Harley (West Coast Rock Star #1)

by Michelle Jo Quinn

  They didn’t move afterwards. Jax brushed her hair from her shoulders, let it fall on her back and dip in the bath water. The warmth of her breath tickled the skin of his throat.

  In bed, when the first rays of the rising sun shone through the windows, and after another mind-numbing lovemaking, Cade spoke in a soft, muted voice, “Remember the last time we were at my apartment?”

  He nodded. “Yeah.” How could he forget the first time they shared a singeing night of passion?

  She looked up to him. “Remember what you asked me?”

  Jax could and would never forget. He straightened, brought her to a sitting up position too, and made her face him. He wanted to see honesty in her eyes. He wanted to make sure that whatever she was about to say—if he wasn’t mistaken—wouldn’t come with regret afterwards. “Of course I do.”

  He waited. Cade lowered her eyes, raised their joined hands and then looked at him again. “Let’s do it. Let’s get married.”

  For so long, he had searched for real happiness, from other people, through various vices, through music. The only one who had given him that was when Harley was born. And now, with Cade.

  “I would love nothing more.”

  She snuggled back down under the covers, with her head on his chest. “But you have to promise me one thing, Jax.”

  “Anything, Cadence, anything.” Could she hear the rapid speed of his heart?

  “Promise me that you’ll sing to me every night, even when you’re away and we aren’t in the same bed. Promise me that?”

  “I promise,” he breathed out, “I love you, Cadence.”

  “I love you, Jackson.”

  And even though the rest of the world was stirring outside of their bedroom, Jax held her close and lulled her to sleep with a song.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  A blue and white Fender guitar was strategically placed between Jax’s jean-clad thighs. The sleeves of his white t-shirt were rolled to reveal the musculature on both arms. He sat on the edge of an unmade bed, looking to his right.

  “Tilt your head a bit, Jax,” the photographer in a Beatles shirt ordered.

  The shoot had taken longer than they had anticipated because of the state of his bruises. Tina and Bruno were present throughout the entire thing. Harley sat quietly in one corner of the room, stretching her head every now and then when a certain pose intrigued her.

  “I have an itch under my eye,” Jax said, and without bothering to wait for a reply, he scratched under his left eye. At least twenty clicks came from the camera within that second, or so it seemed to him. He signalled Bruno with a curt nod, letting his manager know that he had had enough for the day.

  Exhaustion had him waving a white flag. That, and not having Cade around for the shoot and quick interview. The rest of the band had already washed their faces. Marco in particular, wasn’t too thrilled to have any sort of makeup applied on his face.

  Bruno clapped his hands together. “Let’s wrap things up, shall we?”

  The reporter from the Rolling Stone nodded at him. “Mathieu, finish up. I think we have enough to work with.”

  After a couple clicks from the camera, Mathieu straightened and stretched out his hand to Jax. “It was a pleasure.” Jax returned the firm handshake and thanked the photographer.

  When he was about to approach the reporter, Cade entered the room. Her face revealed nothing to Jax and it irked him that he wouldn’t be able to talk to her until after the people from the magazine were gone. They made eye contact, and Jax felt the world spin around them. Just the two of them.

  She had said yes. They were going to get married. No one else knew except the two of them and Harley. They’d agreed to talk to his daughter during breakfast. Harley, expectedly, cheered loudly on her chair before launching herself at Cade and Jax. She had asked question after questions regarding the wedding and all Cade could do was plead to Jax to take over the answering round. While he explained to Harley that they had to handle the situation with kid gloves, Cade received a phone call from her grandmother. The eighty-year-old woman requested that Cade visit her for the morning.

  Cade hadn’t hesitated to say yes and immediately planned her trip to New Jersey even before she finished her breakfast. “I’ll be fine on my own, Jax,” she promised him. She’d been gone for almost three hours, and there was no sign whether her visit brought good or bad news.

  Jax couldn’t resist any longer. He didn’t care who saw what. He needed to know. After a quick word of thanks to the reporter, he strode to Cade and circled his arms around her waist, and then he kissed her right in front of everyone.

  “I missed you,” he told her.

  Cade had worry in her eyes. “What are you doing?” she muttered under her breath. “There’s media here.”

  “I don’t care, Cade. I just want to know if you’re okay. You look sad. Why?”

  Bruno cleared his throat behind him. “Jax, do you have anything else to say to Miss Potter?”

  Cade’s eyes widened, but Jax matched it with smile in his eyes. Two beats passed between them, before Jax cocked his head to one side to ask a question without saying a word. Her reply was a slight rising of her chin.

  “Yes, yes we do,” Jax said as he turned to face the reporter with a grin plastered on her face. It was her lucky day. Her interview with the rock god became even more exclusive. The photographer was set to snap a picture of the couple by the threshold, holding hands.

  ***

  Earlier That Day…

  Anxiety wrought havoc in her stomach while she made her way to her grandmother’s house. It was good that Jax had agreed for her to be alone. She would have bitten off anyone’s head at the moment. The traffic had been horrendous.

  Why would Gram call in such a huff? Cade wondered again. If she had spoken to anyone else, they wouldn’t have been able to detect the slight tremble in Gram’s voice. But Cade felt it through the phone and it reverberated to the tips of her toes. She hadn’t wanted to alarm Jax and had kept her own voice steady. Once she’d gotten inside a car, provided by Tina, she rang her grandmother’s house phone, only to receive the outgoing message of her machine.

  Cade had broken the speed limit and had sworn more times than she’d ever done in her life. She tried calling Sheila, her gram’s neighbour, to see if the kind woman could check on her grandmother, but she wasn’t answering either. People would normally be at work at that time of the day, and there was no one else Cade could call.

  She’d decided to wait until she arrived to the house before she jumped the gun and called 911. Gram is resilient. Gram is a fighter. Nothing was wrong.

  Cade parked Tina’s car behind a black sedan. She’d been opposed to carrying guns for her job, even though she was licensed to do so. At that moment, she wished she’d brought the standard issue Glock sitting inside the hotel’s safe. Still, her mind tried to calm her down. A black car parked on Gram’s driveway was no cause for alarm, she told herself.

  Laughter trilled inside the house as soon as she entered. Gram’s laughter. Cade sagged against the door as soon as she recognized it. The living room was clear and the continuous laugh came from the kitchen.

  “Gram,” she called out.

  “We’re in here,” Cade received as a response.

  “We?” Cade whispered to herself. Gram was known to have visitors every now and then but she always preferred to entertain in her living room, where the seats were more comfortable compared to the hard plastic pre-war era chairs in the kitchen.

  When she walked into the bright kitchen, Gram was seated on one of the chairs, and the man who stood pouring coffee for her surprised Cade.

  “Mac? What are you doing here?” Cade almost yelled, but she reconsidered given that she was at her grandmother’s home.

  Mac adjusted the knot of his tie and placed the coffee pot on the table. “Let me get you a cup,” he said, and walked over to the cupboards to fetch a mug for Cade.

  Arms crossed over her chest, Cade stayed
at the threshold. A number of different scenarios had played in her head while she had driven to New Jersey, but this wasn’t one of them.

  “What are you doing here, Mac?” When she didn’t get a response from him, she turned to her grandmother, “Why is he here, Gram?”

  Her grandmother got up from her chair and lifted her cup and saucer. “Why don’t I let you two talk in here? I’ll be in the living room watching my show.” The older woman walked past Cade and simply tapped her granddaughter’s arm. Cade mouthed a “why” and a “what’s going on” but Gram shook her head and left the kitchen.

  Mac placed the empty mug on the table and poured coffee into it. “How do you like your coffee?” he asked. He wasn’t smiling or frowning. There was no hint of any emotion on his face.

  Had Cade dreamt that she’d heard laughter from Nan earlier? That would have meant some kind of emotion coming from Mac too. Mac had an obvious dislike for Cade, and she couldn’t tell why. She understood that he had only accepted her to work for his company because of Gram’s request. Mac wasn’t stupid, either. Cade could tell that since the beginning, he had known that Cade had an ulterior motive as to why she’d joined Mackinley Securities. Perhaps now that she had recently agreed to marry Jax, Mac wanted a piece of the pie too.

  “Just tell me why you’re here, then leave,” Cade bit out.

  Mac stared at her for a moment, then sat on the chair. “Please, sit with me.”

  Cade didn’t move.

  Mac pinched the bridge of his nose and exhaled loudly. That was about as emotional as Cade had seen him since meeting the man.

  “Irene is sick. She has cancer and the doctors have given her six months to live,” he said in one breath, without looking at Cade.

  Her heart wrenched. Irene was a sweet, thoughtful woman whom Cade had thought to be too good for Mac. She took the chair across from Mac but kept her hands on her lap.

  “When did you…”

  “We found out two weeks ago.” Mac stirred sugar into his coffee, still unable to look Cade in the eyes. “She has Non-Hodgkin lymphoma.”

  Cade couldn’t resist. She reached out a hand across the table, but stopped short inches from Mac’s. “I’m sorry to hear that Mac. Irene is…she’s been so kind and sweet to me.” A single tear rolled down her cheek. “If there is something I can do…”

  Mac shook his head. What could anyone do? The disease had one of the highest fatality rates.

  “At first she didn’t want any sort of treatment. She didn’t think there would be any chance of survival.” He cupped his hands over his face, and in front of a surprised Cade, Mac wept.

  Cade got on her feet and embraced the man. She knew he had no one else but Irene. They’d never had children. His only sister had passed away when they were little, and his parents were long gone too. He had only Irene.

  “Look at me getting all…” He swiped tears off his face. “This isn’t me at all.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with a bit of emotion, Mac. Irene is a wonderful woman. And she’s a fighter.” Cade tapped his shoulder. She dragged the other chair around the table and sat close to him. “What can I help with?” If she told Jax, they could put their heads together and come up with a solution, even a temporary one, as long as they could make Irene comfortable.

  There was a small smile at the corner of his lips. “She said that the only way she’d agree to chemo and radiation is if I go and see you. At first I thought she was ridiculous. I even got angry at her.” His frustration rolled off his skin. “I thought about it. And…I suppose that’s why I’m here.”

  Cade squeezed his shoulder. “It’s nice to see you, Mac. I wish it were in different circumstances. I’d like to visit her when I return to Vancouver.”

  Mac nodded. “She’d like that.”

  He worked his jaw with his hand while he contemplated what he wanted to say next. Most of Cade’s interactions with Mac had been about work. No matter how much she’d tried before to ease him into a more personal topic, he’d either wave her away or change the topic. She thought she’d try his tactic.

  “Gram seems to enjoy having you here,” Cade said, leaning back on the chair. Not knowing what else to do, she reached for the coffee. She had plenty of questions for him but Irene’s condition weighed heavily on him, that much was obvious. No one could ever say that Mac didn’t love his wife. They’d been married for years yet they’d always been cozy during any events they had attended together.

  After another sip of his coffee, Mac nodded again, and then shook his head, hanging it over his cup. “I should have been there for you.”

  Cade leaned forward, unsure of what she had just heard. “What do you mean?”

  Eyes lowered, he turned to Cade, and he only lifted his eyes to look at her once he was ready to speak. “I made a promise…” Mac swallowed the lump in his throat.

  “Your father and I were close. We were like brothers. We would have stayed that way if I didn’t—” His brows drew together. “—if I didn’t have an affair with your mother.”

  Cade’s hand flew to her mouth. Her shock and anxiety grew fierce and choked her, rendering her speechless. All she could do was stare.

  Mac continued, shaking his head. “I was separated from Irene at the time and stayed with your parents for a while. It wasn’t good between them and my presence brought the worst out of your father. I didn’t understand it, why he was angry with your mother all the time, but later on we figured it was PTSD. I suppose she wanted to get out of the relationship too. The stress on her was too much. Our connection came as a surprise to me and your…to Mila. We didn’t think we were doing anything wrong at the time.”

  Cade couldn’t believe what she was hearing. She had known something might have happened in the past but not to this extent. “An affair? But my parents seemed fine. And you and Irene?”

  “One day she called me and told me she was pregnant.” Mac ran a hand over his face, trying to wipe away the memories of his infidelity. “I returned to her, of course, but I broke your mother’s heart in the process. We had fallen in love in that short time. I still love her very much now. Irene lost our baby soon after I came back. Mila stayed with your father, then after a while, she found out that she was also carrying a child.”

  Cade held on to the edge of her seat. Was this the moment she’d find out the truth? Who was her real father?

  “Mac, I need to know. Are you—” Tears welled up in her eyes.

  “I wasn’t certain,” Mac answered right away, “There was a big possibility. I severed all communications with your parents for the sake of my own marriage. I didn’t find out about you until your grandmother called to tell me about your father’s passing. Then you showed up at my doorstep.” For a man who always had such a huge presence, Mac seemed so small at the moment. “I’m not ashamed to say that I had a background check done on you. I do it for every employee.”

  “I wouldn’t have expected anything less,” Cade said while she stared at her feet. “I suppose you didn’t find anything incriminating on me.”

  Mac shook his head, and then he produced an envelope from his jacket pocket. He placed it in front of Cade. “I didn’t know if your father ever found out about the affair, but from what your grandmother told me, he had been terrible to you. She couldn’t understand why your mother stayed with him despite her urging.”

  “She stayed for me.” Cade didn’t know if he had heard her, so she repeated it, “My mother stayed with him for me. I think deep inside she had hoped he would learn to love me. My father loved her, that much I was sure of, but he was a terrifying man. It was like living with a time bomb.”

  Mac pushed the envelope toward her again. “This should give us answers.”

  “What?”

  “It’s a paternity test. I had it done the day you showed up.”

  Cade stood abruptly, the hard plastic chair falling on the floor behind her. “You’ve had it all this time? Why didn’t you say anything?”

  His gaz
e pleaded with her. “I was afraid.”

  Cade slammed her palms on the table, causing the cups to shake and clatter. “Of what? Finding out that I’m your daughter? Finding out the truth?”

  “Yes,” was Mac’s quick reply. “I’d caused Irene enough grief. She’d never known about my relationship with your mother. It would have crushed her.”

  With her head reeling, Cade walked away from the small table and faced the sink, gripping its edge. Most of her life had her thinking of other possibilities. And now the truth was at hand.

  She inhaled loudly and exhaled in a quick swoosh. “What does it say, Mac?” She heard the rustle of paper behind her.

  “I’ve never looked at it before.”

  Swinging around to face the older man, she crossed her arms over her chest and shouted, “What does it say?”

  Mac stared at her momentarily, and unfolded the paper. He focused on the results and then handed the paper to Cade. She didn’t take it. She couldn’t get herself to move. Aware of what she might possibly feel, Mac refolded the paper and laid it on top of the envelope. “It might be best if you read it on your own. You have my number when you’re ready to talk.” Mac stood and after another quick glance at Cade, he left the tiny kitchen.

  ***

  “Is there something you’d like to say, Jax?” the young reporter asked once again as she grinned from ear to ear.

  Jax lifted his hand, intertwined with Cade’s, and smiled. “Yes, you can let the world know that I am blissfully in love and I’m marrying this woman, Cadence Williams.”

  The hoots and hollers in the room exploded. The photographer held up his camera to take more pictures when the band members congratulated Jax and Cade, but Zee got in his way and gave him a look of warning.