Her Minnesota Man (A Christian Romance Novel) (4 page)

Having check-writing privileges on Jeb's local bank account allowed Laney to keep things in good order and to pay herself the monthly remuneration he insisted on. Jeb worried that maintaining his place was too much work for someone who had her own house and a tearoom to look after, but Laney always shrugged that off. Unless she kept the house from becoming a burden to Jeb, he might sell it, and then his infrequent trips home might cease altogether.

If they hadn't already.

Still shivering, Laney pulled into the garage. Her cell phone rang, but the display showed an unfamiliar number, so she decided whoever it was could just wait until she got warm and dry.

She stepped out of the garage and automatically made a quick visual survey of the back of Jeb's house. Nothing seemed amiss—she'd cleaned up the broken glass and had the new window installed before leaving for work that morning—so she closed the garage and hurried toward the much smaller brick house next door.

Approaching the back steps, she heard the shrill ring of her kitchen phone. Her answering machine had died months ago, so this caller, too, would just have to try again later.

Inside, she plopped her handbag on a kitchen chair and toed off her muddy shoes. The phone's strident ringing continued, ramping up Laney's annoyance as she eased out of her cardigan and draped it over a wood peg by the door.

"Okay,
okay
!" She strode to the old wall phone and snatched the receiver. The movement caused a painful twinge in her shoulder, so she greeted the caller with a decidedly grumpy hello.

Three seconds of startled silence ended in a familiar masculine chuckle. The sound flowed over Laney like soft warm water, soothing her rumpled spirit and generating a relief so intense she had to close her eyes in order to bear it.

"Your telephone demeanor could use some polishing," Jeb suggested.

"Hello, stranger." She endeavored to match his light tone. "I was afraid you'd forgotten this number." Did he realize how long it had been since he'd called home?

"Telephones work both ways," he said. "You could call
me
."

"I hate to bother you." Shivering, Laney plucked at her blouse, pulling the clammy silk away from her skin. "I know how busy you are."

"Laney." Jeb's deep, smoky voice held a note of reproach. "I'm never too busy to talk to you."

She pressed her lips together, preventing a bitter retort from slipping past them. Had he even noticed how time and physical distance were eroding the extraordinary connection they shared?

Her gaze settled on an old snapshot of him that she'd anchored to her refrigerator with a magnet.

His face wasn't especially handsome. "Arresting" was the word Laney had settled on years ago when she'd first noticed how women followed him with their eyes. Part of the fascination was undoubtedly due to his being much taller than average and as lean as a greyhound. But his eyes were his most distinctive feature. Under a pair of harsh, inward-slanting brows the same espresso brown as his lanky hair, Jeb's perpetually narrowed, light gray eyes glinted like chips of polished steel.

"So how are you doing?" Laney asked.

"Not too bad." There was an unmistakable note of tension in his voice.

Laney made a wry face at his picture. Had she actually expected to get a real answer without having to dig for it?

"You sound stressed out," she said.

"I'm fine," he said, too quickly.

Laney just shook her head. He was as tightly strung as those guitars he loved so much, but he wasn't going to admit it.

If only he would come home. He was always reticent on the phone, but if he would just come home, she would stare into his eyes until his stubborn gaze faltered and he stopped insisting that he was "fine." He wasn't much of a talker, having learned as a child to suppress his emotions, so figuring out what was troubling him would be like working knots out of wet shoelaces. But Laney had been doing it for years.

She was still freezing, so she retrieved the damp sweater she had just hung up. As she poked her left arm into the sleeve, pain flashed through her shoulder and a small whimper escaped through her chattering teeth.

"What's wrong with
you
?" Jeb demanded.

"I'm shivering. It's cold and rainy outside, and I just walked in the door." Pushing her other arm into the sweater, Laney decided against mentioning that she was dripping wet and halfway to hypothermia.

"But you're all right." His anxious tone begged her to confirm that. "You're not sick or anything."

"I'm not sick, Jeb. Just cold. Where are you calling from?" The last time they'd spoken, he'd mentioned an upcoming concert tour.

"Florida," he said. "St. Peters— No, that was last night. I guess I'm in Jacksonville."

Laney had always wanted to go to Florida. Or anywhere.

"Is it nice?" She hugged herself and tried to warm up by imagining a sun-baked beach like the ones in the travel magazines her mom used to pore over.

"Jacksonville?" Somehow, Jeb's shrug was audible. "It's okay, I guess."

"I should know better than to ask an indifferent traveler like you," Laney said ruefully.

In addition to crisscrossing the U.S. more times than Laney could even recall, Jeb's band had toured Europe, Japan, South Africa, and Australia. But he'd never been much for sightseeing, and he hated going to sleep on a tour bus and waking up in a different town each morning. He tolerated the extensive travel only because he loved sharing his music with live audiences.

"This is the last night of the east coast tour," he said. "I'm supposed to be on stage right now, but
 
.
 
.
 
." He breathed a soft sigh into the phone. "Laney, I needed to hear your voice."

He
needed
? That was a startling confession from a man who was fanatically self-sufficient. In Jeb's mind, acknowledging any emotional need was tantamount to exposing his jugular vein to a vicious world.

His stubborn insistence that he didn't need anyone was an artifact of his troubled childhood. Jeb guarded his heart so aggressively that it was a wonder he and Laney had ever become friends.

There are monsters inside me,
he had confided in an awful whisper when he was eleven years old. He'd meant to frighten Laney, but that bleak pronouncement and the anguish darkening his silvery eyes had aroused her pity, instead. She'd soon begun to understand that the monsters terrorizing Jeb were the tangled emotions that stemmed from a horrifying event he'd been unable to process and move beyond.

Was he battling those old monsters tonight?

"I'm always here," Laney reminded him.

"I know." He paused. "Would you mind getting my piano tuned?"

"Jeb! Would I
mind
?" Laney bounced on the balls of her feet, not-minding with all of her heart. "How soon will you be here?"

"I'll catch a flight tomorrow. The band's heading back to L.A., but I need to come home."

There was that word again.
Need
. Worry eclipsed Laney's delight.

"Jeb, tell me what's wrong."

"It's nothing that seeing you won't fix." He spoke lightly, to stop her worrying, but then his voice deepened to a more serious tone. "It's been a long time, hasn't it, princess?"

If she'd needed proof that something was troubling him, that wistful utterance had just provided it. But she wasn't going to drag any explanations out of him tonight, not over the phone, so she moved on.

"Call me tomorrow and let me know when to expect you," she said. Thinking aloud, she added, "In the meantime, I'd better see about stocking your refrigerator."

"You don't have to do that."

"You pay me to take care of your house," she reminded him. "Preparing it for your occupancy is just part of the job." And even if it wasn't, this was the kind of favor best friends did for each other. "So if you've gone vegetarian or something, you'd better tell me now."

She'd been hoping to provoke a laugh, but she was satisfied when the quintessential meat-and-potatoes man emitted a derisive snort.

"Get plenty of bacon," he said. "And ham and roast beef for sandwiches."

Laney grinned. Some things never changed.

And some things did. Her smile slipped as she wondered again why Jeb had gone so long without calling to see if she was okay.

She wasn't okay. She hadn't been okay in a very long time. But whatever was wrong with Jeb and whatever had gone wrong between them, she'd find a way to fix it all when he came home. She'd breathe easier once she knew he was all right, and that would put her in a stronger position to attack her own problems.

Everything was going to be just fine.

"Hurry home," she said.

"Tomorrow," Jeb promised, and he ended the call.

Forgetting her chills and her aching shoulder, Laney bounded upstairs for some dry clothes. She'd call the piano tuner before it got any later, and then she'd hit the grocery store. After that, she'd put fresh soap and towels in Jeb's bathroom and make sure everything was perfect for his homecoming. She'd get him comfortably settled, and then she'd find out what was troubling him and help him deal with it.

If he gave her enough time. Jeb was as restless as the autumn wind, so he wouldn't stay long. He never did.

J
eb looked through a wall of glass at the small regional jet he was about to board for the first leg of his trip home and shook his head in disgust. His extra-long legs demanded First Class seating, but last-minute travelers didn't always have choices about those things. If he wanted to get home today, he'd have to shoehorn his six-foot, five-inch frame into one of the toy aircraft's tiny seats.

He just hoped he wouldn't get stuck in some super-advanced yoga position that would necessitate his removal from the plane by half a dozen firefighters armed with the Jaws of Life.

Carefully avoiding eye contact with the gate attendant, Jeb presented his boarding pass and strolled down the
jetway
to his plane. As he ducked through the door opening, a female flight attendant looked at him and gasped. Brushing past her before she blurted his name, Jeb tugged down the bill of his Minnesota Twins ball cap, shielding his face from curious stares as he bumped and excused his way to Row 11.

Like most musicians, Jeb craved live audiences because he fed off the energy they beamed toward the stage. But after the shows were over, he had no use for fans. Celebrity hampered his freedom.

He rarely gave interviews, so the media had labeled him reclusive, which made him even more sought after. But Jeb wasn't bashful. He was just a guy from Minnesota. And when Minnesota men weren't talking about the weather or their cars, they just weren't all that big on conversation.

As for the songs the critics called "brutally honest" and even "tortured," Jeb hated being asked where they came from and what they meant. Those answers
dwelled in the darkest reaches of his mind, and he wasn't about to go poking around in there and risk stirring up all kinds of awful memories just to satisfy the curiosity of strangers.

He found his row and wedged his backpack into the overhead bin, then squeezed past a woman and her squirming baby to claim the window seat. After hitching up his seatbelt, he reached for his cell phone and entered the number of the Three Graces Tearoom in Owatonna.

The call was answered by one of Laney's great-aunts, who said Laney was on another line booking a bridal shower tea. Jeb had no idea which of the Graces he was speaking to, but it hardly mattered because identical triplets Caroline, Aggie, and Millie were identically exasperating.

"Just tell Laney I called from the plane," he said. "I should be home by—" He stopped when he heard the familiar scuffle indicating one of the Graces was attempting to wrest control of the phone from her sister.

"Is this Jeb?" Grace Number Two asked breathlessly.

"Yeah," Jeb said. "Hi. Please tell Laney I'll be—"

"Well, how
ya
doing, Jeb? Pretty good, then?"

"Not too bad," he replied, slipping effortlessly into his old speech patterns. "Fine, thanks" might be an acceptable answer anywhere else, but that wasn't how a Minnesotan responded to a how-are-you question. Not unless he wanted people to wonder at his exuberance. "Tell Laney that if my connecting flight gets away on time, I should be home by six."