Alex stuck her head in the door. “Are we eating outside?”
“Yeah, I think so,” Vicki replied. “Is it getting chilly?”
“Yep.” Alex took the platter. “Bring my hoodie when you come out please.”
“Can we do anything to help?” Drew asked as Vicki handed plates and silverware to Jaclyn.
Vicki shook her head. “Relax and let us spoil you.”
Ashleigh and Drew moved to the window and watched as the women set the tables. Drew nodded in Alex’s direction. “What’s it like seeing her again?”
“Not what I expected.” Ashleigh watched as Alex smiled at Vicki as they talked. “She’s just someone I knew a long time ago. There’s nothing there anymore.”
“That’s not what your eyes say.” A faint smiled played across Drew’s face as she looked at Ashleigh. “You’ve been studying her intently, and she’s been doing the same to you.”
Ashleigh tried not to react to what Drew was saying. Any hint of interest on her part would spur Drew on, and she would pick Ashleigh apart until she knew her every thought.
“What was she like?” Drew asked with a devilish grin.
Ashleigh grabbed Alex’s sweatshirt from where it hung on the back of a chair. “I might answer that one day,” she said with a grin as she brushed past Drew.
Ashleigh caught a faint hint of perfume as she clutched the shirt in her hand. The scent brought back a torrent of memories as she stepped onto the patio. Alex’s mouth on her skin, her fingers woven into the dark locks, and those eyes peering into hers as Alex kissed her way down her body. Ashleigh stopped short and hung the hoodie on the back of a chair.
“So, Alex,” Drew said later when they sat down to eat. “You’re an attorney now. I imagine that’s a far cry from the music business. What type of law do you practice?”
Alex glanced at Ashleigh before answering. “Corporate, nothing exciting.”
“Your mom finally snagged you, didn’t she?” Ashleigh said as Alex looked away and smiled.
“She got tired of me being a bum. When we came back off the tour, I spent my days on her sofa in front of the TV.” Alex stuffed a potato chip into her mouth. “She laid down the law—school or work. I, of course, picked school, thinking I could screw off.”
“You work for your mother’s firm then?” Ashleigh asked between bites of her burger.
“Oh, yeah, she’d have it no other way. For every argument I presented, she countered. I couldn’t win. When I got my first paycheck, we went house hunting,” Alex said with a laugh. “I mentioned that I liked a house on the street behind us here, and Mom had me signing a purchase agreement before I could second-guess it.”
“Two McKinney women under the same roof and at the workplace every day made for a tense environment,” Vicki said. “The day Alex brought us over to see the place, a moving van pulled up at the same time. She’d just closed and her mother had the movers packing Alex’s stuff. She was in on the same day.”
“So is there a Ms. McKinney home right now?” Drew asked to Ashleigh’s horror.
Alex grinned. “No, but I have a cat. Ms. Mischief, she’s all I care to live with right now.”
Vicki pushed her plate away and groaned. “I shouldn’t have eaten the whole burger. I’m miserably stuffed.”
Ashleigh was thankful for the change in topic. She wanted to kill Drew for prying into Alex’s personal life.
“Ash, I wanted to show you something if you’re finished eating,” Chantal said as she stood.
“I am.” Ashleigh stood and began to pick up her plate when Vicki reached over and grabbed her arm.
“I’ll clear the table, go with Chantal,” she said with a smile.
Ashleigh followed Chantal down a gravel path to what appeared to be a work shed in the back corner of the yard. Chantal slipped a key in the lock and opened the door. “Come in.”
Padded walls surrounded the large room with a low hung ceiling. Chantal’s drum kit sat in the corner surrounded by a glass partition. Sound equipment and instruments took up the rest of the space. “No more practicing in the living room. The neighbors never hear a sound when the door’s closed.”
“Wow.” Ashleigh ran her fingertips over the baby grand that matched the one in the living room.
Chantal pointed to another corner of the building. “We spend a lot of time in here messing around. I just added the fridge and sofa. I’ll have a bathroom built on in the spring.”
Ashleigh surveyed the collection of Alex’s guitars and the huge keyboard bank that she had a mental image of Vicki sitting behind. “Why didn’t y’all continue to record after I left?”
With her hands on her hips, Chantal turned and looked at Ashleigh. “It wasn’t because of you, darlin’, so let go of that guilty tone. You remember how it was when we signed with the recording company. They dictated our every move, and we weren’t allowed to be who we really were.” Chantal moved closer to where Ashleigh stood. “It was really hard for me to see the woman I loved escorted to events clinging to a man.”
Ashleigh remembered the strong rebuke of their sexuality by record company executives. They were assigned escorts when they went out in public, and though most of the men were gay, it still grated their nerves. At a time when Annie Lennox and so many were making androgyny a fashion statement, the women of Versal were expected to stay deep in the closet.
“It wasn’t just that, Ash, we were all feeling the strain. It wasn’t fun anymore.” Chantal shrugged. “It wasn’t what we expected, and your departure was a turning point. We saw an opportunity and we took it.”
“So what ya think?” Vicki walked in the door with everyone in tow.
“It’s pretty cool,” Ashleigh said with a grin.
Kaitlyn whistled as she walked into the room with her hands stuffed in her pockets. “If I were a musician, my nipples would be really hard right now.”
“Sit down,” Vicki said to Ashleigh as she pulled the bench from beneath the piano. “Wait till you hear the sound in here.”
Ashleigh scrubbed her hands together and sat on the bench. She stared at the keyboard for a moment and the room went silent. “I haven’t played in a long time, maybe you should—”
“I don’t care if you play ‘Chopsticks,’ just play it,” Vicki said with a smile. She stood behind Ashleigh and rested her hands on her shoulders. “Just relax and put your fingers on the keys.”
Ashleigh closed her eyes and let out a long slow breath. Her hands rested in her lap, and for the longest time, she didn’t make a move. Ashleigh placed her fingers on the keyboard and the first strain of “Moonlight Sonata” filled the room. She smiled as her fingers moved over the keys effortlessly, as if her hands alone remembered the music. It came back so easily, and she felt the familiar pull that made her want to sit there for hours.
“Now let me hear that voice of yours,” Vicki said with a squeeze of Ashleigh’s shoulders.
“I can’t.” Ashleigh stood, feeling suddenly overwhelmed. “I haven’t stretched those muscles in years, and I’m not comfortable attempting that in front of everyone.” Her tone belied the rising panic, but she was terrified that her worst fear would be confirmed in front of the women she felt she needed to impress the most. What if she couldn’t sing anymore?
Jaclyn gave Ashleigh a nudge. “It’s just us, Ash—”
“Let’s play the new song we wrote,” Alex said as she picked up her guitar. “We’ve got a test audience we can take advantage of.”
With twenty years and a failed relationship between them, Alex could still sense when she needed rescuing. The discreet wink she gave Ashleigh confirmed that her interruption wasn’t a coincidence. She was well aware of Ashleigh’s discomfort.
Chapter Seventeen
Erica opened an eye, glanced at the alarm clock, and groaned softly into her pillow. The alarm would sound in an hour and a half, and she knew she would still be lying awake when it did. Careful not to disturb Ashleigh, she climbed from bed and grabbed her robe as
she left the bedroom. She needed coffee, breakfast, and a shower, and most of all, she needed to be alone for a while. They’d gotten in late from Vicki and Chantal’s the night before. Mercifully, she was asleep when her head hit the pillow, but after her body got its rest, her brain began assimilating all the details of the previous day. She was powerless to stop the parade of thoughts and images playing like a movie on fast-forward in her mind.
There were many disturbing things for her to ponder, the first being Alex. She was indeed “smokin’ hot” as Kaitlyn had so eloquently put it. If she was a single woman and circumstances were different, Alex would have been someone that she would’ve been taken with. She could understand how a woman could get caught up in the magnetism that Alex exuded. Ashleigh had done exactly that at one time. Erica’s stomach turned at the thought. She exhaled loudly as she remembered how Ashleigh’s face flushed when Alex walked into the room. Was the attraction between them still there? She wasn’t sure she wanted to know the answer to that.
Erica leaned her head against the cabinet while she waited for the coffee to brew. Watching Ashleigh play the piano had been a revelation in itself. She remembered how the muscles in Ashleigh’s jaw flexed, how her brow furrowed over half-lidded eyes as she concentrated. Ashleigh’s eyes closed as she gave in to the music as one would give in to an unexpected kiss. This was something intimate, something very personal, something that could be shared, but only at a distance. Erica wasn’t simply watching Ashleigh play the piano, but reconnecting with her first love. She understood then that Alex was not the only threat from Ashleigh’s past. Music itself was a powerful ex-lover.
Erica took her cup of coffee to the kitchen table and sat down. Her gaze settled on the pictures held by magnets to the refrigerator door. One in particular caught her attention. Ashleigh’s face smudged with dirt smiled back at her. She’d taken that picture the day they landscaped the front yard not long after Ashleigh moved in. Erica struggled with reconciling that the woman in the picture was the same one in the videos and pictures she’d seen over the past two weeks. The woman who Ashleigh had been was a complete stranger, a stranger who was now a part of her life whether she wanted it or not.
Erica grimaced when she took a sip from her cup and lukewarm coffee filled her mouth. Glancing up at the clock, she was surprised at how long she’d been sitting there lost in thought. Time for breakfast had come and gone, but so had her appetite.
“Did you sleep at all?” Kaitlyn asked when she climbed into Erica’s SUV. She put on her seat belt and pivoted in the seat so she could look at Erica.
Erica glanced in the rearview and frowned at the dark circles under her eyes. “My allergies always act up when the weather starts to change.” Erica shifted into reverse, hoping that Kaitlyn wouldn’t press her, but her hopes were dashed when Kaitlyn asked her to take the long route to work. “Got something on your mind this morning?” Erica asked as she grudgingly obeyed.
Kaitlyn reached over and laid a hand on Erica’s arm. “You’re troubled, I can see past your poker face.”
Erica’s eyes burned when she faked a smile. Her emotions were closer to the surface than she was comfortable with. She focused on the road and took a sip of coffee that helped force down the lump in her throat. “This is just more of an adjustment than I thought it would be.” Kaitlyn remained silent waiting for her to elaborate. “The videos…I don’t know who that woman is.”
“I’m having a hard time with that, too.”
“You are?” Erica felt immediate relief at Kaitlyn’s admission. “I thought it was just me.”
“No, it’s not just you. Me and Drew talked about it for a long time last night. In the candid stuff, she seemed like the Ashleigh we all know, but in the onstage footage, we didn’t recognize her.” Kaitlyn tapped her travel mug against her teeth for a second as she thought. “She just seemed to morph into someone else. I don’t know how else to describe it.”
“I feel like I don’t know her.” Erica put her empty travel mug in the cup holder and squeezed the steering wheel. “I know she’s dealing with things, too, but…it feels like the woman I do know is slipping away from me.”
“You need to let her know how you feel.”
As Kaitlyn extolled the virtues of communication in a relationship, Erica resumed construction on her emotional fortress. A new brick fit into place each time she was forced to confront Ashleigh’s past.
Ashleigh was startled when the cell phone in her breast pocket vibrated, indicating a text message. Can we talk? She felt a twinge of nervousness as she read the words. That phrase always seemed to mean that whatever was going to be discussed was serious, maybe even painful. Her hand shook slightly as she hit the talk button. “Talk about what?” she asked, trying to sound unconcerned.
“I feel bad about putting you on the spot yesterday,” Vicki said. “I shouldn’t have pushed you.”
“You’re forgiven, it’s no big deal.” Ashleigh nudged the door to her office with her toe until it closed.
“I think it might be a ‘big deal,’ and I’d like for you to discuss it with me.”
“Vic, it’s…it doesn’t matter if I can’t do it anymore.”
“Have dinner with me tonight. I’ll meet you halfway in Zachary at Chili’s.”
Ashleigh leaned back in her chair and smiled. “You’re as bad as Drew and equally persistent.”
Vicki laughed. “I think we may be sisters. I’m gonna have to ask Mom about the milkman. So, does six work for you? I can make it later if you need me to.”
“Six is fine,” Ashleigh said with a sigh. “Erica’s working late anyway.”
“See ya then.”
Ashleigh had already been grilled by Drew over lunch, and now she’d spend the evening with Vicki doing the same about an equally sensitive subject. Relentless, Drew poked and prodded, wanting to know what it was like to face Alex again. She didn’t want to analyze the innumerable feelings that swept through her during that encounter. Didn’t want to ponder why Alex made her nervous even after the shock of seeing her again wore off. Drew didn’t seem convinced when she’d said that she felt nothing during their reunion. It wasn’t a lie, but not the truth, either.
Chapter Eighteen
Erica sounded distracted when Ashleigh called to tell her about the plans with Vicki. Ashleigh could hear Bob Barrett’s voice in the background. “Is Dad checking up on you?”
“Yeah, he says he’s here to help.” Erica sighed. “He’s been telling fishing stories to anyone who’ll sit still long enough. The only people working around here right now are me and Kaitlyn.”
“Should I bring you something to eat?”
“No, if I get hungry, I’ll make something, or I’ll invite myself to dinner at Kaitlyn and Drew’s. Tell Vicki I said hello, okay?”
“Will do, I’ll see you later, love you.”
“Love you too, Ash.”
A last-minute walk-in patient caused her to run late. There would be no time to run home and change. Dressed in Tweety Bird scrubs, Ashleigh plugged her favorite CD in the player and sang along with the music. She struggled to hit a couple of notes, but otherwise her voice still sounded strong to her own ears. If she practiced and got her vocal chords back in shape, then maybe—
What? This foray into her past had dredged up a longing that she hadn’t been able to admit to herself, much less anyone else. She wanted to experience music again. She could’ve sat for hours and played Vicki’s piano and probably would have if Vicki hadn’t pushed her to sing. Playing the piano and guitar were second nature, and she knew it would take her no time at all to master those instruments again. Her voice was another matter. Her parents taught her to demand perfection. The thought of her voice failing her was crippling.
Ashleigh pulled into the parking lot and spotted Vicki standing in front of the restaurant with her cell phone pressed to her ear. She looked good in jeans and a hunter green pullover, making Ashleigh regret even more not being able to change out of her work clothes.<
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“Look at you,” Vicki said with a grin as Ashleigh approached. She tugged at Ashleigh’s shirt. “I bet you have one of these with Bugs Bunny.”
“I thought I’d dress up for this occasion.” Ashleigh returned the tight hug that Vicki gave her. “And yes, I have two Bugs Bunnys.” Ashleigh ran her fingers up the sleeve of Vicki’s lightweight V-neck sweater. “You always did have the best taste in clothes. We need to go shopping so you can make over my wardrobe.”
“It’s a date.” Vicki looped her arm through Ashleigh’s and pushed her way through the door to the restaurant. “It’s the perfect time to shop. There’s always great sales at the end of a season.”
“We’ll have to bring Drew,” Ashleigh said as they were seated. “I’ll never hear the end of it if I go on a shopping trip without her.”
They decided to order appetizers as a meal, Ashleigh’s favorite. Vicki chose nachos, and Ashleigh ordered the Southwestern egg rolls.
Vicki reached across the table and clutched Ashleigh’s hand. “I can’t believe we’re sitting here like this. Remember how we used to spend whole afternoons in IHOP drinking coffee and talking about everything and everyone?”
“Yeah, God, it seems like a lifetime ago.”
Vicki gave Ashleigh’s hand a squeeze before releasing it, then propped her elbow on the table and rested her chin in her palm. “I guess in a way it was,” she said with a wistful smile. “Are you happy with your life now, Ash?”
“I was…I mean I am.” Ashleigh gnawed at her bottom lip as she met Vicki’s gaze. Like Drew, she made Ashleigh feel as though she could read her thoughts and was waiting for her to put voice to them. “I guess I didn’t realize how much I missed you all.”
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