They made room for her at the table and somebody bought her a Bud, and she nursed it slowly, watching the animated faces and enjoying the hilarity as the group collectively shrugged off the stress created by weeks of confinement. Who else in the world but a musician would work killer hours, then spend his precious free time watching other people do the same thing? It was a busman’s holiday, but Casey felt the same draw they all did: she couldn’t escape from the music. It lived inside her head, night and day, and when she wasn’t creating her own, she was compelled to listen to others create it for her.
During lulls in the cacophony, she tried to carry on a conversation with Kitty Callahan. Kitty was twenty years old and had a voice like an angel, and singing backup for Bryan Silver was her first professional job. Like Casey, Kitty was a farm girl, raised in Ames, Iowa, and during endless hours on the road, the two of them had struck up a friendship of sorts. But tonight, the music was too loud and the crowd too raucous, and after ten minutes of trying to talk, their throats hurt from shouting, and they gave up. Then the band began a rousing rendition of Jambalaya, and Rob swooped down on Kitty and carted her off onto the dance floor, leaving Casey to watch the dancers.
Across the table, Bryan Silver lifted his beer bottle and emptied it in a single long draught, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he gulped. Eyes boring into hers, he wiped his mouth and added the bottle to the growing collection of empties. Casey quickly looked away, but the uncomfortable sensation of being watched remained with her. When the band slowed its tempo with a waltz, Silver got up from the table. Skirting Kitty, who was just returning, he made a beeline for Casey. “Hey, doll,” he said, “let’s take a spin around the floor.”
He’d deliberately put her in an awkward position. Everyone at the table was watching, and she couldn’t refuse him without making a scene. Swallowing her distaste, she plastered on a smile so fake it hurt and let him lead her out onto the dance floor.
She knew she’d made a mistake the moment he put his arms around her. He pulled her so tight against him that her breasts were crushed. His breath reeked of beer, and she turned her head to avoid his sour smell. “Oh, baby,” he said, one hand moving in the direction of her ribcage. “You don’t know how long I’ve been thinking about this.”
She pointedly removed his hand from her left breast. “Back off, Silver,” she said.
“Come on, baby. Be nice to old Uncle Bry.”
She shoved hard at his chest. “My family tree,” she said, “doesn’t include simians.”
“What I got for you, baby, will really make your motor purr.”
With the heel of her boot, she stepped down hard on his instep. He stumbled and missed a step. “Oops,” she said.
Regaining his balance, he lowered his head and began to slobber all over her neck. “I’ve been watching you,” he said. “Waiting.”
She struggled to push him away. “Bryan,” she said, “you’ve had too much to drink. I’d like you to let me go. Right now.”
“Come on,” he said, sliding his tongue into her ear. “A hot chick like you can’t be saving it all for Fiore. Share the wealth, baby.”
Casey gave him a hard elbow to the ribs. He uttered a soft explosion of sound and staggered backward. “Come near me again,” she said, “and you’ll regret it.”
The music followed her out into the sticky Arkansas night. Fueled by anger, she stalked past the mud-spattered pickup trucks that littered the parking lot, past the tattered screen door of the motel office, past the crimson neon sign that buzzed and sputtered its no vacancy message. She had just reached the first ugly cinder block building when a hand caught her by the elbow and she was thrust up against the gritty concrete wall. “You didn’t really think you’d get away that easy, did you?” he said, his face inches from hers.
His eyes were glassy, his breath fetid. “Bryan,” she said, “you’re drunk.”
“Not that drunk,” he said. “Not too drunk for what I have in mind.”
“I’m not interested,” she said. “I’m a married woman.”
“Fuck me once, baby, and you’ll never go back to him.”
“You’re revolting,” she said, shoving at his shoulders. “Leave me alone.”
“I don’t think so,” he said, pinning her wrists against the wall with a single powerful hand and crushing her against the concrete with his body. “I’ve been waiting too long to nail you, doll.”
“Damn it, Bryan,” she said, “let go of me!”
He cupped her breast with his free hand. “Don’t fight, sweet thing. You’re gonna love it.”
Mingled with the revulsion was the first stirring of fear. His mouth was wet and slack against hers, muffling her protests. Casey choked on his beer breath. He forced his tongue into her mouth, and she gagged. She tried to knee him in the groin, but her boots kept slipping in the moist red earth, and his hips, pressed close enough against hers to make his intentions impossible to misunderstand, pinned her fast against the wall. He tore open the front of her shirt, scattering buttons, and then his palm touched bare flesh and she panicked, struggling like a wild animal. He toyed with the lacy edge to her brassiere, followed it down to the hollow between her breasts, hooked two fingers beneath it, and yanked. The fabric tore, and her struggle escalated. Undaunted, enjoying the struggle, he changed tack, insinuating a hand between their bodies, running it down her bare belly to the waistband of her jeans. While his tongue continued its drunken exploration of her mouth, his hand maintained its southbound progress and slipped between her thighs.
And she bit him.
He howled like a wounded animal. Eyes wide with disbelief, he released her and his hands went to his injured mouth. His fingers came away wet with blood. Casey kicked him hard in the shin, knocking him off balance. He grabbed at her drunkenly, catching his fist in her hair and taking her with him as he fell. They rolled in the dirt, Silver bellowing with rage, Casey kicking and gouging and cussing him out with words she hadn’t realized she knew. He grabbed a fistful of her hair and yanked hard enough to bring tears to her eyes, and then she was on her back in the dirt and he was on top of her, both of them gasping for breath, his eyes hard and cold, his hand crammed against her mouth so hard she felt the imprint of her teeth on the back of her lips. “Bite me again, bitch,” he said, “and I’ll kill you.”
Then, suddenly, he was gone, torn off her with a surprised yelp. Rob MacKenzie slammed him up against the wall with enough force to elicit a sharp crack when his skull made contact with the concrete. Pressing a bony forearm flat against Silver’s windpipe, Rob held him there, a half-inch off the ground, scrambling for a foothold. “You stupid son of a bitch,” he said. “You pathetic piece of shit.”
Silver’s eyes bulged, and he flailed his arms and legs frantically. Rob pressed harder, and Silver made a guttural choking sound. Rob leaned into his face. “Touch her again,” he said, “and I’ll shove my foot up your ass so far it’ll come out your throat. Understand?”
Silver nodded in terror, and Rob released him. He fell to the ground and slumped there in the dirt, gasping and coughing and spitting up blood. Rob nudged him with the toe of his sneaker, as if he were something rank and dead. “Consider yourself lucky,” he said, “that it wasn’t Danny who caught you mauling his wife. If it was, you’d be a dead man right now.”
The hard look in his eyes was unfamiliar. Rob had just displayed a side Casey had never seen, and she wasn’t sure she liked it. “Cover yourself,” he said curtly, and she realized that her buttonless shirt was hanging open over tattered lace for all the world to see. With sweaty hands, she held her shirt front together, and while Silver continued to gasp and retch, Rob placed a hand between her shoulder blades and escorted her to the door of his motel room.
He locked it behind them. Casey sank onto the edge of the bed, her legs suddenly weak, her body quivering now that the moment of danger had passed. Rob disappeared into the bathroom, returning a moment later with a paper cup. He knelt on the carpet in front of her, p
laced the cup in her hand and folded her trembling fingers around it. “Drink,” he said.
She looked stupidly at the cup in her hand. What is it?” she said.
“Something to make you feel better.”
Casey drained it in a single gulp. Her eyes watered as the liquor burned all the way down, but she felt its soothing effects almost immediately. She licked the bitter taste from her lips, then shuddered at the memory of Silver’s mouth on hers, his hands on her body. “How did you know?” she said.
Rob’s mouth thinned. “I saw him follow you.”
She took a deep breath, struggling to fight off tears. Her eyes filled, and a small, strangled sob broke deep in her throat. Mortified, she covered her face with her hands, more embarrassed by her tears than by her state of undress.
Rob patted her shoulder awkwardly. “It’s okay to cry,” he said gruffly. “It doesn’t mean you’re weak.”
She didn’t want him to be nice to her. Right now, she couldn’t handle nice. The floodgates opened, beyond her control, and the flood began in earnest. “Ah, hell,” Rob said, and wrapped his arms around her and rocked her gently, rhythmically, while she bawled like a baby all over him. It might have been five minutes, might have been an hour, before the sobs subsided and she pulled away from him, reclaiming what was left of her dignity. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t mean to be a baby.”
“You don’t always have to be strong, Fiore. Sometimes it’s okay to lean on someone.”
“If you hadn’t come along,” she said, “he would have raped me.”
Rob squared his jaw. “I know,” he said.
She got up from the bed and began pacing. “I was so afraid. I felt so vulnerable. And I hated it.” She wheeled to face him. “I hated it!”
“Sweetheart,” he said, “you did more damage to him than he did to you.”
“But I should have been able to stop him!”
“You’re a woman. And stop looking at me that way. The guy’s a foot taller than you and he outweighs you by sixty pounds. Those are crummy odds.”
She glared at him. “Maybe it’s time I did something to even up the odds.”
Rob dragged a battered brown suitcase out from under the bed and snapped it open. “Like what?” he said, pulling out a wrinkled tee shirt and tossing it to her.
Still pacing, she said, “Like carrying mace. Or taking a self-defense class.”
“Or like telling your husband.”
She paused, tee shirt in hand. “I’m not telling Danny.” Green eyes met green eyes, searched deep, and came to an understanding. Both of them pondering the secrets that lay between them, some spoken, some merely understood.
Rob unfolded like a gazelle. “You’ll feel better after you take a shower. I’ll be right outside, having a smoke.”
She peeled off the ruined shirt and bra and discarded them in the bathroom wastebasket. If she could have, she would have cut them into small pieces and flushed them down the toilet. She felt dirty, used, violated. He’d had no right to touch her that way, and she wished Bryan Silver a slow and painful death. Preferably one she could watch.
Every muscle in her body ached. Even her scalp hurt where Silver had pulled her hair. Her wrists were already turning color, and her back was scraped raw in places. How the hell would she keep this from Danny? The needle-hot spray of the shower hurt her chafed skin, but she forced herself to stay under it because it made everything else feel so much better.
She dried herself off awkwardly, her aching muscles screaming in protest, then borrowed Rob’s comb to work the snarls from her wet hair. She dusted off her jeans, wiped the mud from her boots, and pulled Rob’s tee shirt down over her head. It clung to her damp body, revealing far too much of her unbound breasts. But Rob wouldn’t notice, and it was only a short walk from his room to hers.
He was waiting outside in the hot, sticky night. There was no sign of Silver; he must have slithered back into his hole. Rob angled a glance down at her, then quickly looked away, leaving her with the uncomfortable impression that she’d been wrong, that he had noticed precisely what she wore beneath the tee shirt. They walked to her room in a silence broken only by their footsteps and the whine of a distant eighteen-wheeler.
At her door they paused, and Rob leaned a bony shoulder against the door jamb. Looking at the neon sign that loomed over the yellowed grass of the courtyard, he said softly, “Will you be okay?”
Although it was nearly ninety degrees, she shivered and folded her arms across her chest. “I’m fine.”
He looked at her then. “Silver’d better leave you alone,” he said, “because I’ll be watching.”
“I don’t need a bodyguard.”
“Just say thank you, Fiore, and leave it at that.”
She opened her mouth to argue. Closed it. And swallowed. “Thank you,” she said.
He pulled away from the door jamb. “See you in the morning, kiddo.”
Danny awakened when she crawled into bed beside him. He turned over and wrapped an arm around her, drawing her close. “Hi,” he said.
She settled into his warmth. “Hi.”
“Your hair’s wet.”
“I just took a shower.”
“I’m sorry I fizzled out on you so early. What time is it?”
“Almost midnight. Try to get back to sleep, sweetheart. We have to be on the road early.”
Outside the window, the neon sign flashed red, then yellow, red, then yellow. Inside the motel room, Casey lay awake, watching the play of colors on Danny’s face as he slept. If he ever found out what had happened tonight, he would kill Silver. She never for a moment doubted that he was capable; she’d seen how cold and hard and silent he could become. Like a snake about to strike. She couldn’t let that happen. Better she should let sleeping dogs lie than allow this nightmare to be carried any further.
It was after three when she finally fell asleep. Danny woke her around six, and they made love for the first time in weeks, slow and sweet, but she was bruised and sore, and it was one of the few times that she had ever been left unfulfilled. She lay beneath him, hands tangled in his long hair, sweetly content with his drowsy weight atop her. “I’m sorry,” he said.
“For what?”
“I rushed you...you weren’t ready...it’s been too damn long.”
“I’m just tired,” she said, gently kneading his shoulders. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”
He let out a long sigh of contentment. “Christ, that feels good.”
She continued kneading. “It’s supposed to.”
The phone rang, and they looked at each other balefully. “We could ignore it,” he said.
“Then whoever it is would just come pounding on the door.”
He scowled and reached for the phone. “Yeah?” he said. “Yes. Fine.” He dropped the receiver back into its cradle. “We pull out,” he said, “in forty-five minutes.”
“I guess that means playtime’s over.”
He kissed the palm of her hand. “I guess it does.” He peered at her forearm. “What’s this?” he said.
Her heartbeat quickened. “What’s what?”
“This bruise on your wrist. Christ, I didn’t do that, did I?”
“My loving husband,” she said dryly, “Daniel de Sade. Of course you didn’t do it. I probably bumped into something. You know me. I bruise if you look at me the wrong way.”
He looked unconvinced. She planted a kiss on the tip of his nose. “Stop worrying,” she said, “and let’s get dressed before the bus leaves without us.”
Two days later, Silver telephoned Drew Lawrence and demanded that Danny Fiore be replaced as his opening act. When Lawrence refused to cave in to his demands, Bryan Silver packed his belongings and called a cab.
And Danny, by default, became the headlining act.
***
Twelve hours after the bus limped into the Big Apple, Danny found himself again facing Drew Lawrence across a massive oak desk. “Sit down,” Lawrence said, pumpi
ng his hand with enthusiasm. “Congratulations. I hear you were a smash.”
Danny rested his weight on his tailbone and extended his long legs. “It definitely went well,” he said.
“It went better than well. Album sales have gone through the roof. They love you.” Lawrence leaned back in his swivel chair and locked his hands together behind his head. “You’ve got big things ahead of you, Danny. That’s why we want you back in the studio as soon as possible to start working on a second album.”
“A second album,” he said, surprised. “Already?”
“We want to strike while the iron’s hot. How much time do you need to get ready?”
He did some quick thinking. New York was a Mecca for musicians, and he and Rob had contacts everywhere. Pulling together a band shouldn’t be difficult. As for material, Casey and Rob were pros. They’d give him what he needed in whatever time frame they were given. “Six weeks,” he said.
“Excellent.” Lawrence punched a button on his intercom. “Lorraine, will you bring me that check for Mr. Fiore, please?” He studied Danny bemusedly. “I just want you to know,” he said, “that we’re impressed. Damn impressed. All of us here at Ariel believe we have a spectacular future together.”
The secretary brought in the check. She shot a quick, speculative glance at Danny and discreetly disappeared again. Lawrence slid the envelope across the desk. “Remember,” he said, “this is just the beginning.”
“I hope you’re right.” Danny took the envelope, folded it, and started to pocket it.
“Ah, Danny? You might want to open it.”
Danny tore open the envelope. Looked at the check, did a double-take. And all the blood left his brain. Lawrence chuckled. “Listen,” he said, “I’ll get the studio time set up. You’ll be hearing from our publicist, who’ll be setting up a photo session, some magazine interviews. In the meantime, you take care of things at your end.” He stood and held out his hand. “Keep in touch.”
***
Two days later, they moved uptown, into an airy, three-bedroom apartment in an old brownstone on Central Park West. Though the building wasn’t as upscale as the newer high-rises, it had an elevator and a doorman, and compared to Freddy Wong’s roach-infested slum, it was a palace. As Casey was trying to figure out a way to make their pathetic collection of mismatched furniture look a little less wretched, Danny walked through the door and dangled a set of car keys in her face. Parked illegally next to the curb outside was a spanking new, shiny red Mustang convertible with a V8, a five-speed transmission, and the best sound system on the market. “I’ve been thinking,” he said, as she admired the car’s luxurious interior. “Now that we have new wheels, don’t you think it’s time we took a honeymoon?”
Coming Home (Jackson Falls Series) Page 18
