“Jonah? You’re scaring me.”
“Sorry…” He fingered her hair.
“Then take me home—no—farther. Away from the diner. From Blue Moon. I never want to see any of those people again.”
“Why? I’ve known them all my life. They’re all I’ve got.”
“What about me?”
A muscle ticked in his jaw. “Where do I begin?”
“How about by saying you love me? That you know full well every word out of that man’s mouth was garbage.”
Jonah swallowed hard.
I can’t give her up, one side of him warred. If I do, what happens to the diner? To Katie? Me? How can I—we—live without her?
One day at a time.
One second at a time. Just like he’d done before.
“Jonah, please,” she begged, her intense gaze making him want to do crazy things, like pack up the baby and run away. She stared at him as if searching, but what was she looking for? A sign that he really wasn’t a bastard, having done the very thing she’d accused him of many weeks ago—using her. Squeezing Katie tighter than ever, she said, “I can’t live with their stares. They all looked at me like I was a freak.”
Maybe you are.
No. He had to believe at least some of what they shared was real.
He looked away. Enough.
His heart couldn’t take any more.
Sure, he could probably play this out indefinitely—at least until Angel’s memory fully returned, but what would that prove? Here. Tonight. He had to tell her at least a portion of what he knew to be the truth.
One part of him longed to take her hand in his, but the part already letting her go stoically held his hands in his lap.
She still stared. Searched. And then asked on a choked gasp, “Don’t tell me you believe that man’s lies?” Wild-eyed, she shook her head. “How could you? I’m your wife. I’ve been right here in Blue Moon—with you—all our lives. How could any of what he said be true?”
“Think about it.” He pushed himself up from the sofa to pace.
“I have. Every day. I’ve thought of little else aside from what could’ve gone so horribly wrong between us. Is this it? Is this what you think I did? Ran off to become a rock star?”
“Stop it,” he said, wishing he could shake her memory back into her. “Listen to yourself. You’re not even making sense. Look, I don’t know if any of what that guy said is true. What I do know to be truth is that you’re not my wife. I made it all up—no, no, that’s not true. You made it up. Right here in this office, you spun this fairy-tale image of me, you and Katie living happily ever after, and I wanted to believe, but…”
“Stop!” she cried, cupping the back of Katie’s head. “Do you think I could nurse another woman’s baby? Now who’s the one being stupid, Jonah? Not to mention cruel?”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Jonah forced a deep breath. “At least that part’s true, Angel. I know you don’t want to believe it, but—”
“No,” she raged. “It’s not that I don’t want to believe it—I won’t. I refuse.” Her hand flew to her mouth, and she broke into rasping sobs, clutching Katie closer than ever.
Jonah might’ve been a jerk for lying to her, but he wasn’t a monster. He crossed the room, pulling her into his arms, smoothing her hair. “I’m sorry. So sorry.”
“Then it’s true?” she asked after finally catching her breath. “All of what that horrible man said? I’m not your wife, but some rock-and-roll freak from LA?”
Jonah looked to his feet. “Judging by the red leather getup I found you in, I’m guessing so.”
Angel kissed Lizzy’s forehead. This was all too much to comprehend, let alone absorb. But if Jonah wasn’t her husband, who was he, and why was he keeping her here?
Pain shot through her forehead. White and, at the same time, red hot. Nausea roared, chugging up then crashing down in a derailment of fragmented thoughts and memories. Just like that, the life she’d have rather forgotten had bullied her back into being the scared little girl she was long ago.
It was all there for her to not only remember, but wish she could once again forget. The lonely years after her parents died, being passed from one foster home to another. You gotta watch out for this one, she’s a pistol. The gamble she’d taken to escape Sulphur, Texas. Hitchhiking to LA to follow her dream of becoming a star, and how that dream ultimately become a nightmare. All of what the suit and that voice in her head had said was true. The alcoholism. Talon’s cheating. And the baby.
Oh—dear, God, the baby.
Angel-Rebel Blue-Rose—she couldn’t come to grips with her own name—fell to her knees, clutching Lizzy unbearably close, terrified that if she gave in to the grief it might consume her. “No,” she cried. “No, please, don’t let me have lost my baby.” But even as she cried the words, she knew they were true.
Her baby, her precious Lizzy, was dead.
The child she held in her arms, as much as she loved her, was not hers after all.
“Oh, God, Jonah,” she sobbed, still on her knees with him easing onto the floor beside her. “I remember. All of it. It was so cold the day of her funeral. It was raining, and my fans and my record company sent all these flowers but I didn’t want them. Nothing meant anything without her. She—Lizzy—was born too soon. Her tiny body was too weak to survive. A nurse had me pump breast milk to feed her through a tube.
“The doctors said the milk contained special nutrients that would make my baby strong. But it didn’t. And one by heart-wrenching one, Lizzy’s systems failed. And I had to sit there helpless, knowing there was nothing I could do but watch my precious baby die.” Rose took a deep shuddering breath before continuing, “A-all of that happened right after New Year’s Eve. I was in Vegas doing a show. The doctors said I’d been pushing myself too hard. I knew, Jonah, I knew—and yet I let them. Talon, my manager, all of them. I let them do this to me, to my baby.” She swiped her hand beneath her nose. “No—I did this. I could’ve refused, but I didn’t. I wanted their love, so I did it anyway. But they didn’t love me. They never really loved me. No one ever has. They just used me to make themselves feel better. I wasn’t a person, but product.”
She looked up, only just now realizing what she was saying. No one had ever loved her—not even her precious Jonah.
He shook his head. “I—I don’t know what to say.”
Squeezing her eyes shut tight, she prayed that when she opened them, he’d have gone away. But he hadn’t. And so she carried on with what she knew she had to do—say goodbye once again.
Palm pressed to his dear cheek, she said, “I love you.”
Watching a war rage within him, Rose realized the part of him who’d fallen for Angel probably did love her. But, hey, like the suit had so eloquently pointed out, she was no angel, but Rebel Blue, rock and roll’s Queen Bitch.
Swallowing hard, she pressed one last kiss to his baby’s forehead, then released her to her rightful parent. “I love her, too,” she said, standing and turning for the door.
“I know you do,” Jonah said. “She loves you.”
“That’s why I have to go.”
“What do you mean, go? It’s the middle of the night.”
“Knowing Sam, he’s still at his office. He’ll be only too happy to give me a ride out of town. Surprise,” she said with a hiccupped laugh that caught on the tears looming at the back of her throat. “I’m a millionaire. I can buy anything in the world—anything but a little happiness.”
Jonah grappled to his feet, put Katie in her playpen before following Angel through the office door. “Please, stay,” he said. “Just the night. We can talk. Then, in the morning, I’ll take you anywhere you want to go.”
Her heart felt trapped in a vice. This was classic Jonah, a gentleman to a fault. Saying all the right things, kind things. But the one thing he wasn’t saying was that he loved her in return. And now that he knew the kind of woman he was really dealing with, words of love from him w
ere something she’d never be likely to hear again. But then, what was she saying? Why would she even want love from a man like him?
Just like all the rest, he’d used her.
Used her as a wet nurse.
A housekeeper and cook.
A cheap entertainer to keep his two-bit diner alive.
He was worse than Talon or her manager. At least neither of them ever claimed to be anything other than what they were—both out to take advantage of her talent or body. What they’d taken from her—her pride—she hoped she could one day get back. But Jonah had taken her very soul and she didn’t know if she’d ever recover.
Giving him one last stare, she raised her chin, determined not to cry. Never to cry. “Good-bye, Jonah,” she said, her voice brittle. “When Lizz—I mean, Katie, gets old enough, please tell her how special she was to me.”
“Don’t,” he said, a muscle twitching in his jaw.
“I have to.” She tried desperately to hold back tears. “I have to regroup. Mourn. Most of all, try to forget.”
“At least let me walk you to Sam’s. You know, make sure he’s there. I don’t like the thought of you being out at night alone.”
“Oh, Jonah…” She sadly shook her head. “My whole life I’ve been alone. Day or night, doesn’t much matter.”
Gazing at him one last time, the man she alternately loved and hated, she squeezed her eyes shut, then opened them to walk out the door.
And just as she’d known he would, Jonah let her.
Chapter Forty
Geneva sat on her cloud, brooding despite her front row view of the moon. How had everything between Jonah and Angel gone so wrong?
Teach popped in.
She figured he’d show up, just in time to gloat.
“That couldn’t have gone worse,” he said, sounding chipper, as if all she’d lost was a two-dollar bet on a longshot horse.
“Bite me.” Geneva was hardly in the mood for small talk.
He rolled his eyes. “Why so snippy? You still have a week before your deadline.”
“Great. Angel-Rebel-Whatever-her-name-is can’t stand Jonah, and he’s scared to death by the prospect of even talking to her.” She pointed to the screen. “Look at him just standing there. If he had even an ounce of brain in that apparently empty cranial cavity, he’d be running down the street after her.”
Teach cleared his throat. “In his defense, he is watching out to make sure she meets up safely with Sam.”
“Big consolation. I thought I knew him better than this. How can he just stand there, letting the best thing that ever happened to him or Katie walk away?”
Pulling Geneva into his arms, Teach made a sympathetic clucking sound. The lights went down and the music went up. And doing more hugging than dancing, Geneva cried to the accompaniment of Elvis’s Only the Strong Survive.
A tune she found ironic in light of the fact that, after tonight’s events, she was headed straight to hell.
Chapter Forty-One
Jonah, with Katie asleep in his arms, pushed open the back door and stepped into a dark house.
No—it was more than dark.
Without Angel, it was lifeless—soulless.
Taking one step farther, he closed the door behind him, somehow managing to get to the table and pull out a chair. He closed his eyes and heard laughter. His, Katie’s, Angel’s. He smelled her pot roast and blueberry pie. Tasted her kisses. Felt the full, warm curves of her breasts.
What had he done?
How could he have just let her go?
He should’ve run after her. Physically stopped her from getting anywhere near Sam. He couldn’t think without her. Couldn’t breathe. And what about Katie? What was she going to do? Sure, Angel had gradually introduced her to solid foods, but would rice cereal and pureed pears be enough?
He was such a fool. All along, folks had told him his attraction to Angel would turn out bad, but there he’d been, falling for her, not giving a damn what anyone said—least of all that nagging voice in his own head warning him to steer clear.
Even worse, what had he done with Sam’s warnings? Esther and Doc’s? Laughed, then gone on to plan a wedding. A wedding! To a bride with no name.
Swallowing back still more bitter tears, he laughed. That would’ve been the social event of Blue Moon’s non-existent season.
I, Jonah McBride, do solemnly swear to keep my head up my ass….
He might’ve claimed his love for Angel had been strictly about Katie. But the real truth was that Jonah had loved Angel for himself. Yes, he loved the changes she’d brought about in his daughter but, most of all, he loved the changes she’d made in him. She’d made him happy. Made him forget his troubles at home and at the diner, allowing him for the first time in—he couldn’t remember how long—to laugh, smile, deeply breathe and look forward to his next day—his next minute—of life.
“Angel…” he whispered, finally giving in to tears. “Where are you? How could I let you go?”
Simple, the realist in him pointed out. He’d let her go because the woman he fell in love with didn’t exist. He’d created her. The real Angel was a rock star. A freakin’ rock star! And he thought Geneva had been a bad-news party girl. She’d been tame compared to the stories he vaguely remembered reading in newspapers and magazines about Rebel Blue.
Without her Goth makeup and vampish leather costumes, without her hair teased and her breasts thrust out, Angel had looked nothing like the star Entertainment Tonight once dubbed a female Ozzy Osborne.
Turning to Katie, he kissed the top of her head. “We’re better off without her, squirt. The last thing we need around here is another wild child like your mom.”
Right. And just who exactly are you trying to convince? Your sleeping baby, or yourself?
“Thank you, Sam,” Angel said at the Little Rock airport the next afternoon. “And please forgive me for all those times I snapped at you for doubting me.” A sad, strangled laugh passed her lips. “Turns out you were right. I am bad news.” Instead of clutching Lizzy to her chest, she clutched a bulging manila file. Late into the night, she and the police chief had surfed the Web for information about Rebel Blue. Her drinking, her partying. Her rock-and-roll way of life. The old Rose would’ve blamed all of it on someone else. Foster parents. Her manager, Talon. But the new Rose accepted her faults for what they were—her own.
The night of her accident, she’d been headed to an Ozark Mountain rehab center. Not only was it secluded and discreet but, judging by the pictures on the website, she’d thought it might be a good place to heal, seeing how the trees and hills had reminded her in small ways of the town where she’d grown up in Texas—the one in which she’d always wanted to belong but never had.
“Who are you going to hassle now that I’ll be out of town?”
Sam shrugged. “Guess there’s always the Boy Mayor.”
Rose conked herself on the head. “Speaking of him, guess I should’ve told you earlier, but you’ve kind of been the last person I’ve wanted to talk to.”
Sam shrugged. “Sorry I was rough on you. What can I say? I love my boy Jonah and his baby girl.”
Me, too. She swallowed back tears.
After forcing a deep breath, she said, “The other day, when I met the mayor at the diner, I remembered meeting him before.”
“Outside of Blue Moon?”
She nodded. “At one of my concerts, of all places. It was in Little Rock. He crashed the backstage after-party. Offered me a hundred bucks to sleep with him.”
“No way…” Sam scrunched his nose. “The Boy Mayor is a legendary saint. Strictly into Christian rock and rumored to be the oldest living virgin. And anyway, what would it matter—other than the fact that if it was him, he’s an even bigger sleazeball than I figured. Although a sleazeball with great taste in women and music.”
“Yes!” Rose swatted Sam’s arm. “Think about it. He doesn’t exactly have a face anyone’s liable to forget. And it matters, because I got the feeli
ng he wasn’t just there to listen to me.”
Sam feigned a gasp.
“This is serious,” Rose said. Surprised to find herself still able to grin, she gave him a bonus swat. “Pay attention. The day Ed had the arsonist’s car parked in front of the diner, I remembered seeing that car at my concert, too—or, more specifically, the crystal flashing from the rearview mirror. I wouldn’t have given it a second’s thought, but the night I saw the mayor, I’d ventured outside the arena for fresh air and locked myself out. I was hoofing it around the corner of the building and saw your favorite guy approach the Lincoln. At the time I thought he was buying drugs. He looked all nervous and edgy—did a lot of glancing over his shoulder. But who knows? Seeing how you and Frank suspect the guy driving the Lincoln to be the arsonist, there might be a connection.”
“Did our fair mayor get in the car?”
“Yes. Passenger side. I saw him in there just before catching up with my own ride.”
“Huh…” Sam scratched his head. “This is definitely something to think about. I mean, I’ve always suspected the creep was up to no good, but what if he really was?”
Hand on his arm, she asked, “Maybe the better question would be, what if he still is?”
“Boggles the mind, doesn’t it?” Still shaking his head, Sam said, “Thanks again. Don’t know whether this’ll lead anywhere or not. Could be our mayor was just buying drugs. Who’s to say a guy who’ll commit arson isn’t also into selling dime bags for pin money?”
“Yeah. Anyway…” After an awkward silence, Rose sighed. “Now that that’s out, guess I’m not sure what else to say.”
She offered her hand for him to shake, but her one-time nemesis pulled her into a fierce hug. “There’s nothing else to say, Rose, other than, maybe, thank you.”
“For what?” She fought back more tears. “All I’ve done is cause Jonah more pain—and as for him using me like he did… Well, that’s just unforgivable.”
Angel Baby (Heaven Can Wait) Page 25