Make Me Believe: Jilted: The Bride

by Tarina Deaton

  “What’s this?” he asked suspiciously.

  Shelby gave him a baleful stare. “You tell me.” She tipped the glass to her lips.

  Luke flipped the folder open without breaking eye contact. Looking down a dull, heavy weight dug into his chest. Bracing his hands on the edge of the counter, he bent at the waist and hung his head between his arms.

  Fuck!

  Rising, he spread the photos out. Whoever took them had caught him in that moment of surprise before he’d managed to push Laney away.

  “Where did these come from?”

  “No idea. They were on the counter when I got back.”

  He shook his head. “Shelby, this isn’t what it looks like.”

  “I know you, big brother. So I know it probably isn’t. But no woman is going to see this and think it isn’t exactly what it looks like,” she said.

  It sunk in that Rowan hadn’t answered when he called. Shit.

  “Rowan?” he shouted. He spun and raced upstairs, taking the steps two at a time. No sign of her in the bedroom and her clothes were gone, along with her suitcase.

  Pulling his phone from his back pocket, he called her. It went directly to voice mail, as it had earlier. Rushing back downstairs, he tried again.

  “Rowan—call me back, please. I promise it’s not what it looks like. I swear to god, I would not cheat on you and there is nothing going on between me and Laney. Please call me back so I can explain. Please.”

  Reentering the kitchen, he flipped the photos over, looking for any indication of where they came from. The folder was plain. Nothing had any markings on it.

  “Was she here when you got home?” he asked.

  Shelby shook her head. “I would have tried to keep her here if she had been.”

  “Damn it! What time did you get back?”

  “A little after one. I was going to see if she wanted lunch.”

  “All right. She texted me before noon, so a little more than an hour.” He grabbed his hair, fisting while he paced. “Fuck. Why didn’t I get the security cameras?”

  “You don’t have security cameras?”

  “I didn’t see the point.” A thought occurred to him. “Is the furniture here?”

  “They showed up about ten minutes after I did. Does it matter?”

  “No. I was hoping if they had been here earlier, they might have seen whoever it was that brought the pictures. Fuck!”

  He didn’t know what to do. How was he supposed to find her and explain? Would she have gone back to Denver? Was she holed up in a hotel?

  Marla. Marla would know how to find her. Snatching up his phone, he impatiently waited for her to answer.

  “Hey, Luke. Can I call you back? I’m in the middle of something,” she said.

  “I’m sorry, Marla. I can’t. I need you to find out if Rowan booked a flight home or maybe rented a car or checked into a hotel? I don’t know…check the buses and trains as well.”

  “Why?” she asked.

  “Someone delivered some pictures today and, taken out of context, they’re bad. She took off and her phone is off.”

  “All right. I’ll call you back.”

  “Please, Marla. I really need help with this.”

  “I know, Luke, but I need to make some calls. I’ll let you know if I find something out, okay?”

  “Okay.” He ended the call and looked at Shelby. What choice did he have?

  Chapter 29

  Rowan sipped her tea and stared unseeing at the tree covered hillside behind her parents’ house. It reminded her a lot of the cabin in Colorado. Except she didn’t have to start a generator in order to have a hot shower.

  After calling an Uber to take her to the closest car rental place, she’d called her dad to see if she could visit for a few days. He was in Knoxville for a teacher’s conference and her mom had tagged along. Rowan was disappointed and, at the same time, relieved she didn’t have to listen to her mother’s lamentations about everything going wrong in Rowan’s life.

  She was well aware, thank you very much. So there she was in Flat Holler, Tennessee. Where the most exciting thing to do on a Friday night was hang out in the parking lot of the Piggly Wiggly and go cow tipping. At least now there was a movie theater.

  How did life get so complicated?

  “So, what are you running from this time?”

  Rowan jumped and sloshed hot tea on her shirt. “Sugar!”

  She glared at Adalynn climbing the steps to the porch and pulled the material away from her chest.

  “Sorry.” Adalynn sat in the chair on the other side of the small table. “I thought you saw me.”

  “No. I was spacing. What are you doing here?”

  “Mama said you were hiding out but wouldn’t say why and asked me to check on you.”

  “I’m not hiding out. Or running.” And even if she was, it was none of Adalynn’s business.

  “Sure you are.” She picked up a handful of pretzels from the bowl on the table. “It’s what you do. Things get hard, you quit, and you run. It’s what you always do.”

  “No, it’s not,” she said through clenched teeth. This was exactly why she was glad her mother wasn’t there—it’s the exact conversation they would have had.

  Adalynn huffed out a laugh. “You broke up with Luke and ran to Denver. You broke up with Michael and ran to Luke. I’m guessing this has something to do with Luke as well.”

  Rowan looked away from her sister and remained silent. The last person she wanted to talk to about this was her sister. Unfortunately, Adalynn wasn’t willing to let it go.

  “Hell, you even quit pageants because it got hard. The only things you never quiet were softball and dental school.”

  She ground her teeth together. “I didn’t quit pageants because it got hard.”

  “Yeah…okay. You didn’t place one time and you quit.”

  Rowan shifted toward Adalynn and glared. “I quit because after that pageant I overhead Mama tell one of the judges that she didn’t know why it was so hard with me. That you had always been so pretty and so easy and that she just prayed I’d grow into my looks so I could start winning some of that entry money back. That’s why I quit.”

  Adalynn had the grace to look shocked. “Mama wouldn’t….”

  She pressed her lips together and raised her eyebrows.

  “But she didn’t mean….”

  She emphasized her look, daring Adalynn to finish her sentence.

  “Is that why you became so distant?” her sister asked quietly.

  She shrugged and blinked several times. “It hurt that you and Mama were so close. It always felt like I was the ugly duckling around you. It was easier not to be compared.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t know. All I knew was one day my little sister didn’t want anything to do with me. Why didn’t you ever say anything?”

  “I told Dad. A week later he took me to Little League tryouts. He told me no one was going to judge me on my hair or my smile or my sashay. All I had to do was hit, catch, and throw and those were all things I could control. I couldn’t catch very well to begin with, but I was angry enough I was a really good hitter.”

  “I always wondered about that. Mama and Daddy had a big row about it when you came home that day.”

  Rowan pulled her knees up and rested her head against the back of the chair, fully facing Adalynn. “I didn’t know that.”

  “Oh, yeah. One of the few times I remember him putting his foot down. He said you needed to do your own thing. I guess he was right.”

  They were quiet for several minutes. It was the first time in longer than Rowan could remember that she felt comfortable with Adalynn.

  She inhaled and exhaled slowly and it was as if a huge weight was expelled with her breath.

  “Luke has a relationship with Laney Faith,” she said.

  Adalynn’s brows pinched. “The singer? What kind of relationship?”

  “The kind where they swap spit.”

  “No way!”r />
  “Way. I saw the pictures,” she said. The images were imprinted on her cerebral cortex.

  “On the internet? I haven’t seen anything and I follow all the gossip pages.”

  She shook her head. “Not yet. His manager brought them to the house to show me.”

  “Why?”

  “He said because he thought I deserved to know what I was getting into. That Luke might love me but I’d never be the only woman in his life.”

  “That’s bullshit,” Adalynn said. “Luke Stone has always been a one-woman man. Even when you weren’t his woman yet.”

  Rowan lifted her head. “What do you mean?”

  “Sophomore year Linda Jo asked him to Sadie Hawkins and he turned her down because he was waiting for you to ask him.”

  “That hussy.” She shook her head. “That was a long time ago. People change.”

  “Not Luke. And not when it comes to you. That boy’s been stupid for you since he realized you were a girl. He wouldn’t jeopardize that. Especially not after he made a public spectacle of himself.”

  “I want to believe that, Addy. I do, but I saw the pictures.”

  “Is this the same manager from before or a different one?” she asked.

  “The same one.”

  “The one you didn’t like because you thought he was a slimeball?”

  “That’s the one,” Rowan said.

  “So maybe he has a reason for showing you those pictures.”

  That didn’t really make any sense. “Like what?”

  “I don’t know. To get you to leave Luke? I mean you left him before for pretty much the same reason.”

  “Yeah but that was…” She looked down at the worn wooden planks of the porch “…not all that different,” she said softly. “The first time, I saw it happen but Brett was there. He stopped me to talk to me about my and Luke’s relationship. How it wasn’t good for his career and how I was holding Luke back from really taking off. I pulled away from Brett and when I turned the corner, Luke was kissing some random girl. Except…”

  “Except?” Adalynn said.

  “Except if someone had taken a picture of that moment, it would be almost identical to the one of him and Laney.”

  “How so?”

  Rowan pictured the two incidents. The girl was wrapped around him, but his hands were on her hips. She focused on Adalynn. “When Luke kisses me, he wraps his arms around me so tight it’s almost hard to breathe. In the picture, his hands were on her hips.”

  “So maybe he was trying to push her away instead of pulling her closer?”

  Rowan collapsed against the chair. “Maybe.”

  “And maybe he was set up?” Adalynn hinted.

  “But why? That doesn’t make any sense.” She shook her head.

  “Does an asshole need a reason to pinch off pieces of shit?”

  She gaped at her sister. “Does Mama know you talk like that?”

  Adalynn grinned. “I’m a perfect lady in the street. Now in the—”

  Rowan held up a hand. “Please don’t finish that.”

  She winked, then grew somber. “Do you love him?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I’ve always loved him.”

  “Then you need to give him a chance to explain.”

  “Do you think he’s going to give me a chance to give him a chance?”

  “Stupid. For. You. Yes, he’s going to give you a chance.”

  “What if…?”

  “Don’t create a problem that doesn’t exist. If it turns out to be something other than a huge misunderstanding, and I don’t think it is, then you can do what if.”

  Rowan looked at her watch. “Do you think it’s too early to call?”

  “One, quit trying to find excuses. Two, get your happy butt in the car and drive back to Nashville. How long of a drive was it?”

  “About four and a half hours.”

  “Well, if you leave now, you should get there early afternoon, even if you have to stop to pee and get gas.”

  Rowan pushed up. “I’ll go before I leave.”

  “I’ll get you snacks for the road.”

  She grabbed her phone from her purse on the way and powered it up. Ten minutes later, she tossed her suitcase into the back seat of the rental.

  Déjà vu set in at the number of text messages she had. Seventy-six texts in twenty-four hours—the majority of them from Luke.

  She couldn’t read them all and really the last couple were the most important.

  Luke: Please let me know you’re okay.

  Luke: I’m going to make this right.

  Shoot. Shoot. Shoot. What did that mean? She pressed the phone icon next to his number and raised the phone to her ear.

  “You’ve reached Luke. Leave a message.”

  She groaned while she waited for the beep. “Luke, it’s me. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’ll be there soon. Please call me back when you get this. I—” It wasn’t the time to tell him she loved him. “Please.”

  Hoping his phone was off and he wasn’t ignoring her call, she also sent a text for him to call her back.

  “I got you carrot sticks and cheese,” Adalynn said, coming out of the house. “Pretzels will make you thirsty. Watch your speed limit around Knoxville, the fines are horrendous.”

  Rowan smiled and hugged her sister tight. “Thank you.”

  “You’d have figured it out eventually.” Adalynn pulled away and rubbed her shoulders. “I expect an invite to visit soon.”

  “Absolutely.”

  “And you should talk to Mama. She’s incredibly proud of you.”

  “How about if I focus on one emotional crisis at a time?”

  “That’s probably a good idea.”

  Rowan climbed in the car and rolled down the window after she started the engine to say good-bye.

  “Drive safe,” Adalynn said.

  “I will,” she said.

  “No really. I put some of Peepaw’s peach hooch in the back.”

  “Adalynn!”

  She threw her head back and laughed. “Call me when you get it worked out.”

  Rowan waved and pulled down the drive. At the first stoplight, she turned her phone back on to use the map app. She checked the speedometer and set the cruise control at five miles over the speed limit. She’d pay whatever damn ticket she got, but she had to get back to Nashville before Luke did something drastic they would both regret.

  Chapter 30

  “Luke, I don’t think this is the right decision. Give me some time to find Rowan,” Marla said.

  Luke shook his head. He’d made up his mind. It wasn’t worth it. None of it was worth if it meant losing Rowan again.

  The pictures hadn’t hit social media and he wasn’t sure why. He’d given them to Marla and explained what had happened so she could put her PR spin on it if she had to but she hadn’t had to, which unnerved him as much as having the pictures show up at the house in the first place.

  “Mr. Stone?”

  He approached the reception desk outside Walter Doll’s office.

  “I’m afraid Mr. Doll has been delayed. There’s a three-car accident on the highway forty bridge exit and he was unfortunately on the bridge behind it. Do you want to reschedule?” Samantha asked.

  “No. I’ll wait.” He turned toward the chairs in the reception area but turned around after three steps. “Actually, I’ll go next door to the studio and see who’s here today. Will you give me a call when he arrives?”

  “Of course, but I’m really not sure how long he’s going to be. Would you prefer to call him?”

  He shook his head. “This is a conversation that needs to be in person.”

  He caught the look she shared with Marla, but he didn’t care. He wasn’t going to bail on the label over the phone. Although he didn’t consider it bailing. If giving up music and all the shit that went with being a singer meant Rowan would be with him, he had absolutely zero fucks to give.

  Rowan finally had to stop for gas about twenty
minutes from Luke’s house. It killed her to stop even five minutes, but she wasn’t going to make it that far on fumes. Back in the car, she tried calling Luke again despite Adalynn’s insistence to just show up. Once again it went to voice mail—not directly so she didn’t think he was ignoring her. More like he had it on silent and wasn’t hearing it.

  She pulled out onto the access road to the highway while her phone GPS talked to her. She knew where she was for the most part, but kept the map app on to make sure she didn’t take the wrong exit by mistake.

  Back on the highway traffic was a little slower and heavier, but she was passing mid-town. A sea of red taillights ahead of her made her ease on the brakes and tap the steering wheel. “Come on, come on, come on.”

  The phone rang and her heart pitter-pattered in her chest, but a quick glanced showed it wasn’t Luke calling. She answered the call and put it on speaker. “Hey, Marla.”

  “Oh thank god! Where are you?”

  “I’m on the four-forty. What’s wrong?” The urgency in Marla’s voice sent her anxiety into overdrive.

  “Where on the four-forty?”

  “I’m coming up on the sixty-five exit. Why?”

  “Take the exit. I’m going to send you a pin drop for Wild West Records. I need you here now.”

  She signaled and checked her mirror, merging to the right. “Marla, you’re freaking me out. Is Luke hurt? What’s wrong?”

  “He’s quitting,” Marla said.

  “What do you mean he’s quitting? Quitting what?” Rowan looked at the phone as if it were a video call.

  “He’s quitting music. He showed me the pictures, Rowan. I know they look bad, but it’s not what it looks like. I promise. I want to tell you why, but I’m trying to protect Laney at the same time as I keep Luke from making a huge mistake. Brett is setting them both up and I’m trying to figure out why before I expose his ass.”

  “I figured out something else might be going on. I just hope I’m not too late.”

  “Me, too. I’m hanging up so I can send you the address. Pull up to the front and valet park—I’ll call down so they’re expecting you. I’ll try to stall as long as I can, but please try to get here quickly.”