Cowboy 12 Pack

by Cynthia D’Alba, Paige Tyler, Elle James, Donna Michaels, Shoshanna Evers, Randi Alexander, Cora Seton, Beth Williamson, Sabrina York, Sable Hunter, Lexi Post, Becky McGraw

  “No need to apologize, you were just the messenger,” she said, taking his hand. Their palms met and electricity zipped up her arm. It felt like it hit her square in the heart when he gave her a blinding smile. She jerked her hand back to rub it on her shorts, and Jase turned toward the front door. Leigh was transfixed by her favorite part of the male anatomy, his being especially nice, until he quietly shut the door behind him.

  Huffing out a breath, Leigh turned toward the stereo and inserted the disk into the CD player, and cranked up the volume. Please be good, please be good, she prayed, as she pushed the start button and plopped down on the sofa. Closing her eyes, Leigh tried to relax as the soft notes of the acoustic guitar introduction started. If that was him playing the guitar that was also a bonus. On the porch during his telegram, he’d sawed on the box guitar. Maybe his fingers were just numb from the cold. And she was making excuses for him, because she wanted him to be good so damned bad.

  Stop it, Leigh, and just listen.

  The lyrics started and Leigh tried to separate them from the background track in her mind to figure out their significance to him, to see what made the song ‘special’ to him. The fact he refused to sell it even though he drove a beat up old pickup truck and wore worn out cowboy boots, said it was. If it was good, he could make a steady income for a long time from one song if the rights and royalties were handled properly. Leigh wondered if he had an agent. Next time she talked to him, she’d have to ask. Next time. Hell there she went again, putting the horse before the cart. The chorus came and she sat up to listen.

  Like a thief in the night, he stole into her life, taking her light. Gone, gone with the wind, never coming back again, turning her colored world black and white. Her memories of our love, my face, her name, gone with the wind, ain’t never coming back again, gone with the thief in the night.

  His voice was special, it was raspy and sexy, with a perfect tenor pitch. She’d heard better for sure, but his voice had something special. It was like fine aged whiskey, potent with a little edge. And Leigh definitely realized those words meant something to him. There was a soulful quality to his voice when he sang the words that ripped at her insides.

  But this was a terrible quality demo, and he was singing the song totally unplugged, without any backup whatsoever. Although it made it rawer and more powerful, this was not a professional quality demo, and she wondered where he’d had it made. But the song and the artist had a helluva lot of potential. With subtle help, a little dressing up in a studio, a little mixing and maybe a soft background track, this song could be a hit. Cautious excitement built inside of her as she got up to start the song over again.

  The second time around, Leigh knew exactly what she was feeling. It was the same thing she felt the night she’d heard Sarah Carpenter, country music’s newest darling, sing at the karaoke bar. But Leigh wasn’t going to let herself get carried away yet. Getting Sarah a win at the CMAs had been a two-year process, very hard work. It had also cost the label a bundle. It had taken Leigh almost three months to convince him to give Sarah a shot, she couldn’t imagine what it was going to take to do that now. This demo definitely wasn’t going to sell Leo. They needed something much better. And Leigh was going to have to figure out how to pay for it, because she wasn’t about to ask Leo for money right now.

  She had a friend with a small studio in Nashville who owed her a favor, but they’d still have to get there. Leigh had some money in her savings account, but she wasn’t independently wealthy. Her mother owed her two thousand dollars, and if she could collect it, Leigh could pay for a couple of red-eye plane tickets, a low budget hotel room and studio musicians for a professional master cut for Jase Smith.

  Finding her mother was going to be the problem. According to Leo, her mother Trudy had a new boyfriend on the north side of town. The odds were if she had a new boyfriend, she also had money now, because Trudy did not date a man without means.

  Her mother’s new means were about to help Leigh make her ends meet.

  *

  THURSDAY EVENING, JASE was feeling morose, and he just couldn’t shake it. He hadn’t heard from Leigh Anderson, just like he expected. Glen Parsons said he’d call Jase back by noon today to confirm if the execs from Twang were coming to hear him play tomorrow night. He hadn’t called either.

  Life continued today, just like it had for the last seven years. With him trying to figure out one day to the next how he was going to have enough money to put gas in his truck to go to work tomorrow. Today, that answer was the fifty bucks in his pocket he’d made from shoveling out stalls at one of the three barns he worked at. Tomorrow, who the hell knew. He was off, so maybe instead of sleeping, he’d see if he could pick up a shift at the restaurant. He definitely wasn’t touching the thousand bucks he’d put into his savings account yesterday.

  Jase stopped his truck over the old oil spot on the cracked driveway in front of his parent’s home. The spot had been there forever, and he thought if he parked his truck over it he could forget he needed to get some degreaser to clean it off. Out of sight, out of mind. He wished his mother’s worsening condition was as easy to fix as buying a bottle of degreaser. There was nothing he could do to cover that up, or make it go away. She got worse every day, and pretty soon she wouldn’t even remember who he was, or that she even had a son. Jase didn’t know how he was going to take it.

  The mind of the woman who’d been his rock for so many years would be a blank slate, wiped clean by her disease. She wouldn’t remember that she’d made soup and chocolate chip cookies for him when he had a cold and had to stay home from school, or that he’d helped her decorate the Christmas tree every year, putting the star on top from his dad’s shoulders. The Valentine’s Day card he’d made for her in fourth grade, the one she kept in a shoebox in the top of her closet all these years, would mean nothing in a year. He’d become no more familiar to her than the guy who used to pump gas for her at the filling station. Living like that had to be damned scary for her, but it was scarier for him. His mother would still be on this earth, but she wouldn’t remember him.

  With a huffed breath, Jase took his keys from the ignition and pocketed them. He opened his door and slammed it harder than necessary. Walking across the overgrown grass to the front porch, he opened the screen door and the rusty hinges squeaked loudly. His eyes tracked to the upper right corner and saw it had turned loose from the rubber that held it in place. He made a note to fix that, and to cut the grass. His dad had enough on his plate taking care of his mama, and working. Jase grabbed the doorknob it rattled. He stood there a second, just breathing, then added it to his mental repair list and walked inside. Feeling sorry for his damned self wasn’t going to make anything better.

  Stopping in the entry, he yelled, “Dad?” But his voice echoed off the paneled walls. He glanced at the clock on the wall, and knew his dad hadn’t gone to work yet. He wondered where they could be, because it didn’t look like his mother was home either. Maybe they’d gone to the store, he thought. That would give him time to get the grass cut, before they got back. But he needed to eat first, since he hadn’t all day.

  Walking into the kitchen, he stopped when his phone rang in his pocket. He pulled it out to connect the call, then tucked it between his ear and shoulder to open the refrigerator and lean inside. “This is Jase,” he said, rummaging on the top shelf for the bologna. Shoving aside a pickle jar, he found the pack of bologna, grabbed a slice of cheese, and the mustard.

  “Jase this is Leigh Anderson…”

  “Leigh?” He paused a second while his brain tossed around the name, then when it clicked, his heart went into overdrive. It was her. “Oh, Leigh!” he said, whacking his head on the top of the refrigerator. “Shit!” he hissed, rubbing his scalp with the wrist of the hand holding the phone. He kneed the refrigerator shut and put the phone back to his ear.

  “Um, just call me back later,” she said with a laugh. “It sounds like you’re in the middle of something.”

 
Jase deposited his sandwich fixings on the counter, and leaned against it. “No, it’s fine. What can I do for you?” he asked, and held his breath.

  “I just wanted to tell you that I listened to your demo…” Her husky voice held a note of drama that caused that sprout of hope in his chest to bloom again.

  His breath rushed out, and he asked, “And?”

  “And I liked it,” she replied, her voice giving nothing away. Not a shred of excitement, dammit. The sprout wilted, and he turned to jerk the twist tie off the bread and pull out two slices.

  “You liked it, but?” he asked, uncapping the mustard to squirt it on one slice of bread, before he picked them up and rubbed them together. His hand shook as he removed a slice of bologna from the pack and laid it on the bread, before topping it with a slice of cheese. “You liked it but not enough to sign me?” he asked, his stomach rolling. He looked at the sandwich and it lurched.

  “I didn’t say that—your voice was good—the song was better,” she replied, and the bloom faded altogether.

  “So you want to buy the song, but not so much the singer?” he surmised, huffing out a breath, as his shoulders deflated. “I told you it’s a package deal.” Jase threw the sandwich down on the counter to leaned back against it. He wasn’t hungry anymore.

  “That’s not what I said either,” she corrected.

  “What exactly are you saying then Miss Anderson,” he asked gruffly. “Because that is what I’m hearing. Just cut to the chase, please.”

  “I’m saying that I think you have talent. I love the song, but the demo sucks. There is no way I can sell you to my boss using that cut.”

  “It’s all I could afford,” Jase replied defensively. Not everyone lived in million dollar subdivisions or worked for big label records. Jase was also fed up with labels wanting a fully developed professional demo served up to them on a silver platter. Do your damned job, cupcake, don’t expect me to do it for you.

  “I figured as much, but do you have anything else you can give me?”

  “No, ma’am, and that is the same demo I gave to Twang last week and they told my agent they were interested. It must not be all that bad.” Take that you prissy bitch. Twang Records didn’t turn their nose up at it, so you shouldn’t either.

  She sucked in a breath. “You’re talking to Twang?”

  “No, my agent is though. He said they’re interested, but you know how that goes.”

  “Who’s your agent?” she asked.

  “Glen Parsons,” Jase replied, picking up his sandwich to take a bite. She got really quiet, so he swallowed then asked, “You know him?”

  “Yeah, I know him. That’s Wade Lawson’s new agent and you need to be careful with that guy or he’ll get you a bad name in the business.”

  “Again, not much choice there. He offered to take me on, and I signed up. Beggars can’t be choosers,” he replied, staring at his sandwich as the one bite he took settled like a brick in his gut.

  “But they can be smarter than you’re being. You’re talented enough to not be begging, sugar. If Parsons was any good, you’d be signed already.

  “I haven’t been signed with him long.” Jase didn’t know why he was defending the guy, but at least Parsons had sparked some interest from a big label. More than anyone else had done for him.

  “Are you somewhere I can come and talk to you?” she asked.

  Jase hesitated, looked around the kitchen that hadn’t been redecorated since the sixties, then his eyes went to the living room where the brown and orange naugahyde furniture from the same era sat. His mind traveled back to the plush leather sofas and high-end furniture in her quasi-mansion. “I, ah—I’m kinda busy,” Jase replied.

  He couldn’t leave right now. His parents would be home soon, and his dad had to go to work, so Jase had to stay with his momma. He took another bite of his sandwich and chewed. Besides, he had work to do around here, and the odds were this woman was wasting his time, wasting both of their time. There was no way he could get her a professional demo.

  “We really need to move on this, if we’re going to get something going for you, Jase. I have an idea I want to run by you, but I would like to talk in person.”

  Jase swallowed the bite of sandwich that lodged in his throat. “You’re willing to take me on?” he asked warily.

  “I’m willing to go to bat for you, to try and get the label to take you on. But we have some work to do first,” she told him. “I need to meet with you to talk about it.”

  “Fine. I’m at my dad’s house over on the east side.” Jase gave her the address and she said she’d be over in a couple of hours. His dad would be at work then, but his mom would be home. Not an ideal time to meet, or ideal circumstances, but Leigh Anderson of Hearts Afire Records was interested in talking to him.

  Who the hell was he to turn her down or make her wait? Maybe he could get the grass cut and grab a shower before she got here, though, if he hurried.

  Chapter Three

  ‡

  LEIGH HUNG UP her phone and fist pumped the air as she danced in circles. With an excited squeal, she ran for the bedroom. After she picked up the money from her mother, Leigh was going to talk Jase Sm—Sutter into going to Nashville with her.

  While she got ready, she’d played his song again at least a dozen times. It got better every time she listened to it, and so did her mood. Since she’d met the man who delivered what should have been the death knell to her career, she had never felt more energized or optimistic. Thirty minutes later, which had to be a record of some kind for her to shower, change, put on makeup and pack, Leigh backed her Audi out of the garage and hit the road.

  If things worked out like she thought they would, Jase Sutter could be her golden ticket to the big leagues, the key to resurrecting Leo’s trust in her. But everything depended on the next two days. Bobby Gillis only had the next two days available in his studio schedule for them to get the new track cut. Bobby was lining up top-notch studio musicians for the session, and a good sound engineer too, and even though the numbers he quoted her for their services were staggering, Leigh was considering it an investment in her career.

  Now she understood how Leo felt when he stuck his neck out for an unknown artist. Risking her own money this time to fund developing Jase Sutter gave her a clearer understanding. Jase wasn’t signed to the label, or even committed to doing it, Leo didn’t even know about him. She was betting her entire career and savings on selling an unknown, unsigned artist to her very particular father. Leo bet his on selling an artist to the world.

  If Leigh didn’t believe it was a calculated risk, her father’s litmus test too, she wouldn’t be gambling. She had no doubt with a perfectly mastered cut, Leo would hear the same thing she was hearing with Jase Sutter. But she wouldn’t know until she could pin him down, and that was always the challenge with him.

  Leo was like the wind, always chasing the next deal. He’d been like that her entire life, so Leigh was used to it. Leo had never been much of a father because of it, but that made him a damned good record producer. The best in the business. Leigh Anderson was determined to be just as good as her father one day. Better. But that all rode on her next deal, Jase Sutter’s ability to produce it, and hers to sell it to Leo.

  Forty minutes later, she turned down a street of small older homes and scanned the porches for the address number Jase had given her. His dusty old black pickup with the white tailgate parked in the driveway of a sunshine yellow house about halfway down the street clued her in that was his house. Pulling up beside his truck, Leigh killed the engine and looked around. The house needed a fresh coat of paint, several shingles were missing from the aged roof, and the yard was half-overgrown, making the overall look a little sad.

  Considering the happy color of the exterior, she knew that happy people who cared about the place once lived here. She wondered why it now looked so downtrodden. There was a story there, and maybe she’d pick that story out of Jase this weekend.

  Move
ment at the corner of the house caught her eye, a shirtless man who pushed a mower around the far end of the house. His muscled, sweat-slicked bare chest made her sweat too, and her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth as she recognized Jase Smith. His jeans hung loosely at his hips, giving her plenty of masculine real estate to admire as he left the mower in the yard to walk toward her car. Yes, it’s been a long time, but remember you need his voice. Why then was her body telling her something entirely different?

  Sucking in a breath, Leigh forced her mind to focus on her purpose for being there, grabbed her purse and briefcase from the seat and got out of the car. She refused to watch as he pulled his grey t-shirt out of his back pocket to wipe his face and chest with it as he made his way over to her.

  “Hey,” he drawled, and her eyes flew to his. His lips curved into a thousand watt smile and something shifted in her midsection. “You’re early.”

  Leigh licked her lips, because her mouth was suddenly dry as a bone. The moisture in her body was having a party elsewhere. “I got ready faster than expected, and traffic wasn’t heavy.” She finally managed a smile. “I’m also excited to talk to you about my idea.”

  “Well, I’m excited to hear it,” he replied. That smile appeared again to tickle her insides. “C’mon inside,” he invited and she watched the flex of the muscles in his sweat-slicked back as she followed him to the house. Then her eyes followed a bead of sweat down his spine until it disappeared under his waistband. Good lord the man was delicious, she thought, as they stopped at the front door. That would make Jase Sutter easy to promote, but like she had with Wade, she’d probably have to beat the women off with a stick. Hopefully, there were no other similarities between the men.

  When they got inside, Jase strode to an end table and clicked on a lamp, then turned back toward her. “Would you mind if I took a quick shower?” he asked, and mental pictures formed in her mind that shouldn’t be forming. Slick, wet bodies rubbing against each other, wet kisses, heat. If I can take one with you, I don’t mind at all.