Triple Beat-nook(3)

“Jett…” She paused. For two years, he’d been her best friend, her confidante, her savior. If anyone should be nervous, it was her. She was the one who’d run and cut him off without a word…for twelve years. Wasn’t he pissed off at her for that?

Somehow, she found enough voice to say, “I’m so happy you called me.”

She could almost hear his smile through the phone when he said, “Thank God. I missed you, Dani. So much.”

“I missed you too.”

***

They’d spoken for almost two hours that night. Dani had tried to explain why she’d left, but in the end, Jett didn’t want an explanation. Or an apology. He just wanted to get to know the adult she’d become, to have his sister back.

The Lewis family had opened their home and their arms to her at the lowest point of her life. They’d shown her compassion and what it meant to belong to a loving family. For twenty-three blissful months, she’d been a part of that.

Then she’d run. She thought she’d lost them forever when she left, but Jett had made it perfectly clear she couldn’t get rid of them that easily. She’d laughed, grateful he couldn’t see the happy tears his words had provoked.

Since then, he had called her at least a dozen times. At first it was just to catch up, and then he started pressuring her to come to New Orleans for a visit. While he had told his family he’d found her in Nashville, he hadn’t told them he’d made contact with her. He was keeping that part a secret. Jett, the king of overactive imaginations and lover of pranks, had created this entire scenario where he would throw a surprise reunion at the traditional Lewis family Sunday dinner. He wanted Dani to simply walk in one Sunday and reclaim her seat at the table.

Dani had to admit the plan appealed to her a great deal. There was nothing she wanted more than to sit at Mama Lewis’ table again.

At first, she’d put him off. Not because she didn’t want to see them, but because her work schedule was insane.

Two things had changed her mind about the reunion in New Orleans.

First, Closing Time, the band she’d formed with Aiden and Bryson, had signed a recording contract with a major label, and there was no way she was going to be able to continue hiding in plain sight. New name or not, her face was the same.

Aiden and Bryson had been dreaming about a deal like this, but Dani wasn’t quite as overjoyed. So far, a lot of their performing had taken place in Nashville or smaller cities along the East Coast. She’d managed to keep them out of New Orleans. Hell, they’d avoided the entire state of Louisiana. And she’d taken special pains to make sure she was always in the shadows whenever it came to the media, letting Aiden and Bryson take the lead in interviews for local channels or magazine articles.

The guys had chalked up her reticence to shyness, though she’d seen them struggle with that explanation because she had no problem performing on stage or holding her own in social settings without cameras. She sure as hell couldn’t tell them she was lying low, hiding from an abusive father they thought was long dead, so she’d let them find their own explanations for her strange behavior.

Of course, that was a moot point now. And was actually her second reason for returning to New Orleans. Her father had found her.

It had started a month or so earlier, when she’d opened her mailbox to find a letter addressed to Dani Patton. She’d never experienced such bone-shaking terror as when she opened it to find a single piece of paper written in her dad’s scrawl.

All it said was “Gotcha.”

Dani had stared at the message until the word blurred, then she’d picked up the phone to call Jett. He’d told her to lock the door and check the windows. He’d even suggested she call the police, but Dani hadn’t gone quite that far. The letter had a Louisiana postmark, which had eased her mind a little bit. Plus she’d come home to pack. Mercifully, she, Aiden and Bryson had been headed to Branson, Missouri, for a three-night gig. Jett only calmed down once she told him her bandmates would be there soon and the three of them would be heading out of town.

However, she’d returned home to two more letters. Each letter was ominously threatening and sparse. One had said, “Come home” and the other, “You can’t run forever.”

She had always known deep inside that her father would never stop looking for her, and for that reason, she’d spent twelve years looking over her shoulder, searching the shadows for the evil man.

Dani recalled the last time she’d seen him. While she’d been able to block out so many bad memories, this was the one that never left her, that caused her to wake up in a cold sweat night after night.