California Girl (40 page)

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After all the vengeful years of plotting and planning, and
weeks of searching, he thought he’d found her.

Adrian Quinn’s stomach rumbled as he ordered a beer. In his
haste to get here after work, he hadn’t stopped to eat. He couldn’t eat. His
stomach had twisted in knots so tight he wasn’t certain if the beer would pass
through.

His hand crushed the bottle the waiter brought, but his gaze
never left the stage. The shaved-head waiter shoved his tip in his pocket and
sauntered off. To Adrian, the kid looked too young to work in a bar, but Adrian
wasn’t in any position to report him. He sank lower in the cracked vinyl seat
of the booth and tried drinking the beer, barely noticing the taste. He hadn’t
touched the stuff in years, but in these last few weeks of hunting his prey
he’d guzzled enough to dull any desire to drown in it.

The noise level in the barroom had already reached
rocket-launch proportions. Tearing his gaze from the unlit platform of the
stage, Adrian scanned the almost all male crowd, gauging it as he had learned
to do from these last years in confinement with repressed male hostility.

The red and blue bar lights illuminated the smoky haze just
enough for him to catch glimpses of weather-seasoned faces. This wasn’t any
polite yuppie hang-out where the constant murmur of networking laced through
the entertainment. This was a very large, noisy, drinking, brawling, pickup
crowd. How the hell had Miss La-De-Da wound up here?

She was a “Miss” now, he remembered. Before, she’d been
Mrs
. S.O.B.

For the most part, the crowd left him alone. Herd instinct
warned them to steer clear of loners, and his naturally brown coloring marked
him as alien in their all-white world. He knew how to overcome the obstacle of
his mother’s Hispanic origins when he wanted, but he wasn’t in the mood for
that game anymore. He had only one purpose here—to find the woman who had ruined his life and return the
favor.

Adrian cracked a peanut shell between tense fingers and
sought the stage again. The band was moving about, setting up instruments. The
last singer had left to a chorus of boos and catcalls. The audience didn’t care
for melancholy love songs, it seemed.

He hadn’t even known Tony’s wife could sing. Hell, what he
knew about her could fit in a thimble. If it hadn’t been for the conniving old
reporter, Headley, he could have spent the rest of his life searching for her.

Or he could have bought a gun on the street and rapped a few
skulls until he got what he wanted.

First time around, he would try the peaceful approach. He
wasn’t in a hurry to spend any more time behind bars. The black hole of the
last four years had already sucked him dry.

The audience stirred restlessly. The tinny noise from the
jukebox didn’t provide sufficient vibration to animate more than a tapping toe
or two. Two couples in the booth across from him erupted in a name-calling
argument. The burly bouncer edged his way through the throng at the horseshoe
bar in their direction.

Adrian sank lower in his seat. He was out of his territory. Hell,
he was out of his state, violating parole. No one knew him here, but he had no
wish to be identified later.

The band began tuning up. The crowd’s roar lessened perceptibly,
and all eyes turned toward the stage. Obviously, she wasn’t a newcomer.

He propped his snakeskin boots on the far seat and sipped
from his bottle. Those boots had caused him some ribbing years ago, back in
Charlotte, in the good ol’ days. But boots were the order of the day here in
Knoxville, in this end of town. Maybe he should have a hat, too.

He couldn’t afford one.

He didn’t go down that depressing trail. He’d been broke
before. He knew how to persevere against all odds. Hope was what mattered. As
long as he had a smidgen of hope to cling to, he would survive.

Hope came in the form of Faith this time. Faith Hope.

Adrian snorted at the incongruous appellation. He assumed it
was a stage name. He’d known her as Faith Nicholls back in the days of yore. Even
that name hadn’t fit. Faith Dollars might have made sense. Faith Fatbucks. Faith
Moneybags. Her kind didn’t deal in nickels and dimes.

Curiosity curled the edges of his mind as the spotlight
blinked on. Maybe the beer was working on his empty stomach. He threw another
peanut in his mouth and wrapped his fingers around the neck of the bottle. What
the hell was Faith Moneybags doing in a dive like this?

Headley had broken the story that had ended in Adrian’s
arrest all those years ago. The old reporter had felt responsible or guilty
enough to keep in touch ever since. Headley had been the one to tell him Ms.
Moneybags walked out on her S.O.B. of a husband long before the trial. Adrian
hadn’t known that at the time. Nicholls hadn’t said a word, and once the shit
hit, Adrian had been too busy trying to save his own hide to care what his
partner’s wife did.

The spotlight changed colors and Adrian popped another
peanut as his gut clenched. Would he recognize her after all this time? Last
time he’d seen her, she’d looked like the proper SouthPark matron she was —her
flaxen hair smoothed into a chignon, her red suit screaming “designer,” her
nails neatly buffed and polished as she swore on a Bible to tell the truth, the
whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

She’d lied.

As the band struck a fast chord with a heavy bass beat, he
recognized the tune. The crowd roared, probably more in gratitude at not having
to make more small talk than in appreciation for the music. If that was her
signature tune, it wasn’t very original.

Adrian had his doubts that he had the right woman, but
Headley had sworn she was in Knoxville and that he’d heard reports she’d been
singing in bars. That meant some of Headley’s drunken cronies had seen someone
who looked like her, but if she used the name Faith—

The cymbals crashed, the guitar hit a screeching crescendo,
and the spotlight burned red.

Adrian nearly crushed the bottle neck as Faith Hope strolled
on stage, belting out a familiar country refrain.

He didn’t hear the song. He strained to see the Stepford
Wife he knew behind the white leather miniskirt, sequined vest, bouncing blond
locks, and red knee-high boots. Only the red silk shirt hinted at the woman he
wanted to see. He didn’t recognize her, but he’d never really met Faith
Nicholls. He’d seen her in the office occasionally, saw her once at the trial. This
couldn’t be her.

Disappointment washed over him as the singer crooned a song
of love, her blond shoulder-length hair swinging with the beat. She already had
toes tapping and heels stomping. She didn’t look any older than the damned
waiter.

How in hell did that enormous voice exist in such a delicate
package?

Adrian would have ripped the cap off the bottle with his
teeth if the waiter hadn’t already removed it. His blood simmered and settled
in his groin as he studied the slender bundle of energy on the stage. She
probably wasn’t being deliberately seductive. She’d covered nearly every inch
of her but the long legs, and she wore boots to deemphasize them.

He’d considered banging the first willing female he found as
soon as the prison gates opened, but life had gotten in the way. That had been
a mistake. As Faith Hope’s voice lowered into a sultry refrain, he practically
sizzled in his own juices.

It couldn’t be her. Nothing he had seen of Faith Nicholls
had ever caused him to so much as blink an eyelash, and not just because she’d
been his partner’s wife. He didn’t like dainty blondes. People shorter than him
made him feel like a gangly youth.

But the woman on stage was an irresistible ball of fire. She
shouted, she crooned, she laughed and sweet-talked her way into the hearts of
every damned man in here. And she wasn’t that great a singer.

Adrian scowled as even that realization didn’t cool his
lust. He wasn’t a musician, but he recognized most of the songs because he’d
grown up with them blaring out of the radio. She had most of the words right
and didn’t mangle the notes badly enough to jar, but a skilled vocalist, she
was not. She captured the audience by sheer passion alone.

He watched in awe as she not only silenced the
testosterone-laden crowd with the haunting refrains of “Blue Bayou,” but had them weeping in their beer for lost loves
and lost places as her voice broke on the chorus. Without missing a beat, she
swung into a rocking version of “Rocky
Top,” and the crowd stampeded to the dance floor, with or without
partners. The woman might not be a musical genius, but she knew her audience.

He couldn’t tolerate the doubt any longer. This couldn’t be
Faith Nicholls. Every cell in his brain screamed the impossibility. Respectable
society matrons did not descend to stinking, smoky dives to sing for truck
drivers and hog farmers. But he couldn’t bear hitting another dead end either. It
had to be her. He didn’t know where else to look, and the rest of his life
depended on finding her.

Leaving the bottle on the table, Adrian edged around the
foot-stomping crowd on the floor. Sticking to the shadows outside the circle of
light, he leaned against a massive, vibrating amplifier at stage edge and
watched her from a few yards away.

She was all sparkle and light, flashing sequins, flying
golden hair, and shimmering stockings over tanned legs. She stroked the
microphone and crooned to it in a way that probably aroused every prick in the
place. It certainly did wonders for his own.

Wryly, Adrian noted she had a run in her stocking that
snaked a thin trail over a leg so shapely a man’s hand could mold it like clay.
He wanted to cling to that small evidence of imperfection, prove to his
straining groin that she was a woman just like any other, and no goddess
capable of restoring his life with the wave of a wand.

But if she was Faith Nicholls, she had that power.

* * *

Normally, Faith wouldn’t have noticed a stranger standing
in the darkness. She tried not to really see any of the men avidly following
her every move. She hated the stares and concentrated on the words and the
music. But the intensity of the stranger’s gaze drew her like a magnet. Alone
in a crowd, he collected shadows.

Did she know him? Was that why he was staring at her? Faith
swung to the other side of the stage, away from him, but the spotlight only
allowed so much leeway. She preferred not being recognized, but she’d always
known the chance was out there.

Damn, why didn’t he at least move? Out of the corner of her
eye she caught the coiled tension in muscled arms folded tightly over a wide
chest, giving the lie to his casual pose against the amp. Had he worn a cowboy
hat or a workshirt or anything normal, she might disregard him entirely, but in
black long-sleeve shirt and jeans, he was a silhouette of hard, sharp edges. He
wasn’t the usual city-soft Friday-night cowboy. She caught a glimpse of silver
at his ear and the swing of coal-dark hair slicked back in a long ponytail. He
had “Danger” imprinted on his forehead as clearly as any flashing road sign.

A beer bottle crashed somewhere in the rear of the bar,
jarring her back to attention. On weekend nights the place could explode like a
powder keg if not controlled. She could see Egghead elbowing his way to the
shouting combatants, and she eased into a lighter song. The man in the shadows
didn’t break a smile at the sexual innuendoes and puns that had the rest of the
audience howling.

She’d break after the next song and hope the stranger would
leave. The regulars here treated her with respect and had a habit of removing
hecklers without Egghead’s help. But the stranger wasn’t heckling. Maybe no one
noticed him but her.

She shivered as the altercation in the rear escalated. She
needed to concentrate on the music, soothe the savage beasts, give her audience
the kick they came for, not obsess over lethal strangers. Keeping the bar from
igniting into warfare was in her job description.

Even the stranger turned at the sharp report of gunfire. A
woman screamed, men shouted, and the crowd broke in two directions at once.

It only took seconds, too fast to follow entirely. The
dancers on the floor surged toward the stage as the crowd at the bar retreated
from the brawl onto the dance floor. Someone took a dive over the sound and
light booth, tilting it precariously. Beer spilled, amplifiers crashed, and the
house lights shorted out just as a mass of bodies rammed into the plywood
stage.

Faith tripped on a wire in the dark and started to tumble
into the sweat-and-beer stench of the crowd.

Muscle-taut arms caught her by the waist and hauled her out
of the melee with no more effort than a shopper heaving a bag of flour into a
cart.

She gasped as she sailed over sprawling bodies and swinging
fists into the relative safety of the harbor at stage right, sheltered by heavy
equipment. The amp the stranger had been leaning against shifted as someone
slammed into it, but the stage behind it held. The instant the hard arms
released her, she gulped a deep breath.

“Some party you throw here,” a whiskey-velvet voice spoke
through the dark.

She knew that voice, but she couldn’t place it. The mellow
drawl shivered down her spine, reminding her of ages past, better left behind
her. Though she searched for the memory, it eluded her. Maybe, in the chaos of
the moment, she imagined its self-assurance.

“We hand out balloons to everyone still standing when the
lights come on,” she answered lightly, trying to ignore the electric vibrations
emanating from his proximity.

“Faith, hey, you all right?” the drummer called from the
stage.

“I’m fine, Tommy. I don’t know about the mike. Maybe Artie
ought to unplug the amps before the electricity returns. They may short the
place out again.”