Love Songs for the Road

by Farrah Taylor

  Ryan frowned and stood up. She shook her head like a teacher scolding the incurable bad boy of her kindergarten class and said, “You know, I don’t know what Louboutin stilettos are, but I do know when I’m being made fun of, and I don’t find it charming. I don’t care whether you’re a rock star or a garbage man––I don’t have to put up with it.”

  And with that, she turned and walked out of the room.

  For thirty seconds, Marcus, alone in his children’s playroom, reared his head back and laughed. A great big belly laugh. Sparring with Ryan was the most fun he’d had, with another adult anyway, in months.

  But once he caught his breath, he thought of the three nannies and five personal assistants he’d had during the four years since Bianca had left him without a word of warning. His heart was racing and sweat was forming on his brow. This was a reaction almost entirely unknown to him, even amidst the difficulties he’d experienced in his post-divorce life. It was called panic. This has to be an all-time record, he thought. I sabotaged this one before it even got started! Why do I keep doing this to myself, and to the kids?

  He knew he had to get his act together, and fast. His biggest tour in three years was starting tomorrow, and the talent pool for nannies wasn’t exactly giant in northwest Montana. Despite his air of carelessness, he knew that if he didn’t find somebody to care for his children, somebody good, while he was performing, meeting with his tour manager, rehearsing, and doing press, he was going to be seriously screwed. And more importantly––his children were his number-one priority––Charlotte and Miles would be screwed, too. Not cool, especially when Bianca was watching his every move, just waiting for him to mess up.

  Marcus flew off the couch and sprinted into his bedroom, flung on a pair of jeans and a short-sleeved button-down. His heart racing, he ran barefoot, nearly knocking over a startled Serena before slamming his palm into the screen door.

  “Bye, back in a sec,” he said while she looked at him like he was some kind of freak for asking her to care for two perfectly well-behaved children for another few minutes.

  Thankfully, the keys were already in the ignition of his mint-condition gold 1973 Cadillac El Dorado––Marcus loved how nobody locked doors in Montana, how the very idea of a car theft was unthinkable––so all he had to do was rev her up, slam the transmission into drive, stomp on the accelerator, and he was in business. He only hoped that Ryan hadn’t gotten too far for him to find her, and that the forty-year-old engine usually more accustomed to leisurely country drives than high-speed chases could deliver the goods.

  Then, realizing he had no idea what he was chasing, he called out the window to Serena, who was still looking shell-shocked on the porch, “What kind of car was she driving?”

  “I don’t know,” Serena said. “Some truck?”

  “A pickup? What make?”

  “I’m not sure, I didn’t think to look.”

  “Okay, can you at least give me a color?”

  “Red! It’s bright red! You’ll be back soon…right?” Serena called. He didn’t answer.

  Without another word, Marcus sped off.

  The driveway was still cloudy from Ryan’s own hasty departure, and Marcus took it as a good sign that the dust hadn’t quite settled. She couldn’t have gotten too far. Once he peeled out onto the asphalt of the county road, he remembered from his gardener that Ryan was from Kalispell. And he knew that there were only two ways to get from Bigfork to Kalispell: you could take 82 to 93 or you could just bang a right onto Route 35 and ride it all the way into town. Like everything else in his life up to this point, he was going to have to take a gamble, and hope he’d pick the best plan. Route 35 it was.

  Realizing that he hadn’t so much as laid eyes on a state trooper since he’d arrived a month earlier, he floored it. Fast driving, and the fact that there was practically nobody else on the road, weren’t the only things Marcus cherished about driving around Bigfork. These legendary Big Sky views gave him a chance to think, too, to really reflect on his life in a way that he’d never been able to manage in the chaos of LA. Charlotte and Miles loved it out here, too. If not for his custody agreement with Bianca, he would have loved to live here all year round, and he was pretty sure the kids felt the same way.

  But full custody of the kids was a distant dream. The reality was that even though Bianca barely paid attention to Charlotte and Miles when they were living with her, she would never give them up, either––just to spite Marcus. Worse than that, she said he was barely fit to parent them, even part-time, that he was “too immature” to handle real responsibility, and that his lifestyle made it impossible for him to parent them at all. That was a blatant lie, of course, and Marcus had recently had a long chat with a lawyer who specialized in custody cases, just to make sure he had somebody good to call in the event that Bianca ever tried to take the kids away from him altogether.

  Marcus checked out his reflection in the rearview mirror. Maybe Bianca was right. Was it mature to conduct an interview in his underwear? Was it mature to sabotage an important tour by chasing away a prospective nanny that a trusted employee had personally vouched for? Are you an adult, Marcus Troy? he thought. Or are you really no good, like your ex-wife is constantly saying?

  Marcus checked the road again. There was no sign of the red truck. He was almost at 206, the turnoff to Glacier National Park. He’d driven almost fifteen miles at about eighty-five miles an hour; if he hadn’t caught up with Ryan by now, he probably wasn’t going to. She must have taken 82 after all. The instincts he had relied on his whole life had been wrong, and now his kids wouldn’t have a nanny for the tour.

  Just after the 206 turnoff, he pulled into Woody’s, a Montana gas station/general store that sold everything from camouflage “Cougar for Hire” baseball caps to live fishing bait to alcoholic energy drinks that had been banned in California years earlier. God, he loved this state.

  Marcus had planned to pull a u-ey in the Woody’s lot, but something, or someone, rather, caught his attention in the rearview mirror: a long-legged woman walking toward him in sneakers and clingy jeans that showed off her athletic legs. First, this was just Marcus being Marcus, unable to tear his eyes away from the sudden appearance of a hot girl. But then he saw that this particular hot girl was wearing a sweater with a big-ass ugly acorn right in the middle of it.

  He got out, slammed the car door, and jogged over to her. “Ryan?” he said.

  “Mr. Troy?” She didn’t look pleased. “What are you doing here?”

  “Where’s your red truck?”

  She pointed behind her. “I parked it back there, because I had to use the restroom. What’s it to you? Did you…follow me here?”

  “Listen, you may have noticed that I am wearing a full set of clothes right now.”

  “Yes, I noticed.” She wasn’t smiling, but she wasn’t frothing at the mouth, either. Maybe Marcus had a shot.

  “Can we try that interview again? For real this time?”

  Chapter Three

  The Bus of Awesome

  Ryan stood on the expansive deck of Marcus’s house. Normally, she would have marveled at the spectacular mountain view, except that it was six thirty in the morning, and she was responsible for the safety and well-being of two children she had known for less than twenty-four hours. So she couldn’t relax, not after Marcus had offered her a salary that was double what she’d made with the Randalls, and a bonus at the end of the completed tour. This was the best job Ryan had ever had.

  “Miles,” she called out to the little boy, who was hanging off the deck railing.

  “Yeah?” He smiled. He still wouldn’t look at her when she talked to him, but he certainly had energy to spare.

  She tried for sweetness and told herself everything was going to be okay. Miles would be just fine. “How about we get you down from there?”

  “Okay,” he said innocently, before suddenly letting go and falling to the grassy hill below.

  “Oh my God,” Ryan cried, runn
ing to the edge of the deck and not even trying to keep her cool. Charlotte, not nearly as worried as she should’ve been, followed her.

  Miles lay curled up in a ball, totally still. Ryan, thinking, Oh my God, I’ve been here five minutes and I’ve already killed one of them, sprinted down to tend to him. Charlotte stood calmly by her side.

  “Are you okay?” Ryan shook Miles’s shoulder. The boy didn’t open his eyes, but started flopping around a bit too melodramatically.

  “Hey, that’s not funny,” Ryan said.

  Miles opened his eyes and began to laugh. At first it was just a giggle, but soon he was bursting at the sides. “Yes, it is,” he said, eyes bright and blue and as mischievous as his father’s.

  “No, it’s not,” Charlotte said. “It’s annoying.”

  Miles didn’t care to stick around for Ryan’s reaction. He stood up, flashed his sister a raspberry, and trotted toward the driveway. “I hear Smitty!” he yelled. Ryan looked and saw an enormous silver bus coming up the driveway.

  “I thought he was shy,” Ryan said.

  “Sometimes he is,” Charlotte said. “When he stops running around, he’s shy.”

  “You’re not shy, though, are you?” Ryan asked.

  Instead of answering, Charlotted said, “How long are you going to take care of us?”

  “Through the summer, it looks like,” Ryan said. “Is that okay?”

  “It’s okay.” Charlotte smiled, and Ryan’s heart melted. “You seem nice.”

  “Well, you and your brother seem nice, too.”

  “It’s hard being our nanny. Everybody says so.” Ryan wondered what that meant. The two of them seemed like regular kids, not walking nightmares. Which could only mean that their dad was too demanding. Uh oh.

  “Oh, come on, how hard can it be? It’s going to be just fine.”

  The ginormous bus pulled into the circular dirt driveway, kicking up a nasty dust storm. The doors opened, and a tall, lanky, long-haired man stepped out. He was bearded and smiling. In beat-up cowboy boots and dirty jeans, he looked to Ryan less like somebody who’d gotten up at the ass-crack of dawn than somebody who’d decided not to go to bed at all.

  “Smitty!” Charlotte cried, running into the arms of the scary-looking man, who, except for the cowboy duds, looked like a Game of Thrones extra. Actually, he looked like exactly what Ryan supposed he was: a rock ’n’ roll roadie.

  Smitty scooped her up and flipped her upside down with one deft movement of his arm. He had done this before, many times by the looks of it. “How’s my girl?” he asked.

  Suddenly, the screen door slammed. “How you be, Smits,” Marcus said, looking more alert and awake than Ryan thought a rock star should be before seven a.m. Wearing tight jeans and a T-shirt that showed off all those sexy tattoos, he was taller than she remembered, an easy six-foot-two. He looked like he’d just stepped out of the shower; there were little droplets of water clinging to his tan, muscular arms. Marcus bounded over (really, “bounded” was the only word; he reminded Ryan of a superhero) to Smitty and the two men bear-hugged. Miles joined them, wanting in on the reunion, clasping them around the legs.

  “Hey, little man,” Smitty said, getting down on one knee to high-five Miles. Then he looked in Ryan’s direction, arched an eyebrow, and said, “And whomsoever do we have here?” The question was ungrammatical but harmless––more comical than sleazy. When Smitty grinned, he looked less like a medieval mountain man and more like a quirky uncle.

  “I’m Ryan,” she said, walking over to shake Smitty’s hand, thinking, It’s not a hand, it’s a big, hairy paw.

  Smitty gave Marcus a quick sidelong glance Ryan couldn’t figure out. Marcus shrugged, expressionless, and Smitty said, “Very pleased to meet you, dear. You’re going to love these kids, you can bet on it. Wish I could say the same for their dad.” Then he pulled a little closer and said in a stage whisper, “He gives you any trouble, you come to me about it.”

  “Very funny,” Marcus said. “Ryan, thanks for being on time. We’ve got a long trip ahead of us, so I really appreciate you getting such an early start on short notice.”

  “Not a problem,” Ryan said, marveling at how much better behaved her employer seemed to be today, and secretly hoping that she’d scared him into it. “I can do early.”

  Before she had a chance to mentally kick herself for saying something as dumb as “I can do early,” she and Marcus locked eyes, and she felt a rush of adrenaline as she held his gaze a second longer than she should have. Realizing she was doing exactly what she’d just told herself not to, she looked to the ground and half giggled like some idiot high school kid, trying to break the tension. But she’d never seen eyes like Marcus’s before; they seemed to change color minute by minute, and they pierced right through her.

  Marcus mussed Miles’s hair and said, “Okay, bunny rabbits, let’s get hopping.”

  “Dad,” said Charlotte, rolling her eyes. “Don’t be cheesy.”

  Marcus turned to Ryan and said, “She used to love it when I called her ‘bunny rabbit.’” Then he put on a sad face for Charlotte. “And she didn’t call things ‘cheesy.’”

  “Well, she used to be a little kid, and she’s growing up,” Ryan said. It was a shameless attempt to win Charlotte over, but it worked. Charlotte was obviously pleased, and as she ran up the steps into the bus, she seemed happier than she had all morning.

  “Nicely done,” Marcus said, tipping an invisible hat to Ryan.

  “Thanks, boss,” Ryan said, winking, trying for a jokey tone, and this time, averting her gaze just slightly so that Marcus’s superhero eyes didn’t work their special powers on her.

  The five of them boarded the bus, which looked to Ryan more like a luxury hotel suite than a moving vehicle. It was tricked out with a video screening room, a posh kitchen, a full bar, and even, weirdly, a mini-library with a couple hundred books in it.

  “This is amazing,” Ryan said, running her hands over the book bindings, thinking, A rock star who reads? No way.

  Smitty, behind the wheel, revved the engine and said, “Welcome to the Bus of Awesome, Ryan.”

  …

  Marcus was good at this part of every tour: the beginning. Generally, he was a master of beginnings. It was endings, and even worse, the long, drawn-out middle parts of everyday living, that he struggled with.

  But even now that he was a dad, and life was completely different from the crazy early days when it had just been Smitty and him and a bass player in a trashed Econoline with two bucks and change on the odometer, the first day of a tour still gave him that wide-open, optimistic feeling that anything could happen. Actually, today felt better than the old days, because Charlotte and Miles were along for the ride.

  Smitty had thought it was a kooky idea to drive out to Seattle instead of flying, but Marcus had insisted. He wanted to ease the kids into the touring life, not push them into the deep end all at once. This was the first time since the divorce that Charlotte and Miles had come out on the road with him, which meant that it was really their first tour—they’d been too young to remember back then. He wanted to experience the road through their eyes, to share his love for travel and adventure with them, and hopefully, to make up for everything he’d missed by not living with them full-time.

  About fifty miles east of Spokane, he leaned over to Charlotte, who was doing something mysterious and incomprehensible on her phone––Marcus didn’t currently own one, preferring instead to borrow his staff’s phones when he needed to make or take a call––and said, “Isn’t this incredible?” She just looked at him, and he realized he needed to be more specific. “It’s just us and the road,” he said. “Like we’re pirates.”

  “Dad, pirates travel in a boat,” she said. “Not in the Bus of Awesome.”

  “I’m sorry, are you ten?” he asked her. “Or did you just skip to the teens?”

  She rolled her eyes at him. His daughter was barely a decade old, and she was already an eye-roller.

 
An hour later, Marcus sidled over to Miles, who was sitting with Ryan. The two of them played thumb wars for nearly ten minutes, which was like an eternity to a kid Miles’s age. Marcus even laid the pirate line on him––quietly, so Charlotte wouldn’t overhear and make fun of him––and it worked like a charm, the boy crying, “Aye, matey,” just like a three-foot-tall Johnny Depp.

  Marcus watched his son, so comfortable with the nanny he’d been painfully shy with only the day before. This girl seemed to be truly gifted with children. And God, was she cute. Actually, cute didn’t begin to describe what Ryan was. She was overflowing with a natural, sexy beauty, and Marcus fully realized he was breaking Celebrity Rule Number 237 by hiring someone so blatantly attractive. She wasn’t one of those LA model wanna-bes who broke six feet in heels––she was maybe five seven––but her legs were long and lean, her waist tapered and trim, and she projected a kind of elegance without even a trace of makeup. And God, what a face: those green eyes, those full, luscious red lips. Stop it, Troy, he thought. Get ahold of yourself.

  He was no fool. Marcus understood that being anything but totally professional with Ryan was the ultimate no-no even before Smitty had given him that look this morning, like, Dude, you’re only asking for trouble hiring a girl this sexy. It would be stupid in any situation, but Bianca had tried to put a scare into him the day he’d picked up the kids. Marcus had the short end of a joint custody arrangement with his ex—normally, he got the kids in Montana only eight weeks a year—which Bianca had been willing to extend a bit so that they could join him for the full ten weeks of the tour. But she told him in no uncertain terms that if he screwed up, she’d sue him for full custody, and win.

  Was that possible? She’d left Marcus for another man, and even before that, had never exactly been a candidate for Mother of the Year. Her relationship with Scott Traynor, the smarmy actor she’d cheated on Marcus with, had fizzled, and she had a habit of moving apartments every six or eight months. But even if Bianca’s case might not have been as strong as she liked to think, Marcus was tired of fighting with her. He wanted peace—for himself, sure, but even more so, for those two precious children. So he was just going to have to forget about Ryan’s endless legs and sensual curves and warm, inviting eyes. The stakes were way too high; he had no other choice.