The Wicked and the Wondrous

by Christine Feehan

  She saw that the band had once more ground to a halt. Brian grimaced at her through the glass. Paul shook his head at her, worry plain on his face. She leaned over to flip the switch to flood the room with sound. Dillon paced back and forth, energy pouring out of him, filling the studio, flashes of brilliance, of pure genius mixed with building frustration and impatience.

  “Why can’t any of you hear it?” Dillon smacked his palm to his head, stormed over to the guitar leaning against the wall. “What’s so difficult about anticipating the beat? Slow the melody down, you’re rushing the riff. It isn’t to show what an awesome player you are alone, it’s a harmony, a blending so that it smokes.” He cradled the guitar, held it lovingly, almost tenderly. The need to play what he heard in his head was so strong his body trembled.

  Watching him through the glass, Jessica felt her heart shatter. She could read him, and his need to bring the music to life, so easily. Dillon had always been exacting, a perfectionist when it came to his music. His passion came through in his composing, in his lyrics, in his playing. It was what had shot the band to the top and all of them knew it. They wanted it again, and they were banking on him to find it for them.

  Dillon glared at Don. “Try again and this time get it right.”

  Visibly sweating, Don glanced uneasily at the others. “I’m not going to play it any differently than I did the last time, Dillon. I’m not you. I’ll never be you. I can’t hear what you want me to hear just by you telling me about blending and smoke and strings. I’m not you.”

  Dillon swore, his blue eyes burning with such intensity Don stepped away from him and held up his hand. “I want this, I do. I’m telling you, we need to find someone else to play lead guitar because it’s not going to be me. And no matter who we get, Dillon, it still won’t be you. You aren’t ever going to be satisfied.”

  Dillon winced as if Don had struck him. The two men stared at one another for a long moment and then Dillon turned and abruptly stalked out of the room. He stood in the sound room, head down, breathing deeply, trying to push down despair. He never should have tried, never should have thought he could do it. Aloud, he cursed his hands, cursed his scarred, useless body, cursed his passion for music.

  Tears swam in Tara’s eyes and she buried her face against her brother’s shoulder. Trevor put his arm around his sister and looked at Jessica.

  The movement snapped Dillon back to reality. Jessica was fiddling with a row of keys, concentrating intently, not looking at him. “Jess!” The sight of her was inspiring, a gift! He stalked across the room like a prowling panther, caught her arm, and pulled her to him. “You do it, Jess, I know you hear what I hear. It’s there inside of you, it’s always been there. We’ve always shared that connection. Get in there and play that song the way it’s meant to be played.” He was dragging her toward the door. “You’ve been playing guitar since you were five.”

  “What are thinking? I can’t play with your band!” Jessica was appalled. “Don will get it right, stop yelling at him and give him time.”

  “He’ll never get it right, he doesn’t love the melody. You have to love it, Jessica. Remember all those nights we sat up playing in the kitchen? The music’s in you, you live it and breathe it. It’s alive to you the same way it is for me.”

  “But that was different, it was just the two of us.”

  “I know you play guitar brilliantly, I’ve heard you. I know you would never give up playing, you hear it the same way I hear it.” He was shoving her, actually pushing her as she mulishly tried to dig in her heels.

  Jessica looked to the twins for support but they were wearing identical grins. “She plays every day, sometimes for hours,” Tara volunteered helpfully.

  “Little traitor,” Jessica hissed, “you’ve been hanging around with your brother too long. Both of you have dish duty for the next week.”

  “Both of us?” Trevor squeaked. “I’m innocent in this. Come on, Tara, let’s leave them to it. We can explore that game room a little more.”

  “Deserters,” Jessica added. “Rats off the sinking ship. I’ll remember this.” She was holding the door to the studio closed with her foot.

  “Actually, I think it will be fun to catch Aunt Brenda cleaning the goop off the stairs,” Tara said mischievously. She flounced out with a little wave and Trevor sauntered after her, grinning from ear to ear.

  “It’s obvious that you raised them,” Dillon said, his lips against her ear, his arm hard around her waist. “They both have smart mouths on them.”

  “Stop making such a spectacle! You have the entire band grinning at us like apes!” Jessica pushed away from him, made a show of straightening her clothes and smoothing her hair. Her chin went up. “I’ll do this, Dillon. I think I have an idea of what you’re looking for, but it will take some time to pull it out of my head. Don’t yell at me while I’m working. Not once, do you understand? Do not raise your voice to me or I will walk out of that room so fast you won’t know what hit you.”

  “I’d like to get away with saying that,” Brian observed.

  “You all can take a break. Jessica is going to save the day for us.”

  “I am not.” She glared at Dillon. “I’m just going to see if I can figure it out and if I can get it, I’ll play it for you. Do you mind, Don?”

  “I’m grateful, Jess.” Don smiled for the first time since entering the studio. “Yell very loud if you need help and we’ll all come running.”

  “Great, the place is soundproof.” Jessica picked up the guitar and idly began to play a blues riff, allowing her fingers to wander over the strings, her ear tuning itself to the tones of the instrument, familiarizing herself with the feel of it. “You’re leaving me with Dillon, just remember that.”

  chapter

  6

  JESSICA CLOSED HER EYES as she played, allowing the music to move through her body. Her heart and soul. It wasn’t right, there was something missing, something she wasn’t quite hitting. It was so close, so very close, but she couldn’t quite reach it. She shook her head, listening with her heart. “It’s not quite what it should be. It’s almost there, but it isn’t perfect.”

  There was frustration in her voice, enough that Dillon checked what he would have said and waited a heartbeat so that his own frustration wouldn’t betray him. She didn’t need him raging at her. What she needed was complete harmony between them. Unlike Don, Jessica was aware of what he wanted, she heard a similar sound in her own head, but it wasn’t coming through her fingers. “Let’s try something else, Jess. Pull it back a bit. Hold the notes longer, let the music breathe.”

  She nodded without looking at him, intense concentration on her face as her fingers lovingly moved over the strings. She listened to the flow, the pitch, a moody, introspective score, opening slowly, building, until the pain and heartbreak swelled, spilled over, filling the room until her heart was breaking and there were tears in her eyes. Her fingers stopped moving abruptly. “It’s not the guitar, Dillon. The sound is there, haunting and vivid, the emotions pouring out of the music. Listen, right here, it’s right here.” She played the notes once, twice, her fingers lingering, drawing out the sounds. “This isn’t a piece where we can just lay a track and have bass and drums doing their thing. It isn’t ever going to be enough.”

  He snapped his fingers, indicating for her to play again, his head cocked to one side, his eyes closed. “A saxophone? Something soft and melancholy? Right there, cutting into that passage, lonely, something lonely.”

  Jessica nodded and she smiled, her entire face lighting up. “Exactly, that’s it exactly. The sax has to cut in right there and take the spotlight for just a few bars, the guitar fading a bit into the background. This melody is too much for just bass and drums. We just aren’t looking at the entire picture. When we mix it, we can try a few things, but I’d like to hear what it would sound like with Robert giving us synthesized orchestra sounds on the keyboard. This song should have more texture to it. The vocal will add the depth
we need.”

  Dillon paced across the room, once, twice, then stopped in front of her. “I can hear the saxophone perfectly. It has to come in right on the beat in the middle of the buildup.”

  She nodded. “I’m excited—I think it will work. I’ve got the ideas for mixing. Don can come in and play it…”

  “No!” He nearly bit her head off, his blue eyes burning at her.

  He looked moody, dark. Intriguing. Jessica nearly groaned. She looked away from him, wishing she didn’t find him so attractive. Wishing it was only chemistry sizzling between them and not so many other things.

  “Don will never have your passion, Jess. He knows that, he as much as said so. He told me to find another lead.”

  She leaned the guitar very carefully against the wall. “Well, it isn’t going to be me. I can’t play the way you want—I don’t have enough experience. And even if I did, this is a men’s club. Very few musicians want to admit that a woman can handle a guitar.”

  “You’ll have the experience when we need it. I’ll help you,” he promised. “And the band wants this to work. They’ll try anything to keep it going forward.”

  She shook her head, backing away from him as if he were stalking her.

  Dillon’s grin transformed his face. He looked boyish, charming, altogether irresistible. “Want to go for a walk with me?”

  It was late, already dark outside. She had been away from the twins for a long while but the temptation of spending more time alone with him was too much to resist. She nodded her head.

  “There’s a door over here.” He picked up one of the sweaters he’d thrown aside days earlier and dragged it over her head. Shrugging into his jacket, Dillon opened the door and stepped back to allow her to go first. He whistled softly and the German shepherd who had greeted Jessica and twins so rudely when they had arrived, came running to them, a blur of dark fur.

  The night was crisp, cold, the air coming off the ocean, misty with salt and tendrils of fog. They found a narrow path winding through the trees and took it, side by side, their hands occasionally brushing. Jessica didn’t know how it happened but somehow her hand ended up snugly in his.

  She glanced up at him, drawing in her breath, her heart fluttering, racing. Happy. But it was now or never. She either cleared the air between them or he would be lost to her. “How did you happen to end up with Vivian? She didn’t seem to fit you.”

  For a long moment she thought he wouldn’t answer her. They walked in silence for several yards and then he let out his breath in a long, slow exhale.

  “Vivian.” Dillon swept his free hand through his black hair and glanced down at her. “Why did I marry Vivian? That’s a good question, Jess, and one I’ve asked myself hundreds of times.”

  They walked together beneath the canopy of trees, surrounded by thick forest and heavy brush. The wind rustled through the leaves gently, softly, a light breeze that seemed to follow them as they followed a deer path through the timber. “Dillon, I never understood how you chose her, you two were so different.”

  “I knew Vivian all of my life, we grew up in the same trailer park. We had nothing. None of us did, not Brian, or Robert, or Paul. Certainly not Viv. We all hung out together, playing our music and dreaming big dreams. She had a hard life, she and Brenda both. Their mother was a drunk with a new man every week. You can imagine what life was like for two little girls living unprotected in that environment.”

  “You felt sorry for her.” Jessica made it a statement.

  Dillon winced. “No, that would make me appear noble. I’m not noble in this, Jess, no matter how much you want me to be. I cared a great deal for her, I thought I loved her. Hell, I was eighteen when we got together. I certainly wanted to protect her, to take care of her. I knew she didn’t want kids. She and Brenda were terrified of losing their figures and being left behind. Their mother drilled it into them that it was their fault the men always left because they had ruined her figure. She even told them, when her boyfriends came on to them, that it was their fault, that of course the men preferred them to her.” He raked his hand through his hair again, a quick, impatient gesture. “I’d heard it from the time we were kids. I heard Vivian say she would never have a baby, but I guess I didn’t listen.”

  They continued along the deer path for several more minutes in silence. Jessica realized they were moving toward the cliffs almost by mutual consent. “So many old ghosts,” she observed, “and neither one of us has managed to lay them to rest.”

  Dillon brought her hand to the warmth of his chest, right over his heart. “You didn’t have the kind of life we lived, Jess, you can’t understand. She never had a childhood. I was all Vivian had—me and the band and Brenda, when she wasn’t fighting her own demons. When Vivian found out she was pregnant, she freaked. Totally freaked. Couldn’t handle it. She begged me to give her permission to get rid of them, but I wanted a family. I thought she’d come around after they were born. I married her and promised we’d hire a nanny to take care of the kids while we worked the band.”

  Dillon led the way out of the timberline onto the bare cliffs overlooking the sea. At once the wind whipped his hair across his face. Instinctively he turned so that his larger body sheltered hers. “I hired Rita to take care of the children and we left. We just left.” He stared down at her, his blue eyes brooding as he brought her hand to the warmth of his mouth. His teeth scraped gently, his tongue swirled over her skin.

  Jessica shivered in response, her body clenching, molten fire suddenly pooling low in her belly. She could hear the guilt in his voice, the regret, and she forced herself to stay focused. “The band was making it big.”

  “Not right away, but we were on the upswing.” He reached out, because he couldn’t stop himself, and crushed strands of bright red-gold hair in his fist. “I wanted it so bad, Jess, the money, the good life. I never wanted to have to worry about a roof over our heads or where the next meal was coming from. We worked hard over the next three years. When we would go home, Vivian would bring the twins bags of presents but she would never touch them, or talk to them.” He allowed the silky strands to slide through his fingers. “By the time the twins were four, the band was a wild success but we were all falling apart.” Abruptly he let go of her.

  “I remember her coming in with gifts,” Jessica acknowledged, shivering a little as the wind blew in from the sea. All at once she felt alone. Bereft. “Vivian stayed away from us, away from the twins. She didn’t come home very often.” Dillon had visited without her, but Vivian had preferred to stay in the city most of the time with the other band members.

  A peculiar fog was drifting in on the wind from the sea. It was heavy, almost oppressive. The dog looked out toward the pounding waves and a growl rumbled low in his throat. The sound sent a chill down Jessica’s spine but Dillon snapped his fingers and the animal fell silent.

  “No, she didn’t.” Dillon shrugged out of his jacket and helped her into it. “She was always so fragile, so susceptible to fanatical thinking. I knew she was drinking. Hell, we were all drinking. Partying was a way of life back then. Brian was into some strange practices, not devil worship, but calling on spirits and gods and mother earth. You know how he can be, he runs a line of bull all the time. The problem was, he had Vivian believing all of it. I didn’t pay attention, I just laughed at them. I didn’t realize then that she was seriously ill. Later, the doctors told me she was bipolar, but at the time, I just thought it was all part of the business we were in. The drinking, even the drugs, I thought she’d tame down when she got it out of her system. I didn’t realize she was self-medicating. But I should have, Jess, I should have seen it. She had the signs, the intense mood swings, the highs and lows and the abrupt changes in her thinking and behavior. I should have known.”

  His hands suddenly framed her face, holding her still. “I laughed, Jess, and while I was laughing about their silly ceremonies, she was going downhill, straight into madness. The drugs pushed her over the edge and she had a schi
zophrenic break. By the time I realized just how bad she really was, it was too late and she tried to hurt you.”

  “You put her in rehabs—how could you have known what bipolar even was?” She remembered that clearly. “No one told you that last year while you were on the world tour just how bad she’d gotten. You were in Europe. I heard them all discussing it; the decision was made not to say anything to you because you would have thrown it all away. The band knew. Paul, Robert, especially Brian, he called several times to talk to her. Your manager, Eddie Malone, was adamant that everyone stay quiet. He arranged for her to stay here, on the island. He thought with all the security she would be safe.”

  Dillon let go of her again, his blue gaze sliding out to sea. “I knew, Jess. I knew she had slipped past sanity, but I was so wrapped up in the tour, in the music, in myself, I didn’t check on her. I left it to Eddie. When I’d talk to her on the phone she was always so hysterical, so demanding. She’d sob and threaten me. I was a thousand miles away and feeling so much pressure, and I was tired of her tantrums. At the time I listened to everyone telling me she would pull out of it. I let her down. My God, she trusted me to take care of her and I let her down.”

  “You were barely twenty-seven, Dillon—cut yourself some slack.”

  He laughed softly, bitterly. “You always persist in thinking the best of me. Do you think she started out the way she ended up? She was far too fragile for the life I took her into. I wanted everything. The family. The success. My music. It was all about what I wanted, not what she needed.” He shook his head. “I did try to understand her at first, but she was so needy and my time was stretched so thin. And the kids. I blamed her for not wanting them, not wanting to be with them.”

  “That’s natural, Dillon,” Jessica said softly. She tucked her hand into the crook of his arm, wanting to connect herself to him, wanting the terrible pain, the utter loneliness etched so deeply into his face, to be gone.