Love Songs for the Road (11 page)

Chapter Thirteen

G-Rated Naughtiness

Marcus woke the next morning to the sound of the bedside telephone, the ring clanging in his ear until he had to succumb to the fact that it wasn’t going to stop until he did something about it. He reached over, picked up the receiver, and was about to slam it down when a tiny, insistent voice screamed, “Marcus Troy, do not hang up on me!” He recognized the voice instantly. It was Cynthia Reed, his divorce lawyer.

“Uh oh,” Marcus said, real foreboding in his voice. He liked Cynthia just fine—she was a tough New Yorker he was glad had been on his team and not Bianca’s—but an unexpected call from her was never followed by good news.

Cynthia chuckled, and he could hear the hundred thousand cigarettes she’d smoked in that throaty laugh. “Good morning to you, too, Marcus.”

“Sorry, Cynthia, you know how it is,” he said. “What can I do for you today?” His tone of voice was approximately that of a child summoned to the headmaster’s office and awaiting a harsh and long-lasting punishment. He looked at the clock. It read six forty-five, which meant that, in Manhattan, Cynthia had already been at work for a couple hours. She probably thought she was being polite, having waited to call for nearly an hour—an eternity to a high-powered divorce attorney.

“Marcus, what am I going to do with you?”

“I don’t know, Cynthia. But I do know you’re going to keep on cashing those enormous checks I send you. How much has this call cost me so far?”

“The call’s on the house, but we may have some real work ahead of us this week.”

“Yeah? How so?”

“Well, I heard from Bianca’s counsel last night. Actually, this morning. Three-thirty my time, to be exact. I’m not in love with getting voice mails in the middle of the night, of course, but the sick part of me really admires this guy’s twenty-four/seven availability.”

“Dear God,” Marcus said. “What’s Bianca trying to pull now?”

“Honestly, what were you thinking?”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about a photo op with the nanny, Marcus. You probably remember her? The twenty-five-year-old young lady who’s supposedly caring for your children?”

“What?” Marcus sat up in bed and pulled an iPad toward him. “What photo op?” He’d seen the photographer with Benjamin, but he’d assumed he’d intercepted the two paps before they’d gotten anything of value.

“She’s very cute, Marcus. Wholesome-looking, too. I have to compliment you on your taste.”

“Whoa, dial it back. There’s no ‘taste’ involved here. We’re not together, and I didn’t hire her because she was cute. I hired her because she came highly recommended.”

“Fine. But she
is
lovely to look at, and you’ve been in this business long enough to know that people are going to come to their own conclusions.”

“Hold on a minute,” Marcus said brusquely. He found the images Cynthia was referring to, the one where he was barely touching Ryan in the most non-sexual way, and the ridiculous caption that accompanied it. How had Benjamin and that other twerp gotten past security? He was going to kill Alex.

“So what? There’s no scandal here. What does Bianca plan to do with these?” Even Marcus recognized how naive he sounded. “They prove nothing.”

“You and I have agreed that shared custody is our long-term goal, have we not?”

“We have.”

“And you also remember how difficult it was for you to get the kids for the entirety of the tour, yes?”

“Of course.” Marcus still recalled the endless revisions to the legal agreement, and the nearly six-figure invoice from Cynthia’s office that had accompanied it. “Just spit it out, please. What’s she after?”

“She wants the kids off the tour. She wants to come get them now, and she wants a custody hearing.”

“Another one?” Their last hearing had been just four months before. “On what grounds?”

“On the grounds of your intimacy with this hot young thing who is supposedly caring for her children, Marcus.”

“
Our
children.”

“Yes, your collective children.” She clucked her tongue. “You have to admit, it’s a pretty damning picture. And the captions…”

“Pure fiction.”

“Maybe so, but she can and will get a California State hearing based on this. You must know that.”

“But I’m in the middle of a tour.
She
knows that.” Marcus knew what was behind this: nothing more than jealousy. He wanted to pick up the phone and call Bianca directly, let her know that nothing was going on between him and Ryan, nothing at all. But he knew his ex well enough to know that, if her state of mind had allowed her to place a midnight call to her attorney, she wasn’t going to recognize what he told her as the truth.

“Yes, she knows it very well. And she also knows that demanding full custody is the best way to get to you.”

“Full custody?” Marcus’s heart sank. Losing the children altogether would destroy him. “No.”

“I’m sorry, but I think we need to prepare for the worst. Get ready for a real battle.”

“Okay,” Marcus said. He wanted to scream, or cry, or both. “What’s the strategy?”

After he and Cynthia had hung up, Marcus logged in to his Twitter account and read a few dozen laments from fans and enemies alike:

@BWilliams: “The nanny? Say it ain’t so. You can do better, @marcustroy.”

@RFerry08: “I used to look up to @marcustroy. Not anymore. #sexualharrassment.”

@CherylJamesish: “Don’t shit where you eat, @marcustroy. It’ll come back to haunt you.”

@DestroyerLoad: “I say #marcustroysnanny is a serious piece of ass. Congrats to you, Sir Troy!”

Marcus wanted to tweet back, “I’m not married anymore, and all I’ve done is hold her hand and massage her foot and lightly touch her elbow!” (Was that 140 characters or fewer?) He also wanted to stop reading all this trivial nonsense; even after more than a decade of rock stardom, he couldn’t believe that people cared enough about his private activities to waste a single moment of their time tweeting or blogging or Facebooking about them. He knew he’d never understand the fascination with the private lives of strangers, but sometimes he couldn’t help it. At times like this, he wished he were still back with Smitty in 1998, driving that ambulance around Seattle, writing songs, dreaming, becoming. And doing all of it with his privacy still intact.

Marcus knew he should quit Twitter—permanently, not just today—but he kept reading. Finally, he found a couple of tweets from fans who actually stood up for him. When he read @VMarks’s comment, “Get a life, people, and let Marcus live the way he wants to!” he wanted to reach through the tablet screen to give him or her a hug, a high-five…something.

But before he started to actually embrace his iPad, Charlotte opened the door between their rooms and walked over to his bed. She looked anxious.

“Are you okay, sweetie?” He felt very much not okay, himself.

“It’s not me, it’s Miles,” she said. “He’s sick.”

“Sick, how?”

“Like, throw-up sick.”

“Oh boy. Stay here, would you? Don’t go back into your room. Let’s try to keep you from catching this, ’kay? I’m going to get Ryan.”

“Okay, Daddy.”

It wasn’t even seven fifteen, and the encroaching chaos made Marcus want to dive back under the covers. He threw on some clothes, and jogged to the room next door, wondering just what else might go wrong today.

Chapter Fourteen

Entertainment Tonight

Ryan answered the door to find Marcus in jeans, bare feet, and a shirt unbuttoned to the waist. Her eyes popped. He looked a bit flustered. But good, so good that she forgot she was mad at him for revealing her full identity to the global blogosphere. She wanted to forget about those stupid photographers and the pictures they’d taken. She imagined running her hand over her boss’s smooth, muscled chest, pulling her to him and breathing him in. It was about then that she realized that, having slept so little, she was probably looking a little less than sexy herself.

“Hey,” she said, in as chipper a tone as she could manage. Something told her that if there was a great time to bring up the fact that she seemed to have become a minor Internet celebrity overnight, now was not it. “What’s up?”

“It’s Miles,” Marcus said. “He’s sick.”

“Oh no,” she said.

“Really sick. Like, throw-up sick.”

“Aw, poor baby. I’m sure it’s just the flu, though.”

“Just the flu? Have you seen what the flu can do to a tour?”

Ryan didn’t answer. Obviously she hadn’t, but she had heard about how a stomach virus could decimate an athletic team if it wasn’t contained, and she could see how the traveling circus of a rock ‘n’ roll tour would be just as vulnerable.

“Listen, I don’t want to make it sound like I have no compassion for Miles, or that I’m a terrible dad or anything, but it’s not a good idea for me—for any of the performers—to be around him until he’s a hundred percent better.”

“Gotcha.”

“Neither can Charlotte, Serena, or anybody else I’m in contact with. We need to nip this thing in the bud.”

Ryan understood. If Marcus got sick, and they had to cancel a single date of the tour, thousands, perhaps millions, of dollars could be lost. “We’re going to quarantine your son,” she said. “And I’m going to be his nurse.”

“I’m sorry, that’s not—”

“No, it’s fine. This is what you hired me for, after all.”

“You’re not upset?”

“Why would I be upset? This is my job.”

That was the question Ryan would be asking herself for the next few days.
Why would I be upset?
She was Miles’s nanny, after all, and caring for the boy while he was ill was the least she could do, especially given what she was being paid. But it was a pretty weird feeling to be mistaken for Marcus Troy’s girlfriend one night and then told the very next day that she would be kept as far as possible from the rock star for the foreseeable future.

“Cool, thanks for understanding. I’d give you a hug, but there’s a bug going around.” He smiled, but the joke was lost on her. He blushed slightly, hands in pockets, and said, “I guess I’ll see you…when I see you.”

So Ryan and Miles stayed in Santa Barbara while the rest of the tour went on without them. For the time being, Charlotte had no symptoms, so Marcus was going to take a gamble and bring her along with them. He reasoned that Charlotte could pretty much take care of herself without Ryan, which was probably true. More worryingly, though, Marcus had made a vague comment about the kids possibly taking “a little break” from the tour. He didn’t elaborate, and he seemed so harried that Ryan didn’t ask what he meant. But it was hard not to wonder, if the kids weren’t going to be on the tour, what role she could possibly serve.

The first day of the quarantine, Miles had slept nearly the entire day, waking up just long enough, poor little thing, to vomit in a small bucket beside the bed. Ryan was so bored, alternating between reality television and a horribly written romance novel she’d downloaded onto her phone, that she almost looked forward to cleaning up after Miles. Almost.

At about three o’clock, he wandered into the living area of the suite, where Ryan, still in her PJs, was watching the E! Network. She didn’t normally go for entertainment news, but today wasn’t a normal day.

“Can I come in?” Miles asked in a heartbreaking tone.

“Of course you can, sweetie.” She fluffed up a pillow on the lush sofa. “You can go wherever you want.”

“Except where Dad is.”

“Aw, don’t be bummed out about that, kiddo.” She faked a melodramatic yawn. “I was getting so tired of that boring old tour. Weren’t you?”

Miles said nothing, but smiled weakly. Ryan knew what he needed: just one person to comfort him and act like he didn’t have the plague. She asked him if he wanted anything—food, water, a quick shoulder massage. But all he wanted was to curl up on the far end of the couch.

“You can get a
little
closer,” she told him.

He didn’t budge. “Charlotte said I’m going to get everybody sick.”

“Not everybody. Not me. Didn’t your dad tell you? I don’t get sick. Ever. That’s why he hired me, because I never, ever do.”

“I thought he hired you because you’re pretty.”

She thought he might be teasing her, but that kind of humor was too sophisticated for him. “Nope. That was just his good luck. He hired me because I have literally never once gotten a cold or the flu. Or, now that I think about it, any sickness at all.”

He looked at her suspiciously. “Nuh uh. You’re just saying that.”

“It’s true. You can’t hurt me.” She held up her bicep so he could see that she wasn’t actually Ryan Evans. She was Superwoman. “You don’t have to worry about me.”

“Yeah, I do.” He sounded almost angry, and looked straight ahead at the TV. “Because if you get sick, you won’t be able to take care of us. And then, who will?”

She nodded and passed Miles the remote.

At six p.m., Ryan woke up to the sound of voices on the television.
Entertainment Tonight
was on, and the picture of her backstage with Marcus was on the screen, with the caption: “In Love with the Nanny.” She gasped so loudly that she woke Miles. She knew that she’d become fodder for thousands of gossip mongers around the world, but gossip blogs and national television were two different animals, and it was shocking to think that she was being featured on a program that her mother, back in Kalispell, watched five days a week.

“Is that you?” Miles asked. He was barely awake, and the idea his nanny was on television didn’t seem to impress him.

“It is.”

“Don’t worry. It won’t last long. That’s what Dad always says.”

Maybe Miles was used to having his picture and his reputation examined by millions of people he’d never met. But Ryan wasn’t. She tried to imagine what it would actually be like to be Marcus Troy’s—although she felt presumptuous even
thinking
the word—girlfriend. On the one hand, he was so kind, so gentle and caring. If he weren’t famous, he’d be the ultimate catch. But he was a rock star, and his rock-star lifestyle looked to Ryan like an absolute nightmare. Sure, he enjoyed the special privileges of stardom, and he got paid to do what he loved. But what would it mean to be his partner? Guys like Benjamin and the Mustache Man would be following her around 24/7. And
that
lifestyle didn’t appeal to Ryan at all.

She had charged her phone, which sat on the other side of the room, while she was tending to Miles hours earlier. She picked it up now, and saw thirteen (she tried to ignore the unlucky number) missed calls: four from Nick, two from Em, and seven—count ’em, seven!—from her mother.

Nick had also texted her:
WTF?!? Ryan, call me! This is so amazing! You work for…Marcus Troy?!? Incredible! Congrats!

And then again, three minutes later:
Backstage passes, anyone? Jack and I checking tour dates right now. Hook us up!

Ryan typed her response:
Are you frickin’ serious, Nick? Your ex-girlfriend is linked to a rock star and all you can think of is backstage passes?

She was so stung. For all Nick knew, there really
was
something going on between Marcus and her. Apparently, their relationship had meant so little to him that he wasn’t even jealous. Didn’t Nick realize that because she
had
cared about him, it was tremendously painful just to hear his voice? That communicating with her, even over something as trivial as celebrity gossip,
especially
over something so banal and idiotic, was just cruel?
Men suck
, she thought.
And so do relationships.

As Ryan’s thumb hovered over the send button, the phone rang again. It was probably for the best—she would ignore Nick altogether from now on, and maybe he would get the message and stop harassing her.

“Hi, Mom,” she said, even-toned and relaxed as she could manage. She knew her mom wasn’t going to do it, so she’d have to stay calm, cool, and collected for both of them.

“Honey, what is going on out there? Are you all right? Your father is worried sick about you.”

“I’m fine, Mom. Really.”

“We’re both worried about you. Kathy Schrader says celebrities do this all the time. They hire a nanny, but they
want
a concubine. Are you even caring for the children?”

“Yes, of course, Mom. In fact, I’m with one of them right now. Miles. He’s a very sick little boy, I’m sorry to say. But it’s not a head cold, so
his hearing
is just fine.”

“Okay, you can’t talk. I get it.”

Ryan, sitting cross-legged on the bed, smiled ruefully at Miles. The boy, having switched channels to Nickelodeon, showed no interest whatsoever in her conversation. She marveled at his ability to mind his own business, and wished adults could do the same.
Why can’t anybody older than twelve be as blissfully ignorant as the kid on this couch?
Ryan thought. Still, she couldn’t have a fully candid chat with her mom in front of Marcus’s son.

Ryan asked her mother to hold on a moment and called out to Miles, “Sweetie, would you be okay here for five minutes while I talk with my mom just outside the door?”

“You have a mom?” he asked, as if she had just stated that she had a pair of wings on her back. Then, “Sure.”

“No more than five minutes, promise. If your tummy starts to bother you, just call me.”

“I’m okay.” Staring straight ahead at the television, he put his thumb in his mouth.

Outside the room, Ryan explained the entire misunderstanding to her mother. She told her that Charlotte had forced her to join the Troy family onstage, that she’d only been there a moment, and that Marcus had merely comforted her for an instant, like any gentleman would have. There was nothing going on between her and her employer, nothing at all.

“It sure didn’t look that way on the video, Ryan,” her mom said. “The way that man looked at you…”

“On what video?” There hadn’t been any video on
ET
, just stills.

“Of you two at the concert.”

“Of course.” It wasn’t surprising that a cell-phone video would emerge eventually, Ryan supposed.
10,000
amateur videographers had attended the concert. There would be no shortage of evidence that Marcus Troy had—scandal of scandals!—touched her elbow.

It was incredible to Ryan that her mother in rural Montana had seen footage of the concert before she had. But of course, the Internet had become the great equalizer when it came to the rapid dissemination of absolutely meaningless information. You could be in New York City, Tokyo, the Great Plains, or Ant-frickin-arctica, and learn about Kim Kardashian’s struggle to lose her baby weight in exhaustive detail at precisely the same moment.

“Anyway, Ryan, I do hope you’re not going to get involved with that man. That’s not like you.”

“We’re not involved, Mom. I promise.”

“His eyes are glued to you, sweetie. Any fool could see there are feelings there.”

“I can’t help what his eyes do—” Ryan saw a woman emerge from the elevator. She heard the
click-clack
ing of high-heeled shoes but paid the person no mind.

“Well, sweetie, he wouldn’t look at you that way if you hadn’t been encouraging him, now, would he?” Her mother giggled.

“Are you enjoying this, Mom?” She couldn’t help laughing a little, too. “Your daughter becoming fodder for Internet gossip?”

The woman was walking directly toward her. Tall and slim, she wore sheer cream-colored pants, a light-blue top, and a floppy sun hat. But it didn’t occur to Ryan, with the rest of the crew long gone, that this stylish lady might want something from her.

Ryan’s mom cleared her throat and assumed a more serious, maternal tone. “You’ve always been shy and private. Ever since you were tiny. I just…don’t want you to get hurt, that’s all.”

“That makes two of us, Mom, believe me.”

“Do you have feelings for Mr. Troy, sweetie? You can tell me.”

“No, Mom.” Ryan had started this conversation in a state of imperturbable Zen-like calm, but now, though she was still succeeding in keeping her voice down, her mother was starting to get to her.

The glamorous woman had stopped five feet away from the room, but Ryan was now too distracted by the fact that her mother thought she knew more than Ryan did about the state of her emotions to pay attention.

“I’m not falling for anyone.”

“Do not fall for a rock star, Ryan. It will not end well. You’re from such different—”