On Love's Gentle Shore

by Liz Johnson

  Yes, sir. He’d keep his distance. He wouldn’t give her the chance to yell at him again. And he wouldn’t be forced to think about how he might have let her down.

  Except tonight.

  Tonight she’d paid the twelve-dollar entrance fee along with a line of tourists and a few friends and followed her fiancé into the second row on the middle aisle.

  Right in front of him.

  Tonight he’d have to stare at her all night from his spot on the stage. This wasn’t a high-tech performance venue. The lights on the stage were on the same switch as the rest of the room, so all twenty rows of seats—and the church pews along the walls—were completely visible from the stage and everywhere else in the room.

  He wasn’t sure how he was supposed to concentrate on the music when the guy with the cleft chin had his arm around the back of Natalie’s chair and was leaning in to whisper in her ear.

  That rope took another hard jerk. This was going to last all night.

  Perfect.

  He picked up his guitar, lifted the strap over his head, and thrummed it harder than was necessary to tune it.

  To his right Jordan LeSea plucked at his fiddle strings, the instrument tucked below his square jaw and bow loose in his grip. Penny Garner and Alex Folley stood just off the end of the stage at the center’s back door, talking with a few friends he recognized. He tried to catch Penny’s eye and nod her on the stage, but the middle-aged woman had thrown her head back in a deep belly laugh. Alex wasn’t much better, his attention clearly focused on a pretty brunette from the Cavendish area. Justin had seen her more than a few times, lingering around after a show. She’d smiled shyly at him. Once. Apparently he hadn’t returned the gesture, and she’d moved on to friendlier pastures.

  His forehead wrinkled and his gaze narrowed as he remembered that interaction. She’d been sweet and certainly flirting with him. So why had he scowled at her?

  Because that’s what he did. It was how he’d responded to everyone and everything for a long time.

  Since …

  Well, he didn’t want to think about that. Especially right before a show.

  “You ’bout ready, man?”

  He looked over at Jordan and nodded. “You?”

  “Sure. But who’s going to pull Alex away from that girl?”

  Alex wasn’t the best-looking guy in the room. With lanky limbs and ears a bit too big for the rest of his features, he looked like he’d forgotten to grow out of the awkward teenage years. But he was certainly the most charming guy in the whole town, and he had maneuvered his arm around the brunette’s shoulders, leaning in just enough to keep her on the line.

  The same scowl that had scared her off fell right back into place. “You do it,” Justin said.

  Jordan shook his head. “No way. This is your show.”

  “Doesn’t that mean I get to delegate unpleasant chores?”

  “Nope. Not enough people around here to delegate.” Jordan tossed him a full smirk before turning back to tighten a string on his instrument.

  With a sigh Justin hustled down the four steps from the hollow wooden stage to the tile flooring and inserted himself into the laughter there. With one arm around Alex and the other around Penny, he said, “Excuse me. I need these guys.”

  His gaze swept the small group, and it landed on Alex’s young woman, whose deep brown eyes grew wide. Something like fear swept across her face, and she took a small step under the protection of Alex’s outstretched arm.

  His whole body clenched at her reaction to him, and he searched for a smile. But it wasn’t there. “Let’s get started and give these folks what they paid for.”

  Penny and Alex nodded, followed him up the steps, and picked up their instruments. They each found their mics, and Justin stood at his, giving the audience a quick scan. His mom sat in the back row next to Harrison Grady, who was leaning into her shoulder and whispering something in her ear. Funny, Harrison rarely talked to anyone except at his diner. Whatever he’d said made her whole face light up.

  Before he could wonder what had made her cheeks glow, his mom turned toward the stage, made eye contact, and used her fingers to push up the corners of her mouth even farther.

  Great. Not only was he scaring girls, his mom also had to make the universal smile motion. His face didn’t feel any different than usual. Which probably meant that he’d become used to frowning.

  It hadn’t always been that way. Had it?

  Alex cleared his throat, so Justin stepped up, strummed his guitar, and said, “Let’s do some Stompin’ Tom Connors.”

  The tourists clapped politely, but the locals let out a whoop that could have taken a less sturdy roof off. Justin forced a smile as he launched into a song about a potato truck driver from the Canadian Maritimes’ favorite folk singer.

  Three bars in, even the island first timers were hooked, feet stomping and hands clapping. Justin let himself relax into the song. A jig featuring Jordan’s fiddle and a Maritime fishing song quickly followed, and Justin’s head and heart were swept away on the familiar melodies.

  In an instant the show was almost over, and he took a quick moment to point out Penny’s new album available on the table by the door. “Can we do a few more for you?” he asked no one in particular.

  “Do ‘Good-bye, Girl’!” The cry came from the back of the room, from Father Chuck sitting beside his mom. It landed like a punch to the gut. No way was he going to sing that song tonight. Maybe not all summer. It didn’t matter if it was his most requested—the song he was most proud of.

  Catching Father Chuck’s eye, Justin shook his head. “Not tonight.”

  The man elbowed his neighbor, who happened to share Justin’s home. Justin attempted to keep his smile in place while glaring at his mother.

  She simply crossed her arms and yelled over the low hum of the crowd, “We want to hear ‘Good-bye, Girl.’”

  Traitor.

  She knew who it was about.

  Man, the whole town knew who that song was about. It wasn’t like he’d tried to hide it. Not back then. Not when the wounds were still so fresh that every breath could reopen them.

  Maybe they liked his angry rant, knowing who had inspired it. Maybe they just liked that they could make him remember her at every show.

  But it was one thing to write a song about Natalie. It was quite another to sing it in front of her. She wasn’t an idiot. She’d know the truth by the third line.

  A few more calls from the crowd egged him on. “Do it!”

  Justin waved them off, looking to Penny to begin her next number. But the trouble with a kitchen party was that there was no set list. No rules. No one to say they couldn’t take requests.

  In fact, in any other setting, with any other audience, he’d have been happy to oblige.

  But not tonight.

  “Penny here has a brand-new album. Just came out last month.” He waved her toward her mic, but she stayed near the back of the stage, one hand resting at her waist above her generous hip.

  Come on, Penny. Don’t do this to me.

  He tried to speak to her with his eyes, to beg for her to rescue him.

  The laughing quirk of her lips told him she understood. She just wasn’t interested in saving his sorry behind. Jordan and Alex gave him matching grins.

  They all knew. And they were going to have a good laugh at his expense.

  Risking a glance toward the second row, Justin read the confusion on the face of Natalie’s fiancé. At least one person didn’t understand why a musician had been dragging his feet for sixty seconds.

  But if the horror in Natalie’s eyes was an indicator, she’d already put two and two together and come up with bad news for both of them. She had the song—had him—pegged before he’d played a single note.

  A little boy in the row behind them leaned into his mom and whispered loudly. Feet tapped and chairs scraped against the hardwood floors. A white-haired man on a pew under the oversized window crossed his arms over his stomach
and closed his eyes before his chin dipped and then jerked back up.

  Every musician knew the cues of an antsy audience. He had to win them back, and if the ongoing murmurs from the locals in the back row were right, he had no choice about what to play next.

  Natalie already knew he’d been angry. Their face-off in the barn was evidence of that.

  She might as well hear the rest of it.

  Stepping up to the microphone, he strummed an A minor chord on his guitar. The audience perked up. He shot lasers from his eyes at his pastor for starting the whole thing. The older man raised his eyebrows.

  “I wrote this one a few years ago. It’s a local favorite. Hope you like it.” His voice disappeared like vapor, and he sucked in as much nerve as he could with his next breath as Jordan leaned into his fiddle. A haunting progression filled the box of a room.

  “Went looking for you last night

  In all our favorite haunts.

  Along the water, near the light.

  But you were gone.”

  He gulped in a breath as he pumped his hand up and down his guitar. Jordan and Alex joined him, the sound swelling until it felt like it could reach the waves and still have enough energy to make it back to them.

  “You didn’t even bother to say good-bye, girl.

  You left without a second look.

  You left me on the hook,

  And you couldn’t even say good-bye, girl.”

  As the words flowed out of him, he refused to look in Natalie’s direction, his gaze locked on the back row. On Father Chuck’s seemingly smug grin and his mom’s drooping eyelids. But a movement from the middle of the room caught his attention. His gaze snapped to the little girl who’d dropped her toy, and he squeezed his eyes closed.

  If only he could play a venue where it was just him on a stage larger than a double bed.

  If only the lights above could block out the room before him, and he could lose himself to the run of the chords and the rhythm of his heart pounding in his chest.

  If only he wasn’t consigned to this life.

  “You’re nothing better than a good-bye, girl.”

  A jab in his back from Alex’s guitar was his cue that he’d missed the lead-in to the bridge. Forcing himself to fall back into the music, he pushed away the if-onlys that had only made his life more miserable.

  Settling back into the song, he opened his eyes, and they knew right where to go. Right where he didn’t want them to.

  Natalie’s face was whiter than a lone cloud against a PEI summer sky. Her blue eyes had nearly doubled in size, and her lips had all but disappeared. Arms wrapped around her middle and shoulders like stone, she glared at a fixed point near his feet.

  But her fiancé wasn’t nearly as cool. Elbows leaning on his knees and chin resting in his hands, he gave faint nods in time with the music. And he watched the musicians not with the detached interest of someone merely enjoying the music, but with the assessing eyes of someone knowledgeable. His gaze made Justin’s palms suddenly feel damp and the hairs on his neck tingle.

  Finally they reached the last chorus, and Justin had to keep himself from rushing through.

  The closing lines seemed to drag on forever, but finally it came to an end as Penny crooned a sweet note, and the room erupted in applause.

  He gave a slight bow and prayed the show would end quickly. It did.

  One more song and a solo by Jordan took them through their time, and with a wave and a word of thanks, he was off the stage and pounding a beeline for his mother. He was going to tell the back row just what he thought of them for unleashing a song he’d rather forget he’d ever written.

  But before he could make it halfway across the room, a white-haired couple stopped him. “What a wonderful show. Where can we buy your album?” the woman asked.

  Album?

  He bit back a bitter laugh. “I’m still working on that, ma’am. Excuse me.” He stepped to the side, about to make his break.

  A hard hand clamped on his shoulder and stopped him cold. The fingers didn’t exactly dig in, but the grip was firm. Before he even turned around, he knew they belonged to Natalie’s fiancé.

  And he’d never wanted to punch a pastor more.

  Taking an easy breath to get his heart back to a normal pace, Justin pressed his fists into his thighs and slowly turned.

  Sure enough, Natalie’s fiancé dropped his hand from Justin’s shoulder and held it out for a shake. Justin glanced between the man and Natalie’s still oddly pale face. Maybe it was that she’d been so red, so fired up, the last time they’d spoken. Or maybe she was gravely ill. But something wasn’t quite right with her.

  “Russell Jacobs,” the other man said by way of introduction.

  Years of his mother pounding common courtesy into him showed up in a reflex. He shook Russell’s hand and gave him a curt nod. “Justin Kane. Good to meet you.”

  “This is my fiancée, Natalie O’Ryan.”

  A beast inside him roared at being introduced to the woman he’d known forever. No one had to introduce them. Not when their names had practically been one word. JustinandNatalie. Not when they’d splashed their way through every kiddie pool in town and terrorized enough teachers to fill a retirement home.

  It took some gall for this guy to introduce them. But Russell didn’t know that. So Justin bit off the rising temper that seemed to rear its ugly head whenever Natalie showed up. He said only, “We’ve met.”

  Russell chuckled. “Of course you have. Natalie mentioned you’d gone to school together.”

  For a moment he wondered if he could shoot lasers out of his eyes, so intense was the heat flashing through him. Gone to school together? That’s how she’d explained their history? Schoolmates. Acquaintances crossing paths.

  Fine. Two could play that game.

  It was infinitely clear in that moment that this was a game. One he had no intention of losing.

  Forcing a big smile, he nodded. “Oh, we go way back. Man, I could tell you some stories about this one. We were practically engaged, you know.”

  Russell’s eyebrows dipped dangerously low, and Natalie coughed like she’d swallowed her tongue.

  With a half grin that he hoped didn’t give away how much he enjoyed that reaction, Justin said, “Well, that was the rumor anyway.”

  Natalie thumped her chest before confirming. “It was just a rumor. We were not engaged. We never even dated.”

  Her vehement denial stung, and Justin laughed to cover the flinch. “Of course not. What would our Natalie want with a dairy farmer?”

  Russell’s narrowed eyes suggested he understood more of the subtext of this conversation than Natalie would probably like him to, but he didn’t speak into it. Instead, he clapped Justin on the shoulder again. “Well, I don’t know about your dairy farming, but you’re some musician. Where’d you learn to play like that?”

  “PEI winters aren’t good for much except sitting in front of a fire and playing music.” He shrugged and then offered a real laugh. “With fifteen feet of snow and a tunnel that gets you only as far as the barn and back, everyone on the island can play at least a little.”

  Russell glanced toward Natalie, and Justin quickly amended his statement. “Well, nearly everyone.”

  She scowled, and he could hear her frequent lament. I tried to learn.

  Well, he’d tried to teach her a few times. But that had gone about as well as his mom teaching him how to drive.

  The truth of it was that while most kids on the island grew up with parents who played around the kitchen table on cold nights, Natalie’s folks hadn’t. They hadn’t even been at the table. And when she’d first started having dinner with his family, she’d been too shy to ask why his dad’s banjo had only four strings or how his mom made the old upright piano sing like the morning birds.

  “She said she only ever learned half a song on the guitar,” Russell said.

  “Three quarters.” Justin said it at the same moment as Natalie, and a familiar co
nnection zipped between them.

  So much history. So many years lost. All the years they’d missed because she’d abandoned him twisted inside.

  Again, Russell’s eyebrows asked questions that Natalie clearly hadn’t answered. While Justin had an urge to lay out their entire history, something in him pulled up short. Maybe it was the way her eyes filled with fear. Maybe it was a loyalty born from a thousand nights in the lighthouse. Maybe it was just that he knew it would be a jerk move.

  And his dad hadn’t raised him to be a jerk.

  Swallowing the words that were right there, he shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans and hunched his shoulders. “Do you play?”

  Russell nodded quickly before reaching into his pocket and pulling out his wallet. “Percussion, piano, guitar, and a touch of mandolin.”

  Justin’s eyebrows rose as he pulled his hands from his pockets. Crossing his arms, he leaned away as Russell dug through the crisp leather billfold. It matched the starch of his button-up shirt, the crispness of his jeans. Even his sleek hair looked like it had been polished.

  Had Natalie forgotten to tell him that a kitchen party wasn’t the Met?

  He glanced down at his own attire. Tan cargo shorts that were frayed at the hem. A black T-shirt that he was lucky didn’t have a bleach stain on it. Gray sneakers.

  And he was the headliner.

  He covered his chuckle with a cough behind his hand. Russell blended into the island about as well as a turnip in a potato field.

  Russell found what he’d been looking for and pulled a white card from between the leather lips. Holding it out to Justin, he said, “I know artists in Nashville who can’t sing like that.”

  Now his cough was real, his throat suddenly stone dry. His stomach hit his toes and his head spun as he tried to focus on the words clearly printed before him.

  RUSSELL JACOBS. PRESIDENT. RJ MUSIC.

  RJ Music. One of the up-and-coming labels in country and crossover music. RJ Music had Grammy winners and Billboard chart toppers. Its stable of artists boasted a judge on a reality TV singing competition.

  When Justin let himself dream about the music career he’d never been free to pursue, always it involved a label like RJ.