In Tune with Love Page 2

  Kristin huffed. “Busy doing what?”

  “Busy working. Writing songs. Trying to land a record deal. It all takes time, and I just don’t see how—”

  “You’ve been doing that for over three years now.” Kristin made a disgusted sound. “It’s about time you accepted the fact that it will probably never happen. I need your help. You can go back to writing your little jingles on Monday after the wedding.”

  Jingles. And this is how her family saw her, every last one of them. As if it was her fault she hadn’t yet been discovered. Her fault that the right place and right time hadn’t yet surfaced for her. Her fault that a guy she worked with had ripped off one of her lyrics three years back and made a huge success of himself while she still passed out drinks and peanuts at the same stupid dive bar.

  April took a deep breath and forced herself not to hate Jack Vaughn. As always, it took work, especially considering she’d heard a rumor he was in town for a few days. The idea alone sent a ripple of anger up her spine, one she quickly commanded to go away. To think she once had a ridiculous crush on him. April nearly gagged just thinking about it. Besides, Kristin needed her. They were sisters—and friends. And despite their differences in opinion, they really did love each other.

  “Okay, I’ll do it.”

  The relieved look on Kristin’s face made relenting worth it. “Thank you. You won’t regret it, I promise.”

  “What do I need to do?” April asked.

  For the first time all day, her sister smiled. “Really, not that much.”

  If ever she had cursed her belief in humanity and the truth behind a spoken word, it was now. Not that much, her sister had said.

  Not that much, her butt.

  April blew a strand of hair out of her face and tied another ribbon around a bag of birdseed, holding the yellow silk ball and stick in place so it would stop leaning to the side for the love of all things holy while she tried once again to keep all of it together. She wasn’t sure who came up with the idea, but she knew one thing: whoever decided birdseed bags needed to resemble cake pops should be required to put these together themselves. But it was up to April. Everything was up to April.

  For fifteen solid hours now, wedding crap was all she’d had time for.

  “Are you almost done with those?” Kristin popped her head around the corner, a giant look of concern crinkling the space between her eyebrows as she took in the stack of unfilled cloth and bucket of birdseed. “Because I need help with the place cards and you have better handwriting than me.”

  And this was the excuse for all the work she’d been doing unassisted since she accidentally fell into the job of wedding coordinator yesterday afternoon. April was apparently better at everything. Better at making birdseed bags. Better at polishing bridesmaids’ shoes. Better at stacking monogrammed matchbooks inside clear glass hurricanes. Better at everything.

  And now better at writing names on place cards so that everyone in attendance could sit at chairs preassigned by Kristin. April didn’t care where anyone sat. April didn’t care if anyone sat at all. At this point, April didn’t care if her sister flew away to Jamaica or Aruba—wherever crazy, high-maintenance brides went to elope with their poor, unsuspecting husbands-to-be.

  But as had become customary, she smiled. Sucked it up. And answered. “I’ll be done in just a minute and then I can help you.”

  “Okay, thanks.” Kristin waved her fingers and walked away, only to pop her head in a second later. “Oh. One more thing.”

  Something about the way she said those three words made April’s blood run cold. Maybe it was the slight lilt in her voice at the end brought on by the artificial effort to sound casual. Maybe it was the way each word was carefully enunciated, as though Kristin needed extra time to really make sure her sister knew what came next was important. Or maybe it was the simple fact that every piece of bad news Kristin had ever delivered in life began with those same words. When April was seven: one more thing, your goldfish died. When she was ten: one more thing, Santa Claus isn’t real. When she was sixteen: one more thing, I accidentally made out with your boyfriend. And when she was nineteen: one more thing, Jack Vaughn’s song “Confidence” hit number one on the country charts.

  April was sick of One More Things, and it was about time her sister knew it. She tied a bow around another bag and tossed it in a box. “What did you do now?”

  Kristin’s eyes went wide, the picture of false innocence. “What makes you think I did something?”

  “I know you did something. Spit it out, Kristin.”

  She shifted in the doorway. “The wedding singer quit this afternoon.”

  April blinked, waiting for the rest of the story. She would like to say the news surprised her, but in reality she was shocked the whole hired staff hadn’t quit by now. Kristin was a diva. Verged on a tyrant. Would probably go down in the books as the worst bride ever in the history of brides, and she’d seen the movie Bride Wars so this was saying a lot.

  “I’d like to say I’m surprised, but then that would be a lie and lying is a sin and—oh my gosh, do you want me to sing? Because I’ll do a lot for you, Kristin, but I’m not singing in your wedding.” April flattened another piece of material and spooned a small pile of birdseed in the middle of it.

  “No, I’m not asking you to—wait, why wouldn’t you sing in my wedding?” Kristin crossed her arms and glared down at her. “It’s not like you don’t sing in public all the time. And don’t tell me you’ve developed a sudden case of stage fright because I won’t believe you. You sing for a living, April. And you’re telling me you wouldn’t sing in my wedding if I needed you to?”

  Her sister, ever the drama queen. April sighed. “I don’t have stage fright, but I do have a very real fear of crying in public. So if you don’t mind, I’d really rather not look like a sobbing idiot in front of three hundred people while I sing twelve stanzas of ‘Wind Beneath My Wings.’ ”

  “Aw, you think you’ll cry at my wedding? That’s so sweet.”

  “Of course I’ll cry. You’re my sister and I love you. Plus, I cry at Hallmark commercials.”

  Kristin made a face. “You’re so emotional. But ‘Wind Beneath My Wings’?” Kristin made an unflattering noise. “As if I would choose that overdone song. But I don’t need you to sing. I hired someone.”

  “Then why are we having this conver—wait. You hired someone already?” There was no way—no way—Kristin could have hired someone that fast. Aside from April, she knew no one in the music scene, and a replacement that fast would have to be done on a favor. But who owed her a favor?

  “Um . . . it was more like a chance encounter than anything else.” April watched while her sister reached up for a strand of hair and began twirling. Twirling, twirling, twirling. And more than the One More Things and fake smiles and all the other regular habits Kristin used to mask guilt, hair twirling was the biggest sign of wrongdoing. Always had been. She raised an eyebrow at her sister and repeated the question. “Kristin, who agreed to sing last minute? Because I can’t imagine that anyone around here would—”

  Then she knew. Like a cat knows when someone is dying and a child senses stranger danger, she knew.

  And just like that, prison found its way to the top of her bucket list, because this was totally and completely and entirely grounds for murdering her sister.

  “Has anyone seen my brain? I can’t seem to locate it,” Jack said, raking his hands through his hair before burying his face in his palms. “What the heck possessed me to agree to sing in that wedding? I don’t even like that chick, but it was almost like my mouth opened up on its own and said yes before I could stop it. I’m a musician—I have a great career—so how in heaven’s name am I suddenly playing the part of Adam Sandler in that lame nineties movie?”

  “The Wedding Singer?” His manager, Brian, peered at him over his laptop screen. They sat at Jack’s mother’s kitchen table drinking coffee. Jack always made a point of stopping in to see his mom when h
e rolled into town. With a rare weekend off and the new tour kicking off next weekend, neither he nor his manager were in a hurry to do much of anything else. “I think that movie came out in the early two-thousands.”

  “Whatever. I’m still starring in it. Will probably be forced to wear some blue tuxedo with a puffy ruffle shirt and sing some cheesy ballad.” His head came up, eyes wide with horror. “If she makes me sing ‘Wind Beneath My Wings’—”

  “She wouldn’t dare,” Brian said. “Besides, I saw that chick in her tight blue skirt. I’m not surprised you said yes. Not surprised at all.”

  “Please,” Jack said, “You don’t know this girl. She could have been standing there in a fringe bikini and I still would have found her repulsive. I only said yes for one reason.” Guilt. Guilt and a fair amount of self-loathing. Pair those two attributes with a healthy dose of shame and a guy could be talked into just about anything. But he didn’t say that. In fact, he said nothing. It took Brian a minute, but eventually he caught on.

  “And the reason is . . .?”

  “I owe her sister something.” That was as close to the truth as he dared to admit. He couldn’t tell his manager his entire career was launched on a stolen song. It didn’t matter that he didn’t know it was stolen until exactly four weeks after it was released and playing on an hourly basis on the radio. It didn’t matter that over a month of television appearances had gone by before April began to flood his phone with text messages demanding an apology, a retraction, money. It didn’t matter that Jack spent the next two months panicking before he finally sucked it up and called her back, or that she had subsequently ignored all his calls—at that point likely too angry and hurt to bother acknowledging him. It didn’t matter that she’d written only four lines and Jack had built an entire song around them— he’d spent three years rationalizing that pathetic idea—but his conscience wouldn’t let him deny the hard truth that stealing a little was the same thing as stealing a lot. People went to jail for both.

  Sometimes Jack suspected jail was where he belonged. Despite the poor conditions or the fact that he might be eye candy for the sexually frustrated, he wondered if landing his butt in solitary for a few days would make his guilt magically disappear.

  It was a long shot, he knew, but he still couldn’t help consider the possibility.

  “You owe who something?” His mother walked in, the picture of health and stability and normalcy—something he appreciated more and more as life got crazier. She wore her usual uniform of mom jeans and pullover sweater. No matter how many times Jack encouraged her to go shopping and treat herself to something more than JCPenney or Sears, she wouldn’t do it. There were definite benefits of having money, but other than this house that Jack purchased for her last year and a cleaning lady who came once a week in spite of his mother’s objections, she didn’t bother enjoying any of them.

  “No one, Mom. I was just filling Brian in on the history of this town.” Not exactly a lie; just a few details left out to protect the less-than-innocent. Namely, him.

  “Oh, tell him about the Belle Meade Plantation,” she said, fishing a black mug out of an upper cabinet and setting it beneath a shiny chrome Keurig, a purchase Jack had made the last time he visited. “It’s one of the most beautiful landmarks in Nashville. You should take him to see it while you’re here.”

  And this is what his mother did. Made plans for Jack to tour the city every time he came into town, despite knowing he had only two days set aside before a grueling concert schedule took over every second of the next seven months of his life. Sightseeing was the last thing he wanted to do. But ever the dutiful son, he agreed.

  “Sure thing, Mom. I’ll try to fit it in.”

  He wouldn’t, but she didn’t need to know that. His mother was the best woman he’d ever met—provided for him and raised him alone, when the only thing they could afford was a trailer park on the outskirts of town and Ramen noodles most nights for dinner. The last thing he would do was hurt her, not when she was excited about the idea of Jack playing Nashville tour guide. But the only thing about sightseeing in Nashville . . . sometimes you ran into people you’d rather not see.

  Jack stared at the table, his thoughts a swirling tornado wrapping itself around the same familiar subject.

  April Quinn.

  He knew he owed April everything, and for the last three years his conscience had begged for release. And now it would have it in the form of a big, fat face-to-face with her. He had no idea what he would say, no idea how he would feel seeing her after all these years. But he knew one thing: if he had to sing ninety-seven verses of “Wind Beneath My Wings” on repeat, he’d do it the entire wedding to keep her from slapping him.

  The next morning Jack picked up two grocery bags and set them on his hips, then turned to walk to the car, trying to change his attitude but failing miserably. He hated grocery shopping. Hated it almost as much as mowing the lawn and unclogging a hair-filled drain. But his apartment contained nothing edible except for a bag of stale Doritos he didn’t recall buying and one unopened can of beer tucked away in the back of his refrigerator. Brian was taking yet another nap, so Jack figured now was as good a time as any to get the errand over with. Which meant he’d spent the last half hour of life cursing his existence.

  But every internal foul word that had flitted across his brain in the grocery store was nothing compared to now.

  He stepped off the curb and stopped short. Twenty feet away from him stood April Quinn depositing bags inside the trunk of her car. She reached for the last bag inside her shopping cart and turned back around, giving him a nice view of her backside. So he looked. Of course he looked. Until it occurred to him that any second now, she would notice him standing there and quite possibly yell at him across the parking lot.

  Jack decided to make himself invisible. After looking over his shoulder to make sure April was still preoccupied, he walked in the opposite direction toward his own car. Everything went well until he made the bonehead move of setting both bags on the back of his Lexus to retrieve car keys from his pocket. Just as he fished them out, one bag toppled onto the other bag and both started shooting contents onto the ground. While he lunged to grab them, his hand hit the panic key. His car alarm blared across the parking lot like a bullhorn announcing a battlefield retreat while Jack just stood there among the carnage.

  He clicked the Off button and surveyed the disaster.

  A carton of eggs lay upside down with four—maybe five—yolks oozing out from the top. An untied bag of apples rolled underneath cars and in the driving lane, fruit heading in too many directions to rescue. Jack watched as a minivan obliterated one. Cereal toppled end over end, but it was cereal, so nothing much happened there, thank God. But the chocolate milk fared worst of all. One side busted and gushed brown liquid in a puddle around his feet. He had to jump out of the way to keep any from getting on his new two-hundred-dollar leather combat boots. A silly expenditure, but he swore it was love at first sight even though he didn’t believe in that crap. Seeing no hope for his situation, he gave the heavens a great big eye roll and bent to retrieve an apple. The eggs could stay there and scramble in the hot afternoon sun for all he cared.

  “Need help with that?”

  Jack’s spine stiffened even though he was kneeling down. Who knew spines could do that? But apparently spines could because his did, right then and right there, making it painful and awkward to stretch for more apples. So he gave up trying and straightened, dread and nervousness filling up every crevice of his insides because he would know that voice anywhere. Only this time, it rang with a definite chill. That same sound haunted him at night when he lay awake with nothing on his mind except time and emptiness. It taunted him from its place in the crowd as he stood onstage and pretended to be a songwriter. It jabbed at him in his dreams that played out like real-time memories on repeat. He’d listened to her early messages so often he could recite them on command.

  Jack, where did you find that napkin? It
wasn’t yours to take.

  Jack, where did you get those lyrics? And don’t even think about telling me it’s just a coincidence.

  Number one, huh? I hope you’re proud of yourself, Jack.

  How do you live with being so dishonest, Jack?

  She’d said so many other things in those first few months, but these were the questions he remembered the most. Because these were the ones he wished to undo. The ones he wished to deny. The ones he asked himself daily.

  Yes, he was proud of his career. But no, he wasn’t proud of the way he got here. For every second of every day, his regrets were many. Still, regret did nothing to prepare him for what he was sure to face when he locked eyes with April for the first time in three years. Wanting to get it over with, he inhaled all the air around them and slowly turned around.

  Nothing prepared him for her smile. Or for the fact that three years had done scrawny, short, wispy April Quinn a whole lot of favors.

  April kept the smile pasted on her face, unwilling to give him the satisfaction of seeing any other emotion. Maybe he felt guilty. Maybe he felt remorseful. Maybe he felt bad that his career took off instead of hers, which would have been justified.

  But she wouldn’t let him see her feeling anything except happy. Happy, happy, happy. Despite the past two days spent doing every freaking thing possible for the Sister Bride from Hell, Jack Vaughn was going to see her happy. So she smiled. The sweetest, kindest, Southernmost, fakest smile she could muster. And she kept it there while his mouth opened and closed, the famous singer-songwriter at a sudden loss for his own words.

  Imagine that.

  “Um, I think I can manage it myself. But thanks.”

  An apple dropped from his hands and rolled across his foot before it disappeared under a black Volvo. April nearly laughed at the awkward picture it made, but then she saw Jack wince and saw him shift and saw an embarrassed flush as it made its way up his neck, and then she felt . . . sorry for him? Frustrated, she straightened her shoulders and demanded indignation to return. Like an obedient puppy she’d been carrying around for three solid years, it did. With a little added anger to make things interesting.