Jay drove from the flower shop back to his grandmother’s and carried the fern inside. She was in the kitchen, nursing the big metal pot she used to cook down her strawberries.
He set the plant on the table. “Are you tired of ferns, Gran?”
She glanced around the veritable jungle growing inside her house. “It’s what your grandpa always gave me. How could I get tired of them?”
He leaned his hip against the table. “I told Detective Teas who I was.”
She gave him a sidelong look. “Thought you were just Jay Cross.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Do you know what you mean?”
He muttered an oath and rubbed his forehead. “I’m too tired for your cryptic comments. Jett Carr’s a stage persona. That’s it.”
She turned and gently drew her fingers along the fern’s feathery edges. “Jet-pack. Your grandpa loved you more’n anything on this earth. And I loved him more’n anything on this earth. That’s why I took on O’Brien when he asked young Louella Carr to marry him.” She poked him once in the chest with a finger that was definitely not gentle. “Jett Carr isn’t just some name you plucked outta thin air. Your problem with Jett Carr was that you were letting other people control who he was. Instead of being who you wanted to be.”
“Some things aren’t that easy.”
She made a disgusted sound and returned to her pot.
He dropped it. “Was there ever something between him and Mabel?”
She threw back her head and laughed. “Lord no.”
“And I know you didn’t steal her jam recipe.”
She snorted, still laughing. “No, sir, I did not.”
“Then what the hell happened between the two of you?”
She gave him a look over her shoulder. “You really want to know?”
He spread his hands helplessly. “I’m asking, aren’t I?” He’d been asking for days now.
She gave a huge sigh. “Shop-World wants to pay me a boatload of money to put my jam in all their stores. From California to Wyoming to Texas.”
Jay was glad he was leaning against the counter, because he probably would have fallen on his butt otherwise. “What?”
She gave him an annoyed look. “You heard me.” She tapped her long wooden spoon against the side of the pot. “My mistake was telling Mabel about it. She’s always had a pea-green streak about her. She’ll get over it in time.”
“Why didn’t you tell me about it? Does Mom know?”
“What good would that do?” She looked even more annoyed. “Wouldn’t make your mama stop trying to get me to give up my home and move into a dinky bedroom at that house she shares with your dad. Nothing wrong with that house, mind you, but it isn’t mine.”
“Are you going to take the offer?”
“Would’ve done it already if it weren’t for you.”
“What have I got to do with it? Gran, you’ll make a fortune.”
“Never wanted a fortune,” she muttered. “Just wanted my home and my family.” She stuck her spoon back into her pot. “And soon as I take it, word is going to spread around this town like wildfire. Shop-World wants to do a whole advertising thing about me growing my strawberries and all that. How’s that gonna play when my grandson’s famous and afraid to get his face seen on some newscaster’s camera?”
“I’m not famous.”
“Jett Carr damn sure is now whether you like it or not.” She gave him a fierce look. “I know you’ve been spending time with Arabella. Quality time.”
“I’m not having a discussion about my love life with you, Gran.” He wanted to dunk his head in the stream outside his barn just thinking about it.
“There’s nothing new under the sun,” she told him tartly. “Why d’you think Herb and I had such a quick wedding? That’s the problem with all you young people. Thinking you’re the only ones who ever invented sex.”
He covered his eyes and wanted to be anywhere other than there.
“You want to keep having your way with that young lady, you’d better do more than ’fess up to that detective person. Arabella’s the one who matters, isn’t she?”
He dropped his hand. “Yes.”
She gave him a narrow-eyed glare. Then after a moment nodded decisively and pointed the end of her dripping red spoon at a drawer. “There’s a metal box in there. Get it for me.”
He pulled open the junk-filled drawer and managed to extract the flattish, rectangular box. He started to hand it to her but she just waved with her spoon. “Open it.” He did so, expecting the deck of cards that he vaguely remembered it once contained.
Instead, sitting on a folded yellowed hankie were two delicate, glittering necklaces and one small diamond ring.
“I had t’stop wearing the ring when my arthritis got too bad.” She waggled her slightly bent fingers. “But it’s yours if you want it.”
His gut tightened. “Granny—”
“Just take it.” She sniffed slightly and focused on her bubbling jam concoction. “Give it to that girl. Pretty sure you love her just like Herb loved me. Or buy yourself something fancy and modern to give her. I don’t much care so long as you get your head on straight and do what’s right.”
He slid the ring over the tip of his pinky finger. It was as far as it would go. She knew he’d never want modern and fancy. Then he kissed her lined cheek. “You’re a helluva woman, you know.”
She snorted. “Of course I know.” But she patted his cheek the same way she’d done when he was five. “Now get on with you. I don’t want to see your face until you’ve come clean with Arabella once and for all.”
He hadn’t slept. Hadn’t showered.
He knew he probably ought to at least do one of those things before he went down on bended knee, but he did neither. Just got in his truck and drove back into town.
It was a sign of his own stupidity that he had to spend an extra hour getting gas when he ran out of it halfway there.
But finally he was standing on Brady’s front porch step. The afternoon sun was high in the sky above him and he squinted against the glare because he’d also forgotten his hat back at his grandmother’s place.
“You’re falling apart, man,” he muttered to himself before reaching out to knock on the door.
He heard the squeals of little boys laughing before the door opened up and he looked down to see Toby—or was it Tyler?—looking up at him. “Hey there. I’m here to see your auntie Bella.”
“She’s in the backyard,” the boy said artlessly. “How come you made her cry?”
He frowned. “She’s crying?”
The twin’s twin popped his head into the doorway. “’Cause you’re a liar,” he said seriously. “We gotta get time out when we lie. Are you gonna get time out?”
The only thing Jay had lied about to Arabella was his past. “Can I come in?”
The two boys shook their heads. “We’re not supposed to open the door.”
“But you did.”
They gave each other looks and promptly shut the door right in his face.
Jay started to knock again, but thought better of it.
Instead, he left the geranium on the porch and walked around to the back of the house. It was protected by a tall wooden fence all the way around the yard. Logically, he knew there had to be a gate somewhere, but he was way too impatient just then to try to find it.
Feeling like the biggest louse on the planet, he stretched up and caught the top of the fence, then grunting slightly, managed to heave himself up and over.
He landed in a pile of dog poop, which should have been his biggest warning to date that things were not going to go as he planned. He scraped his boot as well as he could against the grass and walked farther into the backyard, turning around the corner of the house.
And there she sat. Her flaming hair was spread around her shoulders. The temper in Arabella’s blue eyes when she spotted him made them almost as black as the bruises that had faded over the last several days. She didn’t even seem all that surprised to see him. “What’re you doing here?”
He took a few cautious steps closer. She was holding a baseball in her hands and the way she kept turning it between her palms was a little alarming. Particularly when she’d told his mother just two days earlier how she’d played softball in high school.
“I came to tell you something I should have told you a long time ago.”
She tossed the ball lightly from one hand to the other. “I think you should know that—” She broke off, seeming to be waiting for some response.
“That I’m—” His voice came out croaky and hoarse. He cleared his throat. “I’m in love with you,” he finished more clearly.
She made a harsh, buzzing sound. “Wrong.”
“What?”
“Before the balcony collapse. You were going to tell me something. Remember?”
Time had been so full in the last several weeks that in comparison, the balcony collapse felt like it had happened years ago, rather than just six months. “I remember I wanted to tell you everything about me.”
“Like the fact that you’re a liar?”
Regret sank hard inside his gut. “Bella.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“You know. Don’t you?”
Her lips twisted. “That you’re Jett Carr?” She bounced the ball twice in her palm. “And I’m the biggest fool on the planet?”
“You’re not a fool.”
She sent the ball whizzing two inches from his head.
It bounced hard on the fence beyond him. “You should have told me,” she said flatly and marched inside the house.
She slammed the door behind her.
Jay went over to it and tried the knob. No shock that she’d locked it.
He pressed his forehead against the warm wood. “I should have told you,” he said loudly enough that if, by some miracle, she was still standing close to the door she’d be able to hear. “People used to only like me because I was Jett. And the longer things went on with you, the more I was afraid you’d like me only if I’d never been him at all. Bella, I’m sorry. I warned you that I wasn’t good enough for you but I fell in love with you, anyway. You’re everything that’s right in this freaking world.”
The door yanked open and he nearly stumbled inside. Tears glittered in her eyes, making them even more sharply blue. “I don’t know why I didn’t figure it out before I saw your damn video. You gave it all up. Became someone new. Never gonna trust again. Certainly not me. Not enough to tell me the truth. Was she the complication in California, Jay? The woman who broke your heart?”
His voice rose. “It wasn’t a woman who broke my heart! It was the music that did that!”
She’d paled and taken a step back as he shouted the words, and he felt even worse.
“I would never hurt you,” he said roughly.
“Bzzz,” she said thickly. “Too late.”
And she closed the door in his face yet again.
He sighed wearily. “Bella, please. There’s no other woman. There’s only you.”
“Maybe you should go.” He jerked his head back, looking up at the voice from above. Harper was leaning out an opened window. “Brady’s going to be home soon and once he sees the state Bella’s in—” She looked almost sympathetic. “Give her—give them—a little time, Jay.”
He squinted up at her. The sunlight was creating a halo around her dark head. “You overheard, I guess.”
“That you’re the sexy missing Jett?”
He grimaced, feeling his neck get hot. He’d blushed more in the last twenty-four hours than he had in his entire adult life and he didn’t much like it. “Just Jett,” he muttered.
She propped her head on her hand. “I overheard.”
He spread his hands and his grandmother’s diamond ring on his pinky winked in the sunlight. “I should have told her. I know that. But I can’t undo the past. So what am I supposed to do now?”
“Undo the future?”
“There is no future. Not without her in it.”
She smiled slightly. “Find a way to make her listen,” she suggested, and then disappeared back inside the window.
Jay blinked against the sun again. He looked around the yard. Spotted the gate finally, as well as the sturdy metal lock on its latch.
Resigned, he climbed back over the gate, this time at least managing to miss the dog crap.
He walked back to his truck, feeling the itch on his spine of several pairs of eyes, but when he looked back at the house again, he saw nothing but the twitch of curtains in the windows.
He got behind the wheel and started the engine.
As if the fates were mocking him, the radio came on to his own voice singing back at him. He spun the dial and a droning voice reciting farm futures replaced his song.
Harper’s words echoed in his head. Find a way to make her listen.
“How in the hell am I supposed to find a way to do that?”
He made it all the way back to his grandmother’s place before the obvious hit him.
He drove around the house—something he never did—and parked next to the stone barn. Inside, he flipped up the piano bench and shuffled through the music books until he found a couple sheets of staff paper.
He flipped down the lid of the grand piano with shocking disregard for its value and dropped the paper on top of the gleaming black wood. He located a stub of a pencil and then he sat down at the keyboard and got to work.
“Ohmigod, have you heard it?” Hallie squeezed a folding chair in between the ones Arabella and Beulah were occupying.
It was Monday morning and even though Arabella would have preferred to be anywhere else, family loyalty had made her show up at the hotel for Callum’s big staff meeting.
“Heard what?”
“Jett Carr’s new song. It dropped just last night and every music station’s been playing it practically nonstop. There’s a rumor he was even spotted right here in Texas. Can you believe it?”
Arabella closed her eyes. “Hallie, I don’t—”
It was too late. Hallie had already started the video playing on her phone. This time there was no shot of Jay. Or Jett. Or whatever he was calling himself.
Just hands on a piano keyboard. One raised scar on a long, tanned finger against ivory and black.
The melody was simple but haunting.
“Your love healed me,” he sang softly. Much like the way he’d sung that shoe-tying song to her nephews that day that felt so long ago. “Your love revealed me—”
“Thanks to everyone for coming today.” Callum’s voice cut over the soft music from Hallie’s phone that she quickly turned off and tucked away.
Healed me. Revealed me.
Try as she might, Arabella couldn’t keep the words from circling inside her mind. To such an extent that she missed almost everything that Callum was announcing.
She’d been so afraid that Jay would also show his face at the staff meeting, but he was nowhere to be seen. More proof that he wasn’t the man she’d believed him to be. Jett Carr might have been spotted and now it was Jay Cross who’d disappeared.
She ducked her head, surreptitiously swiping at the tears that kept leaking out.
She wasn’t the only one who was crying, though that was more caused by the announcement Callum was making.
“This Friday night,” he was saying. “That’s just four days. So spread the word. The more people who turn out, the better off we’ll all be.”
Brady hadn’t told her they’d be having a final party. But that was what it sounded like Callum was talking about.
Then the meeting broke up again and Arabella filed out miserably behind the others.
Hallie’s car was parked next to Arabella’s. “Think you’ll go back to Austin?”
“You mean if this doesn’t work?” Hallie shrugged. “How could it not?” Considering the situation, Hallie looked quite cheerful.
Arabella got into her car and drove back to Brady’s. She went inside and her energy took her as far as the narrow twin bed in her bedroom. She threw herself down on it, staring blindly at the geranium plant sitting on the windowsill. She could hear the muffled sounds of Harper and the boys from the backyard accompanied by Murphy’s excited yips.
She could sell her car. Maybe she’d get enough to pay for a one-way flight back to New York.
At least her dad would be happy.
She swiped her cheeks and pulled out her cell phone. She had two text messages, both from Tammy Jo Pendleton, containing photos of her and Ham wearing their wedding finery.
Arabella was so miserable she couldn’t even summon a speck of annoyance. She texted back a polite congratulations and then dropped the phone like a hot potato when it vibrated and Jay’s name popped up on the screen.
But he wasn’t calling her. Just sending a text message. Even though she wished she had enough willpower to delete it unseen, she swiped her screen again and the new message appeared.
You don’t have any reason to forgive me, but I still hope you’ll come.
Below the message was a small image and she frowned at her own inability to just let it go.
She tapped the image and it blew up, the headlines filling the screen.
Jett Carr
One Night Only
She slowly sat on the side of the bed, expanding the image even more to read the smaller print.
And when she had, she bolted down the stairs, nearly plowing right into Brady as he came in through the front door.
Even though he had his own phone at his ear, she waved hers in his face. “Do you believe his gall?”
He pointed to his own phone as he brushed past her, dropping his tie on the couch as he passed it. “That’s all it took?” he said to whomever was on the other end of his call. “Fifteen minutes?”
She followed him through the kitchen. “I should’ve listened to you all along. You said he was hiding something and—”
Brady turned on his heel and held up a silencing hand. “That’s good news, Kane. Thanks.” He ended the call and waved his hand in front of her. “What’s got you so wound up? As if I don’t already know.”
“He’s having a concert! Right here in Rambling Rose. It wasn’t bad enough that he lied, but now he has to rub our faces in it?”
“I wouldn’t exactly put it that way.” Looking entirely too calm about it, he picked up Murphy, who’d been dancing around his legs, and headed out the back door. Boyish squeals greeted him and he was kissing Harper when Arabella stomped out after him.
She propped her fists on her hips. “What way would you put it?” The wary looks she earned from both her brother and Harper annoyed her even more. “Why am I the only one who’s upset here? Jay—” She shook her phone in the air. “Jett is having a concert. Right under our noses!”
Harper disentangled herself from Brady’s arms. “Do you know why?”
“Because he’s a deceitful—”
“Generous,” Harper said firmly, as if Arabella were no older than Toby and Tyler.
“Generous!” Arabella snorted. “He’s—”
“Donating his ticket sales to Hotel Fortune,” Brady said. “Callum announced it at the staff meeting.”
She felt poleaxed. “What?”
“You were there. What the hell did you think he was talking about?”
She blindly felt for a patio chair. “I wasn’t listening,” she mumbled.
Brady poked his finger at her nose. “For whatever reason, your crush is throwing us a lifesaving buoy and I don’t want—”
“Brady.” Harper closed her hands around his arm. “Arabella is the reason,” she said gently. “And it’s way more than a crush. Jay is in love with her.”
“She’s too young.”
“I am not!” Arabella’s ire instantly refocused on Brady as she shot to her feet.
“She’s only a year younger than me,” Harper added.
Brady frowned. “That’s different.”
Harper’s amused eyes met Arabella’s for a moment. “You think Jay—who has managed to keep his alter identity a secret all of these months—revealed himself to the public by volunteering his concert proceeds to Hotel Fortune because he’s been so thrilled working there as a management trainee?”
Arabella sank right back down into the chair she’d just vacated. “He volunteered?”
“Criminy, Bella. Have you been listening at all?”
She shook her head, ignoring her brother in favor of Harper. There was a gnawing hole in the pit of her stomach, outsized only by the ache growing inside her heart. “Why would he do that?”
Harper smiled. “I think he found a way to be heard.”
The days leading up to Friday were the longest days of Arabella’s life.
She couldn’t turn on the news without seeing some mention of Jett Carr. His mysterious disappearance from the public eye, now ended just as abruptly and just as inexplicably. There was speculation that he’d gone into hiding over a woman. That he’d been recording a new album for which his latest song was just a teaser. That he’d been abducted by aliens.
There seemed to be no end to it, and it wasn’t helped by the fact that the singer, himself, was refusing all interviews until after the concert.
Posters of Jett Carr—bearded, sunglasses-wearing Jett Carr—cropped up all around town. They were in the grocery store. In the flower shop. At Provisions. Everywhere Arabella turned, there were people talking about the coming event. The motels miles outside of town were full.
Mariana’s Market was supposedly even transforming itself into a campground of sorts for the weekend.
Meanwhile, aside from that one text message that Jay had sent her, Arabella didn’t hear another word from him.
Not even when she went out to his grandmother’s place—bearing the linen napkin that he’d wrapped Louella’s chocolate chip cookies inside that very first time she’d been there with him—did she see him. Instead, Arabella had been stunned silly to see Louella and Mabel sitting together on her porch as if their brouhaha had never occurred at all.
When she’d finally just asked if Jay was there, Louella had shaken her head. “Gone to California.”
Arabella’s heart had fallen through the floor. “Is he coming back?”
His grandmother had merely peered cagily from beneath her shady hat. “Got a concert tomorrow night, doesn’t he?”
Arabella hadn’t had the guts to tell her she’d meant was he coming back to her.
By the next afternoon, the traffic lining up for the concert stretched all the way from the blocks surrounding the hotel that had been cordoned off by the police to the other side of town.
As she sat in the rear of the air-conditioned black SUV that had been sent for her and Brady, Harper and the kids, Arabella felt twisted tighter and tighter into a knot of nerves. If the ticket she had wasn’t hanging around her neck inside a plastic lanyard, she would have twisted it, too, into a sweaty, pulpy mess.
“What’re they doing?” Tyler poked his finger against the tinted window beside him. They were still several blocks away from the hotel but there were tables set up at irregular intervals along the curb and lines of people were already congregating around them.
“Selling concert merchandise,” Brady said. He sounded almost as stressed out as Arabella felt.
She wondered what rabbit hole she’d fallen down and restlessly pulled the small mirror out from the purse she’d borrowed from Harper. Her black eyes had mercifully faded. But that was about all she could say about her reflection and she pocketed the mirror once again.
After another thirty minutes of crawling along in traffic, the driver—an amiable guy named Ted—pulled to a stop in front of a mass of yellow caution tape stretching across the main parking lot entrance of the hotel. “Okay, folks. This is where I drop you.” He got out and opened the door for them. The sun was just starting to dip to the horizon and lights blazed across the parking lot, focused on the complicated metal framework that was nearly as tall as the four-story hotel behind it.
The stage was at the center of the framework with the hotel entrance immediately behind it. On either side, massive screens hung from the metal bars.
The first few dozen rows of chairs were also positioned beneath the soaring metal framework and Arabella was shocked to see several people moving about in the heights, anchored by safety belts.
“Holy cow.” Harper murmured what Arabella couldn’t manage to put into words. “Brady, are those cameras or lights up there?”
“Both. A crew came in yesterday and started building the staging. Callum’s been working with some guy named Devane on security. The last thing anyone wants is some snafu tonight. That’s why there are so many cops and security guards around.” They joined the line of people waiting to pass through a metal detector.
In front of them, two teenage girls wearing headphones were dancing together. In back of them, two middle-aged couples were laughing and showing off the T-shirts they’d purchased outside the concert “gates.”
Arabella felt dizzy. “I didn’t know Jett Carr was so...big.”
“Not sure Jett Carr knew it either,” the woman behind Arabella stuck her head forward to say. She had a gleam of excitement on her face. “We used to see him once a month at a club he played at all the time in Los Angeles.”
“You came from Los Angeles?”
The other woman with her leaned forward, too. “Plane tickets on such short notice were too expensive, so we drove. Took three days.”
The line moved and feeling numb, Arabella opened the purse for a security guard to poke a flashlight into before waving her through the arch of the metal detector. She could only imagine how long it would have taken if she’d brought her usual bag.
A vaguely hysterical giggle rose in her throat as she left the metal detector and yet another guard shone a device over her plastic-encased ticket.
Then the lot of them were through and they started up the center aisle between two sections of chairs.
Each row was numbered and Arabella felt even dizzier when she realized there had to be at least a thousand chairs and their row—number 5—was actually the very first row. It was empty, except for Jay’s parents and his grandmother, sitting in the very center. Louella saw Arabella and held out her hand.
With a knot in her throat, Arabella took it and sat beside her. She looked over her shoulder at the sea of chairs. Beyond the seats there was even more standing room.
“Exciting day,” Louella said.
Turning back around, Arabella could only nod. She was too busy trying to keep her sudden tears at bay.
All too quickly, the seats around them began filling. When she saw Detective Teas and a pretty teenaged girl sit in the two seats at the end of their row next to Mariana, Arabella was even more disconcerted.
Music had been playing on the loudspeakers all along. But until it suddenly went up a notch in volume, Arabella hadn’t even realized that none of the songs were Jay’s.
The sky was nearly dark and the lights from the steel rafters overhead began swirling around. Shots of Jay playing guitar were spilling over the projector screens overlaid with horses running wild and waves crashing on a beach.
Jay’s grandmother suddenly leaned toward her. “Breathe,” she advised.
Arabella exhaled on a rush and laughed shakily.
Louella took her hand in hers and squeezed. She didn’t let go.
Tyler and Toby were standing in front of Harper and Brady, dancing around with little Erin McCarthy. Kane’s future stepdaughter was doing her level best to keep up with the boys even though she was half their age. A chant had risen in the crowd, getting louder and louder as people stamped their feet and clapped their hands. Their chant got even louder, almost drowning out the loudspeakers when a trio of men stepped out onto the dim stage. One went to the big drum set and the two others went to the standing mics and picked up guitars that Arabella hadn’t even realized were there. The drummer suddenly rolled out a solo in perfect timing to the music on the loudspeaker and the chanting got even louder when the two guitar players started strumming. Then another trio—women this time—danced out onto the stage and took position to one side, where they started swaying and singing.
Arabella didn’t even know the song and she suddenly wished she hadn’t spent the past four days dithering over the fact that Jay hadn’t called her when she ought to have been listening to every single piece of music he’d ever made.
Then the energy climbed to an even higher pitch and the lights that had been dancing over the skyline suddenly centered on the stage, beams crisscrossing.
Jay stood in the center.
His hat was pulled low over his face. A pair of sunglasses shielded his eyes and a guitar hung down his back. He wore black jeans and a plain white shirt with the sleeves rolled up his forearms and the buttons unfastened halfway down his chest.
Arabella had no way of knowing whether he knew she was there. Whether he was looking straight at her or at any of the people crowding into the parking lot and the street beyond as he pulled the guitar over his shoulder and launched into a hard-beating song that had everyone around her jumping to their feet.
Jay’s grandmother pulled Arabella to her feet, too, and she pulled her close, an arm over her shoulder. “Jay’s first song,” she said into her ear, loud enough that she could hear. It was followed by three more equally fast and rowdy and wonderful tunes, and when the last notes trailed away and Jay lifted his guitar high above his head, Arabella was stomping her feet and clapping as loudly as everyone else.
Then Jay stepped close to the mic again and the crowd abruptly quieted. “It’s good to see y’all here.” His deep voice rumbled over them.
“It’s good to see you,” someone yelled from deep in the crowd. “Where’ve you been?”
“Been around.” Jay’s smile flashed and he chuckled, which set off another flurry of excitement. “Never had quite a turnout like this before,” he drawled.
“We’ll go anywhere you go, Jett,” a woman screamed.
His smile flashed again. “That’s real sweet of you, darlin’.” He started strumming again, picking the recognizable notes that had been playing so incessantly on the radio for the last year. “Last year, I thought this was going to be the last song I ever wrote,” he admitted and with the band and backup singers along with him, he sang it as he walked back and forth across the stage. When he finished and returned to center stage, a grand piano had been rolled into view. Its lid was lifted and the image of the strings and black-and-white keys filled the video screens.
“Wouldn’t ever know they only had a few days to pull this all together,” Louella commented in Arabella’s ear. But she was barely listening because she was raptly watching every movement Jay made as he handed off his guitar and sat down at the piano.
He set his fingers on the keys and the crowd went quiet again as he slowly ran them up and down in a simple scale. “We spend so much of our lives pretending. I’m a piano player,” he said quietly. His fingers danced again up and down the keyboard in a melancholy way. “There’s only a handful of people here tonight who even know that.”
“Play for me, Jett,” someone cried out.
His dimple flashed. “And I can’t help but think how much better off we would be if we could all just be who we really are. Folks want to know where I’ve been all this time.” He swept out an encompassing arm. “And I’ve been right here all along. Just me. Figuring out who I really am.” He banged out a couple chords that earned another burst of applause, and just as deftly returned to the haunting notes up and down the keyboard. “I play piano. I love my family. I ride horses. I write songs and I make more mistakes than I can count.” He pulled off his sunglasses and tossed them into the blackness outside the lights focused over him. “And I’ve realized how badly everyone wants to be loved exactly the way we are. Even me.” He cleared his throat softly. “So I wrote a little song about that. This song.”
Then he looked straight at Arabella.
His long, strong fingers picked out the notes with impossible delicacy as he sang right to her.
Even though they were surrounded by hundreds and hundreds of strangers, even though he was helping to save the hotel from financial ruin, she knew in that moment that this song, this moment, was the real reason for it all.
For her.
“I think you should know that your love healed me,” he sang, his voice turning gruffer. Huskier. “Your love revealed me. You’re my Bella. And I never want to let you go. My Bella, please don’t go.”
By the time the final notes of the hauntingly beautiful piano notes faded into the night, Arabella didn’t even care anymore that tears were sliding down her face. Nor did she need the little nudge that Jay’s grandmother gave her as she stood and walked to the corner of the stage where a slim man dressed all in black helped her up the steps.
At the top, she turned and was shocked at the way the lights blurred out everything beyond their glare. But at the center of it all was Jay.
Her Jay, standing next to the piano and watching her oh-so-closely with those green eyes. The same green eyes that she’d fallen headlong into on a January night.
A pin drop could have been heard as she slowly crossed the stage, not stopping until she stood toe to toe with him.
“I think you should know that I could never stop loving you.” She didn’t care that the mic picked up her words. She reached up and slowly pulled off his cowboy hat. “Not even if I tried.”
When his arms swept her tight against him, she heard only his whispered words. “I love you—”
But suddenly a spotlight swerved and Arabella felt a sudden whoosh of heat.
She didn’t even understand that it wasn’t normal until Jay swore and shoved her down. Her knees hit the stage and she cried out, blinded by light and Jay’s body covering hers, flattening her right down.
She heard shouts. The sound of cymbals crashing. A discordant guitar twang. The stage beneath them vibrated with running footsteps.
“What’s happening? What’s wrong?”
He raised his head and she could finally see the wall of orange flames licking at the edge of the stage.
She gasped.
Beyond the flames, beyond the spotlights, she could hear but not see the people who were yelling. Then Jay, on his knees, pulled Arabella farther away from the flames. They knocked into one of the standing mics and it toppled, adding yet another screech to the cacophony.
Hands grabbed at them and in a panic, she hit back with all the ferocity her brothers had ever taught her. “Leave him alone!”
But Jay caught her flailing fists. “They’re security, Bella. It’s okay.”
“Nothing about this is okay.” She wrapped her arms around him, glaring at the guards who seemed perfectly useless considering the state of things. “We need to get you somewhere safe.” They were farther away from the flames now, but the heat was still searing.
“Ah, Bella.” She felt his lips against her ear. “You’re my somewhere safe. Come on. We’re almost at the steps.” His lips moved away. “Devane,” he yelled. “Where’s the crew?”
“Safe.” The slim man in black appeared, the sweat on his face shining. “Everyone’s off the stage except you. Nobody’s been hurt. The audience is being pushed back.” He was shining a flashlight on the stage floor. Arabella barely spotted the steep steps before the security guards surrounding them hustled them down them and well away from the stage.
From the other side—the audience side—Arabella could only stare in horror at the tableau.
The images of horses and rolling waves on the big screens were still playing, accompanied now by the sounds of the retreating crowd and the hungry flames hissing and popping.
Jay’s arm kept her close to his side. “I told you no pyrotechnics.”
Devane lifted his hands. “And there weren’t any. This isn’t our doing. I already told the cop there, that.”
Arabella realized he meant Detective Teas, who was pacing back and forth some distance away, a cell phone at his ear.
Several guards were wielding fire extinguishers which didn’t seem to be having any effect. The wall of flames just kept flowing up and over the metal framework of the stage, long fingers flicking back and forth into the sky, neither growing nor shrinking.
If it weren’t so shocking and horrible, it would have been almost mesmerizing.
She obviously wasn’t the only one who thought so, Arabella realized when she spotted Jason on the other side of the chairs. He was staring at the fire in much the same way she’d been.
She squeezed Jay’s hand. “I’ll be right back.”
He frowned slightly, but when he followed her gaze toward the young man, he nodded and let go of her.
Giving the first dozen rows of chairs a wide berth, she crossed over to him and realized his shoulders were shaking from sobs even before she reached him. “Jason.” She slid her arm around him. “It’s okay. Nobody’s hurt. Listen. You can hear the sirens already. The fire department will put out the fire.”
His shoulders heaved even harder. “My grandpa’s under the stage.”
She stiffened. “Norman? Your grandpa Norman?” She looked back toward Jay and as if he sensed it, he separated from the cluster of people around him. Dragging Jason with her, she dashed toward him and met him halfway. “Jason says that Norman is under the stage.”
He swore and gestured to the guards. In seconds, they’d fanned out and were approaching the stage once again from the sides not engulfed in flame.
“It’s my fault,” Jason was moaning where he’d collapsed in a chair.
She sat beside him and covered his fisted hands with hers. “Of course it isn’t,” she soothed the same way she would have soothed Tyler or Toby. She knew the young man was close to his grandfather.
“He said he just wanted to see how it was all set up. He’s always interested in how things are built. How they work. So I got him backstage.”
“Backstage doesn’t mean under it,” Jay reasoned.
Arabella nodded. “Jay’s right.” Despite the height of the stage, it was still difficult imagining the gray-haired man clambering beneath the metal framework. But even if he had, the flames hadn’t gotten beneath the stage. Hadn’t surrounded it or engulfed it. She was nevertheless grateful to see the fire engine creeping through the congested parking lot. “I’m sure your grandpa’s fine. There’re a lot of people here for the concert. He’ll turn up.”
“You don’t understand. When he was in the army, he used to blow things up.”
Her mouth dried and her eyes met Jay’s. Because she suddenly realized that Jason wasn’t concerned because his grandfather was a curious man in danger. “You think he has something to do with the fire? Why would he want to hurt Jay?”
“I don’t think it’s him he wants to hurt.” Jason swiped his face with his arm and held out his hand, opening his fist to reveal his hotel name badge. “I found this in my grandpa’s car tonight.”
Jay plucked the badge from the young man’s palm. “Did you forget it there?”
The firelight danced over Jason’s pale face. “I lost that one the first week I started working at the hotel. Before they even opened up in January.” He turned slightly and she saw an identical badge already pinned to his chest. “He’s had it and he never told me. He could get anywhere in the hotel.”
Because the badge was an access key.
Jay grabbed Jason’s arm and hauled him to his feet. “You need to tell this to the police.”
“Aunt Petunia’s gonna lock him away if she finds out.”
“He’ll be lucky if that’s all that happens,” Jay muttered. He was aiming toward Teas but Devane caught up to them first.
“Nobody’s under the stage,” he reported.
Feeling shaky, Arabella didn’t know whether to be relieved or not.
“Find Callum and fill him in,” Jay told him and the man set off again.
The fire engine had made it through the parking lot, and in practiced choreography, firefighters in full gear began dragging hoses from the truck.
Jason had barely finished stammering out his story for Detective Teas when the crews conquered the fire. The cessation of heat was immediate.
“Jason.” Arabella suddenly turned back to him. “You said before that you didn’t think it was Jay your grandpa wants to hurt. Why?”
Jason looked more miserable than ever. “When I first started working at the hotel, I was on the cleaning crew at night. I found him sleeping inside the kitchen at Roja. It was locked up tight.” His gaze flicked over the name badge that Jay had handed over to the detective.
“Just sleeping,” Teas repeated.
“Yeah. When I woke him up to get him outta there, he was all confused. Talking about my grandma and how he—”
“How he what?” Teas asked flatly when Jason broke off.
Arabella sat beside him again and squeezed his hand.
He swiped his cheeks again. “He was talking about how he was gonna get her back from the Fortunes and—” his voice dropped to a hoarse whisper “—and make them pay.”
Detective Teas swiped his hand down his face. “Is there anything else? Any other details you should have shared before now?”
“He’s been in Roja after it’s closed more than once,” Jason admitted, slumping in his chair.
Jay leaned his head closer to the detective and Arabella knew he was telling the man about Norman’s problem with his meds.
Teas lifted his cell phone again to his ear. “Get someone over to Roja now. And I want an all-points on Norm—” she heard him saying as he paced away from them.
Jason’s eyes sought Arabella’s. “I told you he’s just confused. My grandma hasn’t lived in Rambling Rose since before I was born. I doubt she’s ever even met anyone named Fortune.”
A confused man—for whatever reason—with a grudge and unfettered access to a hotel that had been besieged with one inexplicable challenge after another.
Arabella looked over her shoulder at the rows of chairs. What had been neat and orderly when they’d arrived had been knocked askew by the vacating audience.
Only they hadn’t really vacated at all, she realized. The outer edges of the parking lot were crammed with faces. The streets beyond, equally packed.
They’d all come for a show, and they’d gotten one none of them could have expected.
“Norman or not, we need to finish the concert,” Jay said, as if he were reading her mind. “People paid good money that the hotel still needs.”
She looked at the stage. The fire was out, but the foamy substance used to douse the flames flowed over the stage, dripping off the sides while the firehoses still snaked all over the ground. “How?”
“He’s how.” Jay nodded toward Devane who was jogging their way again, this time with Callum Fortune keeping pace with him. “If there’s one thing Michael Devane is good at, it’s turning a situation right-side up.”
And he did.
In thirty minutes, they had a plan. And while Devane went off to address the crowd, everyone else set to work. The fire chief said that even though the fire appeared to have been set more as a distraction than to cause damage, nothing from the original staging could be used until it was inspected for damage. But there was backup equipment that was pulled off trucks and repositioned squarely in the center of the parking lot. Chairs were repositioned. And before another thirty minutes had passed, the crowd was chanting Jett’s name again and when a spotlight suddenly came on, picking out Callum Fortune standing in the center of the impromptu “stage,” the chanting got even louder.
“Let’s give it up for Jett Carr,” Callum shouted and his voice rang out from the speakers. “Thanks to his generosity, Hotel Fortune’s gonna be here for Rambling Rose for a long time to come.” He stretched his arms, clapping his hands rhythmically over his head and the backup band started playing again and the women were singing something that had the crowd singing along, too.
Arabella looked up into Jay’s eyes. “That’s your call, Jet-pack. Your fans are waiting. Tonight. Tomorrow.”
“Give me my Jett!”
She smiled as the piercing yell was swallowed in the night and the music. “From the sounds of it, every day from here on out.”
She felt the fine tremor in his fingers as he stroked her cheek. “None of that out there counts for anything if you’re not a part of it.”
“Jay.”
“I’m serious, Bella. I walked away once but it wasn’t for the right reason. Once these shows are done, I could walk away happy. Because you would be the right reason. Music’s my first love.” He kissed her fingertips and pressed them against his chest. “But you’re the very heart of me. And if you want to raise strawberries and babies with me, then I’ll spend the rest of my life doing just that.”
Sudden tears sprang to her eyes. “Babies? You want babies with me?”
He reached in his pocket and pulled out a small ring. A diamond ring. “I want everything with you,” he said huskily. “Laughter. Tears. Triumphs. Fears. And babies who’ll have all of their mother’s beauty and hopefully none of their father’s failings. And I’ll read them bedtime stories about Oscar and Aaron. If you’ll have me.”
She laughed through her tears. If she hadn’t already fallen so far in love with him, she would have tumbled for good right then and there. “And you’ll teach them piano,” she added huskily, holding out her hand.
He slid the small ring into place. “Of course it would fit perfectly.” He sounded a little choked. “Trust my grandmother. It’s her ring.”
Arabella’s tears spilled over as she pressed her lips to his.
Then she pulled back and gave him a little shove. “Now go make your music, Jay. And I’ll be right here waiting.”
His eyes glittered. “You’re absolutely sure?”
She took the guitar that Devane was holding nearby and held it out to Jay. “I told you. I couldn’t stop loving you even if I tried.”
His fingers caressed hers as he took the guitar. Then he turned and jogged into the spotlight, holding it high above his head.
The cheer that went up could have probably been heard all the way to Houston.
And even though his smile was directed at the crowd beyond the spotlight, Arabella knew it belonged, most of all, to her.