“I do, too,” Miles said.
“You were only four,” Charlotte said, shaking her head.
This was only the third show that Ryan had seen in full, but the songs had started to make their way into her head. She could even sing the choruses to a few, although she didn’t yet identify with them as passionately as Marcus’s audience clearly did. As she looked in the front rows, she saw grown men wearing T-shirts with Marcus’s face and name on them––men like Nick, she supposed, though some of them were ten, even twenty years older––pumping their fists in time with the drums. She also saw couples engulfed in each other’s arms, swooning to the slower numbers.
It wasn’t hard to see what was turning the audience on. Everything Marcus did onstage was just so damn sexy. The way he moved that body of his, strutting around and pivoting the guitar off his hip; the way his trademark white T-shirts clung to his broad shoulders and back; the way he closed his eyes when he sang—Ryan couldn’t get enough of it. She could watch him every night and never get tired of it. And to think, this gorgeous man had been flirting with her, massaging her feet, only days earlier. The tour schedule had been so busy, Ryan and Marcus hadn’t been alone long enough for a moment like that to happen again. She wondered now if it ever would.
Once the encores began, Ryan carefully counted the songs, nervous that she might miss her cue. But it wasn’t necessary. When Marcus introduced “Love of My Life,” he made it clear to the audience that something special was about to happen.
“Folks, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve sung this next song,” he said. “It’s probably well into the thousands.” The audience screamed in anticipation. “A lot of people think it’s about a woman, but they’re wrong. It’s about the most precious things in my life, my beautiful children. So just for fun tonight, I’ve asked two very special guests to come join me, and maybe even sing the chorus along with me. But they need to know you guys want to meet them. What do you say, will you give a hand for my daughter, Charlotte, and my son, Miles?”
The crowd went crazy. “Is that the best you guys can do?!?” Marcus yelled. “Come on, bring it for my kids, will you please?” The crowd complied, and went way past crazy.
Miles looked up at Ryan for her permission. She nodded, and he immediately sprinted into his father’s arms. But Charlotte stayed put.
“Come on, sweetie,” said Ryan. “Don’t be scared.”
“I don’t want to go,” Charlotte said, looking like she was near tears.
“Don’t worry, it’ll be fine. Your brother’s already up there, see?”
“I’m not going.” Charlotte crossed her arms defiantly. “Not without you.”
Ryan, starting to panic, looked up to see Marcus peering in her direction. She didn’t want to mess this up, not in front of 10,000 people.
“But Charlotte, I’m not invited. Only you and Miles are.”
Charlotte grabbed onto Ryan’s arms and started pulling her onstage with her.
“Stop, Charlotte, this isn’t cool.” The girl was surprisingly strong for a ten-year-old.
“Yes, it is!” Charlotte continued to tug and pull, and Ryan had no choice but to follow her.
“But it’s not what your dad wanted.”
She tried to loose her hand from Charlotte’s grip, but it wasn’t easy. And by now, they were actually on the stage. People could see her, so she couldn’t make a scene by swatting crazily at a little girl’s hand. As the crowd roared, she tried to smile.
“Charlotte, please don’t!”
Three steps later, the spotlight hit Ryan’s face. Now that both kids had appeared, the audience totally erupted. The spotlights blinded her, and she could no longer see where her feet were leading her.
“Everything’s going to be fine,” Charlotte said, not upset at all, instead smiling mischievously. “Don’t be scared.”
…
Marcus didn’t know what to make of it when he saw Ryan take the stage. He’d been perfectly clear that he’d wanted the children, and only the children, to join him. But even in performance mode, it wasn’t difficult to see that Charlotte was dragging her nanny along against her will. Ryan smiled a big fake smile because she seemed to understand that was the default expression when you were unexpectedly being carted out in front of 10,000 strangers, but when she made eye contact with Marcus, she looked mortified.
Two microphones had been set up for Charlotte and Miles so they could sing the chorus with Marcus. As soon as they’d taken their positions, Ryan swiped her hand from Charlotte’s grip and started walking—no, she was actually tiptoeing, as if that would make her less noticeable—back to the side of the stage. Marcus tried to pat her on the back—the gesture felt awkward, but Ryan was up here before everyone, and he didn’t want her to go unacknowledged—but she’d slipped out so quickly that he found himself reaching out to thin air instead. He heard a few titters from the audience.
When Ryan was just a few steps away from disappearing, some schmuck in front of the stage-left monitors whistled so loudly—one of those ear-splitting, two-fingered whistles hunters used to call their dogs inside from miles away—that everyone around him plugged their ears with their fingers and looked at him with unrestrained hostility.
“Hey, take it easy, there, buddy,” Marcus said gently enough, hoping to diffuse the tension.
“Who’s that, Marcus?” Another voice called out. “Your girlfriend?”
Uh-oh. The last thing he needed was for some fool to get a rumor started about Ryan and him. He had to move quickly to squash this. “Everybody, please help me give a shout-out to the most valuable member of my crew,” he said, assuming a tone that was official, professional, and anything but romantic. “Our nanny, Ryan Evans!” Not my nanny, but our nanny. Marcus patted himself on the back for thinking on his feet. He loved to give props to the crew, and by the end of the tour he would similarly single out probably every single Bus of Awesome passenger.“Woo-hoo, Ryan!” Miles said in his still partly babyish voice, and Marcus could hear women in the front row cooing, Aaaaww. The crisis seemed to have passed, thankfully.
He nodded to Smitty, who counted off, eyes on the drummer, “A-one, a-two, a-three, four!” and the band, rock-solid now that they’d been playing every day together for this long, launched into a crack version of Marcus’s biggest hit. Singing on top of the groove felt smooth and comfortable and luxurious, like taking a ride in the ’73 El Dorado on a Montana summer day. Marcus sang:
Came into this world a frightened little boy
Never knew I’d know nobody who could give me any joy
But a man can climb a mountain if you give him enough rope
And a hopeless soul can fall in love if you give him enough hope
Marcus glanced at the kids, who were both looking up at him with mile-wide smiles. When he’d told the audience that he’d written the song for Charlotte and Miles, he’d told a white lie. In truth, of course, he’d written it for Bianca; he’d been madly in love with her at the time. But now that the kids were up here with him, he realized it described his feelings for Charlotte and Miles much better than it had ever captured his feelings for his ex-wife. He didn’t love Bianca anymore, not even a little bit, but he adored these children who were the product of their union and their love. Was it possible he’d written a song for two people he hadn’t even known when he’d written it? He thought so. And it made him feel like all the pain of his marriage, his divorce, his separation from the kids, might have been worth it, or would at some point in the future.
Marcus looked stage-left, where Ryan had disappeared. He didn’t know why, but he wanted to see her.
You’re the fire in my heart, and the love of my life
And I hope I lead a long one
‘Cause any life I live without you by my side
Won’t be nothin’ but the wrong one
He spotted Ryan, but she wasn’t looking at the stage anymore. She was talking to a couple of guys, though he didn’t recognize either one. He la
ughed to himself. How dare she speak to other men when I’m singing my biggest love song and trying to make eye contact?
You’re the love of my life, and the reason I try
To be a better, kinder man
Never want to go back to the life I lived before
Sure hope that’s not part of the plan
Marcus smiled at Miles, then bent down and gave each of the kids a peck on the cheek. The audience went wild, and he saw a woman in the front row put her hand on her heart. Rock critics accused him of pandering to the crowd, over-emoting, but wasn’t the whole point to move people? When he made a woman touch her heart, connect with the feelings that had made him write a song in the first place, he knew he was succeeding at his job.
At the same time, Marcus acknowledged the humor and irony of these lyrics he’d written when he hadn’t known anything about life or loss. Part of the plan…he’d never been the kind of guy who lived according to a plan. Life was out of control, always, and that was the beauty (and sure, sometimes, the pain) of living it. He’d never planned on being a rock star, or falling in love with Bianca, or having two beautiful babies. He’d obviously never planned on a painful split from his wife or having to beg her just so he could spend one-fifth of the year with them. But he was determined to change that, and he knew that life would get better for him and the kids. Hopefully sooner rather than later.
He glanced again stage-right. Ryan was still talking to the men, gesticulating with her hands. Two camera flashes went off. If he hadn’t been mid-song, he would have run over and checked on her. Luckily, the show was almost over; soon he’d be able to see just what the hell was going on over there. He belted out the final chorus, while Smitty, behind him, whipped the band into a big, stirring crescendo.
As they walked offstage, Marcus headed toward Ryan and the two guys—he needed to see what was happening. Over the din of the crowed, Charlotte yelled “You like her!”
“Who’s that, baby?” he asked.
His daughter looked at him as if she were the adult, and he the child, like Silly Daddy, can’t you understand anything?
“Ryan! You like Ryan!”
Marcus stopped before they got close enough for anyone to hear. “Charlotte, I like Ryan as your nanny. And as a friend, maybe. But that’s all.”
But his daughter was having none of it. “You like her, like her, I can tell!” she cried as he bundled Miles into his arms.
“Shh, enough of that, young lady. Don’t go spreading rumors.”
But Charlotte didn’t answer him.
“Charlotte, there’ll be no more talk about Ryan and me, is that clear?”
“Yes, Daddy,” she said, although she didn’t look the least bit contrite.
His daughter’s sophistication amazed him. Could she have pulled Ryan onstage like that on purpose? Had she been trying to manufacture some kind of interaction between her nanny and her father? He knew Charlotte was precocious, but he hoped she wasn’t going to start playing matchmaker. The last thing he needed was for her to get that idea in her head. If Charlotte started to think of Marcus and Ryan as a couple, even a potential couple, she could tell Bianca, who would flip.
Charlotte was still examining Marcus. “Don’t be scared, Daddy,” she said before walking toward Ryan. “Everything’s going to be fine.”
Chapter Twelve
To Smithereens
Ryan barely slept that night. Warring thoughts and impulses bombarded her, and all she could do was let them circle around, careening into each other, shooting themselves to smithereens until they’d exhausted all their ammunition, run out of fuel, and crashed to the ground.
As she’d put the kids to bed, they were still buzzing from the song they’d shared with their dad. As young as they were, their ease and comfort in front of an audience of thousands was clear. Miles was probably too young to fully comprehend the grandeur of it, while Charlotte had apparently appeared onstage so many times, the experience was almost old hat to her. But Ryan had never experienced anything close to the surreal lift, the intense surge of energy that she felt with all those eyes on her. She’d been embarrassed, sure, but, when Marcus had called out her name, and 10,000 people screamed out on behalf of her, Ryan Evans? It was hard not to feel the pride of a child, soaking in the praise of people she’d never met and never would. What a thrill. But also, what a wild ride it would be to experience that praise—that adulation, in Marcus’s case—every single night. No wonder half the famous people in the world are lunatics.
But oh, had he really had to use Ryan’s full name? She could tell by Marcus’s expression that he hadn’t been part of Charlotte’s plan, and he was probably just trying to be gracious by calling out his thanks to her. But now that she’d been fully outted—really, how many female Ryan Evanses were there in the world?—her Internet presence was sure to skyrocket. In fact, she’d been checking her phone every twenty minutes, and she saw that it already had. And with what she’d done after she’d left the stage, she’d only compounded the problem.
As soon as she’d gotten herself safely out of view, Ryan had moved back into her old spot, so she could keep an eye on the kids and be ready to receive them when “Love of My Life” was over. She was too distracted to contemplate the lyrics very seriously, although she did think the line about trying to be a kinder, better man was sweet. Marcus was a good man, kind and considerate, and being up there, that close to him, she couldn’t help but feel that magnetic pull toward him, even in the way-too-public setting. And the lyrics were just plain sexy. The idea of Marcus actively trying to be good, working at it as the song suggested, was new to her, and it turned her on. Nick had never worked to be a better person, or even considered that such a thing was possible. He was such a child next to Marcus, and adulthood, this mature, wise rock star’s brand of adulthood, was hot.
But a voice behind Ryan had interrupted her thoughts.
“Hello there, Ryan Evans,” the man had said. Ryan turned around and saw Benjamin, the little Harry Potter reporter from that first night at the Seattle Hyatt. Standing alongside the mustachioed photographer he’d been with that night, he smirked. “I knew we’d get a last name out of you eventually.”
“Hey, Benjamin,” she said, trying to stay professional with the little creep. “I’m still on the clock here, so if you could give me a little space…”
“How about just posing for us?” the photographer asked, snapping a couple of pics as he said it, that bright light hitting Ryan smack in the eyes.
“Why bother to ask, if you’re just going to do it anyway?” she said.
“She’s feisty,” Benjamin had said, while the photographer snapped away, twisting and turning the camera in the air, even getting on his knees for an angle of Ryan that couldn’t possibly be flattering. “Feisty makes for good shots. But why don’t you give us a nice posed one?”
“What, do you guys follow Marcus around for the whole tour?”
“We check in on him periodically, see how his summer’s going, that’s all,” Benjamin said.
“Are you guys even allowed to be here?” Ryan asked. “Backstage, I mean?”
Benjamin flashed a press pass. “Sure. We’re trying to get a little bit of the behind-the-scenes flavor into our stories. You know, the relationships between Marcus and his bandmates, his crew…or, say, his nanny.”
“I don’t see any other reporters back here.”
Benjamin didn’t answer the question. “Come on, just pose for us for a half second, and we’ll stop bugging you. Pretty please?”
Ryan reasoned that a pleasant expression had to be better than the contemptuous sneers she’d been shooting in Benjamin’s direction. So she put her hand on her hip, cocked her head to the right, and smiled as sweetly as she could in Mustache Man’s direction.
“Oh, that’s cute,” the photographer said.
“You’re gorgeous,” Benjamin said. “Work it, Ryan, work it.”
She was hardly working it; she was smiling prettily the same
way she would for a friend with an iPhone, and no more. Through her smile, Ryan said, “Okay, you’ve got your shot. Are we done?”
“Twerk it, Ryan!” Mustache Man said.
“Yeah, stick your tongue out, Miley-style!” Benjamin clapped with glee.
Obviously, that wasn’t going to happen. Ryan dropped her pose and crossed her arms in front of her chest, signaling an end to the impromptu photo session.
But Benjamin wasn’t finished; he was going into hardcore reporting mode. Ryan looked around her for someone to appeal to, but all hands on deck were focused on smoothly operating things onstage, not off. “Looks like you and Marcus have gotten pretty friendly, Ryan. Have you taken the relationship to the next stage yet? Or is it still strictly professional?”
A voice in Ryan’s head said, Don’t say anything, but she couldn’t help herself. “I’m just the nanny, Benjamin.”
“Yeah, but for how much longer?” Mustache Man asked.
Ryan looked over their shoulders, where Serena had at last spotted them, a concerned look on her face. Should she have called out to her, requested security to come and bail her out of this situation? But Serena dashed off before Ryan could say anything.
“There’s nothing happening between Marcus and me,” Ryan said. Even as she said it, she thought she sounded like she was denying something that was actually true. “I care for his children, and that’s all.”
“Out of all the nannies he could have picked, though, why did he go with a girl as sexy as you?” cackled Benjamin. “It’s a classic Troy maneuver.”
Ryan couldn’t restrain herself anymore. She lunged forward and shoved the little twerp, while Mustache Man said, “Yes!” and his flashbulb sprayed blinding light on her.
Behind her, Ryan heard the roar of the audience. For a moment, she imagined they were clapping for her, cheering her on like patrons at the Roman Coliseum, thirsty for blood as she played lion-tamer to these two paparazzi punks. But they were cheering Marcus and the band, of course, who were walking offstage after their second and final encore.
Love Songs for the Road Page 9