by Kait Nolan
“Oh, what a marvelous idea! I’ll be sure to be there. And I’ll spread the word!”
She would, and it would be more effective than taking out an ad in the local paper, a highway billboard, and a TV commercial combined. With a cheerful wave, Mamie took her bag and left the shop.
“Why didn’t anybody tell me about this?” Tyler’s voice was just a shade too cool for polite.
“I’m telling you now. It was a last minute thing. Tucker’s idea. He’s taking the whole transition to Assistant Director a mite serious. You wanna ream somebody, ream him.”
“I’m not gonna ream the injured guy.”
“Then I guess you’re singing. Assuming anybody picks you.”
Her flat stare said volumes.
“Okay, yeah, of course they’ll pick you. And me. And probably the pair of us. We can get over our crap and do this for a good cause.”
“We’re doing it for a pal in the Army,” she muttered.
“Exactly,” he grinned, leaning companionably against the counter.
“Sweetie, where do you want me to put this invoice for the—”
At the sound of the new voice, Brody straightened as if somebody had rammed a cattle prod up his ass. If he’d thought Tyler’s look was chilly, the expression on her father’s face was positively glacial.
“Jensen.”
“Mr. Edison. Sir. Hello.”
They stared at each other. Well. Mr. Edison glared and Brody looked back. The alternative was to haul ass with his tail between his legs and his pride wouldn’t allow that. But what the hell did you say to a man when the last time you saw him, you asked permission to marry his daughter? The same daughter who didn’t want to marry you and was standing across the counter?
“Hey Dad,” said Tyler—a little too cheerfully, Brody thought. “I didn’t know you were back. Where’s Ollie?”
Who’s Ollie? he wondered.
Without shifting his gaze from Brody’s, Sam Edison answered, “In the office having a snack. I’ll take him home in a bit, but I wanted to drop off the progress report from the neurologist and a copy of the bill. Which is paid, by the way.”
“Dad,” chastised Tyler, “you don’t need to do that.”
“I’ll do it if I want to, and you’ll let me.”
“Well, thank you.” She moved out from the counter and pecked her father’s cheek. Looking back, she asked, “Brody, did you need anything else?”
“No. Just delivering the message. So you’ll be there?”
“I’ll be there.”
He lifted his hand in a wave, gave a curt nod to her father, and headed for the door as Tyler walked into the back office. As he pushed open the door, he saw her crouch down, saw the toys in the floor.
“Hey baby. Did you and Grandpa have a good day today?”
Brody nearly did a face plant as he stepped out onto the sidewalk. Tyler had a kid?
~*~
“Are you sure you should be on your feet this much?” asked Tyler, eying Tucker as he crutched his way down Front Street toward Speakeasy Pizza.
“It’s good practice on the crutches. Besides, another seven weeks and I’ll be good as new. Doc said.”
“Well, good. Then I only have to wait that long to kill you.”
“Now why would you wanna go and do that?”
“Don’t you dare play innocent, Tucker McGee. You knew exactly what you were doing when you set up this whole karaoke fundraiser.”
“Bet your ass. The Madrigal’s golden couple are both in town, both performing for the first time in years. I saw an opportunity, and I’m sure as hell exploiting it to raise bucks for the cause. Your names get butts in seats. That’s the price of local fame, sugar, and I won’t apologize for it. You’ve gotten over your shit with each other in rehearsal, you can do it for this.”
Tyler scowled. That was true. Mostly. But a whole night of singing alongside Brody, where she knew with absolute certainty that some of the crowd would have them singing the love songs from the shows they were so known for brought up feelings she didn’t know how to deal with. Since she didn’t have anywhere else to direct her ire, Tucker was a convenient target. “You waited ’til the last minute to have somebody tell me because you knew I wouldn’t want to play. Sending Brody as your messenger really wasn’t the smartest move you ever made.”
Tucker paused on the sidewalk outside the pizzeria and sent her a smug smile. “You’re here, aren’t you?”
“Yes, damn you, I am. The one high point to all of this is that your Last Minute Man planning will keep it small scale.” Tyler tugged open the door to Speakeasy and got blasted by a roar of sound.
“You were saying?” Tucker grinned and crutched through the door, past the hostess station where Rachel Neely was taking the cover charge, and into the crowd.
Dear God, it’s standing room only, Tyler thought, dazed as she followed him inside. A cheer went up at the sight of her. She shook hands, uttered greetings, and accepted enthusiastic high fives and fist bumps to the tune of applause. Where did they all come from? she wondered.
Tucker made it to the stage first. Somebody gave him a mic. Evidently he was to be emcee for this shindig. “Hey there, everybody! Who’s ready for some music?”
More cheers and claps. The rest of the cast and a handful of other folks she’d acted with in the past took up the tables in a semi-circle immediately by the little stage.
Tucker gestured to a marker board mounted on an easel beside the stage. “So here’s how this is gonna work. We’ve got our performers listed in tiers. The more you love ’em, the more it’ll cost to have them sing for you. The bottom tier will cost you five bucks per song per person. The top is pricier. Twenty bucks per song, per person. You want a duet, you get to pick who sings it and pay for the pair. Group stuff, same deal. We encourage you to pool your funds and remember that this is for a good cause, so don’t be shy! You can pick anything in the book over here. We’ll start off with a freebie to kick off the night. This one’s for everybody.” Tucker waved them all to the stage.
It was positively highway robbery. But as the group of them squished together on the stage, people lined up, cash and checkbooks in hand. At least half a dozen folks stuffed money in Tucker’s jar as they kicked things off with a rousing rendition of “Any Way You Want It.”
“He should be a snake oil salesman,” said Brody, flopping into a chair beside Tyler as Piper—one of the top tier singers—got drafted for “Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend.”
“Clearly,” she agreed. “I can’t believe people are paying money for this. And I can’t believe how many people are here.”
“Might could’ve done with a change of venue. Ah, but the theater doesn’t have pizza,” he said, offering a smile to the waitress arriving with a tray.
“Large supreme, no mushrooms, due to the lady’s allergy. You want another beer, Brody?”
He tipped his half-full bottle at the waitress and said, “Good on this, but maybe a couple pitchers of water with lemon. We’re all gonna need them.” The waitress left and Brody reached for a slice. “Dig in. No telling how long we’ll be down before they call us again.”
Tyler didn’t move.
“What? Aren’t you hungry?”
“You already ordered?”
“I knew you’d be getting off work later than most of the rest of us. Figured I’d have something pretty much ready when you got here so you could scarf between songs. Would you rather have something else?” He started to lift his hand to signal the waitress.
“No, no, this is fine. Thanks.” He remembered her preference for pizza. He’d been considerate. Points to him, she thought, grabbing a piece.
Tyler got called up right after Piper for her first solo of the night on “Maybe This Time” from Cabaret. Somebody figured out how to operate the lights on the tiny stage and spotlit her for it. That made it easier, more like a real performance. The crowd kept them steadily busy with numbers from Grease, Les Miserables, and a handful of
tunes from the early seasons of Glee, interspersed with Patsy Cline, Garth Brooks, and Carrie Underwood. She sang “Don’t Go Breakin’ My Heart” with Mitch, who’d been reluctantly drafted to the chorus for the show when Nate discovered he could move his feet. She made Ethel Merman proud as she dueled with Brody on “Anything You Can Do.” And it wasn’t weird. That made it easier to bring her A game and give the people what they wanted—and they wanted a lot. Tucker was making an effort to rotate through the singers, giving her and Brody a short break between numbers because, as he’d predicted, despite the price, they were the most popular choices.
She guzzled a glass of the lemon water, had another slice of pizza as her toes tapped to Tucker’s rendition of “L-O-V-E.”
“So what’s the deal with Ollie?” Brody asked.
Tyler glanced at him. “What’s what deal with Ollie?”
“Your dad said something about a neurologist?”
“Oh, that. About four months ago he had a—well the medical term is long and hard to pronounce, but basically a spinal stroke. It led to unilateral paralysis in his left side, so he’s having to go through physical therapy and learn how to walk again.”
“Jesus. That’s horrible.” He laid a hand over hers. “I’m really sorry you’ve had to go through that. Both of you. It must be really tough.” The sincere concern on his face gave her pause.
“It hasn’t been easy, but we’re managing. His prognosis is good. The neurologist thinks he’ll make an almost full recovery. But it’ll be PT for several more months.”
Tucker ended his number and signaled that she was up again. Tyler finished inhaling her slice and tossed back more water to wash it down.
“How old is he?”
“Seven,” she said absently, heading for the stage.
As the opening bars of “It’s All Coming Back To Me Now” began to play, she looked out at the audience and arched a brow. “Really?” Somebody cheered from the back of the room. Tyler just shook her head and offered up a little wave as she launched into the song. Okay, fine. They want 1990s melodrama, I’ll give it to them. She hammed it up, wringing every ounce of parodied emotion out of the piece. She glanced at Brody, expecting to see him grinning in approval. But instead, his face was white, and he looked like he’d been sucker punched. What was that about?
When she finished, he met her at the edge of the stage to take the mic. Under the cover of applause, he said, “This is for you.”
He was acting weird. The music started, and he fixed his gaze on her as he began to sing “I’ll Stand By You.”
Brody was a born performer. He had charisma dripping out his pores. But absolutely nothing paralleled his performances when he put the truth of himself into the music. It was that sincerity that everyone saw as he serenaded her from the stage. It was a song of promises. What business did he have singing this to her when he’d broken his so long ago?
Tyler felt her face flush and had to fight not to squirm in her seat.
The crowd went wild when he finished, a full-on standing ovation. Eyes still on her, he stepped off the stage, passing the mic off to Myles. Before the opening bars to the next song began, Tyler was out of her seat, jerking her head toward the fire exit and the alley.
As the door slapped shut behind him, Tyler turned on him. “Okay, what the hell was that? We’ve been singing together all night, and it wasn’t weird. But you totally just made it weird.”
Brody took her hands. “I mean it. Every word. I want to help.”
Baffled, Tyler could only stare at him. “With what?”
“Ollie’s medical bills for starters. Being a single parent is no joke, and even with your dad to help, it’s got to be overwhelming. I’ll do anything you need. Babysitting. Child support. I’d have been helping all this time, if only I’d known. Jesus, how could you not tell me, Tyler?”
He was so absolutely earnest. Tyler was pretty sure she’d been zapped to the Twilight Zone. Then what he’d said began to filter through her muddled brain, and she couldn’t help it. She started to laugh.
“I hardly think this is a laughing matter.” His stern expression only made her laugh harder at the utter ridiculousness of the situation.
“Brody, Ollie is my dog.”
“Your…dog,” he repeated. “But I heard you talking, at the shop earlier, saw the toys, and I thought…” He trailed off.
She made an effort to button down the giggles. “You thought he was my son. That he was our son.”
“I…yeah.”
The expression on his face sobered her right on up. The idea of it was so staggering, a dream of a future with him that she’d put away years ago.
Did he actually look crestfallen at the news that they didn’t have a child together he didn’t know about?
“Brody, honey, did you honestly think it was possible that I could’ve had a child, your child, and somehow you wouldn’t have known about it? That I would have kept such a thing from you, if it were true?”
He released her to scrub both hands over his face. “Okay, yeah, when you put it that way, it does sound ridiculous. But I just…from what you said it sounded like you were talking to a child. And then he was seven. And…”
“You leapt to some really impressive conclusions.” And with those conclusions, he’d immediately sought to do what he’d perceived as the right thing. She’d have to think about that later. “Why didn’t you just ask outright? If not me, then Tucker or Piper. They could’ve told you otherwise.”
“I figured if they hadn’t told me, it was for a reason. Same with you. I… I’m sorry for making things weird. God, you must think I’m an idiot.”
Tyler had thought him many things since his return. But this made her think he was sweet and a hell of a lot more adult than he’d been at twenty-one. Because she found she liked that about him, and because he looked really damned embarrassed now, she decided to cut him some slack. “Doesn’t have to be weird if we don’t let it be. Come on, I’m sure there’s a list another mile long of requests waiting for us.”
~*~
The door to Speakeasy closed behind them, abruptly cutting off the sound of voices and laughter, momentarily locking them into a cocoon of silence in the cold night. After the last several hours, it was glorious.
He’d opened the floodgates with his performance to Tyler. As soon as they stepped back inside, they got slammed with romantic duet requests. Anything and everything from their past roles, to jazz, to Garth Brooks and Tricia Yearwood. Various other members of the cast trickled out as the night wore on, but the crowd didn’t thin. Not until Tucker had declared them off the roster—a good thing, as they were rapidly losing their voices—did the requests finally slow down. Over the course of the night, they’d fallen back into their rhythm. As he stood beside her, belting the final bars of “Come What May” from Moulin Rouge, he could almost let himself believe that they could find their way back to who they’d been together. God, he wanted to believe that.
Tyler paused and took a bracing breath, looking up at the clear sky.
“Where are you parked?” asked Brody.
“Back at the store.”
Which was several blocks away. This was Wishful. She’d probably be fine that distance, but Brody had spent too much time in cities and was too much of a southern gentleman to let her walk it alone. “It’s late. Let me walk you back to your truck,” he said. It was another small victory when she acquiesced without argument.
They fell into step, moving down the empty sidewalk in a silence that managed to be comfortable rather than awkward. That was a surprise, considering his earlier misconceptions about Ollie. Tyler had been amused and oddly understanding about the whole thing. He wondered if she was imagining, as he had been, that alternate reality where they made a family.
Shaking free of the image, he asked, “So you’re working for your dad?”
Tyler shook her head. “He’s retired. Not his idea, but he had a heart attack a few years back and doc said he had to slow
down. I’m the boss these days. Since he is retired, he’s been keeping Ollie for me while I’m working.”
Running the family business wasn’t what he’d expected of her. “Do you like it?”
She hummed a non-committal note. “I like working for myself. The nation-wide obsession with HGTV and home improvement means business has been pretty good, which hasn’t been the case for a lot of mom and pop stores, so we’re grateful for that. An Edison has run the shop for five generations. I couldn’t be the one to change that.”
Family ties. They ran deep for her. It was something he both admired and hated. Admired because of who that made her. Hated because he knew now that had been part of why she’d stayed rather than coming to him. But he wouldn’t bring that up.
“What about you?” she asked, jumping into the silence. “You’re not working directly as a contractor anymore. Moved up the ranks, I take it.”
“I’m a project manager,” he said. “The one who juggles the contractors, engineers, and architects to make sure they all play nice and the project gets done on time and within budget.”
“I guess the same memory skills you use for learning your lines come in handy for keeping up with that kind of detail.”
“Doesn’t hurt,” he agreed. “You want to see the job site? It’s just up that way.” He gestured to the next block.
Her eyes sparkled. “Inside tour? Heck yeah. Everybody’s buzzing about what they’re putting in. Those in the know have been all hush hush.”
“Gerald—my boss—had everybody who knows the particulars sign a non-disclosure agreement.”
“Why?”
“For buzz. Not knowing makes people curious. Crazy curious. They can’t stand a mystery.”
“This is Wishful. There’d be buzz no matter what. You know that.”
“Sure, but isn’t a surprise more fun?”
Tyler tipped her head in acknowledgment of the point and waited while he pulled out his keys.
“I’m really quite impressed that the rumor mill hasn’t sussed it out by now,” he said. “I wouldn’t have thought non-disclosure agreements would keep people from at least telling their spouses, who’d tell their friends—in confidence of course—who’d tell their friends, and so on.”
