BornontheBayou

by Lynne Connolly

  On the other hand, if Jace followed through and decided to leave the band for her, she’d be seen by fans as responsible for shattering what she believed would be one of the most influential and exciting bands around, and destroying the pleasure of millions of people. She wouldn’t do that either. He hadn’t given her the choice, he’d just told her he was doing it, not asked for her opinion. As if she didn’t have one, or that he didn’t want to hear it.

  Madness even to imagine any possible future with this impossible man. Walking away from the man she loved would be hard, but at least she had something to walk to.

  Chapter Twelve

  “Where is she?” Half dressed, Jace erupted into the lounge of the main suite, finger-combing hair out of his eyes.

  Several women he couldn’t recall meeting before sat on the main sofa on either side of Riku, who grinned at him smugly. “These are mine, man. You don’t get to do more than shake their hands. You mean Beverley? Not seen her.”

  “I have.” Chick stood in the doorway of one of the bedrooms. He beckoned to him. “She left you a note.”

  “Fuck.” Jace strode across to the bedroom. Chick closed it behind them. He’d set this room up as a temporary office, as he did most of his hotel bedrooms. His large, top-of-the-line laptop lay leering and glaring on the desk he’d probably had brought in here, and several scribbled sticky notes littered the surface and the mirror next to it.

  Chick handed him a note. “She came past at three a.m., wheeling her little case, so I stopped her. She said she was needed at home. That true?”

  Surely she’d have woken him? He ripped open the envelope and scanned the note.

  Jace,

  I didn’t want to leave this by the bed, too cliché, but I needed to explain.

  I can’t let you do this. You can’t leave the band, they need you too much. You need them, you know you do, deep down. And how about all those other people you make a difference to, the people who love your music? You’d be walking out on them too.

  And I won’t follow you like some pathetic groupie, always scared you’ll find somebody else. I deserve better than that.

  I’m going home to see my parents. I decided what I wanted, Jace. I like organizing, so that’s what I’m going to do. It’s just organizing my own life I’m finding hard right now.

  I’ll write properly. I meant what I said.

  Beverley

  It told him everything he’d been afraid of since he’d woken to find the space next to him cold and abandoned. “She’s left me. Says she can’t let me do it.” He wouldn’t mention the other part. He was already deeply ashamed of saying it. He wasn’t some kid who couldn’t keep his dick in his pants, like when he first started out in the music business. Maybe he’d wanted to test her, to see how she’d take it, or maybe he’d gotten cold feet. Either way, it had been utterly fucking stupid to say it.

  “Do what?”

  “Leave the band.”

  Chick stared at him, mouth in a thin line. “Too fucking right she can’t. You were going to leave us mid-tour?”

  “Only when you’d found somebody to replace me. One of the session musicians could sit in for a while. And there are a few—”

  “Stop right there. Nobody can replace you. You saw what happened when Maxx left. The band nearly broke up. If it wasn’t for Riku, Zazz and V, you’d have been yesterday’s news. What makes you think Murder City Ravens would survive you leaving?”

  “It survived Maxx.”

  “Because he had serious fucking problems.” Chick struck his palm with each point, then stood with hands on hips, facing him down. “Fuck, you all did. You needed that break. But now you’re on a roll. Tell me you hate it. Tell me you hate going on that fucking stage and hearing thirty thousand people baying your name and loving your music. Tell me you hate the creation sessions, or whatever the fuck you call them. Tell me you hate the other members of the band.” He glared. Jace glared back but stayed silent. “You can’t, can you? So why does she say she’s left you?”

  “She doesn’t want me to leave the band. Says she doesn’t want that responsibility, that we wouldn’t last if I did that to her.” He made a noise of disgust. “What did she tell you?”

  “I didn’t ask, she didn’t say, other than she needed to see her folks. Got her a ticket to London like she wanted.” He motioned to the laptop. “I was online at the time.”

  “What? You bastard, why did you do that?” He could kill his manager right now. He wanted to try. Fuck, he wanted to hit something, even if it was just the wall. Or Chick. It would probably have the same effect on both of them. “You could have talked to her, persuaded her to stay.”

  Chick clicked his tongue. “Don’t do that. You’ll damage your guitar-playing hand. And your piano-playing hand.”

  “It’s the same hand,” he growled.

  “No shit.” Unimpressed, Chick turned back to his laptop. “Sounds as if she knows you better than you know yourself. You can’t put all that crap on her. And you can’t leave the band either. You feel too strongly about it.”

  “What, I love it best?” He put on a sneering tone, but as he said it, he felt it. More than everything else, except for one thing. One person. “I didn’t promise her forever, but I wanted to give what we have a fair chance.”

  “And you told her, you didn’t ask.” He glanced up from the laptop. “Didn’t you?”

  Realization hit Jace like a stone. “Shit. I fucked up, didn’t I?”

  “And then some.” Chick folded his arms, tucking his hands under his armpits. “No woman likes being told what to do. What do you plan to do about it? You know we have another show tomorrow night?”

  That made him pause. “We do?”

  “Yeah. Arshavan had a two-nighter going and they’ve let us have both nights. I gotta pay them a percentage, but I took the amount right down, so it’s worth it. Once they realized we could fill the big venues, the others have come knocking.” He glanced at the screen and then back at Jace. “I did my best for you.” He started typing, and didn’t speak until he’d done at least a paragraph. How a man with such huge hands could type so fast never failed to amaze Jace, but maybe practice worked as well for typing as it did for guitars. “Her flight left at seven a.m., but it has a fuck of a layover in Charlotte. As far as she’s concerned, it was the only flight I could find at that time in the morning at short notice. Are you game for a chase?”

  Chick had come through again. Jace didn’t have to think about it. “Sure. Find me a flight.”

  Chick leaned back and grinned. “I can do better than that, my man. Put some clothes on and get back here. I’ll have a couple of letters ready for you. Then I’ll send word to the airport. On condition you get back for the concert. You fail me there, we fall out, you hear?”

  Jace knew the voice of authority when he heard it. “Absolutely.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  “Running out on me?”

  At first Beverley thought she was hearing voices in her head. She’d imagined everything he’d said to her on the way here, cherishing each and every word, not knowing if she’d ever hear him again for real. But she didn’t remember this one.

  Then she looked up and nearly dropped her e-reader.

  Correction, she did drop it but he caught it before it hit the ground.

  The waiting area for her gate was full, so she’d settled for propping herself against a nearby pillar for an hour after wandering around the small airport one more time and looking for something other than burgers or sandwiches to eat. She’d been here hours already and she had as long to wait again.

  She swallowed, staring in disbelief at the man standing before her. He looked royally pissed and honestly, she’d expected him to be that way. What she hadn’t expected was to see it in person. “What are you doing here?”

  He glared at her. “Guess.”

  Someone behind him said, “Hey, are you—?”

  “No,” he said.

  The girl went away, casting
a dirty look at the handsome man waiting for an answer from Beverley.

  “So?” she said. “I meant what I said in the letter I left for you. You saw it?”

  “Yes.”

  She couldn’t say much, but she was saying goodbye. As if all this, her affair with Jace, going backstage with a rock band, was a dream she’d had, one she’d had for a week or so, and best forgotten. It wouldn’t happen again and she would remember it forever.

  Except it was happening now, he was drawing her in all over again, trying to persuade her this was real without saying anything. Those eyes, so blue, so clear, drinking her in as if she were all he wanted to see.

  Another girl approached. “Let’s walk,” she said, not wanting a scene.

  “Good plan.”

  She grabbed her case, or would have had he not got to it first. He gave her the reader back and she stowed it in her bag, tucking it next to the purse containing her English money. “I’m leaving for London.”

  “If you want to, that’s where we’ll go, but I’m hoping I can persuade you to come back with me. Chick will skin me alive if I don’t return in time for the gig tomorrow night. Not that I give a fuck.”

  “I do,” she said before she could censor herself. “I don’t want you hurt.”

  “Too late.” He glanced at her and when he did, she saw it, aching and raw, agony etched deep in his eyes. “You ran away.”

  “I didn’t.” They headed up the line of gates, passing people who stared at them, either because Jace was hot or because they recognized him. Or both, of course.

  “Yes you did. Ran. You did it before, didn’t you? When you found you couldn’t cook anymore, you ran as far as you could.”

  She wasn’t about to tell him he was right. Not yet. But everything he said was hitting home, making her recognize the hard truths he was telling her. She had run, although she didn’t see it like that at the time.

  “Then, when you can’t talk to me, or feel you can’t, you run again.” He stopped in the middle of the concourse and turned the wheeled case so he could face her. “What made you think you couldn’t stay?”

  “You gave me your decision as a done deal. You didn’t ask me, you didn’t talk to me or discuss it with me.”

  He studied her, scanned her face with a loving affection that threatened to break her apart. “I didn’t mean to do that. I didn’t want you trying to change my mind because it meant too much to me. So are you still running?”

  She shrugged. “Bell’s offered me a job. It’s a great opportunity. I have more leave, because the incumbent is working out his notice. So I could go home and see my parents first.”

  “They’ll see you soon enough. If you come with me on tour, we’re getting to London later in the year.”

  She stared at him doubtfully. “You still want me?” Her hand was still in her bag. She fingered the wallet containing her passport and boarding pass. “I wouldn’t. I wanted you to hate me.”

  “Hate you? How can I do that when I love you so much?”

  Taking an involuntary step back, she looked away, at the woman standing behind the desk, ready to announce passengers for the flight to—Amsterdam, the flight board said. She was staring at them, smiling. She’d heard and she was blatantly staring, a faint sentimental smile creasing her lips.

  Beverley hated public scenes when she was at the center of them, but few had come her way before now. “You’re just saying that.”

  He stepped forward and took her free hand. “No I’m not. We’ll cope, Beverley. The one thing I can’t bear is if I lose you. I swear I won’t let that after-show thing get to me.”

  “The one where you want to fuck everything in sight?”

  “That’s the one.”

  She’d hoped to shock him but he didn’t seem in the least fazed or uncertain. Instead, he dropped her hand and glanced in the direction she was looking. “Let’s make sure, shall we? Stay here.” He pinned her with a warning glance. “If you go, I’ll hunt you down again.”

  With swift strides, he went to the desk and grabbed the mic the woman had just switched on, its hum evident above the quiet chat going on around them. “I want to make an announcement.”

  At least he’d used a localized mic, so the whole airport wouldn’t hear him. Only the hundred or two people lingering in this area.

  More, after he’d started to sing. Although Jace didn’t do lead for Murder City Ravens, he sang backup and his face had become better known than before, even outside the ever-increasing band of fans. He had a sweet, rich voice, a light baritone.

  You turned my world hot and cold,

  You made me think too much, too strong,

  Until I wanted to turn my face against the wall and die.

  Not immediately romantic lyrics. Except to her, because she knew what he meant. She’d made him face things he needed to examine before he could find peace. When he sang it, she realized he’d done the same thing for her. Persuaded her that life didn’t begin and end in a kitchen, that she could do more with her life than just survive.

  He sang only a verse, and then he handed the mic back to the woman with a smile, before the security guys could reach him. She frowned, then glanced at him and smiled, and the audience applauded.

  Jace came back to her.

  “Cheesy,” she said.

  “Yeah. Come on, let’s get out of here.”

  He didn’t take her back to her gate. Instead he led her away, to another part of the airport where a small plane stood waiting on the tarmac. “You have to climb the steps to this one,” he said.

  “You didn’t charter this, did you?” She couldn’t believe he’d do that.

  He shrugged, spread his hands wide, her case resting at his feet. “I wish I could say I did. But no, Chick decided we needed one for the rest of the American part of the tour, and it was on its way from Chicago. It has another passenger onboard. So are you coming?”

  She hesitated, wanting one thing clear. “You don’t just expect me to fall in line? It’s not an order?”

  He shook his head. “Baby, I’m asking. As humbly as I know how. We can talk onboard, but we have to get in the air soon or we’ll miss our slot. Tell you what, if you still want to go to London, we’ll go first class on the next available flight. How’s that?”

  Reluctantly, she smiled, and then found how easy smiling could be when he smiled back. “It sounds like a deal.”

  Inside the plane, they found comfort and ease. And a dark-haired man, a shade taller than Jace, who shook her hand and introduced himself as Matt, then glared at Jace. “You were cutting it close, man. We’d have hours before the next slot. If they let us have it. Fuck, it’s fine for you, but with this little delay, I don’t get to see V for hours after I planned.”

  “Yeah, sorry about that.” The men exchanged a hug and much back-slapping ensued.

  Matt had a seat in a comfortable lounge area furnished with long, squashy sofas and a polished hardwood floor with thick, soft rugs under their feet. She’d hardly know they were on a plane at all except for the small windows looking out on to the runway.

  Matt grinned. “Things going good for you, I see.”

  Jace drew her forward. “This is Beverley, the woman I love. Beverley Christmas. Beverley, this is Matt Scott, who used to be Maxx Syccorraxx.”

  Not for the first time, she saw someone’s eyes widen when their owner heard her name, but her eyes widened too. Not at her name but her description. Matt gave an easy grin and held out his hand. “Welcome, woman Jace loves. About time too.”

  They shook hands. Beverley saw the openness in his face and liked this man instinctively. Maybe she should give her instincts freer rein because so far they hadn’t guided her wrong. The only other place she’d used them to effect had been in the kitchen, especially when working out a display scheme for a new dish.

  Another shock. For the first time she didn’t feel a pang of grief when she thought about her work as a chef. Just a touch of nostalgia.

  Jace help
ed her fasten one of the seat belts tucked behind the sofa cushions, then fastened himself in next to her, taking her hand. “This is incredible,” she said, looking around.

  “It is, isn’t it?” said Jace, looking at her.

  After takeoff, the flight attendant came through to ask them if they needed anything. Matt, by then busy with his laptop at one of the tables, asked for a coffee. Beverley refused. She could hardly breathe, much less eat, overwhelmed by the decision she’d just made. Jace had turned her life completely around, but he hadn’t done it forcefully, except for that last decision when she’d felt her life spiraling out of her control.

  As soon as she’d unfastened her seat belt, Jace tugged her to her feet and headed for the back of the plane. He opened one door to reveal a shower room. The shower looked small. He glanced at her, his eyebrow quirked. “Interesting. But no. Not yet, anyhow.”

  Across the narrow hallway lay a bedroom. Compact, but with a bed big enough for two. Jace dragged her inside and closed the door. Beverley sat on the bed since there didn’t seem to be anywhere else to sit, but that didn’t last long. He leaned over her and kissed her, urging her to lie back. Willingly, she did so.

  He didn’t stop until they both lay on the bed. “I thought I’d never get to do that again,” she said. She stared at him, knowing now how much harder it would have been than she’d imagined.

  “You will. More and more. We’ll have plenty of time to do that.” He cupped her face, the calluses developed from playing metal strings rubbing against her cheek in a sexy rasp. She’d come to welcome that touch, recognizing it as his even waking from sleep.

  “What do we do now?”

  “We’ve got a couple of hours.” Already he was undressing her, urging her to sit so he could pull her T-shirt over her head and reach around her to unclip her bra. But she wouldn’t let him have it all his own way. She pulled at his clothing, getting him to shed his jacket and that oh so conservative top to reveal the so unconservative body underneath.