you won’t send the plane back? If you are, I understand. I’ll arrange for a charter.”
“Forget chartering another plane,” Jordan said impatiently. “I can just imagine what your granddaddy would have to say if I did that. If you need the plane, it’s yours. You let me know what time you want the pilot ready to bring you back here, and he’ll be waiting at the closest airstrip.”
“Thanks, Uncle Jordan.”
“Don’t thank me yet. I’m still not convinced you’re not making a huge mistake.”
When Harlan Patrick hung up, he tried very hard not to think about his uncle’s reaction. What if Jordan was right? What if Laurie was infuriated by his scheming? What if this plan of his backfired?
But how could it? He was just trying to assure that Laurie remembered the good times, so she could weigh them against what she had now.
He glanced around at the lavishly appointed custom interior of her touring bus, then recalled the club date she’d played the night before with its standing-room-only crowd and wild applause. How would a quiet stay in Los Piños stand up against that? Would it be a welcome respite or a stark contrast that couldn’t measure up? What about the men she’d met? Were they more exciting than a simple rancher from Texas?
“How are those plans coming?” Val asked, leaning across the aisle and breaking into his gloomy thoughts. “Everything falling into place?”
“Pretty much. Thanks for going along with this and for agreeing to come to Texas with us.” He studied Laurie’s assistant with her short blond curls and deceptively innocent expression. No one knew better than he just how fiercely loyal and efficient this woman could be. “Tell me something, Val.”
“If I can.”
“Is Laurie going to go through the roof when she figures out what I have in mind?” It bothered him more than he wanted to admit that this comparative stranger might know Laurie—today’s Laurie—better than he did.
Val grinned. “Very likely.”
He winced. “Why doesn’t that seem to bother you?”
“Because she needs shaking up. She needs to take a long hard look at her priorities. She’s got a handsome man—the father of her baby—absolutely wild about her and she’d rather sing songs to strangers night after night.”
She gave him a solemn look. “Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying she shouldn’t sing if it matters to her. Millions of people would go nuts if she even thought about quitting. I’m just saying she needs to get some balance back in her life. She seems to think it has to be one way or the other.” She tilted her head and regarded him quizzically. “Wonder where she got an idea like that?”
Harlan Patrick sighed. “Probably from me.”
“You still feel that way?”
He searched his heart and had to admit that a part of him did still want her home with him a hundred percent of the time, especially now that they had a daughter. For all of his crazy and impulsive exploits, it seemed he was just an old-fashioned guy at heart.
“You do, don’t you?” Val guessed without him saying a word. “No wonder the two of you butt heads. You’ve both got a mile-wide stubborn streak, don’t you?”
“Maybe so,” he conceded. “But I’m working on it.”
She looked skeptical.
“I am.”
“I hope so, but we’ll see, cowboy. We’ll see.”
* * *
Laurie was exhausted by the time she left the stage after her last set. It was ironic, really. She’d reached a point in her career when she could perform for an hour or ninety minutes before thousands in the country’s biggest concert halls and stadiums and she’d chosen to do twice that much singing in clubs that could barely hold a hundred.
But these were the clubs that had given her a break. When she’d been a struggling nobody, these out-of-the-way club managers had offered her a chance to hone her act and build a following, and she believed in paying back old debts. She could have insisted on a single seating, just one show a night, but she wasn’t about to shortchange either the clubs or her audience. She did two performances nightly and she sang her heart out.
By the time she retreated to her dressing room after the second show, she wanted nothing more than a hot shower, something cold to drink and a good night’s sleep. Instead, she found Harlan Patrick waiting for her, straddling a chair just the way he had been when she’d first discovered him in her dressing room the night before.
Had it only been