by Luanne Jones
Out in the darkened lounge she heard Jillie whisper, “Do it, Rita.”
The only thing Rita wanted to do was run away. Lacey Marie was right. She couldn’t do this. She was a stick in the mud. She’d never change and she was stupid to try.
The rhythm of the music came up through Rita’s new shoes, but she could not move.
What had she thought? Because she slept with the sexiest man she’d ever met, because a man who could have anyone had wanted her, that made her something special? If she was so special, where was he now?
Her mouth went dry as a desert. Her focus grew bleary. Only her thoughts raced on, keeping pace with the driving beat of the music and her raging pulse.
Will hadn’t wanted her for the long term. And even though she had always known and accepted that she didn’t need a man to make her complete, damned if she didn’t wish the man she loved was standing there now to give her courage.
Loved? Will? As if her pulse hadn’t gone hay-wire enough already, she had to think of him, then go and admit to herself how she really felt! Of course she loved him, but she couldn’t have him. She had always known that.
Still, she had convinced herself she could take her taste of heaven once and be forever satisfied. Now, having acknowledged her love for Will, she wondered how she would ever be satisfied with any man, with her old life, again?
“You okay, sugar?” Tressie Lynn, the waitress who moments ago had jumped on the stage and dubbed herself the “Miss Tress of Ceremonies” for the evening asked from the side of the stage.
Rita blinked at her, trying to recall the instructions Tressie had given earlier.
“Start with something upbeat that everybody recognizes,” she’d suggested. “Set a fun tone for the evening, and that way you won’t have to worry about forgetting the words. People will just get carried along no matter what comes out of your mouth.”
The only thing Rita feared would come out of her mouth right then was her dinner.
“Jump in anytime, honey.” Tressie fiddled with the knobs on the machine. “The words are on the screen if you need them.”
“Thanks, I…” She tapped one finger to her throat and shot her most pathetic puppy-in-distress look at the woman.
“Got a tickle?”
She tapped harder and bugged her eyes out, hoping to convey that she had suddenly lost her voice entirely.
“Who is gonna tickle her?” the bald man wanted to know.
“Not you,” one of the ladies shot back.
“She’s got something stuck in her throat,” another explained.
“Shut up, you old poop,” the Graceland T-shirt lady commanded.
Spontaneous laryngitis, she wanted to shout out. “I have spontaneous laryngitis!” Instead she improvised a dry, feeble cough. She had not taken into account how the microphone would carry the sound.
“I’ll say she got something stuck in her throat. It’s like a cat with a hairball,” baldy announced before tossing back his drink.
The tour-group ladies hushed and shushed and tsk-tsk-tsked his outburst.
So far in her singing debut she had her very own heckler, had become the object of pity to strangers, and had yet to croon a single note! Stupid, stupid. She wanted to get out of there and back to the safety of her dull, take-no-chances life.
“You poor thing.” The waitress cut the music.
Rita let out a sigh of thanks for her answered prayer and took a step toward the edge of the stage.
“Here, take a drink of this.” The waitress met her with a glass of ice water. “And when you’re ready, I’ll start the song over again. Remember, relax and enjoy yourself.”
Enjoy? She had not come here to enjoy herself. She had come to prove herself.
“What she up to now?” the bald man demanded of his table mates.
“Show a little respect,” a maternal voice said.
“Shut up, you old poop.” Graceland took his drink away.
As the cold water flooded her mouth and throat, Rita reviewed her predicament. She had come through so much, and this was her graduation ceremony. If she walked off this stage without squeaking out at least a couple songs, she would walk off a failure. She would be looking at the aftermath of the twister that her friends had unleashed on her—that masculine sexual force named Wild Billy West—and choosing to live in the rubble.
“Don’t you dare have put me through everything up till this, then chicken out.” Jillie’s whisper penetrated the fog in her mind.
However, if she stood her ground and poured her heart into the music, she could go back to Hellon a survivor. She would be safe on the other side of the storm, stronger and with something new to build upon. She put the glass down on the table where Jillie sat at the side of the stage.
Her friend gave her a thumbs-up.
Rita wet her lips and raised the mike in a white-knuckled grip. The opening chords of the perkiest pop tune on the play list vibrated through the plastic panels of the stage floor. She took a deep breath.
The first word came out softer than a baby’s sigh. The next wasn’t quite that audible. She cleared her throat and wheezed out the last phrase of the opening stanza.
“Louder. I can’t hear a damned thing. What is wrong with her anywa—”
“Shut up, you old poop!” the whole crowd chimed in unison.
Shut up. What good advice, Rita couldn’t help thinking. Four beats before the next line. That gave just enough time to make a break for it. She looked both ways, saw the perfect spot to lay the microphone down, fixed her gaze on the doors and…
A hand took her elbow. Jillie stepped up beside her and belted—nothing else described it better though Rita had heard better noises out of an electric-sander belt—out the next line.
“What are you doing?” Rita whispered.
“Helping a friend.”
Her first impulse was to protest. Rita was the solid, dependable one. Rita was the one who stepped up to help. Rita was the one who could be counted upon to hang on and ride out any foolish endeavor on behalf of friendship.
Jillie launched into the chorus with reckless abandon.
This was what Miss Peggy had meant about being careless with your heart. Not hasty and irresponsible, but if the cause is worthwhile, fearlessly throw yourself into the fray even if you knew it could tear you apart.
That’s what Rita had done the first time she confronted Will. And what she had failed to do every time since, when she held back just a little because she did not want him to think of her as stupid. Distance and differences were not what had kept her and Will from pursuing anything more meaningful, caution and self-consciousness were.
That and the fact that he did not love her.
He had been her taste of heaven, not meant to last. And though she felt like hell, she would do what she had come to do and deal with her heartache later.
She took Jillie’s hand and bent forward so they could share the microphone.
The muggy Memphis summer air got under Will’s collar. He yanked his tie loose before he hit the hotel doors. Why he’d gone the suit-and-tie route for this place was beyond him, anyway. Of course he hadn’t done it for any place. He’d done it for Rita.
What the hell did he hope to accomplish by showing up, anyway? To announce to Rita that his mama thought they loved each other? If he couldn’t say it for certain himself, wasn’t it just cruel to show up and…
And what? he wondered to himself.
Rita had gone to great lengths on more than one occasion to point out his basic flaws. He was selfish and unsettled, the kind of man more available to strangers than to people who cared about him. He thought of all the people in Memphis willing to do him favors, knowing they could count on him in work and socially, but never asking or demanding anything more. He stayed away from Hellon because no one there saw the real man or spoke the hard truth to him, but if he examined his closely crafted life here in Memphis, was it any better?
He looked at the glass door with the starl
it parking lot beyond.
“Hey! What are you doing here, big brother?”
His mama would have had his hide if he’d said out loud what he thought just then. Instead he forced his gritted teeth into a big old grin and turned to greet the women he’d come from Hellon to see. Only she wasn’t with his sister. “Where’s Rita?”
“Still back there.” Jillie jerked her thumb over her shoulder, paused then flung her arm out and pointed again.
He stretched out to peer around the corner and down the short corridor. RIVER REVUE LOUNGE glared back at him in gold-painted letters on glossy black doors.
“If you came for the performance of a lifetime, you missed your chance.”
“Is Rita done singing already?”
“Once she got started, I couldn’t get her to shut up for nothing. You should see her, Will.”
“Should I?” He asked it of himself more than to get an opinion.
“Well, you will. She’ll be out here in a minute to catch her breath. Between the lights and the stuffiness, you pretty much have to get out for a few minutes before you sing again.”
“Since when did you become an expert on lounge singing?”
“Since tonight.” Jillie had a lightness about her he hadn’t seen in years. “That great performance you missed was me!”
“You? Sang karaoke?”
“And the earth did not open up and swallow me alive! Can you believe it?”
“It’s the age of miracles, truly it is. First Mother gave me what seemed at the time to be sound advice, now this.”
“Mother! That’s why you showed up here tonight?”
“I’m losing my grip on reality, aren’t I?” He caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror behind the check-in desk. Tie hanging loose, hair still wet and looking unkempt from his pushing his fingers through it—he looked the part. “It all started when you talked me into working on the Palace.”
“Don’t be too hard on yourself.” Jillie started straightening his tie. “Mama and her nutty talk about following your heart is why I’m on my way right now to try to reconcile things with Paul.”
“He finally call you back?”
She nodded. “He admitted he was stupid. I admitted I was stupid.”
“Ahh, a match made in heaven.” He took over adjusting his attire.
“I reckon.” She laughed. “We decided that we were too pathetic to turn loose on other unsuspecting people and ought to be together. Besides, having already seen the worst about each other, we still want to be together.”
“Good for you.” He kissed her forehead. “I mean that.”
“Thanks. I have to run. You going to stick around a while and hear Rita sing?”
“I was.”
“Second thoughts?”
“You’re her best friend. What do you think I should do?”
“Do you care about her?”
“Yes.”
“Do you love her?”
He clenched his jaw.
“I don’t know, then, Will.” She lifted her shoulders, then eased them down again. “If you want to hear her sing, she’s on the list to do another number. She’s right after Skippy and Daphne, the fun girls of the senior citizens’ Tennessee bus tour, doing their tribute to disco.”
“Hard act to follow.”
“Rita can do it. She can do anything if she gets the right encouragement and lets herself try.”
“I know.” He shut his eyes. “She’s amazing.”
“She’s been through a lot.”
“That a warning?”
“That’s…something to keep in mind.” She smoothed his jacket sleeve, fit her hand into his, and gave it a squeeze. When she moved away, she glanced over her shoulder. “This is a warning—she just came out of the lounge.”
He stiffened, his gut in knots.
“I’m headed that-a-way.” She motioned toward the hotel parking lot. “You?”
“Are you kidding? Wild Billy run from a confrontation?”
“Wild Billy?” She arched her sketched-in-place eyebrow.
He had said that, hadn’t he? Funny, after the talk with his mother, the nickname no longer wounded him, even if it did still sting a little. “Go see Paul.”
“I know whatever you decide about Rita will be the right thing.”
He gave her a quick hug and sent her on her way wondering if she understood how her faith in him had both humbled him and made him want to beat his head against a brick wall?
With that in his mind and his chest gripped with conflicting emotions, he turned to greet Rita.
Chapter 18
EVERY DIXIE BELLE’S MAMA WANTS HER TO BEAR IN MIND:
There is no such a thing as no-strings-attached sex.
Rita put her ear to the lounge door. A shy businessman from Philadelphia, who until a couple of songs ago hadn’t so much as raised his eyes from his club soda and pretzels, was tearing up the room with a spirited rendition of “Heartbreak Hotel.”
She smiled. She certainly didn’t have the lock on using music as therapy. She took a deep breath and it filled her with a sense of growing bigger, better, stronger. She had done it. Closing her eyes, she savored the moment. No matter what she had to face from here on out, she would do it with a renewed sense of purpose and poise and…
“Hello, Rita.”
“Good gravy!”
“I beg your pardon?”
She opened her eyes. “It is you.”
“In the flesh.”
“In the flesh,” the phrase buzzed softly over her lips. “I can see that but…but why are you here?”
“I don’t know if I mentioned this, but I live in Memphis.”
That’s no answer, she wanted to shout at him. Oh, hell, when had she ever had the nerve to shout in public, much less at Will? “Yes, but you’re supposed to be in Hellon.”
“If I was in Hellon, how could I see you in this sexy red dress?”
Her dress. She’d had so much fun onstage she’d completely forgotten the makeover. This was Will’s first glimpse of the new Rita. Well, the old Rita in new-and-improved packaging.
“Rita, I have to tell you…” Will took his time looking her over.
If you could feel a man’s gaze, she decided then and there standing in the hallway of that less-than-elegant hotel, it would feel hot. And steamy. She liked it.
“This…dress is…”
“Too much?” She flitted her fingers over the neckline and touched skin instead of fabric. “Or maybe too little?”
“It’s just right.”
“Maybe if I lost a few pounds?”
“No. It’s perfect. You’re perfect.”
“I’d ask if lunacy runs in your family, but…I don’t want to know.”
He grinned. “Perfect and smart.”
“Not perfect, and I don’t know about smart, that doesn’t sound like me most of the time, but I certainly am curious.”
“Another trait I admire.”
“Why are you here, Will?”
“Disappointed to see me?”
She rubbed the tip of her thumb over her lower lip. Disappointed to see Will? Never. Terrified, perhaps. And thrilled.
He shifted his weight, and his jacket fell open.
The force of his presence, the warmth of his body, the width of his shoulders, and the depth of his eyes, in less than an instant she took it all in. Will had followed her to Memphis. What did that mean?
He stuck one hand in his pocket and cocked his head, “Rita?”
“I…uh. I thought you had to take care of your mother.”
“She’s the reason I’m here.”
“Oh, dear, I hope nothing bad has happened. Jillie went to—”
“Mother’s fine, and I saw Jillie going out.”
“That’s good.”
“You’re good.” He straightened up, his head bowed and his eyes stormy. “You always think of others first. You worry about them. You can’t wait to find out how you can get in there and help.”
“Did I say I found those frustrating?”
“Those were the very things you worked to try to get me to change.” She lowered her lashes, hoping to convey a teasing playfulness. She’d never had much practice at flirting or acting coy with a man.
“I was wrong, then. Don’t change that about yourself, Rita. It’s what makes you perfect, and wise, and make-a-man-crazy-with-wanting sexy.”
He made her feel that way, and she wanted more than anything to do something about it. “This isn’t exactly the kind of place for talk like that, is it?”
“I don’t know. It seems like a damn fine place to remind you of how good you are.” He fixed his gaze on the lounge door.
The last strains of “Heartbreak Hotel” resonated through the thin walls.
“Did you…did you hear me sing?”
“Yeah.” He edged in closer and skimmed his fingers along the side of her neck. “Once.”
She shivered.
He smiled.
“Once?” Her whole body tingled with the memory of lying naked in his arms, singing for him alone. The intimacy of that performance had given their lovemaking a taste and texture, a substance she had never known with any man before. And doubted she ever would again. Yet, she could not trust he remembered things the same way. “Once tonight?”
He shook his head.
“Good, huh?” She wasn’t asking about her singing.
“Incredible.”
“Would you…” She bowed her head. The power rush from singing onstage acted like a kick in the head. It knocked all common sense clean out of her. She would never have dared ask otherwise. But, dammit, the man had come to Memphis. They were in a hotel and…“Would you like for me to…sing for you again?”
He tipped his head toward the lounge door. “After the disco twins?”
“Is that what you came for, the…singing?”
“No.”
In light of everything between them, everything tonight represented, she should have welcomed his bluntness. She didn’t.
He took her hand. “I didn’t even know the disco twins would be here tonight.”
“Funny.” Her fingers fit between his and she pressed their palms and wrists together. “Why did you show up here tonight?”
