Diamond (16 page)

“Dreamin’, darlin’?” Mack asked, leaning toward her in a conspiratorial manner. “Think if you hump the boss enough that one day one of those will be yours?”

She gasped.

She had no intention of dignifying his remark with an answer. Instinct told her that ignoring him would be her best bet. But it was the shock of his surprise attack that caused her reaction.

Tears sprang up and puddled in her clear, green eyes like spring rain on new grass. Her chin quivered once as she bit her lower lip to keep the pain inside where it belonged.

Mack’s face fell. Her reaction had been the last thing he’d expected. He’d meant to instill anger, or passion, or even disdain. But he’d never expected her pain to pierce him so deeply. He tried to laugh it off and to look away from what he’d caused, but instead he watched in horror as a single tear finally escaped and rolled down her face.

“Well, God almighty,” he said, fishing in his hip pocket. “I didn’t mean for you to…hell, girl, don’t do that. Here.” He handed her his handkerchief.

“Why do you keep…” She swallowed a sob and looked away. “I love him,” she said, blotted her face with the handkerchief he gave her, then wadded it back into his large, beefy palm. “I haven’t said that aloud to him, let alone to myself, and here I’ve gone and told you. Says something for my lack of discretion, doesn’t it?”

Mack turned red, slowly, from the neck upward. His mouth dropped at the sincerity on her face.

“You mean you’re serious about Jesse? You ain’t just here today and gone tomorrow?”

She shrugged. “I’m serious, all right. But I don’t know about tomorrow. I’m not even certain about today. Growing up, the only person I counted on was myself. The only certainty was the moment.”

Mack stuffed the handkerchief back into his pocket and shuddered. He’d never given much thought to the women who’d come and gone before. In fact, he’d always considered them fair game if they didn’t click with Jesse. But the last thing he wanted was to hurt Jesse or ruin what he had with the boys in Muddy Road.

“Look,” he said, lowering his voice so no one would overhear. “I’m sorry as hell, Diamond. I just didn’t think about you being…I mean, I always used to go for the ones who…” He cursed softly. “What I’m trying to say is, this won’t happen again. I swear. Okay?”

She couldn’t look at him; but she heard his panic. And she answered his plea with a nod of her head.

Over an hour later, Jesse was back. A few minutes after that, Jesse Eagle and Muddy Road took the award for best album of the year.

And while Jesse and the band were publicly thanking Tommy for all his diligence, Tommy was hard at work, ruining Diamond’s life.

The party was in full swing by the time they arrived. They’d been inside several minutes before their hostess finally made her way over to greet them. Diamond’s stomach turned as she stared into the painted, smiling face of Selma Bennett and knew that her instincts had been right all along. She should have stayed home.

“Jesse! So glad you could make it!” Selma gushed, and blew the boys in the band an all-encompassing kiss. “My party wouldn’t have been the same without you.”

She purposely ignored Diamond’s presence, which was exactly how Diamond preferred it, and then Tommy intervened. “Selma, I don’t think you’ve met Jesse’s friend. This is Di—”

“We’ve met,” Selma said shortly. Manners made her acknowledge Diamond with a nod.

Jesse didn’t miss a nuance of the encounter. He saw Selma smile knowingly at Tommy and then plant a kiss on his cheek as Tommy returned the smile with a wink. And when they walked away, he yanked Tommy by the arm and pulled him aside.

“What’s the deal, Tommy? There were half a dozen parries across town. Why did we come to this one when you knew damn good and well that Selma and Diamond hadn’t hit it off at the charity gala?”

Tommy pulled away, feigning indignation. “How the hell was I supposed to know anything of the kind? I wasn’t there, remember?” He returned Jesse’s glare and walked away.

“Let it go,” Diamond said. “After all, it didn’t amount to anything then, so don’t make an issue of it now, okay?” She grasped Jesse by the arm and tugged him toward the buffet. “Besides, what can she do? Forget it. This is your night. You and your band won Best Album. It’s time to celebrate.”

A photographer stepped in front of them and caught the pair in the midst of their discussion. To the casual observer it would look as if Diamond were coaxing Jesse toward her. And the look of uncertainty on Jesse’s face would be interpreted later as looking as if he were being led against his will. The flash went off, and then the man disappeared as quickly as he’d appeared.

But the photographer’s presence was not unusual, and Jesse didn’t give it a second thought. He was too worried about Diamond. He saw past her wide smile and teasing manner. There was a shadow of panic beneath her laughter. And what made him sick was the fact that it was the same panic he’d seen on her face the day she and her sisters had walked off the hill from the cemetery. It was a panic that said,
My world is falling apart, and I don’t know how to fix it.

Jesse slipped a hand beneath her elbow and began shaking hands and laughing as they made their way across the room. But all the while he was doing one thing, he was thinking another. When he got her home, he was going to love away the uncertainty in Diamond’s life or know the reason why.

Henley was waiting in the checkout line, mental ticking off the items in his cart against the list in his head, when the picture on the front page of a tabloid caught his attention.

“Oh, Lord,” he muttered, and tossed one into his cart. Jesse would want to see this. And he didn’t think his boss was going to be happy when he did.

Less than an hour later, he managed to get Jesse alone long enough to show him the sleazy cover and its slanderous headline:
Has the “Prince” of country music found his “Princess Di”?
In smaller print, it hinted that the woman in Jesse Eagle’s life was leading him around by the nose, coaxing him away from a life that had been more than good to him.

“Where do they get off playing with people’s lives?” Jesse muttered. He quickly read the article, and then tossed the paper into the trash can.

Henley shrugged. “Is there something you want me to do, sir?”

Jesse shook his head and started to walk away. Then he remembered the way Tommy had insisted they attend Selma’s party…and this picture had been taken there.

“Yes, Henley. There is one thing. Call Tommy for me, will you? If he’s not in his office, just leave him a message.”

“Yes sir,” Henley said. “And what would you be wanting me to say?”

“Tell him it won’t work.”

“Excuse me?” Henley said, thinking he hadn’t understood the answer.

Jesse turned and glared. “I said, tell him it won’t work.” There was a bitter twist to his smile as he turned away. “Just tell him, Henley. He’ll know what the hell I mean.”

Henley’s eyebrows rose. He opened his mouth to speak and then shut it quickly, knowing that he had no business interfering in what was going on. He stared down at the tabloid stuffed in the garbage and then began to frown.

He delivered his boss’s message.

Two hours later Tommy returned from lunch, satisfied that his day was going great, and slid into the overstuffed chair behind his desk. He tapped a cigarette from the pack, leaned back and put his feet on the desktop, and lit up. After two deep, satisfying drags, he noticed the flashing red light on his answering machine and pushed the button.

He recognized Henley’s voice instantly. What totally pissed him off was the fact that Jesse hadn’t even called him personally. That the message had been delivered through a third party incensed him highly. And that what he’d instigated was now being ignored made him mad as hell.

His feet came off the desk with a thump. He snubbed out his cigarette and then hurled a stack of papers across the room. The tabloid in question fell to the floor at his feet. He looked down in disgust at the woman pictured in Jesse’s arms.

“I’ll get rid of you yet.”

10

Rain splattered against the
windows like angry tears. Flung by the power of the storm front, they ran like miniature waterfalls across the panes, blurring Diamond’s vision. She wrapped her arms around herself and shivered, struck suddenly by a chill that had nothing to do with the autumn rain.

Months had passed since her arrival at Jesse’s home. In the space of that time she’d fallen under Jesse’s spell so completely that she’d let her own dreams simmer unnoticed.

With Tommy’s assurance ringing in her ears that he was doing all he could to hasten the record companies’ interest in her demo, she’d let everything slide while she’d waited for him to fulfill his promise. But the trust in Tommy was gone. The contract had never appeared, and the constant barrage of journalists that hounded her and Jesse every time they appeared in public was fast becoming impossible to ignore.

Although Jesse had done all he could to shield her from the trash that was published about them, she’d seen enough at his public appearances to know that her presence in his life was making headlines beyond the tabloids.

At the sound of footsteps behind her, she turned away from the window, quick to hide her worries behind a welcoming smile.

“Some rain,” Jesse said, and wrapped his arms around her, inhaling the scent of body powder and shampoo from an earlier bath. “It makes me want to cuddle.”

She grinned and sank into his embrace. “Everything makes you want to cuddle.”

He almost missed the catch in her voice. In fact, he would have overlooked it completely had she not returned his hug so fiercely.

“Are you all right, darlin’?” he asked. “I know the last two months have dragged by for you. But this business is strange. Sometimes things happen for a singer almost overnight, and other times it takes months to get a response from a label. I’m sure Tommy’s banging on every door trying to get an answer.”

“I’m sure,” she echoed.

She knew damn good and well Tommy wasn’t doing anything for her. She just hadn’t faced what she was going to do about it.

“Come with me,” he said. “I have a sure cure for the rainy-day blues.”

She leaned back in his arms and frowned. “You can’t play doctor now, Jesse. Henley’s in the kitchen.”

“Darlin’! You always think the worst of me!”

His injured indignation was so badly overdone she had to laugh.

“I only think the truth,” she said, laughing up at the devils dancing in his eyes.

“You come with me,” he urged. “I’ll fix what ails you, I promise.”

She obliged. After all, it would distract her. But when he pulled her into his music room instead of taking her to his bed, she turned to him in surprise.

“Sit!” he ordered, pointing to a well-used brown leather couch in the center of the room.

She did so, curling her legs beneath her in anticipation. And when he pulled his guitar from its case and slipped the strap around his neck, she clasped her hands and began to smile.

He went through first one song and then another. Old country songs from Red Foley, Tex Ritter, and Hank Williams.

“I haven’t heard those in years,” she said, beginning to relax. “My daddy used to whistle ‘Red Sails in the Sunset.’ He couldn’t sing worth a plug nickel, but he sure could whistle,” she said.

“I haven’t sung them in years, either,” he said. “Can’t you tell?”

She grinned. “More…please.”

“You know the first thing I can remember singing?” He let his fingers run lightly through chords as his memories took him back to childhood.

She shook her head.

“Hymns. Hymns and the songs on my mother’s old 78s. They were big-band songs…you know the stuff. Tommy Dorsey, Glenn Miller, that type of music. I knew the words to ‘Amazing Grace’ before I knew my alphabet. And I played along on Daddy’s guitar every time I heard ‘Tuxedo Junction.’’”

“Then why country, Jesse? If you were so filled with the other kinds of music growing up, why this?” She looked around at all his trophies and awards, the plaques that were confirmation of his talent and popularity.

“Because for me, country said what the others failed to say.” A swath of black hair fell over his forehead as he leaned across his guitar. “Oh, the hymns said plenty, don’t get me wrong. But it wasn’t what
I
wanted to say, what was in my heart. You know what I mean. I heard the same longing in your voice the first time I heard you sing in Whitelaw’s Bar.”

He looked into her eyes. “When I heard you singing that day…like every other man in that bar, I would have traded a year of my life to be your hero, Diamond. I still would.” His hands stilled on the guitar.

“You don’t have to trade anything, Jesse Eagle. You already are.”

He put down the guitar and stood. She met him halfway. And there on the soft brown leather, Jesse took her to heaven with his hands on her face.

What had started out slow became a race. Lazy, mind-drugging kisses became deep, consuming needs. Clothes fell away as heartbeats accelerated. And when she stood before him clothed in nothing but the truth, he started to shake.

“My God, woman, but you’re beautiful,” he whispered.

His hands splayed across the heavy ivory globes of her breasts and pressed gently until he felt the nubs harden against his palms. He didn’t have to look down to know that his own body had hardened in response.

She moved against him, tilting her head to allow him access to her neck, and moaned softly when his teeth found the wild, pounding pulse at the base of her throat. His tongue slid out, tracing the thin, thready vein, and then he pressed his lips against the lifeblood.

“Mine,” he said. The harshness of his voice was evidence of the passion about to overwhelm him. “You’re mine.”

He pushed her down onto the leather couch, pausing long enough above her so that the expression of desire and fear on her face would be forever etched on his mind. But the need was upon him. He could not wait to ask from what came the fear, and later he would forget that he’d seen it there.

He was hard and throbbing as he paused at the juncture of her thighs. She moved once against him. He felt her warm, wet heat, and then there was nothing else except the knowing of Diamond as he slid inside and she surrounded him.