Love, Me (5 page)

“Tucker's coming here?” Dakota asked, crossing his arms in front of him.

“He's stopping by to see me. You don't mind, do you?”

“No, why should I mind? Tell him to bring the whole band with him. My cook will be thrilled,” Dakota said, sardonically.

“It'll just be Tucker. St. Louis is the last stop on this tour, and then they're taking a break.”

Dakota didn't seem all that reassured.

“You want to see me about something?” she asked, tossing her hair back.

“I thought you might like to play a game of tennis with me. You do play, don't you?”

“Sure,” she lied. How hard could it be to hit a tennis ball back and forth?

“Come on, then, let's go.”

She followed him downstairs, through the foyer where a magnificent crystal chandelier hung from the molded ceiling, and outside to the tennis courts located to one side of the balustraded terrace. Pokey accompanied them, running back and forth excitedly.

“Pokey thinks she's the ball girl. She is good at retrieving, I have to admit,” Dakota said. He lobbed a ball and told the black Lab to fetch.

Pokey bounded after it, retrieved it and dropped it at Dakota's feet.

Dakota picked up the ball. “The only problem is she slobbers on the balls,” he said, wiping his hand.

“I'm sure it won't affect the spin I put on my ball,” Chelsea assured him. She wasn't lying, as she hadn't a clue how to put a spin on a tennis ball in the first place. “Let's play.”

“Why don't you serve first….”

“You mean because I'm the woman?” she demanded, her eyes narrowed.

“No, because you're the guest, and I'm the gentleman.” Dakota tossed two tennis balls her way and she dodged them. Realizing she should have caught them to serve, she bade Pokey go fetch.

Thankfully, the dog returned the balls to Dakota. “Since you have the balls, why don't you go ahead and serve,” Chelsea suggested, hoping to pick up a few pointers before she tried it.

Dakota sailed one to her right.

“Wait, I wasn't ready.”

She wasn't ready for the entire set. Her serves were mostly double faults. Dakota ran her all over the court, and took enormous pleasure in doing so.

By the time he'd thoroughly trounced her, Pokey was sprawled on the sidelines, her tongue lolling. The only thing that kept Chelsea from joining the dog was her pride.

After Dakota declared game point, Chelsea announced unnecessarily that she guessed her game was a little rusty.

Dakota laughed. “It's so rusty you should get a tetanus shot.”

She threw her racket at him.

“Whoa, woman,” he said, catching it with one hand. “Anyone ever tell you that you're a bad sport?”

“Not and lived,” she grumbled.

“So are you ready for another game?” he asked, pushing his luck.

“Any game but this one.” Forgetting her pride, Chelsea collapsed beside the panting dog. When they'd started to play, Dakota had looked like he'd been born to wear tennis whites. He still looked that way, annoyingly so. Why wasn't he sweaty and disheveled?

“You know what your problem is, don't you?” he asked.

“You?”

“No. Well, maybe in a way. Instead of looking at me, you should have been watching the way the ball bounces. It changes direction when it bounces a lot.”

“I don't think it matters when you slam-dunk the ball. Haven't you ever heard of a friendly game of tennis?”

“Guess I don't think of you as being particularly friendly,” he said, shrugging.

How, she wondered again, could he look so good. He was just moist enough to look inviting, while she, on the other hand, was sopping wet and looking anything but inviting.

She would get even with him.

“What are you smiling about?” Dakota asked suspiciously.

“I'm not smiling.”

“Good, because you make me nervous when you smile.”

Dakota lowered himself to the ground beside her with a groan.

“Oh, please, I can do without the groaning,” she said, hitting him. “You barely worked up a sweat out there on the court.”

“Does that mean you're not going to offer me one of your massages?”

Chelsea ignored his question and changed the subject. “Let's talk about the song I want you to write for me.”

“Okay,” he agreed, his voice lazy and resigned. “What about it?”

“Do you have any ideas?”

“One or two,” he answered, lifting a dark strand of damp hair from her cheek.

“Great!”

“Ideas don't write themselves, so don't get too excited,” he warned.

She looked at him curiously. “You do plan to write a song for me, don't you? You didn't ask me here just so you could torture me for wrecking your car?”

He didn't give her a direct answer, which told her a lot. “I can't write if I'm blocked. I told you that coming in.”

“But writer's block can be broken, the same as batting slumps and bad luck.”

“We'll see.”

“Try to work up a little enthusiasm. I don't want just any old song, you know. My whole career might be riding on the song you write for me.”

“I never write just any old song,” he said tersely. “I write songs to touch people. I write songs I expect will be around for a long time because they mean something—to others as well as myself.”

Chelsea smiled. She'd pricked his ego. Maybe that was the key to unblocking him.

D
AKOTA WAS RIGHT
.

He didn't write lame songs.

Chelsea sat in the audience at Dakota Country that evening, listening to him perform, and thought it was no wonder he had sponsors lining up at the door to underwrite his concerts. She was amazed a blue-jeans company hadn't seen the windfall his endorsement would bring. It ought to be illegal to wear jeans that tight… and probably was.

The ballad he was singing was an emotional minefield, and the audience was totally caught up in it. She had made the right decision; Dakota was a genius. When he finished the song, she and every member of the audience was drained, wrung out, content.

But Chelsea wanted something different. The song she wanted Dakota to write for her had to be uplifting and optimistic.

Like her.

Despite a childhood that would be fodder for a half-dozen or so movies-of-the-week, Chelsea had refused to be a victim. She believed that if you let the bad things that happened to you in life control the rest of your life, then you lost. It was how people reacted to what happened to them that decided who won and who lost.

Winning was not giving in, not accepting a life or a fate you didn't want. It was fighting back, going on—surviving.

“I'd like to get someone in the audience to come up onstage and sing a song for us. Ladies and gentlemen, give a big round of encouragement to Chelsea Stone!”

Chelsea heard her name and then everyone started clapping.

She was going to kill Dakota Law—right after he wrote her a song. But at the moment she had no choice but to go onstage and act like they were friends. He'd put her on the spot and in the spotlight.

The crowd's enthusiasm and anticipation were both scary and exciting. She'd never suffered from stage fright, but then she'd sung before rock audiences who knew what they were getting. This audience wanted country music. What would they think of her?

Would they accept her or boo her off the stage?

Surely, with Dakota there, they would give her a chance.

“What am I supposed to sing?” she whispered to Dakota when she reached the stage.

“Whatever you want. Here's your chance to try out a country-music audience and see how you like it. Don't freak. It's only a small club. Just pick out a song and go for it.”

The audience had quieted and waited expectantly.

Chelsea could feel her heart pounding. She wasn't prepared. It was warm. She felt dizzy.

She couldn't do it.

Oh, yes, you can,
a voice from her childhood insisted. And she listened to that voice—the voice that had never failed her. The voice that had gotten her through the emotional and physical cruelty. The voice that told her never to show fear.

She didn't know where she found the nerve or the presence of mind, but she launched into a parody of “Kentucky Woman,” only she sang it as “Dakota's Women.”

She was relying on humor and good fun. It wasn't a real test of whether or not country-music fans would accept her, but it was ever so much better than a kick in the stomach.

Somehow she got through the song.

The rest of the evening and the ride home went by in a daze for Chelsea. The full reality of how much of a risk she was taking had sunk in when she'd performed without her accepting fans and a backlog of hits to support her.

“You haven't said a word since we left the club,” Dakota remarked, as they pulled into the long winding drive to his home.

“I'm thinking,” she explained.

“About what?”

“Where the gardener keeps the rat poison,” she joked, hiding her doubts and fears.

“Aw, come on, I thought you'd enjoy it. Besides, the audience loved you. And I'm the one who ought to be sore about that ‘Dakota's Women' bit you sang.”

“You deserved it,” she said, stifling a smile.

He came around to let her out of the car, ever the gentleman.

She followed him to the front door.

As he was putting his key in the lock, he asked, “Are you hungry? I can have the cook make us a snack if you want.”

“No, I'm too keyed up to be hungry.”

“In that case we could play tennis”

“No,” she said. “What is it with you, today? Why are you so bent on embarrassing me?” “I'm just doing my job,” he said, standing aside after he'd opened the door.

“What are you talking about?” she asked, as he followed her into the house.

“I'm observing you in order to write a song for you. Isn't that what you wanted? Oh, look—someone's sent me flowers,” he said, going to the vase of fresh tulips on the round table in the foyer.

Dakota reached for the tiny envelope tucked in amid the flowers. He slipped the card out and read aloud.

A look of puzzlement crossed his face. “There's obviously been some sort of mix-up. My birthday isn't for months.”

“What time is it?” Chelsea leaned over to smell the white tulips.

“What time is it?”

She nodded.

He glanced at his watch. “Twelve-thirty, why?”

“Because as of midnight, it's my birthday. The flowers are for me, not you.”

“Why didn't you tell me it was your birthday? I would have ordered champagne and a birthday cake at the club to celebrate.”

“My birthday just started at midnight, somewhere on the ride home,” she said with a shrug.

“So how old are you?”

“That's none of your business.”

“Sure, it is. I have to know to get the spankings right.”

She didn't like the look in his eyes, and began inching away. “You wouldn't dare….”

He pushed back his cowboy hat, smiled wickedly, and took the three long-legged steps necessary to tug her up against the lean, hard line of his body.

“Dakota, what… what do you think you're doing?”

He answered her by slowly tracing her pouty bottom lip with his thumb. “I figured since Tucker took care of the flowers, I'd take care of the birthday kiss.”

“That's really not—” she began.

“It's the gentlemanly thing to do,” he insisted. He winked, then added, “And you know me, I'm always a gentleman.”

“Dakota, please…” She giggled nervously.

“Aw, you don't have to beg, precious….”

Before she could reply, he lowered his lips to hers, which were parted in surprise.

The kiss started as a nibble, then built.

Chelsea could feel the beating of his heart and smell his cologne. His eyes were closed and she noticed how thick his lashes were. Her eyes were open; that was the way she went through life.

Fleetingly, she wondered what he was thinking, then she was lost in a whirlpool of sensations that carried her into murky waters.

“Happy Birthday, Chelsea,” Dakota said, his voice husky with passion.

Then the devilment returned to his eyes. “Now, about that spanking…” he began.

“Ouch, woman! You've got to learn to stop doing that,” he exclaimed, rubbing his arm where she'd punched him.

D
AKOTA SWORE AS HE
stuck a piece of tissue on his face where he'd nicked his chin with his razor. The tissue joined three other bits, making his face look like a first grader's art project.

He was distracted, had been distracted, ever since Chelsea Stone had waltzed into—actually
crashed
was a better word—into his life.

Six months ago she'd turned his career upside down. Now she was making him reconsider his life.

He'd been singing about love, but he'd never felt the emotion. He wrote love songs with his head, not his heart. Was his writer's block forcing him to think about what was missing in his life?

All he knew was that he didn't believe in love and he felt like a fake writing about it.

How could he be attracted to Chelsea Stone?

He didn't approve of her.

Not of the way she dressed. Nor her attitude. Nor her life-style, and especially not of her relationship with Tucker Gable. Why, the two of them practically made love onstage when they performed together at rock concerts. They were incendiary in front of a crowd, almost setting the audience on fire.

No. Chelsea Stone was not the woman for him.

He liked the sort of girls he'd grown up around. Women who wore gloves, white ones—not black net. Women who spoke softly—not in a voice more gravelly than his own. Women who knew how to behave themselves—not women who… who challenged him?

Was that true?

No. Chelsea Stone wasn't right for him, but it wasn't because she challenged him. It was because she was involved with Tucker Gable. It was dangerous to let this infatuation he felt for her develop.

Still, she and Tucker weren't
married.
Didn't that make her fair game romantically? Maybe. But pursuing Chelsea was doomed to end badly.

He told his reflection that he was only taking her out dancing to celebrate her birthday. That it had nothing to do with the way she kissed. That spending time with her was the only way to get himself unblocked.

Then, once he was able to write again, he'd give her the song she wanted. Write her out of his life.

Satisfied he'd reached a sensible decision, Dakota peeled the bits of tissue off his face and finished getting dressed.

He was opening a bottle of champagne when Chelsea came downstairs to join him. It was clear that white gloves had never entered her mind.

“Don't you have something to wear that isn't see-through?” he demanded, observing the sheer black blouse that laced up the front with a black satin ribbon. She wore a frilly black bra under it, but somehow it made the outfit even more indecent.

“Why, I don't have anything to hide,” she answered, as she slid a silver-studded black belt through the loops of her tight, button-fly jeans.

To keep himself from staring, Dakota poured her a glass of champagne and handed it to her.

“Aren't you going to make a birthday toast?” She eyed his empty glass.

“Of course.” He poured champagne into his glass, then turned to face her and tried not to look at the crests of her breasts swelling over the black lace bra. The sheer black fabric of the blouse only made them more inviting.

“To, ah…”

“Don't tell me your block extends to toasts, as well. Come on, the bubbles will all disappear if you don't come up with something soon.”

“Ah…”

“You said that already.”

“To making better decisions,” he blurted out. He lifted his glass and tossed down its contents.

“What's that supposed to mean?” she asked, after sipping her champagne.

“Whatever you want it to. You could choose better music, better men… a better blouse.”

“Will you chill about the blouse. There's nothing wrong with it. Tucker likes it,” she added defiantly.

“Oh, well. You should have told me. If Tucker likes it, then by all means—”

“Could we just go?” Chelsea set her champagne glass on the table with a toss of her long dark curls.

“Of course.” He'd made her angry again. What was wrong with him? His mother would be appalled at his lack of manners around a lady. But then, Chelsea Stone wasn't a lady, he was reminded, as he followed her to the car, watching the sway of her hips. Jeans did the same thing for her long legs as short skirts. Wasn't there something she didn't look good in? he wondered, as he held the door for her to slide into the soft bucket seat.

The scent of her perfume drifted up to tease him when he bent to close the car door. He wondered just when it had been that he'd become suicidal. Had it been six months ago—or just lately?

As they headed down the long drive, he saw her take out her lipstick and gloss her full lips with her signature scarlet hue. The atmosphere in the car was slightly tense, so he suggested turning on the radio.

He hadn't really wanted to ruin her birthday. Maybe some music would put them both in a more festive mood.

But she stayed his hand when he reached for the controls. “No, let's talk.”

“About what?”

“About the kind of song I want you to write for me. I want a special song. A song so special that no one else can sing it. A song about…”

He waited, but she didn't finish the sentence. She shivered violently and stared out the car window into the lengthening shadows of dusk.

“What's wrong?” he asked, looking over at her.

“I don't know. I just got a chill. It's probably nothing. This song is so important to me that I can't bear to think you won't be able to write it.”

“I'm doing my best, but nothing's coming.”

“Nothing?”

“Nothing worth putting down on paper.”

‘Wow do you know? Maybe…”

“No, Ï know. It has to feel right. It has to haunt you.” He swore at a big rig that flew past them recklessly.

“How do you get your ideas for a song?”

“I read a lot.”

“You read?” she echoed with unflattering disbelief. “Like what?”

“Everything. I read fiction, newspapers and magazines. And I listen to talk shows on the radio and television. You need input for output.”

She turned toward him in her seat. “I don't understand how reading and watching television help you to write songs.”

Pulling onto the highway, Dakota explained. “They help to fill my mind with images of the times and culture we live in. And stories set in the past are full of myth and legend I interpret for modern times. Newspapers are great for odd turns of speech. Songwriting is a lot of little details and observations put together around a theme.”

“So a song just doesn't come to you, then. You set out deliberately to write it, to deliver a certain message in the lyrics.”

Dakota shook his head. “No, it's both. Sometimes, actually often, a phrase will come to me fullblown out of the blue.”

“But nothing's come to you in the past six months….”

“A phrase doesn't make a song, Chelsea. I've got lots of phrases.”

“Where?”

“In my computer. I used to write them down on whatever was handy, but I kept losing the bits of paper, so now I keep the phrases I come up with stored in a file in my computer.”

“What you're really telling me is that you write with your head and not your heart. Is that right, Dakota?”

He didn't answer her.

Instead he stared at the road, looking for the exit that would take them to the Whiskey River honkytonk, and wondering how she had discovered that in one conversation.

She had him wondering whether, if he changed the process and started writing from the heart, his career might disappear. The one truism everyone in the entertainment business knew was: Don't mess with what works for you.

But who was he kidding? At the moment, nothing was working for him.

“What about melodies?” Chelsea asked, shifting the conversation from words to music. “Do you write those with your head or your heart?”

Dakota didn't answer immediately. “I haven't the foggiest idea,” he finally said. “I imagine you might say both as the melodies just seem to pop into my head.”

“You mean you don't work them out on an instrument? Surely not?”

“No instrument. I don't have that kind of patience. Besides, I find I get more original melodies without trial and error on an instrument where I'm sure I'd tend to repeat old patterns.”

“So which do you get first, the lyrics or the melody?”

“Why are you so curious about the way I write songs? No one else has ever asked me all these questions. I just show them the song once I've written it.”

“I told you. I want a special song. I want to have ‘input'.”

“I don't cowrite.” He knew his words were cold, but he couldn't help it. He didn't like allowing anyone access to his thoughts, his feelings.

“I don't want to cowrite the song with you. I'm not a writer.”

“Then I don't get it,” he said, sounding puzzled as they turned off the highway into the parking lot of the Whiskey River honky-tonk. “What are you talking about when you say you want input?” He stopped the car, parked and turned to her, waiting for her answer.

“By input I mean I want you to get to know me, to know how I feel, who I am.”

“Then let's do it.” He opened the car door. The music from the honky-tonk spilled into the car. “Do you know how to do the reggae cowboy?”

She shook her head no.

“The tush push?”

“What!”

“The country two-step?” he finally said.

“That sounds like something I can handle.”

“And here I was sure you'd go for the tush push. See, I'm getting to know you better already,” he said, with a wink, as they got out of the car.

“Wait a minute,” Chelsea said.

“Why? What's wrong?”

“Nothing. I just want you to show me the two-step before we go inside. I don't want to be embarrassed in front of … Well, you know, in case anyone recognizes me.”

“Okay,” he agreed, seeing that she really was nervous. He reached inside the car, hunted up a CD disc that had a song with eighty-five to ninety-five beats a minute, and inserted it in the player.

“You don't really have to know the steps,” he explained, taking her into his arms. “Lots of people just improvise.” And then he proceeded to do just that because he hadn't the faintest idea how to do the two-step.

Before long, she caught on to that fact.

When he stepped on her boot for about the sixth time, Chelsea socked him in the arm. “Dakota Law, you're nothing but a fraud. Why, you don't know nuthin' ‘bout dancin' no two-step. Admit it.”

“I never said I did. I asked you if you did,” he said, unrepentant. “All I wanted to do was show you a good time on your birthday.”

The CD player stopped, and they heard the band inside the honky-tonk rev up their version of “Boot Scootin' Boogie.”

“We can leave if you want to,” Dakota offered.

“No, I want to go inside and watch the dancers,” Chelsea insisted.

“Then let's do it.” He reached into the back seat for his white Stetson and jammed it on his head.

“I wish I had one of those to hide under,” Chelsea said wistfully as they entered the club and found themselves awash in a sea of denim, fringe, neon, and flashing lights.

She turned toward the dance floor where a crowd of spectators swarmed around the wooden railing.

“just a sec,” Dakota said, steering her toward a small store set up inside the dance club.

She looked puzzled until he instructed the clerk to hand over a black cowboy hat for her. “Now maybe we can be incognito,” he said, paying the clerk.

When Dakota had finally elbowed them through the crowd to a good spot at the railing by the dance floor, he asked what she wanted to drink.

“Well, since I'm in your backyard, I guess I'll try a mint julep.” At the look of surprise on his face, Chelsea quipped, “Unless you'd rather I order my regular drink.”

“Your regular drink…?”

Not wanting to disappoint him, she played to her bad-girl image. “Yeah, you know—a screaming orgasm.”

“A mint julep it is.” He ducked away quickly into the crowd, but not before she'd seen him blush.

Chelsea turned her attention to the dance floor where it looked like at least five hundred people were dancing to the Neon Cactus band. The band's singer was a petite blonde in a red sequined dress and feather earrings. Watching her made Chelsea long to be onstage. There was nothing like the rush she felt from the applause of the crowd.

It was the only time she really felt loved.

She missed the times onstage with Tucker. Dear Tucker, what would she do without him in her life?

Dakota returned with a cold long-neck beer for him and a highball glass for her.

He chugged his beer while she took a tentative sip of her drink. She made a face and looked at her drink more closely. “There's a Maraschino cherry in a mint julep?”

“They were out of mint leaves,” Dakota explained. “So I got you a blackberry collins. It's what Melinda, my assistant, drinks. She was at the bar and suggested it.”

“What you're saying is you were too chicken to order me a screaming orgasm,” she taunted.

“No,” he countered, his blue eyes meeting hers in a contest of wills. “What I'm saying is I never order a screaming orgasm, I only serve them.”

“Oh,” was all she said.

They stood at the railing watching the intricate footwork, spins and turns of the line dancers. The music was upbeat and the spirit of fun on the dance floor was infectious.

So much so that when the band moved to the new hit ballad, “She Left Me and It Wasn't Even Rainin,'” Dakota leaned forward and whispered, “You want to dance?”

It was more a dare than a request, Chelsea thought, considering his dancing ability. She looked over her shoulder to see if he was teasing or serious. “Sure you don't mind being seen with me?” she asked, remembering his disapproval of her attire.