The busboy was back, pouring their wine and gaping at Sherry.
Carston lifted his glass in a toast, sipped. “I’m impressed.”
“Impressed?” Sherry’s own glass was still raised. “By the wine?”
“No. By you.” He tugged back a smile. “How kind of you to work with someone who’s the epitome of evil.”
“Okay. Take what I’m saying as a joke. I’ve done my duty.” She put down her wine glass, picked up her fork, and violently stabbed an innocent olive in a dish.
“I just don’t see how Charlie could possibly interfere with my life.”
“See how naïve you are?”
The waiter appeared. He was older than the busboy, thus was more dignified and not inclined to gape. Sherry told him she was a vegetarian, that anything the cook felt like devising was fine with her: she loved surprises. Carston watched the interaction, saw how her easy smile had the waiter charmed. She obviously had a talent for putting people at their ease and making them like her.
“Is going out to eat a problem when you’re vegetarian?” he asked when the waiter had left.
“Usually not. Good chefs usually want to show how original they are. I just put myself in their hands. Look, can we get back to Charlie?”
“Do we have to?” Not that he minded. Any subject of conversation was fine with him. He couldn’t believe how much she fascinated him—though he was doing his best to appear calm and collected.
“Look, I love Charlie. For the last seventeen years, he’s been my best friend in the whole world. He’s also a wonderful agent and road manager, and the boys love him too. But you have to understand how he functions. This dinner, for example, is a pre-arranged publicity stunt. Just that.”
“Is it?”
She nodded. “Charlie never had the slightest intention of joining us. He wanted the two of us to be together and alone. No boys. No outsiders. No interference.”
What was wrong with that? This was getting better and better. “Why does he want us to be alone?”
She didn’t meet his eyes. She even looked embarrassed. It took her a minute before answering. “Because he thinks we’d make a good couple.”
Carston felt his repressed smile break its bounds and broaden out into a grin. “Oh, he does, does he?” Well, old Charlie wasn’t the only one.
“Yes, but not in the way you think I mean it,” she was quick to add. Too quick.
“What way do I think you mean it?” He couldn’t even control his voice anymore: it sounded soft, provocative. A couple? The two of them alone? A couple. The word dragged in others: coupling, coupled…
She still wasn’t meeting his eyes. “He wants us to be a good couple for publicity’s sake. Because he thinks it would be good for my career if people see us together and link us in a romance. Anything. Just so long as I get talked about.”
Carston was silent for a few minutes. So? He still couldn’t see what the problem was. Why was the linking of his name to hers such a bad thing? Since when was that kind of gossip dangerous? Unless… “Is it really such a terrible idea?”
She seemed astounded by his question. “Of course it is.”
“Why? Do you have a serious relationship that could be damaged by the publicity?” He hoped the question sounded light, casual, although the answer was suddenly important to him.
She twirled her glass. Met his eyes steadily. “No.”
Ridiculous. He felt like jumping up, clicking his heels together with relief. Why? What possible difference did it make if Sherry Valentine had a million other men in her life? This was a temporary relationship. A good time had by both. A short good time. Anything else was impossible. A country music singer with her fans, her publicity stunts, all her flashy glamour, had no place in a solitary writer’s life. His intense, almost radical, dislike of crowds and noise certainly had no place in her life either.
She was still watching him. “Do you?”
He blinked. “Do I what?”
“Have any relationship that matters?”
“No.” The vulnerability he heard in his own voice astonished him. He tried to cover it up. Sound practical. “Therefore this concerns only the two of us.”
She leaned back in her chair. “I suppose so. It’s just that...”
Just what? He was getting confused now. What concerned only the two of them? Desire? Desire didn’t have scruples. He’d just decided Sherry was a temporary feature in his life, hadn’t he? So why take this so seriously? “Doesn’t everyone in your world run after publicity?”
She raised a resigned eyebrow. “You wouldn’t say that if you knew how damaging the wrong sort of publicity can be.”
“It can create a star where there’s no talent.” Why was he sounding so cynical again?
She didn’t take offence. “Of course it can. Well-done publicity can hide bad work, bad music, and bad singing. But your world is just as rotten. Nothing like a good review to hide a bad play or bad acting.”
“True.”
They watched each other coolly for a minute. The waiter appeared with a dish of mushrooms stuffed with heady spices. The odor wafted temptingly between them.
Sherry closed her eyes briefly and sniffed the air. “Don’t those smell heavenly?”
They did. And he loved her enthusiasm, too. Her humor. It would be fun spending time with Sherry—if their schedules allowed that. Which is when the idea came to him...Okay, he was fairly sure he wouldn’t like her music when he heard it, but so what? Did it matter? No. He didn’t have to live with it or hear it every day.
He leaned across the table. “I’d like to make a suggestion.”
Sherry looked at him curiously. “Shoot.”
“It might be nice to step into each other’s shoes.”
She winced. “Believe me, cowboy boots will kill you. They kill me, most of the time. As for spurs, they’re hellish.”
“I’m serious.” But he couldn’t stop the grin.
“So am I.”
“Let me explain. Here we are, both stuck in Midville for the next few days. Why not take advantage of the time? I could, temporarily, get involved in your world and you in mine. You’ll come to my rehearsal, I’ll go to yours. You have the advantage because you know what I write, but you’ll be starting from scratch if you want to teach me anything about country music.”
Her mouth twisted wryly. “Charlie’s going to like this, I can tell.” Still, she didn’t dismiss the idea.
“And you? What do you think?” He held his breath. To him, the plan sounded downright brilliant. It would throw the two of them together and open the door to other dinners for two, tête-à-têtes, intimate moments. Intimacy: that would make the Midville Culture Festival a hell of a lot more interesting than he’d ever imagined.
She reflected for a minute or two, seemed far away, as if seeing another scene altogether. Then came back to the present. Gave him a wonderful smile, one of pure seduction. “Actually, it sounds like fun.”
The next time he got anywhere near his agent, Nick Spring, Carston was going to hug that man for getting him involved in the Midville Culture Festival!
****
It was late when they returned to the hotel. The sound of their footsteps echoed along a silent walkway leading between a line of fir trees and up to the front door.
“Sherry?”
She heard the heat in his voice. Stopped. Turned slightly. The tips of his fingers pushed back a lock of hair, caressed her cheek gently. She forced herself to stay right where she was, not throw herself at him or wind her arms around his neck. Where was all her resolution about not having a fling? Would she end up in his bedroom tonight?
Even in the dark, she saw his smile. He knew how she felt.
Then he folded her against him, and she forgot about her scruples. Her arms did slide around his neck; her fingers did tangle in his silky hair. Under all the layers of their clothing, his chest was hard and tight. Curving more closely into his seductive heat, she raised her mouth to his. His l
ips brushed hers lightly, teasingly. She moaned softly.
“I know,” he sighed, his mouth still against hers. “It feels so good.”
Her mouth opened, and his kisses became wanting, intense.
Somewhere behind them a car door slammed; Sherry skidded back into reality.
Carston’s fingers cupped her face. “Come on. This will be much more fun in private.”
Taking her hand in his, he led her up the steps to the hotel entrance. She followed, her body floating, her feet dangling somewhere in the air, and her head spinning.
The glare of the crowded lobby hit her senses with the slam of an electric shock. She felt a million eyes shoot in her direction, in Carston’s. Saw the explosion of flashing cameras.
“There she is!” someone screamed. “Sherry Valentine.”
There was a roar.
“This certainly makes a playwright’s life look dull,” she heard Carston say.
But that was just before a dozen journalists and a mass of hysterical fans surged across the lobby floor. They had to get out of there. And fast. “Carston?”
The arm steering her into the open door of the elevator wasn’t Carston’s. Looking up, she saw Charlie Bacon’s shiny face.
And he looked very, very satisfied.
Chapter Four
Gray light filtered through the windows of the hotel’s breakfast room, and the hum of early morning conversation mingled with the scrape of knives and forks on china, the clack of spoons.
Sherry, seated at a table with Charlie Bacon and her boys, caught sight of Carston as soon as he appeared. She hadn’t exactly been looking out for him. It was more a question of sixth sense. A tingling sensation had told her he was about to walk into the room…then he did. Her heart lurched.
There it was again. The immediate gut feeling. She wished she could order that feeling to stroll over to planet Saturn but knew it was a hopeless undertaking: Carston Hewlett was bane to her, to any woman who wanted to keep sane. She put down her coffee cup knowing the rattling sound was due to her trembling hands. Just look at the state she was in. Because of what? Because Carston Hewlett had kissed her. That was all. All?
Not quite. She’d spent the rest of the night tossing and turning, dreaming about him, about how good his hard, surprisingly muscular body had felt against hers. About the heat and the demand of his mouth. Hell! She just wasn’t used to reacting strongly to a man these days. She didn’t want to either. Where did he get all those muscles from anyway? Didn’t playwrights spend their lives at a desk scribbling or tapping away at computers and getting flabby?
She fought to keep her face expressionless. No need for Charlie and her boys to know that anything untoward was going on, that her thoughts were as scrambled as the yellow mess of eggs on the big plate in the middle of the table.
But now Charlie Bacon had also spotted Carston, although Sherry didn’t attribute any sixth sense to him. It was simply that man’s beady eagle eye missed nothing, and the wheels of his conniving mind never stopped churning.
“Good morning, Carston,” Charlie bellowed out as if the two of them had been best buddies since those prehistoric days when hairy mastodons snacked on ferns, club mosses, and other primeval vegetation. “Come over and join us.”
Sherry winced. This was out and out painful. “Charlie, stop it,” she snapped. “Maybe the man likes being alone in the morning.”
Charlie guffawed. “Why would he want to be alone?” His voice was loud enough to be heard by every other person in the room. Then, mercifully, he stuffed most of a thickly buttered roll into his mouth.
“Perhaps not everyone in the world appreciates your brand of over-zealous socializing at the crack of dawn, Charlie-boy. Some people like to eat their breakfast in peace and quiet.”
The desperate plea was unsuccessful. Here was Carston now, standing beside their table, a light smile playing on his lips as his eyes met her own pained ones for a fleeting second.
“Take a seat, Carston.” Charlie’s voice was still insistently hearty. Excruciatingly hearty, she thought.
Carston didn’t seem to notice—or if he did, seemed not to care. He sat down, contemplated the group with amused eyes, took in their fringed costumes, the green spangled cacti on their black shirts, the sparkling belt buckles and the brightly colored cowboy boots. Two of the musicians wore spurs, and even Charlie Bacon, although he never appeared on stage, sported glittering horses and silvery musical notes on his vast shirt and vest.
“I get the feeling I’ve just walked into a Hollywood-style rodeo. People don’t really ride horses and round up cattle in clothes like those, do they?”
“Cardboard cowboys, that’s all we are.” Sherry shrugged with what she hoped looked like insouciance or just the usual friendliness doled out to all and sundry.
“Were any of you raised on a ranch?”
Everyone—Sherry, her boys, and Charlie—laughed.
“Nope,” said Charlie with a certain raw pleasure. “Don’t let word get out, but Todd’s a Cincinnati boy, Len’s from Miami, Rick hails from Boston, Nat grew up in Toronto, and Jimmy was born in Memphis.”
“Suburban Memphis,” confirmed Jimmy with a grin.
“These boys are some of the best musicians around, and they’ve all had formal musical training. Rick Tally, here, can play the meanest violin sonata you’ve ever heard. Only Sherry has a country background. She was born in the Ozarks.”
“In Dog’s Pass,” added Sherry, quickly. Too quickly? She noted the curious glance Carston threw her way. Be careful, she warned herself. The man has a fine writer’s ear. Well tuned, it’ll be quick to hear odd notes and small lies. She looked down at her plate. She was having trouble meeting those calm, amused, gray eyes anyway. “Unlike your actors and actresses who take off their makeup when they leave the stage, we have to play our roles all the time.”
“And these words are from the very person who spends most of her time arguing with me about doing just that!” Charlie snorted with derision. “Why, when we were in the bus just the day before yesterday, she was complaining about looking like a Martian.”
Sherry ignored him. If she didn’t, there’d be no end to the dirty little secrets Charlie would drag out from the complicated swamp of their long partnership. Instead, she kept her voice cool. “You see, back in the twenties and thirties, when Hollywood made the first westerns, authentic country music was mixed together with cowboy music. The result was something called Western Swing. Of course, music has changed a lot since then, but the public wants the lonesome heart-broken cowboy myth to continue.”
“Does the slick image ever get mixed up with who you really are underneath?”
“Not if you know what’s good for you,” grunted Charlie. “If you don’t know who you are under all the fringes and makeup, then show business grinds you up in no time.”
“Of course, some people do get confused,” added Rick Tally. “We had a banjo player on tour with us some years ago: Billy J. Sudds. He was a great musician but a bit on the unstable side. Somehow he got it into his head he’d been reincarnated as Wild Bill Hickok. The real Wild Bill was killed in Deadwood for having cheated at cards, and Billy thought he’d been put back on earth as an avenger.”
“I never saw a worse loser in my whole life than Billy J. Sudds.” Sherry sighed. “He couldn’t even play musical chairs without getting mean.”
“In any case, Carston, I guess you can decide for yourself if we mix up real life with show.” Charlie was leering and foxy-eyed. “Last night Sherry told me the two of you are going to hang around with each other over the next couple of days, learn a little about each other’s business. Sounds like a great idea to me, and I’ve arranged everything.”
“Wait a minute,” said Sherry. “Slow down, Charlie, my boy. What’s been ‘arranged’?” She didn’t like the sound of this one bit.
“Keep your hair on, chicken. Why’re you so suspicious all the time?” Charlie twisted his face into a perfect example of fake hurt i
nnocence. “You’re the one who told me about this plan of Carston’s. So why not put it into action right away. Today. This morning. Now.”
“No, Charlie. Today I’m going up to the children’s hospital. That’s not what Carston had in mind.”
“Why not go to the hospital together?”
Sherry shook her head. She knew her Charlie; he probably thought she’d tacitly agreed to use Carston to further her acting career—which she very definitely hadn’t. She was certain that if Carston got wind of that, he’d never speak to her again. “Carston has better things to do today. I’m sure he has obligations here and…”
Charlie didn’t give her a chance to finish. “He doesn’t. I spoke to the Mary Scott, the festival director. He’s got the whole day free.”
“Charlie, you didn’t. Why you horrible, prying—”
“Wait a minute.” Carston was actually laughing. “Stop talking about me as if I were a three-year-old in need of a nanny. What’s this about a children’s hospital?”
“Just one of the things Sherry likes to do when she’s on tour somewhere,” Charlie roared in before Sherry could even unclench her gritted teeth. “She doesn’t do it for publicity, and no journalists are in on it. She thinks it’ll bring fun into kids’ lives if they get to meet a big star they’ve seen singing on television.”
“I see.”
Sherry had to give him a way out. “Look, Carston, I know this isn’t what you meant when we talked about accompanying each other, so just ignore what Charlie said. He still treats me like a little kid, and now he’s doing the same thing to you.”
But Charlie continued on in his usual steamroller way. “Both of you can ride up there in your car, Carston. That’ll free me and the bus, so the boys and I can take care of concert arrangements. You know how things are in these backwoods towns: half the time the sound technicians think a plug is something you cut off and chew.”
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