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“Absolutely not,” Bree said. “I guarantee you wouldn’t even get your bags unpacked before Jake would be over there dragging you back to our place.”
“Can’t you call him off?” she asked Bree plaintively. “I know he listens to you.”
Bree merely laughed. “I might be the O’Brien with meddling in my DNA, but Jake is no slouch. He knows exactly how to get what he wants, and heaven help anyone who gets in his way. Since I actually agree with him about this, I won’t even try.”
“All that shows is that you’re highly susceptible to his charm.”
“Of course I am,” Bree admitted readily. “But stronger women than I have been persuaded to change their minds once Jake starts working on them.”
Jenny merely rolled her eyes. As much as she’d idolized her uncle growing up, she was pretty sure she could hold her own against him.
“Bring it on,” she said.
The truth was she was actually looking forward to a good test of wills. Maybe it would keep her mind off the emotional roller coaster she’d been on from the moment she’d driven into town and experienced the first powerful tug of homesickness she’d felt in years.
* * *
Caleb Green, once a partner in one of the hottest groups in country music and winner of half a dozen CMA Awards and two Grammys, sat in the shadows of a crowded club outside of Nashville. He’d come to listen to a young acquaintance perform in a showcase they both hoped would result in a recording contract. The showcase ritual was a way to get agents and record labels to take a listen to up-and-coming talent.
Though Caleb had hung around for a few of Ricky Nolan’s rehearsals, he’d never before heard the mournful ballad Ricky was performing now to close out the show.
As he listened, Caleb sat up a little straighter. There wasn’t a doubt in his mind who had written the song. Only Jenny Collins could rip out a man’s heart and fill it with regret. Hadn’t she done just that on more than one of his group’s hit songs? Their collaboration had been pure gold. Every song they’d done had shot straight to the top of the charts, crossing over between country and pop to find huge audiences.
Caleb relaxed—or tried to—as the showcase ended and Ricky was surrounded by well-wishers, including a man Caleb recognized as one of country music’s top agents. He’d asked Ken Davis—an agent he knew well, but had never worked with—to stop by as a personal favor to him, but he hadn’t been at all sure he’d had any chits left to call in. A lot of people in Nashville had written him off this past year. The fact that Ken had taken his call had been encouraging. The fact that he’d shown up tonight, persuaded by Caleb’s praise for Ricky’s voice, gave him hope for his own future in the business. Maybe not everyone considered him a pariah. Apparently one person still trusted his judgment, at least when it came to recognizing talent.
Unfortunately, pleased as he was for Ricky, his gut filled with envy just thinking about that heart-tugging song that Ricky had performed. Caleb knew instinctively it was exactly what he needed to get his career back after a whole host of mistakes, including walking away from Jenny and breaking her heart. Unfortunately, he couldn’t imagine a way she’d ever forgive him for their very public breakup. Cheating had been awful enough. Adding humiliation to the mix had been unforgivable.
As soon as things in the club settled down and another performer was onstage, Ricky joined Caleb in the back.
“What did you think?” he asked, all the bravado he’d displayed onstage now gone. He was just a nineteen-year-old kid looking for reassurance from someone he trusted.
Ricky had been only sixteen when Caleb and Jenny had first heard him in a club outside Charlottesville, Virginia. At eighteen and just out of high school, he’d turned up in Nashville, taking Caleb up on his offer to put him in touch with the right people. A year ago, though, Caleb hadn’t even been able to help himself, much less anyone else. Now he was making good on his promise, trying to earn back the reputation he’d once had as a good guy who was always ready to help a new artist.
“You knocked ’em dead,” Caleb told him honestly. “I imagine that’s exactly what Ken Davis told you, too.”
Ricky’s eyes lit up at the mention of the agent. “He wants to talk. We’re meeting tomorrow.”
“That’s great,” Caleb said with total sincerity. “You get him on your team and you’ll go places fast. He has the respect of everyone in this town. He’s honest and he doesn’t take on just anyone. If he’s braggin’ on you to the labels, I guarantee you’ll be under contract in no time. He’ll line up a tour before summer, too.”
Ricky looked a little dazed. “I can’t believe it’s really happening. Everyone back home kept telling me I was crazy, that making it was a long shot at best.”
“You haven’t made it yet,” Caleb cautioned. “But with Ken in your corner, your chances have definitely improved.”
“It’s because of you, Caleb. You got me in here tonight. And I know for a fact you said something to Ken, too. He’d never have shown up otherwise. I owe you.”
Caleb drew in a deep breath. “You don’t owe me a thing. If Ken hadn’t liked what he heard, my getting him here wouldn’t have meant a thing.”
“I owe you,” Ricky repeated.
“There is a favor you could do for me,” Caleb admitted, still weighing whether he had any right to ask.
“Anything. Just name it.”
“That song, the one you sang at the end. Jenny Collins wrote it, didn’t she? I recognize her style.”
Ricky nodded, his expression chagrined. “I know you and she... Well, I know it ended badly, but we ran into each other a while back. She remembered me from that night in Charlottesville. She said my voice was perfect for a song she’d just written. The minute I heard it, I knew I couldn’t turn it down. Songs like that don’t come along every day. Ken said the same thing. He said it was a guaranteed hit.”
That gave Caleb pause. How could he ask for a song that could kick-start this kid’s career in such a big way?
Ricky studied him intently. “You want the song, don’t you?”
Caleb nodded. “I think that song is the one that could put my career back on track, this time as a solo artist, but Jenny gave it to you. Ken thinks you could turn it into a hit. I have no right to ask you to give up that shot. I should leave well enough alone.”
“No way, man. It’s yours,” Ricky said without even a moment’s hesitation. “Like I said, I owe you. There will be other songs for me, but, to be honest, I knew when I heard that one it should have been yours. You’re really the one who could do it justice. Having a newcomer like me do it could be a big risk. It deserves to be played on every radio station across the country. Jenny put a whole world of hurt into that song. Anyone hearing it can tell it’s real personal.”
Caleb sighed, a year’s worth of guilt washing over him. “Yeah, she did. And that pain? It was all my fault—every bit of it.”
“All the more reason for you to be the one performing it,” Ricky said, then asked worriedly, “What’s Jenny going to think about my letting you have the song?”
“Now that is the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question, isn’t it?” Caleb responded candidly. “Obviously, I’ll have to work out an arrangement with her.” He allowed himself a rueful smile. “And if Jenny hates my guts these days, her agent probably has tar and feathers nearby with my name on them.”
Ricky chuckled. “Yeah, I definitely got that impression when your name came up in the conversation I had with Margo when we made the deal.”
“All I can do is try to make things right,” Caleb said.
Unsaid was that maybe, just maybe, negotiating for the song could open a door for him to patch things up with Jenny, too. Or at least to make amends for the way he’d treated her.
“She’s out of town, you know,” Ricky mentioned casually. “I heard she went to that town in Maryland where she grew up. Word around here is that she needed to take some time off. Rumor has it she’s hooking up with somebody in her family to write some songs for a Christmas play.”
“That must be her uncle’s wife,” Caleb said, surprised. In all the time they’d been together, Jenny had refused to set foot in Chesapeake Shores. Why had she gone back now? He doubted it was simply to write a few lyrics for some rinky-dink local Christmas production, even at the request of Bree O’Brien, a woman he knew Jenny loved and admired.
Only one way to find out, he decided. He sure as heck couldn’t convince Jenny to make a deal for that song he wanted over the phone. This required a face-to-face meeting. He’d just have to pray that she’d been infected by the holiday spirit and wouldn’t slam the door on him.
* * *
Mick stared at his brother. Thomas, usually a pretty optimistic guy, especially since he’d married Connie and had a son, looked as if the weight of the world were resting squarely on his shoulders.
“What do you mean, Jenny’s staying with Bree and Jake?” Mick demanded, indignant on his brother’s behalf.
“Just what I said. And it’s breaking Connie’s heart, I’ll tell you that,” Thomas said, his misery plain. “It’s all my fault. I should have done a better job of winning Jenny over before I married her mother. I knew she felt as if I stole Connie away from her, but that was never my intention. I wanted to have a family with Connie and in my mind that always included Jenny. The last thing I wanted was to drive a wedge between them.”
“You ever tell Jenny that?” Mick asked.
“How was I supposed to do that?” Thomas asked with frustration. “Every single time I tried, she’d give me one excuse or another. Then it was too late. She found out in the worst possible way that we were expecting a baby, right in front of the whole family on that trip to Ireland. It rocked her world. Not only had I displaced her in her mom’s affections, but there was a baby on the way. It shouldn’t have been a competition between her and Sean, but I know that’s how Jenny felt, and she decided she’d come out the loser.”
“You have to admit some of that goes back to that father of hers who abandoned her and Connie. The man should have been shot, if you ask me,” Mick said. “Whatever the issues were between him and Connie, what kind of man leaves town and doesn’t even stay in touch with his own daughter? It’s little wonder the girl has abandonment issues or whatever it is they call that kind of insecurity.”
“You’re right about that,” Thomas said.
“And now you’re paying the price,” Mick concluded. He shook his head. “As understandable as it might be, that hardly seems fair.”
“I don’t think fair has much to do with it. I doubt Jenny would trust anyone who came between her and her mother.”
“Probably not,” Mick conceded. “But she’s an adult now. She needs to suck it up and deal with the situation. I’ve known Connie for a lot of years. You’ve made her happier than I’d ever seen her before, and you know I don’t throw compliments your way lightly.”
“Believe me, I know,” Thomas said wryly. “What the heck am I supposed to do now, though? I can’t go over to Jake and Bree’s and drag Jenny home. It’s a little late for me to throw around my weight as her stepfather.”
“Want me to go over there?” Mick asked eagerly. He’d had far too little to do lately, with almost everyone in the family happily married and settled down.
Thomas fought a smile, but Mick caught it. He couldn’t say he blamed his brother for being amused.
“As generous as that offer is, you don’t have the finesse for this,” Thomas said. “Ma was very clear that I was to leave you out of it. She recommends being patient. She says if you try bossing Jenny around, she’ll only dig in her heels.”
“You talked to Ma and she said that?” Mick said.
Thomas chuckled. “And a lot more about bulls in china shops and lack of diplomacy. Dillon agreed with her.”
Nell O’Brien certainly had clear-eyed vision when it came to her family, Mick thought, much as her assessment might rankle. He put almost as much weight behind Dillon’s opinion. Since Dillon O’Malley and Nell had reunited in Ireland and married less than a year later, they tended to be in lockstep on this kind of thing.
“Okay, I’ll stay out of it for now,” Mick conceded reluctantly. “But you need me, say the word.”
Thomas stood up. “Thanks for listening, Mick. That’s what I really needed. I can’t let Connie see how frustrated I am. Then she goes and blames herself for putting me in the middle. It just complicates an already messy situation.”
“How about this?” Mick said. “You bring Connie and your boy here for Sunday dinner, like always. I’ll see to it that Jenny’s at the table.”
Thomas frowned. “Didn’t you hear a word I just said? No meddling.”
“I believe my instructions were to stay away from Jenny,” Mick said, satisfied that he’d found the perfect loophole. “Doesn’t mean I can’t put a bug in Bree’s ear about getting that girl over here for a family dinner. I’ll speak to Jess, too. We’ll make it a welcome home celebration. It’ll be downright rude of Jenny to refuse the invitation, especially if the gathering is in her honor. I know her mama raised her better than that.”
Thomas’s expression turned thoughtful. “I think you’re bending the spirit of Ma’s edict, but I’m willing to risk it,” he said eventually. “I want to see my wife smiling again. I thought just having Jenny back in town would do it, but not like this. Earlier, I asked Connie if she’d seen Jenny yet. She burst into tears and left the room. There wasn’t a thing I could do to comfort her.”
He sighed. “Just as bad, Sean knows something’s going on, too. He ran into Jenny at Bree’s theater this afternoon and came home with a thousand and one questions about his big sister and why she wasn’t coming to our house. Since I couldn’t answer most of them and Connie wasn’t up to dealing with his curiosity, I dropped him over at Kevin and Shauna’s to play with their kids. I need to get back over there and pick him up.”
“You go, and stop your worrying. We’ll fix this,” Mick said confidently. “It’s Christmas, after all, and don’t the O’Briens specialize in Christmas miracles?”
Chapter Two
It only took a couple of calls for Caleb to confirm what Ricky had told him. Jenny had, indeed, gone to Chesapeake Shores, and was expected to be there through the holidays. The second confirmation had just come from her agent, who wasn’t one bit happy about having inadvertently pointed him toward her whereabouts.
“Do not go anywhere near that town or Jenny,” Margo Welch warned him. “I swear, I’ll advise her to get a restraining order.”
Despite the unlikelihood that Jenny would do such a thing, Caleb was shaken. “On what grounds?” he asked, wondering exactly what Jenny had told people after the breakup. Hadn’t those tabloid pictures of him with another woman told the story clearly enough? Had she felt the need to elaborate? Didn’t it take some pretty serious accusations to justify a restraining order? Just being lower than pond scum in someone’s opinion usually wasn’t enough.
“You broke that girl’s heart,” Margo said, her raspy voice fiercely protective. “I won’t let you get close enough to do it again.”
“That’s really up to Jenny, isn’t it?” he said mildly. “Look, Margo, I know you only have her best interests at heart. You always have. Believe it or not, so do I. I’m not going over there to cause trouble, I swear it.”
She sighed heavily. “But you are going to Chesapeake Shores? There’s nothing I can say to talk you out of it?”
“Nothing,” he confirmed. “And, just so you know, I intend to try my best to talk her into selling me the rights to record that ballad she wrote and sold to Ricky Nolan.”
“There’s a contract, Caleb. If that song is what you’re after, you can forget it. When I write a contract, it’s airtight. You should know that.”
“Believe me, I do. But Ricky and I have already agreed to this. He’ll relinquish his rights. To tell you the truth, he could probably make a deal with me on his own, but I didn’t want to go behind Jenny’s back. I want to do this in a straightforward way, by convincing her I’m the right man to record this song. If you’re honest, Margo, you know that’s true.”
“That song will be a hit no matter who does it,” she contradicted. “I’ve already spoken to Ken Davis. He wants to make it Ricky’s first single. Are you going to strip that boy of the opportunity to go platinum right out of the gate? That just proves every rotten thing I’ve been thinking about you.”
Caleb decided it was best not to remind her how eager she’d once been for him and Jenny to work together. She’d been even more ecstatic when their relationship had become personal. It had provided a publicity gold mine that had benefited Jenny and, by extension, Margo herself, quite nicely.
Instead, he said, “Ricky has the talent to go platinum with any song he chooses. He recognizes that this particular song was meant for me. It’s a done deal, Margo. I just need to work out the details with Jenny.”
“And if she says no?”
“I’m hoping she won’t, but if she does, that’s that,” Caleb said. “I’ll be disappointed, but I won’t pressure her.”
“I’ll advise her against it,” Margo informed him. “Jenny listens to me, Caleb. You know she does. I’ll do whatever I can to prevent her from hooking up with you again, professionally or personally.”
Even though it wasn’t in his own best interests, Caleb actually respected her more for protecting Jenny’s back with such maternal ferocity. “I wouldn’t expect anything less.”
“Caleb, please don’t do this,” she requested quietly. “It’s taken Jenny a long time to get over what you did to her. If you ask me, the only reason she’s in Chesapeake Shores right now is to get some distance from Nashville and all her memories of you.”
“Then it’s past time I apologized for the pain I caused her,” he countered. “Maybe that will give her the closure she needs to move on.”
“If that’s all you intended, I might not argue,” Margo said. “But you want more. You want that song and, unless I’m a whole lot worse at reading you than I used to be, you want Jenny back, too. I was there when you staged that full-court press to win her the first time. That’s what you’re planning now, isn’t it?”
He hesitated, then decided now wasn’t the time to add a lie to his sins. “Can’t deny it,” he admitted.
He thought back to the first time he’d laid eyes on Jenny. His manager had brought her over to his place, but he’d been hung over and miserable. While he’d pulled himself together, his manager had sent her onto the patio to wait.
A half hour later, showered and in a more receptive mood, Caleb had found her strumming her guitar, bathed in sunlight. She’d looked ethereal. The music had been just as heavenly, striking an immediate chord in him.
When she hadn’t noticed him, he’d continued listening, falling just a little bit in love with the songs and the woman. It was hard to say which had grabbed him more. The music, more than likely, because his work was his life at that point. His feelings for Jenny had deepened with time.
And then he’d gone and ruined it all.
He sighed, remembering.
“Oh, Caleb,” Margo murmured, real pain in her voice. “If you still love her, can’t you leave her in peace?”
Long after he’d hung up the phone, he thought about Margo’s heartfelt request. The older woman was probably right. The kind thing to do would be to let Jenny go to start over with someone more deserving. And if it was all about a song, perhaps he could do that, but it wasn’t. It was about reclaiming the missing piece of his heart.
* * *
When Jenny left Bree at her theater, she walked along the waterfront trying to get her emotions under control. Leave it to Bree to call her on her behavior in the gentle, chiding way that forced her to see herself more clearly. It hadn’t been an entirely comfortable confrontation.
Not that she could argue with a single thing Bree had said. She’d struggled with herself over those very things for a long time now. Each and every time reason had lost out to emotion.
Chilled after just a few minutes in the icy breeze off the water, she crossed the street, walked briskly back toward Main and went into the café. Her cell phone rang, but a glance showed that the call was from her agent. Right this second, business was the last thing on her mind. She let Margo’s call go to voice mail and settled into a booth.
