Coming Home (2 page)

“Our work
is
fun,” Jill said. “I enjoy it, and you do, too, when you’re feeling well.”

“I haven’t enjoyed it in a long time—long before I got sick.” Saying the words out loud was somehow freeing. “I feel like I’m on a treadmill with every day exactly the same as the last. The only thing that changes is the city and the venue.”

“What about the band and the roadies and all the people your show employs?”

“We’ll give the roadies and the tour people a nice severance package and pay the band to give us six months before they sign on with anyone else. You think they won’t welcome some time at home with their families? Some of them have kids who barely recognize them on the rare occasion they’re actually home.”

Jill nibbled on her thumbnail as she mulled it over. Her mind worked a mile a minute, which made her such an asset to Kate. After several minutes of mulling and nail biting, Jill glanced at her sister. “Let me see what I can do.”

Damn, it was good to be home, Kate thought as she took her horse, Thunder, on a slow gallop through the woods that abutted her home twenty minutes outside Nashville. At thirteen, Thunder was showing no signs of slowing down and hadn’t lost his enthusiasm for outings with Kate.

“We’ll be spending a lot more time together for the next little while, boy,” she said, stroking his neck as his hooves clomped along the well-worn path.

He nickered in response to her, as he always did, drawing a smile. She swore he was a human stuck in a horse’s body, and the comfort of being with him filled her with joy.
 

As they often did when she rode Thunder, her thoughts strayed to the man who’d given her the horse after their ill-fated romance blew up in their faces. It was impossible, she’d discovered, to spend time with Thunder without thinking of Reid and the magical months they’d spent together.
 

Kate didn’t believe in regrets. She was pragmatic enough by now to know that life could be incredibly sweet and just as incredibly painful. More than ten years had passed since the last time she saw Reid, the awful day he flew her home to Rhode Island after her sister Maggie was badly injured.

But not a day had gone by that she hadn’t thought of him, wondered where he was, what he was doing, if he was happy. One night, about six years ago, during a lonely moment on the road, she’d searched for him on the Internet and discovered he’d sold his business and left Nashville shortly after they broke up.
 

She’d been unable to find a single other reference to him online in the ensuing decade. It was like he’d dropped off the face of the earth, which was why she was about to ask something of her sister that she’d hoped to handle on her own.
 

Kate brought Thunder to a stop outside Jill’s two-story post-and-beam house. She slid off his back and tied the lead to the railing. Rubbing her hand over his flank, Kate said, “I won’t be long, pal.”

His nicker and nuzzle made her laugh. Sometimes she felt like the horse she rarely saw these days knew her better than any of the people in her life, except for Jill, of course. Since they were young girls, Jill had known her better than anyone, which was why Kate was so certain her sister would balk at what Kate was about to ask of her. But she was determined to ask anyway.

She rapped lightly on the front door and stepped inside. “Hello?”

“In here,” Jill called from the kitchen.

Kate strolled into the kitchen, stopping short when she saw Jill dressed for business, bent over her laptop with papers strewn across the table. A steaming cup of tea sat ignored next to her. “Okay, what part of
vacation
didn’t you get?”

Jill glanced up at her. “You might be on vacation, but I’m still trying to keep your ass from getting sued.”

Kate glanced over her shoulder, pretending to look at her ass.

“Stop being funny. It’s no joke. Buddy is furious with you, and Ashton is, too.”

“What else is new?” Kate asked of Reid’s son, who’d given her the cold shoulder every time she saw him over the last ten years. Since he was the chief counsel for Buddy as well as Buddy’s superstar wife Taylor Jones and Long Road Records, their paths crossed more often than Kate would like.

“Regardless of his ongoing feud with you, he’s also moving heaven and earth to prevent a slew of lawsuits.”

“He’s not doing it for me. He’s doing it for Buddy and the company.”

“Who cares why he’s doing it? The end result will save you millions.”

Since Kate had been focusing on rest and relaxation since they got home two days ago, the last thing she wanted to hear about was the threat of lawsuits. “Remember those jeans we bought in the Mall of America? You must still have them around here somewhere.”

“I still have them.”

“So you can only be productive in a power suit.”

“I have a meeting in the city in just over an hour.”

Kate helped herself to a diet soda. “With who?”

“Ashton.”

Here’s your chance
, she thought, as a flutter of nerves invaded her belly.
Just say it.
“So, um…”

Without looking up from what she was doing, Jill said, “So um what?”

Kate dropped into a chair across from her sister.

Jill took off the gold-framed glasses she used for computer work and sat back in her chair. “What’s on your mind?”

“I was wondering… While you’re with Ashton, um…”

“Will you spit it out? I’m on a schedule.”

“You’re supposed to be on vacation.”

“Speak. Quickly.”

How to sum up years of longing and regret in one sentence?
 

“Is something wrong, Kate?”

Hadn’t something been wrong every day that she’d spent without him? Hadn’t every man she’d been with since him failed to live up to him? Hadn’t she been disappointed time and again when she’d tried and failed to fall in love again? “Will you ask him for his father’s contact info?”

Jill’s mouth fell open, and then she quickly closed it. “You’re serious.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because there’s something I need to speak with him about. Something personal.”

“And you think Ashton, who’s never forgiven you for hooking up with his father in the first place, is going to just hand over that info?”

“That’s where you come in. Your powers of persuasion are legendary.”

Jill shook her head. “I don’t feel comfortable asking him that. Our relationship is professional, and that’s a very personal topic.”

“I know I’m asking a lot. I know I always ask a lot of you, but I need to talk to him.”

“And you won’t tell me why?”

Kate shook her head.

“It’s been over with him for a long time, Kate. I don’t know what you’re hoping to accomplish—”

“I need some closure.”

Jill crossed her arms and studied her sister. “Closure.”

“That’s what I said.” After a long pause, Kate asked, “Will you ask him?” While she awaited Jill’s reply, her heart hammered. She had a feeling she was making this into too big a deal, but the need to see him, to hear his soft drawl, to feel the way she had when they were together, was getting bigger by the day. No doubt he was long over her and rarely spared her a thought. Kate told herself if that were the case, she would put the past where it belonged and get on with her life. But if there was even the slightest chance that he thought of her as often as she thought of him… “Jill?”

“If I get the chance, I’ll ask him, but no promises.”

“That’s fair enough.”

“Are you sure you want to venture into that hornet’s nest again?”

“It was only a hornet’s nest at the end. The rest of the time…” She met her sister’s gaze. “The rest of the time it was magic.”

Jill drove into the city an hour later in the white Mercedes coupe Kate had given her for Christmas last year. Her sister was endlessly generous and appreciative of everything Jill did to make her life run smoothly, but sometimes she asked too much. Like this morning… Kate had no way to know that the last thing in the world Jill would ever want to do was mention the ill-fated love affair between Reid Matthews and her sister to the man’s ridiculously handsome and endlessly irritating son.
 

She always dreaded her one-on-one meetings with Ashton, which were far more frequent than she’d like, thanks to the fact that Kate and the attorney for her record company didn’t speak to each other. So it was left to Jill to run interference between them. Sometimes she had half a mind to sit them down and tell them to stop acting like children, but she was wise enough by now to know that some hurts weren’t made better by time. Some hurts were too deep to ever heal.
 

Ashton’s office was in Green Hills, a trendy area that Jill might’ve preferred if close proximity to her sister didn’t make her life much less complicated. Plus, she knew Kate liked having her nearby. Kate needed someone around who she could always count on—and trust. Most of the time, Jill was happy to be that person.
 

This was not one of those times.
 

She pulled into a parking space behind the restored Victorian Ashton used as an office and turned off the car. She took a moment to collect herself and gather the calm, cool façade she preferred for business dealings. No matter how much time she took to affect that cool façade, however, she could count on Ashton Matthews to have her rattled and furious within five minutes.

“Just get through this and you can be on vacation,” she said out loud as she grabbed her briefcase and went inside.

“Hi, Jill,” Ashton’s assistant, Debi, said. “He’s waiting for you in his office.”

“Thank you,” Jill said with a smile for Debi. She went up the stairs and took a right, heading for the huge office at the end of the hallway. Jill had been here a hundred times and had the same reaction every time. By the time she reached the closed door to Ashton’s office, her heart beat hard, her palms were sweaty and her stomach fluttered with nerves. Why did the thought of seeing him always undo her? It was positively maddening!

Jill took one last moment to prepare for battle and raised her hand to knock.

“Come on in.”

Oh, that voice. That accent. It was positively lethal. Jill opened the door and stepped inside, closing the door behind her. When she ventured a glance at the desk, she found him sitting back in his chair, eyeing her with what seemed to be a mixture of amusement and annoyance. Good, at least they were both annoyed.

He got up slowly and came around the desk. “Jill. Nice to see you as always.”

She surreptitiously rubbed her sweaty palm on her skirt before she returned his handshake. It was appalling, really, the way she wanted to lean in for a better sniff of his cologne. He wore his blond hair short, and his dark suit had been cut to fit his broad shoulders.
 

“Something wrong?”

Jill snapped out of her visual perusal to realize she was still holding his hand. She released it quickly and searched for her missing composure. “Of course not.”

“Have a seat. Can I get you anything to drink?”

“I’m fine.”

Rather than sit behind his desk, he took the chair next to hers and crossed his long legs.

Jill’s mouth went dry as she watched him move like a big cat on the prowl.
 

“Your sister has put us in one hell of a fix,” he said in that Tennessean drawl that made her go stupid in the head, but only when it came from him. She heard that accent a hundred times a day from others, but no other voice was quite like his.

“She feels bad about it.”

“Is she really sick or in need of a vacation?”

The implication that Kate was lying made Jill see red. But then she remembered the enmity between Kate and Ashton and quelled the urge to jump to her sister’s defense. “She’s yet to fully bounce back from the pneumonia. She went back to work too soon.”

“The company’s PR people are working around the clock to deal with the fallout.”

“It’s not Kate’s fault that the press is convinced she’s strung out on drugs, and besides, that’s not what this meeting is about. The fact is, she wants a few months off, and it’s our job to make that happen.”

“It’s your job to make that happen. My job is to keep Buddy’s company from getting sued because your client is a flake.”

“That’s completely unfair and unwarranted, Ashton, and you know it. She’s one of the hardest-working performers in the business, and she is
ill
. I’d like to see you try to put on a two-hour concert when you can barely breathe.”

“Fine,” he said begrudgingly. “If you say she’s sick, she’s sick. I’ll do what I can to keep her from getting sued, but no promises.”

“I hope you’ll do as much for her as you’d do for any of Buddy’s artists.”

At that, his expression hardened. “What’s that supposed to mean? I treat all our artists the same, but my job is to protect Long Road Records from exposure. Your sister has exposed us to tremendous liability.”

“I’m going to keep saying it until you
hear
me—she is
sick
. If anyone tries to sue her for breach of contract, we can provide documentation from the hospital in Oklahoma City.”