Whiskey River Rockstar (Whiskey River Series Book 3) Page 5

  She stared at him. He was going to sleep in the tree house. That blessed tree house, where they had first given in to hormones and attraction running hot. After everything, he was going to sleep up there. As if there were no memories at all attached to it.

  “Bugs,” she muttered. “That’s what you’re thinking about?”

  “It’s one of my favorite places.” She was sure her emotions must be showing in her face. And a moment later she knew it, because he said softly, “And that’s the difference, Zee. You hate the memories from that tree house. I treasure them.”

  Those memories were about to swamp her, and it put an edge back in her voice. “I don’t hate them,” she said. “I’m just surprised they matter to you at all.”

  “Zinnia Rose Mahan, you have no idea what matters to me anymore.”

  She blinked at his use of her full name. “You’re probably right. How could I, when I don’t even know who you are anymore?”

  “That’s okay,” he said, suddenly sounding unutterably weary. “Neither do I.”

  He picked up the sack with the sleeping bag, turned around and headed for the big post oak, leaving her staring after him.

  When she got back home, True was in the office labeling some receipts, a habit he’d developed a bit late in the career neither of them had quite realized they had until well into it. That had resulted in a ton of confused paperwork, but it had also resulted in him hiring Hope to straighten it out, and look where that had ended.

  It occurred to her to wonder why she’d ended up dropping Jamie’s stuff off when her brother was here instead of out at Deck and Kelsey’s place, but she let that go in favor of a more pressing question.

  “You’ll be helping him, right?” she said without preamble.

  True lifted a brow at her. “When I can, yes. Why?”

  “Just want to be sure he won’t always be alone out there.”

  “Why?” her brother repeated. “He’s a big boy, he can take care of himself.”

  “Can he?” she asked. “He’s really off balance right now, hurting, and like you said, rattled.”

  “Thought you were going to chew on him a bit and bring him back to reality.”

  I did. Even though I didn’t mean to.

  “His friend did just die. It’s obvious it’s really shaken him.” She tossed down the handful of receipts he’d just given her. “But maybe that’s not a bad thing. I’ve always been afraid he’d follow that same path.”

  True’s brow furrowed. “Jamie? I think you’re underestimating him a bit.”

  “I think you’re underestimating the pull and power of that world he’s living in now. I’d hate to see him end up the same way, even if I am mad at him half the time.”

  “Anger,” True said in his most careful tone, “is still caring.”

  She watched her brother go, his last words echoing in her head. She supposed he was right. You didn’t get angry if you didn’t care. But it wasn’t love. Not anymore.

  You hate the memories from that tree house. I treasure them.

  She would have sworn on her life he meant those words. It had been in his voice, in his eyes when he’d said them.

  But if it were really true, in the way it should be true—the way she’d once so wanted them to be true—Jamie Templeton would have come back home a long time ago.

  And back to her.

  *

  This was the farthest of far cries from his canyon house in L.A., Jamie thought as he lay staring up at the rough-hewn roof of the tree house. He shifted slightly, grateful True had thought of the air mattress he hadn’t. But then that was True. Tell him what you wanted the result to be, and he’d give you a plan and a list of materials off the top of his head and he’d be right down to the last nail.

  He was on top of the sleeping bag, risking whatever bugs might make it up here and through the holes in the screens, because the heat of the day had lingered into twilight. He thought in a while he might actually try to sleep, even after last night, when he’d crashed so hard at True’s that he hadn’t quite been able to believe what time it was when he’d finally awakened.

  He almost regretted it, because now his brain was rested enough to run wild. It naturally went to last week, to the hours spent waiting to hear what he’d already known in his gut—Derek was dead. From there to his colliding reactions, horror that it had happened, almost overpowered by the guilt he felt for not noticing in time just how out of it the guy was, and for feeling awful, but not quite as bad as he thought he should, not as bad as he would have had it been one of the others. Logic argued that he’d known them for years and Derek for only a few months, but logic didn’t always play into emotion.

  From there he’d let his mind loose, and it was doing its usual bounce around from one thing to another, yet shying away from the big, looming thing. He looked at the planks of the tree house roof and remembered True helping him one summer. Not building it—he’d wanted to do that himself—but making suggestions he’d been, even at fifteen, smart enough to heed.

  He’d have to redo some of the screening; there were a couple of rips here and there. The rolls of fine mesh had been True’s idea, too, in case he wanted to be out here at the height of mosquito season. He’d already repaired rungs of the rope ladder, which True had also wisely suggested he make from nylon rather than natural fiber; it had endured where the other would likely be rotted by now.

  “Just be careful,” he’d said. “It’s pretty elastic so if it breaks, the snapback could do some damage.”

  The warning had only added spice to the adventure.

  His mind slid then into wondering if True and Hope were planning on having kids. True would make a great dad. Hadn’t he already practically raised two, him and Zee?

  No, not going back to Zee, brain. Especially not here.

  He shifted position, his arm nudging the guitar, still in the case that lay beside him.

  Oh, no. Definitely not going there, either.

  He wasn’t even sure why he’d brought the thing up here, except it had felt wrong to leave it in the house alone. His mouth twisted wryly. He was thinking as if it were still alive, still that willing, wonderful partner, helping him make those emotions into music. As if it were still that instrument that had led him from this very tree house to the bright lights and thin air of success.

  Something caught his eye, something on the edge of his vision. He sat up to look through the mesh. A tiny flash of light. Then another.

  He’d been gone so long it took him a moment.

  Fireflies.

  The moment he realized the air seemed full of them, flitting, circling, dashing, painting the air with their golden lights. The gift of spring rains, Aunt Millie had called them. She had loved these shows, and would watch as long as they lasted. He’d made up a song for her about them, one that had made her laugh and sing along with him. That had been the first time he’d really felt not whole, but mended, since the crash that had taken his parents.

  Thank you, Aunt Millie.

  For what, sweetie?

  For everything.

  You’ve given me much more than you’ve taken, so I should be thanking you.

  Pain tightened his chest. He stared at the darting lights, aching with the memories, all of them, his parents, Aunt Millie, now Derek…and the part of himself that was now gone just as completely. Maybe he’d had to come back here, to where it began, to finally face it.

  Once, he would have reached for the guitar, to make up some darting, buoyant tune that matched the flight of those little specks of light. But that was pointless now. A useless thought. Because he knew all the speculation that the death of his friend was the beginning of something, of a reassessment, a reorienting, and that he would be back after a suitable period, was wrong.

  Derek’s death hadn’t been the beginning. It had been the culmination of a process that had begun some time ago. The process he’d at last admitted to, sitting on the floor of an emergency room waiting area, and only finally
faced at the funeral.

  Derek’s death, aside from the heartbreak of it, didn’t mark the start of anything.

  It marked the end.

  It marked Jamie Templeton’s final admission of the truth.

  The music was gone.

  Chapter Eight

  “Have you seen Jamie?” Deck asked.

  “Not since Wednesday,” Zee said. “He made it pretty clear he didn’t want…company.” Me.

  She’d tried to keep her tone level, but apparently she hadn’t succeeded, because he said, rather carefully, “You’re like Kels. If she’s hurting, she turns to family, friends.”

  She frowned. “Of course. Who else would you turn to?”

  Deck gave her a wry half-smile. “Me, I want to go hole up somewhere alone until I chew my way through it.”

  “But you need people—”

  “Some do,” he cut her off, but quietly. “Some of us…it’s better if we’re alone until we can at least see the other side.”

  She studied him for a moment. Remembered the old stories about Crazy Joe, the recluse. Realized she was witnessing a small miracle, Deck reaching out like this, being so open. Maybe it was simply because he’d come to trust True completely, and it had stretched to include his sister. Whatever it was, she appreciated it.

  “I didn’t think of it like that,” she admitted.

  “It doesn’t mean we care any less, that we hurt any less. We just handle it differently.” His mouth quirked. “And run into a lot of people who think our way is wrong and theirs right.”

  “Like me?”

  “Like most people,” he said tactfully, then dropped it. “True tells me you know Jamie better than anyone.”

  Zee managed to fight down the heat that wanted to flood her cheeks. For she had spent most of the night thinking about just how well she knew Jamie Templeton, from the quirky workings of his brilliant mind to every gorgeous inch of his body. What little sleep she’d gotten had been no respite, for then the dreams had come, dreams of heated moments in a tree house and then, even worse, dreams of here and now, of finding out if he still liked that little nibble on his ear, if a sliding touch inward from his hipbone still made him shiver.

  And in those dreams, of course he’d forgotten none of what drove her mad, the things she’d learned about herself from their exuberant explorations. He’d been the same careful, generous, impossibly sexy lover he’d been until the day he’d walked out of Whiskey River and her life.

  Like he’d remember. All those women, groupies at his beck and call—why would he remember what that silly girl back home liked?

  She schooled her expression to calm, although she didn’t know if it would be enough to fool the very perceptive Declan Kilcoyne. And whatever he was after, it had to be important, for him to steal time away from his work and his beloved Kelsey this close to their wedding and come practically into town to her door.

  “We spent a lot of time together,” she said. “Only natural, after our parents were killed in the same accident.”

  Deck didn’t waste breath on condolences for the long-ago tragedy, and she was grateful for that. She knew he had no idea what it would have felt like, to even have loving parents let alone lose them, and she appreciated that he didn’t pretend he did.

  “Is he different, now? I don’t mean just grief over his friend, I mean…something deeper?”

  Her eyes widened. She’d started to wonder if she’d been imagining something beyond grief at the death of a friend, but if Deck had seen it, too…

  It still took her aback, that she was standing here talking to one of the most famous authors in the world, as if he were any other friend. And he was a friend, no longer just the reclusive client who had helped begin Mahan Services. And because of that, she could not, would not do what she might with someone else, dodge his question. And if Deck cared enough to ask, he deserved a straight answer.

  “I don’t know what it is, but I sense it, too.”

  After a moment Deck nodded. “I guess we’ll just have to keep a close eye on him, then.”

  Zee smiled, diverted for the moment. “And you’re the guy who once said you didn’t know a thing about being a friend.”

  “I didn’t,” Deck said. Then he smiled, that flashing, brilliant smile that Kelsey had given him. “But I’ve had a great teacher.”

  “And now you’ve got friends who’d go to the mat for you.”

  He actually flushed. “Yeah. How about that?”

  And there, she thought after he’d gone, was another one who wouldn’t understand her anger. She wasn’t sure she understood it herself anymore.

  Being Zee, she resorted to her go-to…she made a list. She sat at her desk, pulled over a note pad. Wrote “MAD” in caps across the top, then drew a line down the center of a blank page. Down the left side she listed all the reasons she could think of that made her angry with Jamie, even if down deep she knew they were unfair. Down the right, she wrote what she guessed was his side of it. And then she sat back and studied the columns.

  He never came back/They hit it big, momentum

  Not even to see to Aunt Millie’s things/But he was there for her when she got ill

  Across both columns, As Deck said, different ways of processing?

  Sex, drugs, and rock and roll?/Less than most, maybe. ← As if that’s an excuse!

  Hypocrite, sings about home but never even visits/But he remembers, it shows

  Thinks he’s too big for us now?/Went over and above when True needed him

  Said he loved me but left anyway/Never lied about it, he was always going to

  Her gaze snagged on that last one. She knew it was the hardest for her, even though of all of them, it was the most unfair.

  Be sure, Zee. Because I’m still leaving. We’re heading west as soon as we can and I don’t know when we’ll be back.

  When. Not if. Like the foolish girl she’d been, she’d clung to that word.

  She’d just never expected it to be once in seven years, and driven by death, not love.

  And now? Driven by death again.

  She threw her pen down on the pad. It rolled, until it covered that last line. She reached to move it, then stopped. What if she left it? What if she took that last line out of the equation? The unfair one, the one she knew deep down she didn’t really have any right to?

  He had never lied to her. He’d warned her, time and again. It was not his fault if her heart had been silly enough to think that things would change, after what they’d found together. That was hers to own, not his to carry.

  She read the rest of the list again. And finally admitted that, were it not for that last line, everything on that list was…forgivable. And would have been forgiven in a friend long ago.

  It was only that he’d been her lover that tilted the balance. And she’d just admitted that was the one complaint that was most unfair. And she had the uncomfortable feeling she’d been clinging to that hurt like the teenager she’d been, long after she should have let it go. They’d had almost three years together, although the last two were as much apart as together as the band began to tour locally, taking any gig offered in the effort to get themselves out there.

  But he’d always come home, then. And she foolishly had thought it would continue that way as their reach expanded. And then the chance at L.A. had appeared, the chance to open for a big-name band at a string of West Coast dates. She’d expected him to go—you didn’t turn down a chance like that.

  She just hadn’t expected that he’d never come back.

  Time to grow up, Zinnia Rose.

  She only used that name even in her thoughts when she was being the most stern with herself. And she’d apparently decided she deserved that just now. The question was, what now?

  That was going to take some more thought.

  Chapter Nine

  “You’re working pretty hard for a Sunday morning.”

  Jamie dropped the bag of yard debris he’d collected and spun around.


  “Zee.”

  “And you’re awake, too,” she said lightly, and with a smile. For a moment he just looked at her warily. “I brought a peace offering.”

  She opened the top of the white bag she carried, then held it out toward him. He got a whiff of the aroma.

  His eyes widened. “Cinnamon rolls?”

  “Straight from the bakery. Still warm.” His stomach growled so loudly she heard it. And laughed. “Guess that answers that.”

  He nearly shivered despite the warmth of the sun in a clear blue sky. He hadn’t heard that laugh, a genuine laugh, from her in so long he wasn’t sure how to read it. But it hadn’t seemed fake or forced.

  “I brought coffee, too,” she said. “I didn’t know what you had here.”

  “Um…nothing?”

  She blinked. “What have you been eating? And if you say nothing, I may rethink this peace offering,” she added sternly.

  He suddenly remembered something True had often said: Never get in the way of a determined Zee Mahan.

  “No, I’ve eaten,” he said quickly, his eye still on that bag giving off the tempting smell. “Hope dropped off some stuff, and Deck brought a bag of fast food yesterday. I ate it all.”

  “Well, I’d give you the eat healthy lecture, but you know I’m as bad as you are about it, so I won’t.”

  He smiled at that as he took the bag. Looked inside. “Wow. Half a dozen? I’ll keel over in a sugar coma.”

  “I thought you might share. In the nature of tipping the delivery person.”

  His gaze shot back to her face. This was almost the old Zee, the gently teasing Zee rather than the one looking daggers at him all the time. God, he’d missed her.

  “I gave you three days,” she said softly. “Now it’s time for some company.”

  “I’d…like that.”

  He looked around; there was no furniture in the house, or anything else for that matter, he’d cleared it out to the walls and floor this morning. And Millie’s old picnic table was long gone, he didn’t know where.

  “We can sit outside,” she said.