Love Songs for the Road (8 page)

Chapter Ten

I Want to Hold Your Hand

Marcus could do these junket-style interviews in his sleep, which was a good thing, because he was so unrested that that was almost exactly what he had to do. But while answering standard questions like, “Where does your inspiration come from?” and “What’s it like
actually being
Marcus Troy?” he spent the bulk of his mental energy on Ryan, playing and replaying the memory of his unexpected morning with her in a kind of dream state.

Smitty used to tease Marcus—and would surely do so again, as soon as he heard about the morning’s events—about playing what he called “the paramedic card.” (And vice versa, as Smitty had taken every conceivable opportunity to transform his medical expertise into romantic and/or sexual opportunities.) Yes, Marcus had tended to women in distress before, but he’d always felt cheesy while doing so and had never “capitalized” on his medical skill set. This morning, he’d been so overcome with desire—it had taken enormous concentration and control to keep his hands from shaking with excitement as he’d applied the bandage—that he didn’t feel self-conscious about the paramedic card at all.

Marcus loved giving foot massages, touching and caressing a woman’s body, almost as much as the act of sex itself. As a younger man, of course, foreplay had been nothing more than an obligation, a prelude before the good stuff happened. But as he’d grown older, he’d noticed that the most erotic memories of his life were the things he didn’t even notice in the moment, but which became more important only later: the look in his partner’s eyes, something she’d whispered in his ear, or the way she’d tenderly grazed his face with her fingertips.

He thought about how Smitty—both the real man and the fictional projection—would continue to warn him against any involvement at all with the nanny. But Marcus knew with all his heart—and yes, he acknowledged that he was only a few days into a nearly summer-long tour—that not all relationships are what they appeared to be, and he now rejected the debate between the angel on one shoulder and the devil on the other. He reasoned that Ryan very well may have been the angel in this scenario, and hoped that Smitty would soon return to the more earthly status of his hell-raising best friend.

“Is there anyone special in your life?” asked the final interviewer, a friendly young man, a reporter from
The Oregonian
whom Marcus had barely even registered while answering his questions on autopilot.

“What’s that?” Marcus asked. He’d been in a dazed reverie for nearly two hours.

“Sorry, I don’t mean to pry,” the reporter said. “I thought it was sort of a standard question.”

“It’s cool,” Marcus said, wanting to put the guy at ease. “If you mean am I in a relationship, the answer is no.”

“Gotcha.” The reporter seemed ready to move on, and started to shuffle through his notes.

“But yes, there is someone special in my life.”

The reporter sat up in his chair, raised his eyebrow, and checked his digital recorder to make sure it was still running. “Who’s that?” he asked.

For a moment, Marcus panicked.
Someone special in my life?
He hadn’t meant to say it, but he was so exhausted, the idiotic statement had flowed right out of him. And this reporter, sensing a scoop, wasn’t just going to let it go. He tried to think of an answer that would satisfy the kid without giving anything away.

“I don’t have a name for you. But I guess you could say I’m admiring someone from afar.”

“Really? That must be hard to do if you’re famous. I mean, you have a pretty big entourage. A girl could see you coming from a mile away.”

Marcus chuckled. “That’s probably true.”

“So how does Marcus Troy admire someone from afar?”

“Just like anybody else,” Marcus said. “With my fingers crossed.”

…

Ryan wouldn’t have any real interaction with Marcus until nearly twenty-eight hours after she’d gotten injured, and the waiting was killing her. The kids had started to tire of going to every concert, so Marcus (without any guilt tripping, she noticed) encouraged them to stay in, skip the previous night’s show, and watch a movie in the suite with their nanny. The next morning, Marcus had joined them for breakfast, but Alex, the tour manager, had too, and he’d monopolized Marcus with all sorts of questions and briefings about the upcoming leg of the tour. Poor Marcus had barely been able to finish his breakfast and give both of his kids a kiss. There was no time for flirty banter with Ryan.

Her thoughts about Marcus had been seesawing wildly since she’d hurt her foot. Part of her was dying to see whether or not he would want to build on the momentum of that amazing, sensuous foot massage. Another part of her couldn’t believe that she’d flirted so openly with him. Why had she done it? Had she lost her mind?

She thought about her fall, and about being tended to by Marcus, that paramedic-turned-rock-star. In retrospect, maybe it had been silly of her to panic—from what she knew of him now, he was so laid-back that it would’ve been absurd for him to fire her for being out of touch for a couple of hours (especially since she had a good excuse). Still, she found it hard to know how Marcus would react. On the one hand, he made sure everyone around him knew he was Mr. Casual. But she thought it might have been an act, partly anyway. Underneath the mellow exterior, she saw that he could be as brooding and intense as that song, “I Lock the Door.” She also saw that, when it came to the safety and well-being of Charlotte and Miles, he was dead serious.

So was Marcus actively pursuing her, or not? It was such a no-no, such a cliché, to go for the nanny. He was ten years older than her, and he was her employer. He was the kind of guy whose every romantic move would be analyzed and dissected by thousands of people. And he could have had anyone he wanted.
Why me?
Ryan thought.
Why not someone easier?

But she hadn’t just imagined that foot massage—he had been blatantly flirting, and Ryan wasn’t made of stone. If it happened again, it could easily lead to something. So what was she going to do about it?

…

Life on the bus had fallen into a kind of routine. Charlotte could pretty much take care of herself, to the point where Ryan found the girl’s sense of independence almost disquieting, while Miles could be awfully needy, and this afternoon, Miles often seemed to be screaming:

1) Feed me!

2) Hold me!

3) Love me!

Oh, and don’t forget:

4) Don’t ever, ever leave me!

all at the same time. Ryan did her best to keep up with him—although it was difficult, hobbled as she was—and, since most of the crew didn’t seem to have gotten much sleep in Portland, to quiet his horseplay. Sometimes she succeeded and sometimes she didn’t.

“Just let him run wild,” said Marcus, taking the seat across from her.

“Really?” Ryan asked. “Are you sure? There are some grumpy people who are going to get even grumpier.” Despite her warnings to herself only moments earlier, she felt touched that Marcus had come to find her. More than that, she was turned on. Not a good sign—she had a crush on Marcus, for real.

“Don’t worry about it. Somebody told me that kid’s dad calls the shots around here.”

“Ha ha.” Marcus was being funny, but Ryan thought he might have been trying to subtly remind her,
You remember I’m your boss, right?

When on the road, Ryan always took the aisle seat so she could give chase at a moment’s notice, but today she regretted it. Even before their flirtation had jumped a gear, Marcus had made a habit of coming over to say hello, and today she wished he could sit next to her without the very public aisle separating the two of them. She wondered if, just for the hell of it, he’d dare to massage her feet again.

Get it together, girl!
Ryan said to herself.
You are acting like a wanna-be cheerleader with a crush on the high school quarterback! Stop it, stop it, stop it, this is your boss. Just stop!

When she snapped to, Ryan realized she had missed a significant chunk of Marcus’s monologue, because seemingly out of nowhere he was talking about the kids and his ex-wife and all kinds of super-personal subjects.

“Would I take them full-time?” Marcus asked, although it seemed to be a rhetorical question, because he didn’t pause long enough for Ryan to answer. “Absolutely I would. And I know I could give them a more stable environment than their mother does. She seems to have a major crisis, on cue, every four to five months, usually sparked by some dude Charlotte and Miles should never have been introduced to in the first place. But Bianca doesn’t know the meaning of the word ‘restraint.’”

“Wow,” said Ryan. “That’s awful.” She didn’t know what to say, and it showed.
Really?
she thought.
He’s sharing some of the deepest stuff happening in his life, and all I can say is ‘wow’?
She wondered, too, why Marcus would share all this info with her, of all people. Was it normal for a guy to flirt one day and talk about his co-parenting problems the next? She felt overwhelmed by what he was telling her, and unequipped to respond. She couldn’t imagine having had kids with Nick, that traitor, but what if they
had
? What would it be like to share your children, your flesh and blood, with someone you couldn’t even stand anymore?

Ryan continued to nod and say, “hmm,” “sure,” and “okay” at the socially appropriate moments, but she found it hard to concentrate. Here she’d been having fantasies about holding hands or getting a foot massage, as if the two of them were teenagers without a care in the world. But Marcus was no high school kid. Not only was he a famous rock star; he was an employer of dozens, a father, an ex-husband, a full-blown adult with all kinds of responsibilities Ryan knew nothing about.

She felt like an idiot, daydreaming about him. The massage had probably just been something he’d done on a whim. He’d come on to her, been interrupted, and forgotten about it easily enough. It would probably be best for both of them to forget it had ever happened.

“So, what do you think?” Marcus asked her, though she had no idea what he wanted her opinion on. “Hey, are you with me, Ryan?”

“Yeah, I just…” Her brain scurried around for a suitable lie, a way to cover her ass, but there was none. “I’m so sorry, I guess I was drifting.”

“No, listen, it’s me. Sometimes when I’m stressed, I start going off about my problems, and I just…cannot stop. You know?”

“I do, yeah.” This
was
a bit of a lie. When Ryan had problems, she didn’t share them with anyone. Not her mom, not Em, nobody. She was in awe of people as open as Marcus.

“One time, when Smitty and I were becoming friends—”

“During the ambulance-driving era?”

Marcus chuckled. “Hey, with a little wordsmithing, that could be my next album title. Yes, during the ambulance-driving era. I was breaking up with someone, or going through some crisis or other, and I just needed someone to talk to, you know?” Ryan nodded. “I called up Smitty, and talked his ear off for a good hour and a half. At some point, I realized I hadn’t heard a peep from him in ages. And guess what? Dude had gone to sleep on me.”

“Oh no!”

“Marcus Troy,” he deadpanned. “Cheaper than a sleeping pill. And ten times as effective.”

“Oh, come on, you’re not that bad.”

“Well, I’ve gotten better over the years, but I’m obviously still able to bore
you
to death.”

“You did
not
bore me to death. Tell me more about this custody thing. I’m interested. Really.”

“You know what? I’m not going to do that. First, I’m going to apologize by saying this. I’ve always had a healthy ego, but for the last ten years, I’ve been surrounded by people who treat me like I’m some kind of god, and that’s no way to tame an egomaniac. But those kids?” He gestured to Miles, mid-somersault in the aisle, and Charlotte, who was pestering a near-comatose Smitty. “They brought me right down to Earth.
They
became the center of my universe, you know? Not long after Charlotte was born, I realized that if I was going to give them any kind of life, I was going to have to get out of the way and stop being such a child myself.”

“This, from the guy who interviewed me in his underwear?”

They both laughed.

“But look, seriously. I’ve done it again, did you notice that? Not only did I change the subject back to myself, but I made you feel sympathy for me
while
I was being a total narcissist.”

Ryan laughed. “Well, you
are
analytical, I’ll say that much. Aren’t all your songs about living in the moment, relaxing, and enjoying life?”

“Wishful thinking, I guess. The truth is, I’m kind of a head case.”

“I have to admit,” Ryan said, “we don’t talk about ‘narcissism’ much in Montana. I only know the word from my child development classes. Instead of ‘narcissist,’ we just say ‘selfish asshole.’”

Marcus cracked up. “Perfect. See, that’s what’s cool about you. You don’t sit around asking a bunch of questions. You just say it like it is. You just
live.
”

“Well, I’m glad that’s what it looks like, but I have my problems just like everybody else.”

“Like what?”

Should she just be honest and tell him about Nick? Marcus had been married and divorced, and appeared to be on the verge of a child custody battle. Her woe-is-me tale of love lost would sound childish and pathetic, and it just didn’t feel natural to share such intimate details with someone she’d known for less than a week.
Ah, screw it,
she thought.
Take a risk. What have you got to lose?