Love Songs for the Road

by Farrah Taylor

  Silently, he said the words to himself: I miss her. Could it actually be true? He had just met Ryan. Could he miss her after such a short time, when she wasn’t within arm’s reach for a few short minutes?

  It felt silly, but as he gazed proudly at his children—his daughter a little sleepy still, his son strangely intent on that too-high pile of bacon—he wondered what it might feel like if Ryan were with them every day, not just on tour, but afterward, too. And then he realized that the chances of that happening, of Ryan still being in their life after summer turned into fall, were slim to none. They were starting to feel like a foursome, but soon he, the kids, and their nanny, too, would go their separate ways. Don’t get too attached, he thought.

  …

  According to the digital clock in the Subaru station wagon of the extremely nice old lady with whom she’d eventually thumbed a ride, it was 7:48. At last, Ryan was back at the hotel. She’d been off the grid for nearly an hour after she was supposed to have picked up the kids. It had taken her less than four days to completely screw up this job.

  Halfway through the lobby, she heard Miles’s voice. She followed the sound and found the boy, along with his sister, eating a buffet breakfast in the dining room. At first they appeared to be alone, but she noticed a third place setting and a half-eaten omelette in front of it.

  “Are you okay?” asked Charlotte, seeming genuinely concerned as Ryan limped toward them. Still seated, the girl reached out toward Ryan. It was a sweet, awkward gesture, especially because Ryan was still about eight feet away from her.

  “Well, I was running, and I fell,” said Ryan, smiling at the obviousness of the statement. “Where’s your dad?”

  They ignored the question, as Miles threw down his spoon and ran to her. “You’re all bloody!” he said, in complete awe. A couple of other diners looked in her direction with alarmed expressions, and Ryan wished Miles didn’t have the habit of screaming out declarations about the state of her body every other time he saw her.

  She heard a voice behind her. “Oh my God,” said Marcus, who’d apparently come from the buffet. “What happened? Are you all right?” He put his hand on Ryan’s shoulder and turned her toward him, examining her minor wounds with the intensity of a surgeon. Despite her discomfort with such up-close scrutiny, she couldn’t help think of George Clooney, from the ER re-runs she’d watched as a kid, before he’d gone gray.

  “I’ll be fine. I just need to clean myself up, and get a brace on this ankle. I’m so, so sorry I was late.”

  “What? No way.” Marcus pulled out a chair for her and offered her support, though she didn’t need it, as she took the seat. “Here, sit down. Don’t put any weight on it.”

  “Listen, I’m fine, really. It’s just a sprain.” So that was it? She was an hour late, not a week into the job, and her employer had barely even noticed?

  Marcus knelt down, held her foot gently in his hand, and took off her shoe and sock with great care. She could smell his freshly shampooed hair, and the delicious sweetness of his skin that she’d noticed on the bus, and hoped her feet didn’t stink too much after her workout. She was thankful her running shoes were less than two weeks old.

  “Please, don’t,” Ryan said. “It’s really nothing.” She was mortified as she noticed other diners looking on, not even pretending to mind their own business.

  “Let’s just make sure,” Marcus said. His hands were big and strong, but he held her foot with such care, his touch so soft and gentle, that it quickly became ticklish. Ryan struggled not to crack up laughing.

  Another voice. “Is everything all right, Mr. Troy?” Somebody from the front desk, maybe the concierge. “Should I call a doctor?”

  “Yes,” Marcus said.

  “No, no, I’m fine,” Ryan said, half laughing. Marcus was, perhaps unconsciously, stroking the bottom of her foot, and it had become too much to bear.

  “What’s funny?” Miles asked.

  “Yeah, what’s funny?” asked Marcus.

  “I’ll call someone in,” the concierge said. “Just to be safe.”

  “I’m fine, really.” The laughter came out in a torrent, the tickling combined with the absurdity of the situation, all this fuss over a sprained ankle, and Ryan lost it.

  Charlotte and Miles began laughing, too, and soon all three of them were doing it.

  “Maybe you could just bring a first-aid kit to my room,” Marcus told the concierge, and the man sprinted away.

  “Come on,” Marcus said. “Let’s get you cleaned up and bandaged. You’ll be all better in no time.” He wouldn’t let her foot touch the ground, so there was no choice but to put her arm around him as the four of them made their way to the elevator.

  “This is exciting!” Miles said. You can say that again, Ryan thought. Injury or not, she hadn’t been this close to a man, not to mention a dead-sexy man, for months, and her heart was pounding so hard she thought it might explode.

  “Miles, don’t say that,” Marcus said. “Ryan’s in pain.”

  “I’m fine,” Ryan said. “Really.”

  She could feel the muscles in his shoulders flexing and unflexing as he supported her at the waist, steadfastly refusing to let her walk on her own weight. Marcus’s back was strong and sinewy. He had to spend a lot of hours in the gym to maintain a physique like this. She let herself relax into him. If her boss was demanding to tend to her insignificant injury, there was nothing she could do about it. She would have to go along for the ride.

  Chapter Nine

  Foot Massage

  “So what happened, exactly?” Marcus asked. He was kneeling at her feet again, examining the contents of the first-aid kit that the concierge had sent up as promised. “What do you mean, a little fall?”

  He could hear Charlotte lecturing Miles in the next room, and was glad the kids were occupying themselves and not gawking over Ryan. He wanted her to himself for the moment.

  “It was stupid of me,” Ryan said. “I looked up for a second and missed a giant root growing out of the path. A total klutz move.”

  She brushed the hair from her face. He could tell she was a little embarrassed—maybe a lot embarrassed—to be under his care, but he wouldn’t have it any other way. She was his nanny, the most important person on his staff, so he needed to make sure she was up and running again as quickly as possible. And he had more than enough training to set a sprain. Mostly, though, he liked having a good excuse to touch her this way, to be this close to her…close enough to kiss.

  “Why didn’t you call? We could have picked you up.”

  “My phone died.”

  Eventually, Marcus coaxed the whole story out of her, and by the end of the tale, Ryan’s voice, though she was obviously trying to hide it, had a slight shake to it. Marcus realized that, though she was putting up a good front, it must have been scary for her to take a fall on a route she didn’t know, in a town she’d never set foot in before. And it must have worried the hell out of her to be miles from the hotel without a working phone. He wanted to comfort her without being inappropriate, but then he realized that with the slightest touch, it would be impossible to resist going further. And going further could end in disaster. For now, he’d have to stay gentlemanly, and professional. How hard could that be?

  Marcus gently rotated her bare ankle, saying, “Does that hurt?” until Ryan felt a twinge of pain, at which point he stopped and nodded.

  “It’s not a sprain, actually. Looks like you just twisted it. We’ll have you up and running again in no time.”

  “Who are you now, Marcus Troy, MD?” Ryan asked. “Sounds like an old TV show.”

  “Actually, it was an old TV show. Close, anyway.” He loved that she could joke around after clearly having had a bit of a scare. Bianca would never have handled an injury as well, although she’d never been very interested in exercise, so she probably wouldn’t have gone running in the first place.

  Next, Marcus sprayed some disinfectant on Ryan’s foot, and began to wash it with a
clean bath towel.

  “What are you doing?” Ryan said. “I didn’t break the skin.”

  “Actually, you did.”

  Gently, he held her ankle up for her to see. “See that little cut right there?” She nodded. “Well, it could have gotten some dirt in it. And we don’t want you getting an infection.”

  “There was no dirt in it. I had a sock on.”

  “Yeah, but it could have been a little dirty. I’m just talking about a speck or two.”

  “Invisible dirt, maybe.”

  Marcus smiled. He didn’t know Ryan had a funny side. “Well, those of us in the medical profession call that invisible dirt ‘bacteria,’ and it’s actually pretty powerful stuff.”

  “Very funny,” Ryan said. “What do you mean, ‘those of us in the medical profession?’”

  Marcus didn’t answer just yet. He dried her foot thoroughly, then started blowing on it.

  “Hey, stop,” Ryan cried. “That tickles.”

  Soon enough, he quit tickling. All business again, he pulled a pair of medical scissors from the kit and tailored a padded bandage for her. Then he put it on her ankle and expertly wrapped the gauze around it and clipped it, a very professional piece of work all around.

  “Seriously, where’d you learn to do that?” she asked.

  “On the job.” He let out a deliberately pretentious sigh. “Before I was a famous rock star—”

  “You’re famous? I didn’t realize that. I thought you just liked traveling around in a bus, and sleeping in hotels.”

  Marcus chuckled. “Before I started spending each night in a different hotel just for the hell of it, I was a paramedic.”

  “You were?”

  “That’s where Smitty and I met. Riding around in an ambulance together.”

  “I can imagine you guys in the back, after some late-night shenanigans,” Ryan said. “But in the front? Driving? Taking care of people? No way.”

  “Yes way. It was a great year, too. Smitty and I co-wrote all the songs from the first record while driving around in that damn ambulance.”

  “Smitty seems like a great guy. He’s so good with the kids.”

  “He is. He’s good with me, too, keeps me grounded. If he lost both his hands in a freak accident, I’d still bring him on tour with me.”

  “He could play his guitar with his feet.”

  Marcus laughed at the joke, and as Ryan laughed along with him, he took advantage of the distraction to pick up her other foot, remove her shoe and sock, and begin massaging it tenderly.

  “What are you doing?” Ryan asked.

  “You’ve been through a minor trauma, and I’m giving you a little stress relief.” He was looking right at her, for the first time all day, just to see if the eye contact sent that same thrill right through him. It did. It was becoming like a drug to him.

  “When you’re calm and relaxed, you actually heal faster. It’s been scientifically proven.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Like I said, I’m a trained medical professional.”

  Ryan didn’t respond to that. She seemed to give in to Marcus, closing her eyes and letting him caress the arch of her foot. She breathed deeply, and he thought he heard a light moan escape her lips.

  “The job is good,” Ryan sighed. “But the benefits are phenomenal.”

  At that, they both laughed, for real this time, big belly laughs. He hadn’t had this much fun with a woman in years.

  Marcus couldn’t help himself. He let go of her foot. Slowly, looking into her eyes, he held her waist and drew her toward him until she was sitting on the edge of the bed.

  “Hey,” Ryan whispered. “What are you doing?”

  But she wasn’t protesting, and she wasn’t pushing him away—she seemed to want him as much as he wanted her. He leaned toward her, so close that her hair grazed his cheek. He could almost taste her lips.

  But suddenly Ryan jerked her head back, looking past Marcus to the kids’ bedroom.

  Marcus heard footsteps behind him. “Daddy!” Miles sprinted in his direction, nearly body-slamming into him. Quickly but, he hoped, subtly, he moved away from Ryan. Miles, beaming and filled with energy, seemed to be clueless.

  “Careful, buddy,” Marcus said. “For the next few days, we need to be really gentle around Ryan. Until she heals.”

  “Sorry,” Miles said, a little sheepish.

  Charlotte walked in—thank God she’d lagged behind her brother—and gave Ryan’s ankle a thoughtful look. “Nice work, Daddy.”

  Marcus looked for any trace of recognition on his daughter’s face, but there was nothing. Still, he’d have to be more careful. His attraction to Ryan was screwing up his judgment.

  Ryan stood up and tested the ankle. The bandage seemed strong, and she was doing a great job of recovering from the moment they’d just had. If he hadn’t been there himself, he’d have never known. “It is good,” she said. “Thanks, Marcus.” The moment between them had passed. There would be no more moans escaping Ryan’s lips today, no near-kisses between them. The girl in front of him was back to being his children’s nanny, every bit the professional herself.

  “Seriously, guys,” Marcus said, getting up, “we’re all going to have to take it a little easier on Ryan over the next few days. She’s going to be moving around a bit more slowly, and that means she can’t be running after you. When she calls, you come.”

  “Okay, Daddy,” they both said, and he was in awe at how good they were being, how much better behaved they’d been since Ryan had appeared.

  “Daddy made Ryan better!” said Miles.

  Marcus thought, Maybe Ryan makes Daddy better, too.

  Chapter Ten

  I Want to Hold Your Hand

  Marcus could do these junket-style interviews in his sleep, which was a good thing, because he was so unrested that that was almost exactly what he had to do. But while answering standard questions like, “Where does your inspiration come from?” and “What’s it like actually being Marcus Troy?” he spent the bulk of his mental energy on Ryan, playing and re-playing the memory of his unexpected morning with her in a kind of dream state.

  Smitty used to tease Marcus––and would surely do so again, as soon as he heard about the morning’s events––about playing what he called “the paramedic card.” (And vice versa, as Smitty had taken every conceivable opportunity to transform his medical expertise into romantic and/or sexual opportunities.) Yes, Marcus had tended to women in distress before, but he’d always felt cheesy while doing so and had never “capitalized” on his medical skill set. This morning, he’d been so overcome with desire––it had taken enormous concentration and control to keep his hands from shaking with excitement as he’d applied the bandage––that he didn’t feel self-conscious about the paramedic card at all.

  Marcus loved giving foot massages, touching and caressing a woman’s body, almost as much as the act of sex itself. As a younger man, of course, foreplay had been nothing more than an obligation, a prelude before the good stuff happened. But as he’d grown older, he’d noticed that the most erotic memories of his life were the things he didn’t even notice in the moment, but which became more important only later: the look in his partner’s eyes, something she’d whispered in his ear, or the way she’d tenderly grazed his face with her fingertips.

  He thought about how Smitty—both the real man and the fictional projection—would continue to warn him against any involvement at all with the nanny. But Marcus knew with all his heart––and yes, he acknowledged that he was only a few days into a nearly summer-long tour––that not all relationships are what they appeared to be, and he now rejected the debate between the angel on one shoulder and the devil on the other. He reasoned that Ryan very well may have been the angel in this scenario, and hoped that Smitty would soon return to the more earthly status of his hell-raising best friend.

  “Is there anyone special in your life?” asked the final interviewer, a friendly young man, a reporter from The Oregonian
whom Marcus had barely even registered while answering his questions on auto-pilot.

  “What’s that?” Marcus asked. He’d been in a dazed reverie for nearly two hours.

  “Sorry, I don’t mean to pry,” the reporter said. “I thought it was sort of a standard question.”

  “It’s cool,” Marcus said, wanting to put the guy at ease. “If you mean am I in a relationship, the answer is no.”

  “Gotcha.” The reporter seemed ready to move on, and started to shuffle through his notes.

  “But yes, there is someone special in my life.”

  The reporter sat up in his chair, raised his eyebrow, and checked his digital recorder to make sure it was still running. “Who’s that?” he asked.

  For a moment, Marcus panicked. Someone special in my life? He hadn’t meant to say it, but he was so exhausted, the idiotic statement had flowed right out of him. And this reporter, sensing a scoop, wasn’t just going to let it go. He tried to think of an answer that would satisfy the kid without giving anything away.

  “I don’t have a name for you. But I guess you could say I’m admiring someone from afar.”

  “Really? That must be hard to do if you’re famous. I mean, you have a pretty big entourage. A girl could see you coming from a mile away.”

  Marcus chuckled. “That’s probably true.”

  “So how does Marcus Troy admire someone from afar?”

  “Just like anybody else,” Marcus said. “With my fingers crossed.”

  …

  Ryan wouldn’t have any real interaction with Marcus until nearly twenty-eight hours after she’d gotten injured, and the waiting was killing her. The kids had started to tire of going to every concert, so Marcus (without any guilt tripping, she noticed) encouraged them to stay in, skip the previous night’s show, and watch a movie in the suite with their nanny. The next morning, Marcus had joined them for breakfast, but Alex, the tour manager, had too, and he’d monopolized Marcus with all sorts of questions and briefings about the upcoming leg of the tour. Poor Marcus had barely been able to finish his breakfast and give both of his kids a kiss. There was no time for flirty banter with Ryan.