Lost in Tennessee

by DeVito, Anita

  Sometimes a man finds trouble...and sometimes it comes looking for him...

  Heartache makes for good country music. It’s what country superstar Butch McCormick keeps telling himself. He’s done with women and can’t handle one more disappointment. He’s taking a few months off to work on the old house on his parents’ land to fix shutters, scrape paint, and figure out what he wants in life...

  Then she appears out of nowhere, with red hair and a peaches-and-cream complexion...and just so damned lost.

  Architect Kate Riley doesn’t have the luxury of getting lost, having a damaged car, or being smitten by a sexy-talkin’ cowboy with an irresistible smile. But the longer Kate stays at Elderberry Farm, the stranger things get. For one, there’s the crazy chemistry between her and Butch. For another, dead bodies are starting to turn up...and Kate might be the murderer’s next victim.

  Table of Contents

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Discover more Entangled Select Suspense titles…

  Nothing But Trouble

  Broken Honor

  True Deceptions

  In the Arms of a Stranger

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2015 by Anita DeVito. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact the Publisher.

  Entangled Publishing, LLC

  2614 South Timberline Road

  Suite 109

  Fort Collins, CO 80525

  Visit our website at www.entangledpublishing.com.

  Select Suspense is an imprint of Entangled Publishing, LLC.

  Edited by Laura Stone

  Cover design by Sara Eirew

  Cover art from iStock

  ISBN 978-1-63375-374-7

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  First Edition October 2015

  To my husband, for not cringing when I said, “I have an idea,” and for giving this Master of Science girl the chance to play on the liberal arts side of the road. I love you every bit as much today as I did when we started twenty-one years ago.

  To Kyra Jacobs, for being the foot that kicked me, the ear I ranted to, and the shoulder I whined on. Wouldn’t have gotten here without you.

  Chapter One

  “Smooth as a baby’s bottom.” With his eyes closed, John McCormick, Jr. could have sworn his fingers ran over the sleek lines of his favorite Taylor guitar instead of his granddad’s old work bench. His granddad had always called him Butch, and to his family and friends, he was still just Butch, easy-going with fast hands and a killer smile. Here in his granddad’s workshop in the old barn, he was still a boy with big ideas and no responsibilities.

  To the rest of Tennessee and the country-music-loving world, he was Butch McCormick, country music star. Last month, he released his third album since “hitting it big.” He’d already had a single reach number one on the charts, and two more were climbing like cats up a tree. He had to hand it to his manager and agent, Landon Finch. He could sell water to a drowning man. Finch demanded Butch grow his hair and use a trainer. Finch bullied Butch to make the latest video without a shirt. Finch transformed small-town Butch into a heart throb the ladies loved to download.

  Butch looked up at the sound of shuffling boots on gravel. He’d know the sound of that stride anywhere. “Hey, Daddy,” Butch called through the open barn doors.

  The senior John McCormick stepped onto the wooden floor. “Whatcha doing in here?”

  Butch ran his hand over the worn wood again. The familiar shape and texture felt like home, something he hadn’t had for years. Just touching it soothed the part of him that craved reconnection with his family, his roots, his true self. “Thinking about fixing the place up a bit. Things seem to be inching their way toward hell. Even started a list.” Butch had come home to find a shutter on the house hanging cockeyed. Paint had flecked off the barn doors, weathered wood filling the gap. The downspout hung limply on the side of the house, pulled away from the gutter and doing nobody any good. The house seemed to need him as much as Butch needed the house.

  “Well, I guess I have let things go a bit since your mama and I moved up to the big house. Don’t put yourself out. Fixing and tinkering were never your things. Play your guitar. Write your songs. I’ll get to the rest in good time.”

  A faint smile brushed Butch’s lips. The first album he made after signing with Finch made money. Real money. Butch used a good chunk of it to build a new house for his parents on the corner of their three-hundred-twenty-acre farm. A nice house and well built. Not showy or ridiculous, but enough the king-sized bed he bought could fit with room to spare in the big house. That’s what his parents called it. The big house. His grandparents’ farmhouse, the one he grew up in, became the old house. Butch felt like a success the day he held his mama’s hand and led her into her new home. Was it really only four years ago?

  Butch kept his hands busy taking stock of the tools spread over the bench. His fingers danced over a gap where wrenches lay in a row. No, he wasn’t the handiest man in the family. His hands were better suited to driving tractors instead of fixing them, but he pulled his own weight. Always had, always would. Now more than ever. “I’m not helpless, and I have time. I need to do something. You know, something that matters.”

  “You’ve been home nearly two weeks now. We respect your privacy, but other than coming to the big house for dinner, you haven’t left the old house. Your mama notices things like that and she worries.” John laid a hand on Butch’s shoulder. “You all right?”

  Butch felt the squeeze in his heart. He’d never been good at hiding things from his parents. While his father’s gesture might have seemed understated to some, that simple squeeze on his shoulder said Butch’s mama wasn’t the only one worried, and so he confessed. “I went into Nashville and filed the papers yesterday. I started the divorce proceedings.”

  John’s grip tightened. “That’s it then? It’s over?”

  “No, it’s just the start. Fawn isn’t going to make this easy.” Butch’s heart raced. Adrenaline gave it a nasty little punch when he thought how the college-educated actress would react to the fact that small-town Butch hadn’t played his role as the awe-struck husband. When it came to drama, Fawn Jordan was a natural.

  “Maybe she wants to try again. You know, marriage isn’t supposed to be easy. I figure there are more days when your mother tolerates me than when she loves me.”

  Butch couldn’t keep the teasing grin from shining through. “She wouldn’t get so riled at you if you would stop erasing her shows.” His mother had chirped in his ear for thirty minutes about how the best parts were missing from all her favorite programs.

  John crossed his arms over his
chest, leaning against the tractor that sat like dinosaur bones on a museum floor. “I can’t stand those damned gadgets. Why can’t she just watch the program when it’s on television?” He went quiet for a few moments. “You’ve only been married for two years. You’ve barely had a chance to get to know each other.”

  The smile slid from Butch’s face. He’d wrestled with facts of his marriage over the year they had lived apart. Over the last two weeks, he’d come to accept those facts. Still, it humiliated him to say it aloud. “Fawn married me because she thought she could ride my coat tails into a career. And she was right; she did. The producer from one of the videos made introductions for her, and voila, another soap star is born. Fawn never cared about me, not really. She wanted the life, the fame, the money. I was just the price of admission. She was already giving me crap, because she didn’t want the separation to become public. With that good-girl character she plays, Fawn didn’t want a scandal to hurt her ratings. She’s not going to be happy when she’s served.”

  “What comes next?”

  “I’m going to stay here for a while, if you and Mom don’t mind. Just slow things down a bit. I’m thirty-three years old, I’ve been married three times, and I have nothing to show for it.” Butch ran a hand over his face, squeezing eyes that burned from sleepless nights. “I have the tour starting up in June. That gives me about three months to fix shutters, scrape paint, pound nails, and ponder life.” Three months to figure out what I want out of life.

  “I don’t think you could call those gold records nothing.”

  “I guess heartache does make for good country music.”

  John pushed off the tractor and shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his jeans. “Come up to the big house for dinner. Your brother’s coming, and your mother’s making a casserole.”

  “All right. I’ll be over in an hour or so.” Butch pulled a heavy canvas tarp off an impressive chunk of wood. “After I hang Granddad’s old sign.”

  Fences framed the lush, green, rolling hillside as hedges stood sentry, separating the working fields from the roadway. Early April in northern Tennessee looked a world away from southern Michigan, where the daffodils were only starting to poke their heads above ground. Here, color burst wildly against a vibrant green pallet. The sun hung proudly in a cloudless sky, bathing the farmlands in rich sunlight, but the tranquility of the picturesque country scene eluded Kate Riley.

  “How in blazes can I be lost?” Furious with herself, Kate leaned over the steering wheel to peer down the road, praying for a sign that would direct her to the highway.

  She had returned to Michigan two days before, trying a new strategy for dealing with a father that thought her too young, too inexperienced, and too female to handle a project like Cicada. The only ones who thought youth a liability were old farts who thought anything invented, created, or born after they turned thirty-five to be unnecessary and overdone. Ed Riley had been thirty-six when his only child was born. Nearly thirty years later, the degrees that hung on her wall and awards parading across her mantle had done nothing to convince the old man his daughter could stand on her own two, competent feet.

  Hating the near-daily debates about the details of the construction project, Kate made the eight-hour drive home to have a civil conversation with the man.

  The civil part lasted ten minutes.

  Her father’s inside voice required ear plugs, and his vocabulary would render the conversation one long beep under FCC regulations. Kate sunk to his level. Despite the hours of pep talk she had given herself, she sank right down to the bottom of that black pit with him. The man got to her like no one else.

  The silver lining had two electric blue stripes over a cotton white body. Her 1966 Shelby G.T. 350. Her baby. Her spirit raced with the speed and the freedom of driving on the open road.

  Or it normally did.

  Now, so lost she didn’t know if she was still in Tennessee, Kate’s spirit had more in common with a dung beetle than a mustang. The cherry on top of her day? The battery on her cell died, taking her phone, contact numbers, and GPS with it.

  “How did people do this before smart phones? I followed the freaking detour. Where did it go?” She glanced at the clock. It had been twenty minutes since Kate saw the last detour marker. The narrow road ahead barely let two cars pass each other. This couldn’t be right. “Damn it. I don’t have time to be lost.”

  Up ahead, a man in a nice pair of Levis wrestled with a big sign on the side of the road.

  “All right, handsome, you’re the first human I’ve seen in miles. I hope to God you know your way out of this maze.” Kate pulled off the road a car length back. She measured the man as she walked to him: good-sized with broad shoulders and muscles worth noticing. His knees bent, sagging under the weight of wood in his arms. Forgetting her own issues, Kate raced the remaining distance and grabbed the dropping end.

  “I got it. I got it.” Kate said as a means of introduction, taking part of the weight against her shoulder. “Let’s set it down. Nice. Solid oak, right? Four-feet wide, three-feet tall, as thick as my thumb and made to last a lifetime.”

  Dusty blue eyes, cloudy with confusion, looked at her as though she were an alien. “It’s oak. My granddad made it.”

  She admired the lettering, hand carved and well preserved. “Do you want some help getting her back where she belongs?”

  Butch crouched, mirroring the woman until the weight of his granddad’s sign rested safely upon the earth. He rose slowly, measuring the interloper. She didn’t belong here. Something about her didn’t fit in. Something in her stance. In her demeanor. The redhead with peaches-and-cream complexion stood facing him with hands propped on denim-clad hips. Her stretchy little T-shirt showed off feminine curves. Her blue eyes were sharp, vivid, not muted like his own. By the set of her full mouth, he doubted those eyes missed much of anything. But that didn’t answer the most pressing question. “Who are you?”

  “Kate Riley.” She held out her hand, an inviting smile on her lips.

  Butch took her hand, surprised by her grip. She shook hands like a man, hard and dominant, but had soft-as-a-lamb skin. His hand engulfed her smaller one, his thumb caressed the back of her hand, liking the feel of it. “Nice to meet you, and I’d appreciate the extra set of hands. I need some things from the barn.”

  Butch headed up the long drive, his stranger bouncing beside him. He glanced at her as they walked. Did he know her? No. He didn’t know her, he was sure. She didn’t giggle and bounce like his fans often did. She just quietly walked next to him in quick strides to keep pace, looking left and right across his family’s farm. “Is there something I can help you with?”

  One of the dogs his parents kept poked his head out from behind the house. The monster black Lab broke into a loping run down the driveway tail wagging, ears flopping, and tongue lolling.

  She sighed heavily, her shoulders sagged. “I got off I-65 for gas and couldn’t get back on because of construction. I followed the detour but haven’t seen a sign for a while.”

  The dog slid to a halt at her feet, sending the stone of the gravel drive flying.

  She held out both hands, palms up and gave the command. “Stop.”

  “Easy, boy.” Butch reached for the dog but was side stepped in favor of the small woman. Coming just up to his shoulder, she didn’t have to stoop to rub the dog’s ear. “I’m sorry to be the one to tell you, but you’re lost.”

  She walked sideways a bit, the dog putting much of his weight into her hip. She not only didn’t mind, she encouraged it by rubbing the spot the dog liked the most. Inside the barn door, she leaned down to talk to the dog.

  “I was afraid of that. Would one of you know how to get me found?”

  The dog exhaled long and hard as he leaned in to the rubbing hands. Butch doubted at that moment the dog was capable of a thought beyond Aaahhhhh.

  She lifted her head and looked around the building. “Nice workshop. Vintage.”

  Butch picked
up the drill, bits, and hardware he’d set out.

  She stopped rubbing the dog’s ear to pull open six dusty drawers in the wooden chest on the bench. She grinned up at him with all the satisfaction of a pirate. “This is going to be fun.”

  “You know how to hang Granddad’s sign?” Butch laughed when the dog nearly knocked the woman over, trying to get her to pet him again. Pound for pound, he guessed the dog weighed more.

  She flashed a devilish little smile. “I am a woman of many talents. Unfortunately, one of them is not finding the highway. My phone died and took my GPS with it. I’m not even sure I’m still in Tennessee.”

  “You are. Prettiest part, if you ask me. Where are you from?”

  She built a small collection of hardware. “Michigan. Detroit area.”

  Butch let out a slow whistle. He’d played a few shows in Michigan. Grand Rapids. Battle Creek. Good people, even if the land was a bit flat for his taste. “You really are turned around. You’re about forty-five minutes from the highway. Where are you going?”

  All expression fell from Kate’s face. “Forty-five? Oh, jeez. Ah, toward Chattanooga.”

  Butch raised an eyebrow. “Toward?”

  She nodded, her tongue darting out between contoured lips. There was more to the story, Butch had no doubt, but he let it lie.

  “What’s your name?” she asked.

  “Butch.” He said it without thinking. Would she recognize him now? She certainly hadn’t acted like she knew who he was. Butch left the barn, knowing she would follow.

  “Huh. You don’t meet many Butches these days.” Arms full, she jogged until she reached his side.

  “No, I guess you don’t.” Butch’s long strides ate up the couple of hundred yards to the road. He wrestled again with the sign, hefting it to his legs, and worked to suspend it while he lifted the drill to the thick beam. From behind him came the exasperated sigh of a woman.

  “Please. Let me help. It will go much better if we work together. How about I measure, you drill?”

  “All right. I can work with that plan.”