Liar's Moon by Heather Graham

were you. Your songs are fabulous! And you sing like a lark. And—”
    “Jamie, get out of here!”
    Liz laughed happily behind Tracy, then linked arms with her. “Come on—let’s go save Leif.”
    Saving Leif was the last thing Tracy had on her mind, but with Liz hurrying her along, she had little choice but to keep up. They came upon Leif and the reporter against one of the outer walls just before the dressing rooms. Leif looked calm, but he was eyeing the man carefully, though his stance was casual. He answered each question slowly, taking his time, weighing his answers, while still appearing casual and idle about the whole thing.
    “You actually disbanded two years ago, right?”
    “That’s right.”
    “Why?”
    Leif shrugged, glancing at his sister and Tracy over the man’s head, arching a brow and grimacing. He turned his attention back to the eager reporter.
    “Well, because we really started out as street musicians when we were kids. Tiger and Sam were a little bit older, Jesse was sixteen, I was fifteen. Two years ago we celebrated twenty-five years together, and we just decided it was time to call it quits.”
    “What about the times that you split up before?”
    Leif shook his head. “We never split up before.”
    “Sure you did! All the rags had this thing going about some massive fight going on between you and Jesse—”
    “The group didn’t split up. We held off recording for awhile.”
    “What was the fight about? How did you two finally make it up? Was it over a woman?”
    Tracy felt her cheeks bu rn , but not a muscle in Leif’s face twitched, nor did he glance Tracy’s way.
    “Jesse and I had a little blowup, yeah. It was over a song. We solved it by keeping our distance for a while, that’s all.”
    “What about before?”
    “There was no ‘before.’ I was drafted into the service, but the group didn’t split up then. I wrote songs when I could, and we carried on long distance, you might say. Obviously, we didn’t do any concerts then, but we were still a group. When I came home, we toured for a year, then we worked in the studio for a year. It was like that frequently.”
    “Are you planning on forming a new band with Jamie Kuger? And what about Jesse’s daughter? We’ve never heard much about her before. Why? Who is she really? Can you—”
    Leif reached around the man for Tracy’s hand, pulling her next to him in a protective gesture. “Tracy—this is Mack Arnold. Mack—Tracy Kuger. The real Tracy Kuger.”
    “Miss Kuger!” Mack offered her a fleshy hand. “What a pleasure! What have you been doing all your life!” He laughed at the scope of his own question. “It’s rumored that you write music and songs—under a bunch of pseudonyms. Is that true? How—”
    “Mack! You’ve gotten to see the lady—let her breathe!” Leif jumped in. “She writes—and she keeps pseudonyms because she likes her privacy. So let her keep it, OK?”
    Mack didn’t get any choice—Leif smoothly introduced h is sister and his son, then promised to send Jamie out to talk to him. Tracy was glad that he had defended her. Mack Arnold might well have ripped her to shreds in a matter of seconds. But she was still ready to kill Leif for pulling her on stage, and she didn’t feel any kinder toward him when he smoothly got them away from Mack and into Jamie’s dressing room. Her brother’s backup musicians were all there and Jamie dragged her around like an exotic prize. She understood—he was special to her, too—maybe more so since it had taken them so long to reach one another. She just didn’t like the thousand-and-one questions everyone asked her now that they knew she was Jesse’s other child.
    Champagne flowed freely in the dressing room. Tracy sipped some idly, trying to steer questions away from herself and keep her comments on her brother’s performance. Naturally, people asked her where she had been, how and when she and Jamie had gotten together—and just how well she