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“I’m not looking for fans,” Mason protested. “It’s Mulligans. I can’t believe they don’t see what Mulligans does.”
“Clearly we have some work to do,” she agreed.
While they walked slowly to her white, 1968 VW bug, she dug in her purse for her keys. He stood watching while she got in and buckled her seat belt. She started the car and then leaned out the window. “We’ll beat this, Mason. Suburbanites don’t frighten me.”
He nodded. He trusted Stephanie. She was book smart, street smart and, after him, she was Mulligans’ biggest fan. Plus, next weekend she was marrying Brian Price, the community manager, and then she’d be living at Mulligans, his companion in homelessness if they lost the zoning fight. Failure wasn’t a word anyone associated with Stephanie Colarusso. That was good.
He went back toward where he’d parked his black Pontiac Firebird. It was the last thing remaining of his rough living Jersey-boy days—he’d never been able to trade it in for a Subaru. He rested the poster display on the hood while he leaned on the car, patting the pockets of the suit jacket he’d worn in the hopes it would make him seem trustworthy. He might as well have worn camo.
Just when he pulled out a pack of Marlboros and his silver lighter, a breeze kicked up. He turned his shoulder as he put a cigarette in his mouth and flicked the lighter. He dragged the smoke deep into his lungs and held it there, eyes closed, feeling the burn and savoring the scent.
“Smoking’s not healthy.”
Startled, Mason released the smoke before he was ready. A woman was standing in front of him. He’d been so absorbed he hadn’t heard her come up. She was about Stephanie’s height, a little less than shoulder high, but that was the only thing the two had in common.
Where Stephanie was all neatly contained planes, this woman curved and swerved. Her light brown, gently curling hair was streaked liberally with dark gold and tumbled down her neck, with smaller curls springing around her face. Her eyes, golden brown with a dark circle around the iris, tilted at the corners, contrasting exotically with her small, slightly upturned nose. He thought he’d recognize her if she was from the neighborhood—the way she filled her jeans was hard to overlook—but he’d better be civil on the chance she was one of them.
“I only take the one drag a day.”
“What?” The woman’s eyes widened in surprise and her expression was almost studious, like she was taking notes. She shoved quickly at the soft curls the wind had blown into her face, twisting and pushing them behind her ear. Mason caught the flash of chunky silver rings on slender fingers as her deft hands quickly and decisively tamed the curls. Woman 1, Wind 0.
“One drag,” Mason said. “I kicked the six-pack-a-day habit but I miss it. The smell of it, the taste, the fire.” He flipped the top of the lighter back and flicked the wheel, smiling at her through the flame. “If the day really sucks, I take two drags.”
He took a second long drag and then carefully ground the cigarette out on the edge of the trash can next to the Firebird before tossing it in. “Haven’t had to take three yet, though.”
The woman studied him intently, seemingly unconcerned that he had no idea who the hell she was. Again he thought surely he’d have remembered her if they’d met before. And okay, she was round and sexy with her curvy hips and the black V-neck T-shirt shaping itself to her, but he didn’t pick up strangers on the street. He grabbed the display, intending to cut this encounter short. She could be an old fan, but this woman with her sharp gaze didn’t seem awestruck like a fan.
“One drag,” she said. “That’s a fascinating detail. Peculiar and vaguely masochistic, but fascinating.” She stuck her hand out. “Anna Walsh. Nice to finally meet you, Mr. Star.”
Ambush number three. Suddenly that third drag wasn’tso far out of the question.
CHAPTER FOUR
HE WALKED AWAY. Anna should have expected that. He’d hung up on her just the day before after ignoring almost fifteen messages she’d left during the week.
He seemed taller than the six-one quoted in his bio and he was moving fast down the street. She appreciated walking with someone who moved as quickly as her for once. His hair was shorter now than it had been when he was with Five Star; more military than rock and roll. But the front was gelled with short, careless swoops that kept it south of severe, hinting at some leftover not-ready-to-settle-down.
Rocker Mason had been a pretty boy. At thirty-five, grown-up Mason was a man, shoulders broad and muscular, the planes of his face set and defined. He was saved from looking flat-out intimidating by the deep laugh creases at the corners of his eyes and the sprinkling of freckles on the tops of his cheeks and bridge of his nose. She hadn’t known about the freckles and she found them oddly arresting.
She’d thought her mammoth teenage crush on Mason had died that night with Terri, but despite her wish to remain professional, the attraction had come barreling back five minutes ago when she watched him light his cigarette.
Her fingers twitched as she thought about getting his face in front of a camera. How long would it be before she could sit him down and ask him questions? Because answers were all she wanted from Mason, no matter how pretty his green eyes were.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“I need a drink,” he answered. He strode forward, his long legs working effortlessly, the sexy swagger in his hips reminding her of the Five Star videos she’d sighed over in high school. His voice was gravel over dark chocolate when he said, “I don’t need company.”
“I need a drink, too,” she said, pretending indifference. She’d read about his drinking and other addictions and knew they’d been the reason he got kicked out of Five Star. Listening to him speak about Mulligans in the zoning hearing she’d been surprised to feel grudging respect for the man. For a few years after he’d left the band, Mason had bounced around the celebrity scene and she’d found plenty of tabloid evidence that he’d elevated hedonism to an art form. Then he dropped out of sight. She knew he’d spent time in a rehab place run by Craig Jordan, a former session musician from Nashville. After that there wasn’t much. She’d been lucky to stumble over the notice for the zoning hearing tonight.
She hadn’t expected to see Mason. The best she’d hoped for was a word with his lawyer. She’d figured Mulligans was some tax shelter anyway—he lent the place his name and showed up for a charity function twice a year. But she was pretty sure from what she’d heard that he actually lived there. So what was he doing heading out to a bar?
If she’d been hoping to get the inside story on Mason Star, this was certainly a start.
Halfway down the second block he turned abruptly and pulled the door of a shop open. Not a bar. Putting Pete’s? Was it possible she’d just followed Mason to a golf shop?
He held open the door with one foot, looked up at the sky with a dramatic sigh and then waved her through. “No point in being ruder than I’ve already been,” he said. “It’s like you’re missing the ‘take-the-hint’ gene.”
“Occupational hazard,” Anna answered absently, too busy observing him to take offense. She was glad she’d gotten this far, but she needed to concentrate. She’d surprised him tonight and probably wouldn’t get a second chance. The gambit she and Jake had come up with to persuade him to participate in the movie was the best they had, but she wished she was more confident it would work.
“I thought you said you were getting a drink.”
“I said I needed a drink. Not the same thing,” he replied.
“Hey, Pete,” Mason said to the man behind the counter. “You get that Ryan putter?”
Pete waved to the back of the store. “It’s in the rack. We’re closing in half an hour.”
“Got it.” Mason headed down the aisle. The entire back of the store was a fake putting green built up on a platform. A panoramic poster on the wall behind it gave the impression you were standing on the eighteenth hole of some golf course.
Anna was flying by the seat of her pants, way out of her depth.
Mason held out the poster from the hearing. “Grab this?”
It was an awkward size and she bobbled it when he handed it off. His hand flashed out to steady it. “Careful,” he said. “That’s my baby.”
The way his eyes crinkled even as he cautioned her made an odd combination of brusque and friendly, vaguely insulting but genuinely good-natured. She couldn’t decide which was real but the story hound in her was intrigued.
She got a hold on the poster and then stepped back to watch as he pulled a putter out of the rack and moved a bucket of balls close to the line. He stepped up on the platform and with absolutely no self-consciousness proceeded to sink five balls in a row. He moved with confidence, the same way he had when he’d owned the stage, she thought, comfortable in his body and his surroundings. He’d looked like that in front of the zoning hearing until chaos broke out and then he’d crumpled.
“You’re good,” she offered, confident in her assessment after a childhood of weekends spent at her parents’ country club.
“The platform’s a funnel. Pete wants to sell these stupid expensive clubs so he makes you feel like a hall of famer.” Mason cleared the balls out of the hole and went back to the line. With his head down, concentrating on the ball, he said, “I don’t suppose you tracked me down to ask me about my golf game, although I’d like to state for the record I’m a scratch golfer on a good day.”
“If you’re a scratch golfer, I’m Tiger Woods!” Pete hollered back from the front of the store.
“Jealous,” Mason mouthed to her pointing at Pete. He’d stopped hitting and was gauging her reactions as surely as she was studying him. Performers did that, she knew, waited to see what the audience wanted and gave it to them. She’d need to be careful because she didn’t want a line, she wanted the truth.
In the file she and Jake had compiled on Mason were pictures from when he was with Five Star, his magnetic personality obvious even in fifteen-year-old photos. Pictures couldn’t do justice to the color of his eyes, though. Blond glinted at the temples of his rich, dark hair. His thick lashes were chocolate brown and his sculpted eyebrows a shade lighter. All that dark framing made the green of his eyes startling. Mason’s eyes weren’t a messing-around color like hazel. They were green like a beer bottle.
She’d never been sure if, given the chance, she would have gotten on the bus with Terri that night, if she’d have fallen under the rock and roller’s spell. But the man standing in front of her would have no trouble persuading most women and a heck of a lot of men to do whatever he wanted. Anna’s imagination strayed to what he might want, how he might ask for it in his smoky voice. Was this what Terri had felt? Was this why she’d made that fatal decision?
Mason Star had lived his life and he had the laugh lines and care lines to prove it. What had made him smile often enough to make those deep crinkles? What had put the care in his eyes? What combination of experience and personality and family had created this man who couldn’t seem to help being polite to a stranger he wanted nothing to do with? What was he like when he was with people he did enjoy?
Stop it, Walsh. She needed to remember what she was here for. Who she was here for. She wasn’t a seventeen-year-old kid with a crush on a rock star anymore.
She wanted his story because it might give her Terri’s. Period.
“I want to make you an offer,” she said. She and Jake had done their research looking for his vulnerability. She hoped they’d chosen the right hook.
“No,” he said and then casually knocked another ball in the cup. He quirked his lips, though, in almost a smile, softening the rejection. Progress. She wished she had a camera to film his mouth. It was decadent, sculpted lips with little lines at the corners that weren’t quite dimples but then again, definitely were.
She leaned back, took her eyes off his mouth, thought about Terri. “You don’t even want to hear what I have to say?”
“You left fifteen messages. I heard. A movie. Five Star. My story. No.” He sighed. “Oh, all right. I’ll be polite. Make your offer.” He cocked an eyebrow and waited.
“I assume you’re not familiar with my work.” He shook his head. She felt a twinge of disappointment, which surprised her. Why did she care that he hadn’t even taken a second to Google her? “My brother and I make documentaries, but we have to pay the bills, so we do other things, too. Campaign spots, travel pieces, commercials, music videos.”
Mason leaned on the club, waiting her out. If she’d expected him to react, she was disappointed again.
“Can I try?” she asked, stalling, unable to take the plunge.
He handed her the putter, taking back the poster display. She tested the weight and balance of the club before kicking a ball into place. The last time she’d held a golf club she’d been seventeen, playing in a father-daughter tournament at the country club. After Terri died and her relationship with her parents fractured, they’d barely spoken, let alone played golf.
While she lined up her shot, she went ahead with her pitch. “Our music videos are top notch. We’ve won video-music awards. The one we did for Del Sweeney was on TRL for fourteen weeks straight.” Which wasn’t bragging but salesmanship. He needed to believe she knew what she was doing. “You agree to be in my movie and—” she swung the putter smooth and easy and waited until the ball sank “—I’ll shoot a video for your son’s band free of charge. I guarantee he’ll love it.”
She hadn’t expected laughter. His laugh was throaty and full of gravelly undertones like his voice and she wondered how many years he’d smoked. The lines at the corners of his eyes deepened and crinkled in a way that made her want to laugh with him. Except he wasn’t laughing with her, he was laughing at her.
“Nice swing, but, oh, man. You don’t know me very well if you think that’s the bribe that’ll get me into your movie.”
She was stung. She and Jake had misjudged, which didn’t happen often. “That’s the point of the movie. No one knows you. We should.”
He shook his head, suddenly serious. He leaned one forearm on the railing around the platform and his face was closer to hers than was comfortable, but she forced herself to hold still. “No. You don’t want to know me. The guy you want? Mason Star, lead singer of Five Star? That guy doesn’t exist anymore.”
He rubbed his hand back and forth in his short hair, leaving the front sticking up in messy points, and then looked at her, his head cocked to the right. “Matter of fact, why don’t you put that in your movie. Mason Star died. RIP.”
She held the club tighter, pressing her thumb into the grip. She needed Mason. What would motivate him? “People deserve to know what happened with the crash and afterward. They deserve the truth.”
“What?” He looked more engaged than he’d been.
“There’s more to the story of what happened. A story like that can’t be left untold.”
“I don’t know what you think you know. But here’s your truth. I’m not that guy anymore and digging all that up won’t do anything good for me or anyone else.”
“David Giles told me to ask you about the crash.”
Mason’s face settled, the light left his eyes. “You talked to him? No.” He shook his head. “Forget I asked that. I’m living here now.” He gestured around the pro shop, but she knew he meant Lakeland. “Five Star is history for me.” The corners of his mouth turned down, the not-quite dimples deepening, communicating disgust. About her? The crash? She couldn’t tell.
They’d misread him. He was slipping away. She had to think fast and find the right thing.
“Mason…” she started to say, but he shook his head.
“The last thing I need right now is for people to remember I was in a rock band.”
She noticed the protective hold he had on the Mulligans poster. “Your neighbors aren’t too thrilled, are they?” He’d called it his baby.
“You were at the zoning thing?”
“Stalking you. Sorry.”
“Witness to the execution,” he said wearily.
“I can help.” She put down the club and stepped off the platform. She tapped the poster, focusing his attention.
His eyebrows lifted. “You bribe zoning boards?”
“You and your charming smile were doing okay with the board. It’s the neighbors that killed you. Ms. Tidy Pants and the PTA brigade.”
His shoulders slumped. “Roxanne Curtis and her upwardly mobile assassins. If they’d come over and see Mulligans. Get to know us.”
“Watch the movie I make about it.”
“Watch the…?”
“You agree to speak on camera about the Five Star bus crash, I’ll make you a kick-butt film about Mulligans I guarantee will not only solve your zoning problems, it will have your neighbors eating out of your hand.”
“You guarantee?”
“Here.” She reached into the inside pocket of her jacket and pulled out two DVDs in plastic sleeves. “Go home and watch these. Then call me and I’ll start making one for Mulligans right away.”
He shifted the poster and took the DVDs but didn’t look at them. “I appreciate the offer, Anna, I do. And I can honestly say I admire your confidence. But I’m not going to talk about Five Star. Not to you. Not to anyone.” He backed up, cradling his poster carefully under his arm. He put the DVDs in his pocket, though, she noticed.
“Can you at least think about it?” she asked as she followed him to the front of the store.
“I think about that crash every day.”
She’d meant the movie, but he’d misinterpreted her. Deliberately or not, she couldn’t tell.
When he turned left outside the shop, she let him go. She hoped that last offer had been the right one. The way he’d looked when she mentioned the zoning board made her think she had a shot at least. She never would have expected him to be as involved as he seemed to be in Mulligans.
She knew quite a bit about getting people to discuss things they wanted to keep to themselves. There was a time to push and a time to back off. Mason needed to stew over her offer before she gave him another nudge. And she needed to deal with the feelings he’d stirred up in her.
CHAPTER FIVE
MASON STARED at the screen. He couldn’t believe he’d ever been the kid who was standing center stage singing the hell out of “Stage Fright.” He’d been twenty when this movie, Five Star Rising, was shot. It was mostly a concert video, intended to support the Five Star Rising album during what ended up being his last tour. Tonight he was fast-forwarding through all the backstage coverage. Couldn’t stand to see the bottles and women and himself wasting his life as fast as he could.
He never watched this movie. Damn Anna for making him seek it out. He’d come home expecting to clear up some paperwork and get to bed, but he’d been too restless. Angry about the zoning board, pissed off at David and his e-mail and really mad about Anna’s offer. What the hell was David thinking talking to anyone about the crash? Telling her to come here?
Without the zoning fiasco, he’d never have given her offer to make him a movie another thought. But the hearing had been bad. He knew Stephanie would do her best, but people, not just Roxanne, a lot of people, were really upset. He used to be able to get people on board with his plans without even trying. But he’d lost something after Five Star. Now he couldn’t even get a suburban zoning board to leave him alone. The last time people turned on him and he couldn’t fix it, he’d lost everything. What if he couldn’t fix this and this time Mulligans was the price?
Anna had said her movie would save Mulligans.
But he’d have to talk about the crash. She’d said people wanted the truth about it. He’d never told the truth. He’d had his reasons then and he still thought he’d made the right decision. What did Anna know or think she knew? He was pretty sure he and David Giles were the only ones who knew what really happened that night. David had his own reasons for keeping quiet. If he agreed to talk to her, how much would he have to say? What would she be able to figure out?
Those questions had led him out to the video store and then here, to this place in his past where he didn’t like to go, thinking about the tour that led to the crash…and everything else that happened.
He had all the lights off and was sunk deep in the leather couch in the small room he and Christian used as a private family room above the common rooms where the residents ate communal meals several nights a week, did their laundry, conducted meetings and held functions.
This room had always felt safe to him. Seeing his old life in the midst of this real one was jarring.
