"Your telephone demeanor could use some polishing," Jeb suggested.
"Hello, stranger." She endeavored to match his light tone. "I was afraid you'd forgotten this number." Did he realize how long it had been since he'd called home?
"Telephones work both ways," he said. "You could call me."
"I hate to bother you." Shivering, Laney plucked at her blouse, pulling the clammy silk away from her skin. "I know how busy you are."
"Laney." Jeb's deep, smoky voice held a note of reproach. "I'm never too busy to talk to you."
She pressed her lips together, preventing a bitter retort from slipping past them. Had he even noticed how time and physical distance were eroding the extraordinary connection they shared?
Her gaze settled on an old snapshot of him that she'd anchored to her refrigerator with a magnet.
His face wasn't especially handsome. "Arresting" was the word Laney had settled on years ago when she'd first noticed how women followed him with their eyes. Part of the fascination was undoubtedly due to his being much taller than average and as lean as a greyhound. But his eyes were his most distinctive feature. Under a pair of harsh, inward-slanting brows the same espresso brown as his lanky hair, Jeb's perpetually narrowed, light gray eyes glinted like chips of polished steel.
"So how are you doing?" Laney asked.
"Not too bad." There was an unmistakable note of tension in his voice.
Laney made a wry face at his picture. Had she actually expected to get a real answer without having to dig for it?
"You sound stressed out," she said.
"I'm fine," he said, too quickly.
Laney just shook her head. He was as tightly strung as those guitars he loved so much, but he wasn't going to admit it.
If only he would come home. He was always reticent on the phone, but if he would just come home, she would stare into his eyes until his stubborn gaze faltered and he stopped insisting that he was "fine." He wasn't much of a talker, having learned as a child to suppress his emotions, so figuring out what was troubling him would be like working knots out of wet shoelaces. But Laney had been doing it for years.
She was still freezing, so she retrieved the damp sweater she had just hung up. As she poked her left arm into the sleeve, pain flashed through her shoulder and a small whimper escaped through her chattering teeth.
"What's wrong with you?" Jeb demanded.
"I'm shivering. It's cold and rainy outside, and I just walked in the door." Pushing her other arm into the sweater, Laney decided against mentioning that she was dripping wet and halfway to hypothermia.
"But you're all right." His anxious tone begged her to confirm that. "You're not sick or anything."
"I'm not sick, Jeb. Just cold. Where are you calling from?" The last time they'd spoken, he'd mentioned an upcoming concert tour.
"Florida," he said. "St. Peters— No, that was last night. I guess I'm in Jacksonville."
Laney had always wanted to go to Florida. Or anywhere.
"Is it nice?" She hugged herself and tried to warm up by imagining a sun-baked beach like the ones in the travel magazines her mom used to pore over.
"Jacksonville?" Somehow, Jeb's shrug was audible. "It's okay, I guess."
"I should know better than to ask an indifferent traveler like you," Laney said ruefully.
In addition to crisscrossing the U.S. more times than Laney could even recall, Jeb's band had toured Europe, Japan, South Africa, and Australia. But he'd never been much for sightseeing, and he hated going to sleep on a tour bus and waking up in a different town each morning. He tolerated the extensive travel only because he loved sharing his music with live audiences.
"This is the last night of the east coast tour," he said. "I'm supposed to be on stage right now, but . . ." He breathed a soft sigh into the phone. "Laney, I needed to hear your voice."
He needed? That was a startling confession from a man who was fanatically self-sufficient. In Jeb's mind, acknowledging any emotional need was tantamount to exposing his jugular vein to a vicious world.
His stubborn insistence that he didn't need anyone was an artifact of his troubled childhood. Jeb guarded his heart so aggressively that it was a wonder he and Laney had ever become friends.
There are monsters inside me, he had confided in an awful whisper when he was eleven years old. He'd meant to frighten Laney, but that bleak pronouncement and the anguish darkening his silvery eyes had aroused her pity, instead. She'd soon begun to understand that the monsters terrorizing Jeb were the tangled emotions that stemmed from a horrifying event he'd been unable to process and move beyond.
Was he battling those old monsters tonight?
"I'm always here," Laney reminded him.
"I know." He paused. "Would you mind getting my piano tuned?"
"Jeb! Would I mind?" Laney bounced on the balls of her feet, not-minding with all of her heart. "How soon will you be here?"
"I'll catch a flight tomorrow. The band's heading back to L.A., but I need to come home."
There was that word again. Need. Worry eclipsed Laney's delight.
"Jeb, tell me what's wrong."
"It's nothing that seeing you won't fix." He spoke lightly, to stop her worrying, but then his voice deepened to a more serious tone. "It's been a long time, hasn't it, princess?"
If she'd needed proof that something was troubling him, that wistful utterance had just provided it. But she wasn't going to drag any explanations out of him tonight, not over the phone, so she moved on.
"Call me tomorrow and let me know when to expect you," she said. Thinking aloud, she added, "In the meantime, I'd better see about stocking your refrigerator."
"You don't have to do that."
"You pay me to take care of your house," she reminded him. "Preparing it for your occupancy is just part of the job." And even if it wasn't, this was the kind of favor best friends did for each other. "So if you've gone vegetarian or something, you'd better tell me now."
She'd been hoping to provoke a laugh, but she was satisfied when the quintessential meat-and-potatoes man emitted a derisive snort.
"Get plenty of bacon," he said. "And ham and roast beef for sandwiches."
Laney grinned. Some things never changed.
And some things did. Her smile slipped as she wondered again why Jeb had gone so long without calling to see if she was okay.
She wasn't okay. She hadn't been okay in a very long time. But whatever was wrong with Jeb and whatever had gone wrong between them, she'd find a way to fix it all when he came home. She'd breathe easier once she knew he was all right, and that would put her in a stronger position to attack her own problems.
Everything was going to be just fine.
"Hurry home," she said.
"Tomorrow," Jeb promised, and he ended the call.
Forgetting her chills and her aching shoulder, Laney bounded upstairs for some dry clothes. She'd call the piano tuner before it got any later, and then she'd hit the grocery store. After that, she'd put fresh soap and towels in Jeb's bathroom and make sure everything was perfect for his homecoming. She'd get him comfortably settled, and then she'd find out what was troubling him and help him deal with it.
If he gave her enough time. Jeb was as restless as the autumn wind, so he wouldn't stay long. He never did.
Chapter Three
Jeb looked through a wall of glass at the small regional jet he was about to board for the first leg of his trip home and shook his head in disgust. His extra-long legs demanded First Class seating, but last-minute travelers didn't always have choices about those things. If he wanted to get home today, he'd have to shoehorn his six-foot, five-inch frame into one of the toy aircraft's tiny seats.
He just hoped he wouldn't get stuck in some super-advanced yoga position that would necessitate his removal from the plane by half a dozen firefighters armed with the Jaws of Life.
Carefully avoiding eye contact with the gate attendant, Jeb presented his boarding pass and strolled down the je
tway to his plane. As he ducked through the door opening, a female flight attendant looked at him and gasped. Brushing past her before she blurted his name, Jeb tugged down the bill of his Minnesota Twins ball cap, shielding his face from curious stares as he bumped and excused his way to Row 11.
Like most musicians, Jeb craved live audiences because he fed off the energy they beamed toward the stage. But after the shows were over, he had no use for fans. Celebrity hampered his freedom.
He rarely gave interviews, so the media had labeled him reclusive, which made him even more sought after. But Jeb wasn't bashful. He was just a guy from Minnesota. And when Minnesota men weren't talking about the weather or their cars, they just weren't all that big on conversation.
As for the songs the critics called "brutally honest" and even "tortured," Jeb hated being asked where they came from and what they meant. Those answers dwelled in the darkest reaches of his mind, and he wasn't about to go poking around in there and risk stirring up all kinds of awful memories just to satisfy the curiosity of strangers.
He found his row and wedged his backpack into the overhead bin, then squeezed past a woman and her squirming baby to claim the window seat. After hitching up his seatbelt, he reached for his cell phone and entered the number of the Three Graces Tearoom in Owatonna.
The call was answered by one of Laney's great-aunts, who said Laney was on another line booking a bridal shower tea. Jeb had no idea which of the Graces he was speaking to, but it hardly mattered because identical triplets Caroline, Aggie, and Millie were identically exasperating.
"Just tell Laney I called from the plane," he said. "I should be home by—" He stopped when he heard the familiar scuffle indicating one of the Graces was attempting to wrest control of the phone from her sister.
"Is this Jeb?" Grace Number Two asked breathlessly.
"Yeah," Jeb said. "Hi. Please tell Laney I'll be—"
"Well, how ya doing, Jeb? Pretty good, then?"
"Not too bad," he replied, slipping effortlessly into his old speech patterns. "Fine, thanks" might be an acceptable answer anywhere else, but that wasn't how a Minnesotan responded to a how-are-you question. Not unless he wanted people to wonder at his exuberance. "Tell Laney that if my connecting flight gets away on time, I should be home by six."
"Here, give it to me," another Grace said.
Jeb adjusted his overhead air vent while he awaited the outcome of the latest telephone tug-of-war.
"Jeb? It's Caroline. Will you be in town for a while, then?"
"I'm not sure," he said cautiously. A guy who made careless statements to the Graces was a guy who'd soon regret having opened his mouth. "Tell Laney I expect to be there by—"
"I guess you're coming home to list your house with a real estate agent, huh?"
"List my house?" As the baby next to him began to wail, Jeb frowned and wondered why Caroline's words sounded more like a suggestion than a request for information.
Were the Graces trying to get rid of him? They had always watched over Laney like dragons guarding a treasure, but they knew he'd never represented any danger to her. Certain other attractive young women would have been wiser to avoid him, because although he never meant to do it, he tended to leave a lot of damage in his wake. But Laney would always be safe with him.
"Sir?" The flight attendant pitched her voice to be heard over the baby's robust crying. "I need you to turn off your phone now."
"I have to go," Jeb told Caroline. "Just give her my message, okay?"
"Well, sure, Jeb. What's the message?"
Shaking his head, he pressed the Power button and slipped the phone into his shirt pocket.
The baby had the shrillest cry Jeb had ever heard. Its mother jiggled it and tried to reason with it, and by the time they were airborne, she had resorted to singing. Her absolute inability to carry a tune disturbed Jeb far more than the kid's caterwauling, so he reached for his iPod.
As he inserted his ear buds and selected the first movement of Tchaikovsky's "Piano Concerto No. 1," Jeb wondered if his mother had ever sung to him. He closed his eyes and concentrated, but the phone call he'd made on the day of her death was as far into the past as his mind could reach.
He'd been "Jackson" back then, although he couldn't remember what that name had sounded like on his mother's lips. He couldn't picture her face, either. But with a clarity that made him shudder, he recalled the awkward sprawl of her body on the kitchen floor and the terror that had gripped him as he'd pressed the numbers 9-1-1 on the phone and waited an eon for someone to answer.
"What's your emergency?" the lady asked. She had to repeat the question twice before eight-year-old Jackson found his voice.
"My mom won't wake up!" he blurted, and then he began to cry.
The house quickly filled up with adults speaking in hushed, shocked voices, but nobody told Jackson why his mother was dead. It wasn't until the next evening that he screwed up his courage to knock on the door of his father's study and ask.
"She killed herself," Jackson Senior said bluntly. "Does Mrs. Lee know you're out of bed?"
Trembling in the doorway in his pajamas, Jackson ignored the reference to the mean-faced housekeeper his father had hired just that afternoon and dared even further. "Is she in heaven?"
"No." Seated behind the desk, his father downed the last of the whiskey in his glass and reached for the bottle. "Heaven isn't real. Only fools and cowards believe that garbage."
"Yes, Dad," Jackson whispered, trembling harder. When his father drank whiskey, he wasn't very nice. And his father drank whiskey every night.
"She's gone." Jackson Senior's hand shook as he poured more of the amber liquid into his glass. Some of it dribbled down the side, wetting a pile of papers on the desk, but he didn't appear to notice. He lifted the glass and unwrapped his long index finger from it to point at his son as he added, "She no longer exists."
"Y-yes, Dad."
A hand clamped down on Jackson's shoulder and he yelped like a startled puppy. Twisting free of Mrs. Lee's grasp, he ran to his room, where he cried himself to sleep.
The next morning he stood in front of his bathroom mirror for a very long time, staring into his puffy, red-rimmed eyes as he struggled to process his grief and confusion.
"Heaven isn't real," he whispered over and over, forcing himself to accept that horrible truth. "She isn't there. She isn't anywhere. Heaven isn't real."
Mrs. Lee kept a spotless house and had no patience with grubby little boys. She smacked Jackson's backside with a wooden spoon if he didn't comb his hair or get his fingernails clean. His father didn't like being disturbed, so Jackson didn't tell on her, not even when she began hitting him harder and more often, leaving angry purple marks on his back and his shoulders and his ribs.
He seethed in silence until just after his ninth birthday, when Mrs. Lee reached for her spoon to punish him for leaving dirty socks on his bathroom floor.
"Don't you hit me anymore!" he screamed, turning on her like a wild thing, fists punching and feet kicking as she swatted at him with the long-handled spoon. "I'll call the police and show them my back and they'll make you go to prison!"
Mrs. Lee was stunned enough to stop, and she never touched him again. She continued to prepare his meals and launder his clothes, but she gave up trying to correct him and just treated him as his father did, barely acknowledging his presence in the house.
That was fine with Jackson. He could take care of himself. Except for basic material needs like school supplies and winter coats, he never asked anybody for anything. He became as sullen as his father, and continued in that bleak existence for two long years before Laney Ryland found him and changed his life.
Jeb's eyes snapped open as the back of the seat in front of him pushed against his knees. When a crabby-looking old lady peered between her seat and her neighbor's to see why she couldn't recline, Jeb behaved like a good Christian for once and refrained from assaulting her with a look.
The baby had stopped crying a
nd was watching him, a calculating look in its bulgy blue eyes. Guessing its intent a split-second before it lunged and tried to grab the wire of his iPod, Jeb leaned out of its reach.
He had never touched a baby. He was fascinated by their jabbering and their knowing stares, but babies were too pure to be handled by the likes of him. He left the baby-touching to Laney, who'd been known to strike up conversations with stroller-pushing strangers just so she could bend down and coo at their infants. Jeb teased her about that, but there wasn't a sweeter sight in all the world than Laney cuddling a baby in her arms.
He got off the plane in Houston and headed for the designated smoking area, which was outside the terminal. He had already passed Security when he remembered he didn't smoke anymore, so with a sigh he turned around and got in line to take off his shoes and his belt and get frisked all over again.
After he put himself back together, he plopped onto the nearest chair and called Laney.
"Houston?" She chuckled. "I hate to tell you this, Jeb, but you're heading the wrong way."
"Don't look for logic in airline routes," he advised her. "That way lies madness."
"Will you still be home by six?" she asked.
"Looks like it. I just hope I can rent a vehicle with roof racks." Although the rental company had promised him a Ford Explorer, he knew better than to count on things like that. "But even if it means duct-taping my canoe to the top of a sub-compact, I'm going fishing tomorrow." There was no better place to think than in the middle of a quiet Minnesota lake.
"I can't wait to see you," Laney said warmly.
"Yeah. Me, too. But I'd better let you get back to work."
Forty minutes later, he boarded a normal-size plane and settled comfortably into a First Class window seat. He killed some flight time by reading part of a spy thriller he'd stowed in his backpack, and then he listened to music for a while. When he couldn't think of anything else to do, he closed his eyes and savored his earliest memories of Laney.
Her Minnesota Man (A Christian Romance Novel) Page 3