To this day he had a tendency to keep his guard up around everyone except family. Where once it had been from necessity, however, now it was mostly out of habit.
And entirely beside the point,he thought, giving himself a mental shake. The salient point here was that while in the end P.J., too, had left him behind, she'd still saved his life. If she hadn't attached herself to him the way she had, he wasn't sure he would have survived. It wasn't simply because she'd been on the streets longer than he and knew more about the resources available to them. She'd given him her wholehearted, unconditional admiration, hadbelieved in him, and that had meant the world to him. It had kept him going.
So he'd repay her once and for all by getting Wild Wind off her back. Then she could get on with her career and he could get back to his life.
And if that struck him as just the tiniest bit boring, so be it.
P.J.PICKED UP HER PACE , sprinting the last hundred yards of her late-morning run. Then, slowing to a walk, she rounded the corner of the somewhere-in-California arena she was scheduled to perform in that night and found Jared slouched comfortably in a lawn chair on the tarmac outside the tour bus.
"Hey," he said as she began her cool-down walk from the front of the bus to its rear and back again.
"Hey, yourself." Covertly eyeing him as he lounged in the webbed chair sipping something tall and refreshing-looking, she yanked a hand towel from the waistband of her shorts and paced past him dabbing at her forehead, temples and throat. She didn't know how he managed it, but no matter what he wore he always looked as if he'd just stepped off the cover of some upscale men's magazine. He'd been like that during their time on the streets, she remembered. Even homeless he'd looked like a prep-school boy half the time-especially the days they'd been able to cadge a shower at Sock's Place, the church drop-in center catering to kids in jeopardy.
She, on the other hand, always seemed to be sweaty or disheveled. She shot him a sour look. "My run just didn't seem the same this morning," she sniped. "What with you not breathing down my neck and all."
He merely raised a dark eyebrow, then reached down and picked up another tall glass that had been on the ground next to his chair. He held it out to her. "Lemonade?"
She accepted it with a suspicious look. "What are you up to, Hamilton?"
The grin he flashed her was all white teeth. "Trusting as ever, I see."
"I know you, remember?"
"Yeah, you do. So you have to know I'd never deliberately hurt you. I have some news, in fact, that's just the opposite."
For some reason a silky little ribbon of disquiet unfurled in her stomach, and she changed the subject. "Where the hell are we?"
"What?"
"What town are we in?" she asked impatiently. "I know it's southern California, because there's palm trees all over the place. But we've played so many cities this week and I slept like the dead during the drive last night, and I've lost track. I can't recall offhand where we're supposed to be playing tonight-but it doesn't feel the way I imagined L.A. would."
"We're in Bakersfield."
"Ah. Inland, then. No wonder it's so hot." She blotted up more sweat, chugged down half the drink he'd given her in one long swallow, then lowered the glass. Touching the back of her wrist to her lips, she gazed at him and inhaled. Then quietly she exhaled. "So what's the good news?"
"I'm leaving."
No.
She swallowed the protest unsaid, but her heart began to bang in her chest and she couldn't quite catch her breath. "You're:? Why? Is it because Hank's been giving you a bad time?"
"What? No, of course not. It's because you're right. You've behaved like a professional and your label is treating you like a kid who needs to be sent to her room."
"So you're-what?-handing me off to the devil I don't know?"
"Huh?"
"You know that expression 'Better the devil you know'? Well, that would be you. I don't necessarily see replacing you with an unfamiliar devil as a huge improvement."
"Aw, I'm touched." He flowed up out of his chair and crossed the short distance separating them to stand in front of her. "Except there's not going to be a new devil. I talked to them, Peej. And I made them understand how insulting it is to just accept your mother's propaganda as fact without so much as checking with you for the real story."
Great. Her heart pounded harder yet. "I'm not talking to them or anyone else about my mother."
"I figured that might be your stand, so I told them she embezzled money from you."
"You didwhat? " The sudden ice lining her gut battled for supremacy over the flames of fury licking through her veins and, pushing up onto her toes, she went nose-to-nose with him. "You had noright! My private life is just that and now Wild Wind's gonna splash it all over the goddamn media."
"No, they're going to keep the news to themselves," he interrupted quietly. Catching a damp strand of hair dangling over her left eye with a gentle fingertip, he looped it behind her ear. "They agree with you that it's your business." The same finger stroked a nerve-rich patch of skin below her earlobe. "And they're real impressed with the publicity you garnered for yourself with those honky-tonk drop-ins. Also, since your sales are apparently soaring, they've decided there's no such thing as bad publicity. So they'll leave it alone unless you say otherwise. They don't want to lose you."
"Why would they assume they would?"
"I, uh, might have mentioned that could be a result of treating you like you don't know what you're doing."
She thumped him on the chest. "Damn you, J, I don't know whether I oughtta thank you or knee you in the nuts."
"I vote for the former." But he took a step back and his expression erased faster than a fire-hosed blackboard.
She could have screamed. She'd honestly thought that if nothing else came of Jared's unexpected drop into her life, she'd at least finally get some closure on a few of her more ancient dreams. "Why do you do that?" she demanded.
"Do what?"
"That." She waved at his face. "That bland expression. That big mental step back you take. What happened to you? You used to be so open."
A harsh laugh exploded out of him. "I was never open."
"Yes, you were. With me, you were."
He gave her anare-you-for-real? look. "You think? Well, look where that got me."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
He merely gave her the blank-eyed stare again and she shook her head in frustration. "Tell me!"
"What is it that you want to hear, Peej?" he asked and stepped closer again. But he stopped out of reach. "That you were the best friend I ever had? Fine. You were. For about five minutes." His eyes were dark and shuttered as he looked down at her. "Then you gave me a phony phone number and disappeared from my life."
She jerked in shock. "That number was real! Mama just packed us up and moved a couple days later."
"Uh-huh. And you never got another phone?"
"I-"
"No, wait, I believe you did. But somehow you never called to give me that number, did you?"
"I-"
"I got it anyhow, you know. Rocket tracked you down to Wyoming."
"You had the Wyoming number?" She blinked up at him. "You never called me." She wondered how different her life might have been if he had.
"I was going to. Until I found out you'd given the number to Gert. Not to me-Gert." He met her eyes with a cool, bored gaze. "Then I wised up. Never let it be said this boy can't take a hint."
"I wanted to call you!" she cried. "You don't know how much I wanted to. But you were so educated, so:rich."