“I’d have given up two days ago if it weren’t for you,” she said.
“Never stop pushing yourself, darlin’,” I said. “Amaze yourself every day. You amaze me every single day.”
“Jonah.”
Her soft voice was like a caress across my skin. I shuddered. “Sing again,” I instructed softly before I started strumming the guitar again.
She obliged, singing almost until she was hoarse. I brought our call to a close. “Rest your voice. You have a big day tomorrow.”
“Thanks, Jonah,” she said softly.
“Anytime, sweetheart,” I told her. She didn’t correct the term of endearment. It only made my dreams of her that night more erotic. I could feel her in my hands; I could taste her kiss on my lips. By the time I woke up, I knew I’d be counting every single second until I saw her beautiful face that night.
Instead I found myself called from the factory floor into the main offices where my mom worked. She was distraught when she saw me. “It’s Leah.”
We rushed from the factory straight to the hospital, where her new home healthcare aid had taken her. The young college student, Lisa, had been staying with her during the day while we worked. It cost a pretty penny, but thanks to the job at Southern Nights we could afford to do it, to ensure Leah wouldn’t be left alone during the day. It helped fill the gap of my mother’s 24-hour care before she was forced to take a job, and this particular day it ended up saving her life, when Leah had experienced trouble breathing.
“Leah has experienced a partial lung collapse,” the doctor told my mother, who turned into my arms for comfort. “It looks like her pneumonia has returned.”
The rest of his words muddled together in a low hum. As reassuring as he was that the staff was doing all that they could to save her, two conflicting thoughts battled each other in my brain. I was scared to death of losing my sister, especially so soon after losing my dad. I didn’t think either Mama or I could have taken it. We would have paid anything to keep her alive and well.
The second concern was that paying everything we had was now a very real possibility. Her health had been on the decline for months, and it only got worse after my dad died. The bills were stacking up quicker than we could pay them, if – that was – we had the money to pay them. Seemed these days we were robbing Peter to pay Paul just to keep our heads above water.
But despite our financial dire straits, I’d never leave my mother and my sister alone in a depressing hospital. I called Gay and told her that there had been a health emergency in my family, and she was oddly understanding given my short time in her employ.
“Sure, sugar. You take care of your own.”
That was a lot easier than the text I sent to Lacy. “Something came up,” I said, unwilling yet to share my burdens with anyone… especially a woman I cared for more than I wanted to admit.
I was a man. I was the strong one.
But I wanted to crack like crystal when she returned the text. “Are you okay?”
No, I’m not okay, I wanted to say. I’m scared. And I’m pissed at the fates for trying to knock my broken family to its knees when it barely scrambles to its feet. And I’m going to miss seeing you. I wish you were here beside me.
“I’m fine,” was I sent back. “Just family stuff. Knock ‘em dead tonight. I know you will.”
I pocketed my phone and went to keep vigil at Leah’s bed side.
7: Standing Outside the Fire
Mama wouldn’t hear of me taking off yet another day, so I reluctantly headed home around midnight to get some sleep for my full shift at Southern Nights. The apartment was eerily quiet without Mama and Leah. It made me feel lonelier than I had felt in a while. I fixed a bacon and egg sandwich, to make up for the meager supper Mama and I had shared at the hospital. I sat alone at the table to eat, staring at my cell phone, which displayed Lacy’s number right on top.
If I called her, would she come over?
The odds seemed stacked against it the longer I stared at her number. Finally I pushed away from the table, washed off the dishes in the sink and headed to take a shower. I luxuriated under the hot spray, where every skin cell came alive under the heat of the water. I touched myself as I thought of Lacy, something it was getting increasingly easy to do. I imagined what her mouth would feel like on my skin… or her arms wrapped around my waist, drawing me close. Every time I closed my eyes I saw her face. It was a hunger that was increasingly hard to shake. I started to jack off slowly, wondering what it would be like to make love to her, to possess that fiery little pixie, to tame that wild horse in her soul.
The water turned cold before I could come, which drove me from the shower. I retrieved my phone and headed to the bedroom. Maybe if I could hear her voice it would make the hours left until I saw her again bearable.
I knew she’d be long gone from the club by this late hour. Maybe she was in bed herself, I thought with a shudder as I lay damp and naked in between soft sheets. I couldn’t stand it anymore. “How was the show?” I texted at last.
My heart raced when she answered mere moments later. “It was OK. I didn’t do the song.”
“Why not?”
There was a longer hesitation. I waited with bated breath.
“You weren’t there?” she offered, adding a winking emoticon.
That was all it took. I called her and she answered on the first ring. “Hey,” she said in a breathy whisper I knew meant she had to keep her voice down.
But it was so damned sexy, like she was cuddled up on the bed next to me. “Hey,” I said, in the same low voice.
“Is everything okay?” she asked, and it touched me that she cared.
“Fine,” I dismissed. I didn’t want to talk about me or my woes. “I missed you,” I admitted.
“Jonah,” she said in that same forbidding manner.
“It’s true. I really wanted to hear you sing tonight.”
“Thanks,” she said softly, as if uncertain what else to say.
“Are you already in bed?” I asked softly as my hand slipped under the sheets.
Again she hesitated. Finally she said, “No.”
My words were barely a whisper. “Do you want to be?”
I heard her breath catch. “Jonah,” she said again, and her husky voice poured through my body like aged whiskey.
“I want you, Lacy,” I finally admitted. “Come stay with me tonight.”
She sighed. “I already told you I don’t that. I don’t do coffee… I don’t do lunch. And I don’t do late night booty calls.”
For some reason, that angered me. “Is that what you think it is?”
“Isn’t it?” she challenged softly. “You’re upset. You’re horny. You want a distraction.”
“I want you,” I reiterated. “I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you since the night we met.”
“Are you sure you don’t want Jacinda?” she asked.
“What is that supposed to mean?”
Again she sighed. “I overheard a couple of girls talking at the club tonight. Jacinda has her eye on you. I’m sure if you called her…,” she trailed off.
“If I wanted to call her I would have gotten her number,” I snapped. “Just because she wants me doesn’t mean I want her.” My comment was met with silence, so I went on. “I don’t know what kind of men you’ve met before, but I’m not looking for someone to fill my bed just because I’m lonely. If I wanted that, I could get that in any club in Austin.”
It sounded conceited, but I didn’t care. It was the truth.
Hell, I could have even had a bride in Courtney if I had wanted one. If I had called her, she would have driven all the way to Austin to be with me.
But I didn’t want any of that. I wanted her, claws and all.
“What do you want?” I finally asked.
“I want to sing,” she said immediately. “That’s all I can share with anybody, Jonah.” She grew quiet for a moment before she said, “My heart is not mine to give away.�
�
My stomach dropped. After all the time we’d spent during the week preparing her song, it never occurred to me that she was already taken. “There’s someone else?”
Her voice was small. “Yes.”
My hopeful heart shattered into a million pieces. “I see.” There was only one other question to ask. “Do you love him?”
There was absolutely no hesitation. “More than music,” she said. I couldn’t say anything as I grappled with my immediate disappointment. “It’s just something I keep really separate from my singing career,” she forged on, as if an apology. “I have to.”
I nodded as if I understood, but I really didn’t. It explained a lot, though; why she was surly when it came to attracting male attention, and why she was so private and closed off. It also explained why we couldn’t rehearse in person all week. Likely he was there in their house in the very next room, while I lusted shamelessly over his woman. “He’s a lucky guy,” was all I could manage.
She chuckled, as if I had told some kind of joke. “Thanks, Jonah.” We both fell silent for a long moment, unable to find anything to say, but unwilling to disconnect the call. Finally she said, “Are you going to be at work tomorrow?”
I gulped hard and closed my eyes. The thought of being around her now seemed a cruel punishment, to be close enough to touch, but as far away as the moon. And yet I couldn’t think of anything more painful than not seeing her at all. “Depends,” I said, choking down the lump in my throat. “Are you going to sing our song?”
I might have been crazy, but I could almost feel her tremble. “Maybe,” she offered softly.
Just as softly, I said, “Then I’ll be there with bells on.”
Again silence stretched between us before she finally said, “Goodnight, Jonah,” in a voice so soft it swept across me like a kiss.
“Goodnight, Lacy,” I drawled. I wanted to call her darlin’, or baby, or any other names that would claim her for me. But I knew I couldn’t. I wasn’t the kind of man who could break up a home just to get what I wanted.
But it didn’t make my dreams for her any less lascivious. In my dreams, she was in the shower next to me, naked and willing as I lifted her up, bracing her against the wall while I entered her. She called out my name in that raspy voice. It was a sound that echoed in my fevered brain as I tossed and turned all night long. I gave up on sleep by dawn and was dressed for work by nine o’clock in the morning. Despite how out of reach she was, I couldn’t wait to see her again. I arrived at the club a half an hour early, after a brief stop at the hospital to bring food and clothes to Mama and Leah.
As it so happened, Lacy arrived early as well. Our eyes met and held before we had to go our separate ways. She went to the stage to rehearse, while I went upstairs to consult with Gaynell about the duties I needed to perform with my new schedule change.
Since more than half of my shift occurred before any people actually came into the club, my work as security was limited. That meant I got to do whatever needed to be done for the night ahead.
I would have scrubbed the dance floor with a toothbrush if it meant I could hear Lacy sing.
Gaynell was poring over paperwork when I knocked on her open office door. “Jonah,” she greeted as she waved me inside. “Come on in. How is everything with your sister?”
Gay knew everything that had happened, because I had been completely honest about it when I called. I wanted her to know I was no shirker… but family would always come first. She had been understanding then, and was empathetic now.
“She’s better,” I said.
“That’s wonderful,” she said. “Thank God you had someone at the house who knew to get immediate medical attention.”
I nodded.
She motioned for me to sit and I complied. “Ty’s mother needs home health care. I know it’s a blessing to have that kind of assistance available to you, especially when you’re out of the house all week.” She looked contrite as she studied me. “I just wish there was more I could do. I’d let you work here full-time on the weekends, but you could work sunup to sundown and my hourly wage wouldn’t make up for losing the full-time work at TX Hill Country Plastic and Steel.”
I nodded. I understood.
She flashed her brighter than bright smile. “We’ll figure something out, hon. You’re part of the family now. And you’ll soon learn I take care of my own.”
“Thanks, Gay,” I said, and my intimate use of her nickname seemed to please her.
She rounded the desk to walk me downstairs. There was some detail work that needed to be done, and she now had a willing grunt willing to do it. That night’s special headliner was a chart-topping singer notorious for being fastidious about the venues she played. We had to spruce up the dressing room to meet her demands. Gay shook her head as she went over the list. “She’s only been in the public consciousness for a year, but she thinks she’s Mariah Carey,” she derided. “I don’t know what the hell is wrong with this new crop of ‘stars’ lately. They want this, they want that, acting like we owe them the world when they’re nothing more than entitled little shits who happened to get lucky. They forget where they came from,” she said, motioning toward the stage. “There are some I won’t even book,” she added, before she sighed. “But this brings Jasper Carrington to our club, and that could be a huge boon for our talent, including Lacy.”
Jasper Carrington was only the biggest record producer on the East Coast. He had produced some of the biggest chart-toppers of the new millennium, including his ex-wife, Athena. He was known to take some obscure bar band and make them into international superstars. That was what he had done with this twenty-something Mediterranean beauty. She went from community college dropout to gracing almost every cover of every single magazine in less than a year, her music blasting from both radio and television.
He had given her enough star power that she could demand that no one speak to her directly. No one was allowed to take any photos or video of her performance, which meant we’d have to secure no phones were brought onto the premises. She had a long list of approved food and drink for her dressing room, which included harder-to-find vegan or gluten-free snacks. “She doesn’t even have an allergy,” Gay mumbled, noting that she had been photographed a few weeks prior gorging on pizza and donuts after a public breakup with her on-again-off-again boyfriend, an equally famous star whose demands had been so outrageous, Gay refused to book him.
It was the one reason she was able to get Ariel Acardi to play Southern Nights, provided no one mentioned her ex’s name around her.
We had to move out the furniture, so she could have the approved color palette in her dressing room: white and plum, with roses to match. We also had to scatter potpourri and candles around the dressing room to fragrance it with bergamot and jasmine, just like her designer perfume.
It promised to be an all-day job, grabbing any free pair of hands nearby to assist.
In the midst of moving in the requested furniture, however, one of our volunteers broke two of his fingers. This would have been a minor annoyance had it not been the guitarist for the house band, who had taken a break from rehearsal to lend us a much-needed hand, a hand, as it turned out, was clear would be out of commission for at least six weeks.
“Jesus Christ,” Gay muttered. “What the hell am I going to do now?” We weren’t even halfway done with the conversion of the dressing room, and she still had to ensure that the limo, the flowers, the champagne were ready to whisk Ms. Acardi to her five-star hotel the minute her private plane landed. She didn’t have time to find and book another guitarist, who would have to rehearse everything from scratch.
She gathered everyone together for suggestions of anyone who could be used as a replacement.
“Jonah plays,” Lacy offered.
My eyes darted to hers. I wanted to shake my head, to deny what she said so that I wouldn’t be forced onto the stage, a stage that still intimidated me far more than I wanted to admit.
It was o
ne thing to play and sing for my sister, whose world had been limited to her own four walls for most of her life. It was one thing to play for our church of about fifty congregants, most of whom wouldn’t know a guitar chord from a hole in the ground.
But to play for a live, paying audience? In front of the likes of Jasper Carrington?
This wasn’t what I signed up for at all.
Gay, however, was all over it. Her eyes brightened with hope as she looked at me. “You can play these songs, Jonah?”
I paused only the briefest of moments. Both Gaynell and Lacy needed someone to come through for them, and that’s precisely what Riley men did. Finally I nodded. “Not all of them. But several.”
“I only need three,” she said as she grabbed the song book. She thrust it toward Lacy and me. “Get cracking.”
Lacy and I walked over to one of the bistro tables that lined the wall. “Sorry to put you on the spot like that,” she said.
“You had no choice,” I answered quietly. Sitting across the table from her was seriously scrambling my senses. “I guess we have to do ‘Dream On’ now. It’s the only song we’ve really rehearsed.”
She shook her head. “There’s no way I’m doing that song. Not with everything riding on this performance.”
I searched her face but she wouldn’t look at me. Finally I covered her hand with mine. We both shuddered from the contact. “I know you can do it, Lacy.”
Her eyes met mine for a split second before she wrenched them away again to look at the book. “No chance, pal. Keep looking.”
Finally we dug out three songs that fit both of our comfort levels, but barely. She wanted to do “Wanted: Dead or Alive,” which had significant guitar work – something I was trying to avoid. “I’m a farmer, not a guitarist,” I said.
“Bullshit,” she countered. “I heard you play all week. I know what you can do.”
I shook my head. “Look. This is just an emergency substitute. I just want to fade into the woodwork as much as possible, to keep the spotlight on you where it belongs.”
She chuckled. It never failed to send chills through my body. “It’s the strongest song you know in the playlist.”
Southern Rocker Boy (Southern Rockers Book 1) Page 7
