Page 64 of In This Together

‘Ah, it’s true, a man’s belly really is the way to uncover his good manners.’

As she glanced, uncommonly shyly, up to Seth, who towered above her even when she was in heels, he was displaying that curiously sexy half-smile again.

‘Say, Ros,’ Sofia said through a bite of red velvet cake, ‘why don’t you tag along to Nashville with us for the CMAs? Seth got a last-minute slot. We’ll go south for a few days.’

Rosalie gasped. ‘Oh, oh, oh! I could totally dress Seth. Get him out of those godawful lumberjack shirts and make him look like a real rock star.’

‘Now then, what’s wrong with a lumberjack shirt?’

The voice belonged to Jimmy, who had appeared at the studio door wearing his usual stonewash jeans and checked shirt. His appearance prompted Rosalie to consider the attire of every other person in the room and found them all wearing some variation of the same thing.

She shrugged, offering an angelic smile, and said, ‘You know what I mean.’

As everyone laughed, Jimmy’s expression changed. ‘Soph, I don’t want to break up the mood but I need to speak with you. It’s about Jay.’

* * *

Seth’s session was over for the day but he was hanging around waiting for Jenna fromRolling Stonemagazine to call for a telephone interview. They had a photographer in the city who was going to come out to take pictures of Seth in the studio the next day. They wanted the story badly and it pleased Rosalie immensely.

Sofia had gone home after dropping a bombshell that Jimmy had agreed to drive her husband, Jay, to a rehabilitation clinic, so Rosalie offered to stick around at the studio, as much to calm Seth’s nerves and reluctance to do theRolling Stoneinterview as anything else. Frankie and Billy had gone for pizza and beers.

Rosalie wondered whether Jay could get clean and stay clean. He’d never managed before but he had never had professional rehab before either. She wondered whether it would be a good thing if he got clean and Sofia stayed with him, and because of that she knew that somewhere deep inside, Sofia’s loyalty would be battling with her sensibility. Rosalie hated to admit it to herself because in her eyes, Sofia had the job, the husband, the impending family, but Jay wasn’t a nice person. He had started off great – fun, making Sofia wildly happy. But as soon as they married and he became involved with Sanfia, he started to change Sofia. First her style, then her spontaneity; like, her random calls to hit an open mic night after work stopped. Then he started trying to change Sanfia Records and the way Sofia ran things. Slowly, her confidence started to go. That was all before they kept having to battle the drink and drugs. Still, if Sofia loved him and if he was what Sofia wanted, then Rosalie wanted him to get clean and for them to work, for Sofia’s sake.

The sound of the piano being played in the studio reached her ears as she sat in the sound booth, picking at the last of the cupcakes she had brought. It was an unexpected sound, since Seth tended to improvise on a guitar.

She stood from her stool, looking through the glass pane into the studio, watching him move his fingers over the ivory keys. Then he started to sing, not his own lyrics but a song she recognised by Brett Young, called ‘Mercy’. In this instance, the surname was a genuine coincidence.

Listening to the words he sang made her heart stop beating and stole the air from her lungs. Could he love as fiercely as the man he was singing about?For a moment, she found herself indulging in the fantasy that someone,he, could sing those words about her.

Would she ever know that kind of love in her life?

Had Seth ever felt that way about a woman?

And, despite his crabby attitude towards her, Rosalie wanted him to be singing to her.She willed him to look up and meet her eye. Why? She didn’t know.

Before she could second-guess how much her very presence would irritate Seth, Rosalie had slipped her sore feet back into her heels and found herself walking down the steps into the music studio, coming to sit on a stool behind Frankie’s drum kit. And she closed her eyes, letting Seth’s voice soothe her. She thought of nothing else. Not the pain in her feet. Not her posture. Not the way everyone saw her as a joke and how her loneliness broke her heart every single day. Not about the person people expected her to be and the image of herself she always played up to.

She thought only about the voice in the room and the sweet melody of the piano. How could such a beautiful voice come from such an incredibly ill-mannered, poorly dressed man?

17

ANDREA

Andrea pulled a brush through her dark hair and leaned across the wash basin toward the wall mirror to put on a moisturising lip gloss. She didn’t need to look fancy for her long drive and she certainly didn’t need to look good for what she had planned today.

The combination of the heartburn she had been suffering for weeks now – which she really needed to get checked out, when she had a spare moment – and the anticipation of what she was about to do, had her feeling nauseous.

She crouched by the toilet and pressed a hand to her chest, swallowing until the sickness subsided.

She was playing God today, meddling in people’s lives and, though she knew her motives were justified, if her plan backfired, Andrea could lose her sister forever. There was no way of knowing for sure which way the cookie would crumble.

Pushing up to stand too quickly, spots of purple and yellow flashed in her vision. She closed her eyes briefly, until the spots subsided, then made her way from Tommy’s en suite, through his bedroom, where they had spent another blissful night of rolling around in his sheets, and into the living area.

Seeing Tommy’s naked back as he made coffee in the kitchen, wearing only lounge pants, made her pause to enjoy the view.

Without turning, still focusing on making himself coffee, Tommy said, ‘Didn’t you get a good enough look last night?’

She grinned, thinking she would never get enough. Somehow, over the last few weeks, she had started to crave Tommy – his counsel on matters of the music world, his support of her work, the way he held her in his strong arms, the way he didn’t judge her, the way her opinion on his new songs mattered to him and the way he made her laugh, like no one had made her laugh for years.

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