The Rancher and the Rock Star (7 page)

“I have no clue what to say half the time. It was nice just having him next to me, playing that guitar. He’s got this great vibe, you know? Calming. He reminds me of my mother. But I can’t do anything right.”

“He’s sixteen. You’re supposed to seem like a Neanderthal to him. But he’ll get over it. He’s an incredibly smart kid. Talks like a thirty-year-old half the time. He’s got good ideas, too.”

“He said something when we were on the way to Chicago I haven’t been able to stop thinking about.”

“Yeah?”

“Told me I should use my money to make his grandmother well. I can’t do that, of course, but why not something to help find a cure in the future? I’m going to run some ideas past Chris.”

“Run what ideas past me, Covey?”

Chris entered the small space like a reigning emperor, leaving an entourage of half a dozen twenty-something young women at the door, gawking and covering squeals with their hands over their mouths. Annoyed, Gray glanced down at his worn jeans and favorite holey T-shirt. They all looked like evictees from a homeless camp. The only good thing was that Elliott wasn’t around to memorialize such meetings with his camera. Everyone in the band had agreed he probably shouldn’t cover the rest of the tour, and he wasn’t allowed backstage.

“Philanthropy, Christopher. I’ve been thinking of doing some Alzheimer’s work on behalf of my mother. Maybe starting a new foundation?”

“Hmmm, good idea, Gray. Hold on, ladies,” he said to his group. “Let me make some room in here.”

“I’m serious.” Gray lowered his voice as Chris moved a couple of chairs and pushed aside a second table. “I’ve been talking with Dawson and thinking a lot the past week about getting involved in something outside the rock world. I’d like to talk about it.”

“Look.” Chris patted his arm and captured him with a serious eye. “I think it’s a fantastic aspiration. And, yeah, let’s talk. But remember, you’re at the top of the game, man, and your market isn’t Alzheimer’s patients. I say, in five or ten years, when they’re selling your CDs at card shops, that’ll be the perfect time to sock money into a project. You’ll have the time and you’ll need the good PR.”

His manager wasn’t always the warmest guy, but he made a strong case. Gray wasn’t ready to give up a good idea, but he’d wait until Chris didn’t have a bevy of visitors to schmooze.

“You’ve got a point. But I still want to talk later.”

“Smart man, of course I have a point, I always do. So, now I need to introduce you to a great group of gals. They’re singers with a . . .”

Gray knew his rock-star manners. They’d been drilled into him after years of just such surprise visits. But he didn’t hear much else once Chris ushered the girls into the lounge. This band here, that girl-group there, the president of this city’s fan club everywhere.

“I can’t wait to hear more about you, ladies.” Gray shook hands all around, causing another ripple of tittering. “But I need to leave you in the hands of my band for just a sec. I was about to meet with my son, and I need to tell him I’ll be late. I’ll be right back.”

“Nonsense!” Chris grasped Gray by the shoulder, turned him away from the door and into the group of women. “We’ll get Miles to occupy Dawson. You—greet your fans.”

“Chris, I promised to talk to him, I need to . . .”

“We’ll talk to him. You can go in just a few minutes.”

Gray sent a silent plea to Miles and inclined his head toward the door, receiving a nod from his bandmate. He turned back to Chris and the girls, digging deep to find his schmoozy-best smile and aching for a cigarette. The picture of angry aquamarine eyes filled his mind. A booted toe crushing a glowing cigarette into the dirt. The fear of a barn going up in flames . . .

Ah, Abby. What I’d give for a lecture from you right now. It’d beat this conversation I’m not paying attention to all to hell.
Heck. Abby Stadtler would say
heck
. She was not an
all-to-hell
kind of woman.

A small crash—the door banging open—interrupted Gray’s musings, and he looked over his shoulder. Dawson stood in the door frame, eyes bright with bitterness. Miles set a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Hey, he’ll be outta there soon. Come on with me for now.”

Gray caught the full-force of his son’s wounded anger, and his heart slid to the bottom of his ribcage, its beat erratic as a faulty watch. For an eternal second they stared at each other.

“Thanks, Dad.” He handed the guitar to Miles and sprinted down the hall as if he couldn’t leave fast enough. Gray started after him, but Chris grasped his shoulder. When Miles pointed at himself and then down the hall, Gray nodded, but a gut full of dread told him it was a bad decision.

M
ORNINGS CAME SOMETIME
after noon on post-concert days. The band’s warped sense of day and night took weeks to straighten out once a tour had finished. Gray blinked awake at the noise in his weird dream—he was pounding nails into Abby Stadtler’s front porch, making sure the big saddles stayed nailed to the floor.

The pounding rang again. This time at his hotel room door. “What the—?”

Scratching his hair just above his forehead and running his tongue over fuzzy teeth, he yanked open the door.

“Just making sure your son is here.” Spark stood in the hall, far too wide awake for 9 a.m. Beside him, Corky Hotchkiss looked like a guilty man dragged before a judge.

Gray glanced to the second bed in the room, empty and untouched as he’d expected. Even when he slept in their room it wasn’t unusual for Dawson to be out before Gray arose. The kid functioned on sixteen minutes of sleep a night. But he’d told his angry son he could sleep in Miles’s room, and Miles had given the plan a thumbs-up.

“He’s in Miles’s room. He was still mad at me late last night, and Miles told him he could bunk there.”

“Yeah. Miles said Dawson claimed you’d given permission for him to stay with Wick instead, because they were going to work on Dawson’s song. Dawson told Wick he was staying with Miles. They both thought he was with the other. What did he say to you last night?” Spark pushed into the room. Gray opened the door wider for Corky. His chest had begun to constrict as if something awful was about to happen and he couldn’t stop it.

He’d seen Dawson at the break before the band’s last encore. “He wasn’t speaking to me much. He said, ‘Good show,’ but I doubted he meant it. He said he wasn’t coming to the after-party; he was going to bed early because he wanted to get up early.”

“He left the sound booth just before the encore and never came back.” Corky held his arms tightly across his chest, his face as worried as Gray felt. “But everyone I asked told me he was up here in bed.”

Gray’s legs suddenly lost strength, and he sank onto the bed, rubbing the back of his head. The unease in his chest moved toward pain. Dawson had navigated an entire cross-Atlantic trip. Whatever he’d done this time was hardly likely to be more dangerous than that, but worry clawed at Gray like a fast-growing cancer. What the hell kind of father was he? He’d allowed Dawson his space last night, trusting him to be safe with his band members, but because he hadn’t double-checked for himself, here they all were, evidently caught in a classic Dawson Covey sleight of hand.

“We’ll find him.” Spark squeezed his shoulder. “He can’t be far.”

Gray’s heart rose to his throat and dread flooded his gut. “Damn it all. Yes he can.”

Adrenaline pushed him to his feet, and he strode around a corner of the big suite to the dressing area. This time his heart plummeted back down into his stricken chest. “Shit!”

“What?” Spark stood beside him.

“His duffel bag is gone.”

Chapter Seven

A
BBY COULDN’T REALLY
afford dinner out, but Friday had been a very long time arriving. She was tired of hamburger and rice, she missed the fun of Dawson’s helpful presence around the farm, and she wanted a treat. When she and Kim stepped into the Loon Feather for the second time that week, Lester’s cheery wolf whistle was just the boost she craved.

“Lester!” Kim skipped to a large cage where a pair of cockatiels puffed their chests expectantly. Abby joined her, and gray-and-white Lester hopped across his perch when Abby wiggled her index finger between two bars. He pecked at her fingernail and repeated his whistled compliment.

“Hi to you too handsome,” she murmured.

Next to Lester sat his mate, pearly-white Cotton. “Howdy, stranger,” Kim cooed.

Both birds boasted stunning, rouge-red cheeks and saffron crests, but while Lester preened and clucked for attention, Cotton channeled an owl. “How-dee stran-jer.” Kim enunciated.

None of the Loon’s regulars worried for half a second about birds in a restaurant. Everyone considered the cockatiels family, and helping teach Cotton to speak was part and parcel of a visit. Still, after a year, the customers’ diligence in trying to teach her “Howdy, stranger” had produced only unintelligible grousing from the baleful bird.

Except from one person.

“Come on, Cotton. You’d almost say it for Dawson, but he’s not here. I’m sorry, but you remember. Come on, girl. Howdy, stranger.”

“Dawson sure had a way with that bird.” Abby let Lester have one more soft nibble and removed her finger. “He had a way with most animals, didn’t he?”

“I wonder how he’s doing.” Kim turned from Cotton, too. “I haven’t heard from him since Tuesday. He said they were leaving Chicago and going to Kansas City and Madison. He said it all sucked, but I don’t know any more than that.”

“He’s probably grumping but really having a great time.”

“Abbs!” From across the cozy café, Karla Baxter, with coffee pot in hand, beckoned them toward the Loon’s pride and joy, a booth crafted from local birch logs. The benches and table were nestled into a corner, the spot coveted by every teenage couple in town.

A mishmash of worn Quaker tables set with napkins and tablecloths made from every color and pattern of calico imaginable made for Grandma’s-kitchen coziness. Knotty pine wainscoting warmed the walls, and a narrow shelf rimming the room near the ceiling held the owner Effie Jorgenson’s enormous collection of bird statues and antique coffee cans.

One other feature made the Loon Feather a special place for Abby. Along one entry wall hung a series of ten photographs—her photographs. Effie and her husband, Bud, had bought them from her before Jack and Will’s accident at the town’s summer art fair. In those days, Abby had seriously considered taking up photography as more than a hobby. Now several immortalized residents and the town’s most well-known icons formed her only tiny art gallery.

She and Kim crossed the spotless blue linoleum to their booth, accompanied by an enthusiastic avian rendition of the “Colonel Bogey March.” Lester, unlike his mate, had an actual repertoire of three selections if you counted the theme song from
Andy Griffith
and the chauvinistic wolf whistle. His cheery melody and the rich aroma of baked bread and cinnamon added up to a happy conviction she’d made the right dinner plans.

“How are my girls?” Karla gave Kim a careful hug, holding the coffee pot well away. “Hey, where’s Dawson?”

Abby gave a heartfelt pout. “Dawson’s gone.”

“What?” Karla pushed up on the bridge of her thick, black-framed glasses.

“His parents found him. His father picked him up a week ago.”

“But? I thought he was eighteen.”

“Mmm hmm.” Abby fingered her napkin and straightened her silverware. “So did I.”

“But?”

“Try, he’s sixteen, a runaway, not from New York but from London.”

Karla’s hand jerked in surprise, sloshing coffee over the rim of Abby’s cup. “Boy, there’s a story worth hearing.”

Kim pleaded silently with Abby, her eyes pathetic like a dog begging for steak. She’d agreed to keep Gray’s visit a secret until after his concert in six weeks, in case they all got to meet again, but she obviously regretted her part in the bargain. Abby didn’t blame her. It was a hard secret to keep. “He ran away from boarding school!” Kim settled for imparting that news.

Abby nodded. “He got here on a fake ID and his real passport.”

“You’re kidding? So, what? He went back to England?”

“His father took him, he’s . . . a musician. I’m not sure what their final plans are. I tried to talk him into letting Dawson stay for the summer, but no go.”

“And here I thought Dawson was such a good kid.”

“He is a good kid, Karla.” Abby’s defensiveness surprised her just as it had when she’d let it flare in front of Gray. “Maybe he lied about his age, but he never gave a moment’s trouble in the time he was with us. He’s polite and hard-working. I got the impression he felt ignored and was looking for attention from his parents. I hope he gets what he needs, but I do miss him.”

Her friend’s look was a little too knowing. Too sympathetic. At least she didn’t state the obvious: Will would have been Dawson’s age. Abby refused the idea. That wasn’t what the Dawson thing was about.

“Well.” Karla sopped up her spilled coffee with a towel from her back jeans pocket. “Guess you had your summer adventure before summer even got started.” She adopted her teacher’s voice for Kim. “Now you won’t let your practicing go by the wayside having another kid in the house. You can spend the summer getting ready for music camp.”

“Yeah, okay.”

“Hey now, a little more enthusiasm please.” Karla tapped her on the head.

“You gave me a really hard piece for the contest.”

“Because you’re good enough to handle it.”

“Are things looking better for the funding?” Abby asked.

“Who knows?” A careless shrug loosened a strand of hair from Karla’s dark brown pony tail. Her pretty, round face took on the shadow of determination.

The Kennison Falls summer music camp was Karla Baxter’s beloved annual project. For ten years, the week-long combination of lessons, activities, and a solo-and-ensemble competition had attracted high school kids from around the state. This year, funding for the camp was in jeopardy, along with the entire school music program.

“I’ll do something no matter what happens. We’ll have a chopped-down version, and I can always get a couple of judges to donate time.” She dragged the black glasses down her nose. “So, you keep that clarinet hot and smokin’, my girl.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Abby laughed. It was a blessing and a curse to be friends with your teacher.

“Enough digression.” Karla grabbed a pad from another pocket. “What can I get you two for supper?”

An hour later, stuffed with the Loon’s homemade potpie and decadent strudel, Abby pulled into her driveway. Kim’s frustration over keeping Gray a secret had turned into a giggly mother-daughter secret that had wiped away Abby’s blues and served to keep her memories of Gray Covey alive and warm. Whether that was a good thing or not she didn’t know—the warmth was a little too warm, and the memories were a little too alive—but, really, what could it hurt?

“Mom!” Kim grabbed Abby’s wrist, her whisper a frightened squeak. “Someone’s on the porch.”

Sure enough, even in the eight o’clock dusk there was plenty of light to make out someone slouched against the porch rail facing the front door. A trill of fear raced across Abby’s shoulders, and yet she assumed a person wanting to harm them would not be sitting in full view. Adrenaline pumped courage into her protective mama bear’s veins.

“Hello? Who’s there?” She took an aggressive step forward and almost lost her breath when the owner of the body unfolded and turned, a sheepish hunch to his shoulders.

“Dawson?!” Kim pushed from behind Abby and bounded toward him, stopping at the bottom porch step. “What are you doing here? Is your dad here, too?”

Abby looked behind the boy, then chastised herself for falling prey to hope of her own.

“I’m pretty sure the answer to that is no.” She stroked his arm. “The real question is, does your dad know you’re here?”

Dawson shook his head. His pocketed cargo shorts were wrinkled from travel as was the white, patterned, button-down shirt whose tails hung long over his hips. “He won’t care.” No anger couched his words. The child was serious, and Abby’s heart broke for him.

“I’m sure that’s not true.”

“He doesn’t want me there. I hate being there. Abby, please let me stay with you. You don’t have to tell him where I am.”

“Dawson, sweetie, you know this is the first place he’ll check now. I won’t lie to him.”

“Then tell him I’m staying. Tell him you won’t let me go.” Actual tears formed in tough, young Dawson’s eyes. Abby mounted the steps and pulled him into a hug.

“We’ll figure it out, okay? I’m not about to promise you anything I can’t deliver. And I’m furious at you for running away again. That was stupid. But I am glad you came here and didn’t disappear.”

She released him, and he spoke to the porch deck. “I like it here. Even when you’re furious.”

Taking her turn to sigh—a great, sad release of concern—Abby closed her eyes. Something deep inside warned her to hang on. Maybe for dear life.

H
EADING BACK DOWN
the rabbit hole to Jamawonky Ranch. This was just brilliant.

Gray pictured his reunion with Abby and swallowed against the knots twisting in his gut. He glanced at the bouquet on the seat beside him. Flowers? They were too easy and cliché. The mark of a desperate man. What he needed was a bouquet of miracles.

He pulled into Abby’s driveway in a drab brown Outback—a four-wheel-drive vehicle this time, to assure he wouldn’t be seeing the back of Ed or his archaic Massey Ferguson again. The warm evening air calmed him only slightly when he exited into the yard. He had no idea what he was going to say to the woman who kept winding up with his son. He’d been monumentally arrogant about Dawson, and a rock-and-roll prima donna to Abby. She’d paid him back by being nothing but kind last night on the phone, when he’d called praying Dawson had gone back to her. The lame flowers were all he had as a peace offering. Unless he counted the even lamer bar of chocolate.

Roscoe lay outside the familiar back door and thumped his tail as Gray approached. It was a completely different kind of day from the last time he’d arrived. No storm clouds, no thunder. He inhaled the fragrance of grass, dirt, sun, and fresh breeze. Why did Minnesota smell like freedom? Roscoe shifted his eyebrows and hoisted himself to his feet. The simple act of squatting to touch the golden’s velvety head soothed Gray from fingertips to nervous heart.

“How is everyone, buddy?” he asked. “Are they all mad at me?” Roscoe nosed his hand, stood, and led him to the door.

A
BBY HEARD THE
knock at 6:33. Not that she’d been checking the clock. She’d kept herself from looking out the window, however, and now her heart raced until she felt like it might reach the door before her legs did.

Such nerves were hardly called for. She had no reason to expect anyone at her doorstep but a suave celebrity with, perhaps, a dash of annoyed father. The trouble was, the person she’d dwelled on for eight days was not the celebrity or the father. It was the soaking-wet Gray Covey tossing hay bales as if they’d been toys, and the handsome, caring Gray Covey who’d left a soft, unexpected kiss on her lips.

She reached for the knob, promising herself she would not be hurt by his mannequin smile or his smooth confidence. She’d just call his son from upstairs and let the fireworks go off.

He held flowers in his hands.

And had the farthest thing from a mannequin’s smile she could imagine on his face. He looked miserable. A tremor spread outward from her stomach, found her toes, raced for her cheeks as a flush of pure attraction, and settled in her core as unexpected desire.

“Hey,” he said, his voice devoid of bravado but sexy and rich.

“Hey.”

“I’m with the lame gift society. Are you interested in seeing anything in our line today?”

She clapped her hand over her mouth to stifle a laugh then removed it to speak. “I don’t know. There’s a real trick to good lame gifts. I’m kind of picky.”

“Roses, daisies, fake blue carnations, and some green stuff. Very unimaginative. Doesn’t come close to apologizing for being an ass.”

“I think you’ve failed miserably.” She got a strange sense of power from watching his eyes fill with distress. “In fact, I don’t think you have a very good sense at all of what makes a lame gift. That bouquet has pink roses in it.”

The relief on his face was so touching it wrenched her heart. She wondered what it would be like to kiss away his discomfiture, but banished the thought.

“I guess it’s remedial gift school for me.”

“Why don’t you come in and tell me what else you’ve got?”

She ushered him into the kitchen. Bird appeared and astounded Abby with a cliché cat-act, rubbing and purring against Gray’s ankles. Gray bent and stroked the big cat from head to tip of tail.

“He doesn’t like people,” she said, bemused.

“I hate to think what that says about me.” He straightened and handed her the bouquet. “I did think these were pretty unoriginal.”

“There’s a reason they’re unoriginal. They always work.” She sniffed the perfectly perfumed roses.

“I have one other attempt at lame.”

“Let’s see.”

He reached into his pocket—not the leather jacket this time, but a brown, suede blazer that draped from his shoulders. “For the next batch of hot chocolate,” he explained, and handed her a candy bar. It wasn’t fancy, just a Hershey’s Symphony bar, available in any grocery store in the country. Abby’s mouth went slack.

“But . . .”

“I think my arteries are still running slow from the cream in that hot chocolate drink you gave me. This won’t equal the expensive stuff you used, but it’s my pathetic favorite. I couldn’t stop wondering what it would taste like made into your magic potion. Sometime when you try it, you can think of me wearing your bathrobe.”