Coming Undone

CHAPTER EIGHT

"HEY, IT'S ME,"Jared said the moment his brother-in-law answered the phone. P.J.'s concert filtered faintly through the thick walls of the San Francisco arena behind him. "I need the name and number of the suit who hired us for this assignment. I've been leaving messages at Wild Wind for the past three days, but either he's dodging me, which doesn't make sense, or I'm not asking to speak to the right guy."

"We have a problem?"

"Aside from wasting our time playing watchdog for a clueless client, you mean?"

"O-kay." John's voice was slow and easy. "You wanna expound on that a bit? But make it quick, wouldja? Sympathetic as I am to the plight of the poor working stiff, I don't count myself among your number for the next fourteen days."

Jared felt the tension that had been building over the course of the past week begin to unwind at John's mellow voice and offbeat sense of humor. "You heading up to the cabin?"

"Yep. In about twenty minutes. Just me and Tori."

"No kids?"

"Well, okay, me and Tori and Grayson and two of his very large, always hungry and extremely loud friends."

Jared grinned at the thought of his nephew and his friends wreaking havoc with John's downtime. "Es staying in town?"

"Yep. Running her and Gray's and your future children's inheritance into the ground while I wet a fishing line or two. Which, in the interests of getting this vacation on the road, brings us back to your request. Why do you feel we're wasting our time accompanying P.J. on her tour?"

"It's make-work, Rocket. There's not a damn thing for me to do here-an illustration of P.J.'s face oughtta be next toconsummate professional in the dictionary."

"I'm not sureconsummate professional is actually in the dictionary," John murmured. "Not linked together, anyhow."

He ignored the interruption. "It's clear to anyone with eyes in their head that this tour is important to her. She doesn't need anyone to get her to her concerts, she sure as hell makes her sound checks without assistance and with the exception of the first show in Portland, where we had the only two-night engagement so far, she's been on the tour bus within a half-hour of each show's closing."

"So what do you think compelled them to hire us?"

"I honest to God don't know." Leaning against the arena's concrete exterior wall, Jared settled his shoulders more squarely to absorb the residual heat still stored from the day's high-eighties temperatures, enjoying the warmth that seeped through his T-shirt to the slowly relaxing muscles below. "Wild Wind has a bundle tied up in this tour and there's a lot of negative press out there making it sound as if P.J.'s unreliable. But it's common knowledge it's been stirred up by her mother, so why the hell would they take Jodeen's version of the situation as gospel?"

"Because people tend to believe where there's smoke there's fire and P.J. hasn't exactly been fighting to tell her side of the story?"

"Okay, human nature being what it is, I get that. But they don't once ask their new million-dollar baby what's going on? From everything I've seen so far they're doing a bang-up job on the logistics of this tour. Yet their approach with P.J. is friggin' passive/aggressive. They just slapped a watchdog on her without bothering to discuss the problem. Why hasn't anyone picked up a goddamn phone to deal directly with her?"

"Is that what you'd recommend?"

"Hell, yes. They could probably learn the real story and have a team of spin doctors slanting the sympathy factor back where it belongs in a heartbeat if they'd just take five lousy minutes out of their schedule to talk to her. I'd also warn them that this is no way to build loyalty in their performers. They're putting a lot of money into building P.J.'s career. But if they treat her like a rebellious teenager at the same time, why would she want to stay with them once the tour is done?"

"Yeah, I can see where she might find it insulting to go about her business in a professional manner only to have them sic the dogs on her anyway. So!" His voice turned brisk. "You clearly know what you're doing and you've got a game plan. You don't need my input, except to tell you the guy you want to contact is Charles Croffut. Call Gert in the morning to get the number to his direct line."

Jared grinned, for he could all but hear the sound of his brother-in-law rubbing his hands together in anticipation of his vacation. "Thanks, John. Kiss Tori for me and cast a line or two in my name. In fact, if I free myself up within the next couple days I just might join you."

"Good. You can be in charge of entertaining Gray and his friends."

He heard himself laugh for the first time in days. "I was thinking more along the line of getting in some fly fishing, but I'm always open to negotiation."

"Tell P.J. we're looking forward to seeing her concert when we get back to town. Or hell, just plant a kiss on her from me-whichever strikes your fancy. Me, I'm going fishing and getting in some serious snuggle time with my woman."

Jared was still smiling when they hung up an instant later. Warmth and acceptance were the gifts from Tori and John that kept on giving. They'd taken him in when he was seventeen and parented him with the same evenhandedness they'd used to raise Esme and, later, Grayson. Their support and love had turned around the remainder of his childhood. It was through their example that he'd learned how to become a responsible adult.

Before them, acceptance hadn't been a quality he'd experienced much in his life. He'd grown up with increasingly younger stepmothers uninterested in getting to know him and a father impossible to satisfy. Negativity had been his screw-you response. Not exactly a mature one, he knew, but at the time he'd figured what the hell. If he couldn't make his dad pay attention to him for the things he'd done right, he'd simply earn the old man's notice by smoking, drinking and getting himself pierced, tattooed and expelled from the series of boarding schools his father sent him to.

Not that anything he'd done had made a damn bit of difference, he admitted now, and even after all these years he couldn't prevent a grimace. His father simply hadn't cared about anyone but Ford Evans Hamilton. Not his son or his daughter. Not his granddaughter or any of his wives. And in the end his megalomania had gotten him killed.

For a brief, awful time during his seventeenth summer, Jared had thought he'd murdered him, because in a knee-jerk reaction to being told he should have been aborted, he'd lashed out and shoved his father, knocking him to the floor where Ford had struck his head on the corner of a marble hearth. Unable to find a pulse, panicked, Jared had run as far and as fast from his father's Colorado Springs mansion as he could get.

And, ironically, had been found by P. J. Morgan, the only other person ever to offer him wholehearted acceptance.

Being a homeless teen on the streets of Denver-of any city-was a precarious and terrifying existence. He and P.J. had lived hand to mouth, day to day, and he'd felt perpetually dirty, hungry and so scared it was a constant ache in his stomach, a churning in his bowels. Yet for the first time in his life he'd had a friend who'd allowed him simply to be:him. Survival might have been stripped down to its rawest, meanest form, but he hadn't felt the need to put on a front with P.J.-a state of affairs so novel and freeing he'd actually felt real moments of happiness in the midst of all the horror. Before that summer he'd found it necessary to keep his mask firmly in place to guard against people discovering who the real Jared Hamilton was. It just led to being shipped off or left behind, and he'd had enough of that shit.

To this day he had a tendency to keep his guard up around everyone except family. Where once it had been from necessity, however, now it was mostly out of habit.

And entirely beside the point,he thought, giving himself a mental shake. The salient point here was that while in the end P.J., too, had left him behind, she'd still saved his life. If she hadn't attached herself to him the way she had, he wasn't sure he would have survived. It wasn't simply because she'd been on the streets longer than he and knew more about the resources available to them. She'd given him her wholehearted, unconditional admiration, hadbelieved in him, and that had meant the world to him. It had kept him going.

So he'd repay her once and for all by getting Wild Wind off her back. Then she could get on with her career and he could get back to his life.

And if that struck him as just the tiniest bit boring, so be it.

P.J.PICKED UP HER PACE , sprinting the last hundred yards of her late-morning run. Then, slowing to a walk, she rounded the corner of the somewhere-in-California arena she was scheduled to perform in that night and found Jared slouched comfortably in a lawn chair on the tarmac outside the tour bus.

"Hey," he said as she began her cool-down walk from the front of the bus to its rear and back again.

"Hey, yourself." Covertly eyeing him as he lounged in the webbed chair sipping something tall and refreshing-looking, she yanked a hand towel from the waistband of her shorts and paced past him dabbing at her forehead, temples and throat. She didn't know how he managed it, but no matter what he wore he always looked as if he'd just stepped off the cover of some upscale men's magazine. He'd been like that during their time on the streets, she remembered. Even homeless he'd looked like a prep-school boy half the time-especially the days they'd been able to cadge a shower at Sock's Place, the church drop-in center catering to kids in jeopardy.

She, on the other hand, always seemed to be sweaty or disheveled. She shot him a sour look. "My run just didn't seem the same this morning," she sniped. "What with you not breathing down my neck and all."

He merely raised a dark eyebrow, then reached down and picked up another tall glass that had been on the ground next to his chair. He held it out to her. "Lemonade?"

She accepted it with a suspicious look. "What are you up to, Hamilton?"

The grin he flashed her was all white teeth. "Trusting as ever, I see."

"I know you, remember?"

"Yeah, you do. So you have to know I'd never deliberately hurt you. I have some news, in fact, that's just the opposite."

For some reason a silky little ribbon of disquiet unfurled in her stomach, and she changed the subject. "Where the hell are we?"

"What?"

"What town are we in?" she asked impatiently. "I know it's southern California, because there's palm trees all over the place. But we've played so many cities this week and I slept like the dead during the drive last night, and I've lost track. I can't recall offhand where we're supposed to be playing tonight-but it doesn't feel the way I imagined L.A. would."

"We're in Bakersfield."

"Ah. Inland, then. No wonder it's so hot." She blotted up more sweat, chugged down half the drink he'd given her in one long swallow, then lowered the glass. Touching the back of her wrist to her lips, she gazed at him and inhaled. Then quietly she exhaled. "So what's the good news?"

"I'm leaving."

No.

She swallowed the protest unsaid, but her heart began to bang in her chest and she couldn't quite catch her breath. "You're:? Why? Is it because Hank's been giving you a bad time?"

"What? No, of course not. It's because you're right. You've behaved like a professional and your label is treating you like a kid who needs to be sent to her room."

"So you're-what?-handing me off to the devil I don't know?"

"Huh?"

"You know that expression 'Better the devil you know'? Well, that would be you. I don't necessarily see replacing you with an unfamiliar devil as a huge improvement."

"Aw, I'm touched." He flowed up out of his chair and crossed the short distance separating them to stand in front of her. "Except there's not going to be a new devil. I talked to them, Peej. And I made them understand how insulting it is to just accept your mother's propaganda as fact without so much as checking with you for the real story."

Great. Her heart pounded harder yet. "I'm not talking to them or anyone else about my mother."

"I figured that might be your stand, so I told them she embezzled money from you."

"You didwhat? " The sudden ice lining her gut battled for supremacy over the flames of fury licking through her veins and, pushing up onto her toes, she went nose-to-nose with him. "You had noright! My private life is just that and now Wild Wind's gonna splash it all over the goddamn media."

"No, they're going to keep the news to themselves," he interrupted quietly. Catching a damp strand of hair dangling over her left eye with a gentle fingertip, he looped it behind her ear. "They agree with you that it's your business." The same finger stroked a nerve-rich patch of skin below her earlobe. "And they're real impressed with the publicity you garnered for yourself with those honky-tonk drop-ins. Also, since your sales are apparently soaring, they've decided there's no such thing as bad publicity. So they'll leave it alone unless you say otherwise. They don't want to lose you."

"Why would they assume they would?"

"I, uh, might have mentioned that could be a result of treating you like you don't know what you're doing."

She thumped him on the chest. "Damn you, J, I don't know whether I oughtta thank you or knee you in the nuts."

"I vote for the former." But he took a step back and his expression erased faster than a fire-hosed blackboard.

She could have screamed. She'd honestly thought that if nothing else came of Jared's unexpected drop into her life, she'd at least finally get some closure on a few of her more ancient dreams. "Why do you do that?" she demanded.

"Do what?"

"That." She waved at his face. "That bland expression. That big mental step back you take. What happened to you? You used to be so open."

A harsh laugh exploded out of him. "I was never open."

"Yes, you were. With me, you were."

He gave her anare-you-for-real? look. "You think? Well, look where that got me."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

He merely gave her the blank-eyed stare again and she shook her head in frustration. "Tell me!"

"What is it that you want to hear, Peej?" he asked and stepped closer again. But he stopped out of reach. "That you were the best friend I ever had? Fine. You were. For about five minutes." His eyes were dark and shuttered as he looked down at her. "Then you gave me a phony phone number and disappeared from my life."

She jerked in shock. "That number was real! Mama just packed us up and moved a couple days later."

"Uh-huh. And you never got another phone?"

"I-"

"No, wait, I believe you did. But somehow you never called to give me that number, did you?"

"I-"

"I got it anyhow, you know. Rocket tracked you down to Wyoming."

"You had the Wyoming number?" She blinked up at him. "You never called me." She wondered how different her life might have been if he had.

"I was going to. Until I found out you'd given the number to Gert. Not to me-Gert." He met her eyes with a cool, bored gaze. "Then I wised up. Never let it be said this boy can't take a hint."

"I wanted to call you!" she cried. "You don't know how much I wanted to. But you were so educated, so:rich."

"What?"He shook his head. Then his eyes went from cool and disinterested to flat-out furious and between one heartbeat and the next he was towering over her, radiating so much rage and heat she was surprised she didn't go up in flames. "What difference did the size of my trust fund make? You and I shared something no one else could truly understand, but you waltzed off because I wasrich? Youknew that didn't matter."

"Yes, it did!" She could still remember exactly the way she'd felt when she'd learned he had a cook like someone in the movies, when she'd seen the Colorado Springs mansion he'd called home and heard him correct her grammar. She hadn't needed Mama's whispers that a rich boy like him would have no use for a girl like her to make her feel unworthy. "You lived in a palace. I lived in a trailer! You had your sister and John and your niece and your baseball buddies. You were exonerated of your father's murder. You didn't need me. Your life was perfect. Mine was-"

"Perfect?" he roared. "Fuckingperfect? "

Her driver poked his head out the bus door. "You okay, Miz Morgan?"

"Yes, thank you, Marvin," she said, barely sparing him a glance. Her attention locked on the hint of pain peeking out of Jared's eyes. Her heart beating an erratic tattoo, she began to suspect she had been wrong all those years ago. "I'm fine."

"Okay, then," he said with palpable reluctance and directed a hard glare at Jared. "Yell if you need help." He withdrew back into the bus.

Jared wrapped his hand around her upper arm and marched her away from the vehicle. When they'd reached a point he apparently found sufficiently removed, he dropped his light grip on her as if she were covered in toxic waste and casually slid his hands in his pockets. The pain she'd glimpsed was neatly tucked away once more and he gazed at her with that recently familiar lack of emotion.

"Yes," he agreed coolly, "I had my family and that was great. But my baseball friends were left behind when we moved up to Denver. And would you like to know what most people remembered about my father's murder, Priscilla Jayne?"

Nothing good, she was guessing, if the remote look in his eyes was anything to go by. Still she nodded.

"It wasn't that I was exonerated or that someone else was ultimately convicted. It was that I was accused of it. People don't remember the retractions, honey. They remember the headlines and the talking heads rehashing the manhunt for suspected murderer Jared Hamilton night after night."

"I'm sorry." Reaching out hesitant fingertips, she stroked them along his forearm. His skin under her hand was warm and firm.

He slid his arm out from beneath her touch. "Not a problem," he said carelessly. "It was a long time ago. So, listen, it's been real, but I've got some packing to do."

He started to turn away, but she grabbed his arm. "Jared, please," she said, hanging on when he merely stood and gazed at her gripping fingers as if they belonged to a stranger. "I don't want to part like this."

"Then we won't," he said with that careful politeness. "My flight leaves tomorrow night from L.A., so I'm going to ride down there with you. We'll chat. Catch up."

Yeah, sure they would. It didn't take a genius to see that was never going to happen and her temper started to percolate.

Maybe it was his well-mannered distance that put her back up. Maybe it was-she didn't know-something else entirely. His refusal to show a genuine emotion for longer than two seconds running, perhaps. Whatever it was, if this was goodbye, they were damn well going to say it her way.

"We'll have to do that," she agreed with a polite smile of her own. "But before you go, I have something to say."

"What?"

"Get your head down here," she snapped. "I'm not going to scream this out for any Tom, Dick or Harry who might be hanging around to hear. I'm on enough tabloid covers as it is."

He dipped his head obligingly and, reaching up, she slid both hands into the soft, cool strands of his hair. Then, yanking his head closer yet, she rose onto her toes and locked mouths with him.

She wasn't sure what she'd intended-or, okay, if she'd planned anything at all. But if she had, she was pretty sure it would've been something along the lines of a brief, hot kiss that she directed. Instead she lost control of the situation the minute their lips touched. Between one moment and the next, it seemed, it was all teeth and tongues and runaway heat. She found herself plastered to the hard warmth of Jared's long body while his hands splayed over her butt, keeping her close.

And, oh God, it felt good.

Too good. She could barely think. Ripping her mouth free, she stepped back.

"Take that with you when you go," she said, and if her voice sounded even raspier than usual, well, it couldn't be helped. Head held high, she whirled on her heel and strode back to the bus.

It took every ounce of willpower she possessed to not look back.