Eleanor let out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. “Smart man. And here I thought you only kept me around for my charm.”
“Well, that and the fringe jacket,” he teased, wagging his brows.
“You are such a rascal.” She slapped his arm, light but fond.
He grinned. “Want Megan to let the kid know you’re game?”
“Sure. I’ll talk to him. But no one else. He’s not to bring any of his friends.” She was skeptical that the request came the same instant she’d seen her daughter. “Until then, let’s keep one of your starry-eyed groupies on sentry duty. If anyone comes looking, especially female, wet, and angry, tell her I’m meditating. Or levitating. Or dead.”
“You got it, Mama Lightning.” Shep gave a mock salute, and she was grateful he didn’t ask her to elaborate.
Eleanor eased down onto the makeshift lounger they’d built from cots, a bean bag, and what looked suspiciously like a drum case. The vinyl squeaked beneath her, and Roxy crawled onto her lap, snorting like a little piglet.
She was safe. For now. But her eyes kept flicking to the tent flap.
What if Leanne knew where to look? What if she saw the stage, saw Shep, saw everything? Her earlier fears of Leanne calling the police resurfaced.
What burned wasn’t the fear of being found but the idea that herdaughter might show up with judgment tucked into every crease of her face. Like Eleanor hadn’t earned this joy. Like she was selfish for choosing this fleeting escape, this music, this reckless, wonderful little rebellion over casseroles and crossword puzzles.
Shep watched her, his own eyes narrowing with quiet curiosity.
“What’s got you frowning?” he asked gently. “Besides the rain.”
Eleanor leaned back, stroking Roxy’s tufted patch of hair on her head. “Just wondering how many more times I get to feel like this before someone tells me I shouldn’t.”
Shep cocked his head, studying her for a full beat. “That sounded pretty loaded. Want to talk about it?”
The rocker had a talent—not just for creating rhythm or changing chords but for reading people like lyrics. Probably because, while most of the band rode a wave of bourbon and weed haze, he was clear-eyed and stone sober, tuning in to the frequencies others missed.
Eleanor glanced through the sliver of space in the tent flap, the rain still falling in gauzy sheets across the field. “I could’ve sworn I saw my daughter out there,” she murmured, more to herself than to Shep.
The words sounded absurd leaving her mouth. Leanne, knee-deep in mud, soaked to the bone, dancing at a rock concert in Atlanta? And the woman had been in bell-bottoms. Denim! Eleanor nearly laughed. Her prim, pearls-and-pleated-skirt-wearing daughter wouldn’t be caught dead without an umbrella, let alone barefoot in a storm.
“No.” Eleanor shook her head and brushed a wet curl from her temple. “No, that couldn’t have been her. Just my mind playing tricks.”
“She into music like you?” Shep asked, his voice gentle.
Eleanor scoffed, the sound dry as old paper. “Not at all. Leanne’s…rigid.”
The word tasted sharp, too sharp. Like she was cutting into something that shouldn’t be sliced so carelessly.
She looked down at Roxy, curled into a tight comma on her lap,and guilt bloomed in her chest like a bruise.
“She was raised to be proper,” Eleanor added, quieter now. “Respectable. Clean edges. Good posture. Crisp linens and measured words. Even as a teenager she was the girl who wore gloves to church and never missed a thank-you note.”
The kind of girl Eleanor had worked hard to raise.
The kind of woman Eleanor had once promised herself she’d never become and then had done exactly that.
She sighed, a sound dragged up from somewhere deep, like dust from an attic box. “That’s on me. I clipped her wings before she even knew she had them.” If Leanne had learned to repress her dreams early, to do the practical thing, then she wouldn’t have turned out like Eleanor, longing for what she couldn’t have. Getting a taste of freedom for it only to be torn away. How wrong she’d been.
Shep didn’t say anything. Just sat beside her, drumming one thumb softly against his knee, like he was keeping time with the part of the story she hadn’t told yet.
And maybe that was why she liked him.
He let her talk when she wanted to, and didn’t push when she didn’t.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
