Ellen Hartman - His Secret Past

“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’t so 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.