Face the Music: Beyond Jackson Falls Book 1 Read online

  “Looking good, old man,” Mikey said as he came through the front door of the convenience store.

  From behind the cash register, Gunther scowled. “You’re late.”

  Mikey glanced at the clock. “Five minutes,” he said. “No big deal.”

  “Spend the night with Amy again, did you?”

  “I did, but don’t go thinking I’m running late because we had hot morning monkey sex.” Mikey set down his coffee mug on the checkout counter. Spike, Gunther’s rotund Chihuahua, sprawled on the dented wooden countertop next to a display of beef jerky sticks that were probably past their expiration date. In his black leather harness and Harley-Davidson scarf, Spike was quite the fashionista. Mikey rubbed the dog’s ears and said, “It’s trash day. When I went into the garage to drag the cans out to the curb, somebody’d been there ahead of me. Probably a raccoon. I had to clean up and bag the mess before I could leave.”

  “As hot dates go, that’s a real doozy.”

  “Thought you’d appreciate it.”

  “I don’t know why you keep flogging that dead horse. It’s going nowhere.”

  “I don’t know why you keep sticking your nose into my business.”

  They’d been embroiled in this same debate for months. Gunther kept arguing that if the relationship was going nowhere, they should end it. Mikey argued back that since he and Amy were consenting adults, as long as the sex was decent and nobody had any expectations, it was a non-issue.

  “Of course. Why buy the cow,” Gunther muttered, “when you can get the milk for free?”

  “Jesus, Gunth, you’ve gotta stop reading those Harlequin romances. They’re screwing with your understanding of the mores of modern-day dating.”

  Gunther snorted. “I should fire you for insubordination.”

  “That would be hard,” Mikey said, “since you’re not paying me.”

  “I pay you in good Scotch whisky, a little sweet Hendrix, and the pleasure of my company. That should be enough.”

  “Believe whatever you want, old man, but the truth’s the truth.”

  Gunther grunted. “Key to the safe’s in the cash drawer. We have a fuel delivery coming mid-morning. I should be back by two. Take care of my dog, and try not to burn down the building while I’m gone.”

  They swapped places, and Gunther gave him a long, appraising look across the checkout counter before moving toward the door. Just before he reached it, Mikey said, “Give Bernadette a big kiss for me.”

  Gunther stopped walking. He didn’t turn around, but the backs of his ears turned red. “Bite me,” he said, and slammed out the door.

  PAIGE

  “I CAN’T BELIEVE you just took off, without bothering to tell anyone where you were going. Do you have any idea how worried we’ve been?”

  Paige adjusted her oversized sunglasses and, cell phone propped between ear and shoulder, studied the gas pump that stood on a chipped concrete island outside the old country store. She was pretty sure it had been installed during the Neolithic Era. “I didn’t tell you,” she said, “because I knew this was how you’d react. I need some time, Luce. Time away from the limelight and in the bosom of my family.”

  “So you just elected to drive three thousand miles without telling anyone?”

  “I told my parents I was coming. It’s nobody else’s business.”

  “Nobody’s? Not mine? Not Tim’s? He’s been tweaking out.”

  “Tim worries too much.”

  “It’s his job to worry. That’s why you pay him the big bucks.”

  “I pay him the big bucks to keep rabid fans from accosting my person during public events. My private life is just that. Private.”

  “He was ready to call the authorities last night and file a missing-persons report. I had to talk him down.”

  “Clearly, I’m fine.”

  “Don’t forget to add self-absorbed.”

  Getting nowhere with the outdated gas pump, Paige grimaced and rubbed her temple. “Come on, Luce. You know I couldn’t stay there with all the hoopla. I couldn’t go to the grocery store or the bank or the dry cleaner without starting a riot. Hell, I couldn’t even walk out to the end of my driveway to pick up the newspaper without the neighbors whispering and pointing fingers. And don’t even get me started on the paparazzi.” With their telephoto lenses focused directly on her pain and humiliation, they’d been relentless in their pursuit of her side of the story. If it bleeds, it leads, and they’d been like a pack of hyenas, closing in for the kill. Her brain conjured up an image of Princess Diana, chased by paparazzi through that tunnel in Paris, and she shuddered.

  “That’s all well and good, but you should have told us where you were going. Or at least that you were going. You’ve been out of contact for five days. Five freaking days, Paige. I thought you’d either jumped off the Santa Monica Pier or been abducted by aliens.”

  “I took care of every responsibility on my calendar, and then I slunk away in the dark of night without telling anyone. I’m sorry, okay? I’ll be back in a few weeks. We can argue about it then. Right now, I have to figure out how to work this antediluvian gas pump.”

  “Won’t the paparazzi just follow you there?”

  Paige took a long, panoramic look around, scanning the rusted gas pumps from another era, the empty highway that passed by the store, the Harley parked beside the building, the two cars in the parking lot. “Things here are different,” she said. “Besides, if anybody tries to come near me, I can guarantee that my dad will make sure they regret it. I have to go, Luce. Do you still love me?”

  “Of course I still love you. I’m hurt, but I’ll get over it. But from now on, you will stay in touch. Is that clear, young lady?”

  “Yes, Mom, I’ll stay in touch.” She rolled her eyes. “Tell Tim to stop panicking. I’m still bone-deep exhausted from the tour. I need some time to rest and recuperate. To lick my wounds. And to fill up the well. At some point in the not-too-distant future, I have to start writing the next album.”

  “Take care of yourself, promise?”

  “Promise. Talk soon.” She cut off the call, pocketed the phone, and returned to studying the gas pump, trying to figure out how to get the damn thing to dispense gas. Even for a backwater place like Jackson Falls, this piece of machinery was beyond archaic. It didn’t bear even a passing resemblance to the self-serve pumps she was used to, the ones you slid your credit card into and then pushed buttons until you got what you wanted. This one didn’t even have buttons.

  “Pull on the arm and it’ll reset to zero.”

  The scratchy male voice, floating out of nowhere, startled her. Looking around, Paige noticed the intercom speaker above her head, glanced in the direction of the store but saw nobody. “Excuse me?” she said.

  “The chrome arm on the right. Pull it forward like a slot machine. That should reset the numbers to zero so you can pump your gas.”

  Gingerly, she grabbed the dirty chrome handle and pulled it toward her. The numbers began moving, lining up to zero across the board, like a Vegas slot machine. “Thanks,” she said to the intercom, then inserted the nozzle and began filling her tank.

  When she was done pumping, she went inside to pay. Taking her place at the end of the short line of people waiting to check out, she glanced at the tabloids racked beside the counter. Her own face, eyes lowered to avoid the camera lens, jumped out at her from ten feet away. The accompanying headline read: Dumped, a Heartbroken Paige Goes Into Hiding. Heat suffused her cheeks, and she muttered an oath under her breath. If she ever got her hands on Ryan Legend again, she would rip him to shreds. Slowly, inflicting as much pain as possible.

  She shoved her sunglasses more firmly onto the bridge of her nose and smoothed down the flyaway hair she’d inherited from her dad and had never been able to control. This was a mistake. She should have stopped at the new Cumberland Farms convenience store she’d passed a half-mile back. There, she could have paid at the pump, and avoided the possibility of being recognized.
/>   The elderly gentleman at the head of the line was buying lottery tickets. Her stomach growled. Eyes averted, Paige silently willed the checkout clerk to move a little faster. Claustrophobia was starting to close in. How much longer could she stand here, with that tabloid cover, so blatant it might as well have been flashing neon, staring her in the face? The elderly man finally completed his purchase, and the woman ahead of her stepped up to the counter. Paige’s stomach growled again. Heat raced up the back of her neck. She closed her eyes, hoping to ward off the bad juju that had somehow taken over her life.

  She must have temporarily spaced out from reality, because suddenly a voice said, as if from a great distance, “Paige?”

  It was a familiar voice, one she recognized immediately, even though she hadn’t heard it in a dozen years. But that was impossible. He was a thousand miles away, in a desert somewhere, saving the world. Not back here in Jackson Falls, running the cash register in a musty old country store that should’ve been razed decades ago. She’d obviously imagined him. Exhaustion, nostalgia, and starvation had conjured him up inside her head.

  She told herself, quite firmly, that he wasn’t real.

  “Paige?” The voice, tinged with concern, spoke again.

  Twelve years hadn’t changed that voice. She would have recognized it anywhere. Knowing he wasn’t real made not one iota of difference. Tentatively, still not believing, she opened her eyes and looked directly into his.

  They, too, hadn’t changed in twelve years. Black as obsidian, they stared back at her. His hair was darker than it had been in high school. Still blond, but that silvery color she remembered had darkened a shade or two. And it was longer. A little shaggy, a little unkempt. Shouldn’t he be in uniform, with a military haircut, halfway around the world? Someplace like Iraq, or Afghanistan, or—she didn’t know where he was supposed to be. Any place but where he was, standing behind the counter of the Jackson Falls Country Store, looking at her as if he’d never seen her before.

  A wave of nausea rose from her stomach up into her throat. “Mikey?” she croaked in disbelief.

  And she fainted dead on the floor.

  * * *

  WHEN SHE CAME to, she was in a storeroom of some kind, laid out awkwardly on a smelly cot that was probably loaded with vermin. Sitting beside her on the cot, Mikey Lindstrom held a cool, wet cloth to her forehead. On the floor at his feet sat an overweight Chihuahua wearing a Harley-Davidson scarf and an attitude. The dog watched her, unblinking, and she said, “What the hell is that thing?”

  “That’s Spike. Welcome back. Should I be calling an ambulance?”

  “I’m fine, except for my dignity. Then again, that’s already been demolished, so I guess we’re good. What happened?”

  “You passed out cold. Landed on the floor with one hell of a thud. I picked you up and carried you in here.” His brow wrinkled. “Are you sick?”

  “No.”

  “Pregnant? Drunk?”

  “No and no.”

  “Hungry, then. When was the last time you ate?”

  “I don’t remember. Somewhere in New York state.”

  He muttered a soft oath and said, “It’s convenient that you passed out here instead of behind the wheel. I’ll get you a slice of hot pizza. It’s godawful, but it’s filling, and it won’t kill you. Probably.”

  While he was gone, she managed to sit up, although her limbs felt spongy and her hands shaky. In her determination to get home in the shortest amount of time possible, she’d skipped lunch. What a tool. Clutching the wet rag he’d handed her, she wiped her face and then pressed it to the back of her neck. The dog still stared at her as if in challenge. “What?” she said.

  The dog didn’t answer. Mikey returned with a paper plate that held a single slice of pepperoni pizza. He put the plate into her hand and said, “Eat.”

  His empathy was admirable. “Who’s minding the store while you’re babysitting me?” She eyed the pizza, realized she was ravenous, and dug in with enthusiasm.

  “I locked the door and put up the closed sign. Gunther will probably have my hide, but I can’t be in two places at once.”

  Paige took a second enormous bite of pizza. Dripping with grease, it was the consistency of cardboard, and had undoubtedly been sitting for hours. It was the best thing she’d ever tasted.

  “More?” she said.

  There was something odd about his gait as he walked away, something she couldn’t quite put her finger on. Not a limp, not exactly, just an oddness. His timing was a little off. As though his right side and his left were out of sync.

  Before she could give it much thought, he returned, this time with two slices, and sat on a box across from her while she ate. Ignoring him, Paige inhaled both slices, cupped her hand over her mouth to disguise a small belch, and felt the shakiness begin to dissipate. “Better?” he said.

  “Better.” She examined his face, took in the chiseled jaw, the dark eyes, the sculpted cheekbones. A dozen years older than he’d been the day she put him on a bus for Camp Pendleton, he still looked pretty much the same. But there was a brittleness to him that hadn’t been there the last time she saw him. “Last I heard, you were a career Marine, stationed in the Middle East. What happened?”

  Something darkened in his face, as clearly as though he’d flipped a switch and extinguished the lights. “Long story,” he said brusquely. “Too long to tell you right now.”

  There were places you didn’t go with an ex, and she’d clearly crossed an invisible line. Hoping for a less volatile topic, she asked, “How long have you been home?”

  His face relaxed a little, but the lights didn’t come back on. “A year and a half, give or take.”

  “And nobody told me? In all that time, not one person in the entire extended family could bother to mention that you were back?”

  “They probably thought it was for the best. They were always a little weird about the two of us. Especially after the way it ended. They probably thought it was better to let sleeping dogs lie.”

  He was right. It hadn’t ended well. They’d been kids. Adolescent dreamers. Looking around, Paige took note of the clutter, the cobwebs, the saggy ceiling tiles. Tried to reconcile the Mikey she’d known, the idealistic young man who’d left college to become a Marine and make a difference in the world, with the scruffy man running a cash register in this rundown, smelly convenience store. “And you’re working here?” she said.

  “Don’t sound so horrified. I’m just helping out a friend. Gunther. He owns the place. I’m actually a cop. I work for Cousin Teddy.”

  “He’s still the chief? Wow. My condolences.”

  “And right back at you.”

  “Right back—oh. You’ve seen the tabloids.”

  “It would be hard to miss seeing the tabloids. They’ve been staring me in the face for two weeks now. At the grocery store, the drugstore, the gas station. So how much of what they’re printing is the truth?”

  Paige raised both hands, palms up, and shrugged. “You’re looking at it.”

  “For what it’s worth, I think that no-talent little shit should be strung up for what he did to you.”

  “Thank you. It’s the humiliation, more than anything, that makes me want to grab him by the throat and squeeze until he stops struggling. He could have done me the courtesy of breaking up with me before he married someone else. If he was afraid to face me, an e-mail would’ve been adequate. Instead, he let me find out during a live radio interview. What the hell was he thinking?”

  “Not about you, that’s for sure.”

  “I’ve been so careful to stay out of the sights of the tabloids. I keep my nose clean, don’t air any dirty linen in public. Hell, until now, I didn’t have any dirty linen to air. I think they’ve been waiting to get something on me. They’re like sharks, circling at the first sign of blood. I’m sure Ry’s soaking up the attention. He was always a media hound, always wanted to be in the spotlight. And of course, he’s the one with the blushing bride. I�
�m the one who had to leave town because the public scrutiny got so intense.”

  “You’re tough. You can stand up to it.”

  It was true. She’d always been what her grandma referred to as “one tough cookie.” She’d taken all the bumps and scrapes of childhood, the bloodied knees and the sunburns and the chicken pox, in stride. She hadn’t even cried when her mother died. “There’s only one direction I can move. Speaking of moving—” She checked her watch, realized how late it was. “I should go. Dad and Casey are expecting me.”

  “You sure you’re okay to drive?”

  “I am now.” She rubbed her tummy. “Thanks to you and your magical pizza.”

  “If you think that pizza’s magical, you don’t get out much.”

  “I’ve just come in from six months on the road. Pickled tripe would taste good to me at this point.”

  He walked her to the entrance, flipped the closed sign back to open, and unlocked the door. “Wait,” she said, pausing in the doorway. “I didn’t pay you for the gas.”

  “Don’t worry about it. I’ll cover it.”

  “I can’t ask you to do that.” Considering their history, she really didn’t want anything from him. Especially when she was more than capable of paying for the gas, the building, the freaking town, if she so chose.

  He read her face. “Jesus, Paige, it’s twelve bucks. It’s not the Hope Diamond. Just say thank you and be done with it.”

  He was right, of course. Mountains, molehills. “Thank you,” she said.

  She could feel his eyes on her as she walked across the pavement to her car. Clutching the steering wheel, she started her engine and swept her hair back from her face. When she glanced over her shoulder, he was still standing there, silhouetted in the open doorway, his face unreadable. She checked her rear-view mirror and wheeled back out into traffic.

  Well. That was weird. And a little disturbing. She’d been in love with him once, a million years ago, when they were little more than children. Now, he was just a familiar-looking stranger. A guy she used to know. Still handsome—aging well, aside from the fact that he badly needed a haircut—but altered in a way she couldn’t put her finger on. Mikey had always been quiet, had always been serious. But he’d also been popular, well liked, a thoughtful guy with a dry sense of humor and a white-knight complex. Captain of the football team and a lightning-fast quarterback, Mikey Lindstrom was a demigod who walked the corridors of Jackson Falls High School, leaving a swath of broken female hearts in his wake.