No Accounting for Cowboys

by Leah Braemel

  Despite what the chauffeur had said, there was no sign of CJ in the room.

  “Do you think we should sit or...what?” Paige whispered.

  “Feel free to sit wherever you want, darlin’. You got here quicker than I expected.” The deep drawl from the phone echoed from the deck. A figure appeared in the doorway, the bright sunlight outside silhouetting him so they couldn’t make out the details. “Despite how butt-ugly they are, the couches here are downright comfortable.”

  He stepped inside, and Paige barely swallowed back another, “Holy fuck.”

  Though she was half-disappointed that CJ wasn’t wearing his trademark black cowboy hat, she was not about to complain about how his black muscle shirt showed every one of his abs, or how his blue jeans hugged what was, she knew from publicity stills, a deliciously hard butt. The man could have given Jake a run for his money in an arm wrestling contest, though from what Paige understood, if the media was to be trusted—which she didn’t—CJ’s muscles were from hours of hard work in a gym where Jake’s forearms and biceps were hard-earned out in the field.

  CJ held out his hand. “Jake, you made it.” He turned a blinding smile on Paige and sandwiched her outstretched hand between his. Unlike Jake’s, CJ’s hands were soft. And from the buff on his nails, he must have had a manicure recently. “You must be the lady who wondered if I was a prank caller. Convinced now that I’m the real deal?”

  A heat rising into her face in what must have been her first blush since she was eleven, Paige nodded. “Yes, sir. Sorry about that.”

  “I’m not sir. Well, I am, but only to my wife.” His smile widening, he winked at Paige. “You can call me CJ. Everyone does. Again, except my wife.”

  She laughed. “You realize the press could have a field day if I quoted you. Which I won’t of course...but...” Oh crap. Her face flamed as mouth wouldn’t stop babbling. “I’m Paige, by the way.”

  Laughing, CJ slapped Jake’s shoulder. “I like her. And, darlin’, you go ahead and tell the press what I said if you want. No press is bad press, that’s what my publicist keeps tellin’ me.”

  After they shot the breeze, discussing how the house was a rental, and CJ agreed that the decorating could only be improved by the judicious use of a flamethrower, CJ picked up a sheaf of papers holding them together from the coffee table and gestured to the deck. “Shall we pull up a chair outside and talk shop? I got a few thoughts on some of your songs.”

  As they walked onto the deck, Paige hung back, not wanting to intrude.

  When CJ realized she wasn’t following them, he frowned. “Darlin’, you’re welcome to join us if you want.”

  “Maybe our guests would like a drink first, Jesse.” A petite blonde Paige recognized as CJ’s wife, Lisa, strutted across the room, kissed her husband, then turned to Paige. “Can I get you something? We’ve got coffee in a variety of flavors—if you don’t mind those machines that use those little cup things. And we’ve bottled water, both still and sparkling, and...” She tapped her lips. “We have tea, but it won’t be sweet tea, it’s the regular, old-fashioned hot tea.”

  Feeling she wasn’t a good guest in not accepting the McGarrays’ hospitality, Paige murmured a thankful request for a bottle of water, though tap water would have done her fine.

  “You’ll have to excuse my husband’s manners, he gets caught up in his music and I swear I could drop a bomb beside him and he wouldn’t hear it.”

  Relaxing at the woman’s easy manner, Paige felt confident enough to confess, “Jake’s the same way.”

  Despite her reservations that she might be intruding on CJ’s business with Jake, Paige allowed herself to be led out to the deck and settled in a plush lounger while Lisa returned to the kitchen for drinks.

  CJ had settled into a deck chair beside Jake and was strumming on a guitar, sounding out one of Jake’s songs. She’d seen him play in concert, and on television, but up close she saw the wear on the guitar’s neck and body, proof of thousands of hours’ practice. Her attention turned to Jake who wore an awed look on his face as he perched on the chair beside his musical hero, his guitar balanced on his knee. Did he even realize he was mimicking CJ’s exact pose?

  Maybe I could take a picture. If I held my phone to my side and tilted it up... Except CJ might consider that intruding on his private life. And she didn’t like it when people snuck pictures without telling the subject.

  “Here you go.” Lisa returned and handed her a bottle of water before settling on the lounger next to Paige. She tilted her head back and closed her eyes. “Oh, I love it out here. It’s so nice to be in a chair that’s not moving.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Oh, Jesse’s just coming off a tour, which means Abigail and I end up spending most of our days sitting in the bus.”

  “Oh, right, I forgot you two have a daughter, don’t you?”

  CJ stopped strumming and his grin returned. “Yes, we do. And she’s the sweetest little angel you ever did meet.”

  “Your sweet angel is teething and as grumpy as sin,” Lisa replied drily. “Of course, Jesse is usually workin’ so I get to walk the floors with her at all hours.” She lowered her voice and mock-whispered, “I swear he volunteers to do extra interviews and gigs just to get away from us.”

  “I’d never do that, darlin’.” But CJ grinned at his wife’s teasing and winked again.

  While she wasn’t jealous of being up all night with a teething baby, Paige felt a twinge of jealousy at how they’d made their marriage work. How Lisa toured with her husband and kept their family together. Of course, having a multi-million dollar custom tailored bus to travel in, and probably a publicist and staff to do all the things Jake had had to do himself, made life a lot easier.

  “Why do you call CJ Jesse?” His first name was Charles, she’d looked it up on the internet.

  “That’s his name. His full name is Charles Jesse, but his father’s name is Charles, too, so his family always called him Jesse to keep ’em straight. Since that’s how he introduced himself when I met him, that’s how I think of him. Besides, CJ is more of a persona he puts on. When we’re alone, he’s different. Quieter. More intense, you know?”

  “Don’t give away all my secrets now, darlin’.”

  After blowing a kiss to her husband, Lisa lay back and closed her eyes.

  Paige decided a mother of a teething baby deserved a little quiet time so she took the opportunity to listen in on Jake and CJ discussing Jake’s song. They’d switched from the first song to the one Jake had been working on at their hotel room.

  “It needs something more, I know. I just can’t figure out what to do.” Jake shook his head in frustration.

  “How about here where you go up...” CJ pointed to Jake’s notebook, “...you go down instead? Like this. Lengthen it too, draw it out.”

  As soon as he finished playing the verse and bridge the way he suggested, Jake sat up straight. “Yeah, that works. Maybe if we repeat the last line of the chorus.”

  He sang the verse before, CJ joining him in on the chorus. Their voices blended in harmony, Jake’s bass emphasizing CJ’s tenor.

  The hair on Paige’s arms lifted, ran up her arms and settled at the base of her head like someone was tickling her. She stayed still, entranced, afraid if she moved they’d stop singing.

  As if they’d heard her thoughts, instead of stopping at the end of the chorus they continued for the rest of the song, their voices blending perfectly as they held the last note.

  “That’s so beautiful,” she blurted. “You two should sing it as a duet.”

  * * *

  Jake held his breath at Paige’s suggestion. Everyone in the industry knew CJ didn’t do duets. Ever. And if he did change his policy, it wouldn’t be with an unknown singer like him.

  Lisa rolled onto her side, pushing herse
lf up on one elbow. “She’s right, honey. Your voices blend real good.”

  Setting his guitar on the stand beside his chair, CJ laughed. “When people think duets, they think of a man and a woman, darlin’.”

  “Think about it, Jesse.” Lisa left the chaise and wrapped her arms around her husband’s neck. “It would make you different. It would be nice if you gave Jake here a hand up the way you got help from Waylon.”

  CJ’s lips firmed but from their angle, only Jake could see his expression. “We’ll see, darlin’. In the meantime, I’ve got to make sure I can get Jake’s song here for a good deal. And that means we’ve gotta get all the suits involved in the contracts. It’s going to take a while to hammer out all the details.”

  Damn it, that meant no duet. Still, just having CJ sing one of his songs would get his name in front of people.

  The wind picked up, fluttering the pages on Jake’s notebook.

  “Looks like there’s a storm comin’ in fast.” As CJ spoke, the clouds covered the sun, sending the temperature plunging to Jake’s Texas-thinned blood.

  A baby’s cry rasped through the monitor on the table between them.

  “Your angel baby summons me.” Lisa jumped to her feet.

  She hurried into the house, and moments later her voice came over the baby monitor shushing the baby. The infant’s cries calmed into snuffles. Minutes later she returned, an eight-month-old baby with a flowery hairband around her nearly bald head in her arms. “This is Abigail. Say hi to everyone, Abby.”

  Whether she understood what her mother asked or not, Jake couldn’t decide, but the baby clapped her hands and cooed as if she were being filmed for some baby commercial. Right up until she stuck a chubby fist in her mouth and drool ran down her arm.

  His expression softening at his wife and daughter, CJ stood. “Well, I don’t want to rush you two out the door, but we’ve got plans this evening, and I’m sure you guys need to get back before your concert tonight, Jake. It’s been a pleasure to meet y’all.”

  “Thanks for inviting us.” Jake held out his hand, unsure whether CJ had agreed to even sing his song as a single or not but afraid to jinx it by asking.

  In the limo ride home, Jake knew Paige wanted to talk to him, to find out what he thought, but he couldn’t focus. The memory of hearing CJ singing his words, his song, of just sitting beside the guy had blown him away. But even more was the yearning expression on Paige’s face when Lisa had returned with her daughter. When the kid had clapped her hands, her eyes had softened and her arms had lifted as if she wanted to hold the baby. A split second later, she’d dropped them and the expression disappeared as if it had never existed.

  They’d never talked about kids. He’d always figured he’d have them if he ever got married, but never really thought about them before. What the hell type of a father would he be if he were on the road all the time? CJ obviously managed it, but he could afford a big frickin’ bus so his family could tour with him. He could hardly expect Paige and a kid to cram into his truck, and he couldn’t afford to rent a hotel room for them every night.

  They got driven back but instead of taking the elevator, Jake led her through the lobby, past the pool and onto the beach. “I need to walk. It’s like I’ve drunk a dozen Red Bulls.”

  She grinned slyly. “I know a way I can make you work off all that energy upstairs.”

  He snugged her against him and chuckled. “Yes, you do, and as much as I want to take you up on that offer, right now I need to think. My head’s spinning.”

  They wandered along the sand and under the boardwalk, passing one or two hardy tourists intent on searching for shells. Two hotels up, complaining of the sand getting in her shoes, Paige stopped, placed her hand on Jake’s shoulder and slipped them off and walked barefoot. They walked along the shore, Paige wandering so the waves washed over her feet. She hissed and scampered out of its way. “It’s colder than I expected.”

  Stopping again, he took off his jacket and draped it around her shoulders. He glanced down at the sand and spotted a set of tiny footprints, the largest toe print no bigger than the pad of his pinkie finger. A larger set of footprints bracketed the tiny impressions and he pictured Paige chasing after a toddler, laughing, picking them up and swinging them around.

  Aw hell, they’d only known each other since July—a few scant months. It was too soon to start filling in the wedding invitations yet or buying diapers and those all-in one pajamas with the feet in them kids wore. He’d given himself a year to figure out the music industry, see if he could make something of himself. There was lots of time to make a decision about kids. The whole “I’m going to be there for my kid the way my father wasn’t” dug in its claws then eased up with memories of Ed taking him up on his horse flooded in. As much as he hated to admit it, his mother was right. Ed was his father in every way that counted.

  Yet Paige was the first women he’d ever considered having kids with, the only woman who had ever made him even think about marriage. It wasn’t that he hadn’t met a ton of nice women, but he’d always been so busy, so distracted between chores and singing, he’d let them drift away. Besides, it was Paige he loved.

  They were at least mile from the hotel when Paige tugged Jake to a stop. “We should go back, or we’re going to get drenched.”

  Jake followed her gaze to the rapidly approaching clouds and the curtain of rain that hadn’t been there when they’d gotten out of the limo.

  They didn’t make it back before the wall of clouds caught up to them. Rain lashed at them, the wind swirling it around so they couldn’t avoid it pelting into their faces. Laughing at their folly, they left puddles in their wake as they hurried across the lobby, and bigger puddles in the elevator.

  Once they were in their condo, Jake grabbed several towels from the bathroom. Keeping one for himself, he handed the others to Paige.

  Cam looked up from the couch in confusion. “Where the hell were you? I thought you said you were going to stay here all afternoon?”

  “We went out.” Oh boy, did they go out. “You won’t believe what happened.”

  “Ugh, I need to get out of these wet things and wash my hair now,” Paige announced. She placed her bag on the floor in their room, and grabbed a change of clothes. “You tell Cam what happened while I have a shower.”

  The door was closed in his face before he could offer to help and he turned to find Cam grinning at him. “Yeah, you’re not doin’ the whole shower sex thing with me sitting right here listening, dude. That’s just too creepy. Now tell me what happened.”

  “You’re never going to believe it.” Jake changed in record time, and left the towel slung around his neck as he returned to the living room. “So I got this call, right? Well, Paige got it.”

  By the time he finished filling Cam in, and laughing at his dropped jaw and myriad “Holy fucks,” the shower had been turned off and the hairdryer was buzzing away.

  Paige’s phone rang its familiar warble from the pocket of his jacket. “Hang on.”

  C. Grady...followed by his mother’s number.

  Shit. He debated letting it ring through to a voice message, but guilt squirmed in his gut. He owed her an apology, and a chance to explain. His fingers digging into the plastic case, he stabbed at the screen to accept the call. “Hey, Momma.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  A door closed outside of the bathroom—probably Cam going into his bedroom, or maybe Hunter and Phil had returned. Paige reapplied her eye shadow then frowned at herself in the mirror, tilting her head to make sure it looked right.

  She’d thought the meeting with CJ had gone well, though maybe she’d been precipitous in suggesting CJ record the song with Jake as a duet. Jake’s eyes had widened and he’d frozen until Lisa had agreed. She didn’t see what the problem was—other musicians had recorded duets. Faith Hill and Tim McGra
w, though they were husband and wife so they probably didn’t count. Reba McEntire and Vince Gill. Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton. Hmm, CJ was right. They were all male female pairings. There had to be duets done with two guys. She’d research it later.

  Jake’s tour was going well—from the receipts Jake had shown her, they’d actually made decent money the last couple gigs. And since she’d arrived and taken over selling the merchandise, they’d made even more money. The transition between Drew and Phil as their new drummer had gone smoothly, fitting in with the three of them. Four of them, if she counted herself.

  Even more surprising was how much she’d enjoyed being on the road. Hanging out with the band, and other musicians they’d met. Talking shop. Learning about their financial issues. Offering advice. Getting some too. And they’d all treated her like she belonged there, despite her strange hair color and biker chick clothes. Among some of the groupies, she been surprised to realize she was one of the most conservatively dressed of the crowd. Back in Joshua Falls, she’d always felt like the five sided peg in a four-sided hole, but with Jake and his friends, she fit in.

  Jake’d been edgy on the drive back. Which was understandable considering CJ hadn’t technically agreed to sing Jake’s song. She’d noticed it in the limousine, long before he’d mentioned needing to burn off energy. But then out on the beach, something had changed in him. His shoulders had fallen, his face had relaxed. When they’d run through the rain, she’d seen a joy that she’d not seen in him...ever. It was like he’d come to a decision.

  Whatever it was, she liked it.

  She left the bathroom and found him bracing himself against the marble fireplace mantel, staring into the empty grate, the muscles on his back flexing.

  “Hey, baby. Where’s Cam?”