Lost in Tennessee (22 page)

Fawn glared at Kate. “You’re protecting his little whore?”

Security approached rapidly. Jeb stopped being polite and physically moved people out of his way.

Kate spoke softly. “This isn’t the kind of publicity you want, Fawn.”

“How the hell do you know what I want?” Fawn screamed and swung out at Kate, drawing dagger-like fingernails across Kate’s throat. Pushing Kate to the ground, Fawn launched herself at Trudy.

“You backwoods whore,” Fawn screamed, this time slapping Trudy, pulling her hair.

Butch couldn’t move fast enough. He tried to separate the two women, but Fawn kept coming, and Trudy fought back. Kate set her brow, lifted Fawn by the waist and tossed her away from Trudy. Butch tied Trudy up, stopping certain retaliation. But it wasn’t over. With fire in her eyes, Fawn charged Kate. Kate set her feet wide and steady.

Butch winced. This wasn’t what he wanted. “Katie, no.”

Kate never flinched. She simply stepped out of the way at the last minute. Thick electric cords that snaked across the stage caught Fawn’s fuck-me heels, sending her careening into the set-up of guitars.

Fawn screamed as she covered her nose. “You bitch! I want you arrested. I’m going to sue you for every cent you have!”

Trudy clung to Butch, keeping him from getting to Kate. “Trudy, let me go.”

“I think my nose is broken.” Trudy wrapped her arms around Butch’s waist, preventing him from walking.

Kate pressed a hand to the scratches on her neck, muttering words not fit for prime time. She stepped over the two guitars that were collateral damage.

Butch saw the storm front brewing. He didn’t want Kate involved in the mess of his life. He refused to have her dragged through the mud. Frustrated, Butch pulled at the arms Trudy had locked around him. “Trudy, let go! Kate. Don’t. Damn it. Jeb! Get up here.”

The muscles in Kate’s bare arms flexed as she took the bleached hair by the roots. “Try that again, and I don’t care who you are, you’ll find yourself at the dark end of a deep hole.”

Security reached the stage, pulling Kate away and lifting Fawn to her feet.

“You assholes! Get your hands off of me. I’m going to sue you, too. You…Edward. And you, too, José,” she said, reading the tags on their shirts.

Flashes from the audience made it look like Steel Strings had installed a disco ball. Butch knew where those pictures were headed. Where they already were. What picture had she painted of him? A petty husband, jealous of her success. He wanted to tell the world how she turned him out of their house, out of their bed the minute she didn’t need him.

But he didn’t.

Even with adrenaline coursing through his veins, he wouldn’t air dirty laundry in a public shouting match. He followed security until he reached Kate, dropping his voice low enough that no one would hear but her. “I said no. What part of that didn’t you get?”

Kate tugged the now strapless dress upward. “But she—”

“Butch?” Trudy’s voice trembled from behind him.

K
ate’s heart sunk when Butch turned away from her. She lived with the cold shoulder her entire life, yet the bite stung when she thought herself immune. Tom leaped onto the stage, and she let him lead her to the edge.

“I’m impressed, Katie. I would have laid her out.”

Hyde took the last drag of his beer and held his hand out, helping Kate jump from the short stage. “She didn’t need to. The ex-Mrs. McCormick did the work for her.”

Butch jumped from the stage and scowled at Kate as he went swiftly past to talk to Donny, the owner.

Good, Kate thought, be pissed. He should be pissed with the way the fake-titted Fawn Jordan treated him.

Jeb elbowed Tom. “Get her out of here before Fawn presses charges. We’ll meet you back at the hotel.”

Kate gawked for an instant before she found her voice. “Her press charges? Are you fucking kidding me? She tripped.”

Tom followed Jeb’s advice and pulled his cousin out the back door and into the alley.

“This is bullshit, Tom. She comes in and
assaults
Butch
twice
, and she gets escorted out the front door. I protected Trudy, and I get dragged out the back like yesterday’s trash. I didn’t even hit her.”

“I’m not dragging you out like yesterday’s trash.” But he was. Tom had both hands firmly around her arms and pulled Kate in the opposite direction of Fawn Jordan.

In the skinny alley with brick walks and a sour smell, Kate shouted in a voice too high and too loud. “How could he just sit there and take it?”

“He lives in a different world, Kate.” Tom used the deliberately calm tone Kate hated as he maneuvered her out of the firestorm. “People watch what celebrities do. They take pictures and tell stories. It doesn’t matter if it’s real or fair. It looked to me like Fawn came off as the insane one.”

“Don’t talk to me like I’m not quite bright.” Kate shook off her cousin’s hands and fell into step next to him. She still glowered, but her temperature crawled back down the thermometer.

“How’s your neck?”

“It stings like hell. I bet she dipped those things in poison. Watch, I’m going to get tetanus or rabies or some fucked up STD.” Kate walked to a small park near the Hermitage. “I don’t want to go in yet. Let’s sit for a few minutes, maybe they’ll come by.” Sitting in the cool night, the sounds of a vibrant nightlife in the distance, the adrenalin wore off, and she began to see other points of view. “Where were you and Jeb that whole time?”

Tom sat on the bench, draping an arm across the back. “Trapped behind a wall of people.”

She sighed heavily. “What do you think I should have done?”

Tom puckered his lips as he thought. After a long moment, he answered. “Nothing. It was his fight.”

Kate dropped her head back and looked at the stars. “But—”

“I know. I couldn’t have done it either. But think it through. If you hadn’t jumped on stage, what would have happened?”

“She would have hit him,” she said definitively.

“She would have tried,” Tom corrected. “Didn’t you see his face? She wasn’t going to succeed.”

“I was watching her. Did you see her face? She hated him. She wanted to hurt him.”

“Yeah, I got that. That’s why I get what you did.”

All of the venom had drained away. Kate didn’t want to fight or argue, but she worried Butch wouldn’t be in the same mind. “He’s going to be mad. Think he’s a yeller? I hope so. I know how to deal with loud mad. Quiet mad rips my guts out.”

Tom pushed to his feet. “Looks like we’re about to find out.”

Kate stood, watching the four friends file out of a cab. Trudy walked sandwiched between Butch and Hyde, hunched over and covering her face. Jeb paid the cab, then followed behind, his glare threatening anyone approaching.

Tom called out. “Jeb. Butch.”

Butch turned and abandoned Trudy to Hyde, stalking down the street until he stood in front of Kate. “What the hell did you think you were doing coming up on the stage?” Butch managed to yell without raising his voice. A honed, steel edge came into it as sharp as any knife.

Though she didn’t feel physically threatened, he definitely invaded her space. “I was helping you. She was—”

“Helping me?” Butch looked miserable. His long hair poked out in all directions, matted with drying beer. His shirt clung to his chest, the crumpled tails out of his jeans. His eyes were flat, hard, angry. “That was helping me? Brawling with my not-quite-ex-wife in no way helped me. This isn’t your world where you can bark orders and people jump. This is my world.”

Kate spoke calmly, hoping he couldn’t sense the pounding of her heart and the bile rising up the back of her throat. “It wasn’t a brawl. Not on my end. I just pulled her off of Trudy. I specifically did not get into a brawl. You wouldn’t be yelling like this if Jeb did the same thing.”

Butch inhaled sharply, and his teeth dug into his lip. He wanted to deny it. She read it on his face. “The difference,” he said, his voice now barely above a whisper, “is you and I have a relationship. What happened tonight isn’t going to make it easier to divorce her. Tomorrow the story and pictures will be all over the internet. Hell, they’re probably there already.” Butch ran a hand through his hair, disgust showed on his face when it didn’t comb through. “Your face will be all over the internet. Shit. I have to call Finch.” Butch took three deep breaths while Katie held hers, expecting him to tell her good-bye. Instead, he held out his hand. “Let’s go.”

For nearly an hour, Butch had Finch on speaker phone. Jeb, Hyde, and Tom played on smartphones, monitoring postings about Butch like election night results. Trudy sat curled on a chair, the ice pack on her nose doing little to abate the bloom of blue and purple around her eyes.

Kate needed some space. Too many big bodies, too much emotion, too little square footage. Pulling comfortable clothes from the dresser, she found space in the oversized bathroom. She showered, taking her time to wash the hairspray and knots from her hair. Her neck stung when the water touched the scratches.

It all went to hell so fast. Tempers could run high on a construction site but nothing like Fawn’s. Kate decided she preferred physical catastrophes to emotional ones. The physical ones were, more or less, predictable. Shit fell down. Things blew up. The only edge emotional catastrophes had was people didn’t die from them. They might feel like it at the time, but they survived.

Except Angie.

Kate scrubbed her face again and shut the water off. She dried off slowly and indulged in smoothing her skin with the creamy lotion provided by the hotel. She dressed in her favorite clothes and went into the bedroom to rejoin the fray. Quiet had overtaken the room. “Where is everyone?”

Butch sat on the chair, his eyes closed, his head back. “Sent them on.” He lifted his head to look at her. “A shower sounds good. Care to join me?”

“I just finished, but you go ahead. Take your time.” When the bathroom door closed, Kate called room service. “What do you have that’s fast?”

When the food arrived, Kate dragged the bedspread to the floor and filled it with the silver topped dishes that piqued both curiosity and appetite. Room service delivered faster than she thought possible—but then it was Butch McCormick’s room. She began to understand what his name meant. She set the last plate as Butch came out of the bathroom wearing only a pair of sleep pants. His towel-dried hair flopped across his eyes, which looked tired and worn. The lines around his mouth pulled his face down…until he saw what waited for him.

“A picnic? Is there pizza?” Years faded from his face, and light reached his eyes.

“It’s an adventure picnic. I have no idea what’s under here. Sit down. Pick one.”

Kate crawled across the eclectic spread and lifted the lids of his selections. They fed each other, drank, laughed.

“What’s under that one?” Butch pointed to the one nearest Kate.

She lifted the lid. “Yum. Cheesecake with raspberry sauce. That makes three desserts. Add in two appetizers and a side dish, and we have a lot of food but nothing that constitutes a meal.”

Butch reached for the smart phone he had avoided since coming out of the shower. The closer his hand got, the more anxiety showed in the lines of his face.

Kate covered his hand with hers, wanting to give him a bit more of a reprieve. “Don’t.”

His gaze moved from the technology to her eyes. “You don’t understand.”

“I know. For a little while, let’s pretend you don’t understand either.” She crawled over the array of plates and lids and rolled Butch to his back. It pleased her that his hands went to her hips, lifting her to straddle him. She stripped her shirt off. Butch bowed up, his mouth going to her breast. She arched back, holding his head to her.

In a husky voice, he whispered against her creamy skin. “You’re a gift. You’re a goddamned gift.”

B
utch woke in a tangle of sheets alone. The sun fought valiantly through the darkening drapes, brightening the room. An empty bed was the downside of sleeping with a woman who rose with the sun.

The handle of the hallway door jiggled, then the artificial light from the hall peeked in as Kate entered. She’d opened the door only wide enough to slide her body through then pushed her back against the closed door. Dressed in shorts and a clingy top, her hair poked out from the band that held it. “Holy shit.”

Butch propped himself up on his elbows as the tension in her body set off his own warning system. “Something happen?”

“You have to get out of here. Now.” Kate went to the closet, pulled out Butch’s bag, and started packing his clothes. “There must be a back door. We can get a cab and then—”

“Stop.” Butch slid from the bed wearing nothing but a frown and stilled her sweaty body. “What were you doing?”

“Running. I couldn’t just sit here in the dark while you slept.” She pulled a pair of jeans from the floor and shoved them into his belly. “You need to get dressed.”

He covered her hands and used his winning smile to calm her. “Why? I look good naked. You know it.”

“There are a bunch of people down there waiting to jump on your carcass and strip the meat from your bones.”

Butch winced. “Katie. That’s disgusting.”

“I know, so you need to sneak out the back door.” She went into the bathroom and raked his toiletries into his bag with one swoop of her arm.

“Stop. Stop and talk to me.” He took the bag from her and led her into the main room.

“Okay, but you need to get dressed. You’re…distracting.”

“Fine.” He sat her on the chair, kissed her nose, and disappeared around the corner. “Talk. Are they reporters?”

“Fans. Reporters. Bloggers. Nut cases. Is there a difference?” She sounded worried on his behalf. A mother tiger, Kate protected what she cared about.

He had no doubt he had achieved that status as he stepped into the jeans Kate had shoved at him. “Absolutely. Did you talk to them? Did they recognize you?”

“No one noticed me.” Her voice floated around the corner. “A hive of them hovered around the front doors, buzzing about the Fawn incident last night.”

Butch took a soft T-shirt in burgundy red from the bag. He pulled it over his head and smoothed the wrinkles as he stretched it down his chest. “What was the buzz?”