The First Law of Love Read online

  “Oh,” she said, but her tone implied that she knew otherwise.

  I had built a pretty decent case (argument, really, as the informational meeting hardly amounted to a hearing) for next Tuesday, though I was mentally gearing up as though it was indeed a legal proceeding, considering Derrick Yancy opposing counsel. My enemy. I planned to point out that selling now for quick cash was not in the best interest of individual families, not to mention the entire town. I had also been reorganizing the office itself; the files were in shit shape.

  Al told me about seventy times a day how he couldn’t imagine what he’d done without me. I thanked him just as often, privately hoping that this would also equal a glowing recommendation to his old friend, Ron Turnbull, come the end of summer.

  “I’m serious as a heart attack,” he said.

  “Patty just brightens up this whole space,” Mary agreed. To Al, she said, “Helen Anne wouldn’t like to hear you talking about heart attacks in that fashion, Albert. Considering your own father, God rest him.”

  I had eaten dinner with the Rawleys on Tuesday night as well, fending for myself on Wednesday, and planned to meet them at The Spoke this evening. I was all quivery with nervous anticipation an hour before; I had showered for a second time, left my hair down, and stood in my bra and panties in front of my bedroom closet. Despite my best intentions, I had not yet done any laundry; I even had a roll of quarters sitting on my dresser.

  This weekend, I promised myself.

  I ransacked my clothes for something that was right. Suitable for listening to music in a bar called The Spoke.

  Jeans, I decided, tugging on my favorite faded pair.

  Too cutesy? I held up the buttery yellow blouse. It was very feminine and annoying, one that Camille had lent me. I tossed it onto the bed, atop an ever-increasing pile.

  Too deliberately sexy? I considered a red-and-black striped tank, one with a neckline that fell pretty low between my breasts. Especially when I wore the bra I was currently wearing. I glanced down at my cleavage and reconsidered my bra choice.

  Quit, I snapped at myself. It’s fine. But maybe pick a different shirt.

  I finally settled on a cobalt-blue tank, a soft cotton one with silver detailing around the hem that I had always liked but never found an excuse to wear in Chicago, except around my apartment there.

  Not because Grace once said that this shirt matches my eyes perfectly.

  Not because Case once said I had beautiful eyes.

  Not because of that at all.

  But then I found myself applying an extra coat of mascara, and decided I wasn’t above a little flattery. Things he’d said in the past still affected me, clearly. Maybe they had always been in the back of my mind, still very much there, though unacknowledged until recently.

  I left the windows down on the way to The Spoke, almost vibrating with energy and nerves as I pulled into the parking lot there, already packed with vehicles; immediately I spotted Case’s truck, tailgate down. Which meant he was probably outside here, somewhere.

  Oh God, oh my God…

  Calm down, Jesus, Tish.

  I climbed from my little Honda and immediately stumbled a little, as I was wearing sandals with wedge heels. I caught myself on the car to the left, casting my gaze about to make sure that no one was watching; I felt reasonably certain that I had been unobserved in my clumsiness. I leaned carefully back in the car to grab my purse, though I hated carrying a bag into a club, for fear of it getting stolen. I could already smell grease and hear music, the subtle thump of it through the walls, and my heart began to match this heightened pace. I settled my purse strap firmly over my shoulder.

  I hadn’t taken six steps before I spied Case, coming out of a door near the back of the place, wearing jeans and his cowboy hat, boots and a belt with a silver buckle.

  Oh wow, I thought, my feet stalling.

  He caught sight of me in the next instant; he paused for a fraction, about twenty paces away, before lifting his right arm in a casual wave, giving me the sense that he was about to go right back to what he was doing. Though when I headed in his direction he waited, watching me somberly, the evening light striking the bottom half of his face. The top half was in the shadow of his hat brim.

  “Hi,” I said, stopping about five feet away, suddenly completely embarrassed. I felt as though I had done something unimaginably bold and my face was hot. Hot all the way back to my ears.

  He resettled his hat and said in his deep voice, “Hey there. Clark said you were coming to the show.”

  He looked so good in the sunset light, so damn good that my fingers tightened around my purse strap and my heart seemed to be beating everywhere within my body. At last he said, “I’m just unloading the truck.”

  “You need any help?” I asked, moving closer, indicating the truck bed.

  He seemed to gather himself together, resuming his original course. He said over his shoulder, “It’s all heavy stuff.”

  I followed right behind him, insisting, “I’m pretty tough.”

  At that he sent me a half-grin. We were at the open tailgate then, our hips no more than two feet apart. I could see his eyes better now, without the distance between us. He studied me for the space of a breath, half-grin fading away, his face becoming unreadable. Lightning-flash quick, his gaze detoured to my lips, then just lower, before he turned to the truck and became very businesslike, saying, “I feel like a jerk asking you to carry something for me.”

  I thought his voice might possibly be a little hoarse. And I would be a liar through and through if I didn’t admit that I had just felt his eyes upon me like a touch. The feeling was strong enough that my nipples became instantly firm and round, as though he had actually cupped his hands over my breasts. I felt all breathless and electric, slightly stunned at the intensity of this.

  It’s just been too long since you’ve had sex, I told myself.

  “Well that’s just silly,” I told him, referring to him being a jerk for asking me to carry something.

  He sent a questioning look my way this time, shouldering a huge black duffle bag. He had very good hands, strong and wide through the palm, long-fingered and brown from the sun. The hair on his wiry forearms was as red-gold as that on his head, and there were cinnamon-tinted freckles on the back of his hands. He settled the strap over his broad right shoulder and reached with one hand to grip the lip of the tailgate, in order to slam it closed; I stepped back so he could.

  “My fiddle is in the truck. If you wouldn’t mind grabbing that…” he said, nodding at the passenger door.

  “I think I can maybe handle a fiddle,” I said, drippy with sarcasm, again earning a half-grin.

  Inside the cab of his truck, it smelled fucking good. Spicy, somehow. The fiddle case was black, sitting on the right side of the bench seat, and I closed my fingers around the handle, thinking of how many times his fingers had surely been wrapped around this same spot. I cradled it against my breasts; somehow the pressure of the instrument case alleviated a fraction of the desire to be caressed that was swiftly overpowering me.

  Case watched me approach, again stone-faced and silent. I held his fiddle case to me with both arms.

  “We can sneak in back here,” he told me, indicating the door at the rear of The Spoke.

  He led the way, allowing me the chance to study the back pockets of his jeans, the way his t-shirt subtly hugged the lean shape of his back. Burdened as he was with gear, he still held the door for me, silently watching me pass in front of him, holding his fiddle. Once inside, we were surrounded by the excited, contagious buzz of people nearby, people ready for a good time, as addicting as anything you could inhale or shoot up. Case leaned momentarily close to my right ear and said, “This way,” and I shivered as I followed him again.

  We cut through a back hallway, to what amounted to a storage room, where Marshall was sitting on an old keg, a black cowboy hat pulled low over his eyes, and tuning a guitar. He looked up as we entered and said, “Well hey t
here.”

  I was still clutching the fiddle case against me. Case set his armload on the floor and turned to me, causing my heart to speed up again. He nodded towards my breasts, but I realized he was indicating the instrument as he told me, “That fiddle has been in family since around the time of the Civil War.”

  “No kidding?” I asked. “Can I see it?”

  Marshall grinned at the eagerness in my voice and said, “I hate to tell you, but it looks just like a fiddle made today.”

  I surrendered it over to Case’s hands and he said without looking up from the instrument, “Now that’s where you’re wrong, little bro.” He dropped gracefully into a crouch and nodded to me to do the same; I did at once, my right knee very close to his left. Case balanced the black case over his thighs and carefully opened the hinges, revealing a beautiful piece of craftsmanship; even my untrained eyes could perceive this. It shone honey-brown in the single light fixture in this small, windowless room.

  “Did someone in your family make it?” I asked, watching his face, rewarded as he looked into my eyes, his own unreadable. He studied me no longer than the time it took for me to grow slightly breathless.

  Looking back at the fiddle, he said, “I’m not entirely certain. I only know that an ancestor of ours brought it to the war with him, the Civil War that is, and then it came west with the family, in the late 1860s. Years and years ago, Mom found a few old letters in one of Dad’s trunks. And this fiddle was also in there. I learned to play on it.”

  I was thrilled that he was telling me these things, sweet, personal things. I asked him, “Can I touch it?”

  This prompted Marshall to snort and then laugh, the guitar in his hands whining with a shrill, discordant note as he turned one of the little handles connected to a string. Case only smiled a little, the half-smile that I was already beginning to anticipate, and nodded. I smoothed the fingertips of my right hand over the butter-soft wood grain and then pressed all four of them gently on the strings.

  “I love imagining all the people who played it before me,” Case said.

  “That is something to think about,” I agreed. “How many songs does it know, you know what I mean?”

  He nodded in understanding.

  Wy popped his head around the door all of a sudden and caught sight of me, saying, “There you are, Tish.”

  There was such a sense of relief in his tone that I giggled a little, replying, “Were you worried about me?”

  “Well, we saw your car but you weren’t in the bar anywhere,” Wy explained. His brown hair flopped over his forehead and he swiped at it impatiently. He said, “C’mon, we got seats right in front.”

  This meant I had no excuse to linger and so I rose as gracefully as I could manage to my feet. Case’s eyes followed, even though he remained in a crouch. I held his gaze, feeling all quivery and warm inside my clothes, and said, “Good luck.” Then I immediately backpedaled, correcting, “I mean, break a leg…shit, one is bad luck, isn’t it?”

  Case was grinning now, and this expression on his handsome face did things to my insides. Heated things. He said, “Naw, that’s if we were performing in a play.”

  “Well, good luck all the same,” I said. I wanted to tell him that I was so very much looking forward to hearing him play that I could hardly contain my excitement. But I could be just as much an expert at hiding my emotions as he; I hadn’t attended law school for three years for nothing.

  “Thanks,” he said softly, and then Wy stepped into the room to appropriate my elbow. Seconds later we were heading down the hall and into the main area of the little bar and grill, which was delicious with the scent of greasy food. Neon lights in predominantly warm hues gave the space a feeling of easy welcome. There was chatter and laughter everywhere, country music from a jukebox, people milling about with drinks, servers in black aprons weaving expertly from table to table.

  “God, I’ve wanted to see these forever,” I told Wy, pausing by an empty two-top, admiring the wagon wheel beneath the glass tabletop. “Mathias made one for his and Camille’s cabin. But these are original wheels, aren’t they? Not reproductions, right?”

  Wy nodded, smiling, navigating to a table near the stage, actually a pair of tables, placed aside each other like pool balls, surrounded by the Rawleys, their girlfriends, Case’s brother Gus (who looked so much like Case that I almost stared openly), and another older man, chatting comfortably with Clark. Clark caught sight of me and tipped his hat brim.

  Yes, a girl could get used to that.

  “Hi, guys,” I said to the table at large, thankful that there was a chair yet facing the stage. Damned if I was going to miss even one second of watching Case play. Clark introduced me to the older man, who ran the hardware store where Wy worked afternoons.

  “Something to drink, hon?” asked a server in sassy red cowgirl boots.

  “Just a water to start,” I said, planning to pace myself this evening.

  “Tish, this is Lacy,” Sean said, leaning over the table to be heard. He indicated Gus’s girlfriend, who flashed me a smile. “Lacy, Tish.”

  “Hi,” I said, and then to Gus, as I hadn’t seen him yet around town (actually hadn’t seen him since Camille’s wedding, back when he’d been a teenager), “How are you doing?”

  “Good,” he said, smiling too. He had the same coloring as Case, though Gus seemed a little stockier; I would bet he was shorter than Case. He added, “Welcome to town.”

  Sean’s girlfriend Jessie leaned towards me too, setting her beer aside to do so, and asked, “How was the first week with Al? Grandpa said he heard you’ve been kicking some ass already.”

  I flushed a little, with pleasure. I said, “Well, that’s very kind of him to say so. I’ve been doing my best.”

  “I heard you met Derrick Yancy,” Sean added.

  I nodded at this; I’d told Clark and Wy at dinner on Monday, but it had just been the three of us that evening.

  “What did you think?” Sean pressed.

  “He’s a dick,” I said with every confidence. “Smooth talker. Everything is an opportunity.”

  There was a burst of applause then, and people were suddenly scrambling to take seats, and we all turned to see Marshall and Case, cowboy hats in place and carrying their instruments, coming from the back of The Spoke. My heart seemed to be on a trampoline, energetically leaping, and then leaping again. The guys mounted the steps to the little stage with the ease of familiarity; there was a set of drums, a stool, two microphones on stands, and shrill whistles greeted them.

  I couldn’t pull my eyes from Case, who was grinning under the yellow-red glow of the neon lights, totally comfortable, totally sexy. I could not deny this any more than I could deny that I noticed. A lot. He claimed the stool, setting his fiddle in its case upon the stage, his guitar on a thick leather strap that diagonally bisected his chest. He took a second to lower the mic stand so that it was nearer his mouth, while Marsh settled with a grin behind the drums and skimmed a quick riff, earning more whistles.

  “Evening, everyone,” Case said then, in his deep voice that I felt low in my belly.

  “Hi, Case!” called a woman, over the rest of the crowd, her voice excited and eager, and Case laughed, joined by about half the bar.

  He said easily, “Hi there. It’s been a while since Marsh and I played here.”

  People clapped and cheered; beside me, Wy hooked his pinkies in his mouth and let loose with a whistle.

  “We thought we’d start off with a couple of old favorites, if that’s all right with all of you,” Case said, and I wanted him to look our way, my way, towards the table to the right of the stage. He collected his guitar closer and strummed a few notes, and my eyes dropped to his hands, his strong hands that curved so knowingly around the instrument. He turned to Marsh and asked away from the mic, “You want to join me for this one?”

  Marsh nodded twice, collecting his own guitar from its stand near the drums, and dragged his stool beside Case. The two of them exchang
ed a look, timing their first notes, and then Case leaned into the mic and took up the song. I knew they were into old-school country, and this song was no exception, an old Willie Nelson standard.

  Case closed his eyes as he sang. I had clasped my hands beneath my chin before I realized, just watching him, caught up in the beauty of his rich, true voice. The melody was so sweet, almost haunting; there was an instrumental measure in the middle, both men strumming their guitars lovingly, so obviously into the music. And then, just before Case took up the final verse, his eyes flickered briefly to me, right to my eyes, sending a hot, deep jolt through my center.

  It struck me, as Marshall joined in harmony.

  No, it’s just a coincidence.

  This is not about you.

  But the song was called “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain.”

  When it ended, there was raucous applause. Case strummed a straight G-chord and grinned out towards the crowd. He asked, “Are we mellow tonight, people? Mellow out there?”

  Whistles and more cheering, and the two of them laughed. Marshall asked, “Should we keep some Waylon and Willie going?”

  They did, and people began dancing by the third song, “Luckenbach, Texas.” I sat as one entranced, just watching Case on stage, where he so clearly belonged. He enjoyed every second of it, as I could plainly see and hear, was so completely natural, sitting with his shoulders relaxed, one boot heel caught on the bottom rung of the stool.

  His voice rippled over my skin, his beautiful voice, his effortless grace with his guitar. I hadn’t so much as removed my eyes from him, feeling drunk, though I had not sipped a drop of alcohol. I knew the number of times his gaze had flashed to me – twice now, counting the first song, and only for an instant each time. But again I felt those looks as tangibly as if he’d come and cupped his strong, sexy hands around my face.

  He was singing “Neon Moon” right now, about an hour into the show, while Marsh did impressive duty on the drums. Couples were whirling and waltzing, and just about everyone wore a cowboy hat. I tore my eyes from Case to observe, rather surprised, that I was nearly alone at our table; everyone else was dancing, even Clark. Wy was sneaking the last of an abandoned beer but I didn’t even have the wherewithal to stop him, because just as Case sang the line about “your one and only,” our eyes held for a full two seconds, or, if I was keeping time with my heart, the equivalent of about twenty beats.