Make Me Believe: Jilted: The Bride Page 2

  Brett was probably right—it might be time to renegotiate his contract—but Luke wasn’t as naïve as he’d been when he’d started out. More money for him meant more money for Brett. Especially since, as Luke’s manager, he took twenty percent off the top.

  “Whatever,” Luke said. “Just get me at least two months off.”

  His cell phone rang and he smiled when he saw the caller ID. Right on time. “Hey, Mama.”

  Brett made a gesture indicating he was leaving and Luke nodded. His mama wasn’t a huge fan of Brett. She thought he was a money-grubbing glory hound. She wasn’t wrong, but he’d always done what was best for Luke’s career—even better that it usually worked out in Brett’s best interest as well.

  “Hey, darlin’. Just callin’ to wish you good luck tonight.”

  “I know, Mama. You call every night before a concert.”

  “At this point, it’s a superstition. I feel like if I don’t call, somethin’ will go horribly, horribly wrong.”

  Luke smiled at her fancifulness but didn’t tell her he thought the same thing.

  “Where’re you headed to next?” she asked.

  “Don’t you have my concert schedule taped to the fridge?” he asked.

  “That’s beside the point. I like to hear you tell me about it.”

  He took a deep breath. “Let’s see. Tonight and tomorrow in L.A., then two nights in Las Vegas, one in Phoenix, one in Albuquerque, Cheyenne, and I’ll finish up in Denver.”

  “You sound tired.”

  “Yeah, a little.” He slouched down into the couch and set his guitar on the cushion next to him. “Five months on the road—you get a little worn out toward the end.”

  “You should come home and take a break.”

  “I’m gonna try. As soon as we’re done in Denver,” he said.

  “You know Rowan’s still in Denver, right? Maybe you should take some time to see her.”

  His whole body tensed at the mention of the one person he’d been trying to avoid thinking about. Even as her image had taunted him while he’d been singing earlier.

  “That’s probably not a good idea, Mama. We haven’t spoken to each other in years. Besides, I don’t know her address.” He knew Mama wouldn’t let that stand. Whenever she phrased something as maybe you should, it meant you’re going to do it whether you like it or not.

  “I’m sure I can get her address from her parents if you wanted to drop by and say hi. I still don’t understand what happened to you two. I thought for sure I’d have a bunch of grandbabies by now.”

  Nope. She wasn’t going to let it go. “Mama.”

  “I know. I know. It’s none of my business, but her mama doesn’t know why y’all broke up either or why Rowan moved all the way out to Colorado.”

  “We just drifted apart.” More like had swerved off in opposite directions.

  “Well, I think that’s a load of bad bologna. You two were as thick as thieves since you were twelve years old. You don’t just drift apart with that kind of history.”

  “Mama.” He thought briefly about telling her it was his fault. That he’d walked away. He’d walked toward his dream, but it had been away from her. It didn’t matter that he’d thought it was only going to be for a little while—until he’d made it big and his image wasn’t as important—he’d still picked being a hot, single country music singer over being with her.

  The one regret of his life. The one dream that didn’t come true.

  “And who’s this latest girl you’ve been seen with lately? Some floozy groupie you picked up at one of your concerts?”

  “Please stop reading the tabloids. She’s the new PR manager the label hired.”

  “Mmm-hmm. I know what happens backstage. I was young once too, ya know.”

  “Mama, I don’t even want to know what you think goes on backstage other than taking pictures and signing autographs and I sure don’t want to know why you think you know what goes on backstage.”

  Someone knocked on the door in the middle of the bus before it opened and his stage manager stuck his head in. “Luke, ten minutes to sound check.”

  He moved the phone away from his mouth. “Be right there,” he called. “I gotta go, Mama.”

  “All right. Sing your heart out tonight. I love you.”

  “Love you, too. Tell everyone I said hi. Bye.”

  He ended the call and threw the phone back on the cushion. Pulling the drawer of the bedside table open, he pulled out his wallet. No need to carry cash or credit or a driver’s license on him when he was on tour—if he wanted something, three different people would get it for him.

  Lifting the inside leather flap, he took out the worn photo and brushed his thumb over the couple in the picture. Sophomore year of college. Rowan had run onto the field with everyone else when he’d scored the winning home run in the last inning of the championship game. She’d thrown her arms around his neck and he’d picked her up to kiss her. One of her friends had taken the picture at the perfect moment their mouths met.

  They looked like a publicity still from some sappy romance movie. Except their story hadn’t ended with them living happily ever after. A few weeks later, Brett heard him singing in a bar in Nashville. Nine months after that, Luke was a last-minute opening act for Eric Church and another three weeks on, Rowan transferred to Colorado.

  It felt like he hadn’t been whole since. Six years was a long time to feel like a part of you was gone.

  The phone rang next on the cushion, startling him. Brett’s face flashed across the screen.

  Luke answered. “Yeah?”

  “Bro. You on your way? They need you on stage.”

  “Be right there.” Hanging up, he took one last look at the photo and returned it to its spot in his wallet before tossing it back into the drawer.

  He grabbed the neck of his guitar and shoved his phone in his back pocket on the way off the bus. He needed to focus. The rest of his life would have to wait for the next six hours.

  Chapter 4

  “That makes your ass look huge.”

  “Too simple.”

  “Too fancy.”

  “Too much bling.”

  “It looks like a nightgown.”

  “Is that bodice see-through? What kind of person gets married in a see-through dress?”

  Rowan puffed out her cheeks, stepped off the dais, and headed back to the dressing room. Debra, the poor stylist, trailed along behind her holding the heavy train.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said as soon as Debra closed the door.

  She waved her hand. “Don’t worry about it. They’re not the worst family I’ve ever dealt with, by any stretch of the imagination.”

  “I find that hard to believe.”

  Rowan turned her back so Debra could unlace the back of the corseted dress. The one her sister had picked out because “It’s just like the one I saw on that T.V. show by that one designer.”

  A dress Rowan would never have picked out herself. It did superb things for her waist, but the bodice was see-through from the base of the bust to the drop waist of the skirt. If she was planning on getting married in Vegas…maybe, but they were getting married in the church Michael’s parents had attended for the better part of twenty years, so showing up with a see-through bodice was not going to win over the extended side of his family

  “I once had a bridesmaid rip the entire front of a dress off the bride because it was the dress she’d shown the bride and told her it was the one she wanted for her wedding.”

  “Okay, that’s kind of bad.” She stepped out of the skirt and stood to the side.

  “Which one do you want to try next? The lace trumpet?”

  “No offense to the dress, but I don’t see me wearing a trumpet style.”

  “How about the ruched-waist A-line?”

  It was another dress her sister had picked out. It screamed over-the-top wedding. Something Adalynn had wanted for both her weddings and didn’t get. Rowan must not have done a very good job
of hiding her grimace because Debra let the dress fall back on the rack.

  A quick knock came from the door and Debra opened it a crack, peeking her head through to see who it was. Claudia slipped in, holding a dress over her shoulder.

  “A few things. First: why are you trying on all the dresses your mom and Adalynn picked out when you know you aren’t going to like them? Hell, they don’t even like them and they picked them out.”

  “Because sometimes it’s easier to go along and placate them than it is to argue with them. Debra and I talked about this during the initial consultation and she picked out some dresses that are more my taste and style. I’m just getting the worst of them out of the way first.”

  She looked at Debra. “Not to say the dresses are bad, but they are very much my sister’s style—not mine.” She looked back at Claudia. “Is that another dress they picked out?”

  “I’ll get to that. Second, Michael is awesome. He sent over a bottle of champagne. I managed to grab the card before your mom and sister read it.”

  Rowan took the small white envelope and broke the seal, pulling out the handwritten note. She smiled, then read the card out loud.

  “Enjoy your day. Can’t wait to see the dress you pick. Hopefully your mom and sister are more bearable after a bottle of champagne.” He really was the sweetest.

  “I don’t think you’re getting any of that champagne,” Claudia said. “I’m pretty sure it’s going to be gone before you get out there again.”

  Rowan slipped the card back in the envelope and stuck it in the pocket of her purse. “Pretty sure he didn’t send it for me since he knows I don’t like champagne. I commented one time that they were hilarious when they drank.”

  “Aww. That’s even sweeter,” Claudia said.

  “What’s with the dress?” Rowan asked.

  “That’s one of Rafael’s, isn’t it?” Debra asked.

  “Yes! That’s the third thing. I was wandering around the store looking for dresses that didn’t look like they would be featured on The Housewives of Privilege and Pretentiousness and started chatting with Rafael—he’s the in-house designer—and we started talking about you and what you like and he went into his workroom, came back with this dress and said, ‘This is her dress.’ ”

  She held it in front of her body.

  With a sweetheart neckline, the bodice of the dress was overlaid with delicate Chantilly lace and crystal beading. The illusion sleeves ended at the elbow and also had Chantilly lace at the shoulders and hem. An ice-blue tulle overskirt kept the satin A-line skirt from being too simple.

  Rowan gently ran a finger over the lace. “It’s beautiful.”

  Claudia’s face lit up. “Put it on,” she said excitedly.

  Debra took the dress from her and removed it from the hangar. She gathered it up and slipped it over Rowan’s head. It was almost a perfect fit—too tight around the ribs, but a little loose in the waist. Debra clipped the dress in the back to show how it would look once properly fitted.

  Rowan examined herself in the mirror, starting at the bottom of the skirt and working her way up to the neckline.

  This was the dress. Classic and elegant without being over the top or ostentatious. She felt like a princess. This was the dress she would wear in a little more than four weeks when she walked down the aisle toward Michael and the rest of her life. She met her own gaze in the mirror and the next fifty years flashed before her eyes.

  Kids, a house, a dog. A freaking minivan. School sports and parent-teacher conferences. Graduation and sending them off to college. She pictured all of this in her mind, but the one thing she couldn’t see—the one person she couldn’t see—was Michael. If she couldn’t see Michael in her future, was she making the right decision?

  When she’d been younger and had imagined her future, it had always been Luke. Funny enough, she had a hard time seeing him in the montage of her life. Not the superstar country singer Luke of today. Whenever she’d dreamed of her future, it had always been with the Luke of six years ago. Easygoing, always quick to make her smile, guitar-playing, Luke.

  Now there was a void—a vague shape of a man, but it was like in a dream where she couldn’t see the face of the person in front of her.

  She wasn’t sure if the blood was rushing to her head or pooling in her feet. Either way, she was light-headed and spots formed in her vision.

  “Hey. Rowan. Breathe.” Claudia’s hand in the middle of her back snapped her out of her reverie and she inhaled sharply.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yes,” she said quickly. “Yes. It’s beautiful.” She tried to blink away the tears that inexplicably formed.

  “It’s perfect,” Debra said. “I always know it’s the right dress when the bride-to-be cries.”

  The dress was perfect and it was definitely the dress she was going to be married in. But she’d never been the kind of person who cried over pretty things.

  Chapter 5

  “We need to find you a date.”

  Luke’s head snapped up. Marla didn’t even look up from the tablet she had cradled in her arm, stylus tapping against the screen, after dropping that bombshell.

  “What?” he asked around a mouth full of dry chicken. The catering company on this leg of the journey wasn’t all that great. One month and he’d be eating his mama’s homemade chicken and dumplings. He closed his eyes and imagined her drop biscuits, smothered in homemade sausage gravy. The already dry chicken turned to sawdust in his mouth and he guzzled water to make it moist enough to swallow. Appetite gone, he pushed away the plate in front of him.

  “I thought I needed to be the single, eligible bachelor in order to appear attainable to the female fan base.”

  Marla glanced up from her tablet and gave him a look that was all too familiar—his mama had given it to him for most of his teenage years when she thought he’d said something incredibly stupid.

  She looked down at her tablet, the stylus tap, tap, tapping away. She turned the screen toward him. “You’re trending down with women between the ages of twenty-eight and thirty-five. They see you as the stereotypical party boy.”

  All he saw was a flash of some graph with a bunch of different colored lines.

  “What does that matter?” Brett asked. “Young or old, women love him.”

  Maybe growing up with a house full of women had taught him better than most men how to interpret a look, but if Brett knew what was good for him, he’d shut his trap because he was about to get schooled.

  “Women control over twenty-million dollars in worldwide spending. In the U.S., they account for eighty-five percent of all consumer purchases. More than ninety percent of women pass along deals and information to other women. Seventy percent of women use blogs to share information while almost sixty-five percent use social media. One bad comment from a social media influencer can have significantly negative effects on a product”—she looked at Luke —“or person and the trending topic on I Was A 90s Groupie is, ‘I’m so over the bad boy cliché.’

  “Which all leads to—you need a date for the charity gala at the end of next month. Preferably someone whose dress covers their ass.”

  Brett scoffed. “Who cares what some bored mommy housewife with an online diary has to say?”

  “That bored housewife with an online diary has half a million Instagram followers, a quarter million Facebook followers, over fifty thousand hits a day on her diary, and is a Luke Stone super fan. She attends every concert of his in the Northeast and we’ve sent her tickets to give away on her blog for the last ten shows because she is an influencer and women, who spend twenty million dollars annually, listen to her. The day after her blog post, album sales dropped by three points.”

  She shifted her body so her back was ever so slightly toward Brett, effectively dismissing him from the conversation. “Who’s Rowan Mitchell?”

  Marla might as well have slapped him in the face with a catfish. “What?”

  “She’s on your friends and fam
ily list, but as far as I can tell she’s the only non-family person on there. So—friend or distant relative?”

  That chicken threatened to burn an acidic hole in his diaphragm and he drank some more water. “She was a friend.”

  “Was? But not currently?”

  “Wasn’t that your high school sweetheart?” Brett asked.

  Marla pulled out a chair and sat at the table, two faint lines forming between her eyebrows as she looked down at her tablet.

  “Wait…hang on. That was my first year with the label…” she muttered, tapping on her tablet. “Here it is. Jeez, I remember that meeting—that’s when Bobby John suggested you’d sell more records if you didn’t have a girlfriend. Swear to god, that was stupidest thing he’d said that week.”

  Luke wasn’t sure if he was meant to hear that last part.

  “So you don’t think I should have pretended to be single?”

  “What do you mean pretended? You two broke up.”

  “That’s because she was jealous of all the attention he was getting,” Brett said.

  Luke glared at him. “That’s not what happened.”

  Brett shrugged and crossed his arms. “Happens all the time. Girlfriend is supportive until she has to stand on the sidelines while the star gets all the attention and no one remembers who they are and then they get jealous.

  “Plus, and I hate to be a dick by pointing this out, but your career skyrocketed after you broke up. You poured all that emotional angst into your song writing—you got your first number one single off that record. The truth is, breakups are good for hit songs.”

  He ignored the part about his song writing, because he wasn’t wrong. But he was wrong about Rowan. “Rowan didn’t care that I was getting all the attention. She’s not like that.”

  She wasn’t. She’d been the one who always encouraged him—went to every one of his shows, even if it meant studying at a corner table because she had a test the next day. Rowan had convinced him to sign with Wild West Records. He wouldn’t be where he was without her.