Love Songs for the Road (10 page)

“Shh, enough of that, young lady. Don’t go spreading rumors.”

But Charlotte didn’t answer him.

“Charlotte, there’ll be no more talk about Ryan and me, is that clear?”

“Yes, Daddy,” she said, although she didn’t look the least bit contrite.

His daughter’s sophistication amazed him. Could she have pulled Ryan onstage like that on purpose? Had she been trying to manufacture some kind of interaction between her nanny and her father? He knew Charlotte was precocious, but he hoped she wasn’t going to start playing matchmaker. The last thing he needed was for her to get
that
idea in her head. If Charlotte started to think of Marcus and Ryan as a couple, even a potential couple, she might tell Bianca, who would flip.

Charlotte was still examining Marcus. “Don’t be scared, Daddy,” she said before walking toward Ryan. “Everything’s going to be fine.”

Chapter Twelve

To Smithereens

Ryan barely slept that night. Warring thoughts and impulses bombarded her, and all she could do was let them circle around, careening into each other, shooting themselves to smithereens until they’d exhausted all their ammunition, run out of fuel, and crashed to the ground.

As she’d put the kids to bed, they were still buzzing from the song they’d shared with their dad. As young as they were, their ease and comfort in front of an audience of thousands was clear. Miles was probably too young to fully comprehend the grandeur of it, while Charlotte had apparently appeared onstage so many times, the experience was almost old hat to her. But Ryan had never experienced anything close to the surreal lift, the intense surge of energy that she felt with all those eyes on her. She’d been embarrassed, sure, but when Marcus had called out her name, and 10,000 people screamed out on behalf of her, Ryan Evans? It was hard not to feel the pride of a child, soaking in the praise of people she’d never met and never would. What a thrill. But also, what a wild ride it would be to experience that praise—that adulation, in Marcus’s case—every single night.
No wonder half the famous people in the world are lunatics.

But oh, did he really have to use Ryan’s full name? She could tell by Marcus’s expression that he hadn’t been part of Charlotte’s plan, and he was probably just trying to be gracious by calling out his thanks to her. But now that she’d been fully outted—really, how many female Ryan Evanses were there in the world?—her Internet presence was sure to skyrocket. In fact, she’d been checking her phone every twenty minutes, and she saw that it already had. And what she’d done after she’d left the stage had only compounded the problem.

As soon as she’d gotten herself safely out of view, Ryan had moved back into her old spot, so she could keep an eye on the kids and be ready to receive them when “Love of My Life” was over. She was too distracted to contemplate the lyrics very seriously, although she did think the line about trying to be a kinder, better man was sweet. Marcus
was
a good man, kind and considerate, and being up there, that close to him, she couldn’t help but feel that magnetic pull toward him, even in the way-too-public setting. And the lyrics were just plain sexy. The idea of Marcus actively
trying
to be good,
working
at it as the song suggested, was new to her, and it turned her on. Nick had never worked to be a better person, or even considered that such a thing was possible. He was such a child next to Marcus, and adulthood, this mature, wise rock star’s brand of adulthood, was hot.

But a voice behind Ryan had interrupted her thoughts.

“Hello there,
Ryan Evans
,” the man had said. Ryan turned around and saw Benjamin, the little Harry Potter reporter from that first night at the Seattle Hyatt. Standing alongside the mustachioed photographer he’d been with that night, he smirked. “I knew we’d get a last name out of you eventually.”

“Hey, Benjamin,” she said, trying to stay professional with the little creep. “I’m still on the clock here, so if you could give me a little space…”

“How about just posing for us?” the photographer asked, snapping a couple of pics as he said it, that bright light hitting Ryan smack in the eyes.

“Why bother to ask, if you’re just going to do it anyway?” she said.

“She’s feisty,” Benjamin had said, while the photographer snapped away, twisting and turning the camera in the air, even getting on his knees for an angle of Ryan that couldn’t possibly be flattering. “Feisty makes for good shots. But why don’t you give us a nice posed one?”

“What, do you guys follow Marcus around for the whole tour?”

“We check in on him periodically, see how his summer’s going, that’s all,” Benjamin said.

“Are you guys even allowed to be here?” Ryan asked. “Backstage, I mean?”

Benjamin flashed a press pass. “Sure. We’re trying to get a little bit of the behind-the-scenes flavor into our stories. You know, the relationships between Marcus and his bandmates, his crew…or, say…his nanny.”

“I don’t see any other reporters back here.”

Benjamin didn’t answer the question. “Come on, just pose for us for half a second, and we’ll stop bugging you. Pretty please?”

Ryan reasoned that a pleasant expression had to be better than the contemptuous sneers she’d been shooting in Benjamin’s direction. So she put her hand on her hip, cocked her head to the right, and smiled as sweetly as she could in Mustache Man’s direction.

“Oh, that’s cute,” the photographer said.

“You’re gorgeous,” Benjamin said. “Work it, Ryan, work it.”

She was hardly working it; she was smiling prettily the same way she would for a friend with an iPhone, and no more. Through her smile, Ryan said, “Okay, you’ve got your shot. Are we done?”

“Twerk it, Ryan!” Mustache Man said.

“Yeah, stick your tongue out, Miley-style!” Benjamin clapped with glee.

Obviously, that wasn’t going to happen. Ryan dropped her pose and crossed her arms in front of her chest, signaling an end to the impromptu photo session.

But Benjamin wasn’t finished; he was going into hardcore reporting mode. Ryan looked around her for someone to appeal to, but all hands on deck were focused on smoothly operating things onstage, not off. “Looks like you and Marcus have gotten pretty friendly, Ryan. Have you taken the relationship to the next stage yet? Or is it still strictly professional?”

A voice in Ryan’s head said,
Don’t say anything
, but she couldn’t help herself. “I’m just the nanny, Benjamin.”

“Yeah, but for how much longer?” Mustache Man asked.

Ryan looked over their shoulders, where Serena had at last spotted them, a concerned look on her face. Should she have called out to her, requested security to come and bail her out of this situation? But Serena dashed off before Ryan could say anything.

“There’s nothing happening between Marcus and me,” Ryan said. Even as she said it, she thought she sounded like she was denying something that was actually true. “I care for his children, and that’s all.”

“Out of all the nannies he could have picked, though, why did he go with a girl as sexy as you?” cackled Benjamin. “It’s a classic Troy maneuver.”

Ryan couldn’t restrain herself anymore. She lunged forward and shoved the little twerp, while Mustache Man said, “Yes!” and his flashbulb sprayed blinding light on her.

Behind her, Ryan heard the roar of the audience. For a moment, she imagined they were clapping for her, cheering her on like patrons at the Roman Coliseum, thirsty for blood as she played lion tamer to these two paparazzi punks. But they were cheering Marcus and the band, of course, who were walking offstage after their second and final encore.

“What’s going on here?” Marcus had asked, coming upon the embattled trio, just as Serena returned with two beefy security guys. “Benjamin, how’d you get back here?”

“We were just leaving, Sir Troy,” Benjamin said.

“Got what we came for,” Mustache Man announced proudly.

The security guys took them roughly by the arms, but Benjamin and his buddy just giggled. Marcus reached for Mustache Man’s camera, but the photographer pulled it quickly out of reach.

“There’s no point, Marcus,” Mustache Man said. “Camera’s set to upload the pics to a secure server as soon as I shoot ’em.”

“Yep, no use in destroying cameras these days,” Benjamin said, adding, “You don’t want to deal with a harassment suit anyway, do you?”

Marcus pulled back, taking the threat seriously, but said, “It looks like you’re the one doing the harassing here. Are you okay, Ryan?” He had his hand on her elbow, and leaned forward to look in her eyes.

“I’m fine,” Ryan said.

Another flash went off, Mustache Man somehow getting another picture in, despite the fact that one of the security guys had his arm in a tight grip.

“Will you get these two out of here, please?” The guys carted the paparazzi away.

“You sure you’re all right?” he asked her.

“Yes, I’m fine,” Ryan said. “I do hate that little Harry Potter, though.”

Marcus laughed. “You just have to learn to ignore them.”

“Never react,” said Smitty, who’d come to Marcus’s side. “Just swat ’em away like the mosquitoes they are.”

At two thirty a.m., a “photo essay” comprised of Mustache Man’s shots from the evening had appeared on Perez Hilton’s blog. Ryan didn’t regularly visit the page, but she sure knew what it was and how many millions of people viewed it every day. The slide show featured six shots of her, each with captions revealing a surprising amount of information about her: her hometown of Kalispell, MT, her age, her relationship status (“single, but surely not for long”). Also included were several shots of her from Facebook—not from her own profile, which she’d made as private as she could, but from untagged photos of her that she hadn’t even realized existed. In one, of her eighth-grade soccer team, she was only thirteen years old. Benjamin had even found out that “sexy brainiac Evans plans to attend a graduate program in child development at the University of Michigan this fall.” Great, now Ryan’s grad school professors and fellow students were going to get to know this “Ryan Evans” before she even arrived in Ann Arbor.

Also included in the captions, of course, were all the romantic insinuations Benjamin had made when he’d accosted her. Ryan, whom the text referred to as a “hottie,” a “vixennanny” and, worst of all a “crafty opportunist,” was characterized as “a simple Montana girl nine years the sexy Troy’s junior who just might be the next Love of His Life…”

No one will know it’s all made up,
Ryan thought.
And no one will care.
The perception would become the truth.

The first four photos almost looked like glamour shots, a friendly, beaming Ryan betraying nothing at all of the rage that she’d actually felt in the moment she’d posed. Wide awake in her room, between moments of real fury, she grudgingly acknowledged that at least Mustache Man knew what he was doing behind that camera of his (and had thankfully decided not to include the creepy shot of her that he’d taken while on his knees).

But the fifth picture showed her shoving Benjamin, a fierce look on her face, accompanied by the four-word caption, “Ryan likes it rough.” And the final shot, which Ryan was flabbergasted the photographer had even gotten—had he broken away from security for one last, desperate image while Ryan had been too shell-shocked to notice?—showed Marcus gently checking in with her, his fingers perched lightly on her elbow, a sweet look on his face. “Tender Troy,” read the caption.

By three fifteen, Ryan decided that the only answer for her, the only way she could keep her sanity, was to quit. By three thirty, she vowed to do just that, first thing in the morning. But by three forty-five, she’d reversed course. She couldn’t quit a perfectly good job, one that would be setting up her whole school year so nicely, over the holding of hands, the massaging of feet, and a couple of stupid paparazzi. She was stronger than this; she could rise to the occasion and ignore what people who didn’t even know her thought of her, couldn’t she?

By four a.m., Ryan realized she wasn’t going to get a wink of sleep, not tonight. Her thoughts continued to collide with each other, jumbled together with images she felt like she’d never be able to stop replaying: a crowd of thousands cheering at the sound of her name, the endless white light of the Mustache Man’s flash popping in her face, Charlotte’s mischievous expression as she led Ryan to her dad. And, amidst everything, Ryan could not get that catchy song, those passionate lyrics about love, out of her head. If Nick or anybody else had sung those words to her, it wouldn’t have affected her this way—it would have sounded silly. But Marcus seemed to have earned the right—even if she hadn’t already known, she’d be able to tell from the sound of his voice that he’d been hurt before, just like her, maybe even worse—to sing about love in this way. The fact that he’d loved
and
lost made him so desirable to her. She could imagine caring for a man like that and letting him care for her. But Ryan didn’t kid herself; she knew as little about Marcus as he knew about her. Could she trust him? Could she allow herself to fall for him?

One thing Ryan was fond of doing sometimes when she found herself at a crossroads like this was to play the scenario out to the fullest, to imagine the two or three or more different ways the story could end. In the same way that others used lists of pros and cons, Ryan would add up the costs of each possible future as if they were math problems, and chart the most sensible course. But she couldn’t see the ending to this story. She couldn’t imagine quitting, not now, and she couldn’t picture what would happen were she to stay.
Ryan Evans, possible girlfriend of a rich and famous rock star, mother figure to his children? Ryan Evans, strategic climber, ready to use her nanny job, or anything else at her disposal, to achieve fifteen minutes of Internet fame?
Both ideas were so at odds with her image of herself, her family, her values and upbringing, that she dismissed them entirely. So where did that leave her?

At 5 a.m., she fell asleep at last, before reaching anything close to a decision.