Songbird's Call

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Songbird's Call Page 10

by Herron, Rachael


  And sure enough, Nate and Adele had been locked together head to knee. They sprung apart rapidly.

  “What the hell, dude?” Nate tugged down the edge of his T-shirt. “Last I checked, you don’t work for the fire department.” His voice was a low rasp.

  “Why’re you croaking like a bullfrog, huh? That what passion does to a guy?”

  Adele wiped the back of her mouth and grinned. “You’re a terrible friend.”

  “I’m a great friend. Look at me.” Colin bent and retrieved Nate’s ball cap from where it was lying next to the ice machine. “Picking up your clothes.”

  “You’re lucky that’s all the clothing of mine you get to pick up.” Nate jammed the cap on backwards and looked as annoyed as his frog voice sounded.

  Dixie yelled something Colin didn’t catch. Adele called back, “I’ll be right there!”

  Colin watched Adele hurry out of the storeroom and make her way into the bar. Funny, he’d never taken much time to really look at Adele, not until recently. Adele’s and Molly’s figures were totally different – Adele had long limbs and a thin face, while Molly was more compact. Shorter. Rounder. Softer.

  He wondered if she’d be in tonight.

  He wanted her to be. Maybe this time he’d get a chance to apologize for being so short with her those weeks ago, when he’d been startled by the thought of his sister working in a café. Since then every time he’d bumped into her in town, he’d been hemmed in by a chattering citizen. He’d hoped the coffees and treats he’d been dropping off on his way to work were going towards his forgiveness. Molly smiled a tight, polite smile at him every time they passed in public.

  He didn’t want polite from her, even though he really didn’t need a complication that came in a package like Molly. Especially when that complication happened to be paying Nikki cash under the table.

  “Did you hear me?”

  Colin shook his head. “Who’s going to be able to hear a word you say croaking like a drunk burro like that? You really think you’ll be able to sing tonight?”

  “That’s why you’re here, smart-ass.”

  Colin stepped backwards. “You said you were going to buy me a drink.”

  “I am. I’ll buy all your drinks.” The hoarseness of Nate’s voice sounded painful. “I need you to sing. I’ll still play guitar.”

  Nerves in his fingertips zinged. “No way.” He played okay, he knew that, but his voice was only serviceable.

  “Scrug will still be lead. I need you to sing my two songs. You know all the words.”

  “What, and just stand there empty-handed like a jackass?” That would make it even worse, crooning into a microphone like some cabaret lounge singer. “Is Adele’s sister going to be here?” He didn’t even want to say her name – his stomach was jumping enough already.

  “You can play the Martin. No such thing as too many guitars, right? And nah, Molly never comes in. She works with your sister inside the café all day and then works into the night by herself. Probably in there sanding something right now. When she’s done, she nukes a frozen dinner, and then she goes to bed. Sometimes she and Adele sit on the porch with a beer, but that’s all the socializing she’s been doing lately.”

  “You said you needed a favor. You didn’t say you needed a big one.”

  “Thanks,” Nate croaked. “What would I do without you, pal?”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Molly spent five extra minutes on her appearance before going downstairs to the bar, cursing herself as she did so. She put on eyeliner, thickly lining her upper lid, something she hadn’t done in a long time. She put on dark-red lipstick. She curled the ends of her hair so that it wasn’t such a haystack mess.

  Then she took out the one shirt that fit her, that actually showed the curves of her body. It was a long-sleeved green shirt made of soft rayon, and in the past it had made her feel lumpy. But sometimes, just sometimes, putting it on and looking at herself in the mirror made her feel like she…well, like maybe her curves were just right.

  She stood in front of the mirror in the hotel-room bathroom. It was old glass, and wavered slightly in the middle like a funhouse mirror.

  And sure enough, the shirt clung too tightly to her breasts, hugging her soft belly.

  No way in hell would she go downstairs like this.

  You used to be braver.

  Yeah, well, she used to be famous and richer, too. Now she was just a girl. She pulled on a loose blue sweater over her blue jeans, and tugged on her orange sneakers. She didn’t need to impress a single person down there.

  Unless Colin was there.

  No. She wouldn’t go.

  But crap on a biscuit, she’d promised Adele she’d be there.

  So Molly marched downstairs, feeling as if she were signing in for jury duty. It was a task she just had to get through, then she could be done with it. There was a couple canoodling in the dim white lights on the back porch under the arbor, and Molly was annoyed by the very look of them. The woman was twined around the guy as if she were the plastic wrapping to his candy bar. Molly cleared her throat roughly, but they didn’t stop sucking face. Honestly, if people were going to make those kinds of noises, why couldn’t they take it somewhere else? A car? Their own homes? A cemetery?

  She ignored the logical part of her brain that reminded her people had been kissing behind bars since liquor was invented. If there wasn’t a couple kissing behind a bar, it just meant the night was still young.

  Sighing, she pulled open the back door. A blast of music hit her, lively drumming mixed with a less ambitious bass line. Must be Lizard Lips. They were all about expression and heart, and not always about the musicality.

  She stopped in the darkness in the tiny hallway. It felt like she was trying to shrug herself into clothing that used to fit, that she used to be comfortable in. The music wound around her, and she placed her hands carefully on her belly. The amp squealed with that feedback particular to small clubs, and she had a visceral memory of playing the dive-bar circuit as they had tried to attract attention in Nashville. Music with the overlay of laughter. It was the soundtrack of her adolescence. Playing in bars full of people made happy by drink and friends and kissing and laughter – she’d loved the distinct sound of bars even before she could legally drink in them.

  But now, standing in the hallway, she felt twenty again. Scared.

  She could still turn around. She could still go back upstairs, carefully treading the broken steps in the dark, back to the one room in the hotel that still had a bed that was worth sleeping in. She could apologize tomorrow to Adele, plead a headache.

  When it was really just a heartache.

  She missed that time with her sisters. Back then. When everything had been so exciting, before they broke out big, before Mama had died, and then Daddy. Back when they were still playing bars that smelled like this, of old wood and peanut shells and dusty rafters and hopeful cologne.

  Molly turned to leave. It was too much, and she was too tired.

  Then a tall man carrying a guitar tumbled through the swinging door into the small hallway, lurching into her in the dark.

  “Careful!”

  “Damn, I’m sorry, I didn’t see you there.” Colin – because of course it was Colin, it would have to be him – yanked the guitar out of the way.

  Molly hated how her pulse sped up. “It’s fine. I’ve been jabbed in the belly by a headstock before.” Awesome. Way to bring her belly into it.

  “I was just trying to get this string changed, and I thought it might be brighter back here, but it’s actually darker. Goddammit. Sorry again.”

  His words were choppy, and in the dimness, she could see that his eyes were wide. He was in the grip of stage fright – she’d recognize it anywhere. “You’re playing tonight? I didn’t know you were in a band.” Oh, crap. That sounded like she was admitting she did know things about him. Which she did. She knew a lot of things.

  “I’m not.” He was struggling with a tuner key. />
  “Here,” she said. “Can I?” She reached for the guitar’s strap.

  “God, yes. You kidding me? I haven’t changed a guitar string in five years. Maybe more.”

  It had been closer to ten for her, but she didn’t need to tell him that. And she’d be willing to bet she’d changed more guitar strings in the dark than anyone else currently standing inside the Golden Spike, except maybe Adele.

  It wasn’t until his arms stretched to put the guitar’s strap around her neck that she realized exactly how close they were standing. She turned slightly, and her hip brushed his thigh. “Sorry,” she said. “I’ll just…” She anchored the string with the bridge pin. “It only takes a second, really, once you get it down.”

  “Yeah, well. I’ve forgotten everything I ever knew, apparently.” He paused. “I’m sorry, you know.”

  “Nothing to be sorry for.” She kept her eyes on the string.

  “There is. I’m sorry for not wanting Nikki to work in the café. I was an ass. She seems happy. I’ve been trying to run into you to say so, but every time I’ve seen you, someone’s been yammering in my ear. And I was a little bit scared that if I actually came into the café, she’d throw me out on my ear. Or you would.”

  Molly adjusted the tuning peg and tried to ignore the thrill that ran along her arms. “It’s totally fine. And Nikki likes the presents you leave her. Us. Thank you, by the way. So what are you doing holding this gorgeous Martin?”

  “Oh, no. In the light, you’ll be able to see that Nate’s lending me the beater of the bunch. It’s so old it groans when you pick it up.”

  He was exaggerating. She could feel it humming in her hands. This beautiful old thing wanted to be played. Bowed freeboard, cracked soundboard and all, it was still a Martin. “There. Better than new.”

  “I appreciate it.”

  “No problem.”

  Their words were light, but there was something under their tone that was deeper – she couldn’t tell quite where he was looking as he took the guitar from her. She thought that his gaze was locked onto her mouth – or maybe he was looking behind her, to the right of her.

  “You look nice.”

  He could barely see her. She knew that. They were standing in a dark hallway. He might be able to make out her red lipstick and that was about it.

  “Yeah.” The word was sarcastic even though she didn’t mean it to be.

  “Why do you say that?”

  A thin tremor rocked her. “It’s fine. Here’s your guitar. Go play.”

  “You staying?”

  She shook her head.

  “Why not?”

  All Molly could do was shake her head. Her lips felt frozen even though her body was overheating like she was standing too close to an open oven.

  With the hand that wasn’t supporting the guitar, Colin took her hand.

  “What are you doing?”

  “You should stay.” His hand was firm and callused, as if he worked outside in his free time. A brief but incredibly clear picture made its way into her mind: Colin with an axe in his hands, chopping wood, sweating through a thin T-shirt, pausing at the end of a swing of the axe to look at her. Right in the eye.

  The way he was doing now. His thumb stroked the back of her hand.

  As if he knew what he was doing, which was the opposite of what she knew. She knew nothing. She felt like she never had, not until the moment he touched her. Molly’s breath caught in the middle of her chest as if she were the one who was chopping wood. “You’re that good?”

  “I’m that bad.”

  He was talking about the band. Of course. But the other meaning that was laid underneath those words sent a shiver rocketing down her spine. “Mmmm.” How could a thumb be that sensual? She was melting inside – if she leaned against the wall she would slide right down to the floor.

  “Please stay. I’ll buy you a drink.”

  She was already drunk, couldn’t he tell? She hadn’t had a drop, but her knees felt loose and her cheeks blazed like they did after two glasses of wine.

  Her mouth formed the word without her brain’s permission. “Okay.”

  “Okay.” In the dimness, Colin’s grin split his face wide.

  Molly wanted to kiss him.

  She wanted to sway her body into his, and she wanted him to catch her, and she wanted him to put those hot, hard lips against hers. She wanted to lose her breath in his mouth and not be able to find it until next week, when she finally had to rise, gasping to the surface.

  Instead, she pulled her hand back as if he’d burned her (and he had – she hadn’t seen it coming at all) and spun, heading into the bar, knowing she should already regret the decision to stay and listen.

  But she didn’t.

  Not even one little bit.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Colin regretted touching her almost instantly. He wasn’t sorry for asking Molly to stay. He wanted her in the bar in his line of vision, naturally. Any man would want to look at her, to feast on the way her curves moved under that thin blue sweater.

  But he wished like hell he hadn’t touched her. It was a fuse that, once lit, couldn’t be easily extinguished. He knew that.

  He pretended he was fine. He played the guitar with Dust & Rusty and backed up Scrug on vocals, while Nate played guitar behind him. Helping out the band was easy – he knew the songs, and his wrist moved to make the chord shapes without him having to think much about it. The harmonies were easy, as in all good country songs. The words were simple, the rhymes solid with just enough unpredictability to keep them interesting.

  Just enough unpredictability.

  While the band swung into a slowed-down version of “Walking the Floor over You’, he watched Benny Simmons ask Molly to dance. She’d been sitting at the bar, laughing with Dixie like they were old friends, even though Dixie was a relative newcomer. Molly toyed with the stir stick on her drink, biting it absentmindedly. It was a Manhattan. He knew because he’d bought it for her. He’d stood at the bar, smiling politely at Dixie, rigidly holding out his twenty.

  He should have been chatting Molly up instead of clutching the bill like Norma was going to snake it from his grasp. Colin had no problem flirting with women. None. He’d always considered himself kind of smooth, if it came right down to it. He knew how to meet a woman’s eyes and plant in her the suggestion of how he would follow up. What he might do to her. What she might want to do to him.

  With Molly, though, his brain went on the fritz, all static and buzz.

  When he and Nikki were kids, there’d been a TV in every room, usually a junky one dragged home by his father from the dump. Chuck McMurtry’s off-shift hobby was electronics, even though he wasn’t very good at it. He’d have a few drinks and then open the back of whichever TV it was, pulling tubes and moving wires. Colin had a recurring dream in which his father jolted backwards suddenly, electrocuted with a terrible zzzzzztt. He never knew if it was a wish or a nightmare. Maybe a little of both. But it never happened, and every TV their father had ever fixed up had remained terrible – the antennae trailing up the wall, out the window, and over the highest branch he could talk his kids into climbing. In the middle of any Star Trek rerun, Colin could be sure that the image would shut off at least once, sometimes every minute, frizzling and shorting out, over and over.

  That’s what Colin’s brain felt like when his eyes landed on Molly.

  His hand fumbled at the G chord as she slipped from her bar stool and smiled up at Benny. She offered him her hand.

  As the band moved into an original, “Love Me Sweet’, he tried to counsel his brain into paying attention to the music. He was singing this one, and it was a good one, romantic. Colin knew Nate had written it shortly after he’d hooked up with his Songbird.

  Lord, what love could do to a guy who used to be normal.

  The first verse started, and Colin stepped up to the mic.

  I know I did some good things

  Once upon a time,

  I
killed a dragon, saved some men,

  Raised the sun in wintertime.

  But none of that means a damn

  When I look at what I got,

  I’m a country boy with you, my love

  In our country Camelot.

  Benny swung Molly out with a wide swoop, and she spun. Even in her jeans, she managed to look like she was a princess at the county fair. Her cheeks were pink, and her eyes sparkled.

  Colin wanted nothing more than to stop singing, prop the Martin on its stand, and haul Molly out of Benny’s arms. Benny Simmons was a nice enough guy for a retired game warden who yodeled professionally, but he was a couple of decades too old for her, at least.

  I’m a country boy with you, my love

  In our country Camelot.

  In the hallway, Colin had taken Molly’s hand. And she hadn’t pulled away. Okay, she had, but not for several long, wonderful seconds, seconds in which she was either electrified in the same way he’d been or…

  Had she followed the way his eyes had moved to her mouth, again and again? Had it been her instinct to say yes to his drink or had she just been polite? Had she regretted it when they’d bellied to the bar and he’d suddenly lost all ability to speak English to a beautiful woman?

  And why the hell did just looking at her make him feel like he was in danger of revisiting his teen years, a confused sixteen-year-old with a boner in the swimming pool, too hard to get out without humiliating himself in front of the whole school?

  The song wound down, and the pairs of dancers slowed. They clapped.

  Molly looked at him.

  She looked right at him, her eyes locked on his. His heart rate increased like he was chasing a suspect through a backyard.

  Then Scott Tinker, drunk as a skunk and twice as odorous, lumbered in front of the stage. Beer sloshed out of his pint glass, froth and liquid landing on his boots. “Holy shit.” His voice was as bleary as his eyes. “Is that…”

 

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