Yankee Doodle Dixie (27 page)

He smiles slowly, but nods his head like he doesn’t believe me—as if my propriety is just for show. For the first time since I’ve arrived, it feels ugly.

At last, Liam’s door opens and I notice he’s changed back to the casual clothes he wore earlier. In a brief flurry, he asks how I liked the show but can barely stay for my answer; much less comment on my change of dress or even hug my neck. I walk next to him down the hallway as he explains that he has a quick meet-and-greet that he must attend. Deke whisks him away down another corridor and I find myself all alone. I turn around and walk toward the green room, resigned to making small talk with his bandmates, who all think I’m sharing his bed.

A solid forty-five minutes later, Liam returns carrying a white teddy bear dressed in a pair of see-through black thong panties. All the guys in the green room whoop and holler at the sight of sexy lingerie.

“What’s that?” I ask shyly when Liam strolls over to me.

“A fan gift,” he says, and shrugs his shoulders.

“Wow,” I say, and raise my eyebrows a touch.

“What’s new?” Jerry, his guitar player, says while he’s stuffing one of Liam’s jumbo shrimp in his mouth. “I keep telling White I want to see his collection.”

I must have had an inquisitive look on my face because Jerry says, “What can I say? His fans want to shop for him.”

“Let’s head,” Liam says to me as he throws the bear to Jerry and wraps his arm around my waist. “I’m ready for a drink. And I could eat somebody I’m so hungry.” The guys whoop and holler even louder.

As he holds open the door, Liam peers down at me. “You changed.”

I am still stuck on his last words but quickly adjust, feigning a coy smile. “Everyone in the audience was dressed up,” I say. “So I ran back to my room for a quick change.”

“You look gorgeous.”

“Well, thank you.” I look down at my dress.

“Good enough to eat,” Jerry says.

When I whip my head around and give him a dirty look, he backs away and holds up his hands, palms out. “Just joking.”

A few of the guys snicker, and I turn to Liam expecting support but instead find him in the midst of a grin.

In an instant Liam White has fallen off his pedestal.

*   *   *

A limo is waiting to whisk us off to a restaurant a few blocks away. After the uncomfortable situation in the dressing room, I am grateful for the short trip and the many excuses to look out the window and gawk over the streetscapes. My rose-colored glasses may be off when it comes to Liam, but it’s no reason not to enjoy the remainder of the evening—and to his credit, he’s apologized three times for his crass bandmates. I guess that’s the problem with fairy tales—there’s no room for humanity.

When we step inside the door, just past eleven, the maître d’ asks if we have a reservation and Liam says, “Yes, White.”

The man looks down at a book resting on a podium. “I’m sorry, Mr. White. Could it be under a different name?”

“Longfellow?” he says, and looks over at me. “Deke’s last name.”

Again, the man looks through his book. “No, sir. Another name?”

“Satterfield?”

The same thing happens again.

“I guess we don’t have one.” There’s a chill in Liam’s voice as he digs his phone out of his jacket and punches in a number. “Deke,” he says, angrily, “there’s no reservation here at Marea. Okay.” He hands the phone to the gentleman.

Next thing I know we’re being shown to a table and the maître d’ pulls out my chair. Liam sits down next to me. “We’ll take a bottle of the Dom,” he says, as he’s scooting his chair up to the table. The gentleman smiles and disappears into the back.

I’ve only tasted Dom Perignon one other time when Virginia, Mary Jule, and I each pitched in forty dollars to celebrate Alice’s graduation from graduate school at Emory. Of course, that was a while back and we purchased it directly from a liquor store. Here at this restaurant in New York, I’m sure the cost is quadruple that.

“So, tell me,” he says, after the sommelier has poured us each a glass of champagne. “How is a girl like Leelee Satterfield single?”

After a deep breath, I tell him all about Baker. I start with how we met in high school and how it was me who first had a huge crush on him. I tell him how we came to be married. We talk a little about the divorce and how Helga, the ruthless shyster, had masterminded a scheme to swindle him away from me.

He reaches over and takes my hand, raising it to his lips, and kisses it tenderly. I love how attentive he is to me, listening to my every word. Once he even says he’d like to slap Baker around a bit and that one comment instantly endears him to me. It’s nice to think someone cares about my life and how I’m doing, rock star status aside.

“Any boyfriends since you split up?” he asks.

“No. Well, I take that back, sort of.”

“A sort-of boyfriend?”

“There was this guy in Vermont. The chef at my restaurant.”

“Helga’s brother?” I had told him all about how we came to purchase the inn from Helga and Rolf in the first place.

“No, this was after Rolf left. I advertised for a new chef and he applied. He came in and added a new menu—he was amazing, actually. He looked after my girls and me and if it weren’t for him, I don’t know what would have happened to us. Peter, that’s his name, and I made that place into a remarkable little getaway.”

“But he was your sort-of boyfriend.” His eyes travel away from me and look around the room.

“He never was my boyfriend. But we cared about each other more than we wanted to admit. Until I was leaving—then he finally admitted it. But that was after he acted terribly rude to me when he learned I was moving back home.” I whisk my hand in front of my face. “It’s complicated.”

Abruptly, without waiting for the wine steward, he pours us each another glass of champagne. Then he raises his glass and holds it next to mine. “What do you say we toast to me and you?”

Me and you? I’m sitting across from the man whose album covers I’ve drooled over since I was twelve; someone who’s surprisingly easy to talk to and even kind. I’ve spent collectively less than twenty-four hours with him, it seems vastly premature to be discussing “me and you.” “Okay,” I say, “I’ll drink to that,” totally ignoring my rational internal dialogue. It didn’t seem right to spoil the moment, I suppose.

“Tell me about you,” I say, the champagne finally loosening my tongue.

“What about me?”

“I don’t know, just anything about you. Do you have children?”

He nods his head in affirmation. “I have a son, twenty-seven.”

My eyes open wide.

He smiles as he sips the champagne from the glass and swirls it around in his mouth. “I was a bad boy.”

I tried calculating how young he was when his son was born. Alice had already found out that Liam is forty-four. “So you were…”

“Seventeen,” he says. “And no, we never married.”

“Have you ever been married?” I ask.

“Nope.”

“Gosh, that’s hard to believe.” That may have come out wrong. I change the subject back to his boy. “Is your son a musician, too?”

“No. He’s a whole lot smarter than his old man. He actually works for a living,” Liam says with obvious pride in his voice.

“You work for a living,” I say, and pat his arm.

He laughs. “Not like him. He’s a craftsman. Like in the old days. A damn good one, too. You should see the work he does. Gorgeous cabinetry, millwork, moldings.”

“Where does he live?”

“Northern California. In Napa Valley. Ever been there?”

“You know, I haven’t. Someday, though.”

“You should come with me some time.”

Edward’s scary mug suddenly pops into my mind—unfortunately causing me to cringe about the big fat one I told him about having the flu. “I’d love to,” I say, now accustomed to these hypothetical open invitations of Liam’s.

When we finally get around to ordering it’s very late. Probably close to midnight. I look around and notice there are only a few stragglers left in the restaurant. The waiter politely explains that the kitchen will be closing shortly and that he needs to take our order. We haven’t even looked at the menus and Liam tells him to please come back in five minutes. When the poor thing returns and we still haven’t looked at the menu, Liam scans it quickly and orders the halibut. I decide on the sea scallops.

Throughout the dinner, my cell phone keeps beeping and after the fifth time Liam says, “Someone is desperate to get ahold of you. You might want to see about it.”

“It’s just my crazy girlfriends. No worries,” I say. When I glance down at the phone I have five text messages.

We talk all through our meal. He tells me about the record he’s due to record in the next few months. We talk more about his son and the fact that he doesn’t see him much. He confesses that he’s a grandfather and laments that he would like to see more of his grandson. I tell him about Roberta, Jeb, and Pierre and that being only four hours away from them makes me miss them all the more. I get so lost in talking about Vermont, recalling the zany predicaments I’d been in—from shoveling my car out of five feet of snow to overbooking the inn—that I don’t even realize who I’m discussing. He stops me when I mention Peter.

“Tell me more about this Peter dude, your
sort-of
boyfriend. It sounds like you still like him.”

I’m not really all that keen on giving any more details but when he presses me unrelentingly, I go ahead. “Well, there’s not that much more to tell. He was a really great chef and he helped me out of a really tough spot. We became good friends over the months that we worked together and then I got an offer on the inn.”

“Did he want you to stay?”

“It was too late. I’d made my decision to come back home. It was a decision I made for me, and not anyone else. It would have been hard to change my mind at that point.”

“You made the right decision.”

“You think so?”

“I know so. You made a decision based on your needs and not someone else’s. I like that. And I like you.”

“I like you, too,” I say, less shyly this time.

Then he leans in to kiss me. Right there at the table. It’s just a peck, but it’s still a kiss. When he smiles the crow’s-feet in the corners of his eyes crease, revealing the difference in our ages. It startles me, quite honestly. Eleven years is a big difference, even if he is a rock star.

He picks back up his fork and dabbles at his fish. “So you and Peter have unrequited love? That can be a powerful thing.” If I didn’t know better, I’d swear he was jealous.

“Can we please not talk about Peter? He lives in Vermont and I live in Tennessee. There is 1,473 miles between us and I’m never moving back there and apparently he’s not moving to Tennessee.”

“Why not?”

“Because he doesn’t have a job in Tennessee. And he’s from New Jersey. And, well, I don’t think he would like Memphis. I don’t know, it’s a moot point.” The sharp tone to my voice must let him know that I’m done talking about Peter because he finally lets it drop.

We are the last two people in the restaurant at one o’clock in the morning. Our poor waiter is lurking around our table, no doubt ready to go home. The thought crosses my mind that they are keeping the place open only because it’s Liam. Thankfully Liam notices, too, and signals for the check—which is calculated and paid with swift efficiency. Never seeming to have broken eye contact, Liam asks, “You ready?”

“Yes,” I say, smiling back at him—caught up in the absurdity of the moment, the extravagance, the bottles of champagne and wine, I know I’m practically swooning. I break eye contact and take a deep breath.

“Why’d you do that?” he asks.

“Do what?”

“You went from a smile to a funny look all of a sudden.”

How do you tell a celebrity that you’re on a date with that you have just caught yourself acting starstruck? I can’t tell him that. “I’m fine. Don’t mind me. This whole thing is just, surreal.
Crazy.
It’s just so … this isn’t my life,” I say with an audible sigh. There it is. The one thing we’ve both been pretending all night to ignore: he’s famous and I’m just another dreamy-eyed woman.

*   *   *

When we return to the hotel, Liam’s holding my hand as we stroll casually through the lobby—my fairy tale suddenly melts into a puddle of reality right in front of the elevator bank. As we’re headed back to our
respective
rooms, the thought goes through my mind: What’s going to happen if he invites me up?

Well, I’m going to tell him that I’ll see him tomorrow when we tour the Statue of Liberty. If he wants to have breakfast first, then fine. Surely he knows my intentions for this relationship, and that I want to take things very slowly. But then again, does he? After all, the girls and I hung out backstage at his show in Memphis for over an hour. I flew up to New York on a whim, just because he invited me. I’ve shared a lot of personal information with him, shared a kiss and practically agreed to visit his son in Napa. I can’t say I haven’t sent some mixed messages. But I’m steely-eyed and determined to say right back:
No way. What kind of girl do you think I am, Liam White? Do I look like a groupie to you?

As we’re stepping onto the elevator he says, “Would you like to come back to my room for another drink?”

“Certainly,” I say.

Moments later he’s opening the door to his suite and it’s nearly one thirty in the morning. Kissie King would be laying her holy hands all over me if she had any idea. I take that back. The entire mother board of her church would be laying their holy hands all over me.

With his arm around me, we walk into a living room with floor-to-ceiling picture windows on two sides, overlooking both the park and the Hudson River. And I thought my room was gorgeous. There’s a contemporary feel to his room that mine doesn’t have, with clean lines on the beige sofas, the smooth straight tables and the accent pieces. An Asian flavor infuses his room, too, with subtle touches in the art, the orchids, and the Mandarin accessories. The blinds over the windows are raised and the view is magnificent.

“Take a look around,” he says, before disappearing into his bedroom.