Chapter 4
Lucy
Bronson was on edge again, but that seemed to be his default disposition, even if he put on an amazing act of being my boyfriend in the studio.
He’d almost had me fooled.
The session had gone great, and I was still carrying the warmth of it in my chest when we pulled out of the studio parking lot and headed back toward the beach.
I’d forgotten what it felt like to sing something that was entirely mine.
And to do it without Jimmy hovering at the soundboard with his opinions was refreshing. No music label reps on the phone listening in. No demands to make it more poppy.
Just Marcus and two musicians who’d listened to my directions.
I felt like myself again.
But Bronson had gone quiet the moment we got back in the car, and I felt the shift the way you feel the weather change, that subtle drop in pressure before the temperature dips.
He was watching the mirrors again, his big hands easy on the wheel but his jaw set tight as he did a constant, sweeping read of everything around us.
“So,” I said, keeping my voice light. “The cheek kiss.”
He didn’t look at me. “Necessary.”
“Two of them?”
“Yup.”
“Marcus definitely believed it,” I laughed lightly. I’d believed it, too.
“That was the point.”
I turned in my seat so that I could see him better. “You’re very good at that. Being convincing.”
He’d convinced the hell out of me last night when he’d climbed into my bed during the storm. Heat had flicked between us as he comforted me from my nightmare.
Talk about going above and beyond the call of duty.
Bronson glanced at me, just briefly, before he brought his eyes back to the road. “Don’t read into it.”
“Don’t worry. I’m not reading into anything,” I murmured happily, and that was mostly true.
But a tiny part of me was wondering what it would feel like if none of it were pretend.
He’d make a hell of a good boyfriend.
The kind that I’d always sung songs about but never experienced in real life. One who would take charge and drag me into his arms, making me feel like I was the only woman for him.
Bronson had swept into my life like a storm, and now that he was here, I was getting used to having him around.
He was the first man I’d had any interest in since I’d left my husband.
Thinking about Jimmy was frustrating.
He just wouldn’t sign the divorce papers. His lawyers had one nitpicky demand after another. All of them inconsequential. And in between each request for a change, there’d be a two-week delay.
I bet Bronson could make him sign.
The corners of my mouth curled up before I shook the thought off.
Bronson wasn’t a pit bull who could be set loose on people. But it sure would be nice.
I let the thought go and looked out the window instead, watching Tidehaven give way to the long marsh road that led to the beach.
The wind had picked up enough that the tall grasses along the shoulder were bending hard to one side. The road out here was narrow and empty, and the isolation felt ominous now.
I missed Valerie. The beach house wasn’t the same without her.
“Could we stop for dinner?”
He glanced at me. “That’s not a good idea.”
“Please? I’m not ready to go back to the house yet.”
I could tell he thought it was a bad idea, and it probably was.
But he let me do it anyway.
We pulled into a small place near the water. Nothing fancy, a little seafood shack with a view of the ocean, with no cars in the lot except the cook’s.
I told myself I just needed food.
But the truth was, I needed to feel normal. And maybe I wanted his boyfriend act to continue.
We sat across from each other inside the restaurant, and for a few minutes, it almost felt like I wasn’t being hunted. It was almost possible to forget that someone wanted me dead.
“Tell me about you, Bronson. Where are you from?” I asked.
His gaze lifted to meet my eyes, steady and unreadable for a second.
Then he leaned back slightly, and something in him shifted. Not relaxed exactly, but… easier. He almost looked like “Ben” from the music studio instead of a hired guard with a gun tucked in his waist.
His rough, calloused hand curled around mine, and his voice drawled out like honey slipping over gravel. “Red Oak Mountain. Small town. Real small.”
There was something in the way he said it that made me lean in without meaning to.
“There’s a tree-chopping competition every Fourth of July. Grown men swing axes at dawn while the women lay out enough food to feed the entire town.”
I smiled at that, picturing it.
His eyes took on a faraway look. “And mountain trails wind through the woods. We have a crystal cave nearby, and a roaring river in the valley below. Deer come to your doorstep if you stay real quiet.”
It was obvious that he loved that place.
“Our local diner makes the best blackberry pie, and the town lights up for Christmas every year like a damn Hallmark movie.”
I giggled. “I’d like to live in a Hallmark movie.”
“Would you?” he stroked my hand, and the smile that peeked out on his lips warmed my heart. “You could come live there and be my wife. And I’d buy you a pie at the county fair.”
That’s when I realized he’d heard me singing in the bath last night.
The air between us disappeared as we held hands and stared at each other, lost in a magical moment together.
I could almost believe he was my boyfriend, ready to whisk me off to his hometown.
Then he told me about his friends and his family… and Hidden Lake. How cold the north end of it stayed even in August, fed by underground springs. And how he’d spent his summers racing his cousins to the center and back until he could swim it without stopping.
“I think that lake’s why I ended up in the Navy. I’ve always been drawn to water.” His eyes burned into mine. “You’d love it there.”
I hadn’t realized I’d propped my chin on my hand until I noticed I was just… watching him, lost in the world he was sharing with me. It sounded so ideal.
“You write about places like that,” he said.
I blinked. “What?”
“Small towns. People who know your name. Fireflies in July. An old dog at your side.”
He’s a fan.
Somehow I hadn’t expected that.
“You know my music,” I said, surprised and a little amused.
“I saw you in Dallas.” He shrugged. “Three years ago. Stadium show.”
A slow smile spread across my lips. “That’s not a small-town crowd.”
“No, but the songs were. You sing like you came from a place like Red Oak Mountain.” His eyes locked onto mine. “But after talking to you, I don’t think you did. Where’d you actually grow up?”
“Nashville.” I picked up my fork, suddenly aware of it in my hand. “Population two million.”
He studied me for a second.
“So Lucy Lee is a brand. The whole thing is a character… for marketing.”
I didn’t answer right away because that was uncomfortably close.
I dug into my seafood platter.
“I didn’t think of it that way when I started,” I finally admitted. “I was writing what I wished was true.”
I glanced out at the ocean waves beyond the window, seagulls flying in lazy loops.
“By the time I figured out the difference between the life I was writing and the one I was actually living, I realized I was singing about a dream and not the real world.”
The words hung in the air between us longer than I expected.
Then he leaned forward and caressed my arm, sending jolts of heat through me. His boyfriend act was in high-gear now.
He rumbled, “It’s not a fiction. Places like that really exist.”
“Like your hometown?”
His eyes settled on me warmly. “Yeah. I think you’d like it there.”
Then he added, “It’s private. And quiet. You can be yourself there. I don’t think I’d want all the fame you’ve got. It doesn’t look like a fun way to live.”
I stared back at him in surprise.
Almost everyone in my orbit was hungry for fame. It was rare to meet someone who actively avoided it.
“I spent my career making sure nobody knew I existed,” Bronson rumbled. “Privacy matters more to me than just about anything.”
There was something about that, solid and unshakable, that made my heart ache.
The way he described it, I could almost see that a different life was possible for me. One that didn’t involve touring ten months a year, never having a home base… roots.
“I didn’t know what I was giving up,” I said. “I was sixteen and alone in the world other than Valerie. Then Jimmy strolled in and offered me the world.” I let out a small breath. “I would have done things differently if I’d known better.”
We sat there with that truth stretched out before us.
Outside, the ocean moved in a steady rhythm, and when I finally looked down, I realized I’d eaten most of my food without even noticing.
Which meant, for a few minutes, I’d actually felt… normal.
This man seemed to bring that out in me.
Bronson’s eyes darted to the door as a group of customers walked in.
His demeanor instantly changed, and he tensed up, back in protector-man mode. “Enough playtime. We should go.”
By the time the beach house came into view at the end of the drive, my earlier warmth had disappeared.
Real life filtered back in, and not even the high of a good day at the studio and a hot date at a restaurant could stop the worry knotted in my stomach.
“Wait,” Bronson stopped the car.
He was staring at the gate, completely still. This was different from his usual watchful quiet. He was tense.
Something was wrong.
“We’re going in together,” he growled. “You stay behind me. Don’t move until I tell you.”
My heart sped up as he unlocked the gate and drove us up the driveway. Before we got out, he sent a quick text to Cal and the team.
Then we climbed the stairs. I’d never clung to a man so close before in my life.
The house felt wrong the moment we stepped inside.
I couldn’t have explained it to anyone.
Nothing was visibly out of place. The entry looked exactly as we’d left it.
But it felt dangerous where it had felt comforting before.
I should have gone to a safe house, like he wanted.
Bronson moved ahead of me into the main room, handed me a taser and signaled silently for me to stay in the entryway.
This time, I stayed exactly where he’d put me, my back to the entry wall, the taser pointed straight ahead of me, as I watched him disappear around the corner toward the kitchen.
The silence stretched.
He was gone too long.
And then I became aware of a shift of movement from one of the bedrooms. It was a quiet sound, barely audible above the crashing of the waves outside.
“Bronson?” I called out, hoping he’d come back.
The taser shook in my hands.
A man came out of the hallway fast, and my brain refused to process it at first.
Then the fear hit, and I pressed back against the wall, a loud scream tearing out of my lungs as the man pointed a gun straight at me.
And what did I do? I dropped the taser. Of course I did.
I’m going to die.
I’m going to die right here.
And I never even got to kiss Bronson.
Those thoughts ran through my head in a millisecond as the intruder cocked the gun.
But before he could fire, Bronson ran into view, a predator on the attack.
He closed the distance between himself and the man in three steps, as I screamed and screamed and screamed.
The fight was over so fast that I couldn’t say exactly what Bronson had done.
One second the man was standing, pointing a gun at me. And the next, he’d gone down hard.
Bronson had him pinned and secured before I’d managed to take a full breath.
I stood against the wall, still screaming, but it had gone silent now. My mouth was open, no sound coming out.
Bronson wasn’t even breathing hard as he zip-tied the intruder’s wrists.
He looked up at me from where he crouched over the man on the floor, my hero, and his voice was calm. “You okay?”
I nodded, but my whole body was shaking. I’d never been around a gun before, other than the ones strapped to my security guards’ belts. And they’d never had a reason to pull them before. At least not in my presence.
As I slid down to the floor, concern flashed across Bronson’s face.
Standing had stopped being an option. The adrenaline was hitting me in waves, disorienting me, and my whole body was trembling.
Bronson crossed the room and crouched in front of me, keeping one eye on the intruder, now hog-tied on my living room floor.
He pulled me into a quick embrace, grounding me, and I clung to him like he was my lifeline.
“Look at me,” he rumbled.
I looked at him.
“You’re safe with me. Nobody’s touching you while I’m breathing.” His voice came out like a low growl.
Visions of the gun pointed straight at me flashed through my mind, panic rising again.
“You’re okay,” he grunted. “It’s over. Say it.”
“I-I’m okay. It’s over.”
But just like that, I lost control. My hands fisted into his faded Johnny Cash shirt, and I pressed my head against his chest as violent sobs broke out of me.
That’s when he hugged me for real, tightening his grip around me as his lips scraped against my ear, “You did good, Lucy. But I need you to hold it together long enough for me to find out who hired this man. Can you do that for me?”
He was so solid and unshakeable that my tears started to slow.
Bronson had saved my life.
I became aware of him in a way that had nothing to do with fear. This man of granite held me there on the floor until reinforcements arrived. First Cal and his men, then the police.
And he kept holding me as the others interrogated the man. Until I was able to stand on shaky legs.
He led me to the bathroom, his body firm around mine, holding me upright. Then he drew me a bath.
When he saw that I was still in shock, he stripped my clothes off gingerly and helped me into the tub, a bloom of hunger in his eyes that he worked to suppress.
“I’ll be back shortly,” he rumbled, stroking his fingers across my cheek as his eyes burned into mine. “I need to talk to the men.”
A few minutes later I heard men leaving, followed by Bronson and Cal’s hushed voices in the hallway.
“Is she going to be okay?”
“Yeah. She’s just in shock.”
Then Cal said, “We’ve been digging around and I’m almost certain it’s Jimmy.”
“Yup. I know it’s him. She’s a fucking angel, and no one hates her, except that one singer online.”
My heart sank.
It couldn’t be Jimmy.
I’d spent twenty years of my life with that man.
But if Bronson and Cal were convinced, I had to consider that it might be true.
I shook in the tub despite the warmth, feeling my heart crack in two.
There was no love left between Jimmy and me, if it had ever existed at all, but knowing he could betray me like this still made me ache.
Then I thought of Bronson. Strong. Steady. In control.
He was the reason I was alive. That thought settled into me, and finally, my nerves started to calm, at least enough for me to stop shaking.