by Jackie Black
She was always afraid that no matter how hard she tried not to be a negative influence, there was always the possibility she would be misunderstood by some young person or other, and the idea appalled her.
Elizabeth glanced at the father and saw that, predictably, he was as dismayed as she was by the amount of influence she had over his daughter.
Elizabeth considered giving the girl a lecture about emulating anyone too closely, then stuck to her decision to use her influence positively.
“If I give you this autograph,” she said to her young admirer, “1 want you to promise me that you’ll try for all As at school the rest of this year.”
Maggie seemed taken aback by such a request from her idol, but since the request would be relatively easy for her to grant, she nodded and shrugged, eager to please. “Sure,” she said quickly. “I can dc that.”
Sonny Strotherton gritted his teeth at the ease with which this garishly made-up performer could gain such a promise from his stubborn daughter. He was both grateful and angry. For the barest second he wondered bitterly if his daughter would pay more attention to his instruction if he donned an outlandish costume and strummed a guitar when trying to get her to do something!
“Thank you, Maggie.” Elizabeth smiled and then did her best tc disguise her handwriting by writing slowly and carefully in the girl’s autograph book. Naturally, she failed. It seemed no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t disguise her truly awful scrawl.
Sonny watched the laborious way Elizabeth was writing and wondered wryly if she was even literate. Maybe she was so adamant aboui Maggie paying attention to her schoolwork because she’d had nc education herself and regretted it. His animosity toward the Vixen softened slightly, angling toward pity.
Finished, Elizabeth handed the pencil and book back to theii owner, then lightly touched the girl’s shining blond hair with gentle fingers, thinking the child was truly lovely. Glancing at the fathei again, she decided it wasn’t surprising the girl was so pretty when hei father was such a stunningly handsome man.
“I’ve got to go,” she said lightly, stepping back. “Thanks for coming to the concert. I hope you enjoyed it.”
Of course, Maggie didn’t really have to utter the fervent affirmation that she had loved every second of the concert. It was obvious. The father, too, Elizabeth thought wryly, had enjoyed it more than he would ever admit, and acting with a perverse need to disconcert him, she gave him a sexy wink. She almost laughed outright when her action brought an immediate expression of stiff disapproval to his distinctive face.
Elizabeth gave the two of them a little farewell wave, then turned her back and strode in her normal graceful style toward the dressing room where she would wipe off her makeup and change clothes.
As Elizabeth walked away, Maggie slipped her hand into her father’s and stared avidly after her.
“Oh, Daddy,” she sighed in a starstruck voice, “isn’t she wonderful?”
Sonny cut off an automatic denial just in time before he answered in a way that would start another fight between him and his daughter. Instead, he said nothing at all, and his ice-blue eyes were thoughtful as he watched the woman who had slithered all over the stage in such a provocative way earlier, walk away in an entirely different fashion. With her head up and back straight, she seemed suddenly to take on an aura of dignity, and he found himself realizing that underneath her godawful clothes she had a delectable figure.
“Well, Daddy, she is, isn’t she?!” Maggie persisted, and as Sonny looked down into his daughter’s pretty face and saw the beginnings of a storm rising behind her clear blue eyes, he stifled an inner sigh and forced himself to reply, though his true feelings were ambivalent at best.
“Well, she does seem to know the value of a good education,” he said aloud, thinking silently, even though she doesn’t seem to have had one herself.
“Oh, pooh!” Maggie snorted, dragging her hand out of her father’s. “She probably just asked me to make good grades ’cause you were with me.”
Sonny raised a very male eyebrow as he considered his daughter’s conclusion.
“No,” he finally shook his head, surprised to find that he meant what he was about to say. “I don’t think that young woman would say something she didn’t mean to a girl your age.” He frowned over the contradictory impressions he’d gotten of the lead singer of the Freaky Foursome.
“Well, I’m going to keep my promise to her.” Maggie sniffed. “I guess that ought to make you happy we came to the concert even though you didn’t want to bring me.”
“Yes.” Sonny nodded, steering his daughter toward the exit. “That makes me very happy.”
As his daughter smiled smugly over the victory she presumed she’d won over her father, Sonny reflected uneasily that he had also been strangely happy for a brief instant when the freakily dressed Vixen had started singing that song about “You’re the only man for me” and had looked right at him while she said the words.
You definitely need a vacation, old man, he told himself dryly as he escorted Maggie outside the auditorium. Preferably one where you leave Maggie at home and go to a Caribbean island infested with beautiful women who would likf nothing better than to show you a good time. Either you’ve been wording too hard or you’re losing your mind when you can get excited by a silly song sung by a nut dressed up like a tramp whom your own daughter views as the next best thing to a goddess in the land of the weird.
As Elizabeth drifted toward sleep that night, safe in the snug bed that had been hers since childhood, her thoughts turned idly toward the man with the unusual, and beautiful, blue eyes who couldn’t make up his mind whether she was worthy of approval or should be condemned as a detriment to society, but who definitely disapproved of his daughter’s infatuation with her. What was he doing at the concert when the Freaky Foursome was obviously not to his taste? Was he some businessman who found it expedient to support hospital charities, or had his daughter simply dragooned him into coming?
What does it matter?, she thought sleepily as she snuggled down further in her bed. You'll never see him again, and if you did, what would be the point? He's not the type to become interested in a rock singer, and you haven't got time for a private life now anyway.
She intended to stop thinking about him and go to sleep, but just as she thought she’d succeeded, another question intruded into her consciousness. Was the man married ... or was he divorced or widowed and therefore single and available?
Frowning, she shook her head, wondering why the man persisted in staying on her mind. Besides all the obvious reasons why she shouldn’t be thinking about him at all, the only thing about him that had appealed to her was his looks. She’d never been attracted to stuffed shirts, and though the man was exceedingly handsome, well- built, and possessed the most gorgeous blue eyes she’d ever seen, he was definitely a stuffed shirt. He would probably be a dead bore on a date.
Smiling over her conclusion, Elizabeth promptly fell asleep, and her first thought upon awakening late the next morning had to do with insisting that Danny let her sit in on those auditions he had said he would be conducting that day. She was tired of putting off her own life to accommodate his. There must be a female singer somewhere who could take her place without anyone being the wiser.
I’m not delaying medical school much longer, and that's all there is to it, she thought determinedly as she brushed her teeth. It's time for Danny to face the fact that my needs deserve as much consideration as he's always believed his do.
Chapter Two
Downstairs at the breakfast table in the cheerful nook fronted by bay windows, Elizabeth found Jay, clad in a white karate-type robe, drinking coffee and reading the financial page of the morning paper.
“Morning.” Elizabeth nodded at him as she went to the counter to pour herself some coffee. Jay grunted a response without looking up. When she joined him at the table a moment later, he was muttering to himself in a displeased way that alerted Elizabeth as to what
was on his mind.
“Stocks down?” she inquired sympathetically.
“Not all of them,” Jay growled. “Just the new one I bought a week ago.”
Elizabeth hid a smile. Jay played the stock market with the fervor of a gambling addict and nothing could depress his normal cheerfulness like a loss. He seemed to take it personally when a stock he chose didn’t perform as expected—as though it were a reflection on him.
“But I’m sure it’s only temporary,” he added, sounding more optimistic now. “The president of the company died of a heart attack unexpectedly and until they’ve replaced him, the stock will probably slide a bit.”
“How thoughtless of him,” Elizabeth said dryly.
Alerted by her tone, Jay lowered his paper and grinned at her. “Yes, wasn’t it,” he teased. “In future, I guess I’ll have to check out the health of a company’s management before I invest.”
Elizabeth made a face and sipped her coffee, then asked, “Where’s Danny? Still sleeping?”
Jay’s face immediately assumed an expression of smooth innocence that made Elizabeth suspicious.
“Why, I believe he’s already left to do those auditions he set up,” he replied in a vague tone. Then he dove behind his paper, increasing Elizabeth’s suspicions.
“I wanted to go with him,” she said casually, concealing the grimness she was feeling. There was no response from Jay. “Where is he holding the auditions, did he say?” she asked, still in a casual way. “Maybe I could drop in there later.”
“Ummm ... I don’t believe he mentioned where he was going to do it,” Jay mumbled, sounding distracted.
Elizabeth sat for a moment staring at an announcement on the front page that unemployment had gone up 0.1 percent in the last quarter.
“Jay,” she said quietly, and at getting no response, she reached across the table and jerked the paper from in front of Jay’s face. He looked both startled and offended as he tried to hang on to it. “Jay, it couldn’t be that my beloved brother has no intention of replacing me, could it?” she demanded in a threatening manner, dropping all pretense of casualness now.
Jay frowned and looked annoyed. “For heaven’s sakes,” he said petulantly, jerking the paper out of Elizabeth’s hand. “He’s told you he’s trying, hasn’t he? Don’t you trust your own brother?”
“Not entirely,” Elizabeth said in a grim voice. “He . . . and you — "she added at remembering the truth of what she was going to say, “—have wanted the sort of success the group is enjoying now all your lives. And it’s not beyond the realm of possibility that you’ve convinced yourselves it won’t last if I go. Which is ridiculous,” she said with firm conviction. “Any female singer can dress up like a clown and cavort onstage as convincingly as I do.”
Jay slowly lowered his paper, the look in his normally merry brown eyes turning shrewd.
“You think that’s all there is to it?” he inquired dryly.
Elizabeth looked away. She suspected what argument he was going to use on her next, but before she could think of some way to rebut it, he was already on the attack.
“What about your singing?” he demanded. “Even if you didn’t have an excellent, and more importantly, memorable, solo voice, it isn’t that easy to find someone who can blend in on the duets with Danny. You know what an unusual tone he has.”
“Meredith could,” Elizabeth reminded him of the original Vixen. Jay grimaced. “She could sing the duets, yes,” he agreed, “but her solos didn’t grab anybody the way yours do, even if she’d been mature enough to put her career first and Danny second.”
Elizabeth sighed, but not in defeat. She was determined to resist the pressure Jay was exerting to convince her the Freaky Foursome would collapse if she didn’t remain a member of it.
“Jay, there’s someone somewhere who can take my place,” she said firmly, “but if Danny doesn’t even look, we’ll never find her. Now is he really holding auditions today or is he off with some groupie having a little intimate recreation while he conveniently forgets that I have a life of my own I want to get back to?”
Jay looked pained. “Danny doesn’t date groupies,” he reminded her on a long-suffering sigh.
“No, that’s right,” Elizabeth responded sarcastically. “He’s got enough admirers here in the old hometown whom he knows personally to make that unnecessary.”
“All I know is what he tells me,” Jay said with blithe unconcern as he headed toward the door of the kitchen. “And as much as I’d like to stay and rap with you about it, I’m due for a session with my karate instructor, so I have to go.”
“How convenient!” Elizabeth snapped.
Jay paused to face her, the expression on his face dripping with surprised hurt, which didn’t fool Elizabeth for a second. Jay was a master at such games, but she’d known him too long to fall for them anymore.
“My dear, I am entitled to a certain amount of relaxation between engagements, am I not?” he huffed. “You’ll bury yourself in those stuffy medical books, which for some unknown reason you regard as relaxing, and Jerry is with his family going gaga over his newest heir, so why must I let your paranoia deprive me of my own amusements?” “Oh, get lost!” Elizabeth grated, surging to her feet to replenish her coffee. ‘Td rather take a beating than listen to one of your acts about how underprivileged you are right now!”
“Very well,” Jay responded with dignity as he pivoted and left the room.
Later on that day after Jay had finished his karate lesson and Danny had finished entertaining a young woman he had known for several years, they discussed Lissa’s suspicions.
“You were right,” Jay said as he got his bass guitar out of its case in preparation for working on a song Danny was writing for their new album. “Lissa did plan to horn in on your fictitious auditions today. It’s a good thing you got out of the house early.”
Danny grunted as he leaned forward over the piano keys and marked a note on a sheet of music. “I always know what she’s thinking,” he said absently as he played a chord, tilting his head as though to hear better, which made his thick dark hair fall forward over his wide brow.
“Well, since that’s true,” Jay responded, his tone wry, “you must be aware that she won’t be put off much longer.” He sighed, shaking his head. “What a disgusting development. We worked our butts off for years to make it, but it wasn’t until you got her to help us out when Meredith left that we made it big. And she’s convinced it wasn’t due to her! She thinks we can replace her just like that!”
Jay snapped his fingers, then spotted a tiny fleck of purple that he’d missed with the polish remover that morning and promptly put the nail in his mouth to scrape the fleck off with his teeth.
“I’ll handle it,” Danny said absently, his mind more on the song he was picking out on the piano than his sister’s desires.
“How?” Jay demanded around his fingernail. “I’m telling you, she’s about to bolt!” He looked a little guilty then, and added, “And I guess I really can’t blame her. She wants to be a doctor as badly as we want to be successful musicians.”
Danny looked up with a frown, tired of Jay’s worries about Elizabeth. “I can stall her for another six months,” he said irritably, “and by that time, we’ll be so big we can pick and choose anyone we want to replace Lissa. It won’t cost her anything but a little time. Uncle Ferris has her spot in medical school sewn up, so it’s not as if she has to worry she’ll lose it. Now stop worrying, Jay, and listen to this. I think I’ve got it fixed.”
Jay shrugged and moved closer, his attention focusing on the tune Danny was playing, his right hand moving automatically to the strings of his bass as he began to join in.
Back at the house, Elizabeth was standing in Jay’s room beside the middle-aged woman who had worked for the Farrells for as long as she could remember, shaking her head over the mess Jay had left to be cleaned up.
“He’s worse than a tornado,” Maude Stanley voiced Elizabeth’s own senti
ments. “Makes me wish he’d get a place of his own every time you all come home. Why doesn’t he, honey? Ain’t he makin’ enough money to pay his own way?”
Elizabeth sighed and shrugged. “Yes, but I can’t decide whether he likes to stay with us because he hasn’t any family of his own now and regards us as the next best thing, or whether he just wants that much more to invest in the stock market.”
“Don’t he want no social life?” Maude asked archly.
Elizabeth glanced at Maude, aware that the woman had her suspicions about Jay because of his certain effeminate characteristics and because he never dated. Elizabeth herself had long since given up trying to figure out what Jay’s inclinations were. He was such a paradox, it was impossible to reach a conclusion.
She shrugged again, ignoring the question. “Just do the best you can, Maude,” she said, patting the older woman on the shoulder as she determined silently that she would start adding a little bonus to Maude’s pay when she and Danny and Jay were home. Maude wasn’t getting any younger, and it was only fair to pay her extra when there was extra work to do.
“I ain’t promisin’ nothin’,” Maude said tartly as she bent to start picking up the clothing Jay had strung all over the room, “except that this place will look a little better when I get done than it does now. Not that it’ll last past five minutes when he gets back and starts in on it again.”
Elizabeth smiled and left Jay’s room to go to her father’s library to study for a while. As she entered the paneled room with its book-lined walls, she felt a pang of loneliness for a second, wishing as she always did at coming in here that she would find her father sitting behind his desk as usual, ready to talk to her about one of his cases. She wondered how long it was going to take before she got over missing her dad so much. He’d been dead for almost two years now, and while the pain wasn’t quite as sharp as it had been in the beginning, it was still hard to accept that she would never see him again.