Country by Danielle Steel Page B

was no pressure on her.
    “Okay. What the hell? I’ve come this far, I might as well stay another day.” She said it as much to herself as him.
    “That’s my girl, Stevie. You know what they say. Carpe diem. Seize the day. We only get one day at a time—we have to make the best of it. You never know what’s going to happen tomorrow. Today is all we’ve got.” She had learned that lesson with what happened to Bill. And she knew the expression. It was Latin. Carpe diem. She just never thought it applied to her. It never had before. “I’ll call you around ten. We’ll figure out something to do. I’ve got a car here—we don’t have to take the bus.” It sounded good to her. And like fun. She was going to spend the day with Chase Taylor, just hanging out, just as she had done tonight. Who would have thought that the long-haired, tattooed guy she had met on the hiking trail at the Grand Canyon would turn out to be a country music star, and they’d make friends? He was right in what he said. Carpe diem. Seize the day.

Chapter 8
    When Chase picked her up at ten-thirty the next morning, he had a plan. He waited for her in a Mercedes at a side door of the hotel where no one would see him, and he told her about the Moapa River Reservation of Paiute Indians he wanted to take her to, thirty miles away. “It was a land grant of two million acres originally. Now it’s down to a thousand,” he explained to her. “There’s not much there. They run a casino and a few stores, but there’s a medicine man I met there, at the casino. He’s a very spiritual person. I thought you might like to meet him,” Chase said as they drove north on Interstate 15. It was in the desert, and he said he had been there before. When they got there, they walked around. It was a bleak place, with imposing sandstone cliffs. Chase knew where to find the medicine man at his small, dilapidated house just outside town. Chase introduced him to Stephanie, and the medicine man told her that she had far to go on a new path.
    “Did you tell him that?” Stephanie asked Chase suspiciously, and he swore he hadn’t. The medicine man told her then to open her eyes so she would see the path and to let go of her old ways and life. And he told Chase that he had to open his heart, that it had been closed for a long time, maybe since he was a boy. They talked for a while. Chase thanked him and slipped bills into his hand as they left.
    “That’s pretty scary,” Stephanie commented as they drove away. There was something very profound and spiritual about the man, and Chase said he had been impressed by him before. Chase liked to meet unusual people off the beaten path.
    “Medicine men are very special people,” he confirmed.
    “Was what he said about you true? That your heart has been closed.”
    “Pretty much,” Chase confessed easily as he drove with his eyes on the road. “Except to music. I don’t think I’ve really loved anybody since the girl I married at seventeen. I loved Tamra, but it was complicated, and it was always more about our careers than the relationship. The relationship just came out of that. She’s a hard woman, and she’s all about herself. This business is like that, everyone is out for themselves, and they don’t care who they screw over to get where they want. It destroys people’s souls.” But she had a strong sense that his was intact.
    “So why are you different?” she asked as they drove back toward Las Vegas.
    “Maybe I don’t care as much about where I’m going. I’ve been lucky. I love what I do, but not enough to kill someone over it or give up who I am. I’m not willing to make the sacrifices some people are. I’m willing to work my ass off, not sell my soul.” He had made the right choices and had remained whole. “What about you? What are you going to do now?”
    “I don’t know. I’ve never had choices before. I was on a path I thought I was going to be on forever. I forgot the kids would grow