“You’re fooling yourself, love,” he said with a knowing spark in those deep blue eyes.
“About what? You? I already know that.”
He chuckled. “No. About your songs. You’re running away from them.”
“How?”
“By doing whatever it is you think you need to do tonight instead of showing up for the open mic.”
“No one listens to me at the open mic.”
“That isn’t true. I listen. Courtney listens. Juni listens. Ryan listens. A lot of people listen. And even more people would listen if you would do something about those songs. We should get on the bike right now and go to Nashville. What do you say? I’m going to have to leave soon anyway, now that everyone here is being evicted. Let’s go today. Right now.”
“I can’t. I have things to do.”
“Things that aren’t as important as your songs?”
She turned away and hauled in a huge breath redolent with his scent: smoke and whiskey and something else that made the crazy part of her come alive. How easy it sounded, to pick up and move, to bet her future on a handful of songs no one ever listened to. It was seductive.
And it was a pipe dream.
She turned toward him. “I have to go. I won’t be back.”
He sat up in bed. “But—”
“I mean it. I won’t be back. I won’t be back to the open mics either. I need to get my life back together. I can’t go on lying to people at work. To my friends. To myself. I know it’s only been four days, but honestly, I’m not cut out for this kind of life. I need structure. I need routine. I need habit.”
She turned and raced out of his apartment, down the rusty iron stairs, and out into the parking lot, where her worst nightmare awaited her. Just as she reached her sensible Honda Civic, Leslie Heath pulled her classic red Volkswagen Bug in to the adjacent spot.
There was no escape this time. Leslie climbed out of her car with a smile. “Arwen, I wasn’t expecting you today. Do you have news for us?”
Oh crap. Now what? “I, um, I—”
“She wasn’t here to see you, Leslie,” Rory said from his apartment’s concrete stoop. He’d thrown on a pair of jeans, but no shirt or shoes. He looked gorgeous and romantic and dangerous all at once. He was an addiction Arwen could not afford.
Leslie’s gaze snapped from Arwen to Rory and back again before a big smile spread on her face. “Oh, I didn’t know you two were acquainted.”
“You should come down to the Jaybird some Wednesday,” Rory said. “Arwen is an amazing songwriter.” Rory’s deep-set blue eyes pierced Arwen like a pair of twin lasers.
“It’s not true,” she said. “I’m a much better paralegal. And, um, I, uh, really need to get back to the office.” Arwen pulled open her car door and escaped before Rory tried to convince her to stay. She needed to keep away from that man. He was not good for her. He was messing with her mind.
She peeled out of the parking lot, but instead of heading toward the office, she turned left onto Route 7 and drove toward Winchester. She hadn’t been lying to Rory about the open mic tonight. She had a meeting with Tom McClintock, a clerk in the Jefferson County Building Permits Division.
But even if she hadn’t been busy, she would have begged off the open mic. It was stupid to believe anything Rory said. After all, he was hardly a success in life. He tended bar in a small backwater café, and he lived in a room he subleased in a rundown apartment. He wasn’t living a dream life.
In fact, he was wasting his life on cigarettes and weed. Where did he get off telling her what to do about her life?
But then again, did it make a difference if your cell was gilded or rusty? Either way it was still a cell.
Tears formed in her eyes as she drove. She wanted to be wild and adventurous, but four days of sex with Rory had done nothing except make her crazy. The hours of lost sleep. The deep questioning of her beliefs. The yearning for something she couldn’t even articulate.
Damn. It wasn’t healthy. She needed to get back on track. And tonight’s meeting was the first step back. After that, she’d find some other bar where she and her friends could hang out. There were a few chain restaurants up at the highway interchange not far from downtown Shenandoah Falls. She would get over this momentary lapse of judgment.
She forced herself to focus on tonight’s meeting. Tom was a good guy and an old friend from high school. And in true whistle-blower fashion, he hadn’t wanted to meet in the county offices. In fact, he hadn’t wanted to meet anywhere within the boundaries of Jefferson County. So at 5:30 p.m. Arwen pulled into the parking lot at Jim Barnett Park in Winchester and waited until Matt joined her twenty minutes later.
Then the two of them hiked to a remote picnic area, where they sat down with Tom, who had a lot to say about the Jefferson County Council, and its chairman, Bill Cummins.
Chapter Thirteen
Courtney arrived at Eagle Hill Manor at 9:00 a.m. on Saturday. Allison Chapman’s wedding and reception were the only events on the calendar today. Thank God.
No less than three hundred guests were expected. The Carriage House, Eagle Hill Manor’s largest function space, wasn’t big enough to hold three hundred wedding guests, so a tent had been erected over the adjacent terrace to create covered space for five additional ten-person table rounds.
The ceremony would take place at 4:30 p.m. on the lawn adjacent to the gazebo. The guests would start arriving a little before 4:00 p.m., so Courtney
