“Maud, I love you. I love you, and I want to be with you, and I’ve written some songs for us to sing together.”
Once, just once, I want a man to confess his love for me using my real name. Not Maud. “Really? I could use some new material,” she said, because keeping him talking was obviously the right thing to do, and because behind the drunk, two men in police polos with badges and guns clipped to their belts had materialized. One had reddish brown hair and a lean build that would be easy to underestimate. The other man had a good six inches and fifty pounds of muscle on the drunk guy and shoulders as broad as a steer’s that tapered to a narrow waist. His dark brown hair swooped back from his forehead, emphasizing a square face dominated by cheekbones and a fighter’s chin.
“Hi, Matt,” Eve said, lifting a hand in a casual wave. Her tone was totally relaxed, but Cady knew that “Matt” was a detective with the Lancaster Police Department. Her attention switched from the admirer, stumbling into boxes and amplifiers and lighting rigs, to the two men stalking him from behind and back again. Cady was pretty sure “Matt” wasn’t Shoulders, the one who’d drawn up silent as smoke just behind the drunk guy. She got a flash of slate blue eyes when he flicked a glance her way. Distract him.
“Um … what kind of songs?” she asked.
“A sequel to ‘Love-Crossed Stars.’ It’s about our love. Because I love you.”
Beside her, Chris snorted. Trust him to find this amusing. “Uh-huh,” she said. Shoulders was inches from the guy’s back, so she flashed her brightest smile, gave him a bobblehead nod, and lied through her teeth. “That’s my favorite song. I’d love to sing a sequel.”
When Shoulders’ badge and gun registered in her admirer’s alcohol-soaked brain, he swung out wildly. Shoulders ducked an ineptly aimed backhand and stepped right into the drunk’s body, shoving him off-balance then catching his arm on the forward swing.
“Hey,” the drunk guy said, indignant, struggling. “Get the fuck off me, man. I just want to talk to her.”
The taller cop got the guy’s other arm in a firm grip, then locked eyes with Shoulders over the flailing drunk’s head. “One … two … three.”
Shoulders thrust his leg behind the drunk’s knee. A neat twist of hips, and they took the drunk down, facefirst on the floor. A grunt, then a high-pitched yelp. “Ow! Maud!”
“Hey, Romeo,” Shoulders said, snapping a cuff around the man’s wrist. “You think this is your best move? Coming backstage where you don’t belong, smelling like a frat party?”
“I just wanted to talk to her,” the drunk slurred. “I love her. We’re going to make music together.”
Shoulders clicked the cuff around the second wrist, then nodded at the other cop. Together they hoisted the guy up and set him on his feet. It was an impressive display of strength, given that the drunk guy’s man-bun balanced out a significant beer-and-wings gut. Cady found herself staring at the band around the sleeve of Shoulders’ polo choking his biceps, the way the muscles in his forearms shifted as he easily controlled his prisoner.
“How about you write her a nice letter from jail?” Shoulders said. “No, I’ve got this,” he said to the other cop. “You stay with Eve. Come on, Romeo. You can serenade the rest of the drunk and disorderlies in the van.”
Everyone watched him guide the drunk guy through the maze of equipment, including Cady’s suitcases. She cast them a loathing look. Tonight was the last night she’d live out of her suitcase. Tomorrow she would unpack in her own house, eat food from her own fridge, sleep in her own bed.
“Cady, darling, the only reason we let Evan go was you saying Lancaster was safe. That nothing ever happened here. That you were no big deal here,” Chris muttered.
Evan had been her bodyguard on the tour. An obsessive workout that required two hours a day in the gym meant he had the strong half of “strong silent type” down, but he talked almost incessantly, a running commentary mostly on his workout and diet that, over the course of the tour, drove Cady nuts. “It is. It was,” Cady replied, fingering the bracelet in a habitual nervous gesture before she caught herself. “And you know Evan had to go. I was ready to kill him in Topeka.”
“Barbecued beef tongue is delicious,” Chris said, back on his phone.
“It’s tongue. It’s gross. I didn’t care that he ate it. I cared that he wouldn’t freaking shut up about it.”
The chestnut-haired cop strode over to the small, frozen group. “You all right, Ms. Ward?” he asked, his gaze skimming the group before settling on Eve.
“I’m fine,” Cady said. Her voice sounded almost giddy. She wasn’t sure if she was relieved the guy was gone, or that this was obviously Eve’s Matt. “Thank you for handling that so quickly. Please tell the other officer…”
“McCormick.”
“Please give Officer McCormick my thanks.”