Perfect Rhythm

by Jae

  Something clattered to the floor in the bedroom.

  “I’ll go,” Holly said and slipped back into the room.

  Leo stared after her. “Is she always such a ray of sunshine, or is it just me she doesn’t like?”

  “Holly is a lifesaver,” her mother said. “We couldn’t have managed without her. She’s a lovely girl, really. I hope you two can get along.”

  She shrugged. It didn’t matter. Whatever Holly’s problem was with her, she didn’t intend to stay long enough for it to become an issue.

  Gil had wanted to be brought back to his room after dinner, and Leontyne had retreated upstairs, but Sharon was still puttering around the kitchen, running the rag across the countertop, even though it was already sparkly clean.

  Holly gently took the rag from her and draped it over the faucet. She leaned against the counter and studied the woman she had come to regard as a friend. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, I’m fine.” Sharon sounded anything but.

  “I thought you would be happy and finally get to relax a little now that Leontyne is home.”

  “I am happy. It’s so good to see her.” For a moment, the old spark returned to Sharon’s eyes, but the familiar expression of worry soon smothered it.

  “But?” Holly prompted.

  Sharon trailed the tip of her index finger over the counter, watching its path instead of looking Holly in the eyes. “No but. I just… I guess I’m afraid she’ll leave and I won’t get to see her for another five years.”

  Holly bit down on the inside of her cheek to stop herself from saying what was on her mind. Sharon had been through so much. How unfair of Leontyne to make her worry about yet another thing.

  “Hey.” Sharon grasped one of Holly’s hands and held it in both of hers. “Please don’t be mad at her. I really didn’t expect her to come home and help out with her father. Her life is too busy and…complicated.”

  So what? Holly didn’t care how complicated Leontyne’s life might be. Who else was there to help out Gil and Sharon since Leontyne was their only child? The boatload of money Leontyne sent wasn’t really what they needed, even if it could buy help like hers.

  But saying so wouldn’t do any good. Sharon didn’t need to deal with Holly’s anger on top of everything else. She squeezed her hands, then let go. “Go get some rest. I’ll take Gil to the bathroom and get him settled for the night before I go to bed.”

  “Are you sure you want to stay the night? I called you in earlier than expected today, so if you want to take the night off and get a good night’s sleep without having to keep one eye on the baby monitor…”

  “And miss your wonderful breakfast?” Holly grinned. “No way! If you give me a few minutes so I can take a quick shower, I’ll be ready to earn my pancakes.”

  Chuckling, Sharon leaned forward and kissed her cheek. “Thanks, sweetie. I’ll go see if he wants some company before bedtime.” She squeezed Holly’s shoulder and then walked down the hall.

  Holly watched her for a few seconds before kicking herself into motion.

  A couple of minutes later, she climbed into the shower and sighed in relief when the hot water rained down on her. Taking care of a patient with hemiparesis, helping him from his bed to the wheelchair and back, was hard work. Although he might look thin and fragile, Gil still had forty pounds on her. Her eyes fell closed as she stood beneath the spray and let the heat soak into her aching muscles.

  She could have stayed there forever, but she knew Sharon and Gil were waiting downstairs, so she reached for the shampoo and washed her hair.

  Just as she rinsed the last suds from her hair, a draft of cool air brushed over her, making her wet skin pebble.

  What the…? Spluttering, she lifted her head from beneath the spray and wiped suds from her eyes so she could see.

  On the other side of the fogged-up glass, a blurry figure stood in the doorway. “Oh. Uh, I’m sorry.” It was Leontyne’s voice. She jumped back and pulled the door toward her until just an inch of space remained.

  Even though Leontyne could no longer see her, Holly turned off the water, snatched the towel from its place over the glass door, and covered herself with it.

  “Sorry,” Leo said again. “I guess I was distracted, so I didn’t hear the shower running, and I…I…I didn’t know you would be…um, here. Are you…staying the night?”

  Her stammering was almost cute. Almost.

  Holly had been in such a hurry to get back downstairs that she hadn’t even thought of locking the door. After three weeks in the house, she had gotten used to having the bathroom to herself and had all but forgotten that the guest room where she stayed and Leontyne’s room shared a bathroom.

  “Yes,” she said. “Your mother was running herself ragged, not sleeping enough, so we worked out a schedule. I stay here three nights a week to keep an eye on your father so she can get some rest.”

  “She didn’t tell me that,” Leontyne grumbled.

  Was anyone talking to each other in this family? It was so different from Holly’s own family, which you couldn’t get to shut up even if you tried. Everyone was in each other’s business all the time.

  The steam surrounding Holly dissolved, and cooling water dripped onto her shoulders, making her shiver. “Sorry. I thought you knew.”

  “No. But I’m glad she’s got some help. I, um, will let you finish your shower now. Again, sorry for walking in on you.” The door clicked shut.

  Holly slowly loosened her grip on the towel. Well, now she could say that superstar Jenna Blake had seen her naked…kind of. With a shake of her head, she unwrapped the towel from around her body and began to dry off.

  Jesus! Leo dropped down on her bed and rubbed her heated face with both hands. For the second time today, she was blushing. Oh, come on. What’s there to blush about? She had hardly seen a thing through the fogged-up glass, just a blurry outline of Holly’s body.

  Her very naked, very wet, very curvaceous body.

  She had stood there like an idiot while the vanilla-and-coconut scent of Holly’s shampoo or shower gel wafted around her.

  It wasn’t as if she’d never seen a woman naked before. Hell, once, a fan had thrown her top and bra at her during a concert, leaving herself naked from the waist up. But this wasn’t some stage. This was Fair Oaks. Being in her hometown and seeing her parents again had obviously thrown her off her game.

  She stared up at the poster of Destiny’s Child. “Did you ever have to deal with stuff like this?” she muttered up to them.

  Of course, neither Kelly nor Beyoncé answered.

  “Thanks a lot, girls.” Sighing, she climbed off the bed to ask her mother for the Wi-Fi password. She hoped the Internet connection in Fair Oaks had gotten better since her high school days.

  Chapter 3

  The cheerful chirping of birds woke Leo. No traffic noise filtered in from outside. She opened her eyes, pushed up on her elbows, and looked around, disoriented for a moment. Bright sunlight fell into the room through a dormer window. While she was used to waking up in unfamiliar beds, this clearly wasn’t some hotel room in London, Berlin, Barcelona, or Sydney.

  After a second, she remembered.

  She was in Fair Oaks, in her old room.

  As much as she didn’t want to be here, at least it meant she didn’t have to rush to meet the band for rehearsals and sound checks, attend interviews or CD signings, or have lunch with execs from the record company. She let herself fall back against the pillow and closed her eyes.

  Footsteps sounded on the stairs, and the scent of frying bacon drifted up. Leo had nearly forgotten that everyone got up at the crack of dawn here. She yawned widely.

  A knock came at her door. “Breakfast is ready,” her mother called, just as she had for nearly every morning of Leo’s childhood.

  What a strange déjà vu.

 
“I’ll be right there,” Leo called back. She climbed out of bed and listened at the door to the bathroom for a moment to make sure she wouldn’t walk in on Holly again. When all remained quiet, she entered and quickly brushed her teeth and washed up. Her clothes were still neatly folded in her suitcase. No sense in unpacking since she had no idea how long she would be staying. She picked a clean T-shirt and got dressed, knowing her father didn’t allow pajamas at the table.

  Only when she was halfway down the stairs did she remember that her father no longer had a say in what she wore for breakfast.

  Holly was already in the dining room, pushing his wheelchair to the table. Once again, she was wearing jeans, a T-shirt, white sneakers, and no makeup. Clearly, she dressed to be comfortable, not to impress anyone. Somehow, Leo found it to be a refreshing change from the women she knew.

  “Good morning,” Leo said.

  Her father didn’t return the greeting.

  Holly straightened from where she had set the brakes on the wheelchair. “Morning.”

  Leo walked toward her seat, the chair where she had sat as a child—and promptly collided with Holly, who had taken a step toward it too. Apparently, it was her seat now.

  Holly grabbed hold of Leo’s arms to keep her balance, and Leo instinctively rested her hands on the nicely curved hips. Mmm. Her perfume or shower gel or whatever it was smelled good.

  “Sorry.” Holly quickly stepped back and chose another chair.

  Her mother entered the dining room with a stack of pancakes. “Good morning.” She kissed Leo’s cheek, but all Leo could feel were the ghost imprints of Holly’s hands on her arms. She shook herself out of her strange daze and sat too.

  The table in front of her was loaded down with buttermilk pancakes, hash browns, fried eggs, and bacon—a far cry from the egg-white omelets, granola, and grapefruit she usually had for breakfast. The mug of coffee with cream her mother set down in front of her was usually a big no-no too since coffee irritated the throat and dairy produced phlegm that could affect her voice.

  “Yum.” Holly rubbed her hands. “Breakfast heaven.”

  Leo’s mother beamed at her from across the table before turning toward Leo. “When was the last time you had a homemade meal?”

  “It’s been a while.” After eyeing the food for a few more seconds, Leo pierced a pancake with her fork, lifted it on her plate, and squeezed a dollop of maple syrup on it. Her nutritionist would have a heart attack if she could see her. The first bite nearly had her moan out loud. The taste immediately evoked memories of her childhood, and she had to admit with some reluctance that not all of them were bad.

  “Quiet night?” her mother asked Holly.

  “Pretty much. We got up once. I think it was around three, right, Gil?”

  Leo’s father grunted something that could be interpreted as a confirmation.

  She sat at the table, as quiet as her father, while her mother and Holly chatted about the weather, town gossip, and all the good players the Kansas City Royals had lost this season. Their small talk was so far removed from Leo’s world, where the only topics were album sales, sexy costumes, and concert attendance numbers.

  It occurred to her that Holly appeared much more like a family member than she did. Holly cut her father’s pancake into small pieces that he could eat more easily, while her mother stirred just the right amount of cream into his coffee. They worked together like a well-established team, as if they had done this exact thing hundreds of times already and no longer needed to speak or even think about it. In comparison, Leo felt discordant, like a badly tuned guitar.

  The pancake sat like a ball of lead in her stomach, and she wasn’t sure if it was all the sugar and fat or the out-of-place feeling she couldn’t shake.

  She was glad when everyone else finally cleared their plates and breakfast was over.

  Her mother started to stack the dirty plates, but Holly stopped her. “You made breakfast. Let us clean up.”

  Jeez, was she trying to be on her best behavior because Leo was here, or was she always like this? In Leo’s experience, no one was this nice without wanting something in return. She just hadn’t figured out yet what it was that Holly was after. Was she trying to get into her parents’ good graces so she would one day inherit some of the money Leo had sent them?

  While her mother wheeled her father into the living room, Holly and Leo cleared the table and carried the breakfast dishes into the kitchen. She rinsed the plates and handed them to Holly so she could load the dishwasher.

  Their hands brushed. Warmth climbed up Leo’s arm and flowed through the rest of her body. She looked up, but Holly continued to put the plates into the dishwasher, completely unaffected.

  “What?” she asked as if sensing Leo’s gaze on her.

  Leo quickly directed her attention to the dirty forks and knives. “Nothing. You just…um… You’ve got a scratch on your chin.”

  “Oh. That.” Holly fingered the inch-long, scabbed-over scratch that stood out against her fair skin. She closed the dishwasher and leaned against it. “Kitty love bite. I was helping out my mother yesterday, and one of her feline customers didn’t appreciate it.”

  Feline customers? Oh, right. Beth Drummond was the only veterinarian in town.

  “You helped out your mom yesterday?” Leo’s mother said as she stepped into the kitchen. “Holly, you’re working too much. Why don’t you take the day off?”

  “No, I—”

  “I insist.” Her mother’s glance traveled from Holly to Leo. “In fact, why don’t you two head into town? Holly could show you around and point out what has changed, and you could have a nice lunch at the diner—my treat.”

  Yeah, right. Sightseeing in Fair Oaks. That would take all of two seconds.

  Holly didn’t look any more enthusiastic than Leo felt. “I don’t think I’ll want lunch anytime soon after all those pancakes, Sharon.”

  “Mom, I hardly think Fair Oaks has changed that much. I can get around on my own. Holly doesn’t need to play tour guide on her day off.”

  “Nonsense. She spends too much time with sick people and not enough with people her own age.” Her mother spoke right over both of their protests. “Go and have fun. Maybe you’ll meet some former classmates.”

  That wasn’t Leo’s idea of fun either. What could she still have in common with her classmates who had never left their small town?

  Relentless, her mother shooed them out the door.

  When it clicked closed behind them, Leo clutched the porch rail. Damn. Even her manager usually couldn’t steamroll her like that. She turned toward Holly. “You don’t need to babysit me. I can find my way around town just fine without a guide.”

  A wry smile brought out Holly’s dimples. “Has it been so long that you forgot how things work around here? If we go our separate ways, how long do you think until word gets back to your mother that I abandoned you?” She shook her head. “No, thanks. I want to keep eating those delicious pancakes.”

  Pancakes. Holly didn’t really expect her to believe that was all she wanted from the parents of filthy rich superstar Jenna Blake, did she?

  “I have to run some errands anyway.” Holly tugged on her arm. “Come on. I’m driving.”

  “Why are you the one who gets to drive?”

  “Because I fall asleep within a minute of getting into a car if I’m not the one driving.” Holly strode toward a red Jeep Liberty parked at the curb. It was an older model but looked well cared for.

  Leo stared after her, then jogged down the stairs to catch up. “You’re kidding, right?”

  As Holly parked her Jeep in the small town square, the canopy of gray clouds hanging over Fair Oaks parted, and the July sun cast shadows across the pockmarked asphalt of Main Street and its cracked sidewalks.

  Downtown consisted of a single row of stores, all housed in old brick buildings
: Ruth’s Diner, a little mom-and-pop grocery store, a beauty salon, a hardware store, the grain and feed, a tiny pharmacy, Johnny’s Bar & Grill, a bakery, and a body shop with tires piled up in front.

  On the other side of the square, behind the courthouse, were the library; the post office; Casey’s gas station; and the Fair Oaks Ledger, the town’s tiny newspaper.

  “Wow,” Leo muttered as they crossed the street. “I forgot how small this town really is. It’s claustrophobic.”

  “It’s endearing,” Holly corrected.

  Leo shot her a disbelieving glance. “If you say so.”

  As they strolled through town, memories played through Leo’s mind like snapshots in a photo album. There was the bar—the only one in town—where she’d had her first gigs. Not that the locals had really appreciated her guitar riffs or her choice of music. People here mostly listened to country, not pop. But maybe that was a good thing. Here, she wasn’t a big star; she was just the Blakes’ daughter who had returned because her dad was sick.

  A gray-haired man waved from behind the counter of the hardware store.

  Leo stared. Was that Mr. Gillespie? He’d already been older than Methuselah when she had graduated from high school. Must be the fresh country air.

  Holly waved back. That was what people did here.

  When Leo had first moved to New York, it had taken some time to get used to people not nodding or waving at each other in passing.

  Just when Leo thought they might actually make it to the grocery store without anyone stopping them, two women in their mid-twenties rushed toward them. “Excuse me… Are you Jenna Blake?”

  For a moment, Leo was tempted to tell her she wasn’t, but lying to someone who might be a fan wasn’t her style, so she flashed her well-practiced pop-star smile and nodded.

  One woman elbowed her friend. “See! I told you it was her. I’m a big fan. I have all of your albums. They’re so awesome. Could we get an autograph?”

  “Sure. Got something to write on?”