Regrets Only (18 page)

No,
no, no,
she said
to the Dylan in her head.
This is inappropriate. You’re a client and I won’t
think of you that way. Go away.
She willed herself to concentrate on
Yvette, to hear the words she was saying. “…didn’t think you would mind staying
with me out in the guest house. I hate to intrude on the kids’ fun, don’t you?
It’s very roomy and at least we won’t be kept awake at all hours.”

She
returned to reality as the implication of Yvette’s words registered. The chipmunk-like
little manager considered herself and Suzanne peers, while Dylan and his band
mates and friends were a younger generation.
But I’m barely thirty-three
,
she wanted to protest, realizing that this would have been incredibly offensive
to Yvette if she said it out loud.

“I
know Dylan wants to see you,” Yvette said, “so we’ll just stop in down there
first and I’ll have someone get your bags to the guesthouse. Okay?”

“You
have servants here?” Suzanne asked. It felt as if she was in a Jane Austen
novel.

The
response was a high-pitched, nasal laugh that Suzanne had learned meant Yvette
thought you were an idiot. “Of course not, don’t be silly. We have a cleaning
service, of course, but no. Dylan’s road manager is here, though, and he’s very
nice. Considering his job is getting thousands of pounds of equipment from one
place to the next every night, I thought maybe he could handle your little
bags.”

“Right,
of course. Sorry.”

Yvette
opened the door to return inside and then turned back, leaning close to Suzanne
and whispering confidentially, “Just don’t tip him, okay? I’m sure that’s what
you’re
used to, but he would find that insulting.”

Suzanne
supposed she deserved that one. She nodded obediently, resisting the urge to
respond, and followed Yvette back through the den and down the stairs to…Guy
Heaven.

Nearly
as big as either of the other stories, the basement had a bar area, pool table,
workout room, rehearsal space, and even a small recording studio. More couches
and overstuffed chairs were scattered about, plus four or five flat-screen TVs.
Sliding glass doors opened out to a shady concrete patio beneath part of the
huge deck upstairs. On one half of the patio there was a large grill and two
wooden picnic tables. On the other was a screened-in porch housing a ten-person
hot tub, with a sliding window so that someone at the bar in the main room
could hand drinks directly out to the soakers. No wonder Dylan came here as often
as he could.

Yvette
led Suzanne around, poking her head into various rooms, but they did not find
Dylan. The rest of the band were playing around in the rehearsal space, with a few
girls Suzanne didn’t recognize looking on and giggling wildly as the guys
changed the lyrics of popular songs to raunchy parodies. Three or four other guys
were playing video games in the main living area, and Suzanne noticed that at
least two of them had cups of spit-out dipped tobacco.
Ugh. Disgusting.

In
the workout room, one of Dylan’s sisters was on the treadmill, yelling at
someone on her Bluetooth headset. They found the other outside in the hot tub,
with the guy Suzanne recognized as her date at the museum, and of course, Misty.
All three were drinking the same kind of beer Dylan had brought out of the
kitchen earlier, and there was a fourth bottle on the ledge near Misty.

“Hi,
Sherrie. Seen him?” Yvette asked.
So Amber was the one in the workout room
,
Suzanne noted to herself.

Sherrie
shook her head just as the guy next to her dived elaborately between her
floating breasts and nuzzled wildly. “Roger!” she squealed. “Stop, my bathing
suit is coming off!” Although most people who faced this unfortunate situation
would probably duck back into the water to hide themselves, Sherrie apparently
thought the best remedy was to
stand and hop
away from Roger toward the
side of the hot tub nearest the house, holding her useless bathing suit top in
her hands as she did.

Suzanne
glanced and saw that the guys inside had paused the video game to watch this
little production with wide grins. When Sherrie took refuge from Roger by
wedging herself behind Misty, using the petite blonde’s enormous breasts as a
shield from him, the guys inside forgot about their game entirely and began
nudging one another and pointing.

Maybe
Yvette is right. Maybe I am too old for this.

With
an almost imperceptible eye roll, Yvette retreated from the porch and Suzanne
followed. “Kids,” she muttered. “Well, at least I can show you your room, and
we’ll come back for him.”

That,
however, turned out not to be necessary, because they were halfway down the
stone path to the cottage when they ran smack into Dylan. Suzanne noted he was
not in wet swim trunks, but still wearing the jeans and Ramones shirt she had
seen him in earlier.

“There
you are,” he said to Suzanne. “I’ve been looking for you.”

“
We’ve
been looking for
you
,” Yvette put in cheerily. “I gave Suzanne the tour,
so she’s ready for whatever you need from her.”

The
three of them stood awkwardly on the path for a moment, until Dylan reached for
Suzanne’s elbow. “Let’s go sit down.”

Yvette
moved to follow them toward the cottage, and Dylan stopped her. “Could you wait
for us in the main house, please, Yvette? This is confidential.”

She
looked surprised, but said nothing and returned toward the sound of splashing
and giggling in the hot tub. Dylan guided Suzanne down the path and she
wondered whether he were going to take her into the cottage and show her the
guest room himself. Against all reason, her heart pounded wildly at the thought
of being alone with him in a remote cottage in the woods.
Pull yourself
together, Suze.

But
these ponderings were irrelevant, because Dylan stopped at a little clearing
about two-thirds of the way to the cottage and sat on a large, flat piece of
granite. He motioned for her to join him. “Okay, this is totally on the down
low,” he said softly, “but there’s something I need to add to the wedding
plans.”

The
wedding plans. Of course. You imbecile.

“Kate
asked me to sing,” he began. “But obviously I can’t do that.”

“Why
not?” Suzanne asked.

“No
way,” Dylan said, shaking his head. “Too emotional. I’ll cry like a little
girl. It’ll sound awful. But I want to surprise her with something else.”

“You
two are really close, aren’t you?”

He
looked at her for a moment, surprised by the question. “Well, yeah. I mean, I love
all my sisters, of course, but Kate…Kate is special to me. We’ve always been
the closest of the siblings. She’s the best person I know. Definitely the best
person in my hillbilly family.”

Suzanne
blushed. Even a joking reference to their first encounter still made her feel ashamed.
She started to say something but he stopped her with a hand on the arm. “Relax,
Scarlett. I’m just giving you shit. I think you can be done apologizing for
that now.”

He
was grinning at her. “Anyway, the thing I need your help with is that I’ve
arranged for Pat Green to be here and sing to Kate and Jeff as a surprise.
Kate’s a huge fan, and he’s a friend of mine. Anyway, I can get him here and I
have a place lined up for him to stay, but I need your help figuring out how to
include him in the wedding without ruining the surprise.”

She
could see that he was trying to contain his excitement, like a little kid with
a secret. It was endearing. Just then there was a feminine squeal from the
house beyond, followed by a loud crash and the sound of breaking glass. “
Idiots,
”
he muttered, getting up. “I’d better go see what that was. Thanks, Scarlett.”

Suzanne
decided settling in to the guesthouse was more appealing than watching whatever
drama was happening up the hill unfold. She continued down the path and went
in. The house was simple and quaint, particularly compared with the luxury
resort above. Two bedrooms with spartan furniture flanked a tiny kitchen and a
modest living area. Yvette’s room was the one closest to the house, easy to
spot because of the crowded desk in the corner, overflowing with paper. Suzanne
found her bag at the foot of the bed in the other room, which was cool and
shaded by the surrounding pine trees. The quilt underneath was clean and soft,
and she collapsed into it face-first, suddenly exhausted.

She
awoke in pitch black. It took a few moments to figure out where she was, with
no moonlight coming through the window. Someone, presumably Yvette, had covered
her with a blanket. Otherwise, she was exactly as she’d been in the afternoon,
except ravenously hungry. She fumbled for her cell phone and saw that it was
1:30 a.m.
How had she slept so long?
Her recently-healed arm ached from
being in the same position for several hours. She rubbed it absently and padded
out to the tiny kitchen, trying to be as quiet as possible.

She
found nothing in the fridge except a few ancient condiments and Yvette’s weight
loss shakes. Suzanne debated briefly whether she could simply go back to sleep
hungry, and then exited the cottage as quietly as she could and made her way up
to the main house. The lights were still on downstairs, and strains of rock
music contrasted with the peaceful wilderness night. She could smell charcoal
and cigar smoke.

As
she got close to the house, she could see the silhouette of a couple alone in
the hot tub, locked in what had apparently gone beyond a simple embrace. As she
passed the screened area, she heard soft moans from the water but didn’t dare
look more closely to figure out who it was.

The
main room of the basement was complete disorder. Plastic cups were everywhere,
along with greasy paper plates and wadded up napkins. Sherrie and Amber were
singing inebriated karaoke while one of Dylan’s friends recorded them with his
phone.
That
would be on YouTube by morning. A few of the girls who’d
been admiring the band earlier were now cheering on the singing sisters, while
a couple of others were passed out in various states of dishevel on the
couches. Two of Dylan’s band mates were in the rehearsal room, playing guitar
with surprising sobriety. She noticed one of them wore a gold wedding band, and
wondered what it must be like to be married to one of these guys.

No
one seemed to notice her as she picked her way to the stairway and up to the
den on the main floor. This was where the cigar smoke originated. Several large
windows were open to the night air as Dylan and four other guys sat around a
folding table in the middle of the den playing poker. Not wanting to disturb
them, she crept around the back of the room to the kitchen. She had nearly made
it when Dylan’s voice called out, “Miss Scarlett, in the kitchen, with a
butcher knife.”

She
stopped and turned toward the poker table, putting on her best gracious smile.
“Good evening, everyone.”

“Good
evening,” one of the guys echoed back at her, with exaggerated affectation. He
made a ridiculous bow to the friend next to him with a flourish of his hand.

The
guy next to him joined in, laughing, “I trust this night finds you well, sir?
Do you have any Grey Poupon?” For the hundredth time since she’d met Dylan
Burke, Suzanne felt her cheeks get hot.

“Don’t
pay any attention to them, Miss Hamilton,” said a man Suzanne recognized as
Dylan’s drummer. “They’re just being assholes because I’ve taken all their
money tonight.”

Suzanne
smiled at him. Dylan, who had not looked up from his cards, said, “There’s a
plate in the fridge for you. Hope you like chicken wings, because it’s either
that or Pop Tarts.”

She
was so hungry, wings
and
Pop Tarts sounded heavenly. She realized she
had skipped lunch on the drive up and slept through dinner. “Thanks,” she said.

“Don’t
thank me. Kate’s the one who made a plate for you. But if you like the wings, I
grilled them myself.”

“And
if I don’t like them?”

“Then
Eddie made them.”

“Hey,”
Dylan’s drummer retorted, “don’t go blaming your culinary disasters on me. I’m
a vegetarian.”

Suzanne
left the room to a chorus of the guys ribbing Eddie for being vegetarian, which
was apparently the next best thing to wearing high heels and garters as far as
they were concerned. She went to the kitchen and found a large plate with
several chicken wings, potato salad, baked beans, and a roll, all set out
neatly beneath plastic wrap. She saw the sticky note on top with “Suzanne”
written in neat, feminine script. Suzanne sent a silent murmur of thanks up to
the ceiling to Kate, who she hoped was sleeping comfortably.

She
popped the plate in the microwave for a few seconds and sat at the table to
eat, losing herself in the simple joy of satisfying hunger. It was not long,
however, before Dylan called to her. “Hey Scarlett, no need to be antisocial. I
know this ain’t the country club you’re used to, but we don’t bite in here.”

“Unless
you want us to,” called the Grey Poupon guy. A loud thud was followed by, “Ow!
Shit, Dylan, that hurt.”

She
picked up her plate, hesitated for a second, and then retrieved a beer from the
fridge.
When in Rome.
She settled onto the chair she’d seen Kate in
earlier in the day and finished her dinner, watching the five of them play. Eddie
won the next hand, and spent several minutes taunting the others while Dylan
went to the kitchen for more beer.