Page 89 of Good Girls Don't Date Rock Stars (Rock Canyon, Idaho 2)

“Both.”

Gracie squeezed her waist. “You’re a good mom and Charlie loves you. Believe me, he’ll forgive you.”

“And Travis?”

“If he doesn’t, then he’s a dunce-capped idiot who will find himself in a pair of cement shoes learning to speak trout,” Gracie said with a straight face.

“You are so dumb,” Gemma said, laughing softly.

“Yes, but I’m also hot, funny, and have excellent fashion sense. So I’m pretty sure whatever faults I may have, it’s an even trade. I mean, no one can be this awesome without a few issues,” Gracie said, patting Gemma’s cheek. “If you go to him and tell him you were wrong, that you’ve been a scared sissy la-la, and that you want to spend the rest of your life proving your love. He’d be crazy not to forgive you.”

“I hope you’re right.”

CHARLIE WAS DISCHARGED the next day but still hadn’t said a word to Gemma. After they had him settled at home, her mom had sent her to the store for some groceries while she tried to talk to him, and Gemma went without argument. She needed time to come up with a plan to earn his forgiveness.

And Travis’s.

Travis had called Charlie’s hospital room that morning and talked to him for a while, but whatever he’d said, Charlie hadn’t felt like sharing. She couldn’t blame him.

Pulling into Hall’s Market, she parked her car and grabbed her purse from the front seat. As she headed inside, she passed an employee pushing grocery carts and took one from him before entering the store.

It was like that dream she used to have, where she was walking down the halls of school in her underwear. People were staring at her, whispering behind their hands. She tried to ignore them, intently looking over her grocery list.

“Gemma, how’s Charlie? I heard he had a fall.”

Gemma looked up into Nancy’s concerned face. “He’s okay. Had to stay overnight at the hospital, but he’s home now. He broke his arm, so he’ll have a cast on for a while, but thank God it wasn’t worse.”

Nancy clucked her tongue sympathetically. “Well, be sure to go by the bakery and pick up a sack of snickerdoodles for him. They’re on us. And let him know we’re thinking of him.”

“Thanks, I will,” Gemma said, trying to politely disengage herself.

“Is Travis at home with him?” Nancy asked.

Gemma really didn’t want to get into her marital problems in the middle of Hall’s. “No, actually, he had to leave for his concert in California, but he called.”

“Oh, that’s too bad. Well, I hope he hurries home. Those fool reporters have been writing some serious whoppers; they ought to be strung up. At least Miss Know It All left you alone; there was barely a blip about you in today’s edition.”

Sure, if you call a quarter of a page a blip. Miss Know It All’s report that there might be trouble between them when Travis left town four days before his concert date was mild in comparison to what was in the major gossip rags this week, so she should be grateful. The gossip columnist could have gone with any of the headlines decorating the magazine covers and blaring from the entertainment TV shows:

TRAVIS BOWER’S SECRET LOVE CHILD WITH HIGH-SCHOOL SWEETHEART!

COUNTRY MUSIC’S #1 BACHELOR GETS HITCHED IN VEGAS!

TRAVIS’S DOUBTS: IS HIS SON REALLY HIS?

On and on they went, each one more humiliating than the last. Some had been so accurate, she’d been ashamed to read them, and others had just made her want to punch someone. If she ever discovered who’d brought this shitstorm down on them, she would teach them a lesson about what happens when you make Mama Bear angry.

Half an hour later, she was struggling to find her car keys in her purse when she heard a definite southern drawl ask, “Excuse me, Mrs. Bowers?”

Gemma looked up from her futile search and glared at the tall, brassy blonde with hair so high and s

tiff it must have taken a whole can of hairspray to achieve. “Yes?”

“Well, hey there, can I help you? You look like me when I drop my lipstick in my purse. Don’t know why I carry so much stuff. I guess I always think I’m gonna need it someday.” The blonde took hold of the cart handle, and Gemma grabbed her purse quickly as the strange woman pushed it forward.

“Um, Ms . . . .” Gemma protested.

“Oh, my name is Mrs. Lisa Collier, originally from the great state of Mississippi. Tupelo, to be exact. You ever been to Tupelo? Birthplace of Elvis, and believe me, we don’t let anyone forget it. Even got his likeness frosted on a window at our McDonald’s. ’Course, I’ve been living in Nashville since I was eighteen, and it’s where I met my husband, Nelson. Wouldn’t have looked at him twice, but we were in the same dorm in college and lordy, if he didn’t stand outside my window one night singing Kenny Roger’s song ‘Lady’. Mind you, he couldn’t carry a tune, but . . .”

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