His Melody (18 page)

She also wasn’t going to let Austin ruin his chance at having his dreams come true. He didn’t know how he’d regret this if she let him, but he wasn’t going to have to worry about that. He’d never have a chance to regret it because she wasn’t giving up on him the way she’d given up on herself and her own dreams of being first a songwriter and now a music manager.

Chapter Twenty-One

Austin walked into his office late Monday morning and found Melody at his file cabinet, a stack of papers in a box next to her feet.

“I’m gonna start on your car this afternoon if we don’t have any priority jobs come in today. We should be able to get you out of here by the end of the week,” he said. “I’m shooting for Wednesday.”

She turned to him, placing a hand over her chest. “You startled me.”

His eyes lingered on the hand and her low-cut tank top for a minute before he forced them away. “Sorry.”

“You have a few minutes?”

“Anything older than five years can be shredded,” he said, repeating what he’d told her earlier that morning.

“It’s not about this.” She gestured to the box at her feet.

He’d been afraid it wasn’t. He sat on the corner of his desk and looked in her direction, waiting for her to say something.

“You’ve been ignoring me again,” she said, coming closer.
Too close.
But he couldn’t move away without being obvious about it. “Ever since we kissed Saturday,” she added.

“You had your friend here. I assumed you wanted to spend time with her.”

She shook her head. “No. I don’t think that’s it. You were tense all day Saturday. I guess Donnie was part of it. I think there’s more, though. Especially after what I found out—what I heard—at karaoke.”

“I didn’t mean to be rude. I just don’t see the point in us getting…” he searched for the right word, but nothing came to him. “I’m not looking to get involved with anyone, and it wouldn’t make sense for us to even if I were. You’re leaving soon.”
The sooner the better because he was having trouble convincing himself of the veracity of the part about him not wanting to get involved.
If she wasn’t there, he couldn’t get himself into trouble. “And we’re not even going to talk about music.”

“I just want you to talk to me.” She put a hand over one of his, and he shifted but didn’t pull away from her.

“About?” He rubbed his free hand over the back of his head.

“Everything. Why you’re afraid of me.”

“I’m not afraid of you.”

“Tell me about Donnie and the rest of your family. New York. Just…everything.”

She kept pushing like she was personally invested. “Why does it matter so much to you?” he asked.

“Because you matter to me.” Her face was so open and honest.
And dangerous.
Like a bear trap lined with honey.

“You’ve only known me a couple weeks.” He pulled away from her and stood, walking across the office. Maybe his music mattered to her the way it had mattered to his agent. But he wasn’t going to get fooled into thinking
he
mattered to her. He wasn’t stupid. The only thing more dangerous than an A&R exec was an A&R exec looking for a job.

Maybe she was curious about Grayson like all the reporters who’d tried to hunt him down after he left New York. But he couldn’t imagine anyone outside of his mom, Vernon, and Regan—and maybe Avery—caring about him.
Much less someone who barely knew him.
Besides if she knew him, if she really knew him and what he’d done, she wouldn’t be throwing words around about him mattering to her so eagerly.

“And I’ve been trying to get you to tell me what happened to you that whole time,” she said. “I want to know more about you. You’re the one holding out on me.”

He looked up at her briefly before returning his attention to the floor. He said the words slowly, thinking about each one before saying it, “Because there’s no point. You belong in Atlanta, and I belong here. There’s no point in going into a whole bunch of stuff that doesn’t concern you.”

“So our kiss meant nothing to you? You didn’t feel anything at all?” She moved in front of him as if she were trying to force him to look at her. He turned away.

He had to lie. If he didn’t, he was opening himself up to a whole world of trouble and hurt. He shook his head. “Nope.”

“I see.” Her voice changed.

“I mean it was nice, but it’s not gonna lead anywhere or change anything.” He stared at
a poster
advertising synthetic motor oil without really seeing it. “Sorry.”

“I’m tired of hearing you say that, sorry.”

“S—I’ll be in the garage if you need me.”

She didn’t answer him. Instead, she went back to the file cabinet and grabbed an empty banker’s box sitting next to it. She carried the box over to his desk and plunked it down.

“You need help with those before I go?” Austin asked as she moved across the room to retrieve another box from the stack.

“Nope.” She lifted a second box.

He started toward the boxes.

“I said I don’t need any help,” she snapped. “Besides, you’re wasting time. The quicker you get to the garage, the quicker you can get me out of your hair forever, right?” Her tone was bitter. She’d gone from pleading with him to sounding like talking to him was the last thing in the world she wanted to do.

“I didn’t mean any harm. And you’re better off, believe me.”

“That seems to be the case.” She slammed a third box down on the desk and ripped off the lid.

“Yeah, so…I’ll be in the garage. Like I said.” He walked out, not expecting an answer and not getting one. Why was he feeling guilty? She’d provoked him into it. She kept picking when he’d made his feelings clear about his past and about romantic relationships from the beginning. And his music career was out of the question. It was like the rest of his past—dead and gone.

Besides, all she wanted was what she could get out of him. She wasn’t the first one. Ignoring the fact that she’d done nothing to provoke that thought really, and throwing out all rational thinking and all thinking about her at all, he went into the garage to throw himself back into his work. He had an alternator to replace. That’s what he needed to focus on.

He was poking around in his tool chest, trying to remember where he’d last left his socket wrench when Donnie started cackling.

Austin glanced up at him. “What?”

“It’s the music man,” Donnie said, wheeling himself from under a Dodge Dakota. He lay back on the long wooden board of his creeper and looked up at Austin, a satisfied grin on his face.

“The stunt you pulled at that bar wasn’t funny at all,” Austin said. Nothing he did was ever as funny as he thought it was.

“What?” Donnie feigned innocence.

“I know it was you who changed my song at karaoke.”

“What? You didn’t want your new friend to know about your musical side, Rhyme Doctor?” Donnie asked. He arranged his face into a mask of confusion.

“It should’ve been up to me to decide when, how, or even if I ever wanted to tell her. That had nothing to do with you, but yet again, you came butting in where you weren’t needed or wanted.” Austin banged his fist against the side of his tool chest.

“What you want
don’t
amount to a hill of beans to me.” Donnie snickered. “I just thought Melody should know what she’s dealing with is all. You’re a liar and a washed-up loser, and I wanted her to know about the mess she’s getting herself into.”

“Nobody’s ‘getting into’ anything or anyone,” Austin said.

“Hey, whoa, whoa. Calm down now.”

“You know what? Fuck you, Donnie. You don’t know what you’re talking about, and you don’t know
who
you’re messing with. You have no idea what you’ve done,” Austin said. “Because you’re just that stupid.”

Donnie’s goofy smile finally faded. “I guess that’s why Dad left you the shop, huh? I was too stupid to run it.”

Austin glared at him. “I don’t know why he left it to me any more than you do, but you need to let go of things that aren’t going to change.” He balled his hands into fists at his sides.

“You won’t even let me read that damned letter he wrote you.” Donnie sounded like a sniveling child.

“It’s none of your business what’s in it.”

Donnie stood and leaned against the truck he’d been working on earlier. “None of my business? You have no business even being here. Nobody wants you here. You ruin everything you touch. Gonna add Melody to that list now?”

“You know what? I’m not going to put up with this shit today. Not today,” he said. He needed to get out of there before he did or said something he would regret. He needed to be away from all of them, even Melody and especially Donnie. He headed toward the washroom at the other end of the garage so he could clean up and get out.

“Where you going?” Donnie asked.

“I don’t know. Away from here,” Austin called over his shoulder. “You and Avery are on your own for the rest of the day. I’ll be back tomorrow.”

“What about Melody’s car?” Donnie asked.

“I said
I’ll
be back tomorrow. I reckon it’ll still be here then!” Austin snapped. He then turned his back on his brother, ignoring anything else he had to say.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Melody had Vernon drop her off at the bar where she’d gone to karaoke over the weekend. She walked in and spotted Austin right away at a small table near the back. The table was littered with empty glasses. He was nursing an obviously warm beer as there was no longer frost or even condensation on the glass and glaring at no one and nothing in particular. She took a seat at the table.

“Leigh Anne said you’d probably be here,” Melody said.

His green eyes glittered with smoldering anger when he turned them on her. He answered her by drinking from the half-empty glass of beer. She glanced to the left where a considerable number of empties sat.

“Drinking your dinner?” She raised her eyebrows.

He slowly pushed the glass of beer back and forth between his hands. “What are you doing here?” He slurred his words, but he didn’t sound as incoherent as that number of beers would have made Melody. He could have had more than there was evidence of; she didn’t know whether the server had taken any empty glasses away yet or not. Then again, he was a lot bigger than her so he could probably handle a lot more alcohol than she could.

A dark-skinned woman with her hair pulled back from a pretty oval-shaped face walked up to them. “Anything for you, hon?”

“I’ll take a glass of water for now,” she said.

She nodded and moved her eyes across the table. “Another beer for you, Austin?”

“You know it.” He winked at her.

She smiled and then murmured to Melody, “You’re not letting him drive, right?”

“Definitely not,” Melody murmured back.

After she left, Austin said, “You’re here to harass me or lecture me about Donnie again.”

“I’m just here to have a drink,” Melody said.

“Of water?” He shook his head slowly. “No you’re not. You’re here for information. You know what? I don’t even care anymore. I’ll give you what you want. I’ll give you everything,” he gave her a lecherous scan, and she knew he was drunk and hurting but she couldn’t deny she was hot for him, “you want.”

“And what do I want?” she asked, hoping her tone didn’t give away the fact that she wanted to crawl across the table and get it. She’d been feeling that way especially since the kiss they’d shared Friday.

Austin slurred his words. “You want to know about Grayson. Well, let me tell you about fucking Grayson Meadows. You
wanna
know about him? Fine. He was a murderer and a cokehead. So I did what had to be done. I killed him.”

“What do you mean a murderer?” Both were hard to wrap her head around, but murderer edged out coke addict. She didn’t remember hearing about either in the news and couldn’t imagine how either could be true. Granted, she didn’t follow celebrity gossip closely, but Grayson had been a pretty big deal and Jen did follow it pretty closely. It seemed she would have heard something about either or both of those things.

The server brought over Melody’s water and Austin’s beer. He pushed what was left of the warm beer aside and grabbed the cold one.

Austin’s face drooped with sadness. He clenched the glass the server had brought him, but didn’t lift it to his lips. “I watched her die. I could have saved her, and I watched her die. I killed him, too. It was my fault he had that stroke. Both the first one and the one that killed him.” The glass shook in his clenched, trembling fist. A little beer sloshed out of the top and dribbled over the side of the glass. The dark amber liquid ran over his fingers, but he didn’t seem to notice.

“Austin, I don’t understand. What are you saying?”

His eyes met hers dead on. “My girlfriend, Isadora Lampkin, died of an overdose. We were both hooked on coke at the time. God, she was beautiful. She didn’t deserve that.
And my dad?
I was such a knucklehead. I gave him that stroke. And he—he left me the shop anyway. Despite all I did to him? He still loved me.”