by Tia Siren
Then I worked one Sunday morning, and a well-dressed man sat at the end of the bar reading his newspaper. I sidled up.
“What can I get you,” I asked.
“Cup of coffee, if you don’t mind,” he replied.
I recognized the voice. It was gruff but still sounded young.
“Mike?” I asked.
He lowered the newspaper and had a big smile shooting across his face again.
“You’re a hard woman to track down,” he said.
“I don’t like being found,” I replied.
I started walking away, but he held out a hand to stop me.
“I just want to talk,” he said.
“That depends on which one of you is doing the talking, is it the kind man I fell in love with, or the rich man that brushed me off.”
He leaned forward in his seat.
“I’ve had a lot of time to think about a lot of things while you were gone,” he started, “watching my family home get demolished opened my eyes. I started to wonder what was going to leave me next, and sure enough, Buck and Larry found better jobs elsewhere.”
I nodded and leaned over the counter.
“I got nothing left that I recognize, Jennie. And, I miss those simple days. Waking up with the sunset to feed the pigs, and milk the cows. Going for a long ride on my family farm in the afternoon, stopping off for a swim at the old pond, these were reasons for living.”
His tone was becoming a lot more somber as he continued.
“Money… changes people. I started seeing things that weren’t there and pushing away everyone I cared about.”
It was surprisingly dead in the diner for a Sunday morning.
“Then I found this.”
He slapped a newspaper down on the table in front of him. My photo was plastered all over it; it was something I tried my hardest to forget.
“You’re a riddle, Jennie. I can’t figure you out. I wanted to think that I did and that I might be able to get things back to the way they were. Why didn’t you tell me where you came from, I wouldn’t have treated you any differently.”
I sighed.
“Listen, Mike, I wanted to tell you every day, but I also didn’t want that life. They were forcing me into a marriage, and I won’t marry someone I barely know.”
“Jennie, you’re a character. You have all this money and opportunity, and you decide that it would be better to walk away and live on a farm?”
I giggled at the thought.
“Jennie, I love you. You mean the world to me. I can’t think of what my life would be like without you and the baby in it. If you don’t want me in your life then that’s your choice, I’m not your family, I won’t force you to do something you don’t want to. But, if there’s a slight possibility that you’d be interested in spending your life with me, you’d make me the happiest man alive.”
I looked at him, tears starting to well up behind my eyes again; he still was the best man that I knew.
“When you marry for money, you marry for the wrong reasons. I don’t want a dime of your fortune, Mike. I never did. You just wouldn’t listen to me when I was talking.”
Mike lowered his head, a bit defeated. Then two large hands patted him on the back; Larry and Buck were regulars on Sunday morning, I just didn’t want to tell Mike.
“Guys,” he said, “I can’t believe you two are here right now.”
They all embraced each other in a hug.
“We both knew that you and Jennie were shacking up whenever you went into town. It’s not that hard to figure out, and neither of you did a good job of hiding it,” Buck said.
“We weren’t looking for a bunch of money, we just wanted to work with you again, Mike. I am not looking for a free meal, I’m lookin’ for a good job,” Larry added.
I walked around the diner countertop and joined the group. Mike pulled me in for a warm embrace in the odd group and let out a laugh.
“So, does this mean we’re all getting’ back together?” he asked.
“Only under one condition,” I said.
I whispered in Mike’s ear, and I think he got it because he pulled out his phone and started making calls right away.
It was maybe a week later when we all met up again. This time, Mike picked me up in the same old truck we had driven into town before. I sat in the same seat I always had, with the same tears covered in tape.
I could see the small house off in the horizon. The white dot in the middle of a vast landscape, with a barn sitting off to the side, invited me closer.
The house looked identical to the old ranch house we’d spent so much time in. Except everything was newer. The walls were finally repainted, the leaks in the roof were covered, and I couldn’t have been happier.
I was finally home.
*****
THE END
COLLEGE Romance Collection – College Desires
The College Rockstar – A College Rockstar Romance
Chapter one
He likened an angel in a heavenly chorus.
That is, whenever any random angel in a heavenly chorus decided to set aside the commonplace harp and pick up a wicked hot axe in its place.
Cara Donahue sat at a quiet corner table at Night Grooves, a low-lit night club that formed the eastern border of the campus at Primswell University. She stared with wide eyes at the man who stood center stage at the crowded, compact club; the ebullient backdrop of a red scarlet curtain seeming a perfect accent to his ethereal show.
She listened enrapt as the statuesque man before her, a beautiful vision of flowing golden hair, wide azure eyes, bronzed chiseled features and—for an angel at least—a downright devilish smile, performed a rousing rock instrumental titled “Nightsong.”
"This is an original composition,” she whispered as an aside to her companion at the table, a petite blonde who rolled her blue eyes heavenward in response to this news.
“You don’t say?” sniffed Morgan Cleary, Cara’s roommate and partner in crime (well, as much crime as two relatively sedate English lit majors possibly could muster). “You’ve only told me that at least once during each of the eight consecutive evenings that we’ve spent here, hidden in the corner and drinking lukewarm beer while we drool profusely over the object of your desire.”
Cara shook her head.
“Ian so is not the object of my desire,” she mumbled these last words in a low abashed tone, even as her rebellious bespectacled eyes devoured the sublime vision of the angel with the guitar; an angel dressed tonight in a skin tight leather jumpsuit that accentuated every muscle of his tall, statuesque form.
Not that she noticed.
“Look, I just love his music OK?” Cara insisted, turning briefly to regard her smirking roommate as she added, “Imagine one of our very own classmates, cutting a CD and touring the state with his own brand of classic rock—all before graduation! If only I could have the same luck with that novel, I’m trying to sell.” She paused here. She then piled a small mound of chocolate covered peanuts unceremonious between her lips. “You would think that some big city—or, what the heck, even small city—publisher would jump all over a steampunk version of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, with some mild picaresque themes subtly intertwined. No accounting for taste in the world of modern publishing, I guess.”
Morgan chuckled.
“It’ll happen, Sis. And in the meantime, you’ll always have your tutoring job waiting for you at the student services building,” her roommate reminded her, nodding in the direction of the performer onstage. “And if you really are just an admirer of Ian McGovern’s music, then why are you shy about talking to him?”
Cara bit her lip.
“Well maybe I have yet to garner the courage to actually, you know, speak to him,” she admitted with an awkward shrug. “But I did manage to move up a couple of rows from the last show—so potentially, if he ever lifts his head from that blasted guitar at any point and time, we could indeed make eye contact. Potentially.”
“Oh drat it to blazes,” Cara released through gritted teeth, adding as she jumped from her seat and ran some skittish hands down the length of the basic black dress that covered her Rubenesque form, “We’ve been found out. Code red! Let’s go!”
Just then she realized she’d said these words out loud; intensifying her ire as she grabbed the hand of her wide-eyed friend and ran for the door—the tousled strands of her cocoa brown hair flying like a banner posted to note the moment of her complete and total humiliation.
She froze before the door of the club, her cheeks flushing red hot as she heard a round of deep melodic laughter erupt from the stage behind them; followed by the opening strings of a rhythmic mid-tempo rock tune whose title and theme she knew all too well.
“Baby don’t go,” Ian howled, his deep throaty voice and stirring guitar riffs still searing her senses—even as they drove her straight out the door. “Please don’t leave me behind you, craving your light and your love.”
“Cha, very funny dude,” she mumbled, adding as she and her stunned friend made fast tracks out the door, “All that I’m craving right now is cab fare. Or the timely arrival of a bus. Or a friggin’ unicycle. You know, whatever works.”
What was not working, she decided quickly, was this entire disaster of an evening.
Chapter two
“Never. Again.”
The next morning Cara found herself ensconced in a far more comfortable and familiar atmosphere; one that took the form of her modest, clean-lined enclosed cubicle at the Primswell University student services center.
Sinking in the cushioned steel grey chair that sat behind her polished cherry wood desk, she poised her cell phone up against her ear as she insisted into its defenseless receiver, “I don’t care if Ian McGovern is playing the Primswell winter festival this year. I don’t care if he’s playing the front lawn of the flipping White House, with Barack and Michelle singing back up on his popular cover version of ‘Rock’n’Roll All Night.' I hope never again to lay eyes or ears on that most unsettling man.”
She rolled her eyes as her alleged friend Morgan met these words with a long, hard sigh.
“Did you even bother to turn around and gauge Ian’s reaction to your little melt down at the club last night?” she asked, adding without missing as much as a beat, “Well I did, and—from what I could see, at least—he was thoroughly charmed by you. He smiled, he laughed, and—in a bizarre, totally warped sort of way—he even was serenading you as we left the club.”
Cara shook her head—then pondered just what an ineffectual move this was to make over the telephone.
“Don’t try to dress it up Sis. He was mocking me,” Cara insisted, adding with a snort, “And although I am as much a glutton for punishment as the next university tutor, I will not—and I repeat, I will not!—voluntarily share prime breathing space with that man. Ever. Again.”
She fell silent seconds later, as the stout form of her mustached employer—one Gary Lennox, lead teacher at the Primswell University student tutoring center—loomed suddenly in her doorway.
“And as I was saying,” Cara resumed her conversation, this time in a formal, officious tone, “Just keep practicing that long division, and we’ll see you acing Math 101 in no time. Got it? Good.”
With these words she hit the off button on her phone, dropping it like a piece of hot coal on the surface of her desk as she turned to face her smiling boss.
“Good morning, Gary!” she greeted him with a smile. “I hope we have a full roster of students awaiting us today, eager to benefit from our almost lethal dose of intellectual enlightenment. I don’t have my first class of the day until 2 p.m.”
Gary nodded.
“Well you’re in luck Kid,” he told her, adding with a broad gesture to the office around them, “As it turns out, your newest student is set to walk through our doors in just about 10 minutes. And this should be the first visit of many, considering the fact that he’s about to flunk Classic Literature.”
Cara clapped her hands together, beaming her approval of this concept as she declared, “I love a challenge, especially as it pertains to a subject that I know pretty well. I am an English major, as you know, and I have written a….”
“…a steampunk version of Pride and Prejudice with some mild picaresque themes subtly intertwined,” Gary finished in a deadpan tone, adding with a slight chuckle, “And I’m sure you will be more than pleased to learn that your new student also boasts a most artistic bent. He is a musician, as a matter of fact.”
Cara nodded.
“Well, in that case, he’ll make my third regular client who plays the pipes or tickles the ivories,” she reminded him. “I’m currently tutoring the French horn player and a lead saxophonist from our school’s marching band.”
Gary nodded.
“You do indeed,” he affirmed, adding with a shrug, “I daresay that this gent is just a bit different, though. More of a rocker, I would say.”
Cara froze, eyes flying wide as she considered these words.
“A rocker?” she squeaked, shaking her head from side to side as she considered the unfathomable.
“Yes, Miss. A rocker.”
Cara relaxed immediately as her senses were soothed by the sound of a deep sonorous voice; one that she immediately recognized, but couldn’t quite place.
The mystery was solved seconds later, as her gaze rose to admire the vision of an angel on earth.
A particularly ripped angel who just happened to look mouthwateringly good in a near strangulating pair of skintight blue jeans and a crisp, bright patterned T-shirt bearing his own ebullient image.
Just then her gaze wandered upward to identify the unmistakable face that topped this tall, muscled form; one distinguished by the presence of wide azure eyes bronzed chiseled cheekbones, and a pair of full moist lips that now spread in a downright catlike smile.
“Or to put it in other terms: You may be able to pull an A minor out of me, Sweetheart, but an A plus? Well, that’s entirely unlikely.” He paused here, adding as he extended his hand to her, “Ian McGovern, at your service.”
Cara chuckled.
“Very nice to meet you, Ian,” she greeted him, adding silently, “And even nicer that you have no earthly idea as to who the devil I am. Fates be thanked!”
Reaching forth to engage her new student in her usual hearty handshake, Cara almost pulled her hand away as her fingers touched fire; or at least, that’s how it felt when finally she touched the skin of the man she’d admired for so long.
Sparks ignited the instant they touched hands, spreading swift from their fingertips straight to her heart; igniting her senses with a thrilling sensation that energized her from head to toe.
For just a moment she stared into those azure eyes; seeing in their aquiline depths a sense of awareness that unsettled her still further; letting her know that he knew exactly what she was thinking.
“What we seem to be thinking,” she corrected herself, now seeing those same eyes come alight with more than a spark of passionate interest.
Aloud she told him, “No worries about that grade, Ian. If you can write a song, then you can write a paper. All we have to do is tailor your talents to a different art form.”
Ian paused, his smile softening as he squeezed her fingers in his.
“You know, you aren’t the first tutor who has tried to teach me classic lit,” he told her, adding in a thoughtful tone, “But you are the first who hasn’t treated me like a braindead rocker in the process. I appreciate that, Cara.”
“Not a problem,” Cara felt her cheeks flush as she considered this compliment. “Now let’s go back to my station and get to work!”
Soon the pair settled themselves on opposite sides of Cara’s work table, their gazes hold
ing as the tutor asked her student to relate his difficulties in completing a successful lit composition.
“Dude I dunno,” Ian released with a sigh, shifting uncomfortable in the seat beneath him. “It seems like, as a songwriter, I should be able to turn out a kickass…that is, kick butt…I mean, a top quality essay.” He paused here, adding with a frustrated sigh, “I guess it’s just so different when I’m standing onstage, feeling free and in charge—sexy, in a way—with the girls screaming and the guys high fiving me from the front row. Out there I feel like I’m in my element like I can do no wrong. It’s just not the same as sitting at a classroom desk, with no fans and no music to back me up—only a smug, smirking professor who seems destined to see me fail.”
Cara thought a moment, then nodded.
“Yes, I can clearly see the difference in atmosphere,” she admitted, adding with an encouraging smile, “What you have to remember, though, is that—regardless of where you are or what you’re doing—your gifts and talents never leave you. You just have to know how to tap into them.”
She took in her breath as her pupil met these words with a downright sinful narrow-eyed look and a flirty smile.
“And just how would you know about my gifts and talents, Miss?” he purred, piercing her with a penetrating gaze as he added, “Might you have seen a live demonstration of them, at one time or another?”
Cara cleared her throat.
“Well who around this campus—heck, around this entire city—hasn’t heard of Ian McGovern? My roommate has your CD and plays it constantly. Good stuff!” she affirmed, adding with a weak attempt at a casual shrug, “All the same, you have to admit that I don’t exactly look like the type of gal that frequents rock clubs. It’s not often that I venture to pull out my Doc Martens and my fucsia hairspray and really cut loose.”
The laughter that she expected in response to this obvious joke was replaced by a sly, all knowing smile.