Lost Melody (5 page)

“Yeah, I remember that,” Randy
said.

Chris set his coffee cup down. “Why do
you want to know about her?”

Hank sighed, running his fingers
through his newly cropped hair. “Dad made a donation to the high
school band, and she’s doing a story about it for the paper. He
invited her out here for dinner tonight. She didn’t act as if she
knew anything about me. If she’s from California, it could be a
cover. Some reporters will go to any extreme to get a
story.”

Randy and Chris looked at each other
then at Hank.

“Do you really think she could be up
to something?” Randy popped another Oreo.

“I don’t know. I don’t think so, but
after what Karen did, I can’t be too careful. It’s taken years to
clean up my image and people still call me by that ridiculous
name.”

“At least you found out what she was
up to before you married her,” Chris said.

“True. It was a narrow escape though.
I learned a valuable lesson from the fiasco.”

Chris frowned and tapped his finger on
the table. “You think Mel Harper took the job here just to get to
you? That’s a little extreme. No offense, Hank, but it’s pretty
farfetched. You might be getting a little too full of
yourself.”

He knew the lengths a reporter would
go to in order to get a story. Been there, done that—lesson
learned. Only someone who lived in the public eye could really know
what the media spotlight was like, and he’d given up trying to
explain the experience to his friends long ago. They’d never get
it, no matter how many times he tried to make them to understand.
To them, getting their name or picture in the local paper was
exciting. They couldn’t comprehend what it was like to see your
photo in the gossip rags every day along with a story fabricated
from the flimsiest bit of truth, or more often, no truth at all.
Anything to fill column inches.

He ignored Chris’s question, seizing
on the reprimand for the good-natured set down it was. “I’m full of
it huh? Just exactly how do you propose to remedy that?”

Randy and Chris answered in unison,
“Pool challenge!”

God, it was good to be home. “When and
where, smart ass?” Hank asked.

“Tomorrow night. Eight o’clock at
Smitty’s,” Randy said.

They agreed on the particulars before
Hank walked them to the back door.

“Tell the women folk I said hi,” he
said.

“Will do.” Randy slapped him on the
back as he stepped out onto the porch. “Glad you’re
home.”

“Yeah, it’s good to have you back,”
Chris said, adding his own back slap and handshake.

“It’s good to be here,” Hank said.
“And it’s good to see ya’ll. Thanks for coming out tonight. Next
time, you’ll have to bring the women and the brats.”

“Just name the time,” Randy said. “You
know how much the kids love to run around this place.”

“Man, we had some good times out here
when we were kids,” Chris said.

“Yeah, we did,” Hank agreed. “Your
kids love it, too.”

“They do. I’m glad it’s still here for
them.”

“Me, too,” Hank said.

“See you tomorrow night. Don’t forget
your wallet,” Chris said, following Randy down the
steps.

“Yeah, right. You better
bring
yours
, my
friend,” Hank countered.

Chris dismissed Hank’s comment with a
wave of his cowboy hat as he crossed the yard.

“Drive safe,” Hank said to their
backs.

Their trucks roared to life and
disappeared down the drive.

“Come on, Betty, it’s time to call it
a night.” He followed the dog into the kitchen, latched the
screened door behind them, but left the real door open to let in
the mild night air.

The house was quiet. He wandered
through the empty rooms, turning off lights, remembering the sound
of laughter, family sing-a-longs, and noisy boys playing in the big
rooms. His grandparents never complained when he brought his rowdy
friends to the farm to run wild in the fields or daydream in the
hayloft. They had plowed fields, fed cows, and chased chickens
through the seasons and loved every minute of it.

Randy and Chris were like brothers to
him. As kids, they had been inseparable. Hank had been the creative
one, coming up with ideas. Chris had been the wild one, the
instigator, urging them to carry out Hank’s ideas, and often
embellishing them with a daring element Hank would never have
thought of. Chris had mellowed after marrying and having kids, but
he could still be depended on to come up with a good prank if need
be.

Randy had been the voice of sanity
when they were kids he was still the most levelheaded person Hank
knew. He’d had no qualms about turning over all his private legal
matters to Randy years ago. Without Chris to manage the farm and
Randy to manage his financial holdings, he wouldn’t be able to live
the life he did. Not and stay sane.

The big rambling house was as much
home as his parents’ small house in town where he grew up. He loved
everything about the farmhouse, the creaking wood floors, the
clanging water pipes, the drafty windows, and the memories. He
loved that his mother grew up in the house, and with any luck, his
children would too. Since his career had taken off, the house and
farm were his solid foundation. The house had become his sanctuary,
and the converted barn, his creative playpen.

He wondered if the old
house would ever be home to more than one lonely man again. In his
profession, it was nearly impossible to meet women of the settling
down kind, and
because
of his profession, no one in Willowbrook would even consider
settling down with him. Mel Harper’s image insinuated itself on his
mind, and he fought it back. He could not,
would not
, get involved with a
reporter.

Chapter Four

Smitty’s was packed to the rafters
with locals out for a little recreation after a hard week of
scraping a living from the black soil of North East Texas. Hank
paused inside the door, soaking in the familiar ambiance of stale
spilled beer and the lingering stench of cigarette smoke from the
days before smoking had been banned in the bar. The jukebox belted
out a country ballad. It wasn’t his style, but he could tolerate
it. Someone shoved a cold Lone Star longneck into his hand as he
passed the bar. He took a long swig and sized up the competition in
the back room. Chris and Randy waited for the center table to free
up. He joined them, leaning against the wall.

“Glad you could make it,” Chris
greeted him. “The table should be free in a few
minutes.”

“I’d never miss a chance to whoop the
two of you.”

“Right.” Randy smirked. “Be prepared
to put your money where your mouth is. I’ve been practicing while
you’ve been gallivanting your pansy-ass all over the
world.”

“I’ve never needed practice to clean
your pockets. How much are you planning to part with
tonight?”

They were still haggling over the size
of their bets when the hair on the back of his neck stood on end.
Hank turned, scanned the room. He was just about to dismiss the
feeling as nothing when he saw her. Mel Harper. It took a couple of
seconds before her gaze met his, but when they locked, something
flared between them, and he couldn’t look away.

She wore denim. Expensive, designer
denim. The short jacket matched the jeans and parted to reveal a
white lace camisole. His gaze skimmed down her long legs to her
sexy high heel sandals. Her toenails, painted a soft pink, matched
her fingernails. She’d pulled her shoulder length hair into a high
ponytail that swung side-to-side every time she moved. She sparkled
like a diamond in a box of rocks.

Lord help him, but he wanted
her.

He took a step in her direction, his
gaze fixated on the patch of skin peeking out from the collar of
her jacket. He’d start by tasting her there. A swish of hair
crossed his line of sight, drawing his gaze up to troubled blue
eyes. She shook her head and turned to leave.

He pounced, crossing the room in three
steps and grabbed her by the elbow to halt her retreat.
“Wait.”

“Let go of me, Hammer.”

Hank flinched at the
nickname. He loosened his grip on her arm, and she twisted enough
to break the contact. The voice of reason whispered in his
head,
Let her go
,
but instead he said, “Stay a while. We were about to play a game or
two.”

Her gaze darted around him to Chris
and Randy. “No. No, I don’t think so.”

There was disgust and something else,
fear perhaps, in her eyes. She turned, making a beeline to the
door. He let her go. What else could he do? He cursed the nickname
Karen had given him and the reputation that went along with it. It
was shit like the stunt Karen had pulled on him that made
celebrities wary of the media.

“What was that all about?” Chris asked
when he rejoined his friends in the back. A table became available,
and they moved in to claim it.

“Hell if I know.” He leaned against
the table and stared at the worn floorboards, absently rubbing the
back of his neck with one hand. A part of him told him he’d just
dodged a bullet, but another insisted she was worth the risk. Which
one was right?

“
What did you do to her?”
Randy asked. “She high-tailed it out of here with the chick who
owns the bakery downtown. You would have thought there was a skunk
chasing them they were moving so fast.”

He straightened. “All I did was invite
her to play a round of pool with us. I hardly know the
woman.”

“Didn’t look that way from here,”
Chris said.

Hank grabbed a pool cue and chalked
the tip. “She called me Hammer.”

Chris racked the balls.
“So?”

“So, she knows who I am. I guess she
believes everything she reads.”

“She’s a reporter. She should know
better,” Randy said, circling the table to give Hank room at the
end.

Hank positioned the cue ball and lined
up his shot. “I don’t want to talk about it. Okay? I came here to
play pool. Let’s get on with it.”

“There is some good news in all of
this,” Randy persisted.

“You obviously see something I don’t,
so fill me in,” Hank said.

“Well, she knows who you are now, and
it’s obvious she doesn’t want to be anywhere near you, so the
chances of her using your dad to get close to you just dipped to
zero.”

Chris nodded. “He’s got a
point.”

“Will you two stick a sock in it and
just play?”

Leave it to those two to point out the
flaws in his logic.

His friends were like two dogs with a
‘coon in a tree. They wouldn’t leave it alone. He lost the first
game to Chris, and the second to Randy. He paid up without comment
and settled his bar tab. He left his friends to play a
winner-takes-all round without him.

Randy was right. She should know
better than to believe everything she reads, which begged the
question, why was she so upset to find out who he was? And the
other question he couldn’t shake—why did he care?

* * *

Mel barreled through the crowded bar
and came face to face with Cathy.

“What’s up, girlfriend?” Cathy
asked.

“Nothing. Let’s go. I don’t want to be
here tonight.” She rummaged in her purse for her car keys. “Come
on.”

Cathy followed. “Why? Where are we
going?” she asked, firing unanswered questions at Mel’s back. “Can
you slow down a little? It’s hard to walk in these
heels.”

Cathy hopped into the passenger side,
and Mel jammed her foot down on the accelerator. She sped out of
the parking lot in a spew of flying gravel.

The man should not affect
me this way
.
No
one else ever has.
Farmer? Yeah,
right.
She should have known. She knew his
music. She just didn’t know he lived
here
, in
her
town. She never would have come
here if she had known. This couldn’t be happening. God, he had to
be laughing at her. She had to be the only woman on the planet who
didn’t recognize him on sight. Jeez, she was stupid.

And to think she’d been attracted to
the man, even when she thought he might have been growing pot or
something in that big barn of his. But this was worse. So much
worse. Pot growers could be reformed, but musicians? Not so much.
Not at all, in fact.

“Whoa there! Slow down would you? Do
you want to tell me what happened back there?”

She eased up on the accelerator. As
bad as things were, she had no intention of killing herself, and
Cathy didn’t deserve to go along for the ride if she did. “Hank
Travis is in there.”

“And?”

“Isn’t that enough?”

“I don’t think so, girlfriend. Where
are we going anyway?”