Chapter 24
Dylan’s phone had blown up somewhere around two in the morning. Right about the time the guys had informed Mitch that he wasn’t on the bus.
Somewhere between booking his plane ticket and checking into the hotel, Dylan had a revelation. Once connected to the hotel Wi-Fi, he did a little digging and did what Mitch claimed couldn’t be done. In a matter of minutes, all the contacts were back on his phone.
Casey had been right. Mitch Levine was a lying sack of shit.
Unfortunately, it was also after midnight, and if Charley was as pissed as he guessed she might be, waking her from a sound sleep after a week of silence probably wasn’t the best way to go. But the minute he stepped off the direct flight at eight fifteen Monday morning, he’d dialed her number. And got the message that Charley’s phone was no longer in service.
Maybe pissed was an understatement.
Since she wasn’t on the air until ten, he gave the cab driver the station address and urged him to hurry. As usual, the interstate was loaded with stupid drivers, but the mellow guy in the front seat navigated the traffic like a pro. By eight forty-five, Dylan landed on the doorstep of the Eagle 101.5 studios ready to grovel.
Exiting the elevator on the second floor, he dropped his duffel and stormed the reception desk.
“I need to see Charley Layton, please.”
“I’m sorry, sir, but Miss Layton no longer works here.”
“What?” he exploded, slapping his hands on the counter. “There has to be a mistake.”
The receptionist shoved her glasses up on her nose as she rolled backward, putting more distance between them. “There’s no mistake. Miss Layton is no longer employed here.”
“Did you fire her?”
What could she possibly have done? Charley was the best damn personality the place had, and that included Ruby Barnett.
“No, she quit over the weekend.”
There was no way Charley would quit this job. Not unless something was really wrong. Dylan paced to the elevator and back. He’d let the cab driver go, which would mean calling another to get to Charley’s apartment. And then he remembered the other half of that apartment was in this building.
“Then I need to talk to Matty,” he said. “Matty Jacobs. She still works here, right?”
“Yes, she does.” Rolling herself close enough to the desk to dial the phone, the dark-haired woman let Matty know she had a visitor and then hung up, saying, “She’ll be right up.”
Grateful to finally get some cooperation, Dylan said, “Thank you,” and returned to pacing the small lobby space.
“Who is it, Wendy?” Matty asked as she stepped through the connecting door. Upon spotting Dylan, her eyes went wide. “What are you doing here? You’re supposed to be on tour.”
“I am,” he replied. “Where’s Charley?”
“Why do you care?” she snapped.
“What do you mean . . .” Dylan shoved the balls of his hands against his sandy eyes. “Matty, I love her. I can explain why I haven’t called.”
Turning her back on him, the blonde sauntered back through the door. “Too late for that.”
On the verge of begging, he yelled, “Jesus Christ, Matty, at least tell me if she’s okay. I need to know!”
The blonde spun his way. “Wendy, is the small conference room available?”
The receptionist flipped open a binder. “Yes, it’s open.”
With an icy glare, Matty locked eyes with Dylan. “Follow me.”
Leaving his bag behind, he did as ordered. Not far from the entrance, she turned left into a tiny meeting room. The moment the door clicked shut, she said, “Charley is as fine as she can be in her condition.”
“What condition? What happened at the doctor visit? Is she sick?”
Sculpted brows arched. “Don’t play stupid, Dylan. I know she told you. I was there.”
“Told me what? I haven’t talked to Charley since the night before she went to see the doctor.”
“She called you on Saturday.”
“Saturday?” He’d gotten his phone back that day, but Charley hadn’t called him. “I’m telling you, I haven’t talked to her in a week.”
Matty threw her hands in the air. “She was standing in my kitchen. She called from my cell, because clearly you’d blocked her number.”
“I haven’t blocked any numbers,” he growled. “My phone disappeared Tuesday night during the DC show. I left it on the speaker when I went out to perform, and when I came back, it was gone.” Dylan dragged his new phone from his pocket. “Look, I’ll show you. There are no calls on Saturday.”
Skeptical, she watched over his shoulder as he slid through the screens.
“You must have deleted the call.”
Like an unexpected left hook, the truth smacked him in the face. “Matty, what time did Charley call me?”
“I don’t know. Ten in the morning?”
“That was eleven in New York. Mitch didn’t give me the phone until after noon.”
Crossing her arms, she said, “Your manager?”
“Ex-manager,” Dylan corrected. “Charley must have talked to him. Did she try to contact me at all on Tuesday, after she left the doctor’s office?”
Coming around, Matty dropped into a chair. “She sent you text messages all week. You never responded.”
“I never saw those messages,” he assured her. “Without my phone, I didn’t know her number. Once we were on the road to New York, I had to wait until we got there to get another phone.”
Matty rocked the meeting chair. “But what about Friday night? You were with some other girl.”
“Denise Halliday is a backup singer for Wes Tillman. She’s happily engaged to a woman named Laura.”
Finally convinced, Matty rose from her chair. “You really don’t know, do you?”
“Know what? Is Charley okay?”
Grabbing a station notepad left in the middle of the table, she pulled a pen from her pocket and wrote something down.
“She’s back in Kentucky. The phone number is on my fridge, but I remember the address.” Finishing the note, she passed it his way. “It’s a two-and-a-half-hour drive. You can be there by lunchtime.”
Dylan planted a quick kiss on Matty’s cheek. “Thank you.”
“Grandpa, I am not going to the press.” Charley had made this statement three times since confessing all the day before. “One of us losing a career is more than enough.”
“That boy needs to know there are consequences for this sort of thing.”
“That boy is a grown man who knows exactly what the consequences are, and he wants nothing to do with them.”
“Aw,” the old man murmured. “You know what I mean.”
Charley placed a kiss on her grandfather’s cheek as she passed him by at the table. “I do know what you mean. But I’ve told you. I refuse to be that girl. I’ll have a hard enough time explaining the situation to the locals. The last thing I want is my name splashed across the headlines as the woman who got knocked up by a smooth-talking singer on the night she met him.”
“The night you met him?” Grandpa railed, and Charley cringed. She’d left that tidbit out until now.
“Me and my big mouth,” she mumbled. “I’m not in the mood for a lecture. Karma is punishing me enough for my misdeeds.” Immediately, she regretted her choice of words. A baby should never be considered a punishment. “I don’t mean that. I mean . . .”
Gramps took her hand in his. “I understand. But you shouldn’t have to do this alone.”
“Mama did it alone,” she pointed out. “I turned out fine.”
“Your mama had me and Grandma, and for a while there, you were anything but fine.”
A girl who loses her mother at the age of sixteen can go one of two ways. Charley went the wrong one.
Flattening the four hairs atop his head, she said, “That was a minor blip. And I came around soon enough.”
“Not soon enough to spare your grandmother and me several sleepless nights.”
Hand on her hip, she said, “Is this give-Charley-a-hard-time day? Because I have plenty of unpacking to do.”
Grandpa rose from the table. “I’ll leave you alone. I’ve got chores to do anyway. That hay ain’t going to cut itself.”
“Let Elvis do the heavy lifting,” she ordered. “And I’ll have lunch ready at eleven thirty. Don’t be late.”
Dylan thought he’d grown up in the country, but finding Charley’s home in Kentucky proved him wrong.
He’d gotten lost twice trying to find Welcome Home Road, which turned out to be a quarter-mile narrow dirt lane canopied by overgrown trees and populated by the occasional cow. The moment Dylan started looking for a place to turn around, the foliage cleared to reveal a one-story farmhouse set high off the ground with a wraparound porch and three dogs lazing on the steps. Except for one crooked shutter, the place appeared to be well maintained.
An ancient Chrysler pickup, two four-wheelers, and Charley’s Bronco crowded the gravel patch to the right of the house. Dylan parked his truck in the last remaining spot and marched toward the porch, wishing he’d have stopped for flowers.
Not that Charley was the flowers type, but showing up empty-handed felt lazy. Based on his brief visit with Matty, he knew two things—Charley thought she’d talked to Dylan two days ago, and she believed the crap about him and Denise. Add the lack of contact over the last week, and his initial reception was sure to be on the frosty side.
He didn’t blame her, but Dylan would not be leaving this farm until he’d won Charley back. Whether he’d miss the show in Billings to make that happen, he hadn’t decided. A lot of people would be thoroughly screwed if he did. But music was a job. Something he’d be lucky to do for the next couple of decades. Charley would be forever if he pulled this off.
None of the dogs so much as flinched as he climbed the stairs. Three quick knocks on the screen door and Dylan stepped back to wait, hoping her grandfather wasn’t the shoot-’em-first-ask-questions-later kind of guy. As the seconds ticked by, Dylan shifted left to peer in a window when the door opened. What he turned back to see dropped his jaw. A monolith of epic proportions filled the doorway, clad in dirt-stained overalls, dust-covered boots, and a sweat-stained John Deere cap. Dylan didn’t fear many men, but this one knocked him speechless for a good five seconds.
“You lost?” the stranger offered in greeting, eying him up and down, clearly unimpressed.
Finding his tongue, he said, “I need to talk to Charley. Is she here?”
“If you’re who I think you are, you’ve got a lot of nerve for a pansy-ass dipshit.”
Squinting, Dylan said, “I’m going to take that as a yes. Could you let her know I’m here, please?”
The big guy stepped through the door with a growl. “Are you Monroe? I need to make sure before I pulverize the wrong guy.”
Pushing his luck, Dylan said the first thing that came to mind. “That’s a big word, buddy. I’m impressed.”
Without warning, a muscled arm shot out, and fingers like a vise grip locked around Dylan’s throat. He clenched at the attacking appendage as his oxygen supply was cut off.
“Who is it, Elvis?” Charley said, arriving at the door in time to see Dylan’s feet come off the ground. “Dammit, Elvis! You promised you wouldn’t hurt him!”
“Nope,” he heard the giant say over the ringing in his ears. “Promised I wouldn’t kill him. Didn’t say nothing about hurting the son of a bitch.”
Unappreciative of the insult to his mother, Dylan swung his weight enough to make the buffoon bend his elbow, and with one quick thrust, he drove the ball of his hand into Elvis’s nose. The strangle-hold released, air filled Dylan’s lungs, and the porch buckled when six and a half feet of angry man hit his knees.
Charley crossed the distance to her protector and used the kitchen towel slung over her shoulder to stop the bleeding.
“Why do men have to be idiots all the time?” she asked no one in particular.
“No,” Dylan wheezed, lungs burning and ego bruised. “Don’t worry about me. I’m okay.”
Leaving Elvis to attend his own injury, she checked Dylan’s neck. “That’s going to leave a mark.”
Incredulous, he stared at her. “You think?”
“Where did you learn to do that nose thing?” she asked.
Dylan leaned on the porch rail. “Fourteen years of tae kwon do. Jesus, Charley. You never said you had a brother the size of a freight train.”
“Elvis isn’t my brother. He lives on the farm next door.” Gentle fingers touched his throat, and Dylan failed to smother the wince. “We grew up together, and he’s a little protective of me.”
“Yeah. I noticed.”
“You broke my nose,” Elvis accused, rising to his feet. “You’re a dead man.”
“No one is dying today,” Charley declared. “Elvis, go get some ice for your nose.” Turning to Dylan, she said, “What are you doing here?”
Straightening his twisted shirt, he replied, “I came to explain.”
“Explain what?”
“Why I went silent a week ago. The truth about those pictures of me and Denise. All of it.”
Charley crossed her arms. “So her name is Denise?”
“Yeah, and she’s a friend.”
“Does she know that?”
“Of course she knows that. And so does her girlfriend.”
The arms dropped. “You mean . . .”
“Yes. And I’ll tell you everything else, too. But I’m going to need some water first.” Dylan wiped his forehead with his sleeve. “Does that dude lift tractors in his spare time?”
She ignored the question and stomped back to the screen door. “Grandpa is in the kitchen, and he isn’t much happier with you than Elvis is. I suggest you take a seat in the living room, and I’ll be back with your water.”
The door slammed shut behind her, leaving Dylan alone on the porch.