Jane's Harmony (Jane's Melody #2) (5 page)

I love you will never cross my lips

’Cause it isn’t ever really true.

And if you’d never said it, honey

I might not feel so blue.

The judges looked at one another and nodded. Jane closed her eyes and said a quick little prayer.

“I think I love this one,” the woman next to Jane said.

“I love him too,” Jane mumbled.

When Caleb finished, he let the guitar fall against his chest, suspended by the strap, and he clawed both his hands through his hair to pull it away from his eyes. Then he stared right at the judges with a sincere but stoic expression, looking to Jane like some sexy Roman warrior in the center of the Colosseum, gazing up to Caesar for his fate. The five thumbs came up from the judges and a huge smile erupted on Caleb’s face. Then the female judge on the end slowly turned her thumb down, and Jane heard herself shout, “No!”

The handler waved erratically at Jane to get her attention, holding a finger to his lips and signaling for her to keep quiet. When she looked back to the screen, the judges were arguing, and Caleb was standing there tight-lipped and gently nodding, as if he had expected it to go this way all along.

“Sorry, young man,” the middle judge finally said. “I think most of my fellow judges up here would agree that you have a unique style and an amazing voice. And you’re obviously a very talented songwriter too. But unfortunately, it has to be a unanimous decision. The answer for you is no.”

“Thank you for your time,” Caleb said. Then he walked off the stage with his shoulders pulled back and his head held high.

Jane was so heartbroken and so proud of him at the same time that she forgot they weren’t supposed to leave the viewing area until the last act in their group had performed. She rushed right through the yellow rope and knocked down the stanchions that held it up, ignoring the sound of them clattering on the floor behind her as she ran around to the stage exit and caught up to Caleb, then threw her arms around his neck and kissed him.

He was obviously embarrassed, because when she pulled her lips away to look at him, he just looked away sadly. “I forgot it was my birthday.”

“I know,” Jane said. “I forgot it too. I’m sorry. But Caleb, you did so great. I loved it. Everyone loved it. And don’t worry about that stupid bitter-beer-faced judge. She’s probably just upset because you reminded her of some guy who dumped her sorry ass in high school. Let’s get out of here and go celebrate.”

Caleb smiled and nodded, then took her hand as they walked toward the exit.

“You know what I wanna do?” he asked when they were midway across the auditorium. “For my birthday, I mean.”

“We can do anything, sweetie. Anything at all.”

“I wanna go to the water park.”

“The water park?”

“Yeah. My aunt used to take me on my birthday. I think there’s one in New Braunfels that’s supposed to have a six-story slide that you go doubles down.”

Jane squeezed his hand in hers. “You’re just a big adorable kid, aren’t you?”

“Hey,” he said. “I’m twenty-five.”

The thermometer in Jane’s car read 107 degrees when they arrived, and she believed it. After cooling off in the wave pool and making two trips around the lazy lagoon on the kiddie canoe, Jane finally plucked up the courage to tackle the six-story drop from the park’s highest slide, the one that Caleb had been itching to ride. The Black Knight, it was called.

Wearing their gift-shop bathing suits and surrounded by hundreds of laughing and screaming kids, they got in line and slowly climbed the steps.

“It really is high,” Jane said.

“You going chicken on me?” Caleb asked.

“No,” she said, crossing her arms. “I’m not chicken.”

A small boy, who couldn’t have been more than ten, turned around and looked at her with enormous eyes. “There’s nothing to be afraid of, lady,” he said with great authority. “My grandmother even did it.”

Jane’s jaw dropped, but the boy turned back around before she could respond. “Did he just compare me to his grandmother?”

Caleb at least attempted to contain his laughter, which Jane appreciated.

When they reached the platform at the top, Caleb took a two-person inner tube from the pile and led Jane to the launch line, where they stood looking down the mouth of the slide.

“Hold on a minute,” the man said. “Okay, now go.”

Jane panicked and stepped aside.

Caleb waved her back. “Oh, come on, baby. You can do it.”

Jane stood her ground and shook her head. She had always
been fearful of heights, and six stories up a rickety old waterslide counted as heights to her. She stood there for at least a full minute, refusing Caleb’s pleas to return to the slide, until the children in line grew restless and pressed forward, chanting, “Go, lady, go! Go, lady, go!”

“See,” Caleb said. “Even they want you to go.”

“I’m not taking orders from a bunch of kids,” Jane said.

The man working the slide laughed and shook his head. He’d seen this before. He pointed to a tiny girl anxiously waiting in line and called her forward. “Sweetie, would you show this nice lady how easy it is?”

The little girl grabbed an inner tube, stepped up, and launched herself down the slide without a moment’s pause. All Jane could see were her tiny legs and waving feet disappearing around the corner along with her happy scream.

Two more child demonstrations and a pep talk from Caleb later, and Jane was finally ready. She felt her heart thudding in her chest as Caleb counted down from ten. She decided to put her trust in him, and in the children, and in the engineers who had built this devil ride. When he said, “Go,” she dove with him—racing down into the blue blur, whipping around turns, rising and then dropping, faster now, steeper, and she felt the cool spray of water, the whoosh of air, and she heard her own cries of joy echoing in the tube behind them as they launched out into the air and landed in the pool with a splash.

She was clinging to Caleb’s shoulders and laughing when they surfaced.

“That wasn’t so bad, was it?” he asked, spitting water.

“Let’s go again!”

They rode the Black Knight six more times before Jane had had enough. Then they bought hamburgers and onion rings and an enormous strawberry milkshake each, and sat with them
in the cool shade of the gazebo, beneath the magic mist machine, and ate and laughed and watched the children playing in the pools just beyond.

“I’m sorry they didn’t have any birthday cake,” Jane said.

Caleb popped another fry into his mouth. “That’s okay. I think I’m getting fat.”

“Yeah, right,” she said. “You’re sitting down and I can still see your abs.”

He stood and inhaled deeply, sticking his belly out like a Buddha. Then he rubbed it against Jane’s cheek. “Does this make me look fat?”

“No,” she said, trying not to laugh and pushing his belly away from her face. “It makes you look pregnant.”

Caleb exhaled and dropped back into his chair. Then he looked at Jane with a mischievous smile on his face. “I’d like to see what you look like pregnant,” he said.

“Come on, Caleb. We already talked about this.”

“No. We already talked about how you don’t want to talk about it. But we never really talked about it. Don’t all these cute kids running around here make you want one?”

“No,” Jane said. “They maybe make me want to have a friend with kids. You think it’s easy, but it isn’t. It’s hard work raising a child. You have no idea.”

“But you were alone when you raised Melody. You’re not alone anymore, Jane.”

The very mention of Melody’s name brought tears to Jane’s eyes. She felt silly about it, embarrassed even. As if she should be over it by now. But she would never be over it, and maybe only a grieving mother could understand that. She turned away so Caleb wouldn’t see her crying, and she watched a little girl feeding ice cream to her younger brother.

Caleb leaned forward and took her hands in his, waiting for
her to look back at him. When she did, there was nothing but love and understanding in his green eyes.

“I know it still hurts, baby,” he said. “And I won’t ask you to talk about it. But I want you to know that I’m here to listen if you ever do want to talk. All right? I’m a good listener.”

“I know you are,” she told him, nodding.

He smiled. “I promise I won’t mention kids again, okay?”

Jane reached and placed her hand on his sweet cheek. The sounds of the children faded to just a beautiful murmur, and she and Caleb sat like that for several quiet moments—she with a hand on his warm cheek, he smiling at her with his kind eyes—and she knew that if she ever did want to have another child again, it would be with him. She wanted to tell him so, but the silence seemed too perfect to spoil with words.

When the moment had passed, the noise faded back in and Jane returned her gaze to the kids playing in the pool. She picked up her milkshake and polished it off.

“Just so you know,” she tossed out, “if you ever do want to bring up us having a kid again, mister, then you had better start planning a wedding.”

The sun had set by the time they finally left the water park, and Jane stretched her legs out and relaxed into the passenger seat, thankful that Caleb had offered to drive.

Her muscles ached in that wonderful summer way; her skin was flushed and pink and warm. The smell of chlorine in her hair took her back and reminded her of some fleeting time when she’d been sixteen or seventeen and everything that lay ahead of her had yet been empty road, limited only by her imagination, all the endless possible futures, and where that road might lead. She glanced over at Caleb. He was looking ahead and lost in his
own thoughts. For the first time in my life, she mused, I don’t think I’d go back. She wouldn’t risk one wrong turn that might lead her somewhere other than here. Here now with him.

She rested her head back and turned to look out the side window at the dark hills and the silhouettes of cedar trees sliding past. She must have napped, because her phone vibrating against her makeup compact in her purse startled her awake. Caleb had the radio playing softly, and the sky was darker, with a crescent moon riding now just above the hills. She reached in and fished her phone from her purse. The bright light of its screen momentarily blinded her, and then her eyes adjusted and she read the first line of the e-mail she had just received.

Caleb slammed on the brakes when she screamed. He held out his arm to keep her in her seat, a gesture Jane would have thought only mothers did instinctively.

“Is everything okay?” he asked.

“You made it!” Jane shouted. “Oh my God, you made it.”

“What do you mean?”

“I just got the e-mail. You made the show, Caleb! You’re going to Los Angeles, you superstar you.”

“Let me see that,” he said.

“You had just better look at the road and drive, buddy. I need you to live long enough so I can cash in on all your newfound wealth and fame.”

“Then you read it to me,” he said, obviously excited.

“Only if you promise to make love to me as soon as we get home,” she replied, clutching the phone to her breast.

He put the blinker on and drifted onto the shoulder.

“Hey, what are you doing?”

“I’m pulling over.”

“But why are you pulling over?”

“So I can read the e-mail myself, and then make love to you right here in the car.”

Chapter 5

I
thought I told you I fired him for drinking on the job.”

Mr. Zigler had moved his chair down from the beer truck and was reclining in the shade just beneath the open warehouse door. As Jane approached, he reached and turned off his radio, then picked up a spray bottle and misted himself.

“What happened to paradise?” Jane asked, nodding toward the truck in the parking lot.

“Shit,” he said, “this is too hot even for me. And my wife’s worried I’m getting skin cancer. Says she doesn’t want me to die. Which surprised the hell out of me, because I thought she’d been trying to poison me with her cooking all these years.”

“I didn’t know you were married,” Jane said.

“Hell, neither did I for the first few years. That turned out to be a problem. But seriously, we’ve been hitched now thirty-two years and there’s nobody on God’s good earth I’d rather come home to. Speaking of which, when are you and Caleb tying the knot?”

“Oh, I don’t know. We’ve talked about it a lot, but it’s hard to plan anything with this L.A. music show coming up. That’s kind of all we have time to think about right now.”

Mr. Zigler nodded. “I’m sure gonna miss that kid around here. He’s a good worker, and it’ll take me two guys to replace him. But I knew when I hired him on it’d be temporary. I’ve got a few guys here who’ve been with me better’n ten-plus years. But Caleb’s meant for bigger things. You can see it in his eyes. You just can. When do y’all leave?”

“He leaves next Tuesday.”

“You’re not going with him?”

Jane shook her head. “He wants me to, but I can’t.”

Mr. Zigler raised his eyebrows, as if to ask why not.

“It’s just . . . well, I’ve got to find work. They’re covering his expenses but they don’t pay him anything. Not unless he makes it through this first round of eliminations and onto the live show. They pay him then. That’s why he’s been working all this overtime with you. But anyway, you don’t care about all this. Is he in the back?”

Mr. Zigler turned in his chair and looked back into the warehouse, as if to check. “I think he’s out with Brad doing deliveries all afternoon. Bars are stocking up for Hot Austin Nights.”

Jane saw him eyeing the sack in her hand. She smiled and handed it to him, saying, “There are two sandwiches in there. I expect Caleb to get at least one of them when he gets back.”

He smiled guiltily and took the sack. Jane heard the crinkle of a bag opening as she walked back to her car.

“And one of the bags of chips is for him too,” she called to him over her shoulder.

Jane woke before Caleb and lay in bed, looking up at the egg cartons on the ceiling and listening to the waves from her sound machine. It dawned on her that this was their last weekend together before he left.

Weekends were her favorite because Caleb usually didn’t have to work, and she didn’t have to feel guilty about not job hunting. It was their uninterrupted time to spend together—walking Lady Bird Lake, seeing matinee movies, or even just staying in bed all day and making love. Some nights, if Caleb didn’t have a gig, she’d go out with him into the street and sit nearby with her arms wrapped around her knees and listen to him play for tips. He said he did it mostly just for inspiration,
but it was always fun to go spend the money in his guitar case on a late-night ice cream cone or an early breakfast at an all-night diner. Jane wondered what she’d do to fill the time when he was gone.

She unplugged her sound machine and took it with her into the bathroom for her ritual Saturday-morning shower. She lit a vanilla candle, turned on the shower, and looked at her reflection in the mirror. Faint stretch marks from when she had been pregnant with Melody remained on her belly. She remembered how frightened and abandoned she had felt when Melody’s father had taken off and left her to deal with her pregnancy alone, just shortly after she had begun to show. These feelings had lain dormant for many years, and she guessed that Caleb’s leaving was bringing them back up. But she knew Caleb was different. Oh, so very different. But she also knew that although she had accepted her stretch marks long ago, she wasn’t ready yet to face the other scars that remained unseen beneath the surface.

Jane opened the cabinet and removed her ingredients. Next, she took out the small mixing bowl and the whisk. She uncapped the coconut oil and poured it into the bowl. Then she added sugar and the used coffee grounds she saved every day. She whisked this odd mixture into a sticky brown sludge and then used her fingers to smear it all over her naked body. She was almost completely covered in the strange concoction, crouched and rubbing it onto her calves, when the bathroom door opened.

“Hey, babe, you mind if I . . . ah . . . sorry.”

“Caleb! Don’t you know how to knock?”

He had his hand covering his mouth, and she could tell he was trying not to laugh. “Sorry, babe. I heard the shower and just assumed you were in there. I have to pee.”

“Well, go pee somewhere else.”

“But this is the only bathroom.”

“You’re telling me?” she asked, standing there exposed, wearing only her coffee rub.

He smiled and slowly backed from the bathroom. He had the door nearly shut when he opened it again and leaned in. She could see the question on his lips before he even asked it.

“I saw it on
Dr. Oz
,” she said. “Now get out!”

He had made them both a big breakfast by the time she joined him in the kitchen. An apology of sorts, she assumed. She didn’t say a word as she pulled a stool up to the small bar that they used for their table and waited for him to serve her. He laid everything out and then sat down and joined her.

“I thought you had to use the bathroom,” she said.

“Oh, I did, but I peed already in the sink.”

She slugged him on the shoulder. “Caleb! Tell me you didn’t.”

“Okay, I didn’t.”

“Did you, though? Because that’s a deal breaker if you did.”

He laughed. “Of course I didn’t. I ran downstairs to the convenience store. Here, I got you some oranges too, because he wouldn’t let me use the restroom unless I bought something.”

“How romantic of you,” she said sarcastically. “Did you brew coffee?”

“I did. Would you like some?”

“Yes, please.”

“Okay, but only if you promise to drink it and not wear it.”

He burst out laughing at his own joke, and Jane shoved him so hard he fell off his stool.

“You set me up for that, you jerk.”

He picked himself off the floor, still laughing, and poured them each a cup of coffee. “Seriously, though,” he said, setting her coffee in front of her, “how was the Dr. Oz skin treatment?”

Jane buttered a piece of toast, still refusing to make eye con
tact with him. “Fine,” she said. “He claims it only takes seven minutes, but he doesn’t say anything about the thirty-seven minutes it takes to clean the shower after.”

“But does it work?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I can’t tell yet.”

Caleb moved around behind her and leaned in to brush his lips against her neck. “Let me have a look,” he said softly. “Maybe I can tell.”

Jane tried to ignore him, still buttering her toast.

“Mmm . . .” he said, kissing his way around her neck. “Still not sure, though. Maybe I need a better look. Maybe here. Oh, yes. I think this Dr. Oz of yours must be a real genius. I can’t remember ever seeing skin so smooth.”

“I didn’t put it on my ear, you goofball.”

“How about here? I know you put it here.”

His lips moved down to her collarbone, and she could feel his thick hair drop into her shirt and tickle her bare chest. The butter was an inch thick on the toast by this time, and Jane set it down along with the knife and leaned her head back.

“I was wondering if it worked a little lower,” she said.

Caleb spun her around on her stool to face him. Then he kissed her. When his lips left hers, he moved lower, pulling the loose T-shirt down and flicking his tongue over her nipple.

“Maybe here?” he asked.

“Yes, maybe right there.”

“I wonder if this magic potion works everywhere,” he said, moving his mouth to her other breast. “Maybe I need to inspect you thoroughly so we can give this TV doctor of yours an honest appraisal.”

“Maybe you’re all talk,” Jane said.

Caleb lifted her shirt over her head, and Jane reflexively raised her arms. He tossed the shirt aside, then cupped his hands beneath
her chin and leaned in and kissed her, and soon all she could think about was him. His sexy smile; his haunted eyes. His lips. His body. Oh, dear Lord, his body. And those hands. Hands that did a real man’s work. Hands that made music. Hands that made love to her. Hands that were right now tugging on her shorts.

“What are you doing?” she asked, her voice trembling.

But he pressed a finger to her lips to silence her. Then he continued to pull her shorts free. She lifted herself off the stool slightly to help him, and when she straightened her knees he slipped them free. They landed on the floor next to her shirt. He stood back a moment and looked at her in the light slanting in from the partially drawn curtains. Any other man and she would have been uncomfortable sitting naked on that stool. Not so with Caleb. The way he looked at her, with desire and appreciation in his eyes, made her feel like some kind of prize that he would spend his entire life winning again and again.

He pulled his own shirt off and tossed it down with hers. His skin was golden in the morning light. She could see the striations of muscle between his ribs, the cut of his obliques. Then he pulled his shorts off and stepped out of them. His thighs were long and strong, and she could see between them that he was already swollen for her with his need.

She wanted him on the bed now, and she started to rise from the stool. But he shook his head and stepped toward her and forced her back down. Then he bent and kissed her gently, and when he pulled his mouth away, he dropped down onto his knees before her. She felt his tongue on her inner thigh, his thick hair there too. Then she slid forward on the stool and parted her legs to make room for him to come closer, and she shuddered with pleasure when he did—his tongue now teasing her. He wrapped his arms under her legs and around to grip her thighs, then pulled them apart, working his talented mouth
there between them. She opened her eyes and looked down on him, kneeling before her, lost in the intricate details of her most intimate flesh, and she felt for a moment on that stool like a queen on her throne with the world taut and trembling before her, and all her kingdom safe between her legs.

She buried her hands in his thick hair and pulled him up to her mouth. Not because she’d had enough, but because she needed more. He tasted sweet and salty and it drove her mad with desire. He was standing before her now and the stool was high and their waists were at the perfect height. She wrapped her hand around him and felt him pulsing in her grip. Then she reached behind him with her other hand and gripped his ass, pulling him toward her, guiding him to where she needed more than anything else for him to be.

He moaned as soon as he was inside her and so did she. He was gentle and rhythmic at first, but his tempo quickly built. Jane reclined against the short back of the stool and looked down and watched—his quads were flexed, his abs were tightened, and he was hard and long and disappearing inside her with each thrust.

“Fuck, yes,” she said. “Just like that.”

She felt herself blushing because she never spoke like that. But then Caleb smiled.

“You like that, baby?” he asked. “You want me to fuck you like this?”

“Yes, please. Yes.”

He grabbed her thighs and spread her legs farther and drove himself deeper, thrusting like a man in need of relief. She knew she was close when she began to feel weightless and every nerve in her body seemed to scream with pleasure. Then he was driving into her harder and the stool was wobbling and Jane reached her arms out and spread them on the counter behind her, push
ing their breakfast aside, and she leaned back on the stool with her arms spread and her legs spread and Caleb rising between her, his chest slick already with sweat, his mouth half-open and moaning, and they looked into each other’s eyes and fucked until she heard herself scream—

“Oh God, yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Don’t. Stop. Now.”

And then pleasure flooded over her like light and she was speechless and shaking and Caleb must have felt it because he came too. The stool had half tipped, so Caleb lifted her and kicked the stool over, then gently laid her on the floor, their legs and arms tangled and him still inside her. When Jane’s heart stopped thudding in her ear, she heard the neighbor pounding on their bedroom wall, her dog barking in the background.

“That woman needs to get laid,” Caleb said breathlessly.

“If it’ll shut that damn dog up,” Jane joked, “then I say you go do it.”

“I’ll have to do it later, you wore me out.”

“Don’t you dare, mister,” Jane said, kissing him. Then she wrapped her arms around him. “You’re all mine.”

He scooted slightly on his back, and Jane rested her head on his chest and lay quiet for a minute or so.