“Are you going to take the offer?”
“Would’ve done it already if it weren’t for you.”
“What have I got to do with it? Gran, you’ll make a fortune.”
“Never wanted a fortune,” she muttered. “Just wanted my home and my family.” She stuck her spoon back into her pot. “And soon as I take it, word is going to spread around this town like wildfire. Shop-World wants to do a whole advertising thing about me growing my strawberries and all that. How’s that gonna play when my grandson’s famous and afraid to get his face seen on some newscaster’s camera?”
“I’m not famous.”
“Jett Carr damn sure is now whether you like it or not.” She gave him a fierce look. “I know you’ve been spending time with Arabella. Quality time.”
“I’m not having a discussion about my love life with you, Gran.” He wanted to dunk his head in the stream outside his barn just thinking about it.
“There’s nothing new under the sun,” she told him tartly. “Why d’you think Herb and I had such a quick wedding? That’s the problem with all you young people. Thinking you’re the only ones who ever invented sex.”
He covered his eyes and wanted to be anywhere other than there.
“You want to keep having your way with that young lady, you’d better do more than ’fess up to that detective person. Arabella’s the one who matters, isn’t she?”
He dropped his hand. “Yes.”
She gave him a narrow-eyed glare. Then after a moment nodded decisively and pointed the end of her dripping red spoon at a drawer. “There’s a metal box in there. Get it for me.”
He pulled open the junk-filled drawer and managed to extract the flattish, rectangular box. He started to hand it to her but she just waved with her spoon. “Open it.” He did so, expecting the deck of cards that he vaguely remembered it once contained.
Instead, sitting on a folded yellowed hankie were two delicate, glittering necklaces and one small diamond ring.
“I had t’stop wearing the ring when my arthritis got too bad.” She waggled her slightly bent fingers. “But it’s yours if you want it.”
His gut tightened. “Granny—”
“Just take it.” She sniffed slightly and focused on her bubbling jam concoction. “Give it to that girl. Pretty sure you love her just like Herb loved me. Or buy yourself something fancy and modern to give her. I don’t much care so long as you get your head on straight and do what’s right.”
He slid the ring over the tip of his pinky finger. It was as far as it would go. She knew he’d never want modern and fancy. Then he kissed her lined cheek. “You’re a helluva woman, you know.”
She snorted. “Of course I know.” But she patted his cheek the same way she’d done when he was five. “Now get on with you. I don’t want to see your face until you’ve come clean with Arabella once and for all.”
He hadn’t slept. Hadn’t showered.
He knew he probably ought to at least do one of those things before he went down on bended knee, but he did neither. Just got in his truck and drove back into town.
It was a sign of his own stupidity that he had to spend an extra hour getting gas when he ran out of it halfway there.
But finally he was standing on Brady’s front porch step. The afternoon sun was high in the sky above him and he squinted against the glare because he’d also forgotten his hat back at his grandmother’s place.
“You’re falling apart, man,” he muttered to himself before reaching out to knock on the door.
He heard the squeals of little boys laughing before the door opened up and he looked down to see Toby—or was it Tyler?—looking up at him. “Hey there. I’m here to see your auntie Bella.”
“She’s in the backyard,” the boy said artlessly. “How come you made her cry?”
He frowned. “She’s crying?”
The twin’s twin popped his head into the doorway. “’Cause you’re a liar,” he said seriously. “We gotta get time out when we lie. Are you gonna get time out?”
The only thing Jay had lied about to Arabella was his past. “Can I come in?”
The two boys shook their heads. “We’re not supposed to open the door.”
“But you did.”
They gave each other looks and promptly shut the door right in his face.
Jay started to knock again, but thought better of it.
Instead, he left the geranium on the porch and walked around to the back of the house. It was protected by a tall wooden fence all the way around the yard. Logically, he knew there had to be a gate somewhere, but he was way too impatient just then to try to find it.
Feeling like the biggest louse on the planet, he stretched up and caught the top of the fence, then grunting slightly, managed to heave himself up and over.
He landed in a pile of dog poop, which should have been his biggest warning to date that things were not going to go as he planned. He scraped his boot as well as he could against the grass and walked farther into the backyard, turning around the corner of the house.
And there she sat. Her flaming hair was spread around her shoulders. The temper in Arabella’s blue eyes when she spotted him made them almost as black as the bruises that had faded over the last several days. She didn’t even seem all that surprised to see him. “What’re you doing here?”
He took a few cautious steps closer. She was holding a baseball in her hands and the way she kept turning it between her palms was a little alarming. Particularly when she’d told his mother just two days earlier how she’d played softball in high school.
“I came to tell you something I should have told you a long time ago.”
She tossed the ball lightly from one hand to the other. “I think you should know that—” She broke off, seeming to be waiting for some response.
“That I’m—” His voice came out croaky and hoarse. He cleared his throat. “I’m in love with you,” he finished more clearly.
She made a harsh, buzzing sound. “Wrong.”
“What?”
“Before the balcony collapse. You were going to tell me something. Remember?”
Time had been so full in the last several weeks that in comparison, the balcony collapse felt like it had happened years ago, rather than just six months. “I remember I wanted to tell you everything about me.”
“Like the fact that you’re a liar?”
Regret sank hard inside his gut. “Bella.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“You know. Don’t you?”
Her lips twisted. “That you’re Jett Carr?” She bounced the ball twice in her palm. “And I’m the biggest fool on the planet?”
“You’re not a fool.”
She sent the ball whizzing two inches from his head.
It bounced hard on the fence beyond him. “You should have told me,” she said flatly and marched inside the house.
She slammed the door behind her.
Jay went over to it and tried the knob. No shock that she’d locked it.
He pressed his forehead against the warm wood. “I should have told you,” he said loudly enough that if, by some miracle, she was still standing close to the door she’d be able to hear. “People used to only like me because I was Jett. And the longer things went on with you, the more I was afraid you’d like me only if I’d never been him at all. Bella, I’m sorry. I warned you that I wasn’t good enough for you but I fell in love with you, anyway. You’re everything that’s right in this freaking world.”
The door yanked open and he nearly stumbled inside. Tears glittered in her eyes, making them even more sharply blue. “I don’t know why I didn’t figure it out before I saw your damn video. You gave it all up. Became someone new. Never gonna trust again. Certainly not me. Not enough to tell me the truth. Was she the complication in California, Jay? The wom
an who broke your heart?”
His voice rose. “It wasn’t a woman who broke my heart! It was the music that did that!”
She’d paled and taken a step back as he shouted the words, and he felt even worse.
“I would never hurt you,” he said roughly.
“Bzzz,” she said thickly. “Too late.”
And she closed the door in his face yet again.
He sighed wearily. “Bella, please. There’s no other woman. There’s only you.”
“Maybe you should go.” He jerked his head back, looking up at the voice from above. Harper was leaning out an opened window. “Brady’s going to be home soon and once he sees the state Bella’s in—” She looked almost sympathetic. “Give her—give them—a little time, Jay.”
He squinted up at her. The sunlight was creating a halo around her dark head. “You overheard, I guess.”
“That you’re the sexy missing Jett?”
He grimaced, feeling his neck get hot. He’d blushed more in the last twenty-four hours than he had in his entire adult life and he didn’t much like it. “Just Jett,” he muttered.
She propped her head on her hand. “I overheard.”
He spread his hands and his grandmother’s diamond ring on his pinky winked in the sunlight. “I should have told her. I know that. But I can’t undo the past. So what am I supposed to do now?”
“Undo the future?”
“There is no future. Not without her in it.”
She smiled slightly. “Find a way to make her listen,” she suggested, and then disappeared back inside the window.
Jay blinked against the sun again. He looked around the yard. Spotted the gate finally, as well as the sturdy metal lock on its latch.
Resigned, he climbed back over the gate, this time at least managing to miss the dog crap.
He walked back to his truck, feeling the itch on his spine of several pairs of eyes, but when he looked back at the house again, he saw nothing but the twitch of curtains in the windows.
He got behind the wheel and started the engine.
As if the fates were mocking him, the radio came on to his own voice singing back at him. He spun the dial and a droning voice reciting farm futures replaced his song.
Harper’s words echoed in his head. Find a way to make her listen.
“How in the hell am I supposed to find a way to do that?”
He made it all the way back to his grandmother’s place before the obvious hit him.
He drove around the house—something he never did—and parked next to the stone barn. Inside, he flipped up the piano bench and shuffled through the music books until he found a couple sheets of staff paper.
He flipped down the lid of the grand piano with shocking disregard for its value and dropped the paper on top of the gleaming black wood. He located a stub of a pencil and then he sat down at the keyboard and got to work.
* * *
“Ohmigod, have you heard it?” Hallie squeezed a folding chair in between the ones Arabella and Beulah were occupying.
It was Monday morning and even though Arabella would have preferred to be anywhere else, family loyalty had made her show up at the hotel for Callum’s big staff meeting.
“Heard what?”
“Jett Carr’s new song. It dropped just last night and every music station’s been playing it practically nonstop. There’s a rumor he was even spotted right here in Texas. Can you believe it?”
Arabella closed her eyes. “Hallie, I don’t—”
It was too late. Hallie had already started the video playing on her phone. This time there was no shot of Jay. Or Jett. Or whatever he was calling himself.
Just hands on a piano keyboard. One raised scar on a long, tanned finger against ivory and black.
The melody was simple but haunting.
“Your love healed me,” he sang softly. Much like the way he’d sung that shoe-tying song to her nephews that day that felt so long ago. “Your love revealed me—”
“Thanks to everyone for coming today.” Callum’s voice cut over the soft music from Hallie’s phone that she quickly turned off and tucked away.
Healed me. Revealed me.
Try as she might, Arabella couldn’t keep the words from circling inside her mind. To such an extent that she missed almost everything that Callum was announcing.
She’d been so afraid that Jay would also show his face at the staff meeting, but he was nowhere to be seen. More proof that he wasn’t the man she’d believed him to be. Jett Carr might have been spotted and now it was Jay Cross who’d disappeared.
She ducked her head, surreptitiously swiping at the tears that kept leaking out.
She wasn’t the only one who was crying, though that was more caused by the announcement Callum was making.
“This Friday night,” he was saying. “That’s just four days. So spread the word. The more people who turn out, the better off we’ll all be.”
Brady hadn’t told her they’d be having a final party. But that was what it sounded like Callum was talking about.
Then the meeting broke up again and Arabella filed out miserably behind the others.
Hallie’s car was parked next to Arabella’s. “Think you’ll go back to Austin?”
“You mean if this doesn’t work?” Hallie shrugged. “How could it not?” Considering the situation, Hallie looked quite cheerful.
Arabella got into her car and drove back to Brady’s. She went inside and her energy took her as far as the narrow twin bed in her bedroom. She threw herself down on it, staring blindly at the geranium plant sitting on the windowsill. She could hear the muffled sounds of Harper and the boys from the backyard accompanied by Murphy’s excited yips.
She could sell her car. Maybe she’d get enough to pay for a one-way flight back to New York.
At least her dad would be happy.
She swiped her cheeks and pulled out her cell phone. She had two text messages, both from Tammy Jo Pendleton, containing photos of her and Ham wearing their wedding finery.
Arabella was so miserable she couldn’t even summon a speck of annoyance. She texted back a polite congratulations and then dropped the phone like a hot potato when it vibrated and Jay’s name popped up on the screen.
But he wasn’t calling her. Just sending a text message. Even though she wished she had enough willpower to delete it unseen, she swiped her screen again and the new message appeared.
You don’t have any reason to forgive me, but I still hope you’ll come.
Below the message was a small image and she frowned at her own inability to just let it go.
She tapped the image and it blew up, the headlines filling the screen.
Jett Carr
One Night Only
She slowly sat on the side of the bed, expanding the image even more to read the smaller print.
And when she had, she bolted down the stairs, nearly plowing right into Brady as he came in through the front door.
Even though he had his own phone at his ear, she waved hers in his face. “Do you believe his gall?”
He pointed to his own phone as he brushed past her, dropping his tie on the couch as he passed it. “That’s all it took?” he said to whomever was on the other end of his call. “Fifteen minutes?”
She followed him through the kitchen. “I should’ve listened to you all along. You said he was hiding something and—”
Brady turned on his heel and held up a silencing hand. “That’s good news, Kane. Thanks.” He ended the call and waved his hand in front of her. “What’s got you so wound up? As if I don’t already know.”
“He’s having a concert! Right here in Rambling Rose. It wasn’t bad enough that he lied, but now he has to rub our faces in it?”
“I wouldn’t exactly put it that way.” Looking entirely too calm about it, he
picked up Murphy, who’d been dancing around his legs, and headed out the back door. Boyish squeals greeted him and he was kissing Harper when Arabella stomped out after him.
She propped her fists on her hips. “What way would you put it?” The wary looks she earned from both her brother and Harper annoyed her even more. “Why am I the only one who’s upset here? Jay—” She shook her phone in the air. “Jett is having a concert. Right under our noses!”
Harper disentangled herself from Brady’s arms. “Do you know why?”
“Because he’s a deceitful—”
“Generous,” Harper said firmly, as if Arabella were no older than Toby and Tyler.
“Generous!” Arabella snorted. “He’s—”
“Donating his ticket sales to Hotel Fortune,” Brady said. “Callum announced it at the staff meeting.”
She felt poleaxed. “What?”
“You were there. What the hell did you think he was talking about?”
She blindly felt for a patio chair. “I wasn’t listening,” she mumbled.
Brady poked his finger at her nose. “For whatever reason, your crush is throwing us a lifesaving buoy and I don’t want—”
“Brady.” Harper closed her hands around his arm. “Arabella is the reason,” she said gently. “And it’s way more than a crush. Jay is in love with her.”
“She’s too young.”
“I am not!” Arabella’s ire instantly refocused on Brady as she shot to her feet.
“She’s only a year younger than me,” Harper added.
Brady frowned. “That’s different.”
Harper’s amused eyes met Arabella’s for a moment. “You think Jay—who has managed to keep his alter identity a secret all of these months—revealed himself to the public by volunteering his concert proceeds to Hotel Fortune because he’s been so thrilled working there as a management trainee?”
Arabella sank right back down into the chair she’d just vacated. “He volunteered?”
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