They’d never spent more than a day or two of uninterrupted time together, and the idea was wildly appealing. They left Rob the task of assembling a band, and on a bright Thursday morning, she and Danny climbed into the Mustang, crossed the George Washington Bridge, and rocketed south on the Jersey Pike.
They explored the Maryland shore, shopped for antiques and trinkets, took in the breathless blue vista of the Chesapeake Bay. They danced beneath the stars in Virginia, ate barbecue at a roadside stand in North Carolina. Made love in the sand on a lonely stretch of beach on the Outer Banks. It was a halcyon time with no schedules, no deadlines, no expectations to live up to. Just the two of them, alone on the open road, free to explore and enjoy the world around them.
But as all good things must, it eventually had to come to an end. At a record store in a strip mall in Newport News, they were approached by a hesitant teenage girl carrying a copy of Stardust. “Mr. Fiore?” she said.
Danny was reading the liner notes on Springsteen’s latest album, and he looked up distractedly. “Hmm?”
Flushing, the girl held up the record album. “Can I have your autograph?”
He looked stunned. Then he turned the full force of the infamous Fiore smile on the girl, two hundred megawatts of dimpled splendor, powerful enough to fell the hardest woman. Against that kind of ammunition, no mere teenage girl stood a chance. “What’s your name, sweetheart?” he asked, looking at the girl as though she were the only female left on the planet.
Her eyes were feverish. “Heather,” she said. “Heather Gladstone.”
“Well, hello, Heather Gladstone,” he said as he scribbled. “Pretty name. And a pretty face to go with it. Here you go.” And he winked at her as he handed back the album.
The girl clutched the record to her bosom, her eyes the size of dinner plates. Her mouth worked as though she were trying to speak. Without a word, she spun on her heel and fled.
Casey met his eyes. “You,” she told him, “are a wicked, wicked man.”
The corner of his mouth twitched. “But nobody does it better.”
“And humble as well, I see.”
He turned that grin on her, and she took a step backward. “Oh, no,” she said. “I know how you operate. I’m immune to your considerable charm.”
The grin widened. “Bullshit,” he said, and backed her up against the wall and kissed her, right there in the record store. Face to face, they studied each other until their grins faded and they grew serious. And Danny voiced the thought that was running through both their heads. “It’s time to go back,” he said.
Her heart constricted with regret. She’d hoped for more time. “These have been the most wonderful six days of my life,” she said.
He cupped her cheek. “There’s a part of me,” he said, “that wishes we never had to go back.”
Then don’t, she wanted to say, but she knew that was impossible. A bittersweet sadness pierced her, a fierce longing to cling to the present, to hold on with all her might. But it was too late for that. The winds of change had already begun to blow, and some profound force had taken control of their fates. She had no idea what shape those changes would take, but they would happen, as surely as tomorrow’s sun would rise.
They spent a final night in Virginia Beach, but Danny was distracted, a part of him already somewhere else, some place where she couldn’t follow him. He sat on the balcony outside their motel room while the breakers rolled in below, the tip of his cigarette a pinpoint of light in the darkness as he listened to music only he could hear.
Never enough time, Casey thought. Not in a lifetime would there be enough time to satisfy her hunger for him. Or to appease the hunger in him that she couldn’t satisfy.
She took the lead in their lovemaking that night. Aggressive and demanding, she loved him with an unprecedented fierceness that took them both to dizzying heights before plunging them back to earth in a spent tangle of hearts and bodies and damp sheets. The next morning, immediately after breakfast, they shot back across the Chesapeake, Bob Seger blasting from the Mustang’s stereo. Eight hours later, they were crawling through rush hour traffic in the Lincoln Tunnel. “Welcome home,” Danny said dryly as he edged the Mustang ahead half a car length.
Casey yawned. “Some things,” she said, “never change.”
But others do. And neither of them had an inkling on that ordinary Wednesday afternoon that life as they had always known it was about to blow up around them with a magnitude beyond their wildest imaginings.
***
That year, they spent 300 days on the road, and Casey got to see up close and personal the glamorous life of a recording artist. As a bit player in a big boy’s game, Danny didn’t qualify for the luxurious accoutrements given to the big name acts. They toured in a converted Greyhound bus, fifteen people sharing one bathroom with a hand-held shower nozzle and a twenty-gallon hot water tank. Privacy was nonexistent, sleeping arrangements were abysmal, and bathroom time had to be staggered. Timing was everything, and creativity the name of the game. Casey was the only woman in the group, and at first, the men didn’t know how to take her. But as time and proximity wore down the initial discomfort, she became one of the guys, treated to the same raunchy humor and off-color jokes as the men. Practicality took precedence over vanity. She wore her hair in a single thick braid that reached her waist, gave up wearing makeup, and slept in sweat pants and a ragged sweatshirt. They made bologna and tuna fish sandwiches in the tiny galley, drank endless cups of coffee laced with bourbon or rum, and sang silly songs. While Danny took advantage of his considerable poker playing skill, she and Rob spent hundreds of hours working together with his new Gibson acoustic at the tiny table in the galley.
Life on the road was an educational experience. Casey learned to drink hard liquor, to win at blackjack. She learned that a healthy twenty-three-year-old woman could go for the better part of a year without sleep. That two people could share the same narrow bunk as long as they didn’t mind being close. She learned that it was imperative to check the position of the toilet seat before attempting to sit on it in the dark. And that it really was possible to make love with a six-foot-four, hundred-ninety-pound man in a shower enclosure the size of a broom closet while rolling down the highway at fifty-five.
The towns all looked the same. It was only when they rolled into a new burg and hit the stage and this ragtag assortment of lunatics transformed instantaneously into professional musicians that she realized it was worth every ounce of the craziness. The clean, clear timbre of Danny’s voice, the indescribable sweetness of Rob’s guitar, could bring tears to her eyes.
The venues were relatively small: county fairs and small-town armories, old converted movie theaters that still smelled of popcorn, the occasional 4,000-seat civic auditorium. A representative cross-section of middle America. But no matter what the differences, they all had one thing in common: a sellout audience that was seventy-five percent female.
Casey wore a laminated tag hanging around her neck that identified her as a member of the crew and allowed her the run of every facility they played. As soon as the boys hit the stage, the first thing she did was sprint out front and check out the crowd. There were never more than a handful of empty seats. Night after night, she stood at the back of some darkened auditorium, arms folded across her chest, listening to the weeping, the yelling, the screaming that was so loud it drowned out the music. And night after night, she wondered just where, and how far, this merry-go-round ride would take them.
There was one place it definitely didn’t take them. They came home only four times in twelve months, and during those rare visits, New York no longer felt like home. They’d been so busy working on the album that they’d never really gotten settled into the new apartment. A year after the move, boxes were still piled in corners. Rob was still sleeping on the couch, and she hadn’t yet unearthed Mama’s antique china. The new Mustang sat in storage, gathering dust, and during the first three-month stint on the road, all her housep
lants died.
They were in a hotel room in Buffalo when they got the news. Rob nearly pounded the door down in his enthusiasm. “Wake up, children,” he said. “Santa Claus has just arrived.”
Grumbling, Danny crawled out of bed and went to the door. “This had better be good,” he said.
Rob waltzed in, newspaper in hand, and plunked down heavily on the foot of the bed. With one hand, he shook Casey’s hip. “You might want to be awake for this one,” he said.
She pulled the covers over her head. “Go away.”
“Fine,” he said, and folded up the newspaper. “If you’re not interested in hearing who’s been nominated for a Grammy for Song of the Year, it’s fine with me.”
It took a moment for his words to register. “What?” she said, her mind fogged with sleep. “What did you say?”
Rob stood at the foot of the bed, grinning like the Cheshire cat. Casey reached for the paper. “Let me see!” she shouted.
He pulled it back out of reach. “Oh, no, Fiore. You wanted to sleep instead, remember?”
“Give me the damn paper or I’ll pluck out your eyebrows, one hair at a time!”
She snatched the paper from his hands, folded it in her lap, and devoured the list of nominees. And there it was, in black and white: Casey Fiore and Rob MacKenzie. “Ohmigod,” she said. “Ohmigod, ohmigod, ohmigod.”
“Her eloquence,” Danny said, “is matched only by her—”
She picked up a shoe and threw it at him. “Geez,” Rob said. “I don’t believe I’ve ever seen her quite this feisty.”
“I never thought this day would come,” she said.
Rob patted her knee. “I told you it would, kiddo. You just didn’t believe me.”
She peered at him over the top of the newspaper. “No,” she said. “I didn’t.”
“Don’t get your hopes up too high,” Danny said. “A nomination is just that. It doesn’t mean you’ll win.”
“It doesn’t matter,” she told him. “What matters is that we’ve earned the recognition of our peers.”
Rob chucked her under the chin. “The bus pulls out in an hour.” He pulled a pair of mirrored sunglasses from his pocket and put them on. “Meet me in the restaurant in twenty minutes,” he said, shoving the glasses up the bridge of his nose, “and I’ll spring for breakfast.”
“If those things got any flashier,” Casey said, “they’d blind me.”
Behind the wire frames, he waggled his eyebrows. “Just call me Flash MacKenzie.”
“Right. Then get your carcass out of here, Flash, so we can shower and get dressed.”
chapter seventeen
Her heart in her throat, Casey leaned forward, fingers threaded with Danny’s on one side, Rob’s on the other, as the presenters named the nominees in the Song of the Year category. She’d grown numb, her circulation dammed, her fingers tingling, her chest aching from the need to breathe. Danny squeezed her hand, and she squeezed back as Elly Simmons, lead singer for the band Crossroad, opened the envelope, glanced at it. Smiled, leaned toward the microphone. “The winner of this year’s Song of the Year award is—” She paused dramatically, and the audience was hushed, waiting.
“—Casey Fiore and Rob MacKenzie, for Whisper in My Dreams.”
All Casey’s bodily functions had ceased. She sat there, stunned, as the applause grew around her, and then Danny was standing to let her get by, and Rob, tugging at her arm, bent to whisper in her ear, “Jesus Christ, Fiore, don’t fall apart on me now.”
She plastered on a smile so wide her cheeks ached and took Rob’s hand and somehow managed to place one foot in front of the other until she reached the stage without falling on her face. Elly Simmons was waiting with the coveted award. Casey clutched it to her with both hands, looked at it in utter disbelief as the applause grew and then died down. She looked out over the sea of faces in sheer terror. “I’m speechless,” she said aloud. And then, in a whisper meant for Rob’s ears alone, “Help me, Flash.”
Rob leaned forward without a trace of nervousness. “Casey and I,” he said into the microphone, “have been writing songs together for a long time. But we never thought that what started out as a way to pass a few long winter afternoons would ever end up here.” He looked out over the audience, caught her hand in his and squeezed. “And we can’t take full blame for this.”
There were a few scattered laughs. Casey searched for Danny and found him, told him with her eyes that she loved him, and anticipated Rob’s next words. “Sure, we wrote a great song,” he said. “But a great song’s not enough. It takes somebody with the colossal talent of Danny Fiore to make it a monster hit.”
The applause was wild, and Rob waited patiently for it to die down. “So we have to share this award with Danny, because without him, there wouldn’t have been any Whisper in My Dreams. Thank you.” And he held her arm aloft in a victory sign.
***
The celebration party was in full swing when she returned from the powder room. Danny was standing half-hidden by a potted palm, smoking a cigarette and watching the dancers. “Where’s Rob?” she asked.
He nodded in the direction of the buffet table, where Rob was leaning casually against a marble column, talking animatedly to a petite, blond goddess. “Isn’t that Monique Lapierre?” Casey said, watching as the woman with the blond-streaked hair tossed her head and uttered a crystalline, silvery laugh.
Danny dropped his cigarette into the plant pot. “Vive la France,” he said dryly.
Casey caught Rob’s eye and motioned to him. He said something to the blond actress and then crossed the room to them. “Hey, guys,” he said, “tell me your hearts won’t be broken if I skip out on the celebration.”
“She’s out of your league, MacKenzie,” Danny said. “She’ll eat you up.”
Rob grinned. “I can always hope.”
Casey laughed. “You’re totally incorrigible.”
Rob kissed her cheek. “And you love me just the way I am. If I’m not back in a month or two, have me declared legally dead.” He saluted smartly, then walked away without a backward glance.
“Well, darling,” Casey said to Danny, “I guess it’s just the two of us. Do you think we can find an appropriate way to celebrate?”
“I’m sure,” he said dryly, “we can think of something.”
***
“I tell you guys, this is it, this is love, this is the real thing.” Nibbling on a celery stick, Rob perched on a bar stool in the kitchen of the Fiores’ new Venice Beach apartment. Two blocks away, the Pacific Ocean roared, and palm trees dotted the courtyard outside the window. “This girl has the face that launched a thousand ships,” he said. “She’s intelligent, witty, talented—”
“But can she cook?” Danny said.
“Who cares? She has a house full of servants to do that stuff.”
Casey exchanged a glance with Danny. “But, lovey, isn’t this rather sudden? I mean, you’ve only known her for a month.”
“And lusted after her image on the silver screen for many a month.”
“Rob,” she said, “all we’re asking is that you give it some time. Don’t rush into something you might regret later.”
“Hey, I appreciate the concern. But I’m a big boy. I can take care of myself. Listen, I thought I’d bring her around this weekend. That is, if you don’t have other plans.”
“We’d love to have her,” Casey said. “Come by for supper on Saturday.”
“Thanks for letting me bend your ear.” He kissed Casey’s cheek and slapped Danny on the shoulder. “See you Saturday.”
The apartment was uncomfortably silent after he’d gone. Casey bent over the bar next to Danny and leaned her chin on her palm. Picking up the celery stick Rob had discarded, she chewed on it thoughtfully. “He’s lost all sense of reason,” she said.
“He’s thinking with what’s between his legs, instead of what’s between his ears. I know. I’ve been there.”
“What can we do?”
“Not a damn thing. Let it run its course. Maybe she’ll be good for him. We haven’t met her yet, after all.”
“I know.” She stared glumly into space. “I just have a bad feeling about it. I haven’t forgotten how the last one turned out.”
“Neither have I. Listen, there’s something I’ve been meaning to talk to you about. I’ve been doing some thinking.”
She set down the celery stick. “This sounds serious.”
He tapped his fingers absently on the bar. “It looks as though we’ve both launched ourselves solidly, career-wise.”
Wondering what he was getting at, she sat on the stool beside him and rested her chin on her palm. “And?” she said.
“It’s probably the right time,” he said, “to buy a house.”
“A house?” Her heart began a slow hammering. “Are you serious?”
“Yes. I also thought, while we’re about it—” He paused, cleared his throat. “It’s probably time to start thinking about having a baby, too.”
***
Monique Lapierre waltzed through Casey’s door with the air of a queen in the midst of the peasantry. She eyed the new living room set with distaste, then plunked her dainty rump down on the antique love seat. Rob sat stiffly beside her, and Danny attempted conversation while Casey escaped to the kitchen to bring in the tray of hors d’oeuvres. Monique looked askance at the stuffed mushroom caps, cubed Monterey Jack, and cocktail shrimp, poked a lacquered fingernail at a mushroom, and delicately plucked a single shrimp from the tray. Ignoring Casey, she presented Danny with a dazzling smile. “Rob has told me so much about you,” she said.
Coming Home (Jackson Falls Series) Page 19
