Country Love (A Billionaire BWWM Romance)

by Mia Caldwell

  I swallowed back the bile that rose in my throat, then clapped my hand over my mouth. A few deep breaths settled my stomach, and I felt even better once the light changed and we rolled out of sight of my old home.

  I hated Holcum. I had erased it from my life, just one more place we lived and left with no marks made on us. Except the mark was there, a scar on my heart as black as the night we piled into the station wagon and just drove - silently - away.

  I never saw my father again.

  He was somewhere in Indiana, last I heard. Put away for a very, very long time. Turns out running from your crimes only makes things worse in the end.

  My family all dealt with it in our own way. My mother moved in with her sister and seemed content to forget she ever was a wife...or mother. My younger sister still insisted on his innocence and joined the world of activism. Me, I became a journalist with the intent of finding out the truth of what happened but ended up running from my sadness into the shallow world of celebrities. But I honored my father by moving, always moving, still pathologically unable to put down roots. Perpetually the outside, no matter where I was.

  We all cope in different ways. I erased Holcum from my personal narrative, but it was still here. At least the hotel was far enough away from the family place that I could pretend I wasn't here.

  But when I got out of the car and saw LeeAnne Colfax talking to the woman at reception, my heart dropped all the way down to my muddy cowboy boots.

  "Change of plans again," I rapped on the driver's window. LeeAnne hadn't spotted me yet, but I knew it was her. She still wore her trademark braid pulled back tight from her round, pale face. She looked exhausted and I thought I saw tears in her eyes, and a stain down the front of her shirt. The woman behind reception had the same round face - her sister? Her mother? I hadn't stayed long enough in Holcum to know for sure.

  That strange longing snuck back into my brain. I stared at LeeAnne, swinging wildly between the desire to run away and the desperate desire to know if the best friend I could claim in Holcum would be happy to see me.

  I shook my head. She seemed preoccupied with her own shit. She'd probably forgotten about me already. "Take me to the airport," I told the driver. "I'm going home."

  Chapter Fourteen

  Tanner

  No amount of black coffee was enough to prepare me for Jimmy Hales bouncing around at six in the goddamned morning.

  As I stepped onto the tour bus, I sniffed, grateful that the seeped in smells of booze and old feet were drowned out in a hail of disinfectant. Then I promptly sneezed on Jimmy as he maneuvered his big body in to give me a hug.

  "Back in the saddle, right Tanner?" My big goofball of a bassist punctuated his greeting with a hearty back slap that misfired and knocked my elbow instead, sloshing my open coffee cup onto the just-cleaned floors of the bus. "Whoops, lemme get that," he said, whirling around and knocking over a few more things in his quest for the paper towels.

  I pinched the bridge of my nose and caught the eye of Fitch as he slumped smirking in the corner. He silently raised his coffee in salute, and I raised mine in reply. My drummer was an old tour-dog, who'd backed countless other heavy weights over the span of his career. I could never quite shake the feeling that he still considered me a newcomer, even as we packed stadium after stadium. He remained relentlessly unimpressed by pretty much everything, treating world tours like another day at the office. It got under my skin some of the time, but today I appreciated his low-key approach, because I was feeling the same way. Punch my timecard, I'm back from vacation.

  "I got it, Jimmy," I told my bassist. "You're taking up the whole aisle." I winked over his shoulder to Blake, who had just stepped onto the bus to find Jimmy's big body blocking his way.

  "Oops, sorry Blake," Jimmy scrambled with all the coordination of a Great Dane puppy and we all instinctively ducked. Life in close quarter gives you a sixth sense about these things.

  "Jimmy knocked something over. I'm home again," Blake smiled, spreading his arms. I went in for the proffered hug. "How you doin' brother?" I asked my best friend and rhythm guitarist.

  "LeeAnne's a mess," Blake sighed. "Baby won't stop nursing. She's like, attached to the boob all day long."

  "Sounds fun," Fitch piped up to Jimmy's ribald approval.

  Blake shot him a look. "Ain't fun at all. My poor wife's about ready to drop from exhaustion. Whole time I was home, she was either cryin' or on the phone with her sister." He heaved a sigh. "It was kind of a shit show..."

  "And you had to leave," I finished for him.

  "And I had to leave," Blake echoed, his face showing the strain of new fatherhood.

  "Ah shit, I'm real sorry, man." I wasn't sure what else to say. It was a big surprise to me when Blake up and married LeeAnne, a girl we'd grown up teasing mercilessly. Innocent stuff though, just yanking her pigtails and showing her gross bugs to make her squeal. LeeAnne was too nice to torture too badly. And I guess I could see Blake falling for her, I mean, she was pretty, in her own way, but she was always just...around. Like a little sister. When Blake showed me the ring he'd picked out, I nearly fell off my horse. And then she went and got knocked up on their honeymoon...it was all moving fast. My best friend seemed to be moving in the direction of family man, souring on touring more and more.

  "Wanna see her?" Blake smiled, brandishing his phone with a flourish.

  I obligingly looked down as he swiped through about fifty photos of a squishy newborn that looked exactly the same. But the last one, taken of the three of them on their back porch stopped me in my tracks. "Aw hell man, that's a beautiful thing right there," I said as I stared at the picture of his little family, pride written in every line of his body. "Congratulations."

  "Thanks brother," Blake said with all sincerity. "I'm hoping I can bring LeeAnne and Maddie along for a spell in a few months."

  "Sure, of course."

  "What are we looking at?" Carter nosed his way over Blake's shoulder.

  "Shit, where did you come from?"

  "Been here the last five minutes, but no one noticed me because you were all cooing over baby pictures like a bunch of women," Carter grinned evilly and ducked out of the way of Blake's punch.

  "Hey fuck you man, that's my daughter."

  "Oh yeah? Poor thing. I hope she doesn't get your eyebrows." Carter laughed as he ducked again,

  "Everyone here, Mr. Brock?" Gus, the driver, poked his bearded face into the doorway.

  I took a look at my merry band of misfits. "Yeah, we're here."

  Blake looked up from where he had Carter pinned on the floor. "Weird," he observed, while simultaneously directing punches at Carter's exposed ribs. "Feels different this time."

  "Yeah?"

  "I dunno, bigger. Like we're missing some people."

  I looked out the window. Monique had left exactly two weeks and five days ago. In that time, I fixed every fence rail over fifty linear miles. I cleared brush, made some orders, and arranged for a tenant to keep up the place while I was away. And the whole time I did that, I was rehearsing angry confrontations with her, coming up with convoluted ways I could see her again. Never had a woman gotten so under my skin. I wanted to throttle her, kiss her, fuck her, and shake her right before I did it all over again. But there was no way I could make that happen…

  "I know what you mean," I said, with more sadness than I intended.

  "Ever notice this about starting a tour?" Jimmy piped up. "How weird it is?"

  "What do you mean?" Blake said, apparently done with pummeling Carter. He stood up and hauled the keyboardist to his feet and both grabbed their coffee like nothing had happened.

  "It's like, I dunno, have you ever gone skydiving? It's like that moment right before you jump. Anything could happen in that moment. You could decide not to do it and turn around. You could jump and your chute doesn't open and you're totally dead. Or you could jump and have the best damn thirty seconds of your life. The moment just hangs there as long as you do."

>   Everyone was silent for a moment. "Jimmy Hale, I had no idea you were capable of such deep thoughts," Fitch deadpanned.

  Jimmy eagerly turned to Fitch, knocking his bottled water over in the process. "That's more like it," Carter nodded. "Now the world makes sense again."

  "But you guys know what I mean, right?" Jimmy pleaded as he mopped up his water. "I wish there was a way of feeling this anticipation...."

  "Preserving it," I finished, and everyone looked at me. "Yeah Jimmy, I get it. And you just gave me an idea...."

  Chapter Fifteen

  Monique

  Dayna said his name was Dennis. But in my mind I had already christened him "Finance Guy."

  "A little trick I've learned, working in finance," he told me, in the tone of someone imparting great, rarefied wisdom on someone of much lesser intelligence, like an adult teaching a clumsy child how to tie a shoe, "is that you've got to jump on these type of deals when they come up, you know what I'm saying?"

  Finance Guy didn't wait to see if I would actually answer his question, which was honestly a sort of relief. "The finance world moves fast, and when you're completely immersed in it, 24/7 like I am, you start to see these ins and outs that people who don't work in it wouldn't be able to discern...."

  I smiled at him and nodded, while wondering if faking a seizure would be enough to get me out of this disastrous blind date. Would Finance Guy even notice? Or would he sit next to me in the ambulance and tell me about how his job in finance made him qualified to administer my meds?

  I decided against it in favor of murdering Dayna at the next opportunity.

  "See, they don't see things the way I do, you know what I mean, Monique?"

  I snapped back to attention when Finance Guy said my name, but of course he didn't actually mean for me to contribute to the conversation. "I have the kind of mind that can break these things down, you understand...."

  Picking at my appetizer, I mentally counted down the minutes I had to endure this until I could gracefully make an exit. Should I stay for the entree I had ordered in a fit of "he can't be this bad" optimism?

  "...I told them, I said, you leave this kind of thinking to me, but they didn't. Idiots think they understand finance, like it's something you can just pick up, like riding a bike. It's not; it requires a different set of tools, ones that require years of honing in the trenches. Like my time at Finklestein and Toth, now that was a real crash course in the world of finance, you might have heard of them, they're real titans in the industry...."

  Forty minutes into the date and Finance Guy hadn't stopped to take a breath once. He also hadn't asked me a single question about myself.

  Usually that would be appreciated. But ever since I arrived back from Brock Ranch, I had this vague, unsatisfied desire to...talk.

  "You sound different," Chanel had told me when I called her to say I was on the ground at the airport.

  "How so?" I asked as I fetched my bag from the overhead compartment. I certainly felt different...and it wasn't a good kind of different.

  "Sad?" Chanel ventured. "No wait, that isn't right," she added as I heaved a sigh. "No, wistful. Wistful is the word I'd use. Why are you wistful, Mo?"

  I was being jostled left and right. There is a right time to talk about feelings and disembarking an airplane is not that time. But I couldn't help myself.

  "He was...," I started...

  But I was immediately drowned out by Chanel's hooting. "Oh girl, oh shit, I recognize that tone. Girl, you've got it bad for him, don't you? Shit, are you wearing overalls right now?"

  "Shut up," I seethed, cheeks flaming. "He's not like that."

  "Defending him too, huh? Oh man! This is too good."

  I sighed again, and Chanel's evil glee died away instantly. "Well shit girl, I'm sorry. You sound actually upset about this."

  "I'm not," I snapped.

  And I wasn't, I still insisted to myself. But the longer I sat here, chafing to get the hell away from Finance Guy, the more I had to admit that I had never, in all my years of dating, felt the kind of connection I felt to Tanner Brock. One day with him seemed to be enough to completely rearrange me right down at the cellular level. I couldn't even pretend to care about Finance Guy long enough to get my entree.

  "Dennis, I'm going to have to stop you there," I said, standing up and throwing my napkin down on the table.

  For the first time, he paused his avalanche of words. It was almost gratifying to see him staring, a wad of chewed up food visible in his open mouth. But I was too far gone to laugh.

  "You're a busy and important guy, I get that. Your time is valuable, which is why I'm not going to waste one more minute of it. It was nice to meet you, but this isn't going to work out."

  Dennis closed his mouth with a snap and swallowed. His eyes glittered. Oh my god, were those tears? "Really?" He sputtered. "I thought we had a real connection going on here."

  "The only connection I saw was the one between your mouth and your ego," I snapped, throwing down a twenty. "That should cover my part of the bill, have a good night."

  Leaving Dennis utterly flabbergasted, I strode from the table, phone in hand, ready to light into Dayna the minute I cleared the door.

  Instead my phone buzzed in my hand and startled me so badly I almost dropped it.

  "Gil? Is everything okay?" My editor never called me this late. The man was out the door at 5pm on the dot, all of the work he hadn't delegated yet left to fester in piles on his desk until the next day.

  "Monique, where are you?" If his normal voice was high, right now it was nearly ranges only dogs could hear.

  "Um, I just finished having dinner," I said warily.

  "Good, I need you to come in the office, right now. We got something big here, really, really big."

  "You need me in the office to tell me?"

  "Yes, no wait, no," his voice was cracking like an eight grade boy. My heart rate soared, what could he want? Was there something wrong with my pictures of Tanner?

  He didn't leave me in suspense long. "Fine I guess I'll just tell you, but you're not allowed to say no."

  "That doesn't inspire confidence, Gil," I laughed nervously. People were streaming past me on the sidewalk. There was no place private to hear whatever bad news he was about to give me.

  "This is a massive scoop for Auteur, Exclusive access he's never granted before. You'll need to pack for three weeks, minimum..."

  "Wait, Gil, you're going too fast. You want me to what?"

  But he was off and running. "Backstage access, intimate shots, band life, Mo, it's unprecedented. He's so careful with his image, that wholesome aw-shucks-ma'am thing he has going on. You can blow the lid open on that. The wild scene backstage...I can't believe he asked for this, this is massive..."

  "Gil, slow down. Who asked for what?"

  Gil took a deep, frustrated breath. "Tanner Brock!" he squeaked indignantly.

  I stood frozen in the middle of the sidewalk. "Tanner asked for...."

  "For you, Monique. He is granting unlimited backstage access to you and you alone. You will tour with the band for three weeks, getting shots of life on the road. He's never given this before, to anyone. Are you on board? And remember, you're not allowed to say no."

  Tanner asked for me. Me, personally. My heart was hammering in my throat for a different reason entirely. "He wants me?"

  "You, Mo. I sent him previews of the shots you took back on the ranch and that apparently impressed him, because he wanted more. He said he would only grant this story if you were the photographer."

  Bang bang bang went my heart. Impressed him. Impressed him because I told him no, that was the real reason. Men like Tanner weren't used to being denied. He was using his influence to get at me again, pulling the celebrity angle to get his way. I should have been offended. I should have gotten angry. I should have told Gil that I wasn't a prize, and Tanner Brock shouldn't be allowed to rig the game.

  But all I could think of was Tanner's lips on mine. My lips
were betraying me, with their greedy need to feel his kisses again. And that was why they answered, "Yes, I'll do it."

  Chapter Sixteen

  Monique

  Leo Williams looked every inch a security guard, and there were a lot of inches, both vertically and horizontally. A massive light-skinned Black man with more muscles that I knew were possible, he looked over his mirrored shades at me with an appraising look on his face. Then he glanced down at his clipboard and back up at me.

  I started to wonder if this had all been a huge mistake on Gil's part. Maybe he had misinterpreted what Tanner had offered. It wouldn't have been the first time that my editor sent me on a wild goose chase. I resolved to brazen it through. "Mr. Brock's team should have received my clearances. My editor faxed over my insurance papers and all that stuff already."