West Texas Nights Read online

  Gary glanced toward the row of seats in front of them. “He seems like a nice guy.”

  “He is.”

  “I saw the way he was looking at Amy Lynn when we found them in the hotel dining room. He already adores that baby girl. He’s not going to walk away without a fight.”

  “I know.”

  “He looks at you the same way.”

  She gave him a rueful look. “I know that, too.”

  “He’s the reason nothing ever happened between us, isn’t he?”

  She nodded.

  “If you’re so crazy about him, I’m not sure I see the problem.”

  “He’s in Texas. I’m not.”

  To her irritation, he grinned. “Did you run out of cash for plane tickets?”

  Laurie scowled. “You know, Gary, these pithy little observations of yours are getting on my nerves. Do you have any solutions?”

  He had the audacity to chuckle at her display of temper. “In the words of a country-music superstar I know, you might try listening to your heart.”

  Good advice, Laurie conceded, but she couldn’t risk taking it. Her heart’s message was clear as a bell, but there were far-reaching implications that she simply couldn’t deal with.

  “Grab your guitar,” she instructed instead, reaching for her own. “I’ve got a new song I want to play around with.”

  Like all of her musicians, Gary’s eyes lit up at once at the prospect of creating another megahit. He listened as she strummed a few chords and picked up on her rhythm with the instinct of someone who’d grown accustomed to her creative process.

  Laurie jotted down a few words, hummed a few bars, then tried the words aloud. It didn’t take long before a few of the others were joining in and the bus was filled with the country-pop crossover sound that had taken her to the top of the charts.

  She felt Harlan Patrick’s eyes on her as her voice rang out and wondered if he guessed that he was behind the heartbreak in the lyrics. She lifted her gaze and met his. All at once she was lost in those deep blue eyes, eyes that reflected understanding and love, so much love that it was all she could do not to weep.

  Why was it, she wondered as she strummed the last chord and then fell silent, that sometimes love simply wasn’t enough? Leaving Harlan Patrick not once but twice had hurt. She had anguished over it both times.

  But having him back in her life again, having him so near and knowing that another parting was inevitable, was tearing her apart.

  She heard Amy Lynn whimper and was half out of her seat in the blink of an eye. Harlan Patrick’s gaze remained steady on hers for another instant, and then he broke eye contact and reached for the baby—their daughter, she reminded herself as tears stung her eyes, as much his as hers, though she’d tried to deny that for months now.

  Sinking back into her seat, she watched father and child, unable to tear her gaze away from the adoration in Harlan Patrick’s eyes. Already Amy Lynn seemed to recognize her daddy. She accepted his comfort, settled down at once in his arms. They were bonding, and she knew without a doubt that the ties forming now would be impossible to break.

  “Mind a word of advice from a friend?” Gary inquired lightly, drawing her attention away from the scene being played out up the aisle.

  “What?”

  “Find a way to make it work.”

  “It’s impossible,” she said, unable to hide the despairing note in her voice.

  “Nothing’s impossible if you both want it badly enough.”

  She seared him with a look. “Let me ask you this. Would you give up everything we’ve accomplished the past few years and go back to singing backup in advertising jingles just to be with the woman you love?”

  “You seem to forget, I’ve been divorced three times. I’m not sure I’ve ever had the kind of love you two have. For a love as powerful as what I’m witnessing right here, right now, yeah, maybe.”

  “I don’t believe it for a minute,” she countered. “You of all people know what it takes to get the kind of breaks we’ve had, to reach this level. You’d never throw it away, not for any reason.”

  He gave her sad look. “Yes, I would. For just one glance like the one you’ve been casting toward him, I’d walk away from anything.”

  It wasn’t the first time that Gary had hinted that he was half in love with her himself, but he’d long since accepted that her heart belonged to someone else. He leaned down now and pressed a brotherly kiss to her cheek.

  “Think about it,” he advised. “We’ve known each other a long time. I can read you like a book. You’ll never be thoroughly happy or alive if you don’t find some way to keep that man in your life.”

  “But how?” she whispered as Gary walked away without answering.

  How could she keep Harlan Patrick in her life and have a singing career, too? If she made a choice, either choice, would she be able to live with it, or would resentment destroy whichever one she chose?

  No sooner had Gary left than Harlan Patrick rose with the baby in his arms and came back to join her.

  “I think it must be close to lunchtime for the little one,” he said quietly. “She’s been fussing for a few minutes now.”

  “I’ll fix her bottle,” Laurie said, glad to have something to do.

  “I liked the song,” Harlan Patrick said as she heated the baby’s milk.

  “It’s still a little rough, and the last verse sucks.”

  He grinned. “You’re never happy till it’s perfect, are you?”

  “Of course not.”

  “You know, it seems to me that perfection might be fine to strive for when you’re writing a song, but it’s not real practical when it comes to life.”

  Her hand stilled as she reached to take the bottle from the microwave. “Meaning...?”

  “There might not be a perfect solution to our dilemma.”

  She sighed, accepting the truth of that. “But there has to be something better than what we’ve come up with so far, don’t you think?”

  “Darlin’, I’m not even sure what we’ve come up with, unless you count you being on the road and me being in Texas and both of us being miserable. That’s not a solution. That’s settling for the easy way out.”

  “It hasn’t been easy,” she objected.

  “Okay, not easy. Convenient, then. Or maybe cowardly. Neither one of us has had to make any tough choices. We haven’t even considered compromise.”

  She grinned at him and pressed her hand over her heart in a gesture of shocked disbelief. “I never thought I’d hear that word cross your lips.”

  He grinned back. “It’s a new one, all right. You game to discuss it?”

  “Oh, Harlan Patrick, can’t you see? Discussing it’s easy. It’s living it that’s impossible.”

  His jaw set. “Anything’s possible if we both want it badly enough.”

  Pretty words, Laurie thought, but that’s all they were: words. Their history told another story. It was Harlan Patrick’s way or no way.

  With Amy Lynn’s future at stake, to say nothing of her own happiness, she would meet him halfway, though. “We’ll talk about it,” she promised.

  “When?”

  “Tonight, after the show. You can take me out to a late supper, since tomorrow’s not a travel day.”

  “Why, Laurie Jensen, are you asking me out on a date?”

  “I am,” she agreed. “And I hope you’ve got your credit cards, because my tastes have gotten a whole lot more expensive. You’re not going to get away with a hot dog and some cotton candy.”

  “Steak and champagne?”

  She nodded. “For starters.”

  “Exactly where do you go next and when do you have to be there?”

  “Ohio and not till the middle of the week. Why?”

  “Just wondering,” he said, and excused hims
elf.

  “Where are you going?” she demanded.

  He gestured toward his seat. “Not far. I’ve got some arrangements to make.”

  “What kind of arrangements?”

  “You’ll see.”

  She didn’t like the gleam in his eyes one little bit. Nor was she crazy about the way he and Val had their heads together for the next half hour whenever he wasn’t on his cellular phone. Something told her she’d started something when she’d agreed to have dinner with him to talk about the future. He seemed to have taken it as a challenge. And just as he’d said earlier, one thing she knew for certain about Harlan Patrick was that the man did love a challenge.

  Seven

  Harlan Patrick knew he was taking a huge risk even as he made the plans for his first date with Laurie in years. He had no idea how she’d react when she discovered they weren’t going out for a simple postperformance dinner.

  For the first time in his life, he was truly grateful for the financial resources at his disposal. He discovered that money could make a lot happen in very little time. The hardest part was trying to explain to his uncle why the plane he had just sent back to Texas needed to be piloted right back out again.

  “Harlan Patrick, are you sure you know what the devil you’re doing?” Jordan inquired with an impatient edge to his voice. “I held my tongue when you took off with the corporate jet without a word to me. I sent my pilot to Montana to retrieve it without a single complaint. And now you want him to pick you up? I’m not running a blasted air shuttle. If Laurie’s got you this tied up in knots, maybe you ought to get back home and think things over.”

  “In a way that’s just what I intend to do,” he said, taking the well-deserved criticism without flinching. He knew he’d tested Jordan’s patience to its limits, but he was also counting on the fact that his uncle still had at least a tiny touch of the Adams love of romance in his soul. After all, the tales of Jordan’s elaborate attempts to convince Kelly to marry him were legendary. The current generation had made use of a few of them.

  “Meaning...?” Jordan asked.

  “I’m coming home and I’m bringing Laurie and the baby with me.”

  Silence greeted that announcement, followed by a sigh. “Are you sure that’s wise? You know the kind of questions you’re likely to face here, the pressure from your grandfather to marry.”

  Harlan Patrick matched his uncle’s sigh. “I know, but I can’t think of any other way to make her remember what we had. I want her to see what we could have again, if only she’d be reasonable.”

  “I sympathize with the position you’re in, I really do, but I seem to recall that Laurie’s got a mind of her own, to say nothing of a temper. This is a whole lot more complicated for her than you’re making it out to be. The fact that you’re saying she’s the one who needs to be reasonable tells me you don’t fully understand her position.”

  “Dammit, I do know it’s complicated,” Harlan Patrick replied.

  “Do you really? It seems to me your first mistake was not taking her seriously enough years ago. Are you absolutely sure you can see her point of view now?” He waited, then asked, “Or are you just trying to bulldoze right on over her the way you always did?”

  Harlan Patrick wasn’t entirely comfortable with the question. He supposed he did have a tendency to get a notion into his head and then run with it, regardless of the other person involved. Some might say he was selfish and bullheaded. He preferred to think he was simply fighting for what he believed in.

  “You haven’t answered me,” his uncle persisted.

  “Dammit, we have a baby,” Harlan Patrick retorted. “That’s what’s important. Not my feelings or Laurie’s. I want that baby to be a part of my family.”

  “Well, of course you do,” Jordan soothed. “But tricking Laurie into coming back to Texas when she’s made it clear she doesn’t want to be here seems like the wrong way to go about it. Why not just ask her to come?”

  “What makes you think I’m tricking her?” Harlan Patrick grumbled defensively. “Maybe I have asked her.”

  “Then why are you whispering? That’s a surefire indication that she’s close by and you don’t want her to know what you’re up to.”

  “Maybe it’s just a surprise. What’s wrong with that?”

  Jordan chuckled. “Depends on whether it’s the sort of surprise the recipient will appreciate. Not all of the surprises I tried out on your aunt Kelly went over that well, as I recall. You know,” he added thoughtfully, “there are some similarities. My business was in Houston then, and Kelly wanted to stay right here in Los Piños on her ranch. We fought about it tooth and nail for a while.”

  “And you were the one who gave in. Okay, okay, I hear you,” Harlan Patrick conceded reluctantly. “Are you saying you won’t send the plane back? If you are, I understand. I’ll arrange for a charter.”

  “Forget chartering another plane,” Jordan said impatiently. “I can just imagine what your granddaddy would have to say if I did that. If you need the plane, it’s yours. You let me know what time you want the pilot ready to bring you back here, and he’ll be waiting at the closest airstrip.”

  “Thanks, Uncle Jordan.”

  “Don’t thank me yet. I’m still not convinced you’re not making a huge mistake.”

  When Harlan Patrick hung up, he tried very hard not to think about his uncle’s reaction. What if Jordan was right? What if Laurie was infuriated by his scheming? What if this plan of his backfired?

  But how could it? He was just trying to assure that Laurie remembered the good times, so she could weigh them against what she had now.

  He glanced around at the lavishly appointed custom interior of her touring bus, then recalled the club date she’d played the night before with its standing-room-only crowd and wild applause. How would a quiet stay in Los Piños stand up against that? Would it be a welcome respite or a stark contrast that couldn’t measure up? What about the men she’d met? Were they more exciting than a simple rancher from Texas?

  “How are those plans coming?” Val asked, leaning across the aisle and breaking into his gloomy thoughts. “Everything falling into place?”

  “Pretty much. Thanks for going along with this and for agreeing to come to Texas with us.” He studied Laurie’s assistant with her short blond curls and deceptively innocent expression. No one knew better than he just how fiercely loyal and efficient this woman could be. “Tell me something, Val.”

  “If I can.”

  “Is Laurie going to go through the roof when she figures out what I have in mind?” It bothered him more than he wanted to admit that this comparative stranger might know Laurie—today’s Laurie—better than he did.

  Val grinned. “Very likely.”

  He winced. “Why doesn’t that seem to bother you?”

  “Because she needs shaking up. She needs to take a long hard look at her priorities. She’s got a handsome man—the father of her baby—absolutely wild about her and she’d rather sing songs to strangers night after night.”

  She gave him a solemn look. “Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying she shouldn’t sing if it matters to her. Millions of people would go nuts if she even thought about quitting. I’m just saying she needs to get some balance back in her life. She seems to think it has to be one way or the other.” She tilted her head and regarded him quizzically. “Wonder where she got an idea like that?”

  Harlan Patrick sighed. “Probably from me.”

  “You still feel that way?”

  He searched his heart and had to admit that a part of him did still want her home with him a hundred percent of the time, especially now that they had a daughter. For all of his crazy and impulsive exploits, it seemed he was just an old-fashioned guy at heart.

  “You do, don’t you?” Val guessed without him saying a word. “No wonder the two of you butt heads. You’v
e both got a mile-wide stubborn streak, don’t you?”

  “Maybe so,” he conceded. “But I’m working on it.”

  She looked skeptical.

  “I am.”

  “I hope so, but we’ll see, cowboy. We’ll see.”

  * * *

  Laurie was exhausted by the time she left the stage after her last set. It was ironic, really. She’d reached a point in her career when she could perform for an hour or ninety minutes before thousands in the country’s biggest concert halls and stadiums and she’d chosen to do twice that much singing in clubs that could barely hold a hundred.

  But these were the clubs that had given her a break. When she’d been a struggling nobody, these out-of-the-way club managers had offered her a chance to hone her act and build a following, and she believed in paying back old debts. She could have insisted on a single seating, just one show a night, but she wasn’t about to shortchange either the clubs or her audience. She did two performances nightly and she sang her heart out.

  By the time she retreated to her dressing room after the second show, she wanted nothing more than a hot shower, something cold to drink and a good night’s sleep. Instead, she found Harlan Patrick waiting for her, straddling a chair just the way he had been when she’d first discovered him in her dressing room the night before.

  Had it only been twenty-four hours since he’d walked back into her life? It felt as if he’d been back forever, stirring her up, making her long for things she’d resigned herself to never having.

  “You look all done in, darlin’.”

  “Now, that is just what a woman wants to hear,” she grumbled as she sank onto the chair in front of her mirror and methodically wiped off her stage makeup. “If you can’t say something nice, go away.”

  “Have you forgotten? We have a date.”

  She groaned. She had forgotten. Well, almost forgotten. It was pretty much impossible to forget entirely about Harlan Patrick and his expectations.

  “Not tonight, please. I was awake most of the night, thanks to you. I’m exhausted. I’ll be lousy company. All I want is a good night’s sleep.”