by Casey Hagen
Text copyright ©2016 by the Author.
This work was made possible by a special license through the Kindle Worlds publishing program and has not necessarily been reviewed by RCardello LLC. All characters, scenes, events, plots and related elements appearing in the original Lone Star Burn remain the exclusive copyrighted and/or trademarked property of RCardello LLC, or their affiliates or licensors.
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Heartstrings
Casey Hagen
Hagen Novels, LLC
BUSHKILL, PENNSYLVANIA
Judy, without you, Heartstrings would have never been born. Thank you for being there when I had to plot and write, in record time. Thank you for kicking my ass, when I couldn’t see clear to kick it myself. Finally, thank you for believing in me when I can’t find a way to believe in myself.
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Poetry is plucking at the heartstrings, and making music with them.
―DENNIS GABOR
1
Ryan examined her face in the haze of the chipped mirror. A lone, dust-coated bulb hanging over her head illuminated the faint outline of the black eye she had been working to hide all week. Seeing a hint of the ugly yellowish-green color through her last layer of makeup, she took out her concealer and touched up the bruise once again.
She was smarter than this. Smarter than this beat-down woman staring back at her. She was a Ward, damn it, and in D.C. that meant something. Unfortunately, it also meant expectations, control, and, of late, abuse.
Her father, Senator Abel Ward, remained a well-respected political figure. Talk had already started to circulate of a potential run for the White House in 2020. If his advisor, her former boyfriend, Carter Pierce had his way, he would plant him in the White House through sheer force of will alone. Funnily, she’d found that tenacity and toughness attractive at one time.
It didn’t matter now. She’d shed the business suits, heels, and sixteen-hour days for the four almost-bald tires of her recently-acquired 1978 Dodge Ram truck, long drives, and cut-off jean shorts. As long as she was careful, no one would find her. She intended to use throwaway phones, for as long as she could afford them, to let her dad know she was alive. Other than that, she was done.
Done with politics. Done with appearances. Done with denying her heart.
The door behind her opened and Darcy, the head waitress of Lucifer’s, poked her cotton-candy-like hair in. Her cherry-red lips spread in a quick smile. “You’re up next, sugar,” she said around the chomping of her gum.
Ryan smiled back, and ignored the sting in her cheek. Darcy was a larger-than-life, sweet personality. She’d liked her on sight when she walked into the dilapidated honkytonk. Darcy had been the draw, because one look inside and she wanted to turn right around. “Thanks, Darcy; I’ll be right there.”
Darcy had offered to help Ryan with money, a place to stay, whatever she needed, when she rolled into town four days earlier, but Ryan needed to do this on her own. For once, decisions and consequences rested solely on her shoulders.
Ryan checked her hair in the mirror one last time. She liked to leave her hair down when she performed, but the Texas summer heat drove her to bundle her heavy locks into a messy knot at the back of her head. With her hair as good as it would get, her bangs smoothed off to the side and out of her eyes, she lifted the guitar strap over her head.
The rough strings under the pads of her fingers soothed her frayed nerves. Her soul quieted when she wrapped her left hand around the cool, smooth wood of the tropical mahogany neck, her long fingers brushing over the fingerboard.
Carter had admonished her for the purchase of her Taylor 714ce. Child’s play, he had called it. She strummed the guitar, listened to the individual notes as the pick caught and released each string, and grinned. Child’s play her ass. She was born to have a guitar in her hands, and fuck anyone who tried to take that away from her ever again.
With a satisfied grin splitting her face, she made her way through the darkened back hall to the stage. She’d planned a five-song set. Three country covers to prove she had what it took, and then she hit them with two originals.
The spotlight shone on a lone stool in the middle of the scarred hardwood floor. Smoke lingered in the air, drifting in from the front door that seemed to constantly open and close.
She scanned the crowd, what she could see of it, and recognized a few regulars who had been there throughout the week. Luckily she knew a wide variety of songs, and had written several of her own. This was her fourth night, her last night, and she hadn’t repeated a song yet.
She started with an upbeat Miranda Lambert song. People danced, patrons shot pool, and a group of guys with beers stood around a dart board, laughing and harassing one another.
She let the words take her out of herself and into a different world. A world where she didn’t have to stifle her personality, she didn’t have to worry who was watching, waiting for her to slip up and tarnish her father’s impeccable image. A world where she didn’t have to wonder if she would get hit again.
Hell would freeze over before she was ever hit again.
She finished her first song, and a rowdy group of guys sitting at a table against the stage let out whistles and catcalls. “Hey baby, take it off.”
Typical and harmless, she didn’t take offense. Men got rowdy filled with liquid courage, when traveling in packs. She picked up her water, took a deep drink, and grinned. “You first,” she called out.
She started her next tune to a chorus of “oooohhhs.”. By the time she was on her last song, at least twenty more people had packed in, most probably waiting for the band, Red Wolf, to come on and really get the party started.
She always cut out before the crowd wound up to its max, so as to avoid the fearless drunks. Unfortunately, with it being a Friday, it seemed that the rowdy crowd had already arrived.
A group of ranch hands, in their dusty jeans and sweat-stained shirts, pounded away the beers and harassed Darcy and Kelsey. The rowdiest of the bunch, a big guy with raven hair, brown eyes, and a calculating smile, grabbed Kelsey by the hip and pulled her into his lap. When she tried to get free, he wrapped his arms around her and locked his hands together. His friends laughed while Darcy tried to pry his hands loose.
Ryan didn’t know what happened, but something inside her, something furious, snapped, and before she realized what she was doing, she had abandoned her guitar, jumped off the stage, and headed straight for the ranch hand.
With no real plan, she did the only thing that came to mind, and wrapped her forearm around his sweaty throat and squeezed with everything she had. His slick skin repulsed her, but he finally let Kelsey go, only to reach back and grab Ryan by the side of the neck. He pressed his thumb into the front of her throat and squeezed. Pain burned through her as she struggled for air.
She let go of his neck and tried to pull out of his grip, but his long fingers has locked firmly on her. He dragged her around to face him. His mean eyes narrowed. The stale beer and cheap cigarettes on his breath assaulted her. “You bitch!” he sneered.
Spots formed before her eyes. She tried to speak, to tell him exactly what she thought of him, but no sound came out.
“Cat got your tongue, you little whore?”
She clawed at his hand, digging in with her nails as be
st she could. This was it. She had escaped her sterile existence. She had gotten away from an abusive boyfriend after the first punch, and now she was going to die here in Lucifer’s. She swore she would never be hit again. Technically that was true. She was going to get choked to death in the dirtiest, sweatiest dive bar she had ever had the misfortune to step in to. Yup, she was in hell.
Just as she started to fade to black, his grip loosened, and she fell to her to her knees on the sticky floor.
Darcy took her by the shoulders. “Are you alright, honey?” She brushed off Ryan’s knees and fussed over her just like a mother. As if she wasn’t already feeling fragile enough. “Good Lord, I didn’t think he was going to let you go,” Darcy said.
Ryan nodded, but couldn’t speak. Chairs scraped and tipped over. Her startled gaze landed on a hulking man with short-cropped dark hair peeking out from under the black Stetson that shadowed one side of his chiseled face and steel-gray eyes. His longer fingers held her attacker by the back of his neck while pressing him into chair. Those eyes, good Lord, she couldn’t help but stare as Darcy continued to check her over.
“Thank God Slade showed up when he did, or I don’t know what might have happened,” Darcy said.
The man with the eyes, Slade, Darcy had said, nodded. “Are you okay, Miss?”
Oh, that voice, all low and rumbling. Ryan wondered if he could sing. My God, if he could sing with that voice…he might have something on Josh Turner and until now, no one had anything on Josh Turner. “Yes,” she said, her voice broken and raspy.
“Miss Darcy, best see if Doc Stevens can take a look at her, just to be sure,” Slade said.
“I’ll call him right now,” Darcy said.
“You should probably make sure someone called the sheriff, too,” Slade said.
At the mention of the sheriff, the men who had been sitting at the table backed away even further.
“Call the sheriff for what?” Her attacker jabbed a finger in her direction while craning his neck to look at Slade. “That little bitch put her nose where it didn’t belong and attacked me first.”
Slade shook him by his neck and gave him a fierce scowl. “After you held Kelsey against her will, Cutter. I saw the whole thing. Now apologize.”
What kind of name was Cutter? Jesus.
“The hell I will!” Cutter shouted.
“You’ll apologize and you’ll mean it, or you and I will handle this outside. What’s it going to be?” Slade asked.
Cutter and Slade glared at one another, locked in some primal, male stand-off, and now was definitely not the time to be getting hot and bothered over some cowboy, but she so was.
“I’m sorry,” Cutter snarled.
Slade shook him in his chair. “I said mean it.” Slade practically growled the command, and although he wasn’t directing that venom at her, Ryan stood straighter.
“My apologies, ma’am,” Cutter said as he narrowed his eyes at her.
She chose to keep her mouth shut, because, honestly, she wanted to punt the bastard in the dick. Not just for her, but for everyone woman he’d ever laid his hands on, of which there were likely many.
“Slade! What the hell are you doing slumming it here?” a guy weaving between tables and sloshing his beer called.
Slade turned his back and eyed the man. “I was looking for you, Matt. We had a deal. By being here, you’re breaking it.”
“Awe, come on, man, it’s just a couple beers. I’m not shit-faced,” Matt called back.
“Not yet, no, but it’s only a matter of time, and I gave my word to watch out for you. Go on, and get in my truck,” Slade said.
“Hey, I still have an almost full beer,” Matt said.
“Damn it, Matt—”
Slade’s attention was distracted just long enough. Cutter grinned at her, his smile calculated and mean. She stepped back, but he didn’t lunge for her. His eyes darted to the stage where she had left her guitar, and before she could so much as open her mouth he wrenched out of Slade’s grasp, jumped onto the stage, and snapped the neck over his knee
“No!” she tried to scream, her words hoarse and barely audible as she scrambled for the stage. She pushed to her feet, but the Fort Mavis Sheriff’s Department beat her to him. Two officers wrestled Cutter to the stage floor next to what was left of her once-prized possession.
With his face pinned to the floor by a deputy’s elbow, they cuffed and hauled him off as he shouted threats and obscenities. She dropped to her knees and picked up what was left of her guitar. The strings tangled in a broken mess. The splintered wood of the neck jagged and sharp mocked her. How would she earn money now? After collecting her pay tonight, she would have just enough to pay for the repairs on her truck and to get a couple full tanks of gas and some food, but then she would be broke again.
She couldn’t use her accounts. No doubt her father had someone watching her finances. Her eyes stung with tears that she absolutely refused to let fall. She would figure something out. Maybe she could waitress long enough to pay for the repairs for her guitar. It would take longer since waiting tables didn’t pay as well as performing, but what choice did she have?
A shadow loomed over her. She sat back on her heels and looked up into those fascinating eyes. “I want him executed.”
Slade raised a brow, “He’s a prick, but I don’t know if that warrants killing him.”
“I didn’t say kill him, I said prosecute him,” she rasped.
His lips quirked. “No, you said executed.”
She replayed the conversation in her head. Shit. He was right. Sub-consciously, yeah, she probably wanted him executed. In her defense, it was a phenomenal guitar.
She turned over the fractured wood in her hands. “This was the only thing in the world I cared about.”
Muscled thighs flexed in worn blue jeans as Slade crouched before her. “It can’t be the only thing. You must have friends and family you care about.”
“Not anymore,” she said, her voice thick with unshed tears. She gathered what she could and tucked it under her arm.
“Here, let me help you.” Slade’s long fingers curled over the edge of the body of her guitar. He stood and reached out the other hand to her.
She hated how she hesitated. Never before would it occur to her to fear a man’s hand, but even if Carter hadn’t instilled that in her, Cutter’s actions tonight would have.
Slade tilted his head. “I won’t hurt you.”
Ryan shook her head and called herself a fool. “Of course not.” She took his hand and immediately regretted it. Her skin burned. Her blood surged. Rough, callused hands scraped over her soft ones, igniting nerve endings, sending a warm tingling sensation dancing up her arm.
So she was attracted, but look at him. What woman wouldn’t be? He looked like a scuffed boot, faded blue jean, cowboy fantasy that walked right off of a hot western romance book cover. Didn’t mean she was going to swoon, drool, preen, or any of that other laughable garbage.
“Thank you, for your help earlier. If you hadn’t come along, I don’t know what might have happened.”
Slade let go of her hand and tipped his hat to her with a smile. “You’re welcome. I have a daughter. If anyone put their hands on her like that…” He shook his head. “Had I not come along, I’m sure someone would have stepped in.”
He had a daughter. Probably a wife, too. He didn’t strike her as the kind of man to have illegitimate children running around. Slade would take care of his own. Something about the way he held himself, his quiet strength, his sense of right and wrong, spoke volumes about the man. She would bet that he still gave his coat to a woman, pulled out her chair for her, stood until she was seated, you know, cherished her.
In her old world, those habits had all but disappeared. The rocket-fast D.C. pace, the calculation and the drive, it all culminated in a vortex of ugly selfishness where manners fell by the wayside in favor of the battle to get ahead.
She never wanted to go back. Now she just had t
o decide where she did want to go.
Ryan looked out at the crowd. Most had gone back to their drinking and carousing. A few, those who had been sitting with Cutter, cast wary glances at her.
Whatever. Her hand went to her throat, but Slade took her wrist to stop her. She flinched, just for a fraction of a second, and glanced at Slade to see if he saw it.
“I told you I wouldn’t hurt you. You have my word on that. I’ve never laid a hand on a woman in anger. Ever,” he said in that delicious, low voice of his.
“Sorry, I guess I’m jumpy after Cutter—”
“This isn’t from Cutter. Someone hurt you…before tonight.” He lowered her wrist to her side. He tilted his head, examining her black and blue eye. His eyes narrowed. His jaw clenched, but he kept his mouth closed. He gestured to her neck. “You’re going to need to leave that alone for now; it’s looking fairly ugly, and the sheriff is going to want to get pictures.”
She nodded and tried to ignore the way he still held her wrist. His thumb had begun a rhythmic rubbing back and forth over the sensitive skin on the inside of her wrist. She wanted him to keep going and stop, all at once.
“Yes, of course. Thank you again. Here, I can take that.” She reached for the rest of her guitar, breaking the contact, knocked off her axis that he read her so well. Had Carter’s actions really made her that skittish? She hadn’t even dated him long. She would never have called him a serious boyfriend and yeah, he’d hit her, but he only did it once before she got the hell out of there.
“Will you be able to get it repaired?” Slade asked.
“The neck will need to be replaced. I’ll have to see if there’s someone in the area capable, if I can get a different job to earn the money.” She should have known. It was all going far too smoothly. Each stop, in Tennessee, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Eastern Texas, all went off without a hitch. She performed, was paid, and went about her business. At some point her luck had to run out.
