by Taylor Hart
He touched her hand softly. “I still don’t understand, Chan. Please, just talk to me.”
She stared into his eyes and felt everything sweep over her—the past, the present, and all that could be.
His phone buzzed. He frowned and tugged it from his pocket. “I need to make a call real quick.”
Every part of her was on edge with JJ Kelly sitting right next to her. Yet, it felt so natural that he would be here.
What about Tonya?
To distract herself from that ugly thought, she tugged out her phone and pulled up her email. Since she’d started coaching ice-skating three years ago, she’d found herself busy. Even with the wedding coming up, Dustin had insisted that she couldn’t miss many training sessions with their clients, most of whom were trying to qualify for the Olympics. She’d closed down the facility due to Jack’s funeral, and some of the clients were not happy at all.
Beside her, JJ was speaking to someone she assumed was his agent. “I guess I’ll need someone to take over after all. Sorry, Mike.”
She tried not to listen as she opened an email from Dustin. The email listed all of the training sessions she was missing and the potential client fallout and resulting loss of income. She left the page and turned her phone over. She didn’t want to think about any of that right now.
“I know Tonya’s frustrated, but this isn’t the time. Tell her we’ll talk about everything when I get back, okay?”
That piqued Chantel’s interest.
JJ turned away from her and lowered his voice. “I can’t do that, Mike. I’m sorry. I have to go.” He ended the call.
For a while neither of them spoke, but she found herself curious. “It went that well, huh?”
He turned his phone off and let out a long breath. “Yep. That was the dream you were telling me to go back to.” He ran a hand over his face.
“Is everything okay?” His father’s funeral was yesterday, after all, didn’t he get time off?
After a moment of thought, he shrugged. “Yeah, it’s fine.”
Of course it was fine. If she knew anything about JJ, it was that he didn’t like to share his problems. “Okay.” She turned back to the window, but she could barely make out anything through the snow. “Dang, the storm’s getting worse.”
He moved his head closer to the window, looking both ways. “Like Dad said, never trust the Colorado weather. One minute it’s sunny…”
“…the next minute—” She smiled at him.
“—it’s a blizzard,” they said together, and they shared a laugh.
He sighed, leaning his head back into the seat. “Man, I already miss him so much.”
Mimicking him, she leaned her head back too. “Me, too.”
Again, there was silence between them, but this time it was comfortable.
He closed his eyes.
Chantel worried about him. He’d looked forsaken yesterday, and he’d held her so tightly. Tentatively, she reached out and settled her hand softly on top of his. “It’s going to work out, J.”
“I know. It just hurts like hell.”
She nodded, thinking about losing her own dad. “Yes, it does.”
They sat like that for a long time. He closed his eyes again, and she found herself closing hers, too. She began to relax a little, thinking about the many times, over the years growing up, they’d sat in exactly this way.
JJ spoke. “I read online all about this famous ice skating coach who lives in L.A. I heard she’s the next big thing for Olympic athletes.”
She grinned, her eyes still closed. “Oh yeah?”
Slowly, he put his hand over hers and squeezed it. “You’ve done good for yourself, Chan. I should have told you yesterday, I’m proud of you, too.”
The words meant a lot, but his warm hand holding hers was a bit disconcerting. “Thank you.” It was difficult to accept that she was sitting here with the boy she’d grown up and fallen in love with, holding his hand and talking so casually. “I don’t know what the future holds for me right now.”
“Do you like coaching?”
She thought about the stress she’d felt lately and what a relief it had been to actually leave L.A. and get away from it all. “I do, and I don’t. I like the actual coaching, but I don’t like managing parent expectations, and I don’t like doing PR to keep new clients coming in.” Her mind went back to Dustin. “I don’t like all the time it takes to actually run a business.” She shrugged, finally opening her eyes.
JJ was watching her. She smelled a hint of cologne, something spicy. Butterflies erupted inside the lower pit of her stomach.
She turned away, pulling her hand back. “I know it sounds immature. At least, that’s what Dustin told me.” She let out a light sigh. “Part of the reason he thinks we should sell the property your father gave us is so we can cut back at work.”
JJ frowned. “What do you think?”
“Truthfully, I don’t use the house, the rink, or any of the property, so maybe the smart thing would be to sell.”
“Why not keep it for when you’re ready to settle down and have a family?”
Her eyes met his. “Is that what you’ll do? Come home when you’re ready for a family?”
He shrugged, then let out a laugh. “Tonya and I never talked about it. Isn’t that funny?”
“It is.”
He shook his head. “I can’t believe we never talked about it.”
Chantel’s heart raced, and she imagined her and JJ riding horses on her property. She pushed it away.
“I guess I’ve always seen myself ending up there eventually.” JJ cursed and looked away. “If everything works out with my dad’s will, I guess.”
“What’s going on with your dad’s will?”
“Nothing,” he said too quickly.
She let it go, allowing herself to be distracted by his jawline. JJ had always had a nice strong jawline. Right now he had a sexy five-o’clock shadow. Then she saw the scar. She turned back to the window, embarrassed that she was thinking about that day.
He grunted. “That day was a doozy, wasn’t it?”
She looked back at him, unable to stop herself from smiling. “You always did that.”
His lip turned up. “What?”
Slowly, she touched the scar on his lip. “Sometimes it feels like all of it was yesterday, doesn’t it?”
His eyes closed when she touched him and tensed.
She traced the scar. “You were trying to be such a gentleman that day.”
He opened his eyes, touching his scar too. “The old tree house out on the south forty—it nicked my lip something good.”
She shook her head, all kinds of memories sweeping over her. “You were trying to help me down. That gash was deep and it kept bleeding, but you rode Cocomo home, acting so brave.”
A wry expression crossed his face. “Hey, I was a man, and you were riding on the back, so what choice did I have?”
She remembered how his voice had cracked. “You were twelve and trying so hard to be strong. You had to get stitches.”
“Mama did them, too. She always said we might be rich, but not rich enough to go to the hospital every time one of us boys needed stitches.” He nodded, placing his hand over hers again.
The memories were vivid and could sweep her under if she let them. Quickly, she pulled back. “JJ, I…You shouldn’t be here.”
“Because you’re still deciding if you want to marry Dustin or not? Or no, I mean, you’re ‘paused’ or whatever.”
She laughed at the way he made air quotes. After some hesitation, she asked the question she’d been trying not to ask since she’d heard him talk to his agent. “So what’s the deal with your fiancée?”
His expression went from happy to troubled. “Oh. Well…”
“It’s fine. You don’t have to tell me.”
He stared at her. “Have you ever had a moment of such complete clarity, you couldn’t ignore it?”
She blinked. “Yes.”
; “When I got the news about Dad, I was packing and kind of on autopilot, and Tonya kept following me around—asking when we would leave, when we would come back, if there would be time to practice the new song—and suddenly, I just knew I didn’t want to marry her.”
“Really?” Chantel had watched a fair amount of press covering the tour and their life together. Fine, maybe she’d stalked him a bit. “It looked like you guys were so in love.”
“Sometimes looks are deceiving. It all started when we were just hanging out, jamming with the band, singing different versions of songs; then one day we wrote one together, for fun. When it took off, that kind of spiraled our relationship. My agent told us that songs had a longer life if there was a story with them. Tonya immediately decided we could be a story.”
Chantel had heard about that kind of stuff happening all the time, but this was JJ. That made it feel off. “So you faked a relationship?”
“It wasn’t like that. I mean, I guess our friendship just grew. I mean, she has amazing talent, she’s fun sometimes, and we dated. Our agents were always putting us together for events and trying to find PR things we could do.”
“You proposed on stage during your concert in L.A. last summer.”
“Oh, did you watch it on Instagram?” He narrowed his eyes.
Embarrassed, she let out a little laugh. “Actually, I was at that concert.”
Chapter 6
“You’re kidding me,” JJ said, gobsmacked.
“I wanted to see you, so I took a friend with me.”
“You didn’t have Dustin with you?”
She shrugged, trying to look casual. “He couldn’t go.”
This threw him off-kilter. “I can’t believe you were there.” His heart raced. Chan had been in the crowd when he’d proposed to a woman who thought it might bolster their image to be in a relationship?
She laughed. “Yep.”
“I really would have wanted to see you.”
“You looked happy that night, J. So, what moment of clarity made you want to give Tonya up?”
The truth would sound crazy, but it was all he had. “Tonya is really concerned about growing our image, taking us to the next level. I just couldn’t see myself bringing her to my parents’ place and have her want me to pose for pictures. It just felt wrong. Seriously, I know she cares for me, but I didn’t want the funeral to turn into a PR stunt where she worried about what shirt I was wearing and we had to pose for the press.” He was quiet for a minute. “Maybe it’s stupid, but the ranch means too much to me. My dad meant too much. It’s not some event to bolster the human interest story.”
She was quiet for a few minutes. “I get it.”
“You do?”
She nodded. “It’s the same reason Dustin doesn’t understand the pull the ranch has on me. Why I won’t sell.” She sighed. “He can’t understand what it all meant to us.”
“Exactly.”
She nudged him. “Outside of everything that’s happened lately, do you love what you do? You sang nonstop Garth Brooks the whole summer before my sophomore year in high school. Do you remember that? You were obsessed with that song…”
The memory threatened to shatter him. Unable to stop himself, he started singing. ‘“She’s sun and rain, she’s fire and ice, a little crazy, but it’s nice…’”
Her face became a deeper red. “Don’t.” She sucked in a breath. “So tell me more about touring and knowing all the greats—Sloane Kent, Texas Waters, Montana Crew.”
JJ beamed. “They’re amazing. The best guys. The kind of people that I relate to well.”
“Sloane and Texas served in the military, right?”
“Yeah, and it’s nice to have them understand.”
“You’ve gone through a lot, J. I’m glad you’ve found something.”
He didn’t usually open up about himself. But this wasn’t a usual situation. “After I got home—” He felt her tense. “—I struggled with some PTSD.” He stared at the seat in front of him and thought about that first horrible year. “And with my leg and everything, I just felt so broken.”
She waited.
“Mama…” He let out a light laugh. “You know how she was. She kept pestering me to get back to my guitar, to use the music as an outlet for my depression and anxiety and a slew of things associated with PTSD.”
“Your mama always knew best.”
He turned to her and saw she had tears in her eyes. “Yes, she did.” Dang, he’d missed her.
“Are you okay now?” she asked tentatively. “With the PTSD and with your leg?”
He sobered. “The truth is, I still get the phantom pains you hear people talk about. It itches sometimes, on the part that’s not there.”
“Makes sense.” Cautiously, she reached out, her hand hovering over his knee.
“You can feel; the prosthetic starts here.” He placed her hand at the top of his knee, then moved it down so she could feel what would have been his shin. “My whole knee is bionic. It’s titanium. The cool thing is that the doctors are so smart now and the innovations have become really, really good. So I connect the prosthetic to the bottom of my thigh and it comes all the way down, and—” He let her hand go and tugged up his jeans. “—I have a metal foot that slips into my shoes.”
A look of wonder crossed her face. “And you have total mobility?”
He grinned, finding that he liked telling her about this aspect of his life. “I do. Dad always kept after the doctors to innovate better and better. He brought in a team and we went through a couple of different prototypes, but the past year I’ve been able to run, jump.” He shrugged. “I usually just wear pants, so most people don’t know I have a prosthetic unless they know the story.”
“JJ, that’s awesome.”
“I’ve been blessed. That’s the thing about Dad, ya know? He just made things okay. Even hard things.” Emotions surged inside of him. “He was the kind of guy that did something, even if it was hard. And he did it right and better. I just want to be like him.” Minus the whole blackmailing into marriage thing.
She put her hand on his and squeezed. “Are you kidding me? You’re JJ Kelly, war hero turned famous country music star.” She puffed out a breath. “I think you’re doing pretty good.”
His pulse raced and he thought of the gauntlet his father had thrown down before the Kelly brothers. It did feel like destiny that he would find himself here with Chantel Bonaparte, the woman he’d always loved—the woman he should already be married to. He shook his head. “The old man reaches back from the grave, ya know?”
She gave him a puzzled look. “What do you mean?”
JJ bit his tongue. He’d forgotten that he wasn’t allowed to talk about it. “Nothing.” He had to find a way to tell Chantel they should be together—and not because of his inheritance.
She nudged him. “So what made you get back into music?”
“After the funeral and everything that happened…” JJ fidgeted, skirting past his freakout on Dustin. “Well, I decided one night, when I was in a bad, bad place, to pray.” He blinked rapidly. He would not cry right now. “I just had this memory about the song ‘Let It Be’ by the Beatles. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard Paul McCartney's story.”
“I haven’t.”
“Well, he loved his mother a lot, and she passed away when he was fourteen. Paul talked about how she was a profound calming influence on his life. One particularly hard night, she came to him in a dream and she told him some very wise words.”
Chantel let out a breath. “Let it be. Those are good words.”
Without thinking, he closed his eyes and softly sang.
She squeezed his hand and joined in after a few bars, and it was incredible to hear Chan sing again. He grinned, and they started into the chorus. He kept singing as he stood and opened the overhead bin, tugging out his guitar. There weren’t a lot of people sitting around them, so he placed his case on the empty seat beside them and strummed the music.
Wh
en they finished the song, she smiled at him. It was the same smile she’d given him all those years ago, when they would sit in the tree house together and he would sing and she would gaze up at him like he was the greatest thing in the world. When he’d gotten his scar, she’d sat next to him, holding his hand, while his mother stitched his lip.
The side of his mouth tugged up. “Do you remember how you kissed my stitches after I got them?”
“Of course I do.”
They shared a laugh over that.
A buzz sounded from overhead, and the bus driver spoke over the loudspeaker. “Folks, it looks like the weather is getting worse. I’m also getting all kinds of electrical signals showing the bus might need a tune-up. We’ll have to stop in Denver, and you can get on another bus there.”
There were moans from some of the passengers.
So many feelings pulsed through him. Being together, sitting by each other on the bus, singing together, just felt so right.
Her phone buzzed. He saw Dustin’s name pop up. She silenced it and put it back, facing the window with a frown.
They were only about fifteen minutes from Denver, and he didn’t know what was going to happen next. The SEAL part of him wanted to demand answers, but he knew he couldn’t push with her. “So,” he said casually. “You think we should rent a car in Denver and go to Dallas in a little cozier situation?”
Chantel didn’t respond for a second. “This has been really nice, JJ.” She blinked and breathed in deep. “Please don’t ask me to explain everything. It’s complicated.”
He reached up to move a stray piece of hair out of her eyes. “It always is with us, isn’t it?” His attraction for her was off the charts. It felt like nothing had changed between them, like he could just walk back into the life when he was with her every day on the ranch. He’d missed that life.
He stared at her lips, wanting to kiss her and feel her pressed against him. The memory of those three months they’d spent together before his final deployment raced through his mind. They had been close, intimate, and he remembered every part of it. He’d kept those memories by his heart, and he’d taken them out before each mission and looked at them, breathed them, remembered every part of her touch, the things that made her laugh and cry. He’d wanted to marry her.