He felt uncomfortable with Dodie’s apparent interest in him. Trying to ignore her avid stare, he glanced at Allen. “You’re right. Rachel’s well-being is the most important issue.” His stomach clenched, but he forced himself to say the next sentence. “I promise you both I’ll think very carefully about this.”
Stella leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. “You’re a good man, Judd.” She glanced up at the soft violet sky. “And now one of us will have to go remind that object of our desires that it’s getting dark and she has to stay with us now.”
“I’ll go get her.” Judd stood.
Dodie started to rise. “I’ll go, too.”
Judd glanced down at her. “I think I’d better go alone,” he said as gently as he could.
She stopped in midmotion and looked at him.
He held her gaze until he saw understanding there.
With a smile she rose and dusted off her leggings. “Can’t blame a girl for trying,” she said. “See you all later, okay?”
Judd sighed as she walked away.
“I’m sorry,” Stella said. “I didn’t know how to keep her from joining us without being rude. She was determined to make contact. She’s had her eye on you ever since the concert this afternoon.”
“But don’t get a swelled head,” Allen said. “Dodie goes after every eligible bachelor in town.”
“Oh, Allen, it’s not that bad. The poor woman hasn’t been lucky with men, but she’s still optimistically looking for her one true love. I like Dodie, but she’s not your type, Judd.”
“Whatever that is,” Judd said with a smile. Yet even as he said it, he heard the sound of Kerry’s voice rising on the evening breeze as she started a sing-along with the group gathering near the bonfire. He allowed himself one glance and was rewarded with the vision of her face and hair glowing in the firelight.
He forced himself to look away. “I’ll get Rachel,” he said.
The sand felt good between his toes as he made his way through the maze of blankets and beach towels toward Rachel. The French braid she’d been so proud of was coming loose as she and her two friends played chase with the gentle waves that lapped the shore. Her laughter pierced his heart. Had she laughed like that, so freely and with such delight, back in New York? He liked to think she had, but he wasn’t sure.
He contrasted her friends here with the more sophisticated ones she had back home, the ones he’d hoped to separate her from by sending her away for the summer. Before long she’d be in high school, where she could get into real trouble if she chose the wrong kids to be with.
Maybe things would be different if he’d married and provided Rachel with a full-time female role model. He’d have to try harder on that score. Dodie Gibson wasn’t the answer, but maybe there was someone out there…. Kerry’s face flashed across his mind. No, not Kerry, or anyone like her. She wouldn’t want a deal like that, anyway, not at this point in her life.
Still, if he could find the right woman to love, who would also love and guide Rachel, he might not have to consider this offer of Allen and Stella’s. But time was running out. School enrollment wasn’t that far away. Rachel was so important to him. So very important.
He cleared the lump from his throat and called her name.
She turned toward him, but something caught her eye and she turned back toward the water. “Look, Daddy!” She pointed a finger along the shoreline toward Eternity Harbor. Her voice shook with excitement. “They’re coming!”
* * *
KERRY PUT DOWN her guitar and stood as the first sparkling lights appeared. The boat moved toward them along the shoreline, followed by another and another, each strung with hundreds of tiny bulbs. The charter-fishing-boat owners had outlined the cabins and the prows, while the sailboats were draped with lights that made a graceful arc from the top of the mast to the deck. As the parade of boats drew closer, the people gathered on the beach began to cheer, and as always, Kerry fought the urge to cry.
For the first eleven years of her life her father had been in the Fourth of July Parade of Lights with his fishing boat the Leprechaun. Fifteen years later, her brothers Sean, Dan and Ryan sailed a small sailboat, the Leprechaun II, in the same parade. The legacy the little boat represented created a lump in her throat.
She’d been so proud of her father, sailing his modest boat right along with the expensive pleasure yachts and the bigger, more elaborate trawlers. She remembered standing on this beach with her brothers and sisters and cheering until her throat hurt. Her mother would always caution her to protect her voice. For even then, her parents had dreamed of a glittering future for her. They’d scraped what they could out of a fisherman’s income to give her voice and piano lessons.
The boats tooted their horns in salute as they came abreast of the gathering, and friends and family shouted greetings across the water. Kerry joined her family in waving and calling out to her brothers. Then she noticed Judd standing near the water’s edge, his arm around his daughter. She wondered if he understood how much Rachel worshiped him. Kerry understood; she’d felt exactly the same way about her father.
Maybe that was why she’d said those things about Judd on the beach this morning. During Friday’s piano lesson when Kerry had learned who Rachel’s father was and that he was coming for the long weekend, Kerry had listened to Rachel lavish praise on her father, a father who wasn’t going to be around except for three days all summer. Kerry had become angry that a man could be so blind to a little girl’s love. After losing a wife, he of all people should understand that time was precious, that moments lost could never be replaced.
But who was she to judge someone she owed so much? He was willing to give her the chance she’d waited a lifetime for. If she succeeded, this might be the last Fourth of July she spent in Eternity for a long time. She watched the boats make a wide sweep and glide back toward the harbor. She stared hard, burning the memory into her mind.
A swishing sound from far down the beach ended in a reverberating boom, and over the water the first fireworks spilled red, white and blue stars against the night sky. A soft exclamation of wonder rose from the crowd.
As the embers drifted toward the water and were mirrored on its polished ebony surface, Kerry noticed that Judd and his daughter were walking back up the beach in her direction. Rachel broke away, apparently hurrying to reach her grandparents’ blanket before the next shower of color appeared.
Judd’s path would bring him right past where Kerry stood. Her heartbeat accelerated. She’d refrained from speaking to him all evening partly because Dodie Gibson seemed to have him in a hammerlock and partly because she was still confused about what had happened—or not happened—that afternoon.
Maybe he’d realized their reaction to each other was inappropriate. If so, she would follow his lead, but she still felt awkward being near him. It was dark now. Maybe he hadn’t even seen her there. But as he approached, a splash of new fireworks illuminated his face, and she discovered he was looking directly at her.
What she saw in his eyes made her gasp. She’d expected the same guarded expression he’d adopted that afternoon, or perhaps friendly interest, or a comment about the festivities. Instead his gaze held such hot, desperate yearning it caused an answering tide of desire in her. She trembled, but could not look away from the heat of that fire. No one had ever looked at her that way. And she liked it. Then the sparkling fountain in the sky flickered out, and his face was thrown into shadow once more.
She couldn’t speak, but he did. “See you in New York, Kerry,” he said softly, and walked away.
5
KERRY STEPPED off the train in Penn Station, her garment-bag strap slung bandolier-style across her chest in one direction, her shoulder-bag strap across the other, to deter purse and suitcase snatchers. With a firm grasp on each strap, she mounted the stairs to the main terminal.
The crowd of people jostling her ran the gamut from smartly dressed mothers with toddlers to grimy-looking street people. A boy
with one side of his head shaved and the remaining hair dyed purple walked shoulder to shoulder with a businessman who looked as if he’d stepped out of the pages of GQ. Despite their outward differences, everyone seemed to have the same sense of purpose and determination to get where they were going in a hurry.
But Kerry didn’t want to be in such a hurry that she missed savoring this moment of triumph. She’d made it to the Big Apple. Someday she might be whisked in and out of the city by plane, maybe even private jet, but she would always remember when she first arrived on a commuter train from Eternity, when she first became part of this pulsing, whirling dervish of a city.
She arrived in the cavernous terminal and gazed around for the information booth. Judd’s note had told her to go there, where someone would be waiting to take her to her hotel. The terminal held a bewildering number of shops selling newspapers, coffee, frozen yogurt, doughnuts, even haircuts and shoe shines.
“Coming through.”
She jumped out of the way just as a burly man nearly wheeled a hand truck loaded with boxes over her foot. If she expected an apology, none came. Kerry smiled. Tough, these New Yorkers, like a twisted towel flicked across the backside, after the lullaby security of her hometown.
The brusque delivery man would probably get a belly laugh if he knew the contents of her large shoulder bag. Her mother had warned her about the high food prices and insisted she take a few cans of tuna just in case Lighthouse Records didn’t pick up the tab for all her meals. Then Grubby’s wife had baked her a loaf of banana bread, which rested on top of the tuna so it wouldn’t get hopelessly mashed. Rachel had contributed chocolate bars for the train ride, and Hank had given her a handful of airplane-size liquor bottles to celebrate her first successful gig in New York. She’d taken the offerings more because she was touched than because she was worried that Lighthouse Records wouldn’t provide.
At last she spied the information booth and headed toward it, mimicking the purposeful stride of the people streaming around her. She might as well start adapting to this pace of life. If she got her wish, New York would become her home.
She hadn’t expected Judd to meet her—not really. Still, when a stocky, Mediterranean man held up a cardboard sign marked Muldoon, she deflated a little. She reminded herself that she wasn’t here to see Judd, after all, despite the fact she’d spent a large part of the train ride thinking about that last burning look he’d given her on the beach in Eternity. Maybe she’d misread the look. She shook herself. She had a shot at a recording contract with one of the most up-and-coming labels in the business. What more did she want?
She approached the man with the sign. “I’m Kerry Muldoon. You must be from Lighthouse Records.”
He nodded, his face showing no emotion.
“Which way to the car?”
“I’d better take that.” He pointed to her garment bag.
Kerry wasn’t used to having other people lug her stuff around, but she decided if she planned to be a star, she’d better get used to it.
The man waited with poorly disguised impatience while she divested herself of the garment bag and handed it to him. Then he led the way outside, where July heat settled over Kerry like a steam bath. She expected a taxi or a sedan, but instead, the man headed for a sleek gray limo sitting at the curb. Kerry gasped. Was Judd waiting inside the cool interior with a glass of champagne?
The man opened the passenger door for her. Heart thudding, she climbed in…and found the compartment empty. Another fantasy up in smoke. She’d have to get rid of these small-town romantic illusions. Still, she’d never ridden in a limo before. As the man got into the driver’s seat, she smoothed the leather upholstery and wondered if she dared turn on the little television set. Too bad the guys in the band couldn’t see her now, sitting in air-conditioned comfort, like Cleopatra on her barge, or Queen Elizabeth on her—
Her speculations ended as the car lurched forward and she was thrown back against the seat in a most unregal fashion. Scrambling upright to peer out the window at the traffic churning past, she gulped as the driver veered the long car around a swarm of yellow taxis and several lumbering buses. He drove with the concentration and urgency of a man propelling a hook and ladder to a five-alarm fire.
She’d planned to make conversation on the way to the hotel, but now she thought better of it. One distraction, one wrong move, and they’d both be road kill. After an especially close call, she gathered the courage to lean forward and speak through the small opening in the window separating the front seat from the back. “Is there some rush?”
“Nope. Got an hour before you have to be at Lighthouse. Hotel’s about ten minutes away.” He skirted a delivery truck and narrowly missed two pedestrians. “Plenty of time.”
“Then could we slow down a little?”
The driver gunned the limo through a yellow light. “Gotta keep up with traffic.”
“Oh.” She supposed he had a point. Maybe driving slow through this chaos would only confuse people. Instead of hoping for a recording contract, maybe she ought to pray for surviving New York City traffic.
At last the limo screeched to a stop in front of the Salisbury Hotel on West Fifty-Seventh. A doorman helped Kerry out and guided her into a small but elegant lobby graced with chandeliers, burgundy leather armchairs and potted ferns.
She sighed with relief. This was more like it. Thank heavens she’d worn her suit for the trip. One needed a suit and modest heels, which she also wore, to feel adequate for this sort of understated good taste. But what on earth would she wear tomorrow? The clothes that had served her perfectly well in Eternity seemed unsophisticated and outdated now. She’d brought one cocktail dress, on loan from Emma Webster’s shop. She could perform in that, at least, but her daytime wear was decidedly limited.
The limo driver brought in her garment bag, and even that trusty piece of luggage, which had seen her through her years as a student at Boston College, seemed shabby and worn against the richness of the lobby’s carpet.
“I’ll be outside in half an hour to take you to Lighthouse,” the driver said, never cracking a smile. Then he left.
Kerry drew a deep breath and turned to the reservations clerk, who, bless him, did have a smile on his face. Kerry drank it in. “I’m Kerry Muldoon,” she said for the second time within the past hour. That was another thing that seemed strange to her. Several months could pass in Eternity without the need to introduce herself. It seemed inconceivable that here was a whole city of people who didn’t know who she was. But they will, she vowed. They will.
* * *
FORTY MINUTES LATER the taciturn limo driver deposited Kerry on Fifth Avenue. “Offices are on the eighteenth floor,” he said, waving toward the revolving door of the slate gray building.
“Well…thanks.” Kerry stepped forward with tip money in her hand, but the limo driver waved it away. “Been taken care of by Lighthouse,” he said. What was almost a smile touched his lips. “Good luck.”
“Thank you.” She watched him pull away. That tiny smile had seemed reluctant, as if he couldn’t really afford it or the wish of good luck. She wondered how many bright young hopefuls he’d dropped at this door, and how many had returned home, heartbroken. No wonder he hadn’t made small talk or tried to find out anything about her. The less he got involved, the less he had to feel sorry for the hundreds who didn’t make it. He couldn’t know that she was the one in a thousand who would. Throwing back her shoulders, she marched through the revolving door.
Lighthouse Records had the entire eighteenth floor. The lobby, decorated in shades of blue, was dominated by a large oil painting of a lighthouse standing stark and white against a backdrop of angry clouds and tossing seas. Kerry paused in front of it, loving it instantly. It wasn’t Eternity’s lighthouse, but it almost could have been. She suddenly felt a little more at home.
“Kerry.”
She turned to find Judd standing just inside the lobby door. But this wasn’t the Judd who’d run the length o
f Eternity’s beach, or walked barefoot to the water’s edge to watch the Parade of Lights with his daughter. This man was the CEO of Lighthouse Records, from his dark blue double-breasted suit to his snowy white shirt and silk red-and-navy-striped tie. He looked taller, somehow, his shoulders broader, his eyes darker, more piercing.
“Hello, Judd.” She stepped forward and held out her hand. She hoped he wouldn’t notice it was shaking. “I made it.”
“I had no doubt.” His handshake was firm and lingered a moment as he looked into her eyes. “Are you ready?”
“Of course.” She tried in vain to superimpose the other Judd—the one who’d vacationed with his daughter in Eternity—on to this Judd. The image wouldn’t hold. This Judd had the crisp edge of the city about him, the scent of an expensive men’s cologne. Only the slight hint of a lingering sunburn on his cheeks gave any indication of the person who’d sat on her stoop with his socks between his fingers.
He released her hand and turned toward another door leading off the lobby. “Then let’s do it. I’ve set you up for a preliminary recording session, and then we’ll talk about a couple of club gigs. You brought some sheet music?”
“In here.” She patted her shoulder bag, which no longer contained tuna, candy, banana bread and tiny liquor bottles.
Judd glanced at the receptionist. “I’ll be in Studio B if anyone needs me. Janet Jackson’s manager was supposed to call this afternoon.”
“Yes, Mr. Roarke. And don’t forget about that benefit reception for the earthquake victims in Chile. Barbra Streisand’s secretary called to remind you.”
“Right.” He turned to Kerry. “Would you like to go to the benefit? You wouldn’t begin performing until tomorrow night, anyway.”
Barbra Streisand? Kerry knew she’d have to get used to this and not have her heart stop beating every time she heard the casual mention of some music legend. For all she knew Barbra and Judd were next-door neighbors on Central Park West. “I’d love to go.”
Wedding Song Page 5