Always a Hero. Justine Davis
he knew.
“They were good to that boy,” Marilyn added, “worked hard to give him a good life, and he still couldn’t wait to get out of here. They almost never heard from him. Then when it’s too late for them, he shows up back here, a widower with a young son, and won’t even talk about it. Why, I tried to tell him how sorry I was, and he wouldn’t have any of it.”
“Maybe he didn’t want any pity or sympathy.”
“But he was downright rude about it. Claire would never have stood for that.”
“Seems like he learned from them after all, though,” Kai said. “Jordy says he works hard.”
And boring work, Jordy had added, as if it were a crime.
“Yes,” Marilyn said.
“And he did come back home.”
Marilyn brightened at that. “Yes. Yes, he did. Not a word out of him about where he’s been or what he’s been doing for more than twenty years, but he did come home. Moved himself and the boy back into their old house.”
As the woman later went on her way, Kai wondered yet again why people had kids at all. Seemed to just be asking for pain and tears.
I should call Mom, she thought. Let her tell me again how it was all worth it.
Except that that would be followed by the inevitable lecture, very wearing considering she’d been so consumed by Play On that she’d barely had time to breathe, let alone date. But it didn’t stop her mom from declaring it was time she found a good man and settled down to the task of a family herself. The very idea still gave her the shivers. She liked kids well enough, but babies made her very, very nervous. And she couldn’t imagine sending a baby to sleep with a smoking riff on BeeGee; they needed soft, lullaby stuff. Someday, maybe. But that day was a long way off.
Not to mention there was that “good man” problem.
The Edge modulated his way through that six-note arpeggio again as the door opened. A man stepped in, a stranger to her, and she almost grinned at the juxtaposition of his sudden appearance and her own thoughts. Especially since he certainly had the looking part of good down. His hair was a little short for her taste, but she liked the sandy blond color. And he had that body type she liked—lean, wiry. And just tall enough; she liked a man she had to look up at even in heels, but not get a neck ache doing it.
He glanced around the store, quickly, almost assessingly, in a way that was somehow disconcerting. She had the odd thought that if she made him close his eyes and describe it to her, he’d get it perfectly, down to the Deer Creek High School Musical poster on the wall behind him.
And he moves like a big cat, she thought as the man began to walk toward the back of the store. All grace and coiled power.
She shook her head, laughing inwardly at herself.
It’s because he’s a stranger, she told herself. Deer Creek was a small enough town that she’d seen most of the men around, and none had even come close to sparking such a sudden interest.
He paused for a moment to look at the one personal souvenir she’d allowed herself here; a photograph of her onstage at the peak of Relative Fusion’s brief but promising existence, playing a packed, full-size arena for the first time. For her it had been the pinnacle, a height she would never see again, because Kit had tumbled off the high wire he’d been walking soon after that night, and her charmed life as she’d known it had ended.
She slid off the stool she’d been sitting on and took a couple of steps toward the man. She put on her best helpful smile, and in a tone to match she asked, “Help you find something?”
“Someone,” the man said, still looking at the photograph.
Ooh, great voice, too, Kai thought. She had such a weakness for that rough, gravelly timbre.
Then he looked at her. Gave the photo another split-second glance.
“Never mind,” he said, obviously realizing it was her in the photo, despite the fact that she had looked radically different in those days, with her hair long and wild and a ton of makeup and glitter on.
She met his gaze as this time he focused his attention on her unwaveringly. “You’re Kai Reynolds.”
Three things hit her in rapid-fire succession.
She was being assessed, in much the same way as his surroundings had been when he’d first come in.
Second, she knew those eyes. Jordy’s eyes. The same vivid green, although somehow muted. Tired, she thought.
And at last came the realization. Impossibly, this was the stuffy, boring, staid Wyatt Blake.
And he was looking at her as if she’d crawled out from under the nearest rock.
Chapter 2
It was worse than he’d feared.
Wyatt stared at the young woman before him. He’d hoped, when he’d first seen the tidy, well-organized store that perhaps he’d been wrong to expect a problem here.
Play On hadn’t been here when he’d lived here as a kid. He’d heard that the woman who owned and ran it had once been in a semi-successful rock band, which had registered only as an oddity in a little town like Deer Creek. But Mrs. Ogilvie—who had been the local information center when he was a teenager seemingly in trouble at every turn, and apparently still fulfilled that obligation—told him that Jordan came here after school almost every day, he’d known he had to check it out. Especially since Jordan had told him he was studying at school. He didn’t like being lied to, especially by his own son. If this was going to work at all—and he had serious doubts about that—there had to be honesty between them.
The hypocrisy of that high-flown thought, given his own secrets, made him grimace.
“You’re the owner,” he said.
It came out more like an accusation than a question. He hadn’t meant to sound so harsh, but his thoughts had put an edge in his voice.
She said nothing, but he’d spent his life gauging people’s reactions, and as clearly as if she’d shouted it he knew he’d gotten her hackles up already. That wasn’t how he’d wanted to approach this, but damn, she looked like his worst nightmare as far as Jordan was concerned. The rock-and-roll history was bad enough, but the slightly spiky red hair that fell forward to surround a face that managed to look sexy and impish at the same time, and the slim, intricate, knotted bracelet of a tattoo in a deep bluish-green color around her left wrist finished it for him. She would be an impossible-to-resist lure for an impressionable boy.
“Well?” he said, his voice even sharper.
“Was there a question?” she asked, her tone as cool as the steady gaze of smoky gray eyes. Whatever else she was, she wasn’t easily intimidated.
He took a deep breath, and tried to rein it in. After all, she wasn’t some rock gypsy any longer, was she? She’d quit that life, so maybe there was some sense behind those eyes.
The question was, how much of that life had she brought with her here?
“Where’s the paraphernalia? In back?”
She blinked then, looking genuinely puzzled. “What?”
“The cigarette papers, the bongs, the glass pipes.”
She went very still. The smoky gray eyes narrowed as she looked at him. “This is a music store, not a head shop.”
“Right. And you never touched the stuff when you were a rock star.”
She looked at him levelly. She was tall, he thought, five-eight or so. She wore black jeans and a gray shirt that had some sort of shine to it. Unremarkable, except for the way the shift and sheen of it subtly emphasized curves