AND
THEN
YOU
FALL
Heather Buchman
Copyright © 2013 by Heather A. Buchman
This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.
Cover by Sparrow PM&D
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
ISBN 9-781-301-83129-6
Certain song titles and lyrics in this book are by GB Leighton and are reproduced by permission.
For cute, guitar-playing, songwriting boys and the cowgirls who can’t help but love them.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
About this Book
Acknowledgements
Many thanks to my sweet girl, Catie, for the hours of reading, comments, constructive criticism, and unfailing support. I’m not sure I could write a book without your help. And to Winnie, who never minds the wildly coincidental personality characteristics that the sidekick always seems to share with the author’s dear friend.
Thanks to my band of readers—Angelina, Cathy, Eileen, Erlinda, Kris, Kym and Stacey. I don’t know what I’d do without you.
Special thanks to a guitar-playing, songwriting boy for his generosity, and willingness to lend a lyric, a song, or a particularly dead-on quote just when I needed one.
Chapter 1
Liv picked up the iPad and hit replay on the song coming through the Bluetooth speakers. She intended to set the tablet back down on the ledge in the barn, but she hesitated, picked it back up, and scrolled through the Twitter feed. It took her a minute to zip through the hundred new tweets since the last time she looked, but didn’t see anything from the one person she was hoping for. Why would she? It was only ten in the morning.
She’d already checked at least four times in as many hours. What rock star tweeted between midnight and noon? As logical as that was, it didn’t stop her from looking. Besides, he would never define himself that way. Just a working musician, he’d say. He might even admit to being a songwriter. And a dad. Not that Liv would ever be in the position to have a conversation with him, again.
She heard a car pull up outside the barn just as she tapped the screen to check Facebook, also for the fourth time that morning.
“Oh Liv, aren’t you getting tired of listening to this? Time for a new playlist.” Paige Cochran planted her heals in the dirt to shift open the heavy barn door. As usual, Paige was dressed more as though she was headed for a high-powered meeting at the investment firm she consulted for, than she was for a visit to her best friend’s barn.
“But I love this song,” Liv muttered as she flicked through the playlists looking for something else to listen to.
“Here’s the thing—”
“Don’t say it. I can listen to whatever the hell I want to in my own damn barn.”
“Oh, a little testy this morning? What’s going on?”
“I’m sick of people complaining about my music,” Liv growled.
“People? What people? Who have you seen lately besides Pooh and Micah?”
Pooh was a fourteen-year-old sweetheart of a mare. The quarter horse belonged to Liv’s twenty-one-year-old daughter, who stood firm on the name Pooh when they’d gotten the horse when she was ten. “You don’t know Winnie the Pooh is a boy, ya know. He could be a girl.” Renie, short for Irene, informed her, not realizing the slip in her own words.
“You’re right,” Liv had answered, rolling her eyes. “He could be a she. What was I thinking?”
The other horse, Micah, was Liv’s baby. The four-year-old appaloosa gelding showed promise as a barrel racer, but Liv couldn’t bear to part with him for proper training, nor was she able to train him herself. Those days were long since over for her, they had been since before Renie was born.
“You didn’t answer me. What’s going on?”
“Nothing, just getting tired of my own company. I’m bored, and I’m sick of this cold weather.”
“I sent you a text to see if you wanted to meet for breakfast, but you didn’t answer.”
“Oh sorry, I didn’t see it. I’m done out here, we could head into town if you still want to.”
“We can stay here. I know you have coffee, and probably something fresh out of the oven that I shouldn’t eat, but will anyway.”
She was right. Liv had made cinnamon scones that morning before she came out to the barn to get her chores done. With Renie away at college, she’d end up adding most of them to her already overloaded freezer if Paige hadn’t shown up.
“Aren’t you a little overdressed just have to coffee with me?”
“I have a business proposition for you. I was going to try to talk you into heading up to Denver with me later this morning.”
Paige managed to get herself involved in at least one new business venture a month. For someone who was supposed to be semi-retired, she still worked fifty or sixty hours a week. If there was a deal to be made between Denver and Colorado Springs, whether it involved an investment or promoting some other kind of new business, Paige ended up on the inside edge of making it happen. She was a far cry from the room mom Liv met fifteen years ago when their daughters started kindergarten together.
“I have to go to Vegas next week. Mark said he’d horse-sit so you can come with me.”
Mark was Paige’s husband and when Liv met them, Mark was traveling twenty-five days each month as the lead singer of a folk band. Diagnosed with cancer only a year later, Mark retired and never looked back, choosing to focus instead on their three children, the youngest of which had remained Renie’s best friend since their kindie days.
Mark still wrote music, but spent most of his time picking up odd jobs, like painting houses or other handyman-type projects, often for friends of theirs. He never hesitated to come and help Liv whenever she needed it, sometimes without her even knowing it. He’d say he was coming over to ride, but soon she’d see him out mending a fence, or heading into her house to fix something she hadn’t noticed yet. Liv didn’t know what she’d do without him, or Paige. They were her lifeline, especially now that Renie was attending college out of state.
“A trip to Vegas would certainly help with the grouchy-bored thing. And the cold weather. Come with me. Sit in the sun. Get ungrouchy.”
“I don’t know.”
“What’s stopping you?”
Liv turned on her heel, grabbed her iPad and headed out of the barn in the direction of the house.
“I’ve come with a bribe.”
“What’s that?”
“CB Rice is playing at the House of Blues next Wednesday.”
Paige played dirty. Liv had been listening to one of his songs when she walked in just a few minutes ago.
“Did you think there was a chance I didn’t know it?”
&nbs
p; “And still you say you don’t know if you want to go?”
“That’s why I don’t know. I’m almost forty, a little old for this stalker-groupie life I’ve found myself leading the last few months.”
It was bad enough that the universe seemed to throw the two of them together every time she turned around, but to put herself directly in his line of fire? He would start to think their random encounters weren’t serendipitous accidents at all, but rather her stalking him.
Six days later, Liv boarded an early morning flight, headed for a few days at Mandalay Bay, and another not-so-chance encounter with CB Rice.
***
Liv couldn’t recall how long it had been since she first downloaded his music, or how she found it to begin with. But she did remember the first time she saw him in person.
Liv and Paige got tickets for a concert at Red Rocks for Renie and Blythe, Paige’s youngest daughter, while they were home for summer break from college. The band headlining that night was a cross between a rock and a reggae band, perfect music for a hot summer night.
Red Rocks kept the first twenty rows at most shows set aside for general admission. They arrived early and were able to sit in the center of the sixth row.
There were two opening acts that night, CB Rice was on stage first and a band Renie and Blythe knew from Denver was second.
That was the first time Liv heard him play live, and the first time she met him. After their set, he and the band came and sat in the roped off section where the sound equipment was set up, which encompassed the center section of the rows directly behind them.
Renie tapped her mother’s shoulder and pointed behind her. When Liv turned around, she looked right at CB, who just happened to be looking in her direction. When their eyes met, Liv felt her cheeks turn pink, and she looked away. When she looked back a split second later, he was still looking right at her, only this time he smiled, and winked.
Liv continued to sneak looks back at him throughout the show. Every so often he’d turn his head and catch her.
When the main act finished their second encore and the four turned to leave, Liv felt another tap on her shoulder. When she turned around, he was right behind her.
“I’m Ben Rice, ma’am,” he said, holding out his hand.
“Hi,” she answered, having a hard time looking him in the eye. No one should be that hot, maybe on stage, but not in person. “I’m Liv, Olivia. Fairchild. Olivia Fairchild,” she eked out as she shook his hand. “Oh—and this is my friend Paige, my daughter, Renie, and Paige’s daughter Blythe.”
He shook each of their hands and turned back to Liv. “Thanks for coming to the show tonight.”
“Um, thank you,” Liv stumbled through a response. “Well, bye then.”
Liv remembered breaking out in a near run in the opposite direction toward the parking lot, followed by an hour’s worth of teasing by Paige and the girls. The entire way home they teased her incessantly about the rock star that had a crush on her.
“He called me ‘ma’am,’ didn’t any of you catch that? I probably remind him of his mother.”
“Even I don’t buy that,” laughed Paige.
“I’ve never been so embarrassed in my life.”
“About what? How was that embarrassing?”
“He caught me staring at him during the concert. More than once.”
“I looked back several times myself, my friend, and each time I did, he was watching you. I’d say whatever the attraction was, it was mutual.”
***
Whenever they went to Las Vegas, which wasn’t often, Liv and Paige stayed at The Hotel, part of the Mandalay Bay complex. Situated near the end of the Strip, it catered to a different clientele than some of the other resorts. The lights weren’t as bright, the casino noises weren’t as loud, and the crowd was more subdued. That suited Liv and Paige just fine. Neither were there to gamble. Paige had a few meetings scheduled, but otherwise they’d be camped out by one of the eleven-acre resort’s pools.
“Maybe we’ll bump into him in one of the elevators. Or he’ll be at the bar tonight.”
“Would you stop it? You’re making me a nervous wreck. Wasn’t it you who said we were here to relax? Did you mean only you were going to be permitted that luxury?”
“Oh come on, you don’t think I see your eyes scanning the crowds?”
“He’s not here yet.”
“And how, pray tell, do you know this?”
“Twitter. He’s playing a benefit tonight—at home.”
Liv looked off in the opposite direction. “Yep, I’m a stalker.” Paige heard her mumble.
***
The second time she saw him was in January, just a couple of months ago. Renie had a few days left of Christmas break when she and Liv decided to take an impromptu ski trip. When they woke up Friday morning the sun was shining and the weather forecast was good for the rest of the weekend.
They packed their bags and skis and hit the road, making the two hundred mile drive from Monument, Colorado, to Crested Butte, in just over four hours. They checked into their room at the ski area and went downtown for drink. It was the first time Liv and Renie went out for a drink together. Her daughter had only turned twenty-one a few days before.
Liv felt hideously old when they walked into “the Goat,” a Crested Butte institution on Elk Avenue, the main drag of the historic downtown district. But when she grabbed her daughter’s arm to tell her she wanted to go somewhere else, Renie wouldn’t stand for it.
“Come on Mom,” she’d said. “I’ve always wanted to hang out here, I love this place.”
“But I’m a hundred years older than anyone else in here.”
“You’re not, and you’re gorgeous, and everyone is going to think you’re my sister, not my mom. We’re staying.”
They’d only been there a few minutes when Liv noticed a poster promoting bands scheduled to perform at the bar. She had to get up and walk over to it to make sure her eyes weren’t deceiving her. Sure enough, CB Rice and his band were playing the following night. What were the odds?
***
“Let’s stop and get the tickets on our way to the pool,” Paige suggested, putting on her sunglasses and grabbing her bag.
“No, let’s wait.”
“Why? We can get it out of the way and it’ll be one less thing to worry about.”
“I haven’t decided whether I want to go or not.”
“But isn’t that why we’re here?”
“No. It isn’t. You’re here for business meetings and I tagged along because I would’ve been bored at home and I wanted to relax and get some sun.”
“Yeah, right.”
“I’m serious Paige. I don’t know whether I want to go tomorrow night.”
“You listen to his music almost non-stop, he’s playing a benefit show while we’re here. Not going is nonsensical.”
“I’m not kidding when I say he is going to think I’m stalking him. I’ve ‘run’ into him twice in less than a year Paige. This will be the third.”
“So, this is the only time it’s intentional. You’re in Las Vegas, staying at the same complex where the House of Blues is located. You see he’s performing while you’re here . . . why wouldn’t you get tickets? It makes more sense that you would go.”
“I don’t know, I need to think about it. If I decide I want to go, we can still get tickets tomorrow.”
***
Liv walked over to the bar at the Goat, where Renie waited for her and sat back down.
“What’s up Mom?” she asked.
“CB Rice is playing here tomorrow night. Remember—”
“The guy you met at Red Rocks. Yeah, his family owns this place.”
“What?”
“Didn’t you know that? Rice? His grandfather was one of the developers of the ski area. At one point I think the family owned most of the businesses downtown.”
“How do you know all this?”
“What do you think those magazines they le
ave in hotel rooms are for? Haven’t you ever read the history of Crested Butte? We’ve been coming here at least once a year since I learned to ski.”
Liv had no idea. No, she hadn’t ever read any of the magazines in the hotel rooms. She was a single mom, she had her hands full unloading bags and getting skis and boots and snow clothes ready. Then figuring out where they’d go for dinner and how she’d entertain her daughter until bedtime. Not that Renie wasn’t helpful, or able to entertain herself, but most of the responsibility for everything they did fell on Liv’s shoulders. It had been that way since Renie was born. By the time she fell into bed each night, Liv had no energy left to read a book, or a magazine. It was true at home and worse when they traveled.
“By the way, I didn’t meet him at Red Rocks, we saw him play at Red Rocks.”
“But he’s the guy who came up and introduced himself to you after the show, I know he is. Look.” Renie pointed to the photo behind the bar that Liv hadn’t noticed. “See, that’s him right there.”
Sure enough. It was him. Right there. Liv felt the familiar ache between her legs as she looked at the photo. There was something about that man, and his music, that made her quiver just thinking about him. She shuddered. I cannot think this way. I’m with my daughter. What is wrong with me?
“And, wow! There he is,” Renie pointed behind her mom.
Liv turned to see Ben stop to greet customers as he took off his red and black plaid Woolrich jacket and hung it on the coat rack inside the door. The man was a god. Well over six feet tall, he had the broad shoulders of an athlete. He was muscular, not body-builder muscular, but definitely hard-as-rock muscular. He reached up to put his straw cowboy hat on the rack with his jacket and Liv remembered he kept his head clean shaven.
He turned and looked straight at her, bestowing one of his charming smiles on her.
“Hey little lady,” he said, reaching for her hand. “It’s good to see you again.”
Liv figured he had no idea whether he’d seen her before or not, and even if she was vaguely familiar, she was sure he didn’t remember from where.
And Then You Fall (Crested Butte Series) Page 1