“Mr. Marshall.” Charles shook Brad’s hand and then shifted to take and kiss mine. “We look forward to your performance.”
Brad’s eyes rounded as they slipped past us, already engaged by another couple inside. “You told Mary and Charles I would do it before I agreed.” His tone was even, but I could hear the edge underneath.
“I just left them each a message telling them how good I thought you were, and that I hoped you might perform tonight.”
He glared. “You’re in so much trouble with me.”
“Don’t be mad at me.” My eyes burned as I turned to him. Time was running out for us. I didn’t want my last memory of him to be his anger.
Just beyond us, limos and town cars were lined up at the curb. I didn’t care if they saw us arguing. The only opinion I valued was his.
“I did it because when I hear your voice, I know that you’re destined to do great things with it.”
“You can’t be that sure.”
“I know you. So yes, I can be. I know that if you hadn’t given up your dream, you would very likely be where Rush is today.”
“Cam—”
“Please, Brad. I hear you. In the car, at the house, and now I’ve seen you perform.”
“A very limited sampling.”
“Maybe, and maybe nothing will come of it.”
“I could fall flat on my ass in a room full of my colleagues.” His expression wry, he shook his head.
“You could, but there’s a very real chance you could knock them on their asses instead.”
His gaze searched mine. “It means this much to you?”
“You.” I placed my hand on his cheek. “You mean this much to me.”
“Okay, Cam. If I fail, I fail for you.”
“You won’t. You’ll soar. I believe in you.”
If he remembered nothing else about our time together when it was over, I hoped he would remember that I’d believed in him. That I’d fought for the dream he’d lost but should have always had.
Chapter 57
* * *
Camaro
In the audience, in the front-row center seat reserved for me, I was so nervous, my leg bounced. Luckily, there were empty seats on both sides of me. Room for me to freak out. Brad would sit on my left side after his set, if he would still talk to me. On my right was an empty seat where someone had requested to be, but hadn’t shown up yet.
The president of the charity tonight’s gala benefited, Those Left Behind, emerged from the side of the stage. My leg stopped bouncing as she made her way to the center. The full skirt of her pink gown swirled around her as she stopped in front of the red velvet curtain. A portable mic in her hand, she thanked Brad and all the volunteers for all their hard work. She thanked the bands for playing for free, and the attendees for their donations. She revealed that thirty million dollars had been raised for her organization that offered free counseling to families who had lost loved ones in drunk-driving tragedies.
I clapped with everyone else around me. Maybe a little louder. Counseling had helped me so much. I knew a lot of good could be done with the money that had been raised. Plus, I was proud of Brad for overseeing the planning. He was so good at what he did, but as good as he was, I believed he was even better onstage as a performer.
I held my breath as she introduced Aces High, and my heart raced as she exited the stage. Then, as the curtain rose, my heart stopped beating altogether.
His feet planted shoulder-width apart, Brad stood confidently at center stage behind a mic pole. Logan lounged left with his black guitar, wearing black jeans and a black T-shirt. Everett was on the right with his bass, looking like he wanted to disappear. Behind his drums on the riser, Chance sat wearing a red Tempest hurricane-logo shirt and jeans, his sticks in his hands. The band arrangement was the same as it had been at the club. The set list would likely be the same too.
Brad can do this. I’m right. This is where he belongs.
Chin lifted high as he surveyed the room, Brad looked every inch the rock star, wearing dark indigo jeans that clung to his narrow hips and muscular thighs. The jeans were paired with a black silk shirt that I’d packed for him, and that he’d left unbuttoned nearly all the way to his waist.
Major swoon.
The spotlight made his multihued golden hair glisten as if it truly were enchanted treasure. His abs flexed enticingly as he took a step forward and adjusted the microphone to speak into it.
“I’m Bradley Marshall,” he said, his deep voice rumbling at the perfect frequency. Amplified, the vibrations rolled sonic sensation through me. “Fronting Aces High tonight with Logan Black on lead guitar, Chance Vegas on drums, and Everett Kirk on bass. This first song is ‘Love in Retrograde.’ We hope you enjoy it.”
He shifted slightly, the headstock of his black electric guitar pointing toward Logan, who made an adjustment on his whammy bar before he poised his pick over the strings. The scintillating riff that emerged when his fingers flew got Mary Timmons’ attention.
An empty chair away from me on my left, she’d been shifted toward Charles, who sat behind her. Now she swiveled forward, her eyes wide.
Chance crashed in on the drums. Then Brad sang, his voice rising above the fray. The words of the raucous song were painful, a story of a love found, lost, and never regained.
But Brad’s voice wasn’t painful, it was majestic.
His dark blond brows drew together earnestly as he crooned the words, his sexy lips almost kissing the mic. His sapphire eyes glittered as if with tears. The song was the same one I’d heard him sing before, but his voice was even better now than it had been then.
Everyone went silent around me, shocked breaths held, including my own. We were afraid to disturb the man and the magic he conjured.
One song became two. His voice with Logan and Chance in accompaniment was powerful but also humbly plaintive. Demanding and coaxing a response, he was mesmerizing to watch. All of Brad, all the compelling parts, came together flawlessly beneath the lights. Strong, considerate, passionate, creative, and always authoritative, all the parts I knew and loved coalesced into one.
Only now, everyone knew. Brad was sexy like Warren Jinkins from Tempest. Seductive like Gale Lafleur from Anthem. Untouchable like Marcus Anthony from Brutal Strength. Bradley Marshall would soon be added to the list of front men that others who followed would try to emulate.
At the end of the set, Brad thanked the audience. As the band collectively took a bow, Mary practically leaped from her seat. She had the band already signed to Black Cat Records, but I saw the determined gleam in her quicksilver eyes. She was going after Brad now. Charles Morris too; he was right behind her.
My lips curved, even while a terrible knowledge burned inside me.
Only one thing stood in the way of Brad realizing his dream. His sense of responsibility to others . . . his family, mainly. That, I couldn’t do anything about, but I could do something about me.
I could remove myself as an obligation.
Chapter 58
* * *
Bradley
Cam had seen what I hadn’t, or maybe only what I’d chosen not to see for so many years.
I wanted to go to her, lift her into my arms and hug her, and spin her around the way she had spun me and my life around from the moment I met her. But I’d been stuck backstage, handling one band emergency after another as expected, but unexpectedly also fielding offers. Incredible ones from labels wanting to represent me.
“I’ll think about it.” I gave Mary my firm look, the one that made most people go silent. But it didn’t work that way on her.
“Ten million then, but that’s as high as I can go until I see you in the studio, hear the original material you say you’ve written.”
“Fucking shit.” I nearly swallowed my tongue. That was as big as my portion of the advance for signing Anthem to her label.
“Eleven, and I don’t need to see shit,” Charles said, standing beside her, and Mary turned her hea
d to glare at him.
Released from her intensity, I gulped in a breath and then lost it again as I spotted Cam across the room. Glitterati, the powerful and the famous, were inside the crowded after-party ballroom—politicians, media heads, and celebrities sipping champagne side by side. But she shone brighter than all of them.
“Excuse me,” I said to the two rivals.
“Mr. Marshall.” Mary’s voice snapped like a whip. “I need your answer.”
“You’ll have it.” I flicked my gaze to her. “After I talk it over with Camaro.”
Her stern frown turned into a soft smile. “Very well.”
I nodded to her, then snagged two flutes of champagne from a passing waiter’s silver tray as I made my way to my girl. Across the crowded room from me, she straightened, her pretty eyes lighting up as they met mine, but then someone moved in my way.
I lost sight of her, and in that moment, a man engaged her, one I recognized. He was a local politician who’d been on the news recently regarding some sort of marital impropriety.
Though I didn’t know him personally, it was obvious Cam did. Her lips forming his name and the brightness in her gaze dimming, she took a step backward as he advanced.
Frowning, I dropped the flutes on another waiter’s tray and pressed once again toward her, more determinedly than ever.
“Why not, my dear? I’m willing to pay more to fuck you than anyone else, I assure you.”
Heads turned toward the politician and Cam. The room went still and silent, so silent I heard the rustle of gowns along with Cam’s gasp, well before I reached her.
Tears in her eyes, she picked up her skirt and ran from the room. Cursing under my breath, I pursued her.
The asshole who had embarrassed her and made her cry blocked me at the door. A mistake, one I rectified in short order. There was more than one shocked gasp as I dropped him with a single blow.
“Fucking prick.” Glowering, I stood over him.
Coming up on one elbow, he grasped his jaw and worked it from side to side. “You’ll pay for that, Marshall.”
“Worth it.” I glared down at him. “You, however, aren’t worthy enough to breathe the same air as she does. If you ever insult Camaro again, you’ll be breathing air through a straw afterward. You feeling me?”
“Is everything okay, Mr. Marshall?” Charles appeared at my elbow with Mary beside him.
“No. I need to find Camaro.” I scanned the crowded corridor outside the ballroom but didn’t see her.
“We’ve got this. Go.” Charles waved me off, his expression stern.
I didn’t hesitate. I shoved my way through the throng, but I didn’t find her.
I couldn’t find her anywhere.
• • •
Camaro
“Camaro Rosa O’Brien!” a man shouted.
I froze at the end of the red carpet, not because the temperature outside was cold like I was, but because that was my real name, and I knew that gruff voice. Only it was one I never thought I’d hear again.
I swiped the tears from my cheeks, straightened my shoulders, and turned around.
My father swept his gaze over me as he moved my way, taking me in as I did him. Tall, he was as imposing as ever in a tuxedo that fit him as well as Brad’s, and was certainly as expensive. But he’d aged dramatically since I last saw him on a C-SPAN interview, and he seemed different somehow as he approached me.
“Cam,” he said softly. “You’re so beautiful. You . . .” His voice cracked. “You look like her.”
“Thank you.” I wrapped my arms around myself like he wouldn’t, but she would have if she were here.
“What’s wrong?” His gray eyes softened as he took another step closer. “You dashed out here. I almost didn’t catch you.”
His familiar scent of motor oil with a hint of Irish whiskey hit me, and my body swayed slightly as memories assailed me.
There had been so many cold nights by the fire in the library when my mom had been dressed in finery like I was right now. Better times, when things had been right between my father and me, and my mother was still healthy. In those long-ago days, he would pat his knee, and I would climb up and listen, paying rapt attention as he told me stories about the parties they’d attended and the people they’d met there.
He never understood my passion for storytelling, but it came from him.
“Nothing’s wrong.” I glanced away as the lie left my lips. Everything was wrong.
“Cam,” he said, his voice as gentle as the hand he put on my arm. “My daughter.”
Surprised, I glanced down at it, then up, not to see the disappointment I’d grown so accustomed to from him, but a deep sadness that seemed to match my own. It was almost like looking at myself in a mirror.
“You were crying. You’re upset. I would help, if you’d let me.”
“Why?” My lips trembled. “Why are you here?”
“I came for you, to see you. I’ve been looking for you for quite some time now, but I feared I might never find you. Never have a chance to make amends.” His gray eyes filled, reminding me of dark clouds over our estate on a stormy winter day.
I shook my head. “I don’t believe you. When I ran away, you told me never to come back.”
“I made a mistake, sweetheart. I was mad. I thought I knew what was best for you.”
“I called you.” Tears filled my eyes, and shame too. “He beat me, Daddy. I needed you, but you wouldn’t even speak to me.”
“I never got that message,” he said, his expression stricken. “Not until I filed for divorce from Kathleen. Then she told me about it, and the money she gave Chris to take you away from me.”
“Why would she tell you that?”
“Because she wanted to hurt me. She knows you’re all that really matters to me.”
“That’s not true,” I whispered. It couldn’t be.
“I made a mistake, so many of them. But if you’ll give me another chance, like I would have given you if only I’d received that phone call, I would help you now.”
“There are no second chances.” I thought of all I’d done that couldn’t be undone. My past had resurfaced tonight, tarnishing Brad’s triumph.
“Your mother would say there is. Time and time again, she led the way in making amends with her kindness.”
“She’s gone.”
“She is. Every day I feel her loss, as I know you do.”
“Yes.” Tears spilled, the only warmth on my chilled skin. “I miss her so much, Daddy.”
“I miss her too, sweetheart. You’re all I have left of her. You have her sweet spirit inside you. For her sake, won’t you let me try to help you?”
Chapter 59
* * *
Bradley
Cam disappeared like Cinderella at the end of the ball, only she didn’t leave a glass slipper behind. But after questioning the staff, I pieced together clues and figured out when she’d left and that she hadn’t left alone. But where she was now well after midnight? That was still up in the air.
My cell rang.
“Cam,” I said, picking it up without glancing at caller ID.
“You called,” Rush said. “About a hundred times. I was onstage. Jewel is freaked the fuck out. She can’t get ahold of Cam either. Have you tried tracking her phone?”
“She’s turned the locating function off.”
“That’s fucked.”
She was fucked when I found her. The only thing that kept me from going insane was reminding myself over and over again that she was likely with her father.
Finn O’Brien. Cam was the only daughter of the man who owned O’Brien Auto Parts. She was an heiress, a modern-day princess.
Why she hadn’t told me who her father was and what her exact reasons were for fleeing tonight, I wasn’t entirely certain. Knowing her as well as I did, I had a few guesses. But I wanted her to tell me. I just had to find her first for that to happen.
“Did you call your investigator?” Rush asked.
“Yeah, but there’s not much he can do in the middle of the night.”
“Where are you now?”
“Home.”
I paced the living room, trying to ignore the Winston necklace glittering on the coffee table, along with all her new clothes. I didn’t need to see those things to be haunted by her, though. The ghost of her presence was everywhere. The place wasn’t a home anymore, it was a cage, and I was inside it, imprisoned in loneliness without her.
“Glad you’re not driving.”
“Yeah.” I hated the Z without her in it with me.
“Her dad is unreachable?”
“I called the number we have on file and got his PR rep. He’s supposed to have passed my message along.”
“And your message was?” he asked.
“If she’s with him, for her to call me.” I exhaled heavily.
“Sorry, man. I’ve been where you are. It sucks not to know where your woman is. At least yours knows you love her.”
Pain like a blade sliced through my chest. “She doesn’t know,” I said softly.
“Come again?”
“I haven’t told her.” I’d wanted to, so many times, and had planned to tell her with the ring. I’d wanted to show her how big a deal those words were . . . how big a deal she was to me. But that was all blown to hell now.
“You fucked up.”
“My timing was off.”
But love wasn’t timing, was it? It wasn’t measuring wins versus losses either. It was giving straight from the heart and asking for nothing in return. I knew it because Cam had shown me.
Finding out she was the daughter of a billionaire didn’t do fuck-all to change my feelings. But if she was with her dad, reconciled with him somehow, did that change her feelings toward me?
I shook my head. I wouldn’t let her retract her love. I had to find her. Make everything right. Those were my priorities.
My phone beeped. “Gotta go. A message just came in.”
The Right Wish Page 31
