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True Harmony, Chapter One

Eliza Bancroft knew something was up the minute she walked into her duplex on a Tuesday afternoon in August. It was written all over her roommate’s face.

“What’s wrong?” Eliza asked, eyes narrowed, pulse ramping up as she set her shoulder bag and her fiddle on the bench by the back door.

“Who says something’s wrong?” Grace threw back, trying for a nonchalant tone.

Eliza could see right through it. “You. Your eyes. You’re watching me like you expect me to flip my shit.”

Grace pushed the half-full dishwasher trays in and closed the door of the appliance, then, after too much of a pause, she swiveled to face Eliza. “You’re going to flip your shit.”

“Is Calvin—”

“He’s fine. Still napping with Blitz. Preschool wore him out but good.” Grace took two long-legged strides to the kitchen table, picked up a magazine, flipped through the pages as though on a mission. “Here.” She set the magazine on the table and tapped it. “Familiar?”

Eliza moved closer, eyes on the full-color, full-page photo, and half a heartbeat later, she sucked in her breath. “Oh, my God.” She pressed a fist to her chest to try to stop herself from stroking out.

“His name is Mason North,” Grace told her in a quiet, matter-of-fact voice. “Your baby daddy is the CEO of North Brothers Sports.”

With her breath stopped cold in her lungs, Eliza snatched up the magazine and avidly dug in to the article. “Most eligible bachelor of Nashville?” she let out, her voice climbing higher. “I thought he was from out of town.”

“Sit down, sugar.” Grace pulled out one of the kitchen chairs, but Eliza barely registered it until her roommate eased her down with a gentle hand on her shoulder. “You’re pale. I’ll get you some tea.”

Eliza continued reading as she sat, inhaling the words with her eyes, soaking up every morsel of info on the man she’d spent a grand total of six, maybe seven hours with. Unfortunately, it seemed the Nashville Heat hadn’t actually interviewed Mason North for the piece, had simply put together whatever info was public—his job running North Brothers Sports, his family’s nonprofit foundation, his immediate family, including a younger brother, Drake, who had made the publication’s Most Eligible Bachelor list a few years back.

Add to that information what Eliza knew—he loved the St. Louis Cardinals and expensive whiskey, was irresistible in a suit, and appreciated the hell out of the tattoo of stars and music notes and ribbons that curved over her hip at her bikini line—and she still knew more, at least twice as much, about the musicians she’d played with in the studio today.

“He’s been here all along.” She grasped the tall, cold glass of tea Grace set in front of her, mainly for something to hold on to, as she let that nugget sink in. “I feel so dumb.”

Grace plopped down in the chair next to hers and took her hand. “We’ve been over this a thousand times, Eliza. You’re not dumb. You got caught up in a little magic with a scrumptious man and let yourself go for it. Part of the reason it was so magical is that you didn’t ask for each other’s life story or pertinent information. If you hadn’t ended up pregnant, you wouldn’t have thought anything of it.”

Oh, she would’ve thought about it. She had thought about it, about him, the man who had rocked her world for a few hours before she’d crept out of his hotel room. Mason-with-no-last-name had been a once-in-a-lifetime event. A few spectacular hours she could hold in her memory forever—the kind that had likely ruined all other men for her for the rest of her life.

Luckily for her, she hadn’t had room in her life for men in the four and a half years since. All of her energy and time went to her son and her career. Everything she did was to try to give her boy the best life possible.

“What am I supposed do with this information?” Eliza said, still staring at the magazine photo, which had him in a tux at some formal evening event, looking admittedly gorgeous.

She couldn’t help comparing this man’s classy, sedate life to hers, filled with little-boy noise, music, chaos, an energetic dog, and eternal scrambling. Scrambling was her middle name—scrambling to pay the bills, scrambling to pick up more work, scrambling to make sure her boy had consistent care when she did work.

“Well, it seems to me you have two options,” Grace said, leaning forward to try to force eye contact with her piercing blue eyes, her long blond waves falling over her shoulders. “You can track him down and tell him he’s a father, or you can not and keep on keeping on the way you have been.”

“Both make me want to throw up.”

“Understandable.” Grace glanced at the clock on the microwave.

“You have to work,” Eliza said, suddenly remembering the reason she’d had to hurry home after the afternoon recording session.

“Not for a few minutes yet.” Grace hopped up, went over to the fridge, took out a string cheese. “Can I get you a cupcake?”

Eliza shook her head in a rare rejection of her favorite vice, store-bought, processed, heaven-sent chocolate cupcakes with cream filling.

“Here’s the thing,” Grace said. “You don’t have to figure it out today. You’ve got time to think it over.”

Eliza tried to breathe, nodding, knowing her roommate had a point despite the choking panic that had gripped Eliza from the moment she’d seen Mason’s face in the photo.

Mason North. Calvin’s father.

Tears burned in her eyes out of nowhere, because how many nights had she lain awake wishing for the one thing her boy couldn’t have? A two-parent family. A daddy who loved him, who could teach him how to hit the Little Tikes T-Ball in their tiny backyard, who could go to Family Day at preschool.

Eliza threw her head back, closed her eyes, and blew out all the air from her lungs. “Maybe I could’ve tried harder to find him.”

“What?” Grace’s alto voice went soprano with the one-word question. She rushed back to her seat, grabbed Eliza’s wrist. “Eliza, you did everything you could to find your mystery man back then. The hotel wouldn’t release his info, the business conference he was attending was a dead-end, the internet searching with no last name was a bust. There was nothing else we could’ve done.”

“I still wonder if I could’ve hired an investigator.”

“Sure,” Grace said, “if we skipped paying rent for a few months, went without food. Come on, Eliza. If we could have, we would have. It wasn’t a possibility back then.”

It still wasn’t. Even though Eliza had gotten her foot in the door as a session musician and made her money that way rather than hustling for live gigs now, which was a definite step up financially, there was never an extra dime at the end of the month.

“I could’ve tried the hotel front desk again. The guy I talked to was a jerk.”

Grace stuck the last of the cheese in her mouth and shook her head vigorously. “Wouldn’t have worked and you know it. A hotel can’t and won’t release a customer’s info.”

“I know,” Eliza said, the despair of four years ago coming back to her in droves.

“You need to forgive yourself for not getting his last name or contact info. You didn’t know you’d need it. It was one night of being carefree, and if anybody deserves that, it’s you, sugar.”

“It was part of the fantasy,” Eliza admitted, thinking back to that night.

Both she and Grace had been working the music scene hard even back then, bartending on Broadway, making industry connections by the dozens, getting called to fill in for more and more gigs. Her one rule was never to date or sleep with someone in the industry. It was too small, and you never knew where you’d next run into your ex-lover.

Grace had had a second bartending job at a downtown hotel, and that evening, she’d texted Eliza that a music VIP was sitting alone at the hotel bar and to get her butt over there ASAP. By the time Eliza made it, the VIP was gone, so she’d settled into a barstool for a drink and the Cardinals spring training game and to keep her roomie company for her slow weeknight shift.

Mason had appeared next to her at some point, and they’d bonded over the St. Louis Cardinals. It didn’t sound romantic, but they’d watched the game together, flirting like crazy until the last out. Between his killer blue eyes, his reluctant but sexy laugh, and the complete escape from her normal world of music and working it twenty-four seven, she’d been all in for a rare night of no-strings sex. Even now, especially now, it sounded tough to swallow and a little ridiculous, but somehow, in those few hours at the bar, they’d truly connected on some level, a level far outside of their everyday lives.

“If I ever needed proof that fantasies aren’t real and magic doesn’t exist…” Eliza shook her head, let out a humorless, self-deprecating laugh. “Thank you, universe. Message received.”

“Stop,” Grace ordered her. “Maybe magic doesn’t last, but you, sugar, are one of the lucky ones who experienced it for a blink of time.”

“I don’t feel lucky. How in the ever-loving hell can I tell this man I don’t know that he has—”

“Mama!” Calvin appeared at the doorway between the kitchen and the living room, looking rumpled, wearing his Young, Wild, and Three T-shirt that Lettie, their dear next-door neighbor, had given him for his birthday last year. Next to him, Blitz, the irresistible black-and-white mutt they’d rescued just over a year ago, wagged his tail and looked between Grace and Eliza, as if gauging who would be more likely to give him a treat.

“Hey, baby.” Eliza scooted the chair back and held out her arms for a hug, and her still-waking-up boy raced over to her and jumped at her with full force, just like he did everything. Blitz galloped over to Grace, who’d gone to the treat jar and held out a canine snack.

Eliza held Calvin to her, inhaled the scent of his baby shampoo that still twisted her heart every day, and thanked God for the millionth time for letting her be this boy’s mom. “How’s my favorite boy in the whole wide world?”

“Hungry!” He spotted the empty cheese wrapper Grace had left on the table. “String cheese!”

“String cheese what, little man?” Grace said. “And where’s my hug?”

“String cheese please,” Calvin said as Eliza lowered him to the floor, and then he hugged Grace with just as much enthusiasm.

“How was preschool?” Eliza asked as Grace went after a string cheese and Blitz finished crunching his treat and settled on the floor at her feet, giving her his best puppy-dog eyes in hopes that maybe she, too, would succumb to his charms. She patted him on the head and steeled herself against the sad-dog look.

“Fun! Jacob was the Star of the Week and his daddy told us about being a policeman! We got Goldfish for snacks, and Jacob’s daddy carried him on top of his shoulders when it was time to play outside.”

Eliza’s chest constricted from the image of Jacob and his dad that taunted her mind as Grace dangled the unwrapped cheese in front of Calvin. Snacks and a daddy—the highlights of the day as reported by Calvin. This was the third week of preschool and the fourth daddy she’d heard all about.

“Tell your mom about your art project,” Grace prompted as Blitz moved to Calvin’s side just in case the boy went against their house rules and gave the dog some people food.

Eliza only half registered the enthusiastic yes! and the description of the project he’d started but couldn’t bring home yet because the glue was still wet. Her eyes met Grace’s over her boy’s head, and though they didn’t say a word, it was clear they were thinking the same thing: Calvin was aching for a daddy, and suddenly Eliza had the ability to reach out to his.

“I can’t wait until you bring it home and show us,” Grace said. “And now, I gotta make like a tree and leave for work.”

Calvin laughed at her make like a expression, as he always did, and Eliza couldn’t help smiling at his easy joy.

“Have a good shift,” Eliza said, standing, fighting through the paralysis that the photo on the table had brought on. She slapped the magazine closed and reached out for Calvin’s hand as Grace picked up her bag, phone, and keys and darted out the door with a wave and a goodbye.

“Can we go to the park, Mama?”

“You want to swing?” she asked.

“And climb!”

With a glance at the clock, she decided they could get in some outside playtime and still have dinner at a reasonable hour if she made something quick like tacos. “Then swing and climb it is,” she said as she hoisted him into her arms. “After another hug.”

His little arms wrapped around her neck, and he pressed a clumsy kiss to her. She planted a noisy lip smack on him, making him giggle, then lowered him to the floor.

“Go get your shoes on, kiddo.” She went to the hooks by the door and picked up Blitz’s leash, which had the dog prancing excitedly. She attached the leash to his collar.

Calvin raced off to his room, making vroom noises, leaving Eliza alone with her muddled thoughts and that damn magazine, which, she noticed now, had a small photo of Mason on the cover as well.

“I gotta poop ’fore we go, Mama!” Calvin hollered from the other side of the house, making her grin and shake her head.

She looked at her eager dog and said, “Single parenting is not for the faint of heart, Blitz-o.”

Because of Grace, the best friend God could give a girl—and Lettie, the dear soul next door who stayed with Calvin whenever they needed a third—Eliza had it better than a lot of single moms. She had a support system of steel.

But as much as she liked to believe their team of three women could be everything Calvin needed, there was no denying there were some gaps they would never fill. Take snakes, for example. Eliza could kill a spider as big as a quarter, but when a garter snake had slithered past her and Calvin at the park last week, she’d screamed like a girl and probably scarred her son.

And shoulder rides…though she could possibly carry him on her back right now, her boy was tall for his age and grew like a weed, and she would barely be able to lift him before long.

She tried to be both mom and dad to her son, but God knew she wasn’t, couldn’t be. Telling Mason North the truth scared the holy tar out of her, but if there was the slightest possibility of enriching her son’s life by doing it, how could she not?

Though she wasn’t swimming in optimism that it would produce a happy ending for her boy—she didn’t know Mason well enough to have a clue how he would react—for Calvin’s sake, she had to try.