“Selling concert merchandise,” Brady said. He sounded almost as stressed out as Arabella felt.
She wondered what rabbit hole she’d fallen down and restlessly pulled the small mirror out from the purse she’d borrowed from Harper. Her black eyes had mercifully faded. But that was about all she could say about her reflection and she pocketed the mirror once again.
After another thirty minutes of crawling along in traffic, the driver—an amiable guy named Ted—pulled to a stop in front of a mass of yellow caution tape stretching across the main parking lot entrance of the hotel. “Okay, folks. This is where I drop you.” He got out and opened the door for them. The sun was just starting to dip to the horizon and lights blazed across the parking lot, focused on the complicated metal framework that was nearly as tall as the four-story hotel behind it.
The stage was at the center of the framework with the hotel entrance immediately behind it. On either side, massive screens hung from the metal bars.
The first few dozen rows of chairs were also positioned beneath the soaring metal framework and Arabella was shocked to see several people moving about in the heights, anchored by safety belts.
“Holy cow.” Harper murmured what Arabella couldn’t manage to put into words. “Brady, are those cameras or lights up there?”
“Both. A crew came in yesterday and started building the staging. Callum’s been working with some guy named Devane on security. The last thing anyone wants is some snafu tonight. That’s why there are so many cops and security guards around.” They joined the line of people waiting to pass through a metal detector.
In front of them, two teenage girls wearing headphones were dancing together. In back of them, two middle-aged couples were laughing and showing off the T-shirts they’d purchased outside the concert “gates.”
Arabella felt dizzy. “I didn’t know Jett Carr was so...big.”
“Not sure Jett Carr knew it either,” the woman behind Arabella stuck her head forward to say. She had a gleam of excitement on her face. “We used to see him once a month at a club he played at all the time in Los Angeles.”
“You came from Los Angeles?”
The other woman with her leaned forward, too. “Plane tickets on such short notice were too expensive, so we drove. Took three days.”
The line moved and feeling numb, Arabella opened the purse for a security guard to poke a flashlight into before waving her through the arch of the metal detector. She could only imagine how long it would have taken if she’d brought her usual bag.
A vaguely hysterical giggle rose in her throat as she left the metal detector and yet another guard shone a device over her plastic-encased ticket.
Then the lot of them were through and they started up the center aisle between two sections of chairs.
Each row was numbered and Arabella felt even dizzier when she realized there had to be at least a thousand chairs and their row—number 5—was actually the very first row. It was empty, except for Jay’s parents and his grandmother, sitting in the very center. Louella saw Arabella and held out her hand.
With a knot in her throat, Arabella took it and sat beside her. She looked over her shoulder at the sea of chairs. Beyond the seats there was even more standing room.
“Exciting day,” Louella said.
Turning back around, Arabella could only nod. She was too busy trying to keep her sudden tears at bay.
All too quickly, the seats around them began filling. When she saw Detective Teas and a pretty teenaged girl sit in the two seats at the end of their row next to Mariana, Arabella was even more disconcerted.
Music had been playing on the loudspeakers all along. But until it suddenly went up a notch in volume, Arabella hadn’t even realized that none of the songs were Jay’s.
The sky was nearly dark and the lights from the steel rafters overhead began swirling around. Shots of Jay playing guitar were spilling over the projector screens overlaid with horses running wild and waves crashing on a beach.
Jay’s grandmother suddenly leaned toward her. “Breathe,” she advised.
Arabella exhaled on a rush and laughed shakily.
Louella took her hand in hers and squeezed. She didn’t let go.
Tyler and Toby were standing in front of Harper and Brady, dancing around with little Erin McCarthy. Kane’s future stepdaughter was doing her level best to keep up with the boys even though she was half their age. A chant had risen in the crowd, getting louder and louder as people stamped their feet and clapped their hands. Their chant got even louder, almost drowning out the loudspeakers when a trio of men stepped out onto the dim stage. One went to the big drum set and the two others went to the standing mics and picked up guitars that Arabella hadn’t even realized were there. The drummer suddenly rolled out a solo in perfect timing to the music on the loudspeaker and the chanting got even louder when the two guitar players started strumming. Then another trio—women this time—danced out onto the stage and took position to one side, where they started swaying and singing.
Arabella didn’t even know the song and she suddenly wished she hadn’t spent the past four days dithering over the fact that Jay hadn’t called her when she ought to have been listening to every single piece of music he’d ever made.
Then the energy climbed to an even higher pitch and the lights that had been dancing over the skyline suddenly centered on the stage, beams crisscrossing.
Jay stood in the center.
His hat was pulled low over his face. A pair of sunglasses shielded his eyes and a guitar hung down his back. He wore black jeans and a plain white shirt with
