I'll Sing for my Dinner (17 page)

The following day, Myra and I went shopping. On our way out of the hotel, we tried to detour around a group of photographers who were blocking our way. They were yelling questions at me and asking me to pose. I tried to follow Myra, but a man jumped in my way and pushed a camera in my face.

I stepped to the side to get around him. Suddenly, I flew forward and landed on my hands and knees on the sidewalk. Myra hurried to me and helped me to my feet.

Looking back, I saw my shoe lying on the sidewalk, the broken heel stuck in a metal grate.

“Wonderful,” I said, looking at my skinned palms, torn skirt and bloody knee. “Now I need to buy new shoes, too.”

I limped back into my hotel room, and we applied some first aid. My fingers weren’t damaged, nor were my wrists. I had three days to heal, so I would still be able to play. I changed clothes and we snuck out the hotel’s side door.

That night when we were leaving a club, we again ran into photographers, and I was almost blinded by their flashes.

Two days later, the story of my drunken stumble outside the club hit the scandal rags, with pictures of my fall.

“I hate those people,” Myra said, while Marcus paced and threatened to sue everyone in England.

I thought it was pretty funny. Anyone with eyes and an ounce of sense could see that I was wearing different dresses in the pictures of me falling and the pictures of me coming out of the club. Yes, they doctored the club photos to make the dresses the same color, but they weren’t anything the same.

The following evening, London time, I got a call from Jared. “Hey, how are you doing?”

“I’m doing okay. What’s up? Are you Skyping this call?”

“Yes,” he chuckled. “I’m a bit more computer literate than Jake. I saw some pictures of you today at the grocery store.”

“You’re kidding,” I said.

“No, and I looked on line, too. You’re quite the sensation this morning. Look, Cecily, I know I don’t have any right to throw stones, but don’t you think you should cool it a bit?”

I laughed. “Jared, take another look at those photos. I broke a heel outside our hotel and fell in the morning. The dress I was wearing that night at the club was completely different.”

“Oh. Well, still, don’t you think you should keep a lower profile?”

I tried to keep my voice calm, but I was angry. “When you stop drinking and picking up girls in bars, I’ll think about lowering my profile. If Jake has any questions about my behavior, and whether it reflects badly on the Roadhouse, tell him to ask me when we talk.”

“Jake doesn’t know I called. I don’t think he’s heard about this yet.”

“Well, if and when he does, remind him that if he was with me, he wouldn’t have to wonder if I’m behaving myself.”

I hung up. I couldn’t remember being so angry. The stupidity of the tabloids and their readers didn’t anger me, but for someone who knew me to pay attention to that crap was infuriating. I wanted to call Jake, but he would be at work.

When Jake called at our normal time, the first thing he said was, “Are you all right?”

“Yes, why shouldn’t I be?”

“Everybody wants to keep showing me pictures of you falling down, so I was asking if you’re okay. I’m concerned as to whether you were hurt.”

“No, I’m fine,” I said. “You know that drunks are so loose that they don’t get hurt when they fall down.” I couldn’t believe he was asking me about that stupid story. Surely he didn’t believe that garbage.

“Oh, okay,” he said. “Next question. When is the alien baby due?”

“What?”

“Well, I thought I’d check off all the tabloid stories at the beginning so we could get along with our lives. Let’s see, drunk and disorderly, pregnant by an alien, planning on defecting to Communist China, starting a cult that worships cowboy angels ... I think that’s today’s list. Would Miss Buchanan care to confirm or deny any of the above stories?”

I started laughing. “What in the world are you talking about?”

“I figured that if you were getting falling-down drunk, you might also be having an affair with an alien. Equal probability. So I thought we could get all of this week’s stupid stories out of the way up front and we wouldn’t have to talk about them anymore.”

I was laughing like crazy now. I held up my hands. “I scraped my hands a bit, and the scab on my knee looks like I’m twelve years old again, but otherwise I’m fine. I can play, and that’s the important part.”

“What happened? Did you just slip or something?” The expression on his face showed he was genuinely concerned.

“I caught a heel and broke a shoe,” I said.

“If you’d wear your cowboy boots, you wouldn’t have that problem.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right. I don’t think they’d have gone with that dress, though.”

He shook his head. Grinning, he said, “Cowboy boots go with anything. Cocktail dresses, tuxedos, swimming suits, you name it. You need to start setting fashion instead of slavishly following it.”

“I miss you so much,” I said, opening my bathrobe. “If you were here, you would have caught me and I wouldn’t have fallen. Don’t you feel guilty?”

He took a long slow breath. “If I were there, you never would have gotten out of bed.”

“See? It’s all your fault,” I said. “Pregnant by an alien?” I started laughing again.

The London concert went well, and Myra and I took the train through the Chunnel to Paris because I decided I wanted to experience it. Mother never would have done it. But considering all the hassle of airports, it didn’t take any longer, and I thought it was more comfortable.

In Paris, I took a day at the Louvre and half a day at Musee d’Orsay. I also talked Myra into taking a boat tour on the Seine.

“I’ve never done this,” she told me about halfway through the tour. “I always considered it a touristy thing.”

“It is,” I said, laughing. “We’re tourists. But isn’t it great?”

“Yes, it is. I rather like it. I take it you’ve done this before?”

“When I was fifteen. I talked my dad into it. Mother felt the same way you did. But I wanted to see if it was as neat as I remembered. I want to take Jake and show him all of this if I can ever talk him out of Colorado.”

From Paris we went to Rome, and I talked the owner of a restaurant there into giving me the family recipes for ravioli and a mixed fish recipe. He asked me to sing an aria from Tosca for him in payment. Not a bad deal. I got the recipes and he didn’t charge us for the wine. I couldn’t wait to make them for Jake, and I hit the markets for the spices and herbs I would need.

What made me really happy was the CD that was waiting for me when we checked into the hotel in Madrid. Jake sent the album I had cut in California almost two months before. I put it in my computer as soon as I reached my room and listened to it three times. Myra hadn’t heard it, and I watched her face as she listened to it.

“That’s wonderful!” she said when it finished, jumping across the room and pulling me into a hug. “Can I come on that tour, too?”

“I don’t know. Are you serious?” I asked. I had truly grown to like her, and having a friend along on tour was a treat I had never known before.

“Sure,” she said. “I don’t know how we would make it work. Do you have the same kind of clauses in your contract with your other agent?”

“Yeah, I do. I don’t know what he has in mind, but he’s going to need someone to do the kind of things you do for Marcus.” I sent Tim, the pop agent, an email that night.

I was talking with Jake one morning when he told me that Kerrigan had called. Three more FBI agents in Baltimore had been indicted, and one of them turned state’s evidence in exchange for a plea deal. Almost forty local cops had been arrested, and the drug networks in the area were falling apart.

I think Jake thought I would be happy. Instead, I was terrified. I emailed Kerrigan and asked what could be done to protect Jake. I knew he wouldn’t take my warnings seriously, and I could easily see a bunch of thugs showing up at his door.

The dreams that night were really bad, maybe the worst ever. Men from Baltimore came and killed Jake, and then they raped me while I lay on his body. I woke up shaking and screaming at three o’clock in the morning and didn’t even want to try to go back to sleep.

Vienna was the last stop on the tour, and the one I looked forward to the most. Partly, of course, because Jake would be joining me there. But the State Opera House was a wonderful place to play and sing, and it held such great memories for me.

We flew in from Madrid, and then waited three hours for Jake’s plane to arrive. Marcus went ahead to the hotel, but I didn’t want to miss a single minute of my sweetie. When he emerged past customs, I flew into his arms.

~~~

Chapter 21

Jake

I came out of customs in Vienna and heard a shriek, “Jake!”

A tiny package of energy ran across the terminal and threw herself into my arms, rocking me back on my heels. Cecily pulled my head down and kissed me as though she wanted to crawl inside me. I really didn’t mind. It felt so good to hold her again.

She was wearing a sheer white sleeveless top with a dark blue bra, blue jeans and cowboy boots. Her hair was pulled back in a French braid, and she was so achingly beautiful that I couldn’t catch my breath.

In the limo on the way to the hotel, she bubbled over telling me of the plans she’d made. I hadn’t been around someone as excited since Mary was in high school.

“I have tickets to Strauss’s
Electra
on Tuesday night,” she said, “and tickets to
Anna Bolena
by Donizetti on Friday. I’ve never seen that one, have you?”

She didn’t give me time to answer.

“I booked a boat tour on the Danube for Wednesday, and Thursday I want to go to the Belvedere Palace,” she continued. “And there’s a place that has the most incredible chocolate pastries. I hope it’s still there. Of course it’s still there. It’s been there forever. And we’ll just wander around and see the sights and have lunch in the little bistros and oh, God, it’s so good to have you here!” She punctuated that statement with another long, deep kiss. I was a little embarrassed, glancing at Myra sitting across from us with an amused smile on her face.

“And the nights we don’t have anything planned, we can go out clubbing with Myra. Okay?” she took up right where she left off before the kiss. “You know, when I was touring in Europe before, I was just a kid. It’s ever so much more fun to be an adult. I like going to the clubs and dancing. There’s so much energy in the air! Do you know how to dance? I mean not-country dancing. Oh, it doesn’t matter. It’s not hard. You just shake your ass and get into the beat.”

I pulled her to me and silenced her with another kiss, filling my nose with her scent.

At the hotel, Cecily turned to Myra and said, “Will you please find out where we can rent a tuxedo?”

“We don’t need to do that,” I said.

Her brow furrowed. “Jake, there’s a dress code for the opera and my performance.”

“I bought one.”

“You bought a tuxedo?” She looked surprised.

“Yes, I went down to Denver and bought one and had it tailored. I figured I was probably going to be wearing one a lot, and it seems silly to keep renting one.”

“I love you,” she said. “Myra, what time are we going to dinner?”

“Eight o’clock. You need to meet us in the lobby around seven-thirty.”

“Okay,” Cecily said, and kicked the door to our room closed. Turning to me, she began unbuttoning my shirt. “You know what I missed most the past two months?”

One thing about Cecily, she was punctual. We arrived in the lobby at seven-thirty on the dot, although her hair was still a little damp from the shower. I assumed we were going somewhere fancy, as she told me to wear my best suit and she wore an incredible teal evening gown with the diamonds I gave her. Although Cecily didn’t need a bra, her breasts were fairly large in relation to how slender she was. The dress certainly showed off what she had.

The limo took us to the city park and an elegant old building overlooking a canal. The inside was even more fabulous than the outside.