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“Well now,” he said as he pulled his jeans off the edge of the sofa. “Why’d you have to go and insult Ivy like that?” He zipped up and nodded to the door, his eyes wintry, his tone sharp. “Like the lady said, it’s time to leave.”
The girls knew he meant business. “You’re an asshole,” pixie cut bit out on her way by.
“I’ve been called worse.”
“He sure has,” Ivy retorted for good measure. “By me.”
He didn’t give the blonde a chance to say anything and slammed the door shut behind her, then slowly cracked his neck and stretched.
“You have awful taste in groupies, you know that right?”
Cal ignored Ivy’s comment. He’d give his left pinky for a bacon and egg.
“Now, what the hell is so important you had to interrupt round two before it even had a chance to start?” He turned back to her and immediately went still. Ivy’s blue eyes, large and magnified by her glasses, were somber as they gazed across the room at him. For the first time, he noticed her rumpled clothes and the fact that she’d pulled on her top so quick, she hadn’t taken the time to button it up properly. Her long dark red hair was a tangled mess, secured on top of her head in a loose knot that would fall apart with one tug.
“Ivy?” He took two steps toward her and paused, his gut turning over as her mouth opened and the words spilled from between her lips.
“There’s been an accident.” Her voice was halting and low, hitting a timbre that was somewhere between bad news andreallybad news. “Your brother.”
His gut clenched, an involuntary movement that brought with it a roll of nausea and the kind of sweat that covered his body in an instant sheen. He could have blamed it on the tequila or the Jack, but that would have been too easy. This was a visceral reaction because heknewwhat was coming would be about as far from good as you could get.
“How bad?” he asked slowly, his tongue so thick, it was hard to swallow.
“Bad.” Ivy was never one to sugarcoat. “Or at least, not great. I don’t know many details.”
He looked out the window and saw a plane slice through the bright blue sky, a tail of smoke fading in its wake. In the distance, Sydney Harbor glistened like diamonds, and the sight of it reminded Cal that he was as far from Montana as a man could get.
“Who?” he managed to say as he exhaled and glanced Ivy’s way. He had two brothers and two sisters. His youngest brother, Ryland, was a senior in high school, and the other…
“Bent.”
Benton Bodean Bridgestone. Bent was the oldest and had eight years on Cal. He’d practically raised Cal and the rest of the Bridgestones after their mother died, and as a youngster, Cal had worshipped Bent. They’d been so damn tight, closer than anyone he’d known, but life had a way of making some things that seem certain break apart, and Cal hadn’t seen or talked to his brother in nearly six years. Not since that Christmas Eve when punches were thrown on both sides and things were said, the kind of things you don’t take back.
The kind of things that cut through flesh and bone to become silent wounds that settle in hearts and souls and never heal. Regret, the kind that chokes a man up and fills his throat with sawdust, made it impossible to speak. Cal could only stare at Ivy wordlessly, waiting for the hammer to fall.
“We need to get you back to the States right away. I’ve got the jet waiting. Vivian should be there when we arrive, but no one can get hold of Scarlett. She’s apparently backpacking somewhere in Europe. I’ve been in touch with her friends, and I’ve left messages so as soon as she checks in, which”—Ivy paused her forehead scrunched—“I’m hoping will be by tomorrow latest, we’ll get her home. Don’t worry about the rest of the tour dates. We’ve already rescheduled the European leg and the last show here as well. A press release will go out after we’ve arrived in Montana. I want you to have some time before it all hits. It’s good that we had three days between shows, so no one needs to know yet.”
“When did this happen?” His voice was so low, he barely heard his own words.
Ivy hesitated, and then whispered, “Three days ago.”
Anger flared as his head shot up. “Why the hell am I just finding out now?”
“I don’t know,” she replied softly. “I don’t have any details other than that it’s important to get back as soon as we can.”
“Because he’s not gonna make it.”
“That’s not what I was told, and that’s not what I said. Let’s just get home, and then we can see where things are at.”
Ivy was right. There was no use speculating when he didn’t know jack shit. His vision blurred at the thought of Bent lying in a hospital bed. It twisted him up in a way that should have been surprising considering the state of things, but it wasn’t. How many times had he grabbed his cell to call Bent? To tell him his last album had gone triple platinum in a week? That he held the record for the most downloaded songs ever?
Hell, just a month ago, he’d bought a new stallion, a beautiful paint he planned to breed at his new spread in California, and he’d dialed the house before he knew what he was doing. When he heard Bent’s voice on the other end, he’d frozen up and all those words tangled inside him like a ball of thread wound so tight, it would never come apart. And like a twelve-year-old idiot, he’d hung up without saying anything.
Him. A grown-ass man of thirty. And now he might not get a chance to speak to his brother again.
He glanced down at his bare feet and spied his boots in the corner, near the bar. He was halfway across the room before he stopped cold and rasped, “What about Daisy Mae?”
“She’s still not in the picture,” she said slowly. “No one has heard from her in about four years.”
