“Him I’d dance naked for.”
He could hear the wry smile in her voice, and he stopped with the scrubbing and moved closer to his computer.
“Tom is a fantastic bass player. One of the best I’ve heard. Certainly one of the best I’ve worked with. He brings a sensibility to my music that I would never have thought of on my own.”
“It appears that he also owns a bar and music venue in Louisville?”
“He does. That’s how we met. I played there.”
“So with his new legal troubles …”
Emme interrupted. “I can’t comment on that, but from the pictures I’ve seen, it looks like he’s not the one in handcuffs.”
“So who is his mystery lady then?”
“You know, I’ll answer anything you ask me about me, but I can’t speculate on anyone else.”
There was a pause before the next question. “So, Emme, you have to know this question is coming. Are you involved with him? Is that why he left the tour?”
Tom found himself holding his breath. He shouldn’t be upset if she said no. She had a right to keep her life separate from these vultures. And now, with this new scandal, maybe she should deny it for her own good, for the sake of her own image. God knew he’d caused enough trouble for everyone. But he still had no idea what she would say, and he knew, even if his brain thought differently, that his heart would hurt if she lied.
She didn’t hesitate. “I am involved with him, is one way to put it, I suppose.” She paused and Tom dropped the sponge and sat down at the computer as though moving closer to the sound of her voice would make her speak more quickly.
Emme laughed a little at herself. “I adore him. I love him. And right now I miss him so badly I ache all over. I wish I were with him now, and my thoughts are, even though I’m not, and once this tour is over, I am going home to him as soon as I pack up after my last show.”
“Is it a good idea to get involved with a band member? That’s worked out poorly for you in the past.”
“Oh, it’s a terrible idea,” she agreed cheerfully. “It could all fall apart and my career could collapse. I hope it doesn’t. The last time, I chose the wrong man. This time, I hope I’ve chosen the right one. I do know that no matter what happens, he’s worth it.”
Tom’s whole body shook at the sound of her voice announcing to the entire world that she loved him. That she trusted him, and herself, and whatever this was between them. Some combination of pride and desire and terror pounded through him as she spoke. He nearly grabbed his computer monitor and hugged it. She wanted to come home to him.
He wanted to go home to her.
He’d probably be all over the media now, but he didn’t fucking care. He had one more phone call to make and he had an utterly filthy house to finish cleaning and he had a heart so full of joy that it pushed out against him and crashed into the atmosphere.
He made the five-hour-and-twenty-minute drive in four hours and forty minutes.
He had no fucking clue which hotel they’d be staying in but he knew at which bar she’d be playing. When Emme made a schedule, she planned it out months in advance and stuck to it.
It was such a relief to know he could rely on her and that he could find her no matter where she was.
All of his plans were half-assed and only just set into motion, but he had a smartphone and a laptop and a credit card, and Emme waiting for him at the end of his drive.
He had to circle the block to find parking, and ended up leaving his car parked halfway up a hill so steep, he worried that it would roll backward even with the emergency brake on. The line outside the door stretched down the street. He texted Emme but got no response.
He tried Dave and Guillermo, too, while he waited. No response from Guillermo. He figured they were doing the sound check when Dave messaged him back.
I’m done with this shit. I’m on my way home. Good luck.
What the hell? Did that mean Emme was playing a show without her guitarist? He tried calling her again, but her phone went straight to voice mail.
Tom pushed his way through the line with an “Excuse me” or “Sorry” to each person he bumped. He knew he was getting the stink-eye from at least half the people on the sidewalk, but he didn’t care.
When he got up to the bouncer, though, it was a problem.
“The line’s back there.” The guy pointed. He was big, with a beard down to his navel. He was wearing a stocking cap despite the fact that it was easily eighty degrees outside, and even though he had to be at least fifty years old with a lot of hard living behind him, he still looked scary as hell.
“I’m with the band.” Tom found his palms sweaty, like when he’d been called to the principal’s office for some infraction in elementary school. “I’m the bass player. But I guess tonight I’m the guitarist.”
“Then why didn’t you get here when they did?” The bouncer sent an assessing look over him. Tom thought he raised one eyebrow, but his cap was pulled down so low on his forehead that he couldn’t tell.
“It took me a while to get here. Look, if you don’t believe me, tell Emme that Tom is here.”
Apparently the bouncer didn’t read music gossip blogs, or he’d have recognized Tom from the giant picture of him with Emme currently headlining the biggest one in the industry. He’d have thought notoriety would at least have some advantages.
“Look, man, maybe you’re some kind of stalker. Maybe you’re an ex-boyfriend she doesn’t need bothering her right before a show. She’s a classy lady and I’m not going to upset her.” The bouncer crossed his very large arms across his very large beard and his very large chest.
Okay, so maybe the guy did read gossip blogs. “Could you at least ask?”
“Let me think about it.… No.”
Oh for fuck’s sake. “Okay, then, let me pay the cover and go to the show.”
“Line’s back there.” The beard moved in the direction of the end of the line.
“You’re holding up the line!” The girl behind him tapped on Tom’s shoulder.
“I’m with the band.” He could feel the frustration building in his chest.
“Yeah, right.” The girl rolled her eyes. “Cover’s only fifteen bucks. Cheapskate.”
Tom couldn’t decide if he wanted to throw up his hands in frustration, laugh, or scream. He knew when he was defeated, though.
He circled the building, looking for an emergency exit, a kitchen door, the kind of place he’d normally be out back smoking. Any way in at all. The two doors he found were shut firmly and locked. He had a desperate moment where he found himself assessing the windows before he realized that he was detouring into deranged territory, and he stationed himself back at the end of the line.
He texted Guillermo and called Emme again, but he knew it would be futile. If they hadn’t answered by now, they were away from their phones or had turned them off. He breathed in, tried to remind himself that frustration wouldn’t make the line move any faster, and waited.
By the time the line had crawled forward enough to put Tom within eyeshot of the bouncer, he could hear the show starting. Emme’s voice, indistinct through the walls of the building, drifted through the night. The low hum lit under his skin even though he couldn’t hear the words she spoke. Likely the sound would always be inside him, always feel like warm smoke seeping through his veins.
For a moment he closed his eyes and let himself be mesmerized, imagining her onstage, the light haloing her blonde hair, her hips swaying as she sang, her eyes drifting closed as she felt the music, the audience transfixed by her. God, she was so close. On the other side of that wall behind that door.
And she’d said she didn’t need him, but if Dave had left, she did. He could help her. If he could just get inside the damn bar.
He couldn’t hear the instrumentation clearly, but he could hear the melody of “Lord Have Mercy” as her opening song. He opened his eyes and saw that he was back in front of the bouncer at last.
He p
ulled out his wallet to get his cash and ID, but the bouncer held up his hand. “Sorry, man. Fire code capacity. Can’t let anyone else in until someone leaves.” He smirked when he said it, or at least he seemed to, as much as Tom could tell behind his massive beard.
“Are you just fucking with me now?” Tom heard himself getting loud and tried to lower his voice.
“Nope. You’re gonna have to wait until someone leaves. Sorry.” The bouncer didn’t look sorry in the least; he didn’t even move an inch from the door.
Tom wondered if he could just shove the guy aside and make it inside without getting laid out flat.
Probably not.
So he waited. He waited and he listened.
There was something intensely unsatisfying about hearing Emme’s voice muffled and dampened, with knowing she was so close and not being able to see her. It was like their text conversation had been—joyful and painful at the same time, bringing her close and reminding him of just how far away she was at once. From what he could hear of the song, “Lord Have Mercy” had a new dimension played on the piano without the bass or guitar or drums to drive the rhythm. It was slower, and when the door opened just a crack, he could hear her voice wailing out her lust and her longing.
He felt his whole body lean forward toward her. And then he realized the door was open because someone had stepped outside to light a cigarette.
“Hey!” he called out to the guy who had dreadlocks and, incongruously, wore a polo shirt. “Are you planning on going back in?”
“Once I finish this, yeah.” Dreadlocks held up his cigarette.
“Look, I know this is kind of awful but … would you mind staying out here? I’ll pay you back for the cover.”
Dreadlocks shook his head. “No way, dude.”
Tom fumbled through his wallet. “I’ll pay you fifty bucks plus your cover. Just … stay out here so I can get in there.”
Dreadlocks squinted at him. “That’s the weirdest offer I’ve ever gotten.” He shrugged. “Whatever, man. Sure. If you’re that desperate, I’ll take your cash.”
Tom handed Dreadlocks a wad of money then turned back to the bouncer. “Are you going to let me in?”
The bouncer rolled his eyes, but he made a big show of stepping aside and waving Tom in. He couldn’t even care enough to be pissed at the guy. Emme was here, he was here, and that was good enough.
Dave had walked off two hours before her show. She was singing an unpracticed, unplugged version of her songs, just her and the piano, with Guillermo and Andy there for backup, in the most crowded venue she’d ever played.
Emme should have been a wreck. She hated when her plans went awry, and Dave’s friendship and collaboration had been important to her nearly from the moment they’d met.
But instead, all she felt about his loss was a strange sense of lightness and relief. Maybe what had worked for them before wasn’t working anymore. She could learn to live with that. She just hoped that one day he’d forgive her.
When she stepped out onto the stage in Asheville, just her and the piano, and looked out over the audience, she felt like she’d slid into her own skin at last.
She set her hands on the piano keys, so smooth and familiar beneath her fingers. She closed her eyes and thought of Tom’s skin under her touch. With practice, she’d know him as well as she knew these notes, would be able to coax sounds and sensations from him nearly without thought.
She hadn’t made a set list for the first time in her career. She sat down and played, and what came out was “Lord Have Mercy,” sounding completely different from any version she’d ever played. She breathed in and sang out, and she heard her own voice twining around the notes she played, let herself feel all the emotions that simmered under her surface.
When the song ended, the audience was silent for a long moment. Then the applause came, a crack like thunder shaking the walls. She stood to acknowledge the crowd, and she saw her audience move.
The shift happened in stages, the crowd parting at the back, then the middle, then toward the front. She shaded her eyes from the stage light and looked down.
Tom stood before her, looking like something she’d dreamed.
His hair was rumpled and his shirt was wrinkled. He looked like he hadn’t slept in a week. He flushed as she looked at him and as the crowd began to fall silent, watching to see what would happen next.
God, in just the short amount of time they’d been apart, she’d forgotten how handsome he was. The knowledge had lurked in the back of her mind—Tom is handsome, the way she knew that the sky was blue or that the sun was hot. But the evidence in front of her stole her breath, the way staring right into the sun might.
“Tom?” she spoke into the microphone without meaning to, and the audience cheered again.
He nodded and blushed bright red. “I heard you might need a guitarist.”
“Get up here,” she ordered.
Tom climbed up onto the stage and grabbed the guitar sitting on the stand behind Guillermo. He checked its tuning quickly. “Want me to fill in?”
Emme spoke to the audience again. “We’re going to try something new tonight. Give us a minute.”
She stepped back from the microphone and turned to him. “How’d you get here?”
“Drove.”
“Your sister?”
“I’ll tell you about it later.”
She nodded. There were promises in his eyes and she hoped he could read them in hers. “Want to help me debut a new song?”
He grinned. “You don’t do anything by halves, do you?”
“Not anymore.” She wanted to kiss him, wanted to wrap her arms around him and squeeze, but instead she gave him a rundown of the chords, a quick lesson on the rhythm. He tipped his chin in her direction, and she sat back down at the piano.
“Okay, y’all.” She turned back to her audience, her face finding the light again. “Tom and I are going to debut this song. We’ve never played it together before, and I just wrote it a couple of nights ago, so bear with us. You want to hear it?”
The roar from the audience nearly knocked her back. She laughed with sheer joy at their enthusiasm. “Okay then.” She counted off for Tom and played.
He joined in the second measure, a rhythm different than she had expected but one she loved the sound of. She couldn’t keep the smile off her face as she sang the lyrics to “Fight or Embrace.” When she wasn’t singing, she mouthed the chord changes to him, and he winked as he caught on. It was awkward and silly and messy, and nothing like her usual polished sound, especially when Guillermo joined in on drums and Andy decided to try to improvise on bass. At one point, she heard one of the guys trying to hum harmony, and failing to find the right pitch.
None of it mattered because she was back in that dorm lobby again, but better, so much better, surrounded by love and acceptance on every single side, wrapped in it and wrapped in her song. The minute they stopped playing, everyone ending at a different spot and on a different beat, she burst out laughing with release.
As the audience stomped and clapped and whistled their approval, she turned to Tom. He looked down at her, eyes bright, dimples deep, hand outstretched, and she took it.
Pulled his fingers to her lips, kissed his knuckles, then pulled him to her, wrapped her arm around his neck, the guitar jammed awkwardly between them, the neck sticking out along her side, and kissed him full on the mouth.
“Hey,” he whispered to her.
“Hey, yourself.” She pulled away about an inch so the frets would stop poking her in the rib cage. “We’re gonna play this show.”
“Yeah?”
“And then we’re gonna go back to the hotel.”
“Mm-hm …”
Guillermo cleared his throat. “Guys.”
Emme smiled at him, but she didn’t take her hand from Tom’s. “Later, then,” she whispered.
Tom squeezed her hand. “I’ll be here. As long as you want me.”
She stepped forward and the light
hit them both; bright, warm, unforgiving, and exactly where she wanted to be.
To those early encouragers along the way, who, like Emme’s grandmother, never told me my voice was too loud.
Acknowledgments
Writing a first book is the scariest thing I’ve ever done, and I’ve been tremendously lucky to have such overwhelming love and support along the way.
This book would not exist without the brilliant feedback, the absolute faith in Tom and Emme, and the friendship of Mary Ann Rivers. I even owe her credit for the title, and for so much more—for making me see myself as a writer, a real writer, the kind of writer who writes books other people read instead of the kind of writer who taps away alone at her computer.
Thanks are also due to Serena Bell and Ruthie Knox, who were two of the first to read this manuscript after Mary Ann, and who were so generous with their time for this brand-new, unknown writer—and who I now consider friends.
My early beta readers, Ursula Gruber, Jessica Riggleman, Shari Slade, and Eliza Evans all saw some drafts that looked very different from this one and kept reading anyway.
My agent, Emily Sylvan Kim, and my editor, Sue Grimshaw, have both been a true pleasure to work with and have made this book so much stronger.
Thanks to Dave Mendez for introducing me to the kind of music Tom and Emme might play and the kinds of venues where they’d play it. All musical errors are, of course, my own, and I claim sole credit for my terrible taste in pop music.
Finally, thank you, Will, for always believing in and supporting my dream to be an author.
PHOTO: © Flash Williams, 2014
SHELLEY ANN CLARK’S third-grade teacher told her she’d be the next Danielle Steel. It probably says something about her that, at age eight, she knew who that was and thought it was a compliment. She now holds an MA in creative writing and a master’s of library and information science, and works as a public librarian. A Southerner by birth, Clark lives in Chicago, where she writes about hot Southern men and the strong women who bring them to their knees.
Have Mercy: A Loveswept Contemporary Erotic Romance Page 20
