"Well, in that case, I better work fast," Adam declared. "Dinner tomorrow?"
I frowned down at the floor. He was a nice guy, funny, cute, big, and determined. A better combination there couldn't be. But what was the point? One dinner, two. Maybe a little fun along the way and then I'd be leaving. I was twenty-eight years old, my life had been one meaningless encounter after another. Hell, proof of my bad girl ways had been standing across the room all night watching me sing. If I was honest with myself, I'd got tired of the same old same old.
It's not like it wasn't easy to pick a guy up after a show. I could take my pick, practically, from those who watched me perform. But never, not even with my current flame Derek, had I ever felt anything more than mild intrigue and a dash of hormonal excitement.
Except that one night. The night before I left for Nashville, Tennessee.
And, of course, there was Dad. The reason why I was here and the time waster of my days. I figured I had another two weeks before his house resembled a normal home. If there was an award for hoarding, my father would have won it fifteen years in a row. I was now moving on to the last of the rooms inside and then I'd have to call in the garbage trucks to haul the "shed's" contents to the dump.
"Um, you know, that's tempting," I started, but he interrupted.
"Aw, come on, cowgirl, don't give me the cold shoulder." He gave a full bodied mock shiver to send the point home. "I fell in love with you on that song."
"Stalker," I said smiling, "they all do."
"You tease!" he announced at full volume with a huge smile across his face, making me swat his arm to get him to be quiet. He took the opportunity to grab my hands in his and still my motion. With one pull on my arms he had me flush against his chest. "I was hoping," he said in a whisper from mere inches away, "that you'd give me a private performance. I promise I'll make it worth your while." His deep blue eyes held mine prisoner. I couldn't have moved away if I'd tried.
It's not that I'm not used to men who see what they want and simply set out to take it. Cowboys are macho men. I'm surrounded by good ole boys with bad-boy streaks on a daily basis in Nashville. Hell, it's one of the reasons I chose Country as the musical genre for me. There is nothing more sexy than a rugged cowboy who takes no prisoners and leaves you breathless when he's done.
But Adam just had a way about him and I was sorely tempted to give in and allow myself a little taste.
I needed a bit of lovin', my days were filled with the threat of death in the house, dirt and grime and copious amounts of crap. And a father who made it clear he didn't love me, but right now he'd put up with me, because he didn't want to die alone.
"I see I'm winning you over, cowgirl," he whispered against my lips. "Wanna get out of here?"
I hated being a foregone conclusion.
"I have to talk to Gen first."
"I can wait," he said softly, then leaned in and placed his mouth against my ear to whisper huskily. "I think you're worth it, Evangeline Rowe."
I disentangled myself from his grasp, he slowly released my hands, having let his fingers trail down the length of my arms. I shook my head at him, still smiling. He was a player, I had no doubt, but then every single one of the men who had shared my bed had been too. I was just attracted to that sort of guy.
I walked over to Gen, who was still surrounded by her posse from earlier.
"That was fantastic!" she announced, leaning forward and surprising me with a hug.
"Yeah, brilliant," Wayne in the checked shirt declared. "I'm becoming a fan on Facebook."
I smiled up at him, taking in the checked shirt and cowboy boots under his jeans.
"You're about the only person here who seems to appreciate the Country style," I said in my best Tennessee.
"You bet ya, cowgirl. I'm your man," he shot back, hooking his thumbs in the loops on his jeans and rocking back on his cowboy booted heels.
"I thought you were Edward's man," Jane said, sipping what looked like a mochaccino.
Edward managed an incredulous snort and said, "Only if I let him have the remote."
"I share!" Wayne countered.
"Not the remote," Edward shot back deadpan.
Everyone shook their heads as Wayne humphed away quietly to the side. I turned my attention to Gen, wanting to get out of here before her fiancé returned to her side.
"So, you think we'll do for your opening night?"
"Oh, honey, you are so damn perfect. I couldn't think of anyone better. You rocked that stage and the song you sang to Adam. Whew!" She fanned herself with her hand "I'm just saying, that was so hot. I think every guy in this room, except maybe Wayne and Edward because you know, they're not really your type..."
"I could be her type," Wayne interrupted and received a whack on the back of his head from Edward. "Spousal abuse!"
"And to think," - Gen went on with her run-away mouth moment as though the interruption and theatrics hadn't even occurred - "we went to school together! This is just so cool," she said sincerely, every word from this girl's mouth was always so sweet.
I chuckled and shook my head.
"I remember you clapping in the quadrangle," I admitted with a fond smile.
"I was your biggest fan," she said seriously, as though being my fan in high school was of much importance.
"No, I was," Kelly announced as she rejoined our group. I spotted Spike over by his drum set, dismantling it and getting ready to leave.
"No, I distinctly remember that I was her biggest fan in school," Gen argued. "You liked Duran Duran."
"Oh, purlease, I was Country all the way," Kelly declared with a toss of her hair.
"Kelly Quayle, you are so far from Country you're in a different country," Gen said and started laughing at herself.
"Shhhh!" Kelly hissed back. "Don't let Spike hear you say that, I've just convinced him I was born singing a Willie Nelson song." Gen started laughing even harder, the rest of the group joining in.
"Oh don't worry, cookie," I said, still calling on my Tennessee, "Spike don't need much convincin'."
The laughter got louder, then for some reason suddenly stopped. I felt him behind me, before I heard or saw him. All the eyes of the people before me flicking over my shoulder to let me know he was there.
"Angel," Nick said, in an entirely too seductive voice. His use of the nick-name he gave me that night cutting right through my heart now. No one had called me "angel" the way he did it, as though I was truly an angel brought down from heaven to save his soul. And he was doing it in front of his fiancée.
I spun on my heel and glared at him.
"Don't call me angel," I said through gritted teeth, hands fisted at my sides.
His eyes washed over me, as though we didn't have an audience, as though his fiancée wasn't standing right there bearing witness to this intimate scene. And he was making it intimate. He took his sweet, sweet time. Making sure he lingered on any bare skin, returning to my cleavage for a special amount of attention, then finally coming to rest on my face.
"Angels are a figment," he said bizarrely and strangely quite angrily. "There one minute, or so they seem, then gone the next. Bringing false hope and then crushing it." I blinked at him. He'd clearly lost his mind.
I decided to pretend the whole thing wasn't happening. I'd just ignore it. I frowned down at the ground and then shook my head. Then turned to Gen.
"We can practice here in the evenings? Is that still OK?" We'd needed somewhere to practice other than Gus's garage, Casey was getting pissed off at the noise keeping the kids awake in the middle of the night.
"Sure," she said, her eyes darting between me and Nick. Poor woman, she was going to have a shit night confronting her loser fiancé, that was for sure.
"Sweet," I replied, pasting on my best Tennessee smile, then headed straight for the guys who had just finished packing and stowed my guitar in its case.
We all said said our good-byes, arranged a time with Jane to be back tomorrow evening for practice, Gen
watching quietly from the side, Nick nowhere to be seen. Loser. And then slipped out into the night. I kissed Gus on the cheek, hugged Spike and shared a high-five with Gonzo, then grabbed the first taxi that came my way.
The entire way back to my father's I could have sworn the taxi was being followed. But every time I turned around in the back seat, there was no one there.
Nick had said angels were a figment. There one minute, then gone the next. I was thinking ghosts from the past fitted that analogy better.
Nick Anscombe was my ghost and even if he wasn't following me physically right now, he had me thinking that he was.
Chapter 3
What Was Left Of My Tattered Heart, Shattered Even More
It was only as I was paying the taxi outside of Dad's house, that I realised I hadn't seen Adam when I left Sweet Seduction. He'd simply disappeared. Perhaps that was a good thing. I sure as hell didn't feel like a little lovin' by the time Nick had been through with his weird angel statement.
I watched the taxi roll away until it disappeared round the bend in the road and then I turned back to Dad's little council flat, guitar case in hand. The lights were on inside, the curtains drawn, but even from here I could smell Aunty Jessie's cigarettes. Thankfully, I couldn't smell anything more exotic. Dad would be asleep, there was no way he would have lasted past nine, and Jessie would be halfway drunk, if not all the way. One of her boys would be on task to pick her up, although they'd likely be just as drunk off their asses as her.
For a moment I just stood there, unable to muster the courage to go back in. But the sooner I got this over with, the sooner I could strum my guitar out on the back steps and stare at the moon in peace. A moon that looked different here than it did back home. One quick frown down at the ground and then I hoisted my guitar case firmly and strode up to the front door, letting myself in.
"Took your fuckin' time," Jessie greeted me at the door.
Clearly she'd been watching my hesitation from behind the curtains. That's why it never paid to delay the inevitable. Best to just get on with it, face the music, and then walk away.
"Boys are busy tonight, give me some money for a taxi," she instructed holding out her hand, palm up, fingers flexing in a "come on" motion. "Unless, of course, you want me to stay here."
I thrust a twenty in her hand before the sentence was fully out of her mouth.
"Same time tomorrow night?" I asked, making myself seem disinterested, by flopping down on the couch and propping my boots up on the coffee table with a thump.
"See how I feel. Ray was better tonight, he's still got some time left."
I blinked at her. She was delusional if she thought that, he'd lost five kilos alone in the past week. He was looking sallow and jaundiced and couldn't even hold his head up by nine at night. Most of what he ate came back up or out in other more explosive and disgusting ways, he couldn't have been holding on to much nutrition. I was suspecting that, despite his determination to cling to life so he could verbally abuse me, he'd be in a hospice centre before the end of the month.
But I was determined not to let her know any of that. If she knew how important these early nights off were for me on the weekend, she'd cut Dad off to spite me. Dad needed her visits almost as much as I did. But Jessie did nothing without a reason. Dad might have lived in a council flat, but he actually had a bit put away from his pension and selling off bits and pieces he'd collected and repaired over the years. Jessie wanted his money, what little of it was there. And as there was no chance in hell of me getting it, she'd been keeping herself close to Dad for the past few years.
The moment Gabe went into prison, Jessie decided to show how much she cared. The sad part was, she did care for him. He was her only sibling. She loved him, about as much as she loved her boys. But she was wasting her time. Dad's money would go to Gabe and no one else.
Still, I wasn't above using her greed to my advantage.
"Be a shame if you didn't visit, Aunty Jessie," I said sweetly from the couch. "He talks non-stop about how important your visits are. He tells anyone who comes calling. Even the lawyer the other day." The lawyer had come, at Dad's request, to make sure his will was in order. I managed a brief look at it when they didn't know I was there. It didn't surprise me, Gabe's name was the only one listed at all.
I didn't need or want Dad's pitiful money. But Jessie sure as hell did.
"Really?" she said doubtfully. "You wouldn't be just sayin' that to get me to visit?"
"Now, why would I do that, Aunty Jessie," I said in my best Tennessee.
She stared at me for several seconds, the beep of a car horn breaking her glare. Obviously the taxi had arrived out front. I held her gaze, having had years of practice with my cousins when I was young. Then watched with some measure of guilt when she was the one to look away.
That guilt was quashed when she spoke over her shoulder as she walked out the front door.
"Fuck off!"
After that little confrontation I didn't much feel like strumming the Martin under the stars, so I did my night time ritual, shoved my earphones in my ears, and switched the MP3 player on to listen to some Garth Brooks. All in all it had been a hell of a day. The only thing to bring me out of my slump would be Garth.
I slowly drifted off to sleep listening to If Tomorrow Never Comes.
Country music tells a story, every song complete. I adored that. You could, in no more than three or four minutes, lose your heart to a tale, that had you wanting to cry, while often making you smile. Some were piss-takes, some true heart breakers, but every single one of them left you feeling like you'd been a small part of someone's most endearing moments. Nothing gave me such pleasure as Country songs.
And when life got really hard, you'd listen to some poor cowboy or cowgirl tell you how much harder their lives were. And sometimes, they'd give you the happy ending you thought you'd never have yourself.
The next three days were much of the same. Waking to Dad's latest accident in bed, washing, cleaning, making sure he kept his food down and took his meds, while ignoring his gripes and constant dissatisfaction at having had a daughter who wasn't as good as his son. Twenty-eight rusted out oil cans, thirty-three shoe boxes of nuts, bolts, screws and washers, five broken down lawnmowers, three broken weed trimmers, and sixteen petrol containers most of which were leaking, causing fumes to hang in the air in the shed. The last making it essential to call in an appropriate disposal service, once I'd placed the contents of the shed - which included all of the over three hundred full boxes of Lipton Tea, but not the cats, the SPCA had taken care of those for an exorbitant fee - in the middle of the back lawn.
Evenings had consisted of practice runs at Sweet Seduction after Dad had conked out in bed, which was becoming earlier and earlier with each passing day. I felt a multitude of conflicting emotions leaving him each night. What if he passed away while I wasn't there? What if he woke up and tried to get out of bed and ended up on the floor with a broken hip, no one to hear him cry out in pain? What if his morning explosions became evening explosions and he had to wallow in his own mess until I came home at midnight or there about?
It was hard leaving him, but for three months he'd had a routine that never altered. For the first two I'd waited and waited for a sign that things would change. The last month, I'd been sneaking out and coming home to a sound asleep father, snug in his clean bed.
The guys in the band new my Dad was sick, but not how bad. Their answer to my mental moments of letting them see my worry, was that I needed to have a life. I wanted to tell them that my life would go on once he died, but until then, as his daughter, it was my duty to live my life around him.
But I needed music. I needed Country. Being home and in the same house as my father was driving me insane. It was worse than when I was a kid and I'd escape my mother's antics every night after dark. It was ten times worse than that. I prayed to God that He'd understand my selfish motives, that He'd forgive me my moment of recklessness, leaving a dying man to
fend for himself at night for three hours.
Every time I opened the door to the flat after returning from Sweet Seduction my stomach would be tied in guilty knots. And every time so far he was sound asleep and perfectly OK.
The performances at Sweet Seduction had been my haven. The band my dream come true. We had a blast. Sometimes with Gen or Kelly present, sometimes Jane or Karla or another Sweet Seduction guy named Lucas. Often Adam's mates were there, but for some reason not him. Twice Gen's brother Jason turned up, but on both occasions he seemed more interested in a dark haired movie-star woman, than us. And not once Nick, Gen's fiancé and my sexy-but-no-good ghost from the past.
For that I was thankful and also annoyingly hurt. I was such a horrible memory from his past that he couldn't even watch me perform. I deserved nothing better. One night of passion in his arms did not make me special. Nick would have had his fair few of those. I was nothing new or memorable.
He on the other hand was. Try as I might to not think of that night, seeing him again and knowing he was Gen's and never could be mine, brought it all back in vivid technicolour, surround sound imagery in my mind. The way his soft, talented fingers felt against my skin. How his short dark hair, cut like he belonged in the military, was impossible to ignore, my hands finding their way into the strands without any conscious thought. How his ice-blue eyes held mine while he moved so slowly, so seductively inside me. Those eyes burning themselves inside my brain. For years afterwards, his were the eyes I saw when I closed mine whilst in someone else's arms.
Hell, if I was honest, for years afterwards that night was the standard by which all others were measured. And they always came up short. He'd taken me fast and hard the first time, as though he'd not been able to help himself, or control himself when he finally had me in his arms. The three times after that were more leisurely. His determination to taste every inch of me driving him on for hours, by the time we stopped, the sun cresting the horizon outside of his bedroom window, I was spent.
Sweet Seduction Serenade Page 3
