by Dee J. Adams
She was a hoot. “Sweeper’s disease?” Mel laughed.
Ashley grinned as she began sweeping again. “So, tell me, how was your first night in the new place?”
He realized that for the first time in his life, he could stare and not get caught. Except she turned his way and smiled. As if she knew exactly what he’d just been thinking. “Uh…last night was fine,” he said, adjusting his shades and gazing out to the water. “I got to sleep pretty late. I had some boxes to unpack and some manuals to read.”
“I hated moving,” she said. “I didn’t even have that much. Still, all the shit piles up and you end up dragging it along with you.” She paused and Mel considered making a getaway. The lady was a talker. “I heard they sold the place with everything intact. That’s cool,” she continued. “No need to worry about furniture. It’s all gorgeous. The house, the interior. I walked through before it sold,” she explained. “My place was trashed when I moved in. The couple that owned it had rented it out and the guys living there demolished it. It would’ve cost me more if it hadn’t been wrecked so I was kind of glad. I worked hard to fix it up. One of these days I’ll finish.”
“What’s left to do?”
“A maid’s room and guest bathroom on the first level. I’d left it for last on purpose, but I still want to get it done. I want to make it a hobby room.”
That would’ve been equal to his music room. “What’s your hobby?” She didn’t answer immediately and the ensuing silence seemed uncharacteristic.
“I didn’t really have one, but then I picked up painting,” she finally said, then snorted a laugh. “Clearly that was the wrong thing to learn to love. What about you?” she asked with a quick reversal of attitude. “Any hobbies?” Her smile lit up her face. Straight white teeth gleamed in the sunlight and her face glistened with a sheen of perspiration.
He’d only done one thing his whole life. It had been his vocation and his avocation. “Music,” he said. He didn’t see a reason to lie about that. Of course next she’d ask about his job and he couldn’t tell her he was in insurance. With his luck she’d want to buy some. She’d probably want to know how he afforded this place. Shit, he should’ve thought this out beforehand.
She finished sweeping one step and moved below to the next. Mel looked down at the length of stairs and felt obligated to stay. “Are you in the music industry?” she asked.
Here it came. Twenty questions. The last thing he wanted to do was get caught in a lie. “I am, actually, but—”
“Don’t tell me you’re famous.” Ashley chuckled and kept sweeping. “Or I’ll be mortified.”
“Why would you be mortified?”
“You know…” She looked toward him. “The blind girl can’t see she’s living next door to Sting.”
Sting? That little tidbit should’ve lifted his spirits too. The fact that she hadn’t mentioned Seger Hughes first was a good sign. “Do I sound like Sting?”
“No, you don’t, but I’d still be embarrassed.”
“You already know my name. Have you ever heard of Mel Summers?”
She nodded in agreement. “Right. Good point. So what do you do in the music industry?”
The big question. He had to make it something close to what he did in case she asked more questions later. He still had a few benefit dates to play and she might question him about those. “I’m a guitar tech,” he blurted. Rick would forgive him for taking his identity. Hell, Rick wouldn’t have to ever find out!
She turned her head toward him. “What’s a guitar tech?”
“I tune all the guitars and make sure the musician has the right guitar for the right song.”
Her pretty blue eyes opened wide and sparkled bright. “So, you tour with a rock group.” She was like every other person when it came to show business. He knew the next question before she even asked it. “Who do you work for?”
Bingo. He may as well keep this close to his heart. He was curious to hear if she knew about him and her opinion. Maybe she was as out of touch as Lizzie and wouldn’t know him. “Seger Hughes.”
“No kidding, really?”
There went that idea. “Really.”
She started sweeping again. “That’s cool.”
He waited for the rest of the questions. The admiration. The request for concert tickets. But she just kept at the stairs with her broom and said absolutely nothing.
Below them, Roamer frolicked in the waves and played with a strand of seaweed, alternately tossing it and pouncing on it before it drifted out to sea. He was pretty funny.
“Damn,” she muttered. “I know it’s none of my business, but does a guitar tech make enough money to buy that house?” she finally asked, gesturing to his place. That was the last question he expected. Most people wanted all the dirt. Rick had told him as much.
Shit. She’d asked something else he hadn’t considered. Although Rick made a hefty salary, it wasn’t nearly enough to cover the cost of the estate. He scrambled. “No, no. Actually, I uh…I’m just house-sitting.” May as well make it realistic. “For Seger. It’s his place.” No lie there.
“Oh.” She seemed torn. “So you’re my neighbor, but not really.” The broom stilled and she stood up straight, alert and focused. “I really do live next to a rock star. Wow.”
Mel was fascinated with the sudden change in her demeanor. It was what he was used to. As if his job made him different than any other human being.
“Just to warn you, Seger has something like five houses. He’s rarely at any of them. He buys them as investments more than for living in. I seriously doubt you’ll ever see him.” Oh, shit. Stupid thing to say to a blind person. “Uh, sorry. I didn’t mean that the way it sounded.”
She shook her head and gave him a sympathetic grin. “It’s okay. I knew what you meant.” Back to the broom she went, sweeping away as if her life depended on it and after glancing down the flight of stairs again, he realized it did. “How long will you be here? Are you a permanent house-sitter or just temporary? I’d hate to lose you if you turn out to be a good neighbor.”
He laughed. “The jury’s still out, huh?”
“You never know. You could turn out to be nuts. I have to be careful. It’s still early in our neighborly relationship.”
Okay, it was official. He liked her. Damn. He purposely avoided the house-sitting question because he just wasn’t sure how to respond. “What about you?” he asked. “How did you manage a down payment? Your place isn’t as big as Seger’s, but he told me how much the price dropped on this place after the property was split. What do you do?” He smiled. “Or are you house-sitting for a famous movie star?”
“Nope. It’s my place.” She spread her arms wide and encompassed the ocean. “Aside from the occasional sweeping duties, I do nothing.” The frustration behind her words cut the warm, salty air like a knife. “Correction. I’m trying to learn Braille and I’ve become fairly proficient at investing, but I’ve still got a lot to learn.” She sighed. “I’m trying to live my life as independently as I can, but I do…I do nothing.”
He sympathized with her. He couldn’t imagine losing his sight. On a certain level they were very similar because starting over was a bitch. Her road was just a whole lot tougher. “Sounds like you’ve got a lot on your plate.”
She nodded and got quiet again. The bristles scraped against the railroad ties. Her smile faded faster than last night’s sunset. She obviously hadn’t been blind her whole life if she was just now learning how to live independently.
“If you don’t mind me asking? How did you lose your eyesight?”
“It’s not taboo to talk about so you don’t have to sound so serious. I fell down these stairs,” she said, gesturing to all the railroad ties they stood on now.
That explained the scar on her cheek. Mel respected her openness, glanced down at the steep stairs and winced. “Shit. No way? Not the whole way down?”
She shook her head. “Only half.”
Only? That had to be
at least thirty stairs. “Jeez. Thanks for the head’s up. I think I’ll hold onto the rail from now on.”
“I do, that’s for sure. All the time without exception.” She mumbled something about bees and sand.
“What was that?” Mel asked.
“Besides the sand buildup, just be careful of bees. I recommend not leaning backward if one flies in your face while you’re going up the stairs. You’re better off getting stung. It didn’t help that I was rushing, but still…it was stupid to lean back.”
“What had you in such a hurry? Racing for a fresh batch of cookies?”
“Ha. I wish, but no. I had the beginning of a migraine and my vision was getting spotty. We were packing it in for the day—my best friend was with me—so I could crash, but I never made it.”
“Boy, you crashed all right,” he mused.
“Yeah, no kidding. I woke up in the hospital with no central vision. Nothing broken,” she told him. “But almost no vision. My peripheral is so bad, I may as well be completely blind.”
“Shit,” Mel whispered. “That sucks. Is it permanent?”
“I sure as hell hope not. The doctors aren’t being all that optimistic. I think they want me to be prepared for the worst.” Sweep, sweep, sweep. She didn’t stop.
He didn’t have much experience with doctors, but he couldn’t blame them. Getting Ashley’s hopes up about regaining her vision wouldn’t do her a bit of good if she stayed blind the rest of her life.
Although if her vision returned, he wouldn’t be a mystery anymore. How long did he plan on living here and keeping his identity a secret? What happened when Lizzie moved out and someone else moved in? What happened if Ashley got her sight back?
It wasn’t like he owed her anything. He wasn’t doing her any harm by telling this little white lie. He’d seen her reaction when she found out who owned the house. She was like every other woman. Wide-eyed and fascinated. Even if it only lasted a second. Maybe she was a farm-girl from Iowa looking for the California dream.
“So how long have you lived in Los Angeles?” he asked.
“I’m a native.” She finished another step and Mel moved down to give her room to continue.
“Are you or your parents in the biz?” Show business could explain how she afforded her house.
She laughed and the sweet musical sound drifted around Mel like the breeze. He could write a song to that laugh. “Not even close,” she answered. “I lived in a tiny house in the Valley and my mom worked two jobs to make ends meet after my dad died. My sister and I busted our butts to help her.” She got quiet before adding, “I had plans.”
He shouldn’t have asked, but he couldn’t seem to stop himself. “What kind of plans?”
“I was in law school, working for a firm.” With three brisk sweeps, she finished another step, grabbed the railing and moved down again. Mel scrambled to back down out of her way. “I’d wanted to open my own practice and make enough so my mom wouldn’t have to work anymore. I didn’t have a huge passion for it, but I understood it and I knew I could make a good living if I worked hard enough. Then I was going to make enough money to travel the world.”
Clearly that hadn’t happened. That didn’t explain the house though. “Life didn’t work out the way you planned, huh?” he guessed.
“It rarely does, I’ve discovered.”
He had to agree with that.
“I had an accident. Not that accident,” she hurried to explain, gesturing again to the stairs. “A different one.”
Mel had the sudden urge to move away from her, lest another tragedy befall her and take him down in the process. “What kind of accident?”
“I was walking under some scaffolding along a building being refurbished and it collapsed.”
“Jesus. That sounds major.”
She nodded in agreement and glanced in his direction. “Can you say, ‘coma’?”
Coma! “God, how long?”
“Two months.” Sweep, sweep, as if the incident barely registered.
Mel tried to imagine losing two months of his life and realized he had actually lost more than that in hangovers. Those middle months of his tour were a complete blur. Not anything like Ashley had experienced, but his own hell nevertheless. Just one of his own making.
“Everything changed after that,” she told him. “For obvious reasons. I had months of therapy and rehab. I was definitely getting better, but the migraines were a reminder.” She paused and took a deep breath. “I was lucky. The woman next to me was killed.”
“Jesus. That’s scary shit. When did all that happen?”
“Two years ago.” Back to work with the broom. They kept descending the stairs.
The impulse to stay below her as a protective shield grew stronger inside Mel.
She’d been in this house for a year. The word settlement echoed in his head. “Did you sue the construction company?” he asked.
She shook her head. “No. I sued the guy who dropped the bags of cement mix onto the scaffolding.”
“How in the hell could someone drop cement mix off a building?”
“You’re assuming it was accidental. It was very calculated. Long story short, the man who did it was aiming for someone else.”
“So they caught him and you sued him?” Mel asked.
“Yes, and no,” Ashley said, stopping to wipe the perspiration off her forehead. She leaned against the railing. “He died, and the law firm I worked for sued his estate—the guy had millions—and won me a portion of it. They set up a financial plan and I live off that. First, I was able to set my mother up, then the guys had me invest in real estate.” She gestured up to the house. “We set a chunk in an account and I live off the interest. They gave me a little to play with so I could learn the financial markets. I never had money and I had no idea how much work is involved in keeping it, and also in building it. My budget is wicked strict. If I spend extra somewhere, it comes out of a different part of my plan. Take Roamer for instance. I hadn’t planned on a dog, so he was my weekly massage.”
Mel grinned. He’d never met anyone so willing to spew such intimate life details so quickly. She clearly had very few trust issues. “Does he know he owes you?”
“Oh, big time,” Ashley said, her smile widening. “Honestly,” she went on, “I think he knows he was saved. He’s so good, a great guard dog. Not guide dog,” she stressed with a laugh. “Guard dog. He’s very vocal.”
“Have you thought about getting a guide dog?”
Her smile faded. “No. No, I haven’t given up hope that this is temporary,” she said, tapping her temple. “I don’t want to take away a guide dog from someone who really needs it.”
Was she living in denial? If she’d gone three weeks this way, did she really think it wasn’t permanent? Mel hoped she got her vision back. She seemed like a good person, and God knows she hadn’t deserved the way it happened. No one did.
“Seger bought this place just after I got mine,” Ashley said, changing the subject and sitting on the step above him. “What took you so long to move in?”
“I was, uh, we were on tour.”
“Cool. For how long?” she asked.
“Eighteen long freaking months.” He leaned against the mountain and let the sun at him.
“A world tour, right?”
So she knew that much. “Yeah.” Mel went out on a limb. “Did you see any of his L.A. concert dates?”
“No. I missed them. I never had a lot of time for concerts unless they were on the weekend, but even then I was really busy with homework or paperwork and didn’t get to as many as I would’ve liked. After the accident I couldn’t handle the noise level. Thank God I saw Rob Thomas before the accident.”
She had to be fucking kidding. Not again. “Rob Thomas,” he repeated dumbly.
“I love him with a capital L.” She turned his way, her brows lifted high over her sunglasses. “Hey, you don’t happen to know him, do you?”
“Rob Thomas?” He couldn’t get past it
. She loved Rob Thomas. “No. I mean, I did, uh, Seger did a benefit with him once, but I was never introduced to him.”
“What I wouldn’t do to meet him.” She tilted her head sideways and Mel could practically see her fantasy.
“You know, he’s married.” Mel felt obligated to point out.
“I know. Doesn’t change the fact that he’s dreamy.”
Dreamy? Mel’s stomach turned. “Rob’s dreamy,” he said aloud. “If Rob’s dreamy, what’s Seger?”
She waved her hand flat in the air in a so-so gesture that sent his hopes in the gutter. Then she made it worse with an, “Eh.”
He pushed away from the wall, took the broom from her hands and started sweeping where she’d left off. “Just ‘eh’?” Hadn’t she stood up straight and wide-eyed when he’d mentioned that Seger owned the house? This didn’t make sense.
“Don’t start getting all defensive,” Ashley scolded. “I’m sure he’s a very nice guy, but he’s so skinny and pale and all that long hair is stringy and gets matted to his face when he sings and he’s just kind of…you know…” She made a face and a sound that he couldn’t describe, then she shrugged. “I just got tired of him.”