Free Drowning to Breathe by A. L. Jackson Page A

I ran into her, even though I remained leery. I didn’t want to give her the wrong impression, because I definitely wasn’t out looking for someone to step out on my Angie with.”
    He hesitated, then shook his head as he lowered his voice. “She wasn’t looking for sex, Baz. She was looking for a way to get her daughter’s foot in the door. The first couple of times she talked about her, I humored her. Talked with her a little about the business. But I didn’t give it a whole lot of thought. One night she convinced me to listen to a demo. The girl’s voice on the recording was…unbelievable. There’s no other way to describe it. I would have snatched her up in a heartbeat, but Chloe was already acting as her agent.”
    “Chloe?” I asked.
    “Charlie’s sister…Delaney Rhoads’s mother. Shea’s mother,” he amended a bit quieter, like he was catching on to how little I really knew about Shea.
    I bit back the hostile laughter that worked its way up.
    Nice.
    They were on a first-name basis.
    He shrugged, though it was laced with remorse. “I figured, what the hell could it hurt? I never wanted to be one of those guys who only did things to benefit himself, so I sent her to Jennings. That was right when I first began working with him. Back before I knew the kind of trash he was.”
    His sigh was heavy with implication. “That was only a year before I sent Jennings to the bar to check you and the guys out.”
    With both hands, I palmed the back of my head, trying to beat back the anxiety clamoring through my insides.
    Eating me up.
    God.
    Anthony di Pietro, my agent, but more than that, a friend, a guy I considered an honorary member in my fucked-up family, was the tie.
    Of course, I knew it was Anthony who’d sent Jennings to check out Sunder that night we were playing in Tennessee. That was no secret. How many times had Anthony vocalized his regret? Wondering if we’d have been better off if he’d never sent Jennings our way?
    But none of us could have foreseen the trouble he would bring.
    “The word was, Delaney Rhoads couldn’t cope with the stardom, and she’d tucked tail and ran back home. Sure, there were rumors circulating about an affair between Jennings and the emerging star, but we learn fast in this industry to ignore all of that unless it’s something that affects one of our clients directly. Most of it’s all bullshit, anyway. You know this well enough, Baz. I had no clue Delaney Rhoads even had a kid. She disappeared off the face of the earth. Forgotten in days. I never thought to ask Jennings about what had happened to her. I wasn’t representing her.
    He shook his head. “Hell, I’d never even met her. Initially, I did it thinking it was a favor to Charlie. In all the times I went back over the years, Charlie never once mentioned his niece had moved back there or that she was working in his bar.”
    He shrugged. “It never crossed my mind.”
    Of course Charlie never mentioned her.
    Secrets.
    Secrets.
    Secrets.
    Secrets meant to protect and defend, yet here they were, threatening to ruin everything.
    “I’m sorry, Baz. When I suggested you go to Charlie’s , I never imagined something I set in motion years ago could possibly affect you now.”
    Yeah, I was pissed. Some kind of unknown hurt wound through me as I came to understand how this web had been spun together.
    Shea and I unwittingly tied to the bastard who wanted to destroy both our lives.
    But how could I regret it?
    Because that would have meant never losing control with Shea.
    And never losing control with her just wasn’t an option I could entertain.
    I pressed the heels of my hands into my eyes. “What the hell are we going to do? He was here because of me, Anthony. He looked me straight in the eye when he took Kallie and reminded me I was going to regret fucking with him.”
    A wave of helplessness washed over me, and that was not a feeling I took kindly to. How the hell did you fix something when you had no clue