Love's Road Home (25 page)

Tom plastered a mock frown on his face. "Not hotter than me, I hope."

She reached across the table to patronizingly pat his hand. "Of course not, sweetie. You’re hot, too."

"Humph." Tom took a swallow from his glass, too. She’d badgered him into ordering the beer, saying one drink wouldn’t compromise her safety. Finally he’d given in. "Anyway, I didn’t tell you the best part yet."

"Oh, there’s more? I can’t wait to razz him about this tomorrow."

"No! Don’t you dare. He’d kill me if he knew I told you."

She leered. "Even better. I can save it to blackmail you later." Except there wouldn’t be a later for the two of them. This was as far as it could go.

Beth took a large gulp of beer and promptly choked.

"Whoa, sweetheart, are you okay?" Tom stood up, ready to run to her rescue. She waved him back into his seat.

"I’m fine." She cleared her throat a final time. "Now, tell me the rest."

He waited a brief moment, watching her. Only when she nodded and gestured to him did he continue on. "You know how Leo keeps his hair short? Well, it wasn’t always like that."

"So?"

"So, his hair is really curly, and in high school he grew it out."

Beth began to smile.

"Right. Think big blonde Afro."

She laughed. "Seriously?"

"Yup. And on top of all those issues, he was smart. Still is, of course, but he has the music to take the edge off, so to speak. Back then, he was a bona fide nerd."

"And what, you were the golden boy?"

Their food arrived, and Tom waited until they were alone again before responding.

"Hardly. We were both lowly freshmen so it’s not like I had any pull. I just didn’t stand out as much as he did."

Beth swallowed her bite of salad with difficulty. "Leo was picked on?"

"The very first day he transferred in." Tom leisurely ate a couple spoonfuls of mashed potatoes.

"And?"

"And the next day he wasn’t picked on." He smiled as he speared a piece of meat.

Beth gave up eating until his story was over. "What did you do? Beat up the bullies?"

"Nah. It was just harder for them to harass more than one person at a time, and I stuck to Leo like glue." He consumed another bite of his meal before continuing. "Eventually they left us alone."

So it turned out he’d always been a superhero after all. She’d thought that was the case. "And you guys lived through the rest of your high school existence in peace, right?"

"Not exactly."

When her stomach growled—loudly—Beth picked up her fork again. He apparently wanted to prolong the sordid tale, but there was no sense in her starving to death while he did it.

"You see, with his wacky hairstyle, Leo earned a nickname. Leo the Lion. Original, huh?" Tom downed another swallow of beer. "And since I’d entered the picture, I got one, too. Tommy the Tiger, I guess because I defended Leo so hard."

Beth’s eyes misted, and she quickly looked down, blinking rapidly to clear them. "You guys had those nicknames all through high school?" She’d never imagined a normal teenage life could be so tough.

"Sort of. The badass seniors were gone after that first year, and, by then, we’d turned the names to our advantage."

"How’s that?"

"We’d joined band as freshmen and fallen in love with performing. We knew back then we were going to be successful musicians or die trying." He ate a couple more bites before continuing. "That was the year I taught myself guitar. I taught Leo, too, and we both took piano lessons. Of course, we didn’t broadcast that information around school." He winked and offered a crooked smile. "We didn’t want to provide even more amusement for others."

"How can you laugh about this?" Beth could contain her disgust no longer. "It makes me sick to hear how you guys were treated! If only those jerks could see you two now, how handsome and successful you are. They’d be falling all over themselves to apologize. They’d—"

"Beth," Tom interrupted, "it’s all right." He reached over to take her hand, squeezing it gently. "It was a long time ago, and things changed."

"Uh-huh." She wasn’t happy with what he’d said, but she loved his familiar touch.

"No, really. You know that saying, ‘What doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger’? It’s true. Or at least it was in our case."

"Excuse me, aren’t you Tom Crowley? From Roadhouse?"

Beth pulled her hand away and turned to see a pair of pre-teen girls standing next to the table. They wore similar styles of summer clothing—one in pink, the other in yellow—and each sported two long blonde braids and a wide smile. Cute as buttons, either they were sisters or extremely close friends.

The one with braces spoke again. "It is you! I knew it!"

Tom graced the children with a warm smile. "Hello, ladies. What can I do for you?"

A brief bout of giggling and whispering occurred before the second girl asked, "Could we have your autograph, please?" She produced a pen and heart-shaped pad of paper from the small Barbie-themed purse hanging around her neck.

Tom immediately reached for the items. "Certainly you can have my autograph. One for each of you?" He looked from one grinning face to the other, both girls nodding so hard Beth was afraid their heads would snap off.

"I’m Amanda," said the Barbie fan. "And this is my sister, Emily."

The smaller girl gave a quick wave. "Hi."

"Well, Amanda and Emily, it was very nice meeting both of you." Tom finished writing but hesitated before handing the pen and paper back. He tilted his head toward Beth. "This is Beth. She sings with Roadhouse, too, so do you want her to write something?" He flashed a teasing smile her way.

Oh,
geez
. "Tom, no—"

"Girls!" A harried-looking woman came down the aisle, her arms full with a purse, diaper bag, and restless infant. "What are you doing bothering these people—oh!"

She’d just gotten a close look at Tom. "Oh. My. God."

"Mommy! Mommy, I was right! It is Tom!" Emily jumped up and down and tugged on her mother’s arm as she spoke. "And he gave us autographs, too! Look!" She pointed to the items Tom was returning to Amanda.

The woman stopped staring at Tom long enough to look down at her daughters. "I’ll look later, Emily, but I think you two have bothered Mr. Crowley enough for today. Let’s let him eat his dinner." Her apologetic glance encompassed Beth, too. "Sorry about this. They’re really big fans of your band—I am, too—but we couldn’t get to the show last night. Birthday party at the in-law’s house." She rolled her eyes, indicating her opinion of the event.

Her baby fussed a little more, and the woman turned to leave. "Thanks again, and sorry about the interruption."

"Not a problem, ma’am. It’s always nice to meet young fans. And they were very polite, too, weren’t you, girls?"

His comment caused another flurry of giggles to erupt, but the woman still managed to get her young daughters heading toward the door. Amid waves and cries of "Thank you" and "Goodbye," they heard the mother chastising her children.

"Don’t ever do something like that again! You were supposed to be using the bathroom, that’s all. You’re both lucky it really was Tom Crowley and not some weirdo. Just wait until I tell your father what you did …"

•

Tom couldn’t stop smiling as he watched the family move away. Those girls were adorable.

"She was wrong."

He turned back to Beth. "Hmm? Wrong about what?"

"Little does that poor woman know, but you truly are a weirdo."

"Only about you, sweetheart." He reached for his beer. "But she was right to scold them. I’d do the same to my kids if they ever wandered off." And the instant he’d seen the girls, thoughts of having a family of his own had sprung to mind. They’d looked like miniature versions of
Bethany
, and his desire to get a commitment from her—soon—had flared up again.

Beth picked up her fork and stabbed some more of her salad. "You were very good with those girls. I’m impressed."

"I love kids." He, too, returned to his meal. "The fact that they were fans was just a bonus. They helped Roadhouse get where we are today."

Beth instantly waved her hand back and forth. "Wait, wait. You can’t skip ahead like that. You were talking about high school. The awful nicknames, remember?"

"Oh, yeah." It was an integral part of who he was today, not likely to be forgotten. "See, Leo and I used to use the school’s practice rooms after school. There was a sign-up list posted in the hallway. But whenever we’d put our names down in the morning, some jerk would cross them out and put our nicknames. At one point, somebody got too lazy to write ‘the Tiger’ and ‘the Lion’ and just wrote ‘the Cats.’"

"I don’t see this getting any better yet," Beth said dryly.

"It did. Trust me. Our band teacher knew what we were doing, and he suggested we hook up with some other guys he knew. They didn’t play in the school band, but I think Mr. Seibert wanted to give them a reason to stay in school. And it worked. Normally we all wouldn’t have hung out, but our music brought us together."

"And this relates to bullies and nicknames how?"

Tom laughed. "Turns out we were lazy, too. On the sign-up list, we didn’t feel like writing all five of our names, so Leo just wrote ‘the Cats,’ figuring everyone would know who we were. But Manny, he said that was too wimpy. He changed it to ‘the Wildcats,’ and that’s what we were called from then on."

Beth reclined against the high back of the booth and pushed a stray lock of hair behind her ear. "So your freshman nicknames led to your forming a band called the Wildcats."

"Yup, that about covers it."

Over the remainder of dinner Tom explained how his and Leo’s first band gained popularity not as a bunch of geeks but as a group of really talented musicians. They won school and citywide awards and were invited to play at numerous public functions, despite the fact that the band members often changed.

"We definitely owe a lot to Manny, Frank, and Chris," Tom said, giving credit to the original guys they’d formed Wildcats with. "But they eventually went their own ways over the years."

"Did they quit school like the band teacher thought they would?"

"Frank did, but the others decided to put more effort into their classes so they could graduate on time."

"That’s good."

"Yeah, but Leo and I could afford to split our time between academics and music, and we definitely didn’t want to give up the band."

"So what’d you do?"

The waitress stopped by to clear their plates, and they decided to have coffee and share a dessert. When the steaming mugs and single dish of rich strawberry shortcake were in front of them, Tom answered Beth’s question.

"We stuck it out together." He watched as
Bethany
swallowed a spoonful of the cream-covered confection and had to clear his throat before continuing. "Sometimes there were four Wildcats, sometimes five, but there were never less than two."

A spot of whipped topping remained on her bottom lip, tempting him to lick it off. Then her tongue slipped out to get it, and that drove him just as crazy.

"It must’ve been wonderful having such a great friend. Someone who was there through both good and bad times." Her wistful tone escaped his notice as Beth reached for another taste of berries and cream.