Wild at Whiskey Creek

by Julie Anne Long

  “Glory . . . ?”

  And now his voice had gone husky, and he felt like the pounding of his heart could have drowned out a stadium’s worth of cheers.

  She looked up, eyes wider. Alerted by his tone.

  “I kind of feel like I need to do something about this moment, too.”

  He fished his grandmother’s ring out of his pocket. He kissed the palm of her hand, laced his fingers through hers. “Will you—”

  “Yes,” she said eagerly.

  “. . . marry . . .”

  “Yes!”

  “Me?” he said softly, determinedly.

  “Who, you?” She looped her arms around his neck and stood on her toes and whispered in his ear, as if confiding the secret of the universe. “Yes.”

  And then he slipped the elegant old ring that once belonged to his rather patrician grandmother onto her slim, tough-tipped, rock-and-roll hand, and it surprised neither of them that it fit perfectly.

  Chapter 22

  “Eli?”

  His mom’s voice was cheerful but just a little taut. She always answered on the first ring. He knew she tried to disguise the anxiety, but it was there.

  “Everything’s great, Mom.”

  He always said this first. And then she would relax.

  “What’s going on, honey?”

  “Well, Mom . . . I gave Grandma’s ring away.”

  There was a beat of silence as the meaning of this settled in.

  “You’re getting married?” she breathed. Pure joy. She made the word married about four syllables long.

  “Yep.” He grinned.

  “Who is it?”

  He paused.

  And then the pause kind of stretched.

  And in that pause, she guessed.

  “You’re going to marry her, huh?” She sounded cautiously bemused.

  He gave a short laugh. “Glory Greenleaf. Yeah.”

  Glory Hallelujah Greenleaf Barlow. He loved the sound of that.

  “Well . . . goodness!” Her brightness was a trifle strained.

  Eli stifled a laugh. He wasn’t surprised.

  “So, honey, how did it come about?”

  He gave her a very broad outline—ran into her again at a party in Hellcat Canyon, things kind of took off from there. And he told her about Wyatt “King” Congdon and the discovery that took place in the Misty Cat and what was next for Glory.

  His mom was struggling more than a little with this news. She knew the history of the Greenleafs, and how what had happened with Jonah had actually broken Eli’s heart.

  “Well, I’m incredibly happy for her. She’s wonderfully talented. And I’m so happy the world will have a chance to hear her. Oh, but, honey . . .”

  “Yeah, Mom?”

  “If she’s really successful at this . . . she’ll be touring and recording and doing interviews and shows and Eli . . . the kinds of publicity involved . . . your life could become a zoo. You’ll be away from each other so much. It could be so hard on a couple. And hard on a family, if you have kids. It could be so lonely. And I want so much for you to be happy. I do. Sweetie, you deserve to be happy.”

  He’d expected her to say exactly this.

  She was just reciting stuff that both he and Glory already knew. And he knew his mom was worried.

  He waited it out, listening patiently.

  And then he waited another moment after his mom stopped talking.

  “Was it easy?” he asked gently. “Being married to Dad?”

  She was silent.

  “Even if you still knew how it all would end, Mom, would you do it again? Marry him? Make a life with him?”

  He was going to make his tough mom cry, but he needed her to understand.

  “One minute with her . . .”

  He didn’t finish. His mom understood the rest: . . . is better than a lifetime with anyone else.

  And she did understand.

  In that silence, she made that leap on her own.

  “I’m so happy you found someone to love like that, Eli.” Her voice was thrumming with love and tears.

  “I learned how to love like that from you.”

  A moment passed and neither of them spoke.

  He heard her sniffling. But she pulled it together.

  “She loves you, too, you know, Eli. Glory does.” She sounded like she was reassuring herself when she said it.

  “Oh, I know.” He was smiling faintly, triumphantly. “But what makes you say that?”

  “That night when she played that song . . . that beautiful song . . .”

  “‘Songbird.’”

  “Yeah. She was singing it to you. I don’t know if you could tell. But I could. Back then, even back then, I knew. She’s so gifted.”

  They sat in a moment of sort of radiant silence that they could both feel even over the phone. Smiling through tears.

  “She’s some girl,” his mom said, finally, in a more normal voice. Processing this. Coming around to the idea, albeit cautiously. He heard the humor in her voice. After all, she’d known Glory her whole life. Caution was a reasonable reaction.

  Eli’s smile grew into a grin. “She is, at that.”

  “You two will have the prettiest babies. I can’t wait to hold them.”

  “Yikes. First things first, Mom.”

  He sat on one side of the glass.

  Jonah sat on the other.

  And he still looked like Jonah. Handsome devil, a lot like his sister, lucky with the ladies, particularly fond of bad girls. There wasn’t a single ugly Greenleaf, that was for sure.

  He looked like Jonah, but he was a little pasty and hollow-eyed, and prison-buff.

  Jonah, expressionless, bemused, picked up the phone.

  And then Eli saw his hands were shaking. “Hey, man,” Jonah said.

  “Orange isn’t your color, man.”

  Jonah snorted softly. “Since when do you care about color?”

  “Went on a couple of dates with a makeup artist a while ago. Did you know your eyebrow isn’t supposed to go any farther than past here?” Eli pointed to that spot.

  “No shit?” Jonah was genuinely interested. He touched his own eyebrow.

  It was such a stupid thing. But the fact that they could instantly fall into talking about whatever, that Jonah was feeling his own eyebrow made Eli miss him like mad. Because he was curious about everything. He didn’t really judge anything. He could make anything funny.

  Eli knew a swift surge of frustrated anger, but it evaporated pretty quickly.

  Things were how they were.

  Neither of them had apologized to each other for how things had gone down. It was sort of implicitly understood how it had happened. And Jonah, unlike his stubborn sister, really didn’t quite have it in him to hold grudges.

  They were silent a moment. Kind of just happy to be sitting near each other again.

  Jonah cleared his throat. “Hey, check this out, Eli. I’m learning Spanish.”

  “Yeah, I’ll just bet you are.”

  “No, man. For real. Not just the filthy words. Learning Portuguese, too. Gorgeous language. They started me in on French. Next up is the fancy stuff, Chinese and Farsi. Tagalog, probably. Damned if I’m not actually good at this stuff.”

  Jonah did have that kind of mind. Quick and absorbent. There were easily about fifty things Jonah could have done for a living. If he’d had flawless grades or a family with money or the patience or focus or . . .

  There was really no point in thinking about the “what-ifs.”

  Ironically, being confined to one place was about the only way Jonah would have ever channeled his endless energy and cleverness.

  “Yeah, I can see how that might be true. Damn, Jonah. You can make a living as a translator, you know. Something like that. When the . . . time comes.”

  Government agencies were hardly eager to hire felons. But Eli knew he’d pull strings and move heaven and earth to get Jonah a job like that, if it helped.

  What Jonah di
d after that was out of Eli’s control.

  But Eli realized now that it didn’t matter. He was essentially family. Had always been family.

  He was stuck with him.

  And if he pulled any shit like that again, Eli would arrest him again.

  Jonah was staring at him shrewdly.

  “You got something on your mind, Barlow. You’re not just here to soak up the ambience. Or my pretty face.”

  Eli figured he might as well come out with it.

  “Yeah. I came to tell you I’m in love with your sister.”

  Jonah went perfectly still. Oddly, his expression didn’t change.

  “You mean Glory,” he said neutrally. Finally.

  “Yeah. I mean Glory.”

  He was silent for a long time.

  “Well, yeah, I knew that.” Jonah sounded faintly puzzled.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, the sun rises in the east, the earth revolves around the sun, and you’re in love with Glory. I think I’ve known that for at least as long as you’ve known it. Not consciously, but it was just sort of always there. I just didn’t know if you’d ever find the right time to do something about it.”

  Eli didn’t know what to say.

  “Shit,” Eli finally said, eloquently, in surprise.

  Jonah laughed.

  “Better you than that dip Mick Macklemore.”

  “Flattered.

  “She loves me, too, by the way,” he added, a moment later.

  “Yeah. I guess I kind of knew that, too.”

  Jonah was smiling at him.

  Eli felt himself blush. In a prison, and he was blushing. “I guess I wanted you to know. I’m going to marry her.”

  Jonah went still again. And then he drew in a long, long breath, and released it. He nodded.

  They didn’t bother saying all the stuff that was understood: that Jonah would miss the wedding. Would miss a lot of very important things, in fact.

  “Congratulations, then, buddy,” Jonah finally said. Quietly.

  “Thanks,” Eli said gruffly.

  They were quiet a moment.

  Jonah quirked the corner of his mouth. “Hey, I hear some movie star bought my old house.”

  “Yeah. John Tennessee McCord. Good guy.”

  “My mom visits. Tells me these things. Sometimes she hauls John-Mark or Michelle in with her. I see my nieces and nephews sometimes. Not Glory, though.” Jonah’s voice had gotten a little frayed. “Never Glory.”

  “I know,” Eli said softly.

  “She . . . took it hard.”

  That was an understatement.

  “I think because she loves you best, Jonah.”

  Jonah’s eyes slowly reddened. His breathing was audible now, as he tried to get a grip on his emotions.

  And then he swallowed. “Yeah. I get it, man.”

  They sat together in silence a moment.

  Jonah took in another deep breath. “Will you tell her I love her? And miss her?”

  “Yeah. Of course,” Eli said softly.

  “Miss you, too, bro.”

  “Yeah. Me, too.”

  He didn’t know whether, when Jonah got out in about four years, his sister might be at the top of the charts. Or he might be an uncle to a baby or two.

  He did know he’d probably be glad to see him, no matter what.

  “I’ll talk to you again soon?” Jonah said, softly.

  “Sure.”

  They fist-bumped each other through the glass.

  And Eli turned and walked away.

  “Can you get those off easily? Because they’re going to want you to take them off.”

  Eli was peering down at Glory’s cowboy boots. Above them, jets were roaring into the sky, and travelers were dragging vertical stacks of luggage toward the automatic doors.

  “Don’t worry. They’re boots. I know you like it when I keep them on sometimes, Eli, but I can get these off quickly enough.”

  “Okay. Ask questions anytime you’re confused. Don’t argue with the security. They’re your friends. They might feel you up a little extra after you walk through the X-ray machine, but they feel a lot of people up. It’s random. Mostly.”

  “Would you blame them?” She swept a hand down her own sweet self.

  “Not one bit,” he said sincerely. “Not every day you get to touch a work of art. Okay, what else . . . Check the boards to see if your flight changes. Or check your phone.” Eli had bought her a new cell phone; they were living together at his house now. “Britt Langley says she’ll be in L.A. for another week and she’ll meet you at your hotel and you can have dinner with her and J.T., and when you come back, you can come back with them. If you have any questions or worries about what’s going on at the record label, J.T. will hook you up with the right people, just not Francone and . . . what?”

  She was grinning at him. “I love you, too, Eli. So much.”

  He smiled back at her. “Yeah, I know. You got this. You scared?”

  “Nope.”

  “In other words, yep.”

  “Oh, nervous. A little. We’ll take things as it comes.”

  She used we a lot these days. As often as she possibly could. She liked it.

  My was another word they both liked.

  As in “My husband, Eli.”

  “My wife, Glory.”

  She held out her hand, where Eli’s grandmother’s old ruby and diamond ring and her own slim vintage diamond wedding band caught and shot little sparks in the sun. They’d gone and done it one afternoon at the courthouse and decided they’d have a big party when she got back from Los Angeles, invite everyone they knew, hell, even Mrs. Adler. Eli didn’t think the diamonds were anywhere near as dazzling as the woman who wore them proudly, but she loved sparkle, and he caught her admiring them a lot in a lot of different lights.

  “I’ll miss you a lot,” he said. Gruffly.

  “We can talk dirty to each other on Skype. I want to hear all the non-dirty stuff, too.”

  “I’ll save it all up for you.”

  He kissed her. Hard, and then soft. She hung on to him extra tightly a moment. Because she needed it, and she knew he did, too. Because she knew that his life could be pornographic garden gnomes one minute and a gun wielding meth addict the next. Because they would never get enough of holding each other, no matter what.

  He kissed her fiercely one more time and then whispered, “Go get ’em, tiger.”

  She finally let go. And walked backward, blowing him a kiss.

  He caught a glint of something else sparkling in the corner of her eye. She brushed at it.

  She looped her hand around her new bright red carry-on case, in which she’d packed, among things like her favorite blue bra and faded jeans, a box of the cassettes she’d recorded over the years and her stuffed tiger, so she could finally say, “See? Told you we’d see the world.”

  And when she finally turned around and walked away, she put a little more swing into it.

  Just for him.

  Epilogue

  One year later . . .

  Eli leaned back against the bar at the Misty Cat Cavern in the “V.I.P. section,” his arms wrapped around his wife, who was snuggled up against him, head tucked under his chin. It was both an embrace, and kind of a way to hold each other up. They were both a little dizzied by what they’d learned before they set out for Glory’s show at the Misty Cat this evening. They both felt as if they’d belted down a bottle of champagne each. Champagne made solely of bubbles, maybe.

  Glory finally looked up when the house lights dipped portentously. It was her cue to get a move on.

  And then she froze. “Omigosh! Eli don’t move. You have a spider on your neck.”

  “Holy—! Get it . . .”

  Glory reached up and plucked it off.

  Ah, country girls. Not afraid of a damn thing.

  They peered down at it in her palm. “Oh!” She was bemused. “It’s not a spider. It’s one of my fake eyelashes.”

&nbs
p; Eli laughed.

  A pit crew of uniquely skilled women had just spent a couple hours on her makeup to make it look like she wasn’t wearing any makeup. And then they’d worked on her hair for about an hour to make it look as though she had just rolled out of bed. As part of this routine, a fluffy row of fake eyelashes was glued to each of her eyelids.

  Those women were watching her nervously now, suspecting their good work was being undone.

  They’d let Glory wear her own jeans and her own white lacy shirt on stage, at least.

  She wouldn’t be fitting into either of those for much longer.

  She and Eli kept having thoughts like that. They now saw all the little details of their world, the mundane and the profound, through the lens of their news. Each new realization was like a fresh rush of intoxication.

  “I better go let them fix me.” Glory gestured with the eyelash. “I’m supposed to be on in ten.”

  He gave her behind a pat as she turned and tossed him a minxy look over her shoulder.

  He exhaled, happy he had something to lean against, because damned if she didn’t make his knees weak.

  He was kind of wishing he could be alone with her now.

  But also knew that this was a night destined to be unforgettable in their family’s history.

  And that they were never really going to be alone together again, anyway.

  Funny how things suddenly became very clear. Even though Leigh Devlin had been pretty understanding, ultimately, and the undersheriff position wasn’t off the table for Eli, something about watching her walk away at the airport had prompted him to research what it would take to start his own private security firm. It would be a juicy tactical challenge requiring all of his law enforcement training and skills as a leader, with perhaps a little adjunct training. At some point Glory was going to need a bodyguard. He was that guy. And what mattered, he’d realized in a heartbeat a few short hours ago, was that his family remain together, and all other choices would hinge on that. It would be the one defining law of his life from now on.

  Tonight was in fact a culmination of that moment when she’d left for Los Angeles to meet with Congdon and his Stellium staff about a year ago.

  In that first meeting, the efficient, seen-everything people at Stellium Records didn’t so much as hike a brow when Glory told them she’d never professionally, let alone digitally, recorded anything.