American Diva (24 page)

“Of course!”

“But . . . but you seem so tight with him—and you let him tell you everything.”

Audrey’s brow sank into a deep frown. “Who tells me everything?”

Shit
.

“Who are you talking about?” she demanded.

“Who are
you
talking about?”

“Courtney!”

“Ah,” he said with a nod. “Good call.”

“Are you talking about Lucas?” she asked, clearly miffed.

Jack groaned softly. Sometimes, when it came to women, he really had a knack for walking into a buzz saw. “I guess I am,” he said wearily.

Her mouth dropped open. Then snapped shut. For a moment. “You really are something else,” she said.

“You’re not the first woman to have that opinion,” he said with a snort of amusement. “But I don’t respect a man who will use a woman to further his own ends.”

“What is
that
supposed to mean?”

“Audrey,” he said, looking at her, “don’t you think it’s just a little questionable that every time you end up in a tabloid or the paper or on the Internet that he is with you and, nine times out of ten, taking credit for something that is all you?”

“No, I don’t think it’s questionable. There are cameras stuck in my face everywhere I go, and Lucas and I are together a lot. Of course he shows up!”

“He shows up in the photos because he practically demands it,” Jack said as all his common sense flew right out the window into the blackness around them. “He won’t let you be your own person. He wants you to be
his
person. He wants to use your career as a stepping-stone to his own. Look at what he did at Katie’s house. He didn’t want you to go, but the moment he knew you had, he capitalized on it.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Audrey said, but she looked uncertain. “He was promoting Songbird Foundation.”

“Which just happened to coincide with the release of his CD.”

“Dammit, Jack, you and I have . . . we’ve . . . well, we’re
friends
. But that doesn’t mean you suddenly know all about me and Lucas.”

“I think you have a right to know that he is using you and that you can chart your own course without him.”

“I
am
charting my own course.”

“Oh really?” he asked. “So it was your idea to go pop and to do this nationwide tour?”

Audrey blinked.

“And your idea to hire security and choreographers and Courtney?”

“He is my manager, Jack. That is what managers do! They handle all the business stuff,” she said, with a flutter of her fingers, “so that people like me can concentrate on the music. If I didn’t concentrate on the music, there would be no business at all, would there?”

He’d obviously upset her, and he couldn’t really say why he’d done it. What did it matter to him if she let Lucas Bonner walk all over her? “You’re right,” he said. “You’re the music. You have a tremendous talent.”

She folded her arms across her middle and looked out the window. After a moment, she asked softly, “Do you really think so?”

She looked suddenly and strangely vulnerable sitting there, a young woman uncertain of her talent. “Sweet cheeks,” he said softly, “when you sing, I swear to God I see angels standing around you. I don’t think there is another female artist on the charts today that has even half of your talent, and there is not another artist, male or female, whose music moves me the way your music moves me. That is the God’s honest truth. Don’t ever doubt your talent.”

A grateful smile spread across her lips. “Thank you,” she said, and put her hand on his forearm. “You have no idea what that means to me.” Her smile broadened. “But you’re wrong about Lucas.”

“I’m not, either,” he said.

“Yes, you
are
,” she said cheerfully, and let go of his arm as she moved to get out of the chair. “I’m going to try and get some sleep now, okay?” With one last smile, she went out, leaving Jack to feel warm and sentimental and, God help him, incredibly horny.

They
were in Dallas by three that morning, and thanks to Courtney’s ability to pull a few strings, a Cadillac sports car was waiting for them. From there, without traffic, it was about an hour’s drive to Redhill, which sat smack in the middle of absolutely nothing just southeast of Fort Worth.

Redhill, where Audrey had grown up with two parents who, having divorced ten years ago, still argued about everything. The town was nestled between a feed lot on one end and a tool and dye operation on the other end, and flanked by two opposing houses on hills that overlooked the towns. Audrey’s father lived in one, her mother in the other.

Dad still owned the two-bay auto mechanic shop, but he rarely went in anymore. He preferred to hold court at the sprawling stucco and red-tiled mansion Audrey had built for him on the hill so that he could see over the town. He had insisted on being the general contractor for the job, and the result was a hodge-podge of design ideas that made the place look schizophrenic. There was a large lap pool in back that he had promptly turned into a pond, and a barn where he kept various cars in various stages of repair, and a stand of pecan trees that needed pruning. Dad wasn’t much on upkeep—the house was surrounded by car and motorcycle parts, and the crowning glory, a guitar-playing frog that had once sat on top of his shop.

Across town, on the other hill, was Mom’s house, an old Victorian that had stood on that hill since the town was founded. Always the martyr, Mom had insisted she did not want a new house when Audrey could afford to give her one. She swore she was fine in the family’s three-bedroom, two-bath shotgun and she didn’t need a big fancy house.

But then she saw Dad’s.

Audrey bought the house Mom had coveted since they were kids. She tried to have it renovated, too, but Mom fought her every step of the way. Tile or wood floors, Mom? Neither—the old floors were fine. Pool or no pool, Mom? What a silly question. The result was a dated interior Mom insisted was too big and too hard to clean, and God forbid she should have anyone come clean it. When Allen was sober, he stayed there and kept up the lawn. When he was gone, two garden gnomes Mom had salvaged from the old house stood sentry in front of rosebushes that never bloomed.

As they drove toward Redhill, Audrey was sickened by the possibility of Jack meeting all of her family at once. Individually, they weren’t so bad. Together, they were a redneck convention.

By the time they rolled into town, it was about four-thirty in the morning, and Redhill was absolutely dead. The two lights on the main street through town blinked yellow, and the only car they passed was a cop, who eyed them very suspiciously. A Cadillac in this town could only mean a couple of things: drugs or a funeral procession.

She directed Jack to the outskirts of town, where a hospital had been built in the eighties. Apparently, someone had believed there would be great growth in and around Redhill, because the hospital sat on a huge plot of land with plenty of room for expansion.

They parked in a vast and empty parking lot. Dread began to fill Audrey. There was never a pleasant homecoming, but this one really worried her. She’d tried several times yesterday to get hold of Mom. Before last night’s show started, when everything was arranged, she had tried again to get Mom on the phone. There was no answer. And again after the show, but still there was no answer at the house. And of course Mom didn’t have a cell phone.

“Why on earth would I want one of those?” she’d complained when Audrey tried to give her one.

“I don’t know, Mom. So you can be in touch with the world?”

“Well, as you are the only one out in the
world
, Audrey, I don’t think it’s necessary. The rest of us here on Planet Earth seem to do just fine with the old-fashioned telephones.”

God, if her mother could only see that, from the viewpoint of the rest of the world, Redhill was more like Mars.

Jack smiled reassuringly. “Chin up, sweet cheeks. Someone would have called if it was really bad.”

How odd, Audrey thought, as they strode side by side toward the hospital entrance, that Jack could read her so well after such a short acquaintance.

When they walked through the hospital doors, they were assaulted by the smell of antiseptic. There wasn’t a soul about but a chunky, fifty-ish woman behind the desk. She wore thick round glasses and a shampoo set that Audrey was fairly certain she’d received at Dot’s Hair Shop.

As she approached the desk, the woman looked up and smiled warmly. “May I help you?”

Before Audrey could speak, another woman appeared from absolutely nowhere and shrieked, “
Oh my God. OH MY GOD!
” Jack instantly stepped in front of Audrey, as if he expected her to be attacked. But the woman—more of a girl, really—ran into the little half-moon area behind the reception desk and threw a stack of medical files on the counter. “You’re
Audrey LaRue
!”

“For heaven’s sake, Melissa!” the other woman exclaimed as she straightened her glasses, which somehow, Melissa had managed to knock askew in her eagerness to get in front of Audrey. Melissa ignored her—she was beaming at Audrey.

The other woman rolled to one side in her chair and heaved to her feet. “Can we help you, miss?” she asked again.

“Can I have your autograph?” Melissa squealed.

“Ah . . . yeah, sure,” Audrey said, and looked around for a piece of paper. Melissa pushed a folder in front of her. “Are you sure you want to do that?” Audrey asked, pointing to Steve Helgenstien’s medical file.

The older woman calmly removed the medical file and placed a notepad in front of Audrey. Audrey gave her a quick smile of gratitude and signed the notepad.

Melissa snatched it up and stared at it, wide-eyed. “Oh my GOD,” she said again, and whirled around, picked up the phone, and punched the key pad.

“Now then. Can we help you?” the woman asked wearily.

“Yes,” Audrey said, trying to ignore Melissa, who was now looking curiously at Jack. “I’m looking for my brother. I think he’s a patient here.”

“Where is Lucas Bonner?” Melissa asked.

“He’s not here,” Audrey answered quickly and looked at the other woman.

“A patient, you said?”

“Yes, ma’am. Allen LaRue.”

“Allen LaRue. Let me just look in our records,” she said and carefully took her rolling seat again, seemingly oblivious to Melissa’s whispered phone conversation.

“
Hurry
,” Melissa said frantically before clicking off. She immediately dialed another number.

“Oh, this thing is so slow,” the woman said with a sheepish shake of her head at the computer. “Give me just a minute.”

“Great,” Jack muttered. Audrey glanced around. People dressed in colorful hospital scrubs had started to move into the lobby. In took only moments before they were arriving in twos and threes, all of them looking at her like she was an exotic animal in a zoo.

“Please hurry,” Audrey said to the woman.

“Excuse me, is Audrey signing autographs?” some woman asked Jack.

“I, ah . . . we’ll see,” he said.

“And who might you be?” another woman asked him, smiling brightly.

“Jack,” he said, and smiled right back.

Honestly, it never seemed to matter how often this happened, Audrey could never get used to it. The dozen pairs of eyes studying her sandals, her shorts, and the curls that had cost three hundred and fifty dollars to perfect made her feel terribly self-conscious. She could feel their scrutiny of the rings on her fingers, the dangling diamond earrings, and her Prada bag.

But what was even more remarkable was that while the horde was closing in around her—or rather, around Jack—the woman in front of her at the computer did not seem to notice them at all. Her face was screwed up in a frown of concentration as she peered at the computer screen.

“Allen LaRue, you said?” she asked again.

“Right.” The reception area was quickly turning claustrophobic. “He came in yesterday.” It suddenly occurred to her that they might have taken him to Dallas. If only she could have reached her mother on the phone! If they had taken him to Dallas, it could not be good. “Maybe he was transferred to Dallas?” she offered, dreading the answer.

“Hey, Audrey,” someone behind her called out. “My brother went to high school with you. Greg Baker. Do you remember him?”

“Ah . . .” Audrey turned and smiled at what were now a dozen people. What did they all
do
here in the middle of the night? Patients could be having seizures while they stood up here gaping at her. “Sure,” she said, looking down at the little munchkin of a woman. “He was in band, right?”

“No. Shop. He said you were in his history class.”

“Oh,” Audrey said, nodding thoughtfully. “Of course.” She had no idea who Greg Baker was. “Oh yeah, I remember Greg. Tell him I said hi, will you?”

“Did you go to high school here?” the woman asked Jack.