When Last We Loved

by Fran Baker

  “It is a partnership. You do the singing and show up for the appointments I make for you. And I take care of everything else.” Hoyt's blue eyes glinted impatiently. “Don't bring her downstairs until she's done— or whatever the hell you call it.” He closed the door behind him.

  Dee Dee had resigned herself to Cassie's presence for the time being. She hovered near the pensive hair stylist, offering unsolicited advice as he worked. “Don't cut it too short,” she said as the hairdresser feathered the sides and crown.

  “Well, I think you could take just a little more off the top,” Dee Dee asserted when the stylist stepped away to survey his handiwork.

  Although she hated admitting it, Cassie liked the freer, sleeker hairdo. And when she modeled the lilac silk dress that the seamstress pinned on her, she thought she knew how Cinderella must have felt when the fairy godmother appeared from nowhere and waved her magic wand. The floor-length dress molded Cassie's tiny waist, and the tucked bodice emphasized her high, taut breasts.

  “Not bad.” Hoyt barely glanced up from the books and papers spread over his mahogany desktop when Cassie modeled the result of his image-polishing orders.

  Cassie's cheeks flamed in baffled embarrassment This indifference stung worse than his anger ever had. Ever since the night they'd made love, she had tried to broach the subject of his abrupt change of attitude. Hoyt had tersely muttered something about unchecked emotions catching up with a man faster than a prairie fire in July, and he had left it at that. The tender look that contradicted his impersonal words made Cassie wonder if he'd already felt the scorching heat and was running scared.

  They hadn't been alone all week— he'd made sure of that. But still, he was keeping his end of their bargain, and Cassie was determined to keep hers when she debuted at the Petroleum Club. More than anything, she wanted to please him, to bask in the sunshine of his approval. But judging from his coolness, she was facing a near-impossible task.

  Well, she'd show him what she was capable of when opportunity came knocking. She'd work with this band that he'd hired, even though she missed the Twisters something fierce. And she'd shelve the hurt and shame— again. Hoyt's plans for her future left no time for tears.

  * * * *

  The mansard-roofed, brick Petroleum Club had been erected as a monument to the wealthy Dallas ranchers and oilmen who patronized it. During its first half-century of operation, the club embraced the most basic of chauvinistic principles. No women had been allowed inside the hallowed halls where prominent men clustered for a friendly poker game after rough days of wheeling and dealing; where steaks ordered rare were merely waved over an open fire before being served; and where men escaped nagging domesticity to be treated like real men for a few precious hours.

  Anywhere other than Dallas, the Petroleum Club would have been considered an eyesore amid the towering skyscrapers and architectural wonders that were changing the frontier image of this cosmopolitan city. But there were so many second- and third-generation members, that when the time came, sentimentality had ruled. A vote was taken to remodel the structure instead of demolish it, and the rules of admittance were relaxed somewhat.

  As a grudging concession to the times, ladies were finally granted permission to dine with their husbands or escorts and to attend specially staged shows. The smoking, reading, and card rooms remained off limits to the softer sex, however.

  “What's holding you up? Why aren't you ready?” Hoyt shot questions like a machine-gunner at Cassie. He crossed the room and pulled her dress off the hanger, trying to speed up the processes that had ground to a halt while he was seating his guests out front. “We've got a full house out there!” he barked. “Now get out of that robe and get ready!”

  “I'm a nervous wreck.” She rushed from the mirror at her dressing table to the mirror in the bathroom. “I think I'm hoarse.” Cassie squirted some medicine-flavored gargle into her throat. “My hair is awful. And, look, I broke a fingernail.”

  “Vanity, thy name is Cassie.” Hoyt had never witnessed a case of her stage jitters, and he misinterpreted the source of her frazzled behavior. He stood still in the middle of the room, her dress over his arm, where she'd draped it when she'd dashed into the bathroom to reglue a false eyelash.

  “Get dressed.” He unzipped the lilac silk dress and held it out to her. “Your hair is fine; your voice is in good shape; and, believe me, nobody in the audience is going to notice one chipped nail.”

  “Turn around.” Cassie took the dress. She knew it was silly to be modest now, but she was. He'd hurt her just once too often with that brisk attitude. If he could pretend that nothing had ever happened between them, so could she. “Don't leave,” she cautioned when he moved toward the door. “Somebody has to zip me into this.”

  She slipped out of her robe and into the dress. “Okay.” She held her newly styled hair off her neck so that it wouldn't catch in the zipper. “Now that I've gotten used to it, I kind of like my hair this new way.” She spoke casually but couldn't ignore the hands that guided the metal zipper up her back.

  “I think I've forgotten all the words.” Cassie smiled at her own ritual phrase as she took her place onstage behind the blue velvet curtains. The lead guitarist nodded soberly. “Just kidding,” she assured him.

  The announcer's voice filtered through the drapes and polite applause greeted her when she stepped into the spotlight. The vibrations of the music— her music— flowed into Cassie's body and she forgot the mink and diamond audience that could make her or break her. When she spun her musical tales, her husky, quivering voice held the crowd spellbound. And the Cajun-country rocker that ended her performance set a lively, upbeat tone that brought the spectators to their feet with resounding applause.

  A young man in a tuxedo walked out of the wings and placed a bouquet of yellow roses in her arms when Cassie took her last curtain call. Hoyt offered her an arm and escorted her through a sea of congratulations. Cassie floated, not quite ready to relinquish the high of a good show in front of an enthusiastic audience.

  “A star is born,” Dee Dee drawled sarcastically. Her ruby-red dress fit her like a glove, and her blonde hair was swept up off her face. The diamond earrings that she wore would choke a goat, but their sparkle was offset by the heat in her eyes.

  “Cassie, this is Bo Davis. Bo's an independent producer in Nashville and he wants to cut a demo with you.” Hoyt's navy-blue blazer and gunmetal-gray slacks failed to diminish his rugged, outdoors mystique. “If the demo is any good, we'll press some records and distribute them under the Diamond T label.”

  She rode an emotional merry-go-round, swooping low as she faced the inevitable separation from Hoyt, then rebounding to reach for the brass ring of success, It was possible to be lonesome in a crowd, Cassie realized. Suddenly, she'd never felt more isolated in her life.

  “I'd sure appreciate the chance to visit with you after you've fulfilled your obligation to the Petroleum Club.” Bo Davis looked like everybody's favorite uncle in his rumpled suit. Cassie liked him immediately. “My studio could stand to turn out some hits with a singer like you.”

  “I could probably stand it, too.” She wanted to believe that this was as legitimate as it seemed, but she couldn't shake the once-burned caution kept alive by the memory of Allen Ingram and Harlan Purdy. At least Bo Davis hadn't whipped out a contract and demanded that she sign it on the spot. Cassie chalked up one for him. “May I think it over before I give you a definite answer?”

  “Of course. Take all the time you need.” Bo Davis’ broad, friendly smile reassured her even further.

  Cassie stood between the two men, uncertain as to what her next move should be.

  “I guess you'll want to change your clothes and head back to the ranch now.” Cassie wished Hoyt would tell her, right here in front of God and everybody, that she'd pleased him. But she knew there was no chance of hearing the words she longed for him to say.

  “I'll be ready in two seconds.” Her bubble of happiness had burst. Wh
en she heard Bo Davis congratulate Hoyt as she walked toward the stage door, she wanted to cry.

  “It looks like you've struck oil again, Temple. Sure beats me how you're able to spot a winner every time, but I wouldn't object if you wanted to share the secret.”

  Hot tears smarted in Cassie's eyes, but she managed to hold her head high as she skirted the tables and made her exit more by instinct than vision. For an instant she'd forgotten that she was nothing more to Hoyt than an expensive ante into the poker game of the music business. Well, she certainly wouldn't make that mistake again.

  * * * *

  Cassie caught a last, lingering glimpse of the colorful patchwork quilt that was Dallas and its suburbs as the silver jet soared up into the fluffy white clouds.

  Don't look back! she admonished herself sternly. She killed time, flipping through the pages of a fashion magazine that didn't hold her attention.

  Forget those blue eyes, that hard, lean body. Forget Dee Dee's victorious smile, the triumphant tilt of her cotton-candy head when the signatures were indelibly fixed to the contracts.

  She should have heeded Hoyt's warning. She'd become careless, though, and wound up with what she wanted. Now she had to run with it. But could she ever run far enough to escape those memories that stalked the corridors of her mind like old ghosts trapped in a time warp?

  * * * *

  “It's your decision, Cassie.” Hoyt had shrugged noncommittally when he'd laid the responsibility for the contracts at her feet. She couldn't read the expression in his eyes, and she was stunned by his callous attitude. Anxieties that she couldn't verbalize were tearing her apart. How could somebody so good with words when it came to writing songs be so helpless when it came to saying what was in her heart?

  “I don't know if I'm ready for Nashville yet,” she'd hedged. Her stint at the Petroleum Club was over and Bo Davis was pressing her for a commitment. He wouldn't wait much longer. There were too many other hopeful unknowns willing to fly to hell and back for an opportunity like the one he was offering.

  “You're as ready as you want to be. The contracts are here on my desk. We can sign them whenever you give us the go-ahead.”

  Hoyt had left her alone then and had gone to oversee the horseshoeing in the barn.

  “I don't know what's made you so wishy-washy all of a sudden. I thought this was your big goal in life, to become a singer,” Dee Dee had remarked, her eyes already bidding Cassie farewell even while she mouthed the friendly words. At least Dee Dee had been honest. She had wanted Hoyt to herself, and the sooner the better. “Just think of all the traveling you'll get to do, all the stars you'll be meeting. Why, if I were you, I'd be on that plane in two shakes.”

  The situation had settled itself almost perversely a few short days later.

  “She's bullheaded, all right. But I think she'll come around eventually.” Hoyt was talking on the telephone with Bo. He sat, feet propped on the windowsill of his paneled study, his back to the door where Cassie stood, unintentionally eavesdropping.

  She'd come downstairs to talk with Hoyt. Her heart and her pride were at war— one said stay and one said go. She was hoping against hope that he would ask her to follow her heart.

  “Who knows what it will take to motivate her?” Hoyt sighed in exasperation. “Let's give her another week to decide.”

  The petite shadow that had spilled across the woven Navajo rug turned to escape before she was caught, but not before the decisive bombshell had been dropped into the conversation.

  “I've already spent more money getting her act together than I'll probably ever see again,” Hoyt had said into the receiver. “Who knows? Maybe it is impossible to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.”

  It felt like someone had plunged a dagger into Cassie's heart. She drew the remnants of her injured pride around her like a protective mantle and signed the contracts that evening. Dee Dee had witnessed the signatures with a flourish of her gold pen and a flash of those brace-perfect teeth. Bo Davis immediately started making plans, issuing orders and dialing Nashville to reserve a block of studio time.

  “Have fun,” Dee Dee had enjoined, planting herself next to Hoyt in the airline terminal.

  Hoyt had inspected Cassie with a critical eye, searching for a flaw in the polished veneer of the star he'd created. Cassie had maintained her cool composure and returned his gaze with an unwavering determination to put those blue eyes behind her. A sow's ear! She shook off the shame and smiled at Bo Davis, who was flying to Nashville with her.

  “The first thing I'm going to buy with my royalties is a silk purse,” she had declared.

  Hoyt had looked puzzled. Then his eyes had narrowed and Cassie knew that he knew she'd overheard him on the telephone.

  “I never realized what a low opinion you had of me,” she'd said in a steely voice. Tears burned her eyes.

  “Before you go jumping to those famous conclusions of yours, you might want to hear the whole story.” Hoyt looked at her steadily, his voice vibrant with candor. “I admit I could have made a better choice of words when I was talking with Bo. But I've got business commitments piled a mile high, and your hesitation about the contract was the straw breaking the camel's back. I'm sorry you heard me say that. You know I didn't mean it the way it sounded.”

  Cassie had stared at the floor, trying to balance herself on the tightrope of emotions that she always seemed to walk where Hoyt was concerned.

  “Let's forget it” Her words had been almost inaudible. She squared her shoulders. “After all, business is business.”

  Forget him was the resolution that had fortified Cassie as she'd boarded the plane without a backward glance. Forget him would reverberate through her mind forever, coloring every musical picture that she would paint with her voice.

  * * * *

  The jet swooped out of the clouds, giving Cassie her first view of the concrete jungle that she was ready to challenge. One of her dreams was shattered, but her spirit wasn't broken. Hard work would speed the healing process, and applause was the soothing balm her aching heart required.

  “Just what the doctor ordered,” she murmured, peering out the double-paned window to size up the Nashville skyline.

  Chapter 12

  “There are a couple of places to clear up here, Cassie, and then we'll lay it down.”

  She stood, dwarfed by the overhanging boom mike, reading the typewritten words to her song on the sheet of paper in front of her.

  “Anytime, Bo.” Cassie glanced back at the sidemen spread out like a human fan in the studio. Their easygoing banter relieved the tedium of spending hours laying down tracks, repeating the same chord changes and melody until they achieved exactly the right sound.

  “Don't strain for that E this time,” Bo advised. He spoke over the intercom from the control booth.

  “But it feels good lyrically.” Cassie defended her decision to experiment with the song, to adjust the tempo and phrasing until she was comfortable vocalizing it.

  “Let Johnny Cash handle those low notes,” Bo said. “And try not to step all over the bridge.”

  She nodded mechanically, engrossed in her own thoughts. When she caught a glimpse of her reflection in the glass wall between the recording room and the control booth, Cassie thought she looked like a creature from outer space with the huge earphones clamped over her black hair.

  “Has anybody heard from Scrappy?” she quizzed the musicians, but she didn't expect an answer. Her hands were ice cold and she rubbed them together. This was the real thing, finally, after weeks of grueling rehearsals and endless rewrites. Cassie was as nervous as a black cat on Halloween.

  “He's probably just running late,” Bo soothed, his drawl reverberating through the earphones. “He had a taping session this morning and it's probably running behind schedule.”

  “This is the taping of the Country Music Awards, isn't it?” Scrappy kicked the door shut and set several black instrument cases on the floor. “Let's see, you must be the nominee for Entert
ainer of the Year.” He winked at Cassie and smiled.

  “Where have you been?”

  “We were dubbing in some rhythm on a new album and it took longer than we had anticipated.” He shook his shaggy blond head and grimaced. “Time flies when you're having fun.”

  “That's what you get for being so talented,” she quipped. “If you'd stick to one instrument, you wouldn't be in such demand.”

  Scrappy had become a hot property since his arrival in Nashville. He spent almost every day in studios like this one, over-dubbing his special instrumental sounds on major recordings.

  “How did it go?” Cassie was always curious about soon-to-be-released material and mentally compared her potential against that of other performers.

  “It's gonna go gold. I can feel it in my picking hand.” Scrappy's brown eyes twinkled as he flexed his fingers. He loved the music business and Cassie knew how much he prized his new status among his Music City contemporaries.

  “Are you two going to stand there and jaw away the rest of the day, or can we get started?” Bo's stern question boomed over the intercom. “At the rate we're moving, we'll be here till Christmas. Do you know what studio time costs these days?”

  “Temple sure hired the right man to produce this thing,” Scrappy mumbled as he unpacked his fiddle, banjo, and guitar. “Bo, you're tighter than the bark on a tree!”

  When Scrappy mentioned Hoyt, Cassie couldn't ignore the stinging memories that his name invoked. She'd almost made it through an entire day without letting the feelings rush over her, without thinking those crazy thoughts that had no foothold in reality.

  “How long before you're comfortable with the music?” Bo ignored Scrappy's teasing and adjusted the dials, buttons, and meters on the console in front of him.

  “Comfortable with the music? Hell, I wrote it!” Scrappy drew his bow over the fiddle strings, deliberately producing an ear-piercing screech.

  “The tapes are set. Let's go.” Bo was all business when he issued orders to the sidemen. He reached behind him and punched the Record button, then pointed his finger at Cassie. “Don't miss your cue.”