. Maybe, I figure, if she has a kid she can mother, she’ll be more balanced. It’ll give her purpose in her life and she can stop driving herself crazy. So Skyler was all hers, from the very beginning. I was always gone, and she refused to bring a child along and raise him on the road. It became just one more thing that we fought about. I felt like she was keeping my kid from me by refusing to let him travel with me, and she felt like I wasn’t putting Skyler first by being a stay-at-home dad like she wanted me to be. But how can you be a stay-at-home dad and a country music star at the same time? Oh God, how we fought.”

  His lips curled up at the corners in a rueful smile. “But to answer your question,” he said, clearly embarrassed by his digression, “she was a good mom to Skyler. She loved him more than she ever loved me. She only wanted the best for him. But at the same time…she could be an absolute bitch. The more popular I became, the more success I had, the more she hated me. She would make these biting remarks about me to Skyler, and that was in front of me. I have no idea what she said behind my back, and I’m probably better off not knowing. I always thought that I could do such a better job of raising Skyler than she did, and then when she died and I actually had to raise Skyler, I realized I had no damn clue of what I was doing. None. Poor kid. I turned him over to staff to raise. You’re the first time where that’s ever worked out.”

  He flashed her a grin that faded away as quickly as it appeared.

  “I always thought that if I imposed consequences on Skyler, he’d hate me. If I just gave him everything he wanted, he’d be happy. Getting everything you want always makes you happy, right? But he turned into this horrific brat, and I didn’t have a clue of what to do with him. You know why I hired you?”

  She froze, surprised by the turn in conversation. She shook her head, keeping her eyes pinned on him as he spoke.

  “Because the high-priced agency back in Nashville that had been providing aides for me ever since the accident had no one else to send. Every person even vaguely qualified had either already been chewed up and spit out by Skyler, or had been warned away from him by someone who’d taken him on. The salt-in-your-coffee thing was a favorite of his. As was live spiders, letting air out of tires, and tripwires in the hallway. Although,” he said thoughtfully, tapping his chin as he spoke, “honey on the hairbrush was a new one. He must’ve been getting bored with all of his other go-to’s. When you didn’t scream or yell or throw tantrums or cry, he was absolutely crushed. You took all the fun out of it.”

  “Of course,” she said with a chuckle. “If I’d reacted that way, he would’ve kept it up. Hell, he would’ve gotten worse. You can’t give him that kind of satisfaction.”

  He shook his head in disbelief. “You make it seem so simple, but no one else understood that. Skyler was conducting this holy reign of terror under my roof, and I didn’t have the slightest clue of what to do with him, and neither did anyone else.”

  “You know he’s a good kid, right?” Suddenly, Louisa was afraid. What if Zane didn’t change and they went back to Tennessee and everything went back to the way it was before? What if all of the progress they’d made that summer was for naught?

  “Because of you,” Zane said simply. “He’s a good kid because of you.”

  Chapter 21

  Zane

  He really didn’t know what the hell was possessing him to talk like this – so bluntly, so truthfully. He normally couldn’t – wouldn’t – dare because what if the person he was talking to turned around and sold the story to the tabloids? He’d seen it again and again. Childhood friends turning on their newly famous pal and selling tell-all interviews to magazines for the money, or their 15 minutes of fame, or both. Only a flaming idiot spoke to the damn nanny like this.

  But Louisa wouldn’t tell a soul. He knew that as surely as he knew the sun would rise in the east tomorrow. There was a steadiness about Louisa, a stability and grounding to her that so few people had. The old saying, It’s lonely at the top, was spot-on because the higher you climbed, the less people you could trust.

  But Louisa was one of those few trustworthy people.

  She was looking at him, biting her lower lip, deep in thought about how to best argue that Skyler was a good kid whether or not she was in his life, her every thought showing on her face as clearly as if it’d been written there with a Sharpie marker.

  He didn’t want to hear it, though. He’d had the benefit of watching Skyler devolve for 18 months without Tamara or Louisa there to guide him, and perhaps they’d do better on their own now that Louisa had showed Zane a few tricks, but Zane also knew that eventually, they’d slide back into old habits without her guidance. A guy just couldn’t learn how to be a perfect dad in only one summer, after a lifetime of being shown exactly the opposite. He needed more than a few month’s example to make sure he did this right.

  He didn’t want to hear anything about Skyler in
that moment, not only because he knew he was right, but because there was something else that he was wanting even more. He wanted to feel Louisa’s soft lips under his. He wanted to know the taste of her mouth, her lips, her tongue. What her hair looked like spread around her in a cascade of black water.

  He wanted to know her.

  He shouldn’t do what every cell in his body was screaming for him to do, but he couldn’t seem to bring himself to care.

  Watching her closely, waiting for the slightest sign of hesitation or stalling, he began inching closer to her lips, giving her enough time to say no if she wanted to. She could say no and he’d walk away and pretend this never happened but please, dear God, don’t let her say no. He couldn’t bear it if she did.

  And still, she didn’t pull away. Her lips parted, revealing her straight white teeth, as her eyes went liquid. She wanted him as much as he wanted her, he was sure of it. Her eyes began to flutter shut, her chin tilting just a bit up to his, and that broke him. Broke the last of his restraint, and then his mouth was on hers, sucking that bottom lip in, nibbling on it just as he’d watched her do so many times, her fingers digging into his shoulders, whimpers escaping her as he worked his fingers into her hair at the nape of her neck, tilting her head for better access, wanting all of her. He couldn’t move away from her if his life depended upon it. All of the desire that had been building up inside of him since that first day she showed up on his front doorstep, a tantalizing temptation, the one person he absolutely couldn’t have, but now he was, and oh God, it was better than he’d imagined and how was that even possible?

  She was whimpering, these tiny noises in the back of her throat that were driving him wild and if she didn’t stop making them, he couldn’t be held responsible for what happened. She was everything he’d ever wanted. He eased her back on the ground, lifting up the hem of her shirt, sucking and nibbling at her taut, tanned stomach, working his way up towards her breasts, wanting to finally know what color her nipples were, a question that had been driving him crazy since he first laid eyes on her—