Love's Rhythm

by Lexxie Couper

  Woeful, Lauren.

  “Y’know, I know Murriundah like the back of my hand,” Nick said from the entryway. “I could check all the places I used to go when I was pissed at Dad?”

  Lauren couldn’t stop her snorting chuckle. “If I remember correctly, those places were my old house, my tree house and the footbridge over Willows Creek, and I’m afraid to say all three have been demolished.”

  Nick turned his head, fist balling as he muttered something under his breath. He looked so much like his son at that point Lauren didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Instead, she returned her attention to finding her bag. She needed her phone. She’d send Josh a text. Tell him she was sorry. Ask him to come home so they could talk.

  Ah, there it was. Right where she dumped it beside the sofa Friday night. God, was that only twenty-four hours ago? She crossed to her bag, the very bag given to her by the man whose gaze followed her now, snatched it from the floor and pulled her mobile from its innards.

  Turning the device on, she blinked at the screen. Twenty-five text messages. Forty-two missed calls. How had she missed them?

  Are you kidding? Life hasn’t exactly been normal, has it? For Pete’s sake, you were still in your PJs at two o’clock this afternoon.

  “Lauren, we need to talk about this.”

  Ignoring him, she slid her thumb across her phone’s screen and tapped on messages.

  A string of them filled her screen, none of them from her son. All of them, save one, were about Nick.

  Hey, Lauren, Gary White here. Your mechanic. I hear Nick Blackthorne’s in town. Are U seeing him? Any chance U could get me his autograph?

  Lauren, this is Milly Jenkins, Chris from soccer’s mum. I was told you know Nick Blackthorne and that he’s staying with you. Is that true? Night Whispers was my wedding song and I’d love to meet him. Would it be okay if we came around?

  Hi, Lauren. The mayor would like to extend an invitation to you and Nick Blackthorne to attend dinner at his house Saturday evening. Please let me know by four o’clock Saturday. Thank you. Alysse Robertson.

  They went on and on. All the same. All requests or hints or questions about Nick. Texts from people she rarely had anything more to do with than a smile if passing each other in the local market. Phone calls from numbers she didn’t recognize. All of them. Except one text left on her phone at seven-forty five this morning from Jennifer.

  Heya, gorgeous one. Hope you’ve calmed down after your sudden bolt from my home last night. I’ve been called to an emergency at Gonano’s farm—one of his pregnant mares has gone down and the poor old bugger is beside himself. I’ll call you when I get home. If you need me for anything at all, just give me a ring. Love you heaps. Jen. AKA wonder-vet and rock-star mender. PS, I know it’s none of my business, but I think the guy is still seriously in love with you. You should have seen the gooey face he made when he was talking about you. Like, goo-ee. XXX

  Hot tears prickled behind Lauren’s eyes. Hot and so damn conflicted it was all she could do not to sob.

  “Lauren.” Nick’s hands were cupping her jaw, lifting her face to him. “Babe, don’t shut me out now. Not now.” He brushed his thumb over her bottom lip. “Not ever.”

  She stared up into his eyes, eyes she knew so well. Eyes she saw every night in her dreams. Eyes she saw every time she looked at her son. “Will you hurt me again, Nick?”

  The question left her on a whisper.

  He smiled, a slow, cheeky smile that promised her the world. A smile she knew as well as his eyes. “No,” he murmured. He lowered his head, touched his lips to hers.

  And her mobile rang, the sound of Josh singing Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ on a Prayer” bellowing from her hand.

  She stumbled back a step, blinking, her heart leaping like a petrified rabbit’s. What the hell was she doing? Her son was somewhere out in the cold and she was kissing Nick? Kissing him? She snapped her stare to her phone, something akin to relief, something even closer to regret scorching through her at the image of a grinning Jennifer on her iPhone’s screen.

  She hit accept and pressed the phone to her ear. “Jen,” she almost cried.

  “You missing a family member, Miss Robbins?” her best friend asked. “’Cause I’ve got a cold, grumpy teenager sitting in my living room right at this very moment in time who insists he doesn’t want to talk to his mum…” she paused, “or his dad for quite a while.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Nick opened his eyes reluctantly, hissed sharply through his teeth and squeezed his eyes shut again. Fuck. Someone had opened the curtains through the night and the sun now streamed into his room like a golden bloody spotlight beam.

  He pushed himself upright, squinting at the light. His head seemed to swim in a sickening spin, making his stomach lurch. He ground his teeth together, struggling with the nausea as he shifted on the bed and put his feet on the floor. “I feel like shit,” he muttered, scratching at his hair.

  “That’s because you drank a bottle of scotch all by yourself last night,” a husky female voice said to his right. “And apparently half a bottle of rum as well.”

  He opened his eyes and squinted some more at the petite woman dressed all in body-hugging red leather sitting cross-legged on the end of his bed. “What the fuck are you doing here, Frankie?”

  His agent flashed a wide smile at him. “I heard my client was getting into a spot of bother in yonder sticks. Thought I better come and start negotiations with the locals as to who was going to pull you out of the river. I can’t be forgetting my cut and all.”

  Nick let out a grunt, slumping back onto his bed. “I take it Aslin called you?”

  “He did. And, thank bloody God, dressed you in your PJs before I got here as well, otherwise I’d be having nightmares. I’m a married woman, Nick Blackthorne. I don’t need to find my clients sprawled out drunk in their hotel room beds at ten a.m. half naked. Well, I don’t expect it from you anymore, that’s for certain, although I have to say I like the black silk jammie dacks.”

  Nick scrunched up his face, his head throbbing. He tried to piece together the events of last night, but the only thing he could remember was Lauren telling him to leave. “I need some time away from you, Nick. I’m going to drive to Jennifer’s, collect Josh and then bring him home and explain it all to him. I need to do that alone.”

  He’d argued of course, had damn near got down on his knees and begged, but she hadn’t changed her mind. Nor had she answered her mobile when he’d called a few minutes after watching her drive away in her bombed-out old car.

  I need some time away from you, Nick.

  The words came back to him again, just as tormenting, as numbing as they’d been last night.

  Some time away from you.

  At some stage of the game, he must have walked back to the Cricketer’s Arms. He must have bought a bottle of scotch and he must have drunk it. He didn’t remember. He didn’t remember Aslin finding him either, but that must have happened as well. He especially didn’t remember buying a bottle of rum. He hated rum, but obviously his mood last night hadn’t. So for the second night in a row, he’d ended up drunk in his hometown’s only pub. The prodigal son returns. And to think he hadn’t touched a drop of alcohol for close to two years.

  “She doesn’t want me, Frankie.”

  The words left him on a breathless moan. He raised the heel of his palms to his eyes and pushed. Pain rolled through his head, cold and aching and real. He could grasp this pain. It made sense. But the pain in his heart… Jesus, he couldn’t comprehend it. How could he, when Lauren had never caused him pain before?

  “She doesn’t want me,” he repeated.

  He felt the mattress shift and then Frankie was sitting beside him. “And what does this mean, exactly?”

  The question was soft. Curious.

  “It means…” He swallowed, his throat as scratchy and dry as shit. “It means once again, I’m denied my family.”

  “So, are you thinking of you in this
situation or Lauren and your son?”

  He opened his eyes and studied her through a hazy blur. “Did Aslin tell you?”

  She nodded. “But only after I read about it in the Sydney Morning Herald’s front page this morning on the drive up.” She shifted a little on the bed, crossing her leather-clad ankles and hooking her elbows around her knees. “By the way, you owe Alec breakfast in bed. It was my turn to cook and instead we drove up here. I really can’t believe you grew up in such a tiny town.”

  “You made your husband drive to Murriundah?” Nick scrubbed at his face. “Man, he must really love you.”

  Frankie grinned at him. “He does, thank you very much. And that’s what love is—putting the other person first. Now tell me, what are you putting Lauren ahead of? What are you putting your son ahead of?”

  Nick dropped his hands from his face. He rolled his head, squinting up at his agent. “I told her I loved her. I told her I would quit music for her. For them both.”

  Frankie raised her eyebrows. “Well, shit, that’s not the kind of thing you’re meant to tell your agent, hon.”

  He chuckled, a weak, mirthless laugh that barely left his chest. “’S’true though. And even that wasn’t enough.”

  “Make it enough.”

  Frankie’s flat statement jerked his stare to her face. She was studying him, brilliant sharp blue eyes intent.

  “Now here’s the thing, Nick Blackthorne,” she went on. “I make squillions off you every year. Enough to retire and get fat on the residues. But I’m also your friend. And I know how downright bloody miserable you’ve been since…well, since almost ever. The Nick I know is not the Nick I know is in there. That Nick, that’s the Nick I saw singing “Gotta Run” sixteen-and-a-half years ago to a girl in the audience at the Sydney Opera House, a girl with wild strawberry blonde hair and freckles to die for. That Nick, he fucking well burned with passion and life and love.”

  Nick’s stomach rolled. He remembered that concert. A charity event for Kids with Cancer. He remembered it because it was the last time Lauren had come to any of his concerts after being almost attacked during the event by a horde of women standing around her when he’d sung. She’d needed escorting from the crowd by the hired muscle. He’d been worried sick until he saw her again. Sixteen-and-a-half years ago. How things had changed. Now she’d just slam them all with her satchel.

  A warm pride flowed through him as he pictured this new Lauren he’d come to know in the last few days dealing with maniacal groupies. There’d be no contest. She’d eat them alive and leave their bones for the birds to pick at.

  He frowned, resting himself on his elbows. Something about Frankie’s tale itched at the back of his head. “How old are you, Frankie?”

  She grinned. “None of your fucking business, Blackthorne. Old enough to be at that concert, is all you need to know. Old enough to see footage of you at that concert on Dad’s VCR.” She pulled a melodramatic face. “VCR? Wow, you old guys had some clunky shit technology back in the Stone Ages.”

  “Did you come all this way to insult me?”

  She grinned again. “No. I came to make sure you’re okay. To see if what Aslin says is true. And even lying here in this hotel-room bed, wearing a three-day growth and desperately in need of some toothpaste or mouthwash, I can see it is. That fire is in you again. Lauren Robbins, school teacher extraordinaire, makes you burn like no other, Nicky-boy.”

  The observation set a flutter going in the pit of Nick’s belly. Frankie, and Aslin it seemed, was right. So damn right. He raked his nails across his scalp. “So what do I do about it? Go bang down her door, sweep her up onto my horse and take her away? Stopping only to grab my son?”

  Frankie cocked an eyebrow. “You could, but that would likely only piss her off.”

  Nick snorted. “Yeah. You could say that. And at this point, I don’t know if Josh wants anything to do with me.”

  “But you want to be in his life?”

  Her question, asked with a deceptive calm, made him narrow his eyes. “Of course I do. Jesus, Frankie, do you really think I’d be in this state if I didn’t?”

  “The thing is,” she went on, her expression…guarded. “I know what it’s like to have a celebrity father. What it’s like to grow up in a celebrity’s world. It fucks with your head, Nick. Big time. You’re not the average father material, I have to point out here, and Josh is already getting a taste of it. He’s been named in the media, his photograph is on the front page of the country’s biggest newspaper, his school records are probably being dredged up from any source the muck-gathering gossip reporters can find, his Facebook account hacked, his friends already interrogated over the phone and in person, and it’s only ten a.m.. That’s not going to stop any time soon. And every time you’re photographed with someone not Lauren, hell, it could be me for all it matters, Josh will be reading headlines the next day about his father having an affair. You know that, right? Are you ready to thrust him into that? To throw him into that life? Knowing what it’s like? Knowing what it can do to you?”

  Nick’s heart leapt into his throat. He pictured Josh, the kid who turned bright red when asking about groupies. He thought of his son, smiling like a little boy at Christmas when asked if he wanted to go on a helicopter. He pictured him being harassed by reporters and gossip-rag journoes, mics in his face, camera flashes popping in his eyes…

  The blood drained from Nick’s face. He sat upright, grabbing Frankie by the arms. “What did you say? Something about his friends being interrogated in person and it’s only ten a.m.?” Frankie nodded. “They’re here? The press? They’re here and they’re seeking out Josh’s friends? Already?”

  She nodded again. “I overheard one of them complain down in the foyer that some kid called Rhys told him to, and I quote, stick his camera up his arse and take a photo of his shit. I have to admit, I think I like this Rhys kid already.”

  Rhys’s response should have made Nick chuckle. But he couldn’t. His life, his rock-star life had invaded his son’s. Everything Lauren knew and feared.

  “Have they got to Lauren?” He swallowed, his mouth like dust. “To Josh?”

  Frankie shook her head. “They’re camped out at her home. The whole bloody Sydney horde as far as I can tell, but that mountain you call a bodyguard is keeping them at bay. It won’t be long though before even his mammoth menace doesn’t scare them enough. Once they get the scent—a glimpse of Lauren or your son through a crack in the curtains perhaps—they’ll swarm like the ghouls they are.” Her expression turned dark, angry. “You know what they’re like, Nick. You’ve been dealing with them for almost seventeen years.”

  Nick’s gut rolled. He had. And it was brutal. He shot to his feet, dragging his hands through his hair. Fuck, where were his clothes? Where the fuck were his clothes? He had to get out there. He had to get to Lauren, to Josh. He had to show his son how to deal with—

  “You know if you go there now you’ll only stir up more shit for them?”

  He froze on Frankie’s low statement.

  “You arrive at her house and they’ll never leave her alone. And you’ve lost her. Lost them both, maybe.”

  He dropped back onto the edge of the bed, cold emptiness settling in his stomach. Frankie was right. He did know that. The first few weeks of being hounded by the press had been a massive ego boost for twenty-year-old Nick Blackthorne, the next few months, a pain in the arse, the next sixteen years, hell. And he’d been expecting it. Josh, however…Lauren…

  He thought of the woman he loved. Thought of everything she’d lost due to his fame. The future she thought she was going to have when she’d up and moved from the safety of her small-town home to the big concrete jungle that was Sydney with him at the ripe old age of eighteen, the happy-ever-after he’d promised her when they were just innocent teenagers in love. And now she was losing the future she’d made for herself. Even with him not in her life, hers was being fucked over.

  A noise rumbled low in his chest, a g
rowl of angry contempt. “I can’t do nothing, Frankie.”

  Her lips curled, the smile of an agent with a reputation for being ruthless. Married life may have brought out the romantic in her, but Frankie Winchester was still an agent. A bloody brilliant one. “Call a press announcement. Call a press announcement to be held outside this very pub. It’ll put it on the map and make the proprietor a fortune—Cricketer’s Arms, the place Nick Blackthorne announced his retirement after his one and only show on the Tropical Sin Tour in Sydney.”

  He blinked. He hadn’t seen that coming.

  Frankie chuckled. “It’s what you want, isn’t it? Lauren, Josh? A life with them, not on the road? A normal life doing normal things with normal people?”

  “Yeah, hell yeah, but I didn’t expect my agent to tell me to do it.”

  She shrugged, flipping a fat, round curl from in front of her eyes as she did so. “I’ve made gazillions out of you, Nicky-boy. And I’ll make even more whether you keep singing or not. Besides, I married a millionaire gardener with clients richer than us both. I’m not worried about where my next meal comes from.” She slid her hands over her belly, a slow caress Nick couldn’t miss. “Or my family’s, for that matter.”

  He jerked his stare to her face, down to her belly, noticing for the first time the small but pronounced swell under the snug leather of her biker vest. “Are you…?”

  She grinned once again, a smile so stunning, so happy Nick forgot to breathe for a second.

  “It’s a brave new world, Nick Blackthorne. You’ve just got to grab it.”

  He was on his feet again, prowling the room for his clothes. Grab it? He was going to strangle the bloody thing. Lauren had asked for him to give her time? He would give her time. Time to buy a paper. Time to turn on a radio. Time to read her damn Twitter feed if she had one. Just time to discover what he was about to announce to the world. Time to learn he was serious about her, about Josh, about them.