Coming Undone

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

FOR THREE LONG DAYS NOW, in the wake of Luther Menks's assault, P.J. had held it together. She was still holding it together when Jared came barging into her dressing room in Cleveland's Gund Arena and blew her hard-earned calm all to hell and gone.

"You don't have to do this, you know," he said, banging through the door without so much as a hello. "Youshouldn't do it. It's too damn soon."

She shrugged, hanging on to her composure by refusing to look directly at him.

But he just couldn't let sleeping dogs lie. "Are you nuts, Peej?"

Everything inside of her coalesced into a hot ball of anger and slowly, breathing carefully, she redirected her attention, bringing her gaze from just beyond his left shoulder to meet his stormy eyes. "Excuse me?" Her voice was quiet, but if he was half as smart as she'd always thought he was he'd be very, very careful about what came out of his mouth next.

Apparently she'd overestimated his intelligence.

"Look at you!" He took a step closer, scowling down at her. "The swelling might have gone down, but your cheekbone still looks tender and your eye's still black." He squinted at the orb under discussion. "Well, more green and purple, but the point is, you've got a way to go yet in your recovery. You sure as hell don't need to put yourself through a big-ass press conference. What was McGrath thinking to set it up so soon? What areyou thinking to agree to it?" He took another step nearer. "I repeat, are younuts? "

Tossing aside the stage makeup she'd been contemplating using to minimize her black eye, she marched up to him. "I guess I must be or I would have wised up by now and stopped putting up with your lame game of emotional dodge-'em."

"Huh?" He stilled, looking down at her with eyes gone wary. "What did I do?"

I will not lose it, I will not lose it."Aside from insulting my intelligence and treating me like a five-year-old, you mean?"

"What the hell are you talking about?" he demanded indignantly, bending his head until their faces were nose-to-nose. "I've never treated you like a five-year-old in my life."

"The hell you haven't!" Her last fragile grasp on the react-first-think-second temper she'd worked so hard to rise above simply came undone. She thumped her finger into his sternum. "Don't you pretend to be concerned about me," she snarled, jabbing his chest in cadence with every word.

He had the nerve to look thunderstruck. "Iam concerned-"

"You've been avoiding me like an Ebola outbreak!"

"That's bullshit." Wrapping his fist around her drilling finger, he prevented her from poking at him any further but tightened his grip when she tried to snatch it away. Dark brows gathering over his nose, he looked down at her. "Jesus, Peej, I've just been busy. Between dealing with the cops, the press and the arenas for the concerts we had to cancel, there were a hundred things to do."

"My God, you are so full of it it's amazing your eyes aren't brown," she marveled. "Well, you just keep telling yourself that, pal. Never mind that two thirds of your busywork is Nell's job-you and I both know the real reason you haven't been around."

"Maybe you do, baby. I don't have a clue what this 'real' reason might be."

"You've been running scared because I brought up the dreaded L-word."

"What?"He dropped her hand like a hot brick. "No." Stepping back, he thrust his fingers through his hair, his eyes growing shuttered. "I told you then that I understood you didn't really mean it."

"Yes. And how special that you seem to know my feelings better than I do." She didn't bother disguising her disgust. "But hey, good thing you're not treating me like a five-year-old or anything." Clenching and unclenching the hand he'd turned loose, she looked him in the eye. "No, wait. That's exactly what you're doing."

Then she took a giant step back, suddenly worn to the bone. "I'm so tired of chasing after a love that no one wants to give me I could spit. I did it for way too many years with Mama-damned if I plan to start begging for yours, too. What are you still doing here, anyway, J? Menks is in jail, the danger to me is past." She laughed a little wildly, because what a load of horse manure that was, considering that the very definition of danger stood right in front of her. She'd rather be back in that room with Menks than standing here feeling her heart shatter to pieces in her chest.

But she'd be planted six feet under, pushing up daisies and feeding the nightcrawlers, before she'd let it show. She thrust up her chin. "I think it's time for you to go home."

Face blank with-what? shock? relief, maybe?-he stepped forward, one long-fingered hand reaching out to her. "Peej."

There was a sudden rap on the door, then the portal swung open and her manager, Ben McGrath, strode into the room. "There's quite a crowd out there," he said in his crisp New England voice, pocketing a cell phone on which P.J. knew he'd have just that moment concluded a call. "You ready?"

"Yes." Taking a quick peek at her reflection in the makeup mirror, she rearranged a few strands of her new haircut, which curled just about chin length now, then shrugged at the bruising she'd thought to disguise. What the hell. Let the whole damn world see-what did she care? It wasn't like she'd done anything to warrant the beating Menks had dealt her.

It was simply one more case of attracting the emotionally bankrupt. She seemed to have a real flair for it.

"Dammit, P.J." Jared's voice was urgent, commanding her to look at him, and once again he reached out for her.

Ignoring the demand, she dodged away from his touch and his fingertips merely grazed her forearm. Ignoring as well the heat that seared her skin where they had brushed, she looked at Ben. "Let's go."

She left the room without a backward glance.

SHE THINKSISHOULD GO home?Gut feeling as if a host of maniac grasshoppers danced hip-hop inside it, Jared stalked down the hallway behind P.J. and Ben.

Hell, she was probably right. That's exactly what he ought to do. In fact, that's what he'd sort of assumed his plan was, anyway. He'd thought to see her recuperate, to see her settled, then blow this popstand and never look back.

Now that she'd told him to go, however-

Before he had time to follow that snippet of thought to a conclusion that didn't involve him being one of those stubborn don't-tell-me-what-to-do kind of idiots, they'd reached the stage.

It was like walking into a room you believed empty only to have someone flip on strobe lights and crank up the sound to ear-bleed level. Flashbulbs exploded like the blitz over London, blinding in their proliferation and blue-white intensity. A cacophony of voices shouted questions on top of overlapping questions, all of which seemed to begin with "Ms. Morgan! Ms. Morgan! Is it true that:?"

Blinking against the spots floating across his retinas, he put himself between Peej and the press until they reached a catering table set up at center-front stage. He had originally planned to observe the proceedings from the arena floor until Ben had insisted that he join them at the mics, stating that the press would likely have questions Jared could answer more easily than P.J. Recognizing the truth of it, he'd reluctantly agreed and now he was glad he had. Because the mosh pit swarmed with far more print reporters and TV crews than any of them had anticipated.

They settled themselves at the table and the grasshoppers hip-hopped with increased frenzy when Peej shifted unobtrusively away from him as he seated her. Ben opened the press conference by reading a brief statement.

It didn't begin to satisfy the fourth estate. "Ms. Morgan! Ms. Morgan!" A dissonance of questions peppered them.

Ben, smoother than a White House press officer, fielded as many of them as he could. Most were directed at P.J., of course, and were worded in such a way that only she could respond. She did so with polite composure.

But from the corner of his eye, Jared saw her hands clench in her lap and knew it was costing her.

As Ben had predicted, Jared, too, came in for his share of attention. "So who are you?" demanded one bubble-haired blonde. "Mr. McGrath is Ms. Morgan's manager, but why are you on the dais with her?"

"My name is Jared Hamilton, Ms. Grabowski," he said, reading her press tag. Not about to share that P.J.'s label had hired him to protect their investment in the wake of the bad press generated by her mother, he fell back on the liar's friend and offered up a partial truth. "I'm a security specialist from the Semper Fi agency in Denver. Ms. Morgan began receiving threatening correspondence and Wild Wind Records hired me to keep an eye on her." Not necessarily in that order, but they didn't need to know that.

The woman scrutinized P.J.'s discolored eye and still-bruised cheekbone, then glanced back at him with raised eyebrows. "You didn't do a very efficient job of it, did you?"

"That's very unfair," P.J. said, giving the reporter a look of cool censure. "My label hired one man. How efficient can any one person be trying to be everywhere during every minute of every hour of every day? Mr. Hamilton did an outstanding job with the tools he was given. He's the one who figured out that Luther Menks was my stalker. He's the one who had fliers made up of Menks's likeness and saw that they got passed out to every security team in every venue I played. And if he hadn't arrived when he did I'd most likely be dead."

He turned to stare at her for a second before remembering where they were and jerking his attention back front and center. But Christ on a crutch. She wasdefending him?

Never mind that she still angled herself subtly away from him-that big heart of hers just flattened him like a rockslide. P. J. Morgan was a bigger man than he'd ever be and he didn't deserve her generosity. Because Ms. Grabowski had it right. He'd done a piss-poor job of protecting her.

Despite the fact that his old man had never hesitated to tell him he wasn't worth the space he took up, he couldn't complain about his life up until now. From his seventeenth summer he'd had a family to tell him he had value, people to comfort him when the idiots of the world believed he really had killed his own father. He'd had a strong male influence in John, had plenty to eat, money in his pocket, an elegant roof over his head and access to a first-class education.

P.J., on the other hand, had been dragged from trailer park to trailer park by a mother who'd disdained everything that made her special until Jodeen discovered she could make a buck off Peej's musical gift. But had she turned bitter or self-pitying? No. She was sweet and talented and kind to everyone she met. And she was generous to a fault to give him credit for saving her life when it was his-what had she called it?-his lame game of emotional dodge-'em that had driven her to escape his company in the first place. That had left her vulnerable to a madman's attack.

She'd had every excuse to turn into a stone-cold bitch like her mother, but she'd refused to cling to the past. Instead, putting the ugliness behind her, she had made the best of her present and was heading into one hell of a future.

Which begged the question: If she could put her past behind her, what the hell kind of excuse did he have to hang on to his?

Wonder beginning to suffuse his chest, he turned to look at her.

"Ohmigawd! My baby!" a voice suddenly bawled from the back of the arena. Then, only a shade more quietly, "Let go of me, you ham-fisted moron. My baby needs me!"

P.J. swore softly beneath her breath and Jared didn't need to see the woman slapping at the security guard preventing her from getting near the stage to know that the infamous Jodeen Morgan had come to cash in on her daughter's misfortune.

He surged to his feet, but before he could push back from the conference table to hustle her mother the hell out of there, P.J. leaned into the microphone. "It's okay," she said softly. "Please. Let her go."

He sat back down as the guard promptly stepped back from Jodeen, the man's hands going wide of his body in a you're-the-boss posture.

Jodeen gave him one last slap.

"Mama, stop it. What are you doing here?"

"Oh, my poor daughter," Jodeen crooned, rushing the stage. "I just hadda come see how my darling baby is doing after such a horrible ordeal-even if you did turn your back on your own flesh and blood."

P.J. winced and Jared's ire spiked. So this was P.J.'s mother. She was smaller than he'd expected, which, considering her daughter's petite stature, shouldn't be a surprise. But where P.J. had a softness to her, her mother looked exactly what she was-a hard, self-serving bitch. And he wasn't about to let her just show up and start putting her daughter down.

He leaned into the mic. "I wonder why she would do that, Mrs. Morgan?" he asked in an interested, non-confrontational tone. "Could it have anything to do with the fact that you stol-"

"And you are?" The older woman interrupted with saccharine sweetness even as her eyes narrowed in sour assessment. Then, without taking her gaze off him, she gave her brittle ash-blond hair a little pat and strode through the parting press until she stood in the pit directly below their table. "No, don't tell me. You must be the new manager Priscilla replaced me with when she tossed her own mama aside."

"No, ma'am," Ben said, leaning forward. "That would be me."

"Oh." Hands on her hips, she turned her attention to the New Yorker, taking in his faultlessly tailored suit and patina of sophistication until the flashbulbs going off around her like paparazzi covering the red carpet seemed to recall her to her mission. The hard-edged calculation melting from her expression, she turned a tragic face toward the press. "Then who is this other man?" she asked piteously. "Is he some hanger-on, hoping to get his hands on my baby's money?"

"Interesting question, coming from you," Jared said. "Sorry to disappoint you, but I neither want nor need Priscilla Jayne's money. And frankly I'm not sure why you would assume I'm after it in the first place." She was drunk, he suddenly realized. Not falling down, sloppy drunk, but he recognized the exaggeratedly careful mannerisms for what they were. "However, please allow me to put your mind to rest. My name is Jared Hamilton. Your daughter's record label hired me."

"You!" For an instant unbridled hatred twisted her features. Almost immediately, she wrestled her expression back into her oh-so-sad poor-abused-mama look. "You're that young man she mooned over-the boy who killed his own father!"

"Mama!"

Like Romans uncaring whether the gladiator or the lion won as long as it was a good, bloody fight, the press turned on him, shooting off questions right and left. They quieted, however, when Jared looked at Jodeen with a cool, shuttered gaze and said, "Careful, Mrs. Morgan. I doubt you can afford to be sued for slander."

"I apologize," she said hastily. "I meant to say the young man wanted inquestioning for killing his own father."

He had to hand it to her, that was pretty slick. She'd managed to cover her ass and still get that killing-your-own-father bit in twice in thirty seconds.

"Someone else was convicted of Jared's father's murder, Mama," P.J. snapped. "As you very well know, since I told you all about it when you finally let me come home."

"Don't you take that tone with me, missy!"

P.J.'s jaw went up, but her pointed little chin wobbled for a second before firming up.

Jared's heart clenched so hard that for a second he thought it was going to seize. Ah, man, she was killing him, sitting there taking it on the chin and refusing to let the world see how much it hurt. He was mad as hell at Jodeen for wounding her this way.

He was even madder at himself for having done the same. That didn't stop him, however, from taking his wrath out on Jodeen.

"Don'tyou take that tone with her," he snapped. "Your daughter's still recovering from a fundamentalist right-wing whacko who tied her up, struck her, cut her hair and threatened to kill her, which he would have done in a New York minute if he hadn't been stopped. She's been traumatized and she's been hurt, and so far the only thing I've heard you ask, Mrs. Morgan, is if I'm after her money."

"Well, of course I'm worried about her! Haven't I said so a hundred times?"

"No. You haven't. You've wailed about your 'baby' and you've claimed that you just had to see her after her ordeal. Yet not once did you ask her how she's faring." Taking off the gloves, he demanded in clipped tones, "Isn't it true that your main concern here is to regain your meal ticket?"

Still playing the room, she fluttered a hand to her breast as she weakly gasped, "That's ahorrible thing to say!" But if eyes could morph into knives, hers would have eviscerated him.

"Yep, it's pretty lousy," he agreed. "Still, you kind of set yourself up for a few sticks and stones when you embezzled from your own daughter."

"I never! You better watch yourself, sonny-that suing for slander can go both ways!"

"Except it's not slander if you've got the books to back up the claim. And isn't it true that you're jealous of your daughter? That you've alwaysbeen jealous because she's sweet and has talent and is everything you never were?"

"I made her career! If not for me, she'd still be playing bars and honky-tonks. But when she started to get somewhere, what did she do? Dumped me like yesterday's dirty dishwater for Mister Fancypants there."

"So your contention is that it had nothing to do with your helping yourself to her earnings."

"I deserved that money! Anyway, she was starting to make pots, so I don't see what a dollar or two here and there matt-" She cut herself off, but more flashbulbs flashed and voices erupted and it was too late to take the words back.

P.J. pushed back from the table with a screech of her chair. Ignoring the pandemonium breaking out all around her, she strode from the stage.

Shit.Shit! What the hell had he done? He, too, pushed back. "Take over," he said to Ben, who was all but rubbing his hands together in satisfaction over Jodeen finally having been outed for the crook she was.

Then Jared hotfooted it into the wings after P.J., covering ground as fast as he could without pulling attention to himself by actually running.