Sweet Seduction Serenade (5 page)

Evenings had consisted of practice runs at Sweet Seduction after Dad had conked out in bed, which was becoming earlier and earlier with each passing day. I felt a multitude of conflicting emotions leaving him each night. What if he passed away while I wasn't there? What if he woke up and tried to get out of bed and ended up on the floor with a broken hip, no one to hear him cry out in pain? What if his morning explosions became evening explosions and he had to wallow in his own mess until I came home at midnight or there about?

It was hard leaving him, but for three months he'd had a routine that never altered. For the first two I'd waited and waited for a sign that things would change. The last month, I'd been sneaking out and coming home to a sound asleep father, snug in his clean bed.

The guys in the band new my Dad was sick, but not how bad. Their answer to my mental moments of letting them see my worry, was that I needed to have a life. I wanted to tell them that my life would go on once he died, but until then, as his daughter, it was my duty to live my life around
him
.

But I needed music. I needed Country. Being home and in the same house as my father was driving me insane. It was worse than when I was a kid and I'd escape my mother's antics every night after dark. It was ten times worse than that. I prayed to God that He'd understand my selfish motives, that He'd forgive me my moment of recklessness, leaving a dying man to fend for himself at night for three hours.

Every time I opened the door to the flat after returning from Sweet Seduction my stomach would be tied in guilty knots. And every time so far he was sound asleep and perfectly OK.

The performances at Sweet Seduction had been my haven. The band my dream come true. We had a blast. Sometimes with Gen or Kelly present, sometimes Jane or Karla or another Sweet Seduction guy named Lucas. Often Adam's mates were there, but for some reason not him. Twice Gen's brother Jason turned up, but on both occasions he seemed more interested in a dark haired movie-star woman, than us. And not once Nick, Gen's fiancé and my sexy-but-no-good ghost from the past.

For that I was thankful and also annoyingly hurt. I was such a horrible memory from his past that he couldn't even watch me perform. I deserved nothing better. One night of passion in his arms did not make me special. Nick would have had his fair few of those. I was nothing new or memorable.

He on the other hand was. Try as I might to not think of that night, seeing him again and knowing he was Gen's and never could be mine, brought it all back in vivid technicolour, surround sound imagery in my mind. The way his soft, talented fingers felt against my skin. How his short dark hair, cut like he belonged in the military, was impossible to ignore, my hands finding their way into the strands without any conscious thought. How his ice-blue eyes held mine while he moved so slowly, so seductively inside me. Those eyes burning themselves inside my brain. For years afterwards, his were the eyes I saw when I closed mine whilst in someone else's arms.

Hell, if I was honest, for years afterwards that night was the standard by which all others were measured. And they always came up short. He'd taken me fast and hard the first time, as though he'd not been able to help himself, or control himself when he finally had me in his arms. The three times after that were more leisurely. His determination to taste every inch of me driving him on for hours, by the time we stopped, the sun cresting the horizon outside of his bedroom window, I was spent.

I crawled out of bed while he slept - just as exhausted and sated as me - looked down at the ground for a moment and realised to my shock, that my heart was gone. No longer there. I knew I'd never feel the same way about someone else ever again.

I'm not one to believe in love at first sight, and if I'm honest with Nick it was more lust at first sight that led me to his bed that night, but by the time I left it, there was no doubt I was in love. His laughter during sex, the way he said "fuck" when he came as though no one had ever made him orgasm so violently before. The way he worshipped my body with his, the soft words he murmured when we lay in each other's arms afterwards. His talk of all the places he wanted to visit, his assumption I'd be right there by his side. It was all words, designed to get me underneath him, or wrapped around him, or on top of him, again. But he'd treated me as though I was his angel, his own personal angel, that night. Someone to treasure and protect and keep forever.

Even if I didn't believe him, he'd done enough to make me realise that was the type of man I wanted. Someone big and strong and sure of themselves. Someone with a sense of humour, a wicked laugh and a sexy grin. And ice-blue eyes. My perfect cowboy.

I've never met a cowboy like him since and he didn't even wear a hat. But Nicholas Anscombe is cowboy through and through.

But he's not my cowboy.

I hated that he'd come back into my life so abruptly, right when I was down. Far from home and my support network. Suffering the last moments of an angry, hurtful man's life who despite never loving me, I loved back. I hated him for moving on to beautiful, charismatic, gorgeous Genevieve Cain. Who deserved a cowboy like Nick.

And I hated myself for still loving him and knowing no man would ever reach the standard he had set. That beautiful night, so long ago.

The sooner I returned the better, but despite Dad's declining appetite, despite his constant weight loss, he was still hanging on like clingfilm at a picnic.

So I sang. The house and shed were still keeping me busy during the day, even though the garbage truck had taken a full load twice from the backyard. But the place was cleaner, there was more space and less things to do. Dad, although clearly fading, didn't require much more than cleaning up in the morning, feeding and showering during the day, and being tucked up in bed after his meds at night. It was exhausting work, but even that didn't stop me from singing.

If I didn't have my MP3 player in my ears, singing along to a Country tune while I worked, I'd pull my guitar out and strum a few chords for Dad. Often he'd fall asleep on the couch listening to my music. I made sure to play him my original work. It's not that I was looking for his approval. But when he was gone, there'd be no other chance to show him what he'd had a part in creating. My father is a no-hoper, a skank-loving, trailer-trash of a Dad, but half of what makes me is from him. Before he dies, I want him to see what I have done with what he's given me. He may not have given me love or his time, but I did get my voice from him.

On Wednesday afternoon, sitting in the week winter sun out in the backyard, I sang him my latest song. About a girl who left her hometown for the lights of the big smoke overseas, dreams on her mind, hope in her chest, but who inadvertently left her heart behind without even knowing it. Through the rough times of trying, the knock-backs and far few breaks, she never realised what she'd left all those miles back. It could have been about her family, her friends, or it could have been about a boy. It
was
autobiographical, so you can tell where I got my influence from.

The neighbours came out and listened, my Dad had his eyes closed and head tipped down, so I wasn't sure if he even heard the words or not. It didn't matter, I'd sung it to him. That was all that counted in the end. When I finished I went on to some covers, because the oldies in the council flats next door needed to hear something they recognised. Willie Nelson's
Always on my Mind
, Waylon Jennings'
I've Always Been Crazy
and a little Kenny Rogers, because every oldie loves them some Kenny. My personal favourite,
The Gambler
.

It was at the end of this impromptu solo concert in the backyard of Dad's council flat, five other council flats bordering onto the same broken fenced, dirt patched, lawn, that my cousins decided to visit. They would have heard the last few lines of
The Gambler
, they would have listened to the oldies cheering and clapping for more. They would have spotted Dad in his wheelchair, soaking up the sun, resting his chin down on his chest.

They didn't give a toss. All five of them stomped in, kicked over some carefully placed boxes of crap around the side of the flat - making at least another hour's worth of clean-up for me - laughing their heads off at the "country-bumpkin too big for her cowgirl boots and her expensive-arse guitar."

My immediate thought was they were going to beat the shit out of me. That's what they'd done when I was a kid, when they'd find me down in the far corner of the Reserve near our homes, strumming my third- or fourth-hand guitar to the birds in the trees. My next was they were going to scare the living daylights out of the oldies, causing a few minor heart attacks along the way, but the oldies scattered in the wind, having obviously borne witness to the Russell boys' visits before. My third and final thought before they made it fully into the backyard, taking up every available inch of space, dwarfing my Dad and me as we sat in the centre of the yard - Dad in his wheelchair and me on a stool from the kitchen - was they were going to hurt my Dad. He was in enough pain without having to face off against Aunty Jessie's ill-mannered, sloth-like, trailer-trash brutes of sons.

I stood up, swinging my guitar behind my shoulder, so it hung down my back and started to manoeuvre Dad's chair towards the door of the flat.

"Not so fast, Hoity-Toity," Levi shouted from the front of the group. He'd always been the ring-leader, never got his hands dirty, but sure as darn hell told the others what to do.

"Levi," I said uncertainly. "What ya doing here?"

"Come to see what Mum's been fussing about. Said you'd blown into town to get your stinking hands on his money." His head cocked towards Dad on those last few words.

"Dad doesn't have any money, Levi. If he did, do you think he'd be living in a council flat?" I couldn't help it, Levi always made me feisty as all get-out.

"Still too big for your fucking boots, ain't ya," Tyler snarled from behind his bigger brother's shoulders. Not that any of the Russell boys were small, they all ate their fair share of Auckland's fast food chains' menus. But Levi was the biggest and nastiest of the lot.

No matter what anyone says, I always feel like you've got to keep your eye on the one without the bloody knuckles. At least with the others, you know what to expect, with Levi it was always a game of chance. Dependent on his mood.

"So, ya write ya will out to her, Uncle Ray?" Levi asked my Dad, who had woken up with all the fuss and the movement of his chair.

"You boys go home now, you hear?" Dad said and for a moment I wanted to believe he was saying it for me. To be the father that he had never been. To protect me from the bullies in the world.

But I knew it wasn't. He didn't want Aunty Jessie knowing all his money was going to Gabe. He wanted her to keep visiting him. For some reason he needed that contact with his sister, right up to the very end. Facing death does strange things to a man. Dad couldn't stare St Peter in the face without his sister for moral support.

"Mum's not too happy with you lot," Tyler added and the rest of the bullies nodded their heads enthusiastically.

"But she ain't real happy with cowboy boots here," Bailey threw in, his beady eyes glaring at me from under a backward baseball cap. I held his stare, held my ground, and waited for him to be the first to look away. Maybe that's why they hated me so much, because no matter what they did, no matter how many times they pushed my face in the dirt, I always stood up to them.

Even now, knowing what was coming, I was not the first to look away.

Tyler grabbed Dad's wheelchair and headed for the back door, Levi pushed Bailey and Leo towards me, while the youngest of the Russell boys, Ryder, cut off any escape I might have had at my back. I was surrounded, out numbered, out sized and I didn't give a flying fuck.

"Grab her!" Levi instructed from his safe vantage point at the back of the group.

I ducked under Bailey's uncoordinated and lazily outstretched arm, spun around and kicked out at Leo's shins. I was aiming for his groin, but the guitar over my back hampered my movements. I cursed having the darn thing around my shoulders, all the while positioning myself to protect my Martin from any harm.

"You're just gonna piss us off, Eva," Levi announced, still from several feet away.

"Come over here and say that, coward," I shot back, swinging an arm up to deflect Leo's strike and receiving an horrific shard of pain down to my wrist when I connected with his forearm.

"You know you'll just make it that much more painful. Girls like you need to be taught a lesson."

"How would you know, loser. Had any girls lately that you didn't need to drug first?"

That little comment made Bailey chuckle, but earned a kick in the back of my knees - I was guessing from Ryder - that made me stumble to the hard ground. I felt the skin on my knees tear and clenched my teeth to stop from crying out.

I was up and swinging before the sting had even registered, landing a decent blow to the side of Leo's head, spinning to confront Bailey and managing a solid punch in his gut, that doubled him over. It was at this point things usually went bad. I'd always land a blow or two, a kick here and punch there. If I was lucky, I'd get a decent scrape of my nails down someone's cheek, leaving a message behind when all was said and done. But four against one was not fair and any moment now Tyler would return from depositing Dad in the flat.