by Roz Lee
“Drive safe,” Hank said to their backs.
Their trucks roared to life and disappeared down the drive.
“Come on, Betty, it’s time to call it a night.” He followed the dog into the kitchen, latched the screened door behind them, but left the real door open to let in the mild night air.
The house was quiet. He wandered through the empty rooms, turning off lights, remembering the sound of laughter, family sing-a-longs, and noisy boys playing in the big rooms. His grandparents never complained when he brought his rowdy friends to the farm to run wild in the fields or daydream in the hayloft. They had plowed fields, fed cows, and chased chickens through the seasons and loved every minute of it.
Randy and Chris were like brothers to him. As kids, they had been inseparable. Hank had been the creative one, coming up with ideas. Chris had been the wild one, the instigator, urging them to carry out Hank’s ideas, and often embellishing them with a daring element Hank would never have thought of. Chris had mellowed after marrying and having kids, but he could still be depended on to come up with a good prank if need be.
Randy had been the voice of sanity when they were kids he was still the most levelheaded person Hank knew. He’d had no qualms about turning over all his private legal matters to Randy years ago. Without Chris to manage the farm and Randy to manage his financial holdings, he wouldn’t be able to live the life he did. Not and stay sane.
The big rambling house was as much home as his parents’ small house in town where he grew up. He loved everything about the farmhouse, the creaking wood floors, the clanging water pipes, the drafty windows, and the memories. He loved that his mother grew up in the house, and with any luck, his children would too. Since his career had taken off, the house and farm were his solid foundation. The house had become his sanctuary, and the converted barn, his creative playpen.
He wondered if the old house would ever be home to more than one lonely man again. In his profession, it was nearly impossible to meet women of the settling down kind, and because of his profession, no one in Willowbrook would even consider settling down with him. Mel Harper’s image insinuated itself on his mind, and he fought it back. He could not, would not, get involved with a reporter.
Chapter Four
Smitty’s was packed to the rafters with locals out for a little recreation after a hard week of scraping a living from the black soil of North East Texas. Hank paused inside the door, soaking in the familiar ambiance of stale spilled beer and the lingering stench of cigarette smoke from the days before smoking had been banned in the bar. The jukebox belted out a country ballad. It wasn’t his style, but he could tolerate it. Someone shoved a cold Lone Star longneck into his hand as he passed the bar. He took a long swig and sized up the competition in the back room. Chris and Randy waited for the center table to free up. He joined them, leaning against the wall.
“Glad you could make it,” Chris greeted him. “The table should be free in a few minutes.”
“I’d never miss a chance to whoop the two of you.”
“Right.” Randy smirked. “Be prepared to put your money where your mouth is. I’ve been practicing while you’ve been gallivanting your pansy-ass all over the world.”
“I’ve never needed practice to clean your pockets. How much are you planning to part with tonight?”
They were still haggling over the size of their bets when the hair on the back of his neck stood on end. Hank turned, scanned the room. He was just about to dismiss the feeling as nothing when he saw her. Mel Harper. It took a couple of seconds before her gaze met his, but when they locked, something flared between them, and he couldn’t look away.
She wore denim. Expensive, designer denim. The short jacket matched the jeans and parted to reveal a white lace camisole. His gaze skimmed down her long legs to her sexy high heel sandals. Her toenails, painted a soft pink, matched her fingernails. She’d pulled her shoulder length hair into a high ponytail that swung side-to-side every time she moved. She sparkled like a diamond in a box of rocks.
Lord help him, but he wanted her.
He took a step in her direction, his gaze fixated on the patch of skin peeking out from the collar of her jacket. He’d start by tasting her there. A swish of hair crossed his line of sight, drawing his gaze up to troubled blue eyes. She shook her head and turned to leave.
He pounced, crossing the room in three steps and grabbed her by the elbow to halt her retreat. “Wait.”
“Let go of me, Hammer.”
Hank flinched at the nickname. He loosened his grip on her arm, and she twisted enough to break the contact. The voice of reason whispered in his head, Let her go, but instead he said, “Stay a while. We were about to play a game or two.”
Her gaze darted around him to Chris and Randy. “No. No, I don’t think so.”
There was disgust and something else, fear perhaps, in her eyes. She turned, making a beeline to the door. He let her go. What else could he do? He cursed the nickname Karen had given him and the reputation that went along with it. It was shit like the stunt Karen had pulled on him that made celebrities wary of the media.
“What was that all about?” Chris asked when he rejoined his friends in the back. A table became available, and they moved in to claim it.
“Hell if I know.” He leaned against the table and stared at the worn floorboards, absently rubbing the back of his neck with one hand. A part of him told him he’d just dodged a bullet, but another insisted she was worth the risk. Which one was right?
“What did you do to her?” Randy asked. “She high-tailed it out of here with the chick who owns the bakery downtown. You would have thought there was a skunk chasing them they were moving so fast.”
He straightened. “All I did was invite her to play a round of pool with us. I hardly know the woman.”
“Didn’t look that way from here,” Chris said.
Hank grabbed a pool cue and chalked the tip. “She called me Hammer.”
Chris racked the balls. “So?”
“So, she knows who I am. I guess she believes everything she reads.”
“She’s a reporter. She should know better,” Randy said, circling the table to give Hank room at the end.
Hank positioned the cue ball and lined up his shot. “I don’t want to talk about it. Okay? I came here to play pool. Let’s get on with it.”
“There is some good news in all of this,” Randy persisted.
“You obviously see something I don’t, so fill me in,” Hank said.
“Well, she knows who you are now, and it’s obvious she doesn’t want to be anywhere near you, so the chances of her using your dad to get close to you just dipped to zero.”
Chris nodded. “He’s got a point.”
“Will you two stick a sock in it and just play?”
Leave it to those two to point out the flaws in his logic.
His friends were like two dogs with a ‘coon in a tree. They wouldn’t leave it alone. He lost the first game to Chris, and the second to Randy. He paid up without comment and settled his bar tab. He left his friends to play a winner-takes-all round without him.
Randy was right. She should know better than to believe everything she reads, which begged the question, why was she so upset to find out who he was? And the other question he couldn’t shake—why did he care?
* * *
Mel barreled through the crowded bar and came face to face with Cathy.
“What’s up, girlfriend?” Cathy asked.
“Nothing. Let’s go. I don’t want to be here tonight.” She rummaged in her purse for her car keys. “Come on.”
Cathy followed. “Why? Where are we going?” she asked, firing unanswered questions at Mel’s back. “Can you slow down a little? It’s hard to walk in these heels.”
Cathy hopped into the passenger side, and Mel jammed her foot down on the accelerator. She sped out of the parking lot in a spew of flying gravel.
The man should not affect me this way. No one else ever has. Farm
er? Yeah, right. She should have known. She knew his music. She just didn’t know he lived here, in her town. She never would have come here if she had known. This couldn’t be happening. God, he had to be laughing at her. She had to be the only woman on the planet who didn’t recognize him on sight. Jeez, she was stupid.
And to think she’d been attracted to the man, even when she thought he might have been growing pot or something in that big barn of his. But this was worse. So much worse. Pot growers could be reformed, but musicians? Not so much. Not at all, in fact.
“Whoa there! Slow down would you? Do you want to tell me what happened back there?”
She eased up on the accelerator. As bad as things were, she had no intention of killing herself, and Cathy didn’t deserve to go along for the ride if she did. “Hank Travis is in there.”
“And?”
“Isn’t that enough?”
“I don’t think so, girlfriend. Where are we going anyway?”
She sighed. As she suspected, Cathy wasn’t buying it. Her behavior was not going to be easy to explain. Women all over the world fell at Hank Travis’ feet. “I don’t know. My place?”
“Okay, but you better come up with two things when we get there. Something decent to drink and an explanation.”
“I’ve got wine,” she said. “The explanation is a bit more complicated.”
Cathy rubbed her hands together and bounced in her seat. “Oh, this sounds good. I can’t wait to hear it.”
Mel rolled her eyes. This was not the way she imagined telling her friend, but she hadn’t planned to tell her at all. But with Hank Travis in Willowbrook, it was only a matter of time before her secret came out. Maybe Cathy could help her find a way to keep a lid on it.
Cathy followed her through the tiny bungalow to the kitchen, which like Hank’s, was decorated in mid-century modern, but unlike his—what you saw was what you got. The appliances were original, except for the small microwave she couldn’t live without. She opened a bottle of wine while Cathy selected two crystal wineglasses from the cabinet. A few minutes later, the women curled up on opposite ends of the sofa.
“Do you want to tell me what happened at Smitty’s?”
She twirled her wine glass. The golden liquid swirled inside the cut crystal. She had thought about what, if anything, she should tell her friend and come to the only possible conclusion. If in six months Cathy hadn’t mentioned Hank Travis lived in her hometown, she likely wasn’t going to spill Mel’s secrets either. Nevertheless, she felt the need to hear her say it before she told her everything.
“If I tell you something, can I trust you not to tell another living soul?”
“Of course you can. You know I wouldn’t talk about you behind your back.”
“I know…it’s just….” She took a deep breath. “This isn’t something I tell everyone. In fact, there’s only one other person in Willowbrook who knows what I’m going to tell you.”
Cathy sat up, leaning in. “What? What? Now you have to tell me. I’m going to bust if you don’t!”
Her hands shook as she placed her wine glass on the coffee table. She had told a few people her secret over the years but only out of necessity. Telling Cathy was different—she didn’t need to know. But Mel needed someone to confide in, someone who might understand or at least sympathize with her plight. There was no way her friend could really comprehend her dilemma, but perhaps woman-to-woman she might understand where she was coming from.
“Seriously. This is for your ears only. I don’t want the whole town to know.” Though they will soon enough.
Cathy crossed her heart and made a show of zipping her lips and throwing away the key. “Not a word. I promise.”
“I’m not who you think I am. My real name is Melody Ravenswood.” There, she’d said it out loud and the roof hadn’t come crashing down and flash bulbs hadn’t gone off. In fact, Cathy appeared confused. Not the reaction she expected—at all.
“Okay. And you are telling me this because…?”
“My father was Hamilton Ravenswood.” Still no recognition. She tried again, this time using her father’s title and the name he used on stage. “You know…Earl Ravenswood. Lead guitarist for RavensBlood.”
Recognition dawned across her friends face. Her jaw dropped, and her eyes became saucers. “You’re kidding, right?”
She shook her head. It was a truth she’d hidden her entire life. And she’d come to Willowbrook hoping to bury it, once and for all.
“Okay.” Cathy’s eyebrows knitted in confusion. “But what does that have to do with Hank?” She didn’t seem the least impressed, or worse, curious about her revelation, which eased her mind about telling her.
She wrapped her arms around her bent knees. “I don’t know. It just…does. Up until today, I thought he was a farmer, or to be more specific, I thought he might be growing pot in his barn. I searched the newspaper archives, figuring if he was growing pot, maybe he’d been in trouble before. I couldn’t believe what I found. It was too close to home, you know? Anyway, I was still reeling when I got to Smitty’s, and instead of finding you there, I found Hank.” She reached for her wine and took a fortifying sip. “He wanted me to stay and play pool with him and his buddies.”
Cathy nodded. “Randy and Chris. The three of them play a lot of pool at Smitty’s.” She paused to drink her wine. “Does he know who you are?”
“I don’t think so. After the way I acted, he probably thinks I’m some kind of psycho. Maybe that’s a good thing.”
“What makes you think so? Lord, woman, Hank Travis is a prime, Grade A catch.”
“Not for me he isn’t. The last thing in the world I want is to be involved with someone like him.”
Cathy smiled. “There isn’t an unattached woman in the county who doesn’t want to be involved with Hank, the Hammer, Travis, even if it’s only for one night. Judging by your reaction, I’d say you aren’t immune to him either.”
She couldn’t control the heat creeping from her chest to her face. Denying her attraction would only confirm Cathy’s suspicions, and as she had pointed out, a person would have to be dead not to see Hank’s appeal. She wasn’t dead, but she wasn’t like other people either. There were things she needed to consider.
“He’s a famous musician. I’ve avoided them my entire life. I came to Willowbrook because I thought I could lead a normal life here…away from the paparazzi. If I’d known he lived here, I never would have come.”
“Anyone in town could have told you, but as a rule, we don’t talk about it much. He’s just Henry Jr. to most of us. When he’s not on tour, he keeps a pretty low profile out at his grandparent’s farm. Since he detests reporters….” She grimaced and Mel waved off her concerns. “Sorry. Anyway, not too many reporters hunt him up here, so it’s easy to forget he’s anybody other than Knobby Knees Hank.”
She laughed. “Knobby Knees? You really call him that?”
“Sure. He played basketball in junior high. He had the biggest knees and the skinniest legs you ever saw. He was in my graduating class. We teased him about it for years. I think it may have been the deciding factor in him giving up sports to join the band. Anyway, it seems to have worked out for him. He wasn’t any good at basketball anyway.”
“At least it explains the donation his father made to the band program.”
“Yeah. Good article, by the way.”
“I can’t believe I interviewed all those people, and not one even hinted they knew Hank, or the real reason behind Henry’s donation. Just goes to show what kind of ace reporter I am.” She shook her head in disgust.
“Don’t be so hard on yourself. Like I said, Willowbrook doesn’t drool over celebrities, especially if they’re one of us.” She topped off their wine glasses. “So, why couldn’t we have a drink at Smitty’s?”
“I know this sounds stupid. We didn’t exactly hit it off. Like you said, he doesn’t much like reporters. But I agree, he’s a fine specimen. I thought so even when I was convinced he wa
s a criminal.” She shrugged. “I’ll admit to thinking he was hot, and I guess deep down I thought maybe…well, that flew out the window as soon as I figured out who he was.” She sighed, remembering the rush of feelings when she saw him standing in the back of the room. He fit in seamlessly, but all the same, she’d picked him out instantly, and he had done the same with her.
She hated everything he represented to her, but when his blatant gaze had gulped her down like a cold beer on a hot day, she’d almost forgotten her strictest rule in life—stay away from musicians. It had been an easy rule to live by…up until she met Hank Travis. When he’d touched her, the same zing of awareness she had felt the night before jolted her back to sanity. She had run before she’d done something stupid.
Cathy deserved an explanation, and even though she had just confided her deepest, darkest secret to her, she couldn’t bring herself to tell her friend how her body tingled when Hank turned his gaze on her, or how his touch short-circuited her brain. She settled on a partial truth—the one that really mattered. “I just couldn’t stay in there with him. I couldn’t exactly explain to him why I was so mad, not without telling him who I was. Besides, I don’t socialize with musicians, especially famous ones.”
“Why not? He still has knobby knees and skinny legs. He’s just as human as the rest of us. Other than the leg thing, he’s a prime male specimen, one of the few single ones in town.”
A bone deep chill slid along her spine. “I can’t be involved with someone in the music business. I saw what that kind of life did to our family. All the traveling, the paparazzi, the fans.” She waved her hand in an all-encompassing wave. “My mother couldn’t take it anymore, so she left my father and took me with her. My father wouldn’t give up the business.”
She inhaled deeply. The scars from her emotional wound still had the power to topple her if she let them. “The traveling eventually killed him.”
Cathy scooted across the sofa and took Mel’s hand in hers. She waited for the pity, but what she got was sympathy and genuine concern instead. “I’m sorry. Your father died in a plane crash didn’t he? Somewhere in Colorado?”
