Synergy: New Adult Romantic Suspense (U-District, #1) (47 page)

“Kidnapping?” Tucker rubbed the back of his neck and his left hand balled into a fist. “This doesn’t even come close to kidnapping. You got into this limo of your own accord. We’re going to Los Angeles to clear this up once and for all.” His words were forceful, final.

“Fine.” Selena threw out her hand. “Give me your phone then.” To her surprise, he unlocked his phone and handed it to her. She’d expected him to ask who she was calling. He never did. He just leaned back and looked out the window.

She didn’t quite know what to make of Tucker. He was hurting, of that she was sure. And he was angry with her for writing the poem about him. Of that, she was doubly sure.

She never should have published that poem. It was one thing to write it for herself. Something about his anguish when she was feeling the same way seemed to help her at the time. Like she wasn’t the only one in the entire world lost without the one she loved.

Writing her poems had been cathartic. Publishing them had been a way to finally get past her pain. But releasing the poem about Tucker had been plain stupid. She hadn’t planned on putting it in the book to begin with, but Janet had convinced her to do so.

What was Janet up to? Was she using rumors about Tucker to help the sales of the book? The cowboy hat on the front cover made a whole lot more sense now.

Selena felt the sudden need to make this right. But how was she going to do that? What did Tucker’s lawyer want? When she’d been standing outside the limo, deciding whether to go with Tucker, she’d told herself it was sensible to find out what the lawyer wanted from her.

But the reality was that she went with Tucker because she was drawn to the man with the gorgeous gray eyes. Her life had been turned upside down, had all but come to a stop, until she’d written down her feelings. Her new book had brought meaning to her life again, but Tucker Calhoun brought something else to it entirely. Her body had thrummed with excitement and something oh so female when he’d stood before her reading her words in that velvety voice. She’d reacted to his song in kind, but now she was reading something else from him entirely. This man was lonely, and so was she.

Tucker turned and caught her looking at him. For a brief moment, they just stared at each other. It wasn’t a harsh stare, no sizing the other up. His eyes were soft, understanding. Almost as if he understood her loss. He broke the silence. “You haven’t made your call.”

“Oh, right.” She smiled and held up the phone to call Rebecca to tell her why she wasn’t at the store. Only problem was, Rebecca’s cell number had recently changed, and Selena had no speed dial to resort to. She dialed the store and was surprised when Rebecca didn’t answer. Selena waited and waited for the machine to pick up, but it never did.
Stupid answering machine.
She really needed to replace it.

Finally, Selena called her best friend, but had to resort to leaving a message because Brenda was camping with her family. “Hey, it’s me. I’m on my way to Los Angeles with Tucker Calhoun.” Selena glanced at Tucker to see if he would object to her using his name. He didn’t seem to care. “Anyway, it’s a long story. I’ll tell you later. Can you call Rebecca and let her know I won’t be home until late tonight? I forgot my cell phone and don’t have her new number. Thanks, gotta go, bye.”

She handed Tucker the phone and he slid it into the front pocket of his jeans.

Selena realized that if Tucker had come from Los Angeles that morning, he had to have left for her place at the crack of dawn. “Why does my poem bother you so much?”

“I have an image to uphold.”

Normally she’d believe that, in a heartbeat. Of course one of the hottest up-and-coming country singers had an image to uphold. But once again, his eyes gave him away. “Worried that pain and vulnerability might make you look bad?”

He turned to the window and clasped his hands together. “Something like that.”

“I really didn’t think anyone would read my book, let alone know it was about you. Are you sure this is as bad as you think it is?”

His head snapped in her direction. “It’s in the papers, on TV, and all over the Internet. Every commentator and gossip columnist is speculating about the woman I’ve lost. They’ve dug up my divorce, think that I—you know the rumors.”

“No, I don’t.” She glanced down at her hands. She couldn’t tell him about Katie. “I don’t get on the Internet. No social media accounts, no email. I had to have my friend upload my book for me.”

“You’re telling me you didn’t know the success of your book was because of the poem you wrote about me?”

Selena shook her head. “I didn’t know.”
Is that all people care about? Gossiping over who the poem is about?
All of her heartache and loss was in that book, and all the readers cared about was the girlfriend of a country star. “I never should have published that book.”

“You mean the poem about me.”

“No, I mean the whole book. I should have known people would be so heartless. On the Internet, people say whatever they want. They don’t worry about hurting your feelings the way they would if they said it to your face.”

The lines around Tucker’s eyes softened.

Selena looked out the window and let the cars speeding in the other direction turn to a blur until she was looking and thinking about nothing. Her stomach started to grumble. She decided to help herself to a soda and poured it into a glass. The only thing she’d eaten that morning was yogurt and a banana.

Tucker grabbed two pieces of ice and dropped them into her drink.

“I didn’t ask for ice.”

“Want me to take them back?”

“No.” She pulled her drink out of his reach because she wouldn’t put it past him to lean forward and snatch them out of the glass.

His intense eyes stared into hers as she took a sip. “So who’d you lose, your mother?”

She sucked tiny soda bubbles into her lungs and couldn’t catch her breath.

He grabbed the glass from her two seconds before she would have spilled it on his crotch, then handed her a napkin while her coughing fit continued.

She stared at him, waiting for her breathing to return to normal. He actually looked concerned, which was surprising, given that he was willing to sue her, but apparently it wasn’t okay for her to choke to death.

He remained silent.

She hated silence. Silence gave her too much time to think. And whenever she did think, she’d think about Katie, and the guilt, and the pain. She ran her finger up and down the condensation on the side of the glass. “It was my younger sister.”

He gave a slight nod.

“I had a hard time with it. She was my best friend. My old boss gave me a journal, said it would help. I stared at it for days, not knowing what to write. Then one morning I woke up with words swarming in my head. I spewed them out as fast as I could, and when I read them back, I realized it was a poem, about my sister.”

“It helped?”

“Yes, the pain in my chest”—she put her fist to her heart—“seemed a little lighter.”

His eyes locked on her fist. Normally she’d be annoyed with a man who stared at her chest, but Tucker wasn’t here. He was somewhere else… with the woman he’d lost.

She leaned over to the window. They were in the carpool lane of I-5, hauling ass compared to those in the other lanes. When she sat back, suspicion swirled in his foggy eyes.

“I break women’s hearts every day. You’re the first to write a poem about me.”

“I don’t have a crush on you, if that’s what you think.”

“I’m getting that impression. Then why’d you write it?”

She wasn’t sure if she should respond. Maybe telling him too much would give him ammunition to use against her.

He leaned forward. “I won’t tell anyone.”

“Not even your lawyer?”

“Not even him.”

Should she trust him, this total stranger? Something about Tucker made her think she could. Neal was always telling her that she was too trusting, too naïve, but she had to follow her gut. “About two months ago, a friend of mine said she was tired of me being depressed, that a year and a half was enough, and she dragged me to a concert.”

“I wasn’t on tour.”

“It was the Summer Nights special that CBS recorded in Las Vegas. Her uncle works for the network and knows she’s a huge country fan.”

“And you’re not?”

“I prefer pop and alternative.” His bleak expression suggested he was into pop music as much as she was into country. “Anyway, you sang
Come Back to Me
, the most beautiful song I’d ever heard. Something in your voice spoke to me.”

His brief smile faded.

“And then I heard it again when my friend recorded the concert on TV. I understood your pain.”

“And so you wrote the poem.”

“And so I wrote the poem.” She wasn’t about to tell him she’d watched the recording about a dozen times, or that his words had haunted her dreams. “My friend Brenda found my journal one day and read it before I had a chance to stop her. She said I should get it published. I just laughed, because I’d tried to get two novels published before and that came to nothing. Then she suggested self-publishing. What did I have to lose? So I did it under my pen name, Kay Sutherland. Which reminds me, how did you find me?”

“It took a while, but my lawyer found your real name through your ISBN.”

“I bought them before I decided on Kay Sutherland.”

“I like your real name better.”

“Yeah, well I like my privacy better.”

He raised his drink in agreement. His cell phone rang, the ringtone some country song. He glanced at the number before picking it up. “Yeah, Pops, what do you need?”

That sounded heartless.

“Again?” He raised his eyes to the ceiling. “When will you stop—it’ll have to be Tuesday. I’ll see you then.” He hung up, shoved the phone in his pocket, and returned to staring out the window.

Great, more silence.

She ran her forefinger over her thumb in tiny circles. “Can we listen to some music?”

“Don’t like the quiet?”

“Not particularly.”

“I’m not listening to pop.”

“Well, I’m not listening to country.” She crossed her arms and peered out the window.

After another two hours of the riveting sound of tires on the beat-up highway, Selena was relieved to see the exit to Los Angeles. As they entered West Hollywood, the skyscrapers of L.A. towered overhead, blocking out the sun and casting a permanent shadow over the city. She preferred the low buildings along Fisherman’s Wharf. “So what does your lawyer want from me?”

Tucker turned to her and smiled. “Not much. Just two million dollars.”

HE HAD TO BE JOKING.
But the seriousness of Tucker’s expression told Selena otherwise. When the bodyguard opened the door for her, she stepped out of the limo. A monstrous building loomed before her, its large windows and dark metal façade reflecting the Los Angeles skyline. The sign for the restaurant on the bottom floor read
Chaya Downtown
. Selena nearly gagged from the odor that wafted out the door as she followed Tucker into the Japanese restaurant.

Ugh, seafood.

She couldn’t tolerate the smell, taste, or texture of seafood, let alone sushi. She walked along the concrete floor breathing through her mouth. The place was packed with people in back-to-back tables. Obviously, this was a great restaurant for those who liked raw, stinking fish.

The place was fairly classy. Thank heavens she was wearing a pair of work slacks, low-heeled sandals, and a red fitted blouse. If she’d been wearing jeans—oh who was she kidding? Tucker was wearing jeans, and no one seemed to notice him.

Which is odd.

Why weren’t people staring at the famous country singer? She glanced at his face to find him wearing a pair of dark glasses and chomping on gum. His mouth slanted sideways as he chewed it open-mouthed. He looked strange. Without his cowboy hat to draw attention and with that goofy grin on his face, why would anyone think he was a star?

Tucker had the dumb-ass act down perfectly. He’d even changed the way he walked. He’d erased that long arrogant stride, with his hands in his jean pockets and his thumbs hanging out, and replaced it with a slouching stroll that said he was going nowhere fast.

The bodyguard escorted her and Tucker into a private room in the back. As soon as the door closed, Tucker transformed back into himself. “Selena Hawkins, this is my lawyer, Robert White.”

“Mr. White.” The name contradicted his black suit, sparse black hair, and what seemed to be beady black eyes. Maybe they were just really dark brown, and her hyperactive imagination was getting the best of her.

The lawyer didn’t bother to get up. “Please have a seat, Miss Hawkins. Tucker, pour the lady some wine.”

“No, thank you.” Selena put her hand over the glass. No doubt the bottle of wine was as expensive as Mr. White’s shiny black suit. Water was all she planned to drink. She needed to keep a clear head.

Tucker didn’t sit. He stood with his arms crossed and one foot pointing toward the door.

Mr. White bit into a piece of shrimp bloodied with sauce and threw the tail into a saucer. “Your little book of poems seems to be a hit. However, the last one has put us in a bit of a bind.” His voice lacked the southern charm of his client’s.