Heartland (8 page)

A few moments later, the people dispersed, going back to work or to their half-eaten meals.

“My name’s Rory.” A young waitress, who was the daughter of the owners, laid two menus on the table. She stepped back and fidgeted with her pad and pen. “I love you. Wow. I can’t believe you’re here in my restaurant. Will you sign my pad? Please.”

“Sure. Rory, right?” The girl nodded and smiled widely. Emily took the girl’s pad and signed it. “This is my hometown.”

Rory giggled as she took the tablet back and held it to her chest. “I know. How awesome is that?”

With a smile that seemed bright and dead at the same time, Emily moved into the booth.

“
Follow your dreams. Love, Emily Kendall,
” read the girl in an awestruck voice she might have used to speak to God Himself. She stared at Emily’s sprawled message for a moment. “Wow. Thank you!”

“You’re welcome.” With a smile, Emily opened the menu. “I think I’m ready to order. EJ?”

“Okay.” Rory flipped the pages to a blank and dropped her pen. “Oops. Sorry about that.”

“I’m good. Go ahead when Rory’s all set.” He had no idea what he wanted to eat. The experience with Emily had him rattled almost as badly as it did poor Rory. But for him, he had a sudden desire to protect her from all the prying eyes and the nervous waitress. No wonder she seemed relieved when he’d offered to buy her jeans on a whim. Seeing the fear in her eyes when he’d noticed the maternity sizes had caused a weight to settle in his gut. Was this what her life was like?

She closed her menu. “I’d like the American burger with a side of French fries and sweet tea.”

Surprised by her order, he raised a brow and smiled. “I’ll have the same thing.”

Rory grinned and looked from him to Emily as she took their menus. “Are y’all friends?”

Emily nodded. “Yes. We’ve known each other since we were kids.”

“Wow.” Rory shook her head as if trying to get her starstruck brain to function. “I’ll be right back with your teas.”

“Sorry about all that,” Emily said when the girl was out of earshot. She fussed with the silverware on the paper placemat advertising various local businesses. “I should have known what coming in here would be like.”

Before he had a chance to answer, Rory brought two tall glasses of iced tea and set them on the table. Thankfully, she scurried away before she had a chance to gush over Emily any more than she already had.

He propped his elbows on the table and rested his chin on his folded hands. “Does this kind of thing happen to you everywhere you go? Because if it does, what a royal pain in the behind.”

She laughed, and the sound, all husky and sexy, landed somewhere low in his belly. “I can’t go anywhere without being noticed. I’ve gotten good at disguises. I even have a few wigs I’ve worn when I don’t want anyone to recognize me. But then I run the chance of being noticed and people thinking I’ve changed my hair, or worse.”

He leaned back in his seat. “How the hell do you stand it?”

With a shrug, she looked around the room at the people still staring at her. When she turned her gaze to his, her eyes held a shadow. “To be perfectly honest, I have no idea how I’ll deal with it. For the past couple years, I’ve always been too… eh… high to care.”

Her honesty had him blinking. “How did you handle it before? You’ve been famous for a long time.”

“Thanks for being diplomatic.” She picked up her tea and gave him a mock toast, then took a sip.

Did she wish it was something stronger?

Sighing, she set the glass down and played with the condensation on the surface. “When I first started getting popular, I had my dad. I think he protected me a lot from the price of being a celebrity. Then I started touring on my own and rebelling against what I considered his control over me, I…” She took a deep breath and shrugged.

“That’s about the same time you met the rock star.” Who, if the tabloids could be trusted, had introduced her to the drugs.

She nodded. “I never handled my fame well. I love my fans, but now I miss being…”

As her quiet voice trailed away, something in her tone had him reaching for her hand. She snapped her gaze to his, and he squeezed her cold fingers. “You want to be normal.”

“More than anyone can guess. Singing was--is--my dream, but sometimes I wish I’d listened to my dad and waited until I was older. Being famous at such a young age wasn’t easy.”

He swallowed and leaned forward. “You know in a weird way, we have something in common. I wasn’t a teenager, but I remember my first firefight, and I wasn’t ready for it. I had graduated college and deployed to the Middle East. ISIS was making a mess of things, and I was part of an intelligence mission sent to find out their next target.” As the memories of his first battle flooded him, he shook his head and closed his eyes to make the images stop. Despite his best intentions, he relived the moment he fired his M16 and watched the bullet as it hit the first man he’d ever shot. For years, he heard the cries of the two wounded soldiers in his unit before they died. What had possessed him to bring up his Army days? Fearing for his life and killing other humans was nothing like her life of fame and wealth.

At her gentle touch on his hand, he opened his eyes and met her haunted gaze. “I remember hearing about that fight. I was afraid for you.”

Her quiet voice vibrated through him. At most, she’d been fifteen years old back then. “But that was about the same time your first record came out.”

She smiled and nodded as her eyes took on a heavy-lidded look which couldn’t be anything except desire. “You were my friend and I worried about you.”

He’d never wanted anything as much as he wanted to kiss her right now.

Rory brought their burgers, breaking the sudden trance pulling him under.

Emily let go of his hand and straightened in her seat. “These look delicious. Thank you, Rory.”

While EJ sat for a moment in a daze, Emily picked up a French fry and popped it in her mouth as she watched him. He had to get away from her before he did something extremely stupid.

She sipped her tea. “What time do you get off duty?”

“Four.” His voice sounded rough even to his ears. “Why?”

“Would you like to join me for a ride through the pasture?”

His heart sped up at the invitation. “Sounds fun.”

She smiled, and this time, it lit up her eyes. “Good.”

So much for staying the hell away from her.

Chapter 7

When they reached the riverbank, Emily pulled up and turned in her saddle as EJ came up beside her. Looking sexier than any man had the right to in a plaid western shirt and faded jeans, he leaned over his saddle. He patted the neck of the big gray gelding he’d borrowed from his brother Vince.

“I haven’t been out here in years.” EJ swung out of the saddle, his feet hitting the dirt with a thud.

“Me either.” She moved to dismount her horse.

“Wait. I’ll help you out of the saddle.” He came up beside Tinkerbell and put his hands on her waist.

“I can get off a horse by myself.” The heat of his touch warmed her up faster than the ninety degree temperature of the afternoon had.

His eyes darkened under the brim of his hat as he looked up at her. “I don’t want you to fall.”

Before she could protest, he lifted her out of the saddle. She slid down the length of his hard body and gasped when her feet finally hit the ground at the erotic sensations tingling over her. They stood touching from chest to thighs and staring into each other’s eyes for what seemed like forever before he let her go. As he took a deep breath, he turned away, but she noticed the telltale bulge in his jeans.

Dear God, he was as turned on as she was.

She gulped in air and shook herself, then moved away from the horses to watch the orange light of the late afternoon sun skip over the slow flowing water of the Salt Fork of the Red River. A soft warm breeze rustled through the live oaks and a cow lowed somewhere in the pasture. Not having an idea how to shatter the sudden charged tension between them, she wrapped her arms around herself and closed her eyes.

“I remember when you used come here when you were a kid.” His husky voice had her facing him. As he sat on a boulder sitting by a trunk of a large oak, he jutted his thumb toward a stand of trees about a hundred yards down the riverbank. “I had a treehouse in that big ponderosa over there. Did you know when you first started sneaking over to the Double K, I would sit up there and watch you?”

She sat on the soft moss growing over the exposed roots of the tree next to his rock. After she drew her legs up and hugged them to her chest, she rested her cheek on her knees and smiled at him. “No, I didn’t know. But I must admit, considering our age difference, that bit of information is--well--creepy.”

He chuckled and took his hat off to hold between his hands. “True. Although my interest was chivalrous, I think. I was afraid you’d fall into the water and get hurt. You were such a damn daredevil.”

The sweetness of his confession sent a tingling thrill dance over her nerves. “You shouldn’t have worried too much. I mostly came over here to watch the river and think up songs.”

She looked out over the sluggish river. The water appeared muddy, but the appearance was an illusion created from the reddish yellow slit lining the bottom. A memory brought a bittersweet knot to her throat. “The first song Dad and I ever wrote together was under this tree.” She turned to him. “He used to come here to write songs, too. I found him here one morning, and we ended up writing
The Long Road Home
together.” They’d sung the song at the county fair later that fall, but before they’d gone on stage, he’d announced she was his daughter to over ten thousand people. The song later became her first number one and began her career. She took a deep breath and looked back at him. “I didn’t know he was my dad when we wrote it.”

He touched her shoulder. “I can’t imagine finding out you’ve been lied to. Me and my whole family were shocked when we heard the news.”

She took his hand and held it. He stiffened, and she thought he wanted to pull away, but he soon relaxed and squeezed her fingers. “I didn’t know who I was for a long time. Then when Mike went on trial and all of his secrets came out, I had to accept I was a pawn in his sick games. I agreed to take Seth’s name legally, not just professionally.”

Seth had wanted to legally adopt her, but she hadn’t been sure until Mike’s trial.

The sting in her eyes came fast and furious. “Mike hated me. He admitted he wished he’d either killed me or had me kidnapped when I was little.”

* * * *

EJ swallowed hard, but the lump in his throat wouldn’t budge. For as long as he’d been sheriff, he’d held a deep dislike for the man who’d caused him distrust by the people he’d sworn to protect. But now he hated the man. No wonder the beautiful, carefree girl he remembered turned into such a mess as an adult. “Mike was a sick man, Emily. I know it doesn’t make what he did easier, but you don’t have to let it define you. You’re too strong for that.”

She blinked causing moisture to gather on her eyelashes like dew clinging to blades of grass. But she didn’t shed any tears. “I hope you’re right.” She laid her hand over her belly. How did she hide her pregnancy? Her abdomen definitely had a telling curve. “I need to be strong for my baby. Life won’t be easy for either of us.”

What role would the father play in the child’s life? Who was the father--her ex or someone else? He pulled the reins on his curiosity before he asked. She didn’t owe him an explanation, and he was deep enough in this quicksand bog already.

After a moment, she said, “Back at the store you said you’re used to people gossiping about you. What did that mean?”

As she regarded him with eyes as green as the moss on the tree, the evening sun turned her short auburn hair a burnished copper color. He fought the impulse to run his fingers through it. Instead, he filled his lungs with earthy scented air and put his hat on his head. “Mike Ritter ruined the office of sheriff for this county. No one trusts me. I think at first they may have because I’m a vet. But then Raquel committed suicide and a lot of people blame me for it. They think I’ve covered up what actually happened.”

She narrowed her eyes. “They’re fools. I didn’t know Raquel well, but I know you. You’d never do anything to hurt her.”

Her determined tone spread warmth though him. If she only knew how he’d covered up where Raquel had gotten the depression pills, she wouldn’t be sure of herself. He stood and held out his hand. “C’mon, we had better be getting back. It’s a long ride and the sun is setting fast.”

She put her hand into his. The sensation of her smooth skin in his grasp stirred his desire again. “You’re right. Let’s go.”

Chapter 8

On Saturday afternoon, Gabe McKenna arrived with Emily’s things. Her father’s best friend unloaded a crate holding her ten CMA awards. Of all her various accolades, the
CMA crystal statue she won for Best New Artist six months after her debut album went double platinum was the one she valued the most, because it was her first award. Her father followed him with the last crate, which held her six Grammy figurines. Four other crates held her other twenty-three awards and the plaques for her gold and platinum records.