Unsung

by Shannon Richard

  And he won’t be looking back, either, because the view is starting to look a little rough around the edges. VV is starting to pack on the pounds again and it isn’t a pretty sight.

  But to each their own, maybe McGruff is into that sort of thing…which just makes me question him all the more. And this is why it would be good to know who he is while he’s still around.

  So if any of my loyal readers have any ideas, you let me know. I’d be more than happy to spread the word as to who VV is currently spreading it for.

  “Voluptuous V? What the hell is this?” He looked up at Harper, rage boiling in his veins. “Is this a joke?”

  “I wish it was. She started doing it years ago. Her way of…” She trailed off and shrugged, unsure. “I don’t even know what. Maybe it’s her way of getting back at the world for someone who slighted her. Last week she came in for a massage and I just knew I was going to be popping up in her headlines again.”

  “Again?”

  “Yeah. She had fodder for weeks after Brad left. And I’ve been on there a number of times over the years. This isn’t the first time she’s called me fat or implied that I’m a whore.”

  This was the biggest bunch of bullshit he’d ever read in his life, and he’d been in the tabloids before, so he knew bullshit. “How does she get away with it?”

  “She says it’s all fiction. Though everyone knows exactly who she’s talking about. Which is surprising as no one claims to read it, yet they always know what’s going on.”

  “You read it regularly?”

  “No, I don’t.” She shook her head. “One of my coworkers texted it to me. She thought I might want to know about Bethelda’s call to arms to figure out who you are. I’m actually surprised she didn’t know the answer to that yet. But as my friends and family won’t be talking to her, it’s going to take someone else recognizing you. Which, you know, is really just a matter of time at this point.”

  The worry in her eyes was more than he could take. “Come here.” He wrapped his arms around her, pulling her into his chest as he pressed his nose to her hair. It managed to have a calming effect on his entire body.

  And really, when it came down to it? All of this outside nonsense was insignificant. What was important was the woman in his arms.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered as she kissed his neck.

  He moved back just far enough to look down into her face. “Why in the world are you apologizing to me?”

  “Liam, once she figures out who you are, it’s going to go much further than just some local blog. And when she gets her hands on the fact that I’m pregnant? I don’t even want to know.”

  “Doesn’t matter.” He shook his head. “I flat out refuse to let whoever the hell this woman is mess with our relationship. I refuse to let anybody mess with it. People can write whatever they want to write. At the end of the day, we both know the truth.”

  “We do.” She nodded.

  “And what’s the truth?” He cradled her jaw in his hand, tracing her cheek with his thumb.

  “Are you testing me?” She raised her eyebrow.

  “Just making sure you remember. What’s the truth, Harper?”

  “That I love you and you love me.”

  “Exactly. Everything else isn’t important. Come on.” He grabbed her hand and turned, leading her to the bathroom. “We aren’t letting anyone put a dark smudge on this trip. We’re ending on a high note.”

  “A high note?”

  “Yup, you screaming my name when you come in the shower.”

  * * *

  Bethelda’s little call to arms in figuring out the identity of Liam/Scruff McGruff took seventeen days to finally yield the answer she’d been looking for, and with it a few more facts. It came out the day before Liam was flying back to Mirabelle from Australia.

  THE GRIM TRUTH

  ROCK A BYE, BYE BABY

  It’s all fun and games until someone gets knocked up. Yup, that’s right folks, she’s not fat. She’s just pregnant. VV is procreating, Lord help us all. And the knocker-upper? Well, I’m guessing it’s a certain mystery man who has been hanging around our area for the last few weeks. But he isn’t that much of a mystery anymore.

  The man in question is actually a country musician (name rhymes with Shmiam Shames) if you feel so inclined to classify him as that. The man doesn’t have all that much talent to speak of, but at least he’s pretty. Though I will say his taste in women is rather questionable.

  I was pretty curious to know how VV sunk her claws into a semi-famous singer. But it’s really all because McGruff sunk something else into her. Another case of “I can’t keep my pants on despite my nose…or all common sense, logic, or reason.” Because really if he’d just taken a few moments to think he wouldn’t have gotten himself into a situation like this.

  Who really knows what drew him to VV in the beginning, but I’m sure that the only thing really keeping him around now is the fact that she just might be carrying his child. For his sake, he really should get a paternity test (along with a few other tests if you know what I’m saying. Who knows what the woman is carrying besides the bun in the oven).

  I still don’t really see this whole relationship lasting. It’s got an ice cubes chance in hell if you want my oh-so-humble opinion. But we shall just have to wait and see now won’t we?

  Yup, so the pregnancy was out along with Liam’s identity. And there were certain words in that stupid article that had stung more than others. But it didn’t send Harper over the rails. She knew for a fact that Liam wasn’t with her just because they were having a child. He’d made that quite clear.

  He loved her.

  Bethelda didn’t have the power to take that away. No one did.

  But there was a part that did infuriate Harper beyond all reason: Bethelda insulting Liam. “Not all that much talent to speak of” her ass.

  “Forever” had been officially released almost three weeks ago and not only had it already cracked the top one hundred downloads on iTunes, but it was steadily climbing. Country music stations were getting frequent requests for it, and Harper heard it on the local station daily.

  Those were the facts. Another fact was that Bethelda was probably suffering from gonosyphilherpes and it was beginning to affect her brain at this point.

  Actually, Harper was still surprised that it had taken that long for someone to figure out who Liam was. Maybe it was because Bethelda’s minions hadn’t known what they were supposed to be looking for. How were they to know that he was a celebrity of any sort? Harper hadn’t known who Liam was when’d she’d gone home with him that first night…or after spending the weekend with him.

  No, she hadn’t found out until six weeks later.

  She supposed that was the power of the radio though. You knew the voice and the name, but not necessarily the face. Well, not until the name got a whole lot bigger. Kind of like Tim McGraw, or Keith Urban, or Taylor Swift. Liam’s touring mates were another prime example. If Isaac Dylan or Hunter Andrews walked into a bar, a lot of the people in it were going to know exactly who they were.

  But Liam was gaining on recognition, and it was only going to grow as the video for “Beyond the Limits” was scheduled to be released in less than a week. Not only was Liam going to be singing right alongside Isaac and Hunter, but there was the association with Mason-Dixon…

  And Kiki Jean Carlow, otherwise known as Harper’s least favorite person of all time…and yes, the woman had beaten out Bethelda.

  Bitch was tryin’ to steal her man.

  Liam had told Harper everything about that entire situation, everything that had gone down on the video shoot and before then. Kiki had apparently ruined the song for him and he wasn’t looking forward to the video being released in any way, shape, or form.

  And after he’d told her about it, she wasn’t, either. Liam with another woman made her go about fifty shades of jealous. And they weren’t pretty shades, either. More like a wheel of the ugliest colors a person could
think of, like rust or taupe or mold green.

  But she knew what was going on, and there would be no surprises on her end. It was a fact that made her slightly guilty that she still hadn’t told Liam about the newest Bethelda article.

  Though to be fair, he’d been in the air during a twenty-four-hour flight…and when he’d gotten back to Mirabelle they hadn’t exactly spent a lot of time talking. They’d spent hours getting reacquainted in other ways, which she hadn’t had a problem with in the slightest as she was a veritable hornucopia.

  And good Lord did the man deliver in everything she’d needed. He left absolutely no doubt in her mind as to how much he loved her body or that he still wanted her just as much even though it was changing.

  And was it ever changing.

  She’d gained back the majority of the weight she’d lost, filling out her curves to the fullest. Her breasts were now in the DD range and the bump at her belly was no longer a slight rise. She was visibly showing and her clothing was no longer camouflaging the pregnancy. It was well past the point of the expertly draped dresses and flowy tops that she’d bought with her mother a few weeks ago doing the trick.

  Obviously, as Bethelda had figured it out. And she was going to tell Liam just as soon as she got home. But really how was she going to have told him when she’d been at work all day and he’d been sleeping to get over the jet lag/time difference.

  A time difference that had been the bane of her existence for the last two and a half weeks.

  But she didn’t have to deal with that now. What she did have to deal with was the crowd of people currently at the Piggly Wiggly at five thirty on a Friday afternoon. And of course she had Liam on the phone helping her shop, because why wouldn’t she?

  “So what’s today’s craving?” his voice rumbled low in her ear. He’d only just woken up and had called her while still lounging in bed.

  Really, why in the world should she give a flying flip to that stupid Bethelda article when there was a sexy, scruffy, gorgeous man waiting for her to get home?

  Yup, perspective. That was what she was learning. See, being rational was possible even while pregnant.

  “Tacos for dinner, and Oreos for dessert.” She sidestepped the man in the Jimmy Buffett T-shirt who’d been blocking her path pretty much the entire time she’d been shopping. He had no regard for anyone else in the aisles shopping around him.

  “With milk?” Liam asked, his voice magically pulling her away from her annoyance at Mr. Cheeseburger in Paradise. Asshole in the Piggly Wiggly was more like it.

  Again, it was all about perspective.

  “Is there any other way to eat them?” She grabbed the hard-shells and put them in the cart.

  “You dunk them right away or lick the center first?” The grin in his voice was obvious.

  “Liam, could you have made that sound any more inappropriate?”

  “I could try.”

  “Oh, I’m sure you could.” Harper propped the phone between her ear and her shoulder as she grabbed the cart again and started pushing, heading for the produce section.

  “Do we have the ingredients to make fresh salsa?”

  “Let me check.” He shifted in bed and the sheets ruffled through the phone.

  While he went to the kitchen, she hunted for ripe avocados, because guacamole sounded like the greatest thing ever.

  “That’s a negative, rubber duck. You’re going to need to get onions, tomatoes, cilantro, and lemon juice. Geez, woman, did you go grocery shopping at all while I was gone? You’ve got nothing here unless we’re going to eat peanut butter and jelly.”

  “And this is why I’m at the grocery store. So shut it.”

  “Did you just tell me to shut it?”

  “Yeah I did.” She headed to the tomatoes and threw a couple into a plastic bag. “What are you going to do about it?”

  “As soon as you get home I’ll show you. And it will be a very similar experience to how I eat my Oreos.”

  A shiver ran down Harper’s back as a blush crept up into her cheeks. “Is that a promise?”

  “You bet your sweet ass it is.”

  “Language, Mr. James.”

  “Oh, you like my mouth. And feel free to call me mister when you get home and I use it on you.”

  Home. Home to him. God, how she wished all days were like this.

  “Deal. I’m getting off the phone now. You’re distracting me from shopping.”

  “Translation: you’re getting all hot and bothered as you look at the eggplant.”

  “Hanging up now.” She snatched a bag of cilantro as she rounded past the herbs.

  “Love you.”

  “Love you, too.” She grinned hugely as she hung up, sticking her phone in her purse before she went to grab an onion to add to the cart.

  Five minutes later she had everything she needed and was heading to the front of the store. There was a line at each of the open registers, so she went to number ten at the very end because it seemed a tad bit shorter. Her prime number tendencies weren’t all that important in the moment. All she wanted was to get out of there and get to the man who was waiting for her.

  Waiting to do wicked things to her with his mouth. Yes, that was a good thing to focus on. A much, much better thing to focus on.

  The line shifted and she moved forward, loading the groceries onto the belt while the woman in front of her paid. When the last item was up on the belt she stepped back and glanced over to the stand next to her, her eyes catching on the tabloids. There were the usual articles discussing the supposed demise of another A-List couple, or if so-and-so was coming out of the closet, or how aliens had abducted what’s-his-name.

  But none of those were what caught Harper’s eye. No, it was the tabloid with a massive picture of Kiki Jean Carlow front and center. She was batting her baby blues at the camera and grinning. Right next to it was a separate—and smaller—headshot of Liam.

  Has Kiki Jean Carlow Found Love with Musician Liam James? Is She the Girl from His New Hit Song “Forever”?

  Seeing his name connected to Kiki’s almost had Harper losing it right there in the middle of the Piggly Wiggly. As it was, her heart was pounding out of her chest, her palms had gone sweaty, and her ears were ringing.

  It was automatic, her flipping through the pages to get to the article. She stopped breathing when she found it.

  More pictures were here, these with Liam and Kiki actually together. One was of them sitting in a club, the photo slightly blurry but clear enough to see him leaning closer to presumably hear her speak. Another of her leaving what looked to be a room backstage; he was shirtless and she was running her fingers down his chest. The last was from the video shoot, the two of them walking side by side, his hand on her hip as he looked down at her.

  Yup, just like that, perspective was gone. She was going to be sick.

  Chapter Nineteen

  I’ll Be Your Man

  Liam was starting another load of laundry when Harper walked in the front door. Luna bolted from her comfortable position all snuggled on the bed and ran through the living room to get to her owner.

  He shut the lid of the washer and closed the accordion doors before heading down the hallway.

  “Groceries in the car?” he asked as he rounded the corner. He’d told her to call him when she was close and he’d get them out. But as her arms were laden with four reusable bags she hadn’t listened.

  “There wasn’t that much.” She shook her head, barely sparing him a glance as she headed for the kitchen.

  He made a move to grab the bags but she didn’t let go. “Wasn’t that much? You’re carrying your weight in groceries.” Okay, maybe a slight over-exaggeration. But still, he’d told her he would get them.

  “I’ve got it.” She pulled away and stepped around him.

  He followed automatically, an uneasiness settling over him. What the hell was going on? They’d just been on the phone not twenty minutes ago and everything had been fine. Now she wouldn’t loo
k at him.

  “Harper, what’s wrong?”

  “Nothing,” she said as she pulled the milk, cheese, and sour cream from the bag and walked over to the refrigerator.

  Bullshit.

  “You lying to me now?”

  Her back snapped in tension as she straightened, shutting the door a little harder than normal as she spun around. There was a fire in her eyes, passion in her cheeks, and fury on her mouth. “Did you just call me a liar?”

  “No, I asked if you were lying. Not the same thing.”

  Her eyes narrowed and she took a deep breath, letting it out through her nose. She walked back over to the bags, pulling out a magazine and tossing it on the counter. “That’s what’s going on,” she said, pointing.

  His eyes dropped to the magazine, scanning the front and seeing his picture next to Kiki’s with a headline that immediately had his own temper flaring. He didn’t need to read what was inside to know it was all a bunch of lies.

  Apparently it didn’t matter that he’d been one hundred percent honest with her from the get-go, she thought he was cheating.

  He looked back up to her, doing everything in his power not to lose his damn mind. “Tell me you don’t believe that.”

  “You don’t even know what it says.”

  “I don’t need to, Harper. Anything connecting me to Kiki is horseshit.”

  “I know that!” she shouted.

  “Really? Do you? Then why the fuck did you buy it?” he shouted right back. He didn’t mean to, but good God, she was killing him. “Because if you believe a word of that garbage for a single second, then you don’t know me at all!”

  The instant her eyes filled with tears he knew he’d missed the mark. Had gone too far and let his temper take control. This didn’t have to do with trusting him. Whatever was in there had scared her and she didn’t know how to deal with it.

  “Harper—”

  But she turned and walked away. Out of the kitchen and down the hall to the bedroom, and before the door shut, her sob echoed down the hallway.