Page 14 of A Hero Comes Home

Chapter 4

Eye candy for the chocoholic . . .

(New York City, nine years and one month ago)

“Well, that was a waste of time,” Sally Fontaine said to her best friend, Melody Carter, as they left the Eugene O’Neill Theater.

“For sure! Even if we get the parts, the pay and the hours wouldn’t be worth the effort.”

The casting notice on Backstage.com had been misleading, to say the least. The two of them had skipped morning classes at the Manhattan School of Music to audition for supporting roles in a remake of West Side Story, which was expected to make its Broadway debut next March. It had been a cattle call for mostly chorus spots, resulting in hundreds of singers showing up, many of them with a smattering of experience, like themselves.

Ever since her parents had discovered that Sally had singing talent when she was about ten years old, they’d been encouraging her with voice lessons and auditions, all geared toward a Broadway career. Never the popular music scene, which they considered a meat market for drugs and exploitation. But the “legitimate” theater, yes, yes, yes.

Her parents wouldn’t have minded her skipping classes, today or any other day, despite the expensive tuition they paid out each month. It was important to keep trying, whether through auditions or agent appointments, never knowing when the “lucky break” would come for her to hit the big time. As a result, this marked Sally’s nineteenth tryout since she’d graduated from high school last year. Oh, she’d gotten numerous bit parts along the way, but none of them anywhere near the “big time,” not even the three days of playing Annie when she was eleven and the lead actress was sick with the flu.

Mel fanned her face with a Playbill she’d picked up from the theater lobby. The temperature on the TV this morning had said eighty degrees, and they were both dressed appropriately for the weather in sundresses and flat ballet-style shoes, but eighty degrees in August in the Big Apple was comparable to about a hundred anywhere else.

Not that Sally knew much about “anywhere else,” having grown up in the city with her parents, Max and Lola Fontaine, famous set designers who rarely left their beloved home territory near the Great White Way, except for occasional flights to LA where they worked on films, which was rare. Not for lack of opportunity. They just preferred live theater.

“Should we go back to school or hit the summer concert series in the park?” Sally asked.

“Definitely the concert,” Mel replied. “It’s ‘Beach Music Without Sand’ today. Eight bands, headlined by the Beach Boys.”

“I thought they were dead.”

“Some are, but the band is still cool. Well, their music is.” Mel began to sing “Barbara Ann,” which caused passersby on the busy street to turn and stare, then smile. She was really good. Unlike Sally, Mel and her doting family wouldn’t mind a popular singing role. In fact, she was planning to try out for next season’s American Idol.

Sally elbowed her friend to behave, and they headed across 50th Street, taking a shortcut through the park. Within ten minutes they were at the back of the crowd which stood about or sat on blankets listening to the band. The spectators were all ages. Some seniors who would have been teens in the heyday of beach music, but also some young couples with children, and lots of teens on the loose for summer vacation.

On stage at the moment appeared to be a Southern band called The Shakers, which was playing “Carolina Girls.” Well, actually, there were two bands on the stage . . . The Shakers and the Beach Boys. They had a sort of duel of the bands going on, with The Shakers extolling the virtues of Carolina girls, while the Beach Boys did a counterpoint with their song about West Coast girls. Back and forth they went with contradictory lyrics from their once-popular songs, and surprisingly they worked well together.

Sally and Mel looked at each other and smiled.

“Should we try to get closer to the stage?” Mel asked.

“Nah. Let’s sit on that picnic table over there. That family is leaving.”

They rushed over and were about to hop up and onto the tabletop with their feet on the bench when Sally looked to the side, then did a double take. Standing nearby were a group of six physically fit men in short-sleeved khaki uniforms with green berets covering high-and-tight military haircuts. But it wasn’t the group that caught Sally’s attention. It was one man in particular.

He had dark hair and pale blue eyes. Broad shoulders. Small waist. Tall. Maybe six foot. But not too tall, compared to her five-five. In a pair of her favorite high heels, he would be just perfect.

What? Why make that comparison? Am I nuts? Suddenly attracted to hunks? My parents, true-blue pacifists, would have tandem heart attacks if I ever came home with a soldier. But, holy moly, he does look good in that uniform.

Sally was used to good-looking males in the entertainment business her parents worked in and the participants that they often brought home. Actors. Musicians. Singers. If they weren’t born handsome, they used plastic surgeons, or aesthetic dentists, or hair stylists, or physical trainers to get to that perfection ideal. Eye candy for the sugar-deprived masses.

But this guy was different, somehow.

And, face it, I’m no beauty prize. Sally was realistic about her own shortcomings. Plain brown hair, except for some naturally blonde highlights. A slightly crooked incisor tooth, which her parents said made Sally stand out from the too–orthodontically perfect, too-white-toothed crowd. A petite figure that was far from voluptuous.

Men didn’t stop in their tracks when she walked by.

Still, this guy, as he leaned against a tree, was staring, not at the stage, like his buddies, but at her. And he appeared to be equally poleaxed. Tilting his head to the side, his compelling eyes seemed to be asking a question, the same question causing her heart to leap in her chest.

Who are you?

But then he smiled, a slow, lazy twitch of impossibly sexy lips.

And Sally’s world changed forever.