A brief, now-you-see-it-now-you-don't flood of sunlight washed and retreated across the lounge floor, alerting her that the front door had opened to admit someone new. Oh, goody.
She really needed yet another journalist in her face right now. Then Jon-Michael's voice, stringing obscenities together with rare creativity, cut through the din as another flash went off in her eyes.
"Get that the fuck out of her face!" Striding into the throng, he ripped the camera out of the hands of the most recent contender for the Hayley Prescott photo-of-the-night award and turned to look for the nearest bar maid.
"Lucy!" He tossed her his sax case and a small, exquisitely wrapped package. "Get Bluey out here." Twisting to fend off the photographer who jumped at his side making grabs for the camera, Jon-Michael held it aloft and fumbled to pull up the right menu. Then he found it and the photographer howled in outrage when Jon-Michael hit the delete-all button with one satisfying, economical tap of his finger. “Am I sure?” he murmured, clearly responding to the digital security prompt . “Damn straight.” He hit a button and the photographer moaned.
Jon-Michael looked down at him. "Oh, that was small spuds, chief. You wanna see this expensive little camera stay in one piece, I advise you to back off. I am feeling just the tiniest bit clumsy tonight."
The roar of voices rose to deafening proportions. Then the unmistakable sound of a twelve-gauge shotgun being cocked sliced through the high decibel babble like a chainsaw through butter, and the lounge went very still.
"What the hell is going on out here?" Harve 'Bluey' Moser stood outside his office door, a cigarette illegally glued to his lower lip and a shotgun cradled in his arms, the fully primed barrels pointed at the floor. "Hayley," he said into the sudden silence, "you okay?"
She drew a shaky breath and pulled herself together. "Yeah. I'm fine."
"Uh huh." He looked less than convinced. "And I suppose these fine people howling your name are just a bunch of blues lovers, huh?"
"They're media trash," Marsha snapped, elbowing a network reporter out of her way and slapping her tray down on the bar. She straightened the waistband on her polyester slacks, yanked down the points of her vest and reached across the bar to give Hayley's forearm a comforting squeeze. Then she turned to address Bluey. "These lowlifes have been shoving our customers out of their way, yelling questions I would blush to answer to my father confessor, let alone tell the world, and shoving cameras in Hayley's face ever since they barreled through the door."
"Who, exactly, took her picture?"
"This joker here for one," Marsha retorted with a jerk of her thumb at the culprit. "But Jon-Michael deleted it."
"Yes, and I'll have you know—" the agitated photographer started to say, only to have Bluey step on his words.
"Shut up," the old man advised. He did not so much as twitch the shotgun in his arms but the photographer looked at his set face, shot a nervous glance at the weapon, and shut up.
"The guy with the white shirt took one," Lucy contributed, pointing out the individual in question. "And the babe with the bad haircut over there snapped off a couple."
The woman she had indicated shot her a look brimming with incredulity that anyone with two-toned hair could possibly disparage a perfectly acceptable spiked buzz-cut.
One of the customers pointed out yet another photographer who had shot off a frame and Bluey ordered them all to delete their images.
"Forget it," one photographer snapped, and all the others hesitated when he demanded belligerently, "What is this, a police state? You don't have the authority to make us delete our work."
"This is the state of the blues, boy—and I own it. I have the authority to do whatever I damn well please."
"I'll call the sheriff. I know my rights."
"You're not too bright, are you, son?" Bluey gave him a pitying look. "Hayley, pass this sorry sumbitch the phone. Punch 911, boy, just like you were still in the big city. And don't you believe a word you hear about police brutality in small town cops. Who says they would just as soon lock you up and throw away the key as look at you? Our Brutus isn't like that at all."
Paulette Benson, Gravers Bend sheriff, would have been surprised to hear her new name, and she was not like that at all. Bluey, however, was a better judge of human nature than the photographers. They deleted their memory cards or, in the case of one photographer who still worked old school, handed over his exposed film.
"Now the way I see it, you have a choice," he informed them. "You can stay and listen to some finest-kind blues, or you can go. Bother my bartender again and you get bounced. One more flashbulb goes off in her face and your camera gets smashed. It is all strictly up to you."
No one left.
Hayley discovered her hands were less than steady as she poured the first drink in the wake of the brouhaha. One might expect she would be accustomed by now to this sensation of having her skin peeled back so the fourth estate could get a good gander at her inner workings, but that simply was not something a sane person grew used to. Feeling the spotlight of attention focused on her made her feel naked, exposed, and alone. The only revenge at her disposal was to water down the journalist's drinks. And a feeble reprisal that was.
Her heart pounded and her temper simmered, and Jon-Michael was the last person in the world she wanted to deal with. But there he was anyhow, sliding his handsome muscular butt onto a newly freed barstool, propping his head up with one hand, and pushing an exquisitely wrapped package across the bar at her with his other.
"Hey, sweet thang," he murmured. "I got you something."
It had been a rough night and she was in no mood. Regarding the beautiful package as if were both reptilian and venomous, she said shortly, "Not now, Olivet."
He flashed that big ole charming grin at her. "Yes, now, Prescott," he insisted with an underlying hint of steel that told her he would not go away quietly.
Damn him. Damn him straight to hell. She knew what was in that package, and the last thing she needed tonight was to open it in front of an audience. In her mind's eye she could see her cheap, synthetic lace panties in pieces in his big hands. She heard again the intensity in his voice when he had said, I'll buy you new ones, Hayley. I will; I'll buy you new ones, only you gotta let me—and felt her face flame. It was payback time for knocking him off of the dock and into the water last night. He was going to publicly present her with a pair of rich-boy hundred dollar undies and there was not a damn thing she could do to prevent it. Several people were already hanging around the bar just waiting to see what was in the package. More than one was a reporter.
She tore off the ribbons, shredded the wrapping paper, and ripped open the box. Then she simply stood there for a moment, staring at its contents.
She uttered an abrupt bark of incredulous laughter and reached inside the box. Pulling out a pair of Groucho Marx glasses, complete with nose, bushy eyebrows and bristly mustache, she whipped them on, hooking the ear pieces in place and smoothing the brows. She looked up at Jon-Michael and gave him a mega-watt smile, feeling clothed again. "Thank you."
"My pleasure, darlin’. Pour me a club soda, will you?"
"You got it." A moment later she set it down in front of him. "This one is on the house."
"Mighty big of you, sweetpea." Considering band members’ soft drinks were gratis every night of the week. Picking it up, he saluted her with it, then took it with him as he sauntered off toward the stage.
She watched him go, and the stress knotting her stomach since last night slowly began to unravel. Maybe, just maybe, she would some day allow him to see her breasts again after all.
"Interesting look," a woman’s voice murmured a couple of hours later and Hayley turned to find Kurstin seated on a bar stool, her upper body draped across the top of the bar every bit as bonelessly as her brother had ever managed. Chin atop her stacked hands, she gazed up at Hayley, a crooked little smile tilting up one corner of her mouth. "Didn't anybody ever tell you the early Brooke Shields look i
s passé?"
"You're kidding me." Hayley licked her thumb and smoothed a synthetic brow. "And here I thought I looked so hip." She gave Kurstin a small smile. "So, what can I get you?"
"White wine." Kurstin was silent a moment as Hayley selected a glass and filled it. She looked up when Hayley tossed a cocktail napkin on the bar and set the drink in front of her. "I just stopped by to lend my moral support," she said, lethargically pushing herself upright. "But it looks as though my concern was premature. Here I was expecting it to be a zoo but it is actually rather civilized in here." Sipping her wine, she looked around. "Well, civilized if one doesn't mind being the undisputed center of attention. That’s gotta be a bit wearing."
"You don't know the half of it. And if zoos are your thing, you should have been here earlier, before Bluey whipped out his shotgun."
"Yeah, right. Pull the other one. You must think I was born yesterday."
She just raised her eyebrows and Kurstin sat a few degrees straighter. "You’re serious?" At Hayley's nod, she said with mild indignation, "Well, crap. I always miss out on all the good stuff." But then her expression dissolved into a dreamy little smile and Hayley had a sudden flash of what Kurstin must have been doing while she had been busy fending off reporters and their intrusive flashbulbs.
For a brief moment raw jealousy bloomed, tough and tenacious as a broadleaf dandelion in the height of summer. Then she ruthlessly weeded it out and cast it aside. All these years she had managed not to let bitterness consume her. Damned if she’d allow it entry now because her best friend achieved something she wished she could find for herself. Something, moreover, Kurstin richly deserved.
She leaned close on the pretext of wiping the bar and murmured low, “Kurstin Olivet, you little slut. You got lucky tonight, didn’t you?”
Kurstin gave her a dreamy smile.
Hayley’s loneliness deepened and her gaze sought out Jon-Michael up on the stage. He stood with his head down and his shoulders rolled in, his lips locked around the sax's reed and cheeks bulged as he blew out the melody. His eyes were closed, but they slit open as he brought the instrument up, tilting his head back a little bit more with each spiraling note. His gaze slid across hers, then snagged, locking on her face.
Hayley felt its impact low in her stomach.
Jesus, she heard his hoarse whisper, I love you.
The voice might be in her head, but she could hear the wonder and surprise in his voice as if he were standing right next to her, speaking in her ear. I love you, Hayley.
He had not been loaded to the gills last night. And it had been she who had been caught up in the throes of the moment, not Jon-Michael. So why had he said it?
Staring at him now, she could almost believe for a moment he had meant it. As their gazes locked, she thought she heard him blow a note off-key, as if he, too, were experiencing whatever it was holding her in its grip. But she must have been mistaken for when she concentrated on the melody it was as seamless, as smooth, as ever.
Then a journalist down the bar demanded a refill on his drink and the spell was broken. For God’s sake, Hayley, what a fool you are. What a blind, pitiful fool.
Letting go of the gossamer spell, she tore her gaze away from the man up on the stage and went back to work.
What the hell was that all about? Jon-Michael's gaze followed Hayley's progress up and down the bar as she filled orders, wiped off the countertop, talked to his sister. His heart banged against the wall of his chest, sweat rolled down his temples, and while both could be attributed to the hot blue lights overhead or the normal every-night exertion he expended, he knew better. It was that look they’d exchanged.
His eyes had developed this habit lately of tracking her movements during the odd moments he surfaced from the lure of the music. Never, however, had he looked up to find her already watching him with eyes made big and needy by some suppressed emotion so potent it threatened to blow the top of his head off.
By rights, she ought to look ridiculous with her fly-away hair back-lit by the bar lights and that silly disguise he had given her perched on her nose. But she didn't. Instead, all he could see tonight were her big eyes behind those clear plastic lenses, burning with emotions that reached across the space separating them to grab him by the throat. Her gaze had locked on him and made him play a flat instead of a sharp, and it was a damn rare event that could distract him from the music. But there were secrets in those hazel green depths, secrets and maybe even a vagrant promise or two.
Well, she couldn't just give him a look like that, then expect him to politely back off. Maybe it meant nothing more than she was stressed from a hellaciously bad night. But maybe it meant something more.
Either way, he would get to the bottom of it if it was the last damn thing he did.
Kurstin left Ty’s townhouse in the wake of a call from her brother. When she didn’t return within forty-five minutes, he began pacing, too restless to stay in one spot for more than a minute at a time. She had been gone a good two hours now.
He peered out the window at the lighted greens of the golf course, strode over to the kitchen area and picked up the bottle of wine, then set it down without pouring himself a glass. He went over and snapped on the television, only to immediately turn it off again. Beneath every restless action, he cursed his self-imposed exile from Bluey’s.
He wanted to be where the action was, but the place was bound to be crawling with East Coast journalists tonight, at least a few of whom could be counted on to recognize his byline photo. That was all he needed at this point, to be identified as a reporter. If it became known, Kurstin would kick him to the curb so fast his head would swim. And he needed to be in her life.
His shoulders hitched uneasily, but he quickly squared them.
For the story. His restiveness had nothing to do with the thought of being cut off from the woman herself. He could find sex anywhere. Maybe not as sweet, maybe not as hot. But hell, when it came right down to it, one woman was basically the same as the next. Professionally, however, he needed an inside source if he hoped to get the jump on all the other yahoos pouring into this little backwater burg.
That was the only reason he was so unsettled as he waited for Kurstin to come back.
Tempers were growing short in Bluey's. Or may have been short all night, for all Hayley knew. The first she noticed it, however, was during the band's last break. There was always a rush for drinks when the live music stopped, and in the sudden crush at the bar she noticed that little arguments were breaking out all over the lounge like brush fires in an arid field. Everyone had an opinion they wanted to express. Emotions were riled.
"You don't report the news," she overheard a long-time patron accuse a journalist when she was called down the bar to refill a drink. "You create it."
"That's ludicrous!"
"The hell it is. Look at O.J. Simpson.”
“That was a hundred years ago, for God’s sake.”
“Maybe. But it was pretty much the turning point when celebrity media events became more news worthy than actual news. Simpson wasn't accused of anything that doesn't happen pretty much daily in a thousand similar cases. But because he was a known name, from day one the networks turned it into a goddamn circus."
"It was news!"
"Yeah, worth maybe a week's worth of thirty second sound bites. Hell, there was another case going on in Sacramento at the same time that was virtually ignored, and it involved a serial killer, for cri’sake. At least the print journalists got around to mentioning it, even if they gave it hardly any column space. That’s more than so-called television reporters managed to do."
"Capital punishment is wrong," she heard someone else say. The speaker banged her glass down on the bar for emphasis.
"The hell you say!" came a hot defense. "What is wrong is spending hundreds of thousands of the taxpayers’ hard-earned dollars to house, clothe, feed, and then try to rehabilitate one of these jokers, only to have the prisoner eventually released so he can immedi
ately kill again. Hayley! I need another beer, please."
She silently filled the order and set it down in front of the man, collecting his money and putting it in the till.
"What do you think?" he asked her when she handed him his change. "What's your opinion on the death penalty issue?"
Every reporter within hearing distance immediately quieted and waited to hear her reply. Hayley simply looked at the man.
He grimaced. "Sorry. I guess you're not the best person to ask right now, are ya? You're probably a bit biased."
Oh, for pity’s sake. She walked away, but no matter which way she turned there were similar conversations going on.
"This night cannot end soon enough to suit me," she muttered to Kurstin at one point. But it dragged on endlessly until she felt as if she were caught up in one of those old Twilight Zone episodes they watched back in the day on Nickelodeon. "On second thought, I should probably be careful what I wish for."
"Why is that?" her friend inquired in an equally low voice, pushing her glass across the bar for a refill.
"Well, we’re just delaying the inevitable, are we not? Bluey can control what happens in here because it's private property and he retains the right to evict anyone who gets out of line." Putting the soiled glass aside, she filled a new one with wine. "The minute I step outside that door, though, I’m gonna be fair game." She set the fresh drink in front of her friend. "And don’t think the vultures don't know it.”
She had relocated from the eastern seaboard to the western, had crossed an entire country in an attempt to get away from this very situation. She’d hoped if she removed herself from the heart of the turmoil the furor would die a natural death.
It should have. Yet here she was in a predicament too similar to the one she thought she had left behind. It dogged her footsteps as surely as it would have had she simply stayed in New Hampshire in the first place. She could try to ignore it; she could refuse to respond. But it was right here in her own back yard just the same.
Notorious Page 15
