Before Ingrid could respond, he bounded down the steps, got into his car and peeled out of her driveway.
Chapter Ten
Jason drove back to the hotel, wondering if his anger was displaced. He could’ve done more to reach out to Ingrid three years ago, but Ruby made him believe that she wanted nothing to do with him. I was such a fool. I should’ve done more to find out why she’d left.
He pulled into the parking lot and parked his car near the door. Jason was slow to get out because he didn’t want to deal with Ruby and her madness right now nor did he feel like fighting off another advance from Debony. Would Ingrid take him seriously if he just quit touring and stuck to songwriting? Or did she already have her mind closed to the possibility of having a life with him? Jason wished he’d seen the signs sooner and stood up to protect Ingrid. He could write songs from anywhere and once the contest ended and he found the next big voice, he would write songs for that singer and help make him or her famous. The money would roll in and he wouldn’t have to split his time between New York and L.A. Then he could be a real father to his son. Would Ingrid allow that? The last thing he wanted was to end up in court fighting Ingrid. That’s one of the reasons why he’d made sure he was extra protected when he had sex with Debony. He hadn’t wanted to slip up, get her pregnant and end up fodder for internet blogs and tabloids. He wouldn’t want to hide the fact that he had a child with Ingrid, but he would want to shield them from the nastiness of the press. And shield himself, because he might be made to look like a deadbeat father.
Before he got out of the car, there was a knock on the window. Looking up, he frowned when he saw Debony standing there with a wide smile on her face.
He opened the door as she stepped back. “What do you want?”
Winking at him, she said, “You know what I want, but since you won’t give it to me, I need to know what time we’re leaving for the show tonight.”
“We’re not leaving at all, you can get there on your own,” Jason said. “And don’t expect me to make changes to my stage for the one song that we’re going to do.”
“Ruby said you were acting funny these days,” she said. “I guess that means you and the fat girl aren’t getting along—again. She doesn’t understand this business and us. When are you going to . . .”
“Do me a favor,” Jason snapped, “stay out of my face. My personal business has nothing to do with you and I don’t want to hear anything you or Ruby has to say about Ingrid.”
Debony shrugged and stalked off. Jason took a deep breath and headed into the hotel. He ignored Debony and Ruby as he headed for his room. He knew they were probably planning something, but he had bigger worries and they didn’t have anything to do with those two women. When he got into his room, he flung himself across the bed and thought about how he was going to convince Ingrid that he wanted to know his son.
Ingrid sat on her sofa motionless trying to absorb what Jason had said to her. Now that he knew the truth, she could no longer keep Jason away from DeShawn. I always figured this day would come, but I was hoping that Jason would be too big of a star to care about me or my son. Now he’s back and claims he wants to be in our lives. How do I know I can trust that?
Though she’d planned to go back to the restaurant to help with the lunch rush, when she finally moved, she headed to Jason’s hotel. Ingrid drove slowly to the downtown location, not knowing what she should say to him. I’m sorry didn’t seem good enough. She pulled into the parking spot beside Jason’s car and she wondered if he was still around. She remembered their days together in New York and how he would go to the concert venue hours before the show began and stand on the stage. He loved performing and being on stage. That’s why it was so easy for Ingrid to believe that he would chose music over everything else, even their son.
I guess I was wrong, she thought as she exited the car. Ingrid hurried inside and stopped at the front desk.
“Hey there, Miss Ingrid,” the clerk, who was a regular at the restaurant said. “What are you doing here?”
“How are you, Neil? I need to see one of your guests,” she replied.
“Who are you looking for?” he asked as he started typing on the computer.
“Jason Campbell,” she said.
Neil smiled. “I’ll call his room for you. Not too many people come in here and ask for him by that name, but I think the whole town knows he’s staying here.”
Ingrid offered him a weak smile as he put the phone to his ear.
“Mr. Campbell, Ingrid Harrington is in the lobby for you,” he said. “Yes, sir. Yes, sir. I will send her up.” Neil hung up the phone and turned to Ingrid. “He’s in room three-twenty eight.”
“Thanks,” Ingrid said as she walked over to the elevator. When the doors to the elevator opened, Ruby stepped off.
“Look what the cat drug in,” Ruby said flippantly.
Ingrid rolled her eyes and clamped down on her tongue. She sidestepped Ruby and walked into the elevator car.
“Are you sure you’re not going to weigh this thing down?” Ruby asked.
“Go to hell,” Ingrid said as the doors closed. Once she was alone inside the car, Ingrid cursed herself for even responding to Ruby. That woman had been getting under her skin since the first day they met in New York and the last thing she wanted to do was let Ruby know that she still had that power over her.
Jason had the crowd in a trance as he danced around the stage, singing New Edition's If It Isn't Love, in the middle of Central Park. Ingrid swayed back and forth as she and Jason locked eyes. Even though there were hundreds of people in the audience, Ingrid knew he was singing to her. This was their song. As he began to sing the break down, a scantily clad dancer joined him on the stage, twirling her small hips in Jason's face as he sang. Ingrid felt some kind of way watching her man do a sensual bump and grind with the dancer. Ruby snaked through the crowd and stood beside Ingrid with a plastic smile on her face. "He looks good up there, right? He can be a star."
Ingrid smiled at Ruby. "He will be. Jason is talented and he works hard."
"He's getting an image and it is my job to cultivate it."
Ingrid shrugged. She knew Jason would be getting new clothes, new material to sing and a stage name. What she didn't understand was why Ruby felt the need to tell her this now.
"Look at how he's dancing with Ava. That is sexual energy that turns women on. When he walks down the red carpet at the MTV awards, the public will expect his date to be sexy and alluring."
Ingrid tore her eyes away from Jason and Ava, focusing an angry glare on Ruby. "What are you trying to say?"
"Maybe in Nutbush, South Carolina, you're the best he can do, but in New York, he can do so much better," Ruby said. "For a big girl, you have a pretty face. But unless you plan to drop between fifty to a hundred pounds, you're never going to fit in with who Jay Slade is going to be."
"Who in the hell do you think you are?" Ingrid snapped. "Jason and I are in love and my size seems to be your hang up, not mine or his."
"For now," Ruby said then turned and walked away.
When the elevator reached the third floor, Jason was standing in the hall waiting for her.
“Ingrid,” he said. “I’m kind of surprised to see you here.”
“We need to talk, I’ve come to a decision about DeShawn.”
He nodded. “Let’s go in my room and talk.”
Ingrid followed him into the room, silently noting that it was much smaller than the suite they’d shared in New York. She took a seat on the edge of the king sized bed. “I was wrong to keep DeShawn from you,” she said after expelling a breath.
“Yes, you were,” he replied quietly. “But I can understand why you did it.”
She cast her eyes upward at him. “Really?”
Jason sat beside her and took her hand in his. “I went to New York with a single focus and I allowed outside forces to come between us. You saw that and I didn’t until you were gone.”
“I was afraid to
tell you that I was pregnant, you were just starting your career and everything was just starting to click for you and I didn’t want you put your life on hold and then. . .Well, there’s no need to recount what happened when I left.”
“How did you convince your husband to accept my son?” he asked.
Ingrid sighed and slipped her hand from underneath his. “Louis and I needed each other. There was no way I could come back to town single and pregnant.”
“It didn’t have to be that way,” Jason interrupted.
Ingrid shot him a questioning look. “Really?”
“Do you think I would’ve walked away from my son after the parents I had? I wouldn’t have done that to either one of you. Did you love him?”
She rose from the bed and crossed over to the window. Ingrid wrapped her hand around the curtain and squeezed it tightly. “I did and do love Louis. He was very special to me and provided well for us. He was a great man, but he wasn’t free to be who he really was here.”
Jason furrowed his brows. “What do you mean?”
She turned and faced him. “He was like a brother to me. That’s the kind of love we shared. Louis married me to save his restaurant. You know how people around here are. If you don’t go to First Baptist, then you’re going to hell. If you’re a single mother, you’re a whore and if you’re a gay man with a restaurant, you’re going out of business. Louis had his heart broken when he moved here and my heart was aching, we were able to help each other.”
“Gay?” Jason asked. “He was gay?”
She nodded. “No one knew for sure, but when we swapped heartache, we realized that we could help each other and it worked out.”
Jason shook his head as her words sank in. “So, you and he never. . .”
“No, we didn’t. I knew who he was and I accepted it.”
Jason stood up and walked over to Ingrid. “And you thought he would be a better father to my son?”
“Don’t you dare stand there in judgment!” she boomed, pointing her index finger in his face. “He was good to DeShawn. Damned good to him. You have no right to judge him when you never knew him.”
“But you knew what kind of man he was and you married him and allowed him to raise my son?” he questioned.
“This was a mistake,” Ingrid said as she pushed past him.
Jason grabbed her arm. “And you’re telling me that you and this man never . . .”
She hauled off and slapped him. “Go to hell,” Ingrid snapped then stormed out of the room. She dashed down the hall for the elevator. Part of her expected him to come after her, but when the doors of the elevator opened, she was glad that he wasn’t behind her.
Jason’s head was reeling as he stood in the middle of his hotel room. Ingrid had dropped a hell of a bombshell on him and he didn’t know how to process it. She married a gay man and passed his son off as his. He had been robbed of three years of DeShawn’s life. Did she expect him to believe that she and that man didn’t have a sexual relationship? How could she do this? he thought. And how could she think that I would be all right with this? She should’ve told me this in the beginning. Was she ever going to tell me about her husband and what if my son hadn’t come into the room this morning?
The ringing of his cell phone interrupted his thoughts. “Yeah?”
“Jay, it’s Terry,” his road manager said. “I got that car on the way to Elmore.”
“Shit,” he muttered. “Is it too late to cancel it?”
“The driver is on his way. What happened in the last few hours to make you change your mind?”
“You don’t want to know,” Jason said. “Try and call the driver, get him to come to the hotel and I’ll put Debony and Ruby in the limo.”
“Damn, she got to you, huh?”
“Terry, I don’t want to talk about it. I’ll see you soon,” Jason said then hung up the phone. He tossed it on the bed and swore under his breath. Somehow, he was going to have to find the energy to get through his show.
About an hour later, Jason was in his car heading to Columbia. Though he wanted to stop at Ingrid’s restaurant and see her before he left, he knew there was too much bad blood between them right now and he might say something that he would regret later. His mind was muddled with questions about her relationship with Louis. She’d lied to him about his son, who was to say that she wasn’t lying about her relationship with the man she’d been married to. Suppose she slept with him? Why didn’t she tell him the man was gay from the beginning? Why wasn’t she honest enough to tell him everything?
What else is she keeping from me? Jason wondered as he merged on to the interstate.
As he drove, Jason wavered between anger and disappointment as he thought about Ingrid’s situation. There had to have been another way for her to handle the fact that she was pregnant. But to marry a stranger, a gay man and to hide his son from him for three years? Was this the best she could’ve done? Was she willing to give up her own desires to hide the truth?
Maybe she thought we’d never be together again. I had no idea that we would reconnect with each other and she probably thought that we wouldn’t either. But what if her husband hadn’t died?
Though he’d come into town with a chest full of steam and bravado and the intention of stealing Ingrid away from her husband, he was shocked to find out the truth about her marriage. He resolved that he was going make every effort to understand Ingrid’s choice and get to know his son. The contest would provide that opportunity, but would he be able to be with her again?
Ingrid wiped the counter slowly trying to put the scene with Jason out of her mind. It had been hours since he’d left. “Miss Ingrid, I think that spot is clean,” Yolanda said. “Are you going to Jay Slade’s concert in Columbia?”
“No,” she said flatly. “Didn’t you win tickets from the radio station?”
“I sure did,” she replied with a huge smile on her face. “Is it all right if I take off a little early?”
Ingrid looked around at the sparse crowd in the restaurant. “Go ahead and have a good time.”
Yolanda quickly untied her apron and dashed out of the restaurant. Ingrid walked over to the coffeemaker still struggling with Jason’s reaction to her marriage. Was he just as homophobic as the rest of the town? In another world, Ingrid would’ve been able to come home and raise her son alone, Louis would’ve been able to be the kind of man that he wanted to be and his restaurant would’ve been wildly successful. But small minded people forced them to hide things and create a fairy tale. Now it had all fallen apart. Louis was dead and Jason was mad.
Like he has a right to be angry. He could’ve reached out to me because if he found out that I was married then he knew I was back in town. It’s not that hard to find anyone in Elmore, she thought bitterly as she yanked the filter from the coffeemaker.
“What are you doing here?” Christina asked loudly as she walked into the restaurant. “Don’t you have a concert to get ready for?”
“No, I don’t,” Ingrid said when her friend approached the counter. “You want some coffee?”
“Is that code for you’re about to tell me what happened with you and Jason after I left, then yes.”
Ingrid folded her arms across her chest. “That’s code for I have decaf and regular coffee.”
Christina cocked her head to the side and peered at her friend. “Why aren’t you going to Columbia to be with your man?”
“A, he’s not my man and B, I have a business to run.”
Christina leaned in closer to Ingrid, “And the other situation. Are you going to give him a chance to get to know his son?”
Ingrid shrugged and placed two coffee mugs on the counter. “Jason and I had a big argument about Louis and I don’t know if I want him around my son.”
Christina poured sugar into her cup as she waited for Ingrid to fill it with coffee. “He’s not just your son and now that his real father is around, you can’t keep playing the super, single mom role.”
“I tol
d Jason everything,” Ingrid said in a low whisper.
“Everything as in?”
Ingrid raised her right eyebrow. “Sit there and play stupid if you want to.”
“Oh, you mean about Louis being that way,” Christina said. Ingrid shook her head. Christina was a pretty open minded person, but she couldn’t bring herself to say “gay.” But Jason, she expected him to be a little more worldly. She was sure he’d been around plenty of gay people in the music industry. Why did he have such a hard time accepting what Louis was to her? He’d been her lifeline when she needed him most.
“Well,” Christina asked. “What did he say?”
“He basically flipped out and pretty much showed me that he’s an asshole.”
Christina stretched her eyes and shook her head. “What did you expect him to do? He is from Elmore no matter how many places he’s been.”
“So? Louis and I needed each other and Jason was nowhere to be found.”
“Yeah, well, you didn’t look that hard, either,” Christina said as she reached for her cup of coffee.
“What?”
“If you wanted to get in touch with Jason, I’m sure you could’ve sent him a message on Twitter, Facebook, MySpace or even e-mailed him.”
“I wasn’t some groupie who he’d gotten pregnant. I was supposed to be the woman he loved.” Ingrid slammed her hand against the counter. “To hell with him. I’m not going to keep DeShawn away from him but I don’t want anything else to do with him.”
Christina took a slow sip of coffee before saying, “Now you’re lying to yourself, huh?”
Chapter Eleven
“Columbia! Thank you!” Jason yelled as he finished his fourth encore. Sweat poured from his bare chest and forehead. His show had been three hours, though it was only scheduled for two. While he was on stage, he didn’t have to think about Ingrid, he just sang, danced and connected with the thousands of people in the audience screaming his name. Tonight, he didn’t care about Debony joining him on stage and trying to upstage him with her wild hip thrusts and too close dancing. He even stepped aside and allowed her to sing a few songs from her hit CD. The adoring crowd ate it up while his emotions rumbled inside him like thunder.
If It Isn't Love Page 10