Face the Music: Beyond Jackson Falls Book 1 Read online

  Face the Music

  Beyond Jackson Falls

  Book 1

  Laurie Breton

  c. 2017 by Laurie Breton

  All rights reserved.

  This book is dedicated to you, my readers,

  who have waited far too long for Paige and Mikey’s story.

  Thank you all for your patience!

  I hope it will be worth the wait.

  Thanks to Patti at PK Designs for the cover art. Special thanks go to my critique partner, Lucy Gage, who keeps me on the straight and narrow and offers priceless input on every book. Yes, I stole your name for Paige’s sidekick. I hope you don’t mind.

  PAIGE

  “AT ELEVEN-FIFTEEN TODAY, you have a live radio interview with Mac Dodge at KALA. He wants to talk about the tour and the upcoming album. Tuesday, you have an eleven o’clock with the head of the record company. His office. Be presentable, he’ll probably want to take you to lunch. If you can’t be presentable, at least wear real shoes. Ella Shaeffer called again, wants to know when we can book you on her talk show. I said I’d run it by you and get back to her with a couple of possible dates. And a Derek Hansen from Alexis Cruises called. He’s looking for celebrity endorsements and was hoping you’d be interested. You’d get a free cruise out of it. You could take me along as your plus one. Which reminds me…have you talked to Ryan?”

  Paige MacKenzie checked her watch for the eleventh time since she’d gotten in the limo at LAX. “Not in the last few days. Why?”

  At the other end of the phone, Lucy Benjamin, her executive assistant and best friend, coughed, then quickly recovered. “No reason,” she said briskly. “So what should I tell Derek Hansen?”

  Paige sank deeper into the limo’s plush seat, stretched out her long legs, and sighed. “I’ve been on the road for the better part of the last six months. I thought this was supposed to be my down time.”

  “Down time is a relative term. You know that.” Lucy made a sound of sympathy. “You just have to get through the next couple of weeks, and then you’ll be free until September.”

  “All I want is to go home and play with my dogs. And veg for a while. Is that too much to ask?”

  “It depends. Do you want to keep your career afloat, or do you want to be one of those ‘used to be famous’ people?”

  “I’m tired, Luce. This one took a lot out of me. I just want to putter around my little house, cook for Ryan, play housewife for a while.”

  Lucy cleared her throat. “Yes, well,” she said, appearing to be at a loss for words, which was highly unusual for her. “Look, Paige—”

  “Luce, I have to go. I have another call coming in.”

  “Paige, wait! There’s something I need to tell you—”

  “It can wait. I’ll call you later. After the radio interview. We’ll do lunch, if you can tolerate my footwear.” She cut Lucy off and picked up the incoming call, spent a few minutes talking with her accountant before shutting off the phone, leaning her head back against the seat, and closing her eyes.

  Her head hurt. Her feet hurt. As long as she was taking inventory, there was very little of her body that didn’t hurt. Living in hotel rooms and on buses, eating take-out and room service food, playing every night to screaming crowds and then trying to shut down and actually sleep, was not the nirvana she’d sought when she first started this crazy ride. She wondered, not for the first time, how her dad had managed it for all these years while maintaining his sanity. Moderation. That was the only possible answer. Dad set ground rules and stuck to them, and tried to avoid extremes at either end of the scale.

  Unfortunately, moderation was not a word that had ever been part of her vocabulary, and she’d been on screech for the past five years. But she had a big birthday coming up, the big 3-0. Maybe turning thirty meant it was time to slow down, to give some serious thought to starting a family. She’d spent her twenties focused on building her career. But thirty was a landmark. Thirty meant it was time to reflect on her past and consider her future, because at thirty, her future wasn’t all that far away. Ry had been pushing her for some time to set a wedding date, but she’d figured she had all the time in the world before she needed to think about settling down. Now, suddenly, thirty was knocking on her door, and the time that had once seemed limitless was about to become a precious commodity.

  The limo turned into the driveway of her house, and her heart soared at the sight of it. She’d bought the house after her first record album went platinum, and she loved the nostalgic cottage feel of it. Loved the roses climbing the trellis out front, loved the crooked wooden floors, loved its lack of pretension. There was nothing of the Hollywood mansion about Paige MacKenzie’s house. It was just a solid, cozy little bungalow that had once been owned by a minor movie actress named Minerva Lawrence. Paige had modernized the 1940s-era kitchen, had added a second bathroom. Other than that, she’d done nothing but cosmetic work. She liked the house’s vibe, liked feeling as though Minerva was hanging out there with her, a benevolent spirit who loved the house as much as she did.

  Paige gave the limo driver a generous tip, hoisted her guitar and a single suitcase—like her father, she traveled light—and let herself into the house. A pile of mail sat on the hardwood floor directly beneath the front-door mail slot. The latest issue of People (hers), the newest Sports Illustrated (Ryan’s), a dozen pieces of junk mail. Paige skirted the pile of mail, set down her suitcase and her guitar. “Ry?” she called. “Bo? Janis?”

  Silence. “Ryan?” she repeated, a little more loudly. Still no response. Curious, she walked to the kitchen, opened the door to the garage, and checked. His BMW wasn’t there, just her little yellow MINI Cooper, sitting in a splash of sunlight, looking lonely in the middle of all that empty space. He must have gone out somewhere with the dogs.

  The house felt stuffy, like it had been closed up for days. Paige went around opening windows to let in fresh air. Downtown might be smoggy, but up here in the Hollywood Hills, the air was breathable. She returned to the foyer, scooped up the mail, and tossed it on the counter in the kitchen.

  At exactly eleven-fifteen, her house phone rang. Paige picked it up, greeted the KALA producer who’d placed the call, then was switched over to rock jock Mac Dodge. “Today, folks,” he said in his booming announcer’s voice, “we’re talking to rock-and-roll icon Paige MacKenzie about her recent tour and her upcoming album. Paige, thanks so much for being here.”

  Knowing the protocol by heart—even though she hated it—she responded with, “Thank you, Mac, for having me on your show.”

  “So, Paige, I understand you just finished a tour. Can you tell us a little about it?”

  She’d done this before, dozens of times, and didn’t even need to prepare. “Sure. The first leg of the tour, we hit all the major U.S. cities, and we sold out everywhere. We set up meet-and-greets with fans at every stop, and it was so much fun to meet everyone. Then we traveled to Asia: Hong Kong, Tokyo. I’ve never seen so much enthusiasm. The fans there are amazing. We took a few days of R&R in the Philippines before moving on to the last leg of the tour, where we played sold-out shows in London, Paris, Rome, Barcelona, Helsinki. It was a fabulous experience.” She wasn’t bragging, or exaggerating. It always humbled her when she stepped on stage and fifty thousand people screamed and applauded. “Our fans,” she added, “are the best in the world.”

  “Sounds like a lot of fun. Tell us about the new album. What’s on it, and when can we expect it?”

  “We go into the studio the third week of September. The record’s due to hit stores right before Christmas. This one will be a bit of a departure from the usual. I’ll be writing most
of the songs, but I’ve also been having a very positive response to some old country ballads in my live concerts, so I decided there’ll be a sprinkling of those, too.”

  “You’re not worried that recording a country album will alienate your hardcore rock fans?”

  “I’d like to think my fans are open-minded. And it’s not a country album. There’ll only be two or three country songs on it. The rest will be classic, hard-rocking Paige MacKenzie.”

  “Well, folks, you heard it straight from the source! Just in time for Christmas, Paige MacKenzie’s new album will hit all your favorite retail outlets. If you don’t mind, Paige, I have just one more question. I know I’m dying to hear the answer to this, and I’m sure your fans are, too. How are you handling the breakup?”

  “Excuse me?” She must have heard him wrong, for she had no idea what he was talking about.

  “I’m referring to your split from Ryan. How are you handling it?”

  Mac Dodge should have known better than to believe yet another baseless lie perpetrated by the Hollywood rumor mill. In the three years she and Ry had been together, wagging tongues had split them up a half-dozen times. Was it jealousy or maliciousness? Maybe a combination of both.

  “I’m not sure where you heard that we broke up, Mac, but it’s not—”

  “Wait. You’re telling me that People magazine got it wrong? That Ryan didn’t marry Vanessa Ortiz in Las Vegas four days ago?”

  Everything around her went still, the silence growing increasingly heavy as she tried to make sense of his words. What he was implying wasn’t possible. Ryan wouldn’t do that to her. Would he? But even as her brain tried to deny it, she realized that they hadn’t talked in more than a week. That was so unlike him. They usually stayed in close contact when she was away. But she’d been so distracted with wrapping up her tour that she hadn’t even noticed the absence of those regular phone calls. Now, Lucy’s words rushed back to her in a flood of glaring Technicolor warning: Have you talked to Ryan? Paige, wait! There’s something I need to tell you. And she’d been too impatient to wait and hear what Lucy was trying to say.

  Oh, shit.

  Afraid she might vomit, Paige stared numbly at the telephone receiver in her hand before disconnecting the call and carefully replacing the phone in its cradle.

  She found the People magazine at the bottom of the stack she’d left on the kitchen counter. Paige yanked it free, scattering sales flyers and credit card offers all over the floor. With trembling hands, she held up the magazine and stared at the cover photo of her fiancé, Ryan Legend, with his arm around his lovely co-star, Vanessa Ortiz, who played his sister on the daytime drama 17 Harwood Street.

  It’s WEDDING BELLS for Ryan and Vanessa! the headline screamed. Her lungs aching, Paige opened the magazine and flipped through the pages until she found what she sought:

  Handsome TV hunk Ryan Legend, recently single after his break-up with rock musician Paige MacKenzie, wed his stunning co-star, Vanessa Ortiz, in a secret ceremony in Las Vegas last night. “We’re very much in love,” Vanessa told People’s entertainment reporter Liza Honeywell. When asked about the break-up with Paige, Ryan told us, “It’s been a long time coming.” Below, a photo of the happy couple moments after their nuptials, accompanied by their two dogs, Bo and Janis. Big congrats to both of you!

  Heat suffused Paige’s face. Her throat tightened, and she had to struggle to drag in a breath of that fresh air she’d been so enamored of just minutes ago. He’d dumped her. Dumped her and married that little slut without so much as a “Hey, Paige, I don’t think this is working out for us.” He’d let her find out about it on live radio, had let her be blindsided by the news in front of half of Southern California.

  As if that wasn’t bad enough, he’d stolen her dogs.

  MIKEY

  WHEN THE ALARM went off, he was dreaming about Rachel. Laughing Rachel, camera in hand as the relentless Iraqi sun poured down on gleaming auburn hair that she defiantly refused to cover with a hijab. The bloody reign of Al-Qaeda had rendered it unsafe for even Western women to go out in public without the traditional Muslim head covering. But Rachel, a free spirit who’d been spoiled mercilessly by her father after her mother’s death, had inherited the general’s sturdy backbone. Nobody was going to tell her what to do.

  Stop pointing the camera at me, his dream alter-ego said.

  One corner of Rachel’s mouth turned up, and humor lit those teasing eyes. Why don’t you stop being an old curmudgeon?

  I don’t get it. Why would you want to take so many pictures of me?

  Oh, I don’t know, Mick. Maybe it’s because you’re just so damn pretty.

  It’s not Mick. It’s Mike.

  I know that. You’ve told me enough times.

  Then why do you insist on calling me Mick?

  Because everybody else calls you Mike.

  Resigned, he posed stiffly while she snapped once, twice, a third time. Over their heads, a helicopter flew past, but instead of the expected thwack-thwack-thwack, it buzzed. He’d never heard a helicopter buzz before and, shading his eyes with his hand, he peered up at it. The thing appeared to be an ordinary Black Hawk, except for that damned buzzing. Loud and obnoxious, it just went on, and on, and on.

  He awoke with a start, breathing hard, weighted down by a grief so profound he wasn’t sure his heart was big enough to hold it. For an instant, he had no idea where he was. Fingers of light crept in around the blinds, and he automatically reached out into the dimness to silence the insistent buzzing. Still half-asleep, Mikey fumbled on the night stand until the warm body pressed against his spine shifted position, and he realized it was morning, and he was in Amy’s bed.

  “Amy,” he mumbled. “Alarm.” When she didn’t respond, he put a little more force into it. “Amy!”

  She peeled herself away from him, leaned over her side of the bed, and stabbed the miserable thing into submission. While he lay between wrinkled sheets, heart pounding as he struggled to navigate his way from Baghdad back to the real world, she rolled to her feet and left the bed.

  “Light coming on,” she said briskly, a half-second before she flipped the switch and left him blinking in the sudden brightness. “I promised the kids we’d do a pre-dress-rehearsal before school.”

  He squinted at the clock. “It’s five in the morning.”

  “And the show is tomorrow night. I have to make sure they’re ready.”

  She turned her back on him and began rummaging through her underwear drawer. Narrow of waist, wide of hip and full of breast, Amy Tardiff was built like a real woman, not like the girls in the magazines who sported a waifishness bordering on heroin chic. She pulled out a lacy brassiere and matching panties, bumped the drawer shut with a naked hip, and said, “Can you start the coffee?”

  Before he could respond, she was gone, sprinting in the direction of the bathroom. A second later, the shower came on. Amy always made herself scarce when he dressed. She avoided looking at his leg, as if she found it distasteful or embarrassing. He’d never called her on it. What was the point? If she found him less of a man because of his disfigurement, he didn’t really want to know about it. Some things were better left unsaid.

  Mikey swung his legs out of bed and scraped the fingers of both hands through his hair. After some adjustments, he pulled on his jeans, zipped and buttoned, yanked a gray sweatshirt that read PROPERTY OF USMC over his head, and went to the kitchen. The temperature had dropped overnight, and the floor was cold. Maine weather was notoriously unpredictable. Nights in June could be chilly. On the other hand, Maine’s capricious weather was preferable to the oppressive hundred-degree heat he’d experienced in the Iraqi desert.

  Everything was relative.

  He was leaning against the kitchen counter, allowing that first cup of liquid crack to smooth his rough edges, when she swept into the kitchen, wearing dangly earrings and a skirt that showed a fair amount of leg. She breezed past him and poured a cup of java into her travel mug. Dropping two sl
ices of bread into the toaster, she said, “I just remembered you have that thing with your parents tonight. Are you coming over after?”

  He took another sip of coffee. “Probably not. I think Beth’s spending the night.”

  “I tried to get her interested in Drama Club.” The toast popped, and Amy buttered it. “I think she’d be good at it. But she didn’t bite.”

  “Don’t push her. If she’s interested, let her come to you.”

  “Geez, you’re touchy sometimes. I’m not pushing her. I just think her talents lie in that direction. Now, where the hell did I put my shoes?”

  She disappeared, returned wearing the shoes and carrying a light jacket. Slinging her purse over her shoulder, she said, “Lock up when you leave. Oh, and can you drag the trash cans out to the curb before you go? I missed trash day last week.”

  “Anything else you need done while I’m at it?”

  Her dark eyes narrowed. “Yes. You could be nice to me once in a while.”

  “I made you coffee. How much more do you want?”

  She snorted. Coffee in one hand and toast in the other, Amy stood on tiptoe to plant a chaste little kiss on his chin. Then, like a dark-haired whirlwind, she was gone, the door slamming behind her.

  Outside, her Hyundai started up in the driveway and backed out. She shifted gears with an audible clunk, then sped off down the street.

  And he took a sip of coffee and settled into the silence.

  * * *

  GUNTHER WAS ALL spiffed up this morning, hair slicked back and cemented down with gel, highlighting his widow’s peak. His eyes were a clean, clear blue, free of their customary redness. He wore a pressed dress shirt and jeans without holes, and he’d even taken the time to shave. Gunther was headed to Togus to meet with his VA counselor. Her name was Bernadette, she was half his age and, according to Gunther, a fine-looking woman. Although he would have walked barefoot over hot coals before admitting it, Gunther had a bit of a crush on Miss Bernadette.