Country (10 page)

“And had you?” Stephanie asked with interest. There were lots of temptations in his world, and he was a good-looking man.

“Not that time,” he said laughing. “I used to be pretty wild when I was younger. I gave that up after my first few years with her. It wasn't worth the headache. Before her, I was kind of a bad guy. I was thirty-two when we got together, and I settled down after I turned thirty-five. She never believed me, though. She always thought I was cheating on her. She's a hotheaded woman. She cheated on me, though. She left me a few times, but she always came back. I was the one who wanted out in the end. I wanted a peaceful life, and I couldn't do that with her.”

“Why did you take her back?” Stephanie was curious about him, and he was very open with her.

“She was a beautiful woman and hard to resist. I finally figured out that wasn't enough. I needed someone I could talk to. Tamra was too self-centered to listen. She never cared about anyone but herself. We sang great together, though. I thought I'd take a hit when we stopped recording together, but actually my albums have done better since she's been gone. I always believed the fans liked her. Turns out I have better sales on my own.” The bus passed them a couple of times once they were on the open road, and some of the boys in the band hung out the windows and hooted and waved. He knew they would be having lunch on the bus by then, but Stephanie had brought them sandwiches from the hotel so they wouldn't have to stop. He ate his with one hand while he drove, and she offered to take a turn so he could rest, but he said he was fine. And she ate her sandwich as he continued driving. He put the radio back on then, and as she looked out the window and listened to the music, she fell asleep. He glanced over at her and smiled, and when she woke up two hours later, they were just passing Gallup. He said he wanted to keep driving until dark and get as far as they could that day. There was a motel in Elk City, Oklahoma, where they usually stopped. It wasn't fancy, but it was clean, and he said there was a great truck stop nearby, with a diner where they liked to eat.

“I'll help you plan your route back to California when you leave Nashville. You need to stay in decent hotels. You can't stay in the kind of dives we do when we're on the road. I could write a guidebook to the worst motels in the world,” he said with a grin, but she appreciated his concern for her. “As long as you stick to the main highways, and stay in good hotels and motels, you'll be fine on the way home,” he reassured her. By then they were getting to Albuquerque, New Mexico. She felt as though she were getting a geography lesson as they drove. She would have liked to see Albuquerque, but they didn't have time. Chase had told her, before they left, that they would be driving on average fourteen hours a day for both days. It would have been easier and more relaxing on the bus, where they could stretch out on the couches, eat in the kitchen, use the bathroom, and walk around. But Stephanie liked being in the car with him, and talking as they drove. On the bus they would have had to be sociable with the others. This way she had Chase to herself.

When they stopped for dinner that night in Amarillo, Texas, they met up with the others on the bus. Sandy sat down next to Stephanie as soon as they walked in. She had been dying to talk to her all day. Everyone was looking a little raggedy by then. They had been watching movies on the bus on the large screen in the living room, and Sandy had slept in Chase's room. She was the only one he allowed to use his room. It was off limits to everyone else. And he put an arm around her after dinner, as they walked out of the restaurant. Stephanie liked watching him with her. He was so fatherly, and affectionate and kind, and stern when he thought he had to be. He told her to go to bed and sleep when they got back on the bus. They would be laying voice tracks of her when they got back to Nashville, and he didn't want her getting overtired.

He talked to the bus driver for a few minutes, estimating how much longer until they stopped for the night. While Chase was talking to him, Alyson called Stephanie on her cell. It was the first time she had heard from her all week, which was just as well.

“Oh my God, I'm so sorry, Steph. It's been a nightmare. The kids have been sick. They came down with chicken pox the night we got home. They're covered with them, and I know the baby is going to get them as soon as these guys get over them. I haven't left the house since we got back. How are you?”

“I'm fine,” Stephanie said cheerfully. It had been a great week, but she didn't want to explain it to her.

“I don't know when I'm going to get out of here,” Alyson said, sounding exhausted.

“I'm going to Atlanta to see Michael. And an old friend of mine from college.” Alyson was happy to hear it. She knew that Stephanie had hardly left the house since Bill died.

“That'll be good for you,” she said kindly. “I don't think I'll be able to get out till next week. And if Henry comes down with it, then I'll be stuck all over again.” Henry was her two-year-old.

“I'll come and see you when I get back,” Stephanie said.

“That would be great. Give my love to Michael. When are you leaving?”

“Soon,” Stephanie said vaguely, as Chase walked toward her, and she saw the bus pull out. “I'll call you,” she said, and hung up quickly. She didn't want Alyson to hear Chase talking if he said something to her, but he was cautious. He didn't know if it was one of her kids or someone else.

“Everything okay?” he asked as they got back in the car. They had a few more hours to drive before they stopped for the night in Elk City.

“It's fine. That was one of my two best women friends. Alyson. Her kids have chicken pox. She has young kids. Her husband is a doctor.” She had mentioned them to him before, and as she said it, her life sounded so staid and bourgeois compared to his. But now everything seemed to be changing. She didn't feel like a boring housewife anymore, on the road to Nashville with Chase and his band. She looked over at him as he started the car, and he looked tired. “Do you want me to drive for a while?” she offered, and he shook his head and turned the car back onto the road.

“I'm fine,” he said easily. “I like driving. It reminds me of all the years I drove the van, when we were on the road on tour in the early days.”

“I like driving too. And I'm wide awake, if you want to switch off.”

“You can ride the bus anytime you want,” he suggested, and she smiled.

“I'd rather ride with you. It's nice talking to you.” He looked pleased when she said it. “And being alone,” she added shyly.

“I like it too,” he said gently. “I keep wondering about the hand of fate that made us run into each other on that hiking trail.” And now it felt as though they had known each other forever. She had admitted things to him, particularly about her marriage, that she had said to no one else. And he had been equally candid with her, even about cheating on Tamra. “Destiny is a strange thing,” he added. “Sometimes I think people are brought into our lives to teach us lessons.”

“I believe that too,” she said softly, but she couldn't imagine what she was teaching him. He was teaching her to be more spontaneous and seize the moment, which was what had convinced her to go to Nashville, but she had decided to go to Las Vegas on her own.

“You've led a more stable life than I have. And you spent more time with your kids. I was too busy building my career and going on tour when my boy was little. He pretty much grew up without me. I was all over the place then, but he doesn't hold it against me. He comes up from Memphis pretty regularly to see me. And he loves the Grand Ole Opry. He has a great voice too, but you can't get him near this business. He's happy in construction.”

“Is he married?” She had never thought to ask him, and there was something about driving at night that led to confidences, revelations, and confessions. But he knew most of hers already.

“No.” Chase laughed at the question about his son. “He's still a bad boy, like I was at his age. He's always got a string of girls running behind him. But they can't catch him. He's too smart for that, and he doesn't want to settle down.”

“He should talk to my son Michael. I'm scared to death that girl is going to convince him to get married. He's such a decent guy, and so steady and reliable, any girl would want him. And I think she has her eye on marriage.”

“He sounds like you,” Chase said gently, glancing at her in the light from the dashboard. She had let her hair down, and her face looked soft in the dim light. “Steady and reliable. Someone you can count on to always be there for you. I've never had a woman like that in my life. I've always been drawn to the wild ones, and the bad girls. They always seemed more exciting. It took me a lot of years to figure out that they're just trouble and not much else. They're never there when you need them, and cheating with someone else.”

“That makes me sound so boring. Steady and reliable. Like a solid car, or an old workhorse.”

“They're the best kind. And the ones you want to come home to, not the ones you want to run away from.”

“Maybe that's why Bill had an affair. Because he knew I'd always be there. He was looking for excitement. She wasn't a bad girl, though, just bored with her marriage. I guess Bill was too.”

“It doesn't have to be that way, boring with a good woman,” he said wisely. “I'd rather have a fast car now, and slow women. A fast one will always burn you. At least the ones I knew always did, every time.”

“I don't know what the right answers are anymore,” she said with a small sigh in the darkness. “The marriages that last aren't the ones I want. My friend Jean is married to a man who cheats on her constantly, and she hasn't loved him in years. She stays married to him because he has a lot of money, and she'd rather have everything she can buy than a man who loves her. And my other friend Alyson, the one who just called, is madly in love with her husband. But she has so many illusions about him that I always feel like they're an accident waiting to happen. Like me and Bill. I never thought he'd cheat on me, and then he did. And nothing was ever the same again. We never got back to the way we felt before. So what's the answer to that one?”

“Maybe you should have left him if you weren't in love with him anymore. In spite of the kids. That's not enough reason to stay married.”

“I thought it was. I don't know. Maybe I was wrong.” She looked pensive as she said it.

“What did your kids think? Did you ask them?”

“They were too young. And we never told them what happened. I didn't want them to hate their father.”

“You're a noble woman, Stevie. And they weren't that young. From what you've told me, the two oldest ones were sixteen and eighteen, seven years ago when it happened. And your little one was thirteen. That's plenty old enough to know the difference between right and wrong. Hell, I had a kid myself when I was your son's age at the time. And he was seven when I was the age your son is now. That forces you to grow up. Young people stay kids a lot longer today. Those were different times, in a different world. Kids in the south used to marry a lot younger, especially poor ones. No one I knew went to college. You graduated from high school, got married, and had a baby nine months later. Or you got pregnant and got married. That's why I keep an eye on Sandy. I don't want her doing either one, getting pregnant or married. She has a big future ahead of her, if she sticks with it. I want to get her an album when she's ready, in another couple of years. She's not ready for it yet, but she will be. That's the best gift I can give her father. He was a hell of a fine musician. He died of a brain tumor. He was gone six weeks after they diagnosed him. That taught me something too, about life, and how fast it can change.”

“She's lucky to have you,” Stephanie said quietly. “You're a good man too,” she said and meant it. “You're steady and reliable.”

“Reliable,” he grinned at her, “but not always so steady. At least I didn't used to be. Now I'm just old and tired.” But he sure didn't look it. He still seemed young and sexy. Jean wasn't wrong about that. Stephanie realized too how shocked Alyson would be to see her with him, not to mention her children. They were a slightly incongruous pair. She was a Pacific Heights housewife, and he was a star on the country music scene, and everything that went with it, including his good looks. But there was a lot more to him than that.

“I don't think ‘old and tired' is the way I'd describe you.” She laughed in the darkness at his self-deprecating description.

“Well, you don't look like anyone's boring wife, I can tell you. Your husband was a fool to be after greener pastures, with all due respect. And if you'd bought that black leather miniskirt I picked out for you, I'd be beating guys away with a stick, to keep them off you,” he said with a guffaw, and she laughed.

“Yeah, and they'd be cops trying to arrest me for indecent exposure. The white one I bought is short enough.”

“Nah, we'll get you into some decent clothes in Nashville,” he teased her. But he liked the way she dressed—she managed to be clean cut, respectable, and sexy all at the same time. He knew she was the kind of woman you married, not just slept with. Her husband just hadn't known what a prize he had. But he didn't want to press the point and say it to her. Chase had been proud every time he left the hotel with her, and she had no idea how beautiful she was. He admired her innocence and honesty. He found everything about her refreshing. He was tired of the jaded women he met constantly, and the lunatics and women who wanted to go out with him just because he was Chase Taylor, or for what he could buy them. He could have had a dozen women like that every day. But he had never been with anyone like Stephanie. He knew it the minute he met her.