Heartbreak, Tennessee (9 page)

“Not on your life. All
I need is a few hours in an air-conditioned movie theater and a big tub of
popcorn and I’ll be good as new,” Sheryn said stubbornly. “I love this town. It’s
becoming like my home away from home.”

“Well, you sure aren’t
acting like it,” Amber said. “We were supposed to be coming up with ideas,
remember? Getting a feel for the town’s economic situation, looking over sites
for the park, developing attractions to take advantage of local history and
features...”

“Oh, the guys can do
that,” Sheryn said, waving her hand, clearly disinterested. By “the guys” Amber
knew she meant every professional who had ever been in her employment; she saw
them all as a big team whose only purpose in life was to manage her affairs. She’d
probably be surprised to learn that her accountants, lawyers, and promoters had
other clients.

Of course, that was
part of her charm. At the moment, though, Sheryn’s single-mindedness was coming
dangerously close to opening up a discussion Amber did not want to have.

“When Gray gets here,
you know he’s going to want to hear how we’ve spent our time,” she tried again.
“I don’t have to tell you he doesn’t have time to waste.”

“Don’t worry about
that big old pussycat,” Sheryn exclaimed, laughing. “Have you ever known that
man to be able to stay mad at me?”

Amber just glared in
response.

“Now let’s have the
truth about Mac.”

“Dean’s on his way
here, you know,” Amber said, evading Sheryn’s queries, though she knew it was
pointless. Sheryn would keep after her, questioning and nagging and cajoling,
until she found out the truth. Once a weakness had been exposed, there was no
way to keep the woman out of her business.

“What for, did he
discover there’s a few women left in Tennessee who haven’t bought his latest
release yet?”

“Oh, for heaven’s
sake, he isn’t that bad,” Amber protested, though Dean’s endless appetite for
self-promotion was becoming well-known among country music’s inner circle. “He
just said he had something important to talk about.”

“Really?” Sheryn said,
perking up a bit. “Important enough to come all the way here? How intriguing.”

“Don’t get so excited,”
Amber grumbled. “Nothing juicy is going to happen.”

“Oh? Why, are you
planning to be too busy working?”

Amber shifted uncomfortably. “No, not exactly—”

“Amber, some day I
swear I am going to lose my patience with you. Lately you seem determined to
throw yourself even further into your work. Sugar, Gray and I can’t possibly be
paying you what you’re worth. I know I demand a lot of you, but don’t you think
it’s time you found yourself a nice man to settle down with?”

“Oh, Sheryn,” Amber
sighed. “I was determined not to talk about this.”

“Honey, talking to me
doesn’t count. I’m your best friend, remember? And my lips are sealed.”

“It’s just...I used to
think that Dean
was
the right man.”

“You mean...you don’t
think so any more?” Sheryn’s voice was suddenly carefully neutral. As much as
Sheryn loved to tease her about Dean, Amber knew that Sheryn would accept him
if things got...serious. Whatever that meant. Which they weren’t going to. After
all, she’d just practically broken up with him, right? Although she wasn’t
quite ready to share that tidbit with Sheryn.

“I don’t know.” Amber’s
headache was worsening by the minute. “He’s got everything I ever wanted. He’s
driven, and successful, and smart, and he cares about me.”

“Well, you’re just
going to have to figure out if that’s enough, darling,” Sheryn said, reaching
to give her hand a squeeze. “You can plan and plan, and maybe even almost talk
yourself into loving the wrong man, but in the end what happens? The heart
knows. It knows.”

Amber let herself be
comforted by the warmth of Sheryn’s hands. Sometimes Sheryn surprised her with
the depth of her caring. “Like...you and Gray? Did your heart know then?”

“Yes,” Sheryn said
softly. “First time I laid eyes on that impossible man, I never imagined I’d
marry him six months later. But it was in the stars. I could no more have
prevented myself from falling in love with Gray than I could stop the sun from
rising tomorrow.”

With a final squeeze,
Sheryn released her hand, and Amber stood and stretched, anxious to put Dean—and
Mac too, for that matter—out of her mind.

“Oh well, love’s the
last thing I need right now, anyway. I really am too busy. Excuse me for just a
second, won’t you?”

Ducking into the tiny
bathroom and shutting the door part way behind her, Amber poured tap water from
the bathroom sink into a plastic cup and swallowed the aspirin tablets. Then,
she splashed some cool water on her face and blotted it with a towel.

She felt a little
better. Not much, but enough.

Emerging from the
bathroom, she managed a small smile.

“Sheryn, would you
mind too much if I tagged along to that movie?”

“Not at all.” Despite
the trademark big grin on Sheryn’s face, Amber could tell her friend was
worried about her. At least she had the good judgment to give the subject a
rest. “I’ll even buy the popcorn.”

Several hours later,
Amber reached for the air conditioning button on the console of Sheryn’s sporty
little Mercedes, but then changed her mind and slid down the windows as she
pulled out of the motel parking lot. The car was as comfortable to her as her
own, since she did most of the driving when she and Sheryn were together. She
relaxed in the buttery leather seat and enjoyed the rush of the wind on her
face.

The movie had done her
good; a couple of hours in the cool darkness in the theater allowed her to take
a rest from her thoughts. The images on the screen barely registered, though
the light-hearted comedy had Sheryn in stitches, her unrestrained laughter
filling the near-empty theater.

It was good to hear
her laugh. As had happened so many times before, Amber took comfort in her
friend’s happiness, burying her own worries in the comfort of close friendship.
Gray would be here soon, and Sheryn’s mood was sure to lift several more
notches.

Still, Amber sensed a
phase of her life coming to an end. Not much longer, she could tell, would she
be content to live through others, her own tightly-controlled life pathetically
empty compared to those around her, who had families, children, hobbies,
dreams.

Who had
passion
.

Unresolved issues
demanded to be settled. It was time. She was an adult woman, and she had a life
to live. Parts of her long locked away sensed the coming release and demanded
to make themselves heard.

Once, long ago, she
had followed wherever her heart led, opening her arms wide to take in all that
life had to offer. While she might never be so free again, she had to learn to
trust once more.

The key was Mac. Seeing
him again had made it all so clear to her. She had been going through the
motions of living, but for so long she’d been just cruising along on
auto-pilot, choosing the safest path at every fork in the road. The feelings
she had for Dean were suddenly revealed for what they were, a thin comfort
built on the fear that she would never find anything better.

Mac. If only...

She angrily shook the
head, as though the motion could shake free all her feelings for him. Even if
things were different, if they lived in the same town, if they hadn’t pursued
dramatically different lifestyles, if there was a ghost of a chance they would
have enough in common after all these years...

Even if all those things
were true, she reminded herself, they would never erase the fact that, when it
came down to the wire, Mac had looked over his options and chosen. When she’d
come to him and begged her to leave with her that night, to trust her and leave
Heartbreak in the rear view mirror of his old car, he’d said no.

He’d made his choice,
and it was permanent.

But he begged you to stay
, said the voice inside, the one she worked so
hard to ignore, the one who never let her forget what she’d given up so long
ago.
You never told him the whole story. And
if you had told him everything, Mac would have realized that Pete McBaine left
you no choice but to leave
.

Because if she stayed,
if she saw Mac again, even once, she wouldn’t be strong enough to keep the
awful bargain his father had driven.

But Pete’s dead
, her heart pleaded. What could it matter now?

Dead, perhaps, to her.
But not to Mac. Pete McBaine lived on, growing bigger than life itself as the
years passed, becoming for Mac a symbol of his struggle to make it in the world.
He would figure into the stories Mac would pass down to his children, watch
over the family from some mythical place where fathers genuinely wanted the
best for their children, no matter what.

There could be no
place for her in the picture.

Sobered, Amber drove
slowly through town, then out on a country road through fields aflame with late
afternoon sun, more reluctant than ever to face her errand. The directions
scratched on a piece of paper by the motel clerk were simple enough; Mac had
chosen to make his home a stone’s throw from Boone Lake, in an area that Amber
remembered to be densely wooded, popular with outdoor sportsmen.

The clerk, a man who
resembled a boy Amber remembered being several grades behind her at school, had
raised a curious eyebrow when she asked about Mac’s address, and she was sure
her request was making its way down the gossip chain. At least the clerk had
been able to tell her exactly where Mac lived, but then again, that didn’t come
as much of a surprise. There was a time when she herself could have directed a
stranger to the home of almost any of the town’s residents.

The air rushing in the
car’s windows was warm and heavy with moisture, and a bank of inky clouds
encroached on the descending sun. A summer storm was on its way. Despite the
beads of perspiration forming on her brow and upper lip, Amber wanted to feel
the hot, humid air and the approach of the storm. It matched her mood, somehow,
the far-off rumbling in the clouds like the emotions tumbling deep inside her.

The difference was
that she knew already how the storm would end, a furious downpour slanting
through the dusty fields, drenching everything before tapering off to a light
rain and finally, in the morning, rising off of everything in a steam perfumed
with the promise of new growth.

But it was anyone’s
guess what would be the outcome of her reacquaintance with Mac, into which she
was driving with a determination heavily tempered by misgivings.

CHAPTER
FIVE

Mac pushed the sliced
onion and minced garlic around the pan dispiritedly with a wooden spoon. Colorful
sliced peppers mounded on a cutting board waited nearby, along with opened
bottles of extra-virgin olive oil and balsamic vinegar.

In the early years on
his own after Amber left, dinner usually meant a few slices of deli ham on
stale white bread, and a couple of beers, eaten standing up at the kitchen
counter. The food usually filled his belly, but he barely tasted it, and meals
somehow left him feeling just as empty inside as before.

Fourteen years of
bachelorhood had taught him a few lessons. One of them was that if no one else
is around to make a fuss over you, then you ought to have enough self respect
to treat yourself decently.

And that included
fixing a proper meal at the end of the day.

Charlene had been glad
to help a few years back, when Mac sheepishly drew her aside one day at work
and asked her if she had any easy recipes he might be able to learn to make on
his own. The next morning she brought him a stack of cookbooks. On top was a
children’s cookbook with yellow sticky notes marking several recipes.

“I started Buddy and
Louise out on these,” she said, giving him a look full of sisterly concern. “They
can both fix anything in the book now.”

The fact that he was
outperformed in the kitchen by a nine- and a ten-year-old fueled Mac’s
determination, and by the end of the week he’d mastered sloppy joes, jello
salad, and tuna casserole.

Within a month he’d
worked up to more ambitious fare. With each success his appetite came back a
little, and as a sort of graduation exercise he invited Charlene and her family
over for dinner. With great care he prepared a meal of pork chops and white
bean ragout, a salad of greens and tomatoes from Charlene’s garden, with a
layer cake for dessert. He bought a few cookbooks of his own and returned
Charlene’s, and the two now routinely traded favorite recipes.

Still, nothing would
ever change the fact that a meal with only himself for company could be a
pretty lonely affair, no matter what was on the menu. Tonight, especially, Mac
felt his solitude acutely. Ever since stomping out of Sheryn’s motel room, Mac
had felt a little foolish, both for making presumptions about Amber’s
availability and for his reaction to her phone call. Leaving in a squeal of
tires had been impetuous and pointless, the reaction of a jealous teenager.