I turned back to my beer. Didn’t much want to see the rest.
“I bet those two are gettin’ busy in the back when the cameras are off,” Rhett Ginsler said behind me.
“You think?” Trent McCulty asked.
“Sure as shit,” Rhett said. “She’s actin’ all coy, but I’d bet ten bucks and a jar of moonshine she’s spending her nights getting plowed by that Brock guy.”
The muscles in my back clenched and I tightened my grip on my beer.
“Maybe she’s just playing it up for the camera,” Trent said.
“Could be,” Rhett said. “Leah Mae’s an attention whore anyway.”
I rose so fast my stool fell backward behind me, crashing to the floor with a loud bang. Without much awareness of how I got there, I stood behind Rhett and Trent, my hands balled into fists.
“I reckon you need to stop talking shit about her,” I said, my voice a low growl.
Before I finished speaking, Bowie and Gibs were already flanking me, ready to throw down. They probably didn’t know what had me so riled, but they wouldn’t care. This was how we did things. Backed each other. They might kick my ass later if I got them into something stupid—although it was usually Gibson getting the rest of us into something stupid, not me. I was prepared to deal with the consequences. No one used the word whore in a sentence with Leah Mae’s name. Not in my hearing.
Rhett shifted on his stool, turning to face me. “What’s it to you?”
“She’s one of ours.”
He snorted and took a swig of his beer. “I guess. How long since she’s even set foot in Bootleg, though?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Bowie said, and Gibson growled in agreement. “Jameson’s right.”
“And I suppose you think you’re gonna do something about it?” Rhett asked.
Eyes were on us. Lines being drawn. A couple more guys stood nearby, clearly on Rhett’s side. Like I gave a shit. Jonah stood on Gibson’s right. He hadn’t grown up here, but he understood.
“You’re damn right I’m gonna do something about it,” I said.
Rhett got off the stool. He was about my height—could look me in the eyes. I stared back, my face hard, my jaw set.
“Y’all better back away from my bar if you’re gettin’ rough,” Nicolette said.
“Well, shit.” Scarlett’s voice.
I saw Devlin come up next to Bowie. He was rolling up his sleeves, but he leaned closer and spoke under his breath. “Watch it, guys. You’re supposed to stay out of trouble.”
“Bootleg justice, Dev,” Bowie said, his eyes never leaving Rhett and Trent.
“I know, I know,” Devlin said.
I wasn’t an idiot. Hitting first was a bad idea, if you could avoid it. But if I didn’t hit first…
“What are you hanging out in here for, anyway, Rhett?” I asked. “Shouldn’t you be keeping tabs on your girlfriend?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Rhett asked.
I shrugged. “Word around town is Misty Lynn’s been messin’ around with Wade Zirkel. I reckon you ain’t man enough, so she had to go look elsewhere.”
“You son of a bitch.” Rhett drew his fist back, and I let it come. Took it across the jaw.
Rhett’s punch was the invitation I was looking for. I clocked him square in the nose while all hell broke loose around me. Rhett grabbed his face and hollered, blood running down his chin. Gibson and Bowie dove in, pushing and punching at anyone who dared face them. Even Dev and Jonah got in on it.
The scuffle was broken up quick, and I let someone pull me back. I’d bloodied Rhett’s nose, and I was satisfied with that. Didn’t seem like too many punches had landed on anyone. The only blood was Rhett’s, although Trent looked like he might wind up with a shiner. Gibson flexed his fingers a few times. Everyone else gave each other a good mean glower and went back to their places.
“Jameson, what in the hell were you doing?” Scarlett asked. She touched my jaw and tipped my face see if I was hurt.
“Rhett needs to remember himself, is all,” I said, jerking my chin out of her reach. “I’m going home. See y’all later.”
“If you wanted to go home so bad, you could have just left. You didn’t have to punch someone in the dang face,” Scarlett called after me.
I walked out, ignoring the eyes that followed me. Yeah, starting a bar fight meant people would look—and talk. Although a scuffle in the Lookout was pretty typical for a Friday night. But I could not abide that good-for-nothing pond scum Rhett Ginsler talking about Leah Mae like that. She’d been my friend once, and that still meant something to me. That jackass needed to remember his manners.
After I got home, I might have scrolled through her Instagram a little bit. And that might have been a habit I’d gotten into recently. A habit that was right stupid, and I knew it. Nothing had ever happened between Leah Mae and me when she’d been a normal girl, visiting her daddy for the summer. Sure as shit wasn’t any chance of something happening between us now.
2
Leah Mae
The scenery rushed by in a blur of green and brown. I’d been looking forward to the drive—I hadn’t been out here in so long—but all I could think about was last night’s episode of Roughing It.
“How could they have done that to me?” I asked.
Kelvin had his hands on the steering wheel of our rental car, his phone in a cradle on the dashboard with a map showing the route to Bootleg Springs. He was wearing a Ralph Lauren dress shirt and gray slacks, a pair of Versace sunglasses perched on his nose. I was the one with the modeling career, but Kelvin Graham looked like one too. It was how he’d gotten his start when he was just sixteen. He had that pretty-boy Abercrombie and Fitch look. Dark hair and hazel eyes. Toned physique. Perfect bone structure.
But he liked the business side of modeling more than being in front of the camera. He wasn’t a man who liked people telling him what to do. He owned his own agency now—managing my career as well as the careers of dozens of other models—and this way he could grow his stubble, or cut his hair, or put on a few extra pounds of lean muscle, and no one could tell him not to.
“Babe, you’re getting excited over nothing,” he said without looking at me. “We both knew they were going to make it look like you and Brock were flirting.”
“But we weren’t,” I said. “And I’m telling you, that fishing pole was rigged to break on me. I know how to fish, and they made me look like an idiot.”
“You looked great,” he said, flashing me a smile.
I looked down at my phone. The gossip columns were all buzzing over whether something was going to happen between Leah Larkin and Brock Winston on Roughing It. Would Leah tempt Brock away from his sweet-as-apple-pie wife, Maisie Miller?
It made me want to gag. Brock had seemed like a nice guy when we were filming, but even if we’d both been single, I wouldn’t have been interested in him. He was too flat. Too one-dimensional. He had a nice singing voice, but he didn’t write any of his own music. He wasn’t that creative. Having spent time with him filming the show, I wasn’t sure if he’d ever had an original thought in his head.
And Brock was most definitely not single. He’d had a very public romance with Maisie Miller when they were both celebrity judges on Talent USA. The entire country had been enamored with their sweet little glances and whispered flirtations in front of the camera. When paparazzi had caught them kissing in an out-of-the-way bistro one night, everyone had gone crazy. People had been rooting for them to fall in love, and when it happened, it was like the happily-ever-after the world had been waiting for.
Now everyone was predicting that I’d be the vixen. The woman to break up the perfect love story.
Well, I hadn’t. Filming had already wrapped on the show, and as far as I knew, Brock was back in L.A. with Maisie. They’d been quiet on social media, but all the cast members had. Our contracts stipulated what we could and couldn’t reveal before all the episodes aired, so the easiest thing to do was lay low f
or a while.
I glanced down at the ring on my left hand. I wasn’t single, either, although the world didn’t know. Kelvin had insisted we keep our engagement secret until after the season finale of Roughing It aired. I’d left my ring at home when I went to film the show, and we had yet to tell anyone, save my mom and stepdad. And they knew to keep it under wraps.
Now we were heading to my hometown to tell my dad.
I’d grown up in Bootleg Springs, West Virginia, and after my parents’ divorce, I’d spent summers there with my dad. I had so many good memories of Bootleg. Long days spent in the sun sipping lemonade and sweet tea. Jumping into the lake that was as warm as bathwater. Traipsing through the woods. Coming home at sunset, hungry, dirty, and tired.
I hadn’t been in Bootleg Springs since I was sixteen. That was the summer Callie Kendall had disappeared. She’d been my age, and spent her summers in Bootleg, too. As soon as my mom had heard about her disappearance, she’d insisted I come home to Jacksonville.
Not long after that, my modeling career had taken off. There were always auditions and casting calls, photo shoots and fashion shows. Things had moved fast, and my life had changed almost overnight. It had been easier to fly my dad out to visit me, wherever I happened to be, rather than make the trip to West Virginia.
But this year, Dad hadn’t been doing well. Although he’d quit smoking years ago, he had ongoing lung problems. Last winter, he’d been hospitalized with pneumonia and hadn’t bothered to tell me until he’d already gone home. I was still mad at him for keeping it from me, but he’d insisted he didn’t want me to worry.
He was my daddy. Of course I was going to worry.
I felt awful for not having come to see him sooner. But filming Roughing It had gotten in the way, and afterward I’d had a series of photo shoots to get through. But now my schedule was clear for the foreseeable future while Kelvin and I considered my next career move. With this rare time off, and our engagement, I’d decided it was time to visit Bootleg Springs again.
Although I hadn’t been here in a dozen years, the road was still familiar. And as we pulled into town, it was like stepping back in time.
“You have got to be kidding me,” Kelvin said, looking around as the first buildings came into view.
“What?” I asked.
He lowered his sunglasses. “Nothing. It’s just… you said it was a small town in West Virginia. I guess I hadn’t realized you meant small-town West Virginia.”
“Come on, Kelvin, don’t be a snob. It’s charming.”
“Not the word I’d use,” he said. “But okay.”
I rolled my eyes and looked out the window. The route to my dad’s house skirted the outside of town. I’d have to show Kelvin around later. From what I could see, Bootleg Springs looked much the same as I remembered it. Dad had told me it had grown as tourists discovered the hot springs. But so far, it still held the same charm I remembered so well.
My dad lived about five minutes outside town. Kelvin cast me a questioning glance when we turned down the gravel driveway, but he didn’t comment on it. We bounced down the long drive until the house came into view.
Dad’s house was a little more worn that I remembered. The wood slats were weathered and there was a slight sag to the front porch that hadn’t been there before.
A grin stole over my face at the sight of my dad. He sat in his old rocking chair on the front porch, just like he always had. Kelvin brought the car to a stop and I hopped out.
“Hey, Daddy.”
My heart squeezed when I saw how slowly he rose from his chair. Add to that the tube beneath his nose connected to an oxygen tank, and the sight of him almost brought me to tears.
“Leah Mae sunshine,” he said, holding out his arms. His hair was more gray than blond now, and the lines at the corners of his eyes and across his forehead had deepened. He wore a faded hickory shirt and a pair of jeans that had seen better days.
I walked up the creaky steps. “Dad, you didn’t tell me you were on oxygen.”
“Oh, this?” he asked, tugging on the clear rubber tubing. “This is nothing. Just a little extra help. I won’t need it much longer.”
I stepped carefully into his hug and was surprised at how far around him my arms went. Dad had always been a big man—tall with a barrel chest and arms thick from hard work. His height hadn’t gone anywhere—I was five foot ten, but at six foot four, he still made me feel a bit like a little girl. But he felt so much smaller—his thickness was diminishing with either age or his illness.
He was only fifty-four—much too young for this.
“It’s so good to see you,” I said, pulling away. The stairs behind me creaked beneath Kelvin’s feet. “Daddy, this is Kelvin Graham. Kelvin, this is my dad, Clay Larkin.”
The smile left Dad’s face and he straightened. He had a good three inches on Kelvin, and apparently he intended to use them.
“Mr. Larkin,” Kelvin said, his voice smooth as he held out his hand to shake.
Dad hesitated a second before shaking his hand. “Kelvin, huh?”
Kelvin’s eyes flicked to me, as if he wasn’t sure how to respond. “Yes, well, it’s nice to finally meet you. I think the last time you visited Leah, I was away on business.”
“I reckon,” Dad said.
I’d expected my dad to be a little cold to Kelvin at first. That was the Bootleg father way. He’d warm up to him soon.
I hoped.
“Well, Daddy, can we come inside? It was a long drive from the airport.”
Dad’s smile returned. “Of course, sweetheart. Come on in.”
Kelvin stood back with his hands in his pockets, eying the old house while Dad shuffled inside, wheeling his oxygen tank behind him.
The house was clean and cozy, with a wood-burning stove in the corner and a worn couch with a blanket over it. It smelled faintly of pine and cinnamon. A few pictures of me as a little girl hung on the walls in mismatched frames.
Dad went over to his old leather recliner and lowered himself down. It took him a second to get his tubes situated. Kelvin followed me in, but stayed standing while I sat on the couch.
“Place looks nice,” I said. “You’re still getting help from Betsy Stirling, aren’t you?”
“Yeah, Betsy comes by regularly,” he said. “Checks up on me and helps me keep the place in order.”
Dad had balked at hiring someone to help him around the house, but after his hospitalization, I’d insisted. And Betsy Stirling was perfect. She was a part-time nurse down at the Bootleg Springs Clinic, and had been looking for a side gig to keep her busy. She helped Dad with things like grocery shopping and cleaning up the house, and she kept tabs on his health. It made me feel a lot better to have her around.
“How long do you think you’ll be in town?” Dad asked.
“A few days,” Kelvin said.
I glanced up at Kelvin, raising my eyebrows. Our return flight to L.A. wasn’t for a week. But since he’d insisted on flying in and out of Pittsburgh—as if there was something wrong with airports in West Virginia—we’d need to leave Bootleg Springs on Friday afternoon. Still, that was more than a few days.
“We’ll be here until Friday, actually.”
Kelvin cleared his throat but didn’t argue with me.
“Anyway, Dad, there’s something Kelvin and I wanted to talk to you about.” My heart started to thump harder and my fingers tingled. I didn’t know why I was so nervous to tell him I was getting married. It hadn’t been difficult to tell my mom. But I’d been more sure of how she was going to react. Dad? He could go either way. And as frail as he seemed, I didn’t want to shock him too much.
“All right,” he said, resting his hands on his thighs. His gaze flicked to Kelvin for a second before coming back to me.
“Well, you know Kelvin and I have been seeing each other for a couple years,” I said. “We’ve decided to get married.”
“Huh,” Dad said. “Is that so?”
“Yes,” I said, tr
ying to keep my voice bright. “We can’t talk about it publicly yet, but we wanted to tell you while we were here.”
Dad crossed his arms and leveled Kelvin with a hard stare. “You’ve already asked for her hand?”
Kelvin blinked. “Asked for her hand? We decided to get married, yes.”
“Isn’t there something you’ve forgotten, son?” Dad asked.
“I’m not sure I understand.”
“I don’t recall you ever coming to me to ask my permission,” Dad said.
Kelvin’s brow furrowed, and he cracked a little smile. “Well, no, but that’s a very old-fashioned custom, don’t you think?”
“’Round here, that’s the way it’s done,” Dad said.
“Okay…” Kelvin said. “But Leah is a twenty-eight-year-old woman, not a girl being handed off with a dowry.”
“Daddy,” I said, putting my hand on his knee, “Kelvin didn’t realize that would be so important to you. That isn’t the sort of thing everybody does anymore. This is my fault; I should have told him.”
Dad looked at me, his eyes boring deep into mine. “You want to marry this man?”
“Well, yeah.”
He held my gaze a moment longer, scrutinizing me. I tried not to fidget. He sighed, like he was resigning himself to something unpleasant. “When’s the wedding?”
“We haven’t set a date yet.”
“It depends on our schedules,” Kelvin said. “We probably won’t have time for anything fancy. I’ve been thinking we’d just go to Vegas after Roughing It airs.”
I glanced at Kelvin in surprise. He’d never mentioned getting married in Vegas before. “You don’t want a wedding?”
“We could still have a wedding, babe,” he said. “But this way, we could work it in when we both have a few days free. Come on, you don’t want to get married by Elvis?”
My mouth dropped open. “No, I don’t want to get married by Elvis.”
He smiled. “You know, you’re right. If we have a big wedding, we could turn it into a great PR opportunity. We could sell the rights to the wedding photos.”
Sidecar Crush Page 2
