Georgia had felt as though her world had ended in those agonising moments four years ago. But that was only the tip of the iceberg, for that fateful pain-filled night had only just begun.
Jarrod stood up in a sharp, uncharacteristically graceless movement, almost upsetting the easy chair he’d been sitting on, and the sound brought Georgia back from that terrible night. In one sharp, shocking split second she was in the present again.
What had they been discussing? Songs. Her sexy song. And Jarrod’s air of censure. Georgia wiped her hand shakily across her eyes as he took a couple of stiff-legged strides away from her, his back straight and so obviously reproachful. How dared he?
‘Are you short of money, Georgia?’ he asked, and she blinked, taken totally by surprise by his question.
‘Short of…? No, of course not. What made you ask that?’
‘Lockie told me about your car and I thought if you’re letting Lockie record these songs because you need the money then perhaps I could—’
‘No!’ How could he ever imagine she’d consider taking money from him? ‘No, Jarrod, I don’t need money at all.’ The words came out from between her clenched teeth but before she could continue Lockie rejoined them, and even he had trouble drawing the other two into more than a semblance of conversation.
Not long after that Jarrod took his leave, and before Lockie could ask any questions Georgia escaped to her room to get dressed, exhausted and emotionally drained, as though she had been on an arduous journey and still had to face the formidable trek back.
The patrons of the club tonight were, like last night, a sympathetic audience, and Georgia had to admit that her brother had them eating out of his hand. He had the knack on stage of winning over the most apathetic of groups.
However, just at that moment, Georgia had her own smile plastered on her face. After her pain-filled reminiscences she was finding it almost impossible to relax tonight.
Usually after the first song her nerves had settled, and she could convince herself she was all but laid back by the time the halfway mark of the evening arrived. But not tonight. Tonight she was impossibly more uptight than she’d been in their opening number.
The reason for her nervousness was sitting at the same table in the front row. The hot spotlights that lit the stage had a tendency to cloak the rest of the room in shadow, but no matter how hard she tried Georgia couldn’t block out the sight of Jarrod’s tall body lounging back in his chair as he listened to the music.
He hadn’t mentioned that he was coming to the show again tonight Last night had been bad enough but to have him here for this performance, tonight of all nights, was almost more than she could bear.
He was sitting with no outward signs of discomposure, totally unaware of the havoc he was creating within Georgia as she waited to sing the song. Her song.
It’s just a song, she kept telling herself, and she wasn’t going to allow herself to continue being such a coward.
Her heartbeats raced and her legs felt jelly-like and decidedly weak. Would it never end, this wild, breathless yearning that continued to war with the hurt and hatred that had simmered deep inside her for the past four years? And that had nothing to do with a song.
‘Now for the icing on the cake, the piece de resistance.’Lockie stepped up to the microphone again. ‘This will be the title song from the album we hope to cut, and when you hear it you’ll understand why we chose this song. It’s a sizzler.’ He ran his finger around the inside of his collar and fanned himself exaggeratedly. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the incredible, the dynamic Georgia Grayson.’
Lockie stepped back and the band began to play the softly seductive introduction. The lights dimmed, one warm spot enveloping Georgia as she stood in the silky, shimmering midnight-blue dress that clung where it touched her body. She knew it set off her faintly tanned shoulders, moulded her breasts, nipped in at the waist, to fall with soft sensuality over her hips and swirl about her nylon-clad legs. Her high-heeled shoes were little more than thin criss-crossed straps, and she hadn’t needed Lockie’s low whistle when she’d appeared on stage to tell her she looked her best.
Now she had to sing the song. She kept telling herself that if anything was going to exorcise the past singing this song would do it. It was all very well for Lockie to have been ecstatic when she’d changed her mind about singing it But now the time had come…Could she?
It was sexy, perhaps suggestive-the words, the evocative score written while the afterglow of lovemaking had still carried her high. And Jarrod was here, not feet from her. She was unable to prevent her gaze from sliding across to where he sat. She knew intuitively that his eyes were fastened on her and she nervously raised one hand to push back a strand of her hair, shining like ebony in the spotlight.
Was he sitting just a little straighter now, some thread of tension running through him?
And then she was singing.
‘Touch me, touch my body…’
The noise from the audience seemed to cease immediately.
‘Touch me, let your fingers brush me…’
Not a sliver of ice tinkled in a glass.
‘Can you feel the fire start…?’
Georgia sang instinctively from verse to chorus, her voice catching, throbbing the enticing lyrics, bringing the words to life with spellbinding expression.
‘In my dreams I’ve felt that fire…’
She could so easily let that blaze flare, just knowing he was there.
‘Your fingers setting me aflame…’
So vividly she remembered the exquisite pleasure of Jarrod’s hands moving over her.
‘Finding every sensuous secret…’
He knew each erotic place, every tiny hidden part of her, and he knew how to drive her far beyond all control.
‘As I softly sigh your name…’
Oh, Jarrod.
‘Touch me, touch my body…’
She sang to him. For him.
It was impossible to read his expression from the stage but she was so physically aware of him that the rest of the audience faded into the dimness, might not have been there at all. She was alone with Jarrod and the years slipped away. He was her first love, her only lover. Her voice reached out to him, caressed him the way she used to, the way he used to.
‘Touch me, our bodies one at last…’
Oh, Jarrod, touch me, her heart cried out as her voice faded away.
Georgia was numb now and oblivious to the audience’s response. As the last note died away there was a spine-tingling cluster of seconds of total silence before everyone was standing, hands clapping, crying for more.
The deafening sound started to seep through Georgia’s anaesthetised state, startling her, and for a moment she was disorientated, barely aware of her surroundings or her actions. She sensed Lockie moving beside her as the house lights rose. He reached up, his hand covering the microphone, and spoke softly in her ear.
‘Bloody hell, Georgia. That was something else.’
Georgia scarcely heard him as she blinked, refocusing on Jarrod. He was leaning forward in his seat now and in the hazy light through the faint drift of cigarette smoke his face looked deathly pale. He had the stilled, pained appearance of a man who’d been dealt a sharp, unexpected blow to the solar plexus and couldn’t quite regain his breath.
‘You’d better say thanks,’ Lockie prompted, indicating the still cheering crowd, and Georgia struggled to draw herself together.
She pasted her smile a trifle shakily onto her face. ‘I need a break, Lockie,’ she said in a low voice, dropping her head forward so that no one could read her lips.
‘OK. But they’ll want you to sing again later,’ he warned from behind her. ‘Be back when we finish “Mona Lisa’s Lost her Smile”.’
Georgia nodded. She was having difficulty getting the message through to her legs to carry her.
‘OK?’ he repeated, and she nodded again, turning away, somehow getting herself off the stage.
&n
bsp; ‘A big hand for the fantastic Georgia Grayson.’ Lockie made a flourishing bow after her. ‘Who shall, I assure you, return.’
Georgia almost fell into the small cubicle she used for a dressing room. She struggled over to open the high-level hopper window, to stand leaning against the wall, gulping in the faint breath of fresh air that filtered inside. Through the opening of the window she could see a couple of stars twinkling in the dark sky and she swallowed painfully.
She felt drained, as though a whole emotion-laden segment of her life had been committed to film and the reel had been rerun before her eyes. Warts and all. All the joy. All the exultation. Then all the pain.
There was no way she would be able to sing that song again. So much for banishing her ghosts! It had ripped her apart, torn open sensitive lesions. And it had all happened in full view of the public. She groaned weakly. One particular member of the public. She’d bared her very essence to Jarrod Maclean.
And she’d been so transparent. A moan of pain escaped her raw throat. Transparent? When it came to Jarrod she was as clear as crystal. Yet oh, so brittle. Hadn’t she showed that four years ago? So now he’d know she hadn’t changed.
She hadn’t; she knew that now. She still loved him as much as she had back then. Regardless of what he’d done.
It’s physical, she told herself again, purely physical. Georgia sighed with despair. She’d given up trying to believe that. Physical. Emotional. Seventeen or seventy. Jarrod Maclean had taken her heart and it was his for always, to cherish or to shatter.
But he didn’t deserve it!
Georgia felt like crying but the lump in her throat was threatening to choke her, seemed to be lodged there, the relief of tears denied her. Her entire body ached and she shakily pushed herself away from the wall, her gaze still unseeingly on the dark sky, her shoulders sagging.
Jarrod was right. She’d always known she didn’t have the temperament to be a performer. She lacked that certain something that Lockie and the other boys possessed-their pleasure at being on stage, their elation from the applause. She was a behind-the-scenes person. She could write the songs, but…
Georgia sighed brokenly. It was all so clear now. She’d allowed herself to drift along these past four years. She’d meandered through life like a slow-flowing stream, choosing the path of least resistance. All the fight had been drained out of her and she’d never attempted to replenish it.
In a flash of revelation she recognised that she hadn’t really been living but merely existing, going from day to day, week to week. Morgan had been right about that.
Had Jarrod been responsible for that too? No, it was entirely her own fault. She’d put too much faith in him, literally placed her life, her happiness in his hands, and when he’d decided he wanted his own life, excluding her, she’d let herself sink into herself. Eating. Sleeping. Breathing. But not living.
But she couldn’t forgive him for what he’d done, could she? The hurt ran too deeply. She sighed again-a long, broken sound that echoed in the small room. And then she caught her breath, sensing she was no longer alone. She spun around.
He was leaning with one shoulder against the doorjamb, to all appearances filling the door space.
In that first, wide-eyed glance she took in the whole heart-stopping length of him. From the top of his head, his thick and vital dark hair, to his toes, cased in cream trainers.
He wore a short-sleeved pale apricot tailored cotton shirt, open at the neck, the colour accentuating the tan of the V of skin showing where the collar was unbuttoned, the shirt matched with a pair of light cream canvas jeans in the latest fashion style. His hands were in his deep pockets and one ankle was crossed over the other in a composed, casual pose.
Yet Georgia knew instinctively that he was anything but relaxed. In that first glance she was unequivocally aware of the cord of tension that ran through him, holding his body taut. A pulse beat in one smoothly shaven cheek and his blue eyes were sapphire-bright. Georgia suspected that the hands in his pockets were balled into fists.
Dear heaven! It wasn’t over yet.
‘Are you all right?’ His easy words startled her and her lips slackened, a captured breath escaping in a soft hiss.
Georgia gathered herself together with some difficulty. ‘Why?’ She could have bitten her tongue. Why indeed?
‘You left the stage in something of a rush.’
Georgia shrugged. ‘I found the lights particularly hot and needed a break.’
Jarrod raised one dark eyebrow.
‘It’s quite exhausting really,’ Georgia elaborated.
‘Especially when you put so much into it.’
Her eyes fell and she shrugged again. ‘That’s what I’m paid to do.’
He was silent at that and Georgia looked up guardedly.
‘Did you have to wipe yourself out the way you did tonight?’
She gazed back at him, unable to find a quick rejoinder.
‘Whatever they pay you, it’s not nearly enough.’ He pushed himself upright and made a point of looking around the small dressing room. At her make-up case, the hard chair, the mirror with the harsh little fluorescent tube over it, at her change of clothes hanging on the rough hook on the wall.
‘They pay me pretty well actually,’ Georgia said quickly. ‘A nice little sum to put towards my new car.’
Jarrod was watching her with hooded eyes. ‘Remember what I said about the merry-go-round, and how you might not be able to get off? And so it starts.’
‘As you know from firsthand experience,’ Georgia gibed, and he took his hands out of his pockets and rested them on his hips.
‘Yes, since you remember so well,’ he tossed back at her.
Remember? Oh, there was nothing wrong with her memory. But what about his?
‘It’s hardly any of your business, Jarrod.’ Georgia’s chin lifted angrily.
‘Perhaps it isn’t, but someone should tell you you’re burning yourself out.’
‘Based on your viewing of only two performances?’ Georgia remarked sarcastically. The way she felt at the moment she suspected she was already burnt out, but she wasn’t going to have him tell her that.
‘I’m just concerned that Lockie’s going to try to talk you into doing more shows. You won’t be able to keep up the pace, Georgia. Two nights a week here on top of your fulltime job, plus the hours you spend practising, not to mention your study.’ He raised his hands and let them fall. ‘And for what? It’s too much.’
‘I’m simply helping Lockie out,’ she told him defiantly. ‘Mandy will be back next week.’
Jarrod said something under his breath and took a step into the room, making the cubby-hole seem even smaller than it was.
‘And can this Mandy sing as well as you do?’
‘Better.’
‘I find that hard to believe. Look, Georgia. Lockie—’ he began, and then stopped, shaking his head. ‘We’ve been through all this before too, Georgia. I’m worried about your health. Look at yourself in the mirror.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘It means there’s shadows beneath your eyes and you’ve lost weight.’
Georgia’s lips twisted. She’d lost a good fourteen pounds in four years. Or rather, in a month four years ago. She’d just never regained it. ‘My puppy fat, you mean. I thought thin was fashionable. Anyway, I’d say you couldn’t talk about that. You’ve lost weight yourself.’
‘We’re not discussing me. And you know very well what I mean, Georgia. Don’t make yourself ill over this.’
III! she wanted to taunt him. No, not ill, Jarrod, just sick at heart.
She glanced up at him with fire in her eyes and the concern on his face was almost her undoing. She very nearly threw herself into his arms. But she stopped herself, hardening herself.
It was too late for him to be concerned about her. But she must keep this conversation light, she told herself, or she’d end up making a fool of herself all over again.
�
��Ill? I’m as healthy as a horse.’
He gave a short, sharp laugh. ‘Healthy or not, yon were nearly dropping when you finished that song.’
‘It was that kind of song,’ she quipped lightly, and his lips thinned.
‘It was that,’ he agreed drily, and Georgia shifted indifferently. ‘It was pretty sexy.’
Georgia’s smile didn’t reach her eyes. ‘So Lockie and the boys say.’
‘But that song-it just seems a little out of character somehow.’
‘Does it?’ How she wished she had the aplomb to add a comeback with a conviction of truth. ‘That’s not what I’ve been told’, with a provocative smirk. Or perhaps, ‘I could name a dozen guys who’d give me the seal of sexy approval’. But she couldn’t. She wasn’t outrageous and there had only been one…
‘Still, Lockie thought your song would be the best one to feature on the album, and unfortunately I can see his point.’ He paused and his eyes flickered. ‘It is brilliant.’
‘Thanks.’ Georgia raised her chin.
He was still gazing at her with a tense inscrutability and she felt an urge to shock him, make him see her as he once had, remind him…
‘I wrote it four years ago,’ she added levelly.
He tensed and the shutters fell, shrouding his expression, but Georgia valiantly held his gaze, the taste of imminent revenge sweet on her tongue.
‘As a matter of fact, I wrote it the night we first made love, so if it’s the hit Lockie predicts it will be you’ll deserve some of the credit.’
Georgia’s heartbeats raced and part of her could have cringed in horror as she heard herself speak. She turned away, picking up her brush in an unsteady hand. Her mouth was dry as she pulled it unnecessarily through her hair.
Her eyes were drawn to his reflection in the mirror and what she saw had her hand halting, the brush poised above her head.
He was momentarily unaware that she could see him and his expression shocked her. He looked like a man who had been surprised by a massive punch-until he realised she had swung back to face him and recovered himself.
‘Really?’ he remarked offhandedly.
Close Relations Page 13