“He…had an important call.”
“On Christmas Eve, when he hasn’t seen his woman in two weeks,” he prompted. “What the fuck are you doing wasting time with him?”
I didn’t know why his opinion mattered. But for some reason it did. “I’m trying to break up with him. Okay?”
“Trying?”
I dropped my hands and crossed my arms. “We met through a dating app. I thought it would be fun to date a younger guy. I thought he’d be interesting, energetic. My ex-husband married a woman eleven years younger than I. They made it look exciting. But Mark is…”
“A narcissistic prick,” Vonn supplied.
“You met him for a minute,” I said. I’d taken Mark backstage to meet the band before the concert. He hadn’t been particularly impressed or gracious.
“Already knew I wasn’t gonna like him,” he continued, pressing a second bandage into place. “Just didn’t realize there’d be good cause.”
His hand slid down to my neck, thumb at my throat. It felt amazing. “Why were you going to hate him?”
All amusement disappeared from those blue eyes. “Because he’s yours.”
“Seriously? What does that even mean? You’ve spent the last two weeks ignoring me! You refused to sit down with me. You refused to answer every single question I asked. The rest of the guys had no problems talking to me, but you acted like I was chasing you with a machete.”
“What do you wanna know, babe? Ask me anything.”
His flippant reply made me mad. “Don’t play games with me, Vonn. You made sure that I didn’t get the story. And now I don’t get the job that went with it.”
His hand tightened at my neck. “Explain.”
“I’m hungry,” I said petulantly. And bizarrely turned on.
“I’ll feed you after you explain.”
My sigh was half groan. “The magazine told me if I got you to actually open up and talk about saying goodbye to the band, the fans, that I’d make staff writer.”
“Is that something you wanted?”
“Well, yeah. I’ve always wanted to be a music journalist. I thought this was my shot to get out of a mom job and into something I wanted to do.”
It was Vonn’s turn to blow out a breath. “You know and they know I don’t do one-on-ones. I don’t talk about anything but the music,” he insisted.
He had me there. The man was a vault. He was infamous for avoiding questions and getting downright pissy when journalists didn’t take the hint. And part of me couldn’t blame him. He’d been hounded mercilessly by the press ever since the death of his best friend and the band’s original lead singer.
“This your farewell tour. You’ve been doing this for thirty years. Why don’t you want to talk about that?” I asked in exasperation.
He was angry now. His hand dropped from my neck and landed on the counter next to my hip. “Because it’s never fucking enough. It’s not enough that I write and play music people like. That I get up on stage and perform for them. They still want more. They want pieces of you. Pieces they can hold up under a magnifying glass to judge their worth. Be raw. Be real. Be fuckin’ vulnerable. Let me judge you, dissect you, digest you to decide if you’re good enough.”
It was more words than I’d heard him say in an entire day. And I wished I’d had my voice recorder on.
“Wow,” I breathed.
“You want this story? This job?”
I nodded.
“Then you gotta earn every answer.”
I wet my lips and wondered if it was wrong to hope that he wanted me to earn answers with really awesome punk-rock sex.
“H-how?”
“Quid pro quo, sweetheart. You get an answer; I get an answer.”
I accepted the plate Vonn handed me. I was trying to figure out his angle. I was a divorced mother of two adult children. I lived in a small town in Pennsylvania. I didn’t have secrets like a man who had been on a dozen world tours did.
“Do you want some wine?” I offered.
He shook his head. “No thanks.”
I remembered then that he didn’t drink. An interesting quirk in his line of work.
“We got a deal?” Vonn asked, strolling into the living room.
Betty barked, and I looked down to see her sitting in front of me, tail swishing across the kitchen floor.
“Dinner. Right,” I said. I put her kibble dinner in the bowl before following Vonn.
He was sprawled on the couch. Feet propped up on the coffee table.
Gray sweatpants had been invented for Vonn Barlowe.
Not only did they put the perfect globes of his butt on display, they also paid quite the flattering homage to his crotchal region.
I snapped out of it and took the opposite end of the couch, pulling my feet up and resting my plate on a throw pillow. It was roasted chicken legs with sprigs of rosemary, fat wedges of red onion, and… “Are these grapes?” I asked, poking one of the purple globes. It smelled divine.
“They are.”
I took a bite of grape and onion and chicken. My eyes rolled back in my head. “Yum. This is really, really good.”
“I’m a man of many talents.”
It was safer not to respond to that.
My phone rang on the coffee table, and I realized he’d brought it into the living room for me.
Addison.
“It’s my daughter,” I said, putting my plate down and swiping to accept the call.
Shane and Addy’s faces popped up on my screen. “Merry Christmas Eve, Mom,” they sang.
I grinned. Once again surprised and delighted by the combination of traits both kids got from me and their dad. Hair. Eyes. Jaw. Nose. Yet all four of us were completely different people. Addy was a bubbly perfectionist hell-bent on growing up as fast as possible. Shane was a laid-back athlete who didn’t waste time on things like planning for the future.
“Merry Christmas Eve, guys. How about this snow?”
“I know, right?” The camera shifted as Addy panned through the large wall of windows in her dad’s living room. Beyond the tornado of baby toys and piles of wrapped presents, the snow fell.
“Beautiful,” I said. Betty nosed her way into the frame, always happy to hear the kids’ voices.
“How was the concert? Did you feed Whinnie?”
“The concert was great. Whinnie is fine. She had her supper and she’s bedded down for the night,” I assured her.
“What are you having for dinner?” Shane asked.
“Chicken,” I said, holding up my plate so they could see.
“Is Mark there?” Addy asked. I wasn’t imagining the tone. Both kids had met Mark once or twice. Neither of them liked him.
Vonn snickered, and I shot him a disapproving look.
“No. Mark’s not here,” I hedged. “Something came up.”
“Told you she’d end up alone on Christmas Eve,” Shane said, shoving his sister.
“Oh my God, Mom!” Addy screeched. “What happened to your head?” Somewhere in the background, their half sister added her voice to my daughter’s distress.
I winced. “It’s nothing. I’m fine.”