Save it for a song, man.
“Thank you for everything,” she said. “For taking me with you. It was the adventure of a lifetime.”
He tipped the brim of his ball cap. “Baby, the pleasure was all mine.”
She tapped the brim of his hat. “Such a cowboy. Next time you’re in town, you’d better call me.”
“Then I guess I’d better pray that love spell of yours doesn’t send you the perfect, upstanding Catholic local man anytime soon.” He leaned in for a chaste good-bye kiss. “Until next time … I’ll be dreaming of you.”
* * *
When Gentry had gotten home from his weekend with Skye, he’d expected the words to flow. He’d holed up in his basement studio and tried to make the magic happen, but the more he forced it, the drier his creative well felt. After a few days of that and feeling like the walls of his ranch were closing in on him, he’d stomped to the barn and chosen the first horse he’d bought after his first album went platinum, the aptly named Wild Beaver.
He kept a skeleton staff at the ranch year-round to care for his property and animals since he was rarely home, which meant his horses belonged more to his ranch manager, Elias, than Gentry. But Wild Beaver, or just Beaver, as Gentry called him, remembered him just fine. He’d planned to go on a trail ride to clear his mind with some fresh air, but he and Beaver were only on the trail for a few minutes when the lyrics to “Riding in the Dark” hit his brain all at once like a fireworks grand finale.
He’d raced Beaver back to his ranch where he strapped his guitar to his back like an old-school cowboy and stuffed a notepad in his saddlebag, then headed out on the trail again.
That had been three days ago, and the words had been flowing ever since. The longer he was out on the range with Beaver and his guitar, the more creative he got, writing song after song after song. The words and the notes flowed through him as though directly from the Man on High. He’d never felt so inspired.
Given how closely woven his songs were to Skye, she was never far from the forefront of his mind, but the more he thought and wrote about her, the less real she seemed until he couldn’t shake the impression that she’d been nothing but a fever dream. There were hours that he lay in the shade near the banks of a stream while Beaver rested and replayed moments of their time together over and over, searching for the songs in her beauty and in the potency of their connection.
In the late afternoon of the seventh day, a full week after Natalie and Toby’s elopement, Gentry rode Beaver back to the ranch after having been on the trail all day. He was hungry and tired, but even more satisfied with the progress he’d made. Today he’d tackled “Make Me Your Mardi Gras,” as well as a song that hit a little too close to home to be comfortable and that he wasn’t sure he wanted to include on his next album, titled You’re All I Need to Drink.
A red Ferrari was parked in front of his house. Gentry had an immediate, visceral reaction to the sight—sweaty palms and a racing heart. There was only one man Gentry knew who’d drive such an audacious car.
The moment he’d driven out of Dulcet after dropping Skye off, Gentry had called Neil Blevins. He’d left a voicemail, saying he wanted to apologize and explain what happened, but Neil had yet to return the call. Guess he’d been waiting until he could confront Gentry in person.
Gentry puffed his cheeks full of air, then let out the air in a slow stream until the shot of adrenaline had dissipated. All he had to do was remember that he was the talent, not Neil.
In the stable, Elias caught up with him. He was a wiry, well-tanned man a decade or so older than Gentry, with a wife and young son who lived with him in Gentry’s groundskeeper’s house. “I tried to call you to give you a heads-up about Blevins, but you didn’t have your phone.”
“Thanks for trying. I was trying to keep my head down and focus on song writing. No such luck.”
“Songs aren’t coming to you, are they? I’ve sensed as much since you’ve been back,” Elias said.
Gentry wasn’t sure Elias considered him a friend, but the two men had managed to keep up a loose, if distant, camaraderie over the years. He couldn’t decide if Elias preferred it when Gentry was away from the ranch or when he was around. Probably the latter. “Yeah, it’s hit or miss. A lot like that old well in the south field.”
“That’s why I stick to livestock and wheat,” Elias said with a sympathetic grin. He tried to take the reins from Gentry’s hand. “I’ve got Beaver. You go deal with your business.”
“If it’s all the same to you, I’d like to tend to Beaver myself.” He wasn’t about to admit to Elias that Neil’s presence had him rattled, but he needed the time to calm his nerves and gather his thoughts.
Gentry took his time cooling Beaver down and getting him cleaned, fed, and put up for the night. He had nothing to be ashamed of and he would have helped Natalie and Toby all over again if given the chance. He stood outside his front door and closed his eyes, conjuring a vision of Skye lying in the hotel-room bed they’d briefly shared, looking so sexy and sweet, wearing nothing but a sheet and a sleepy smile, and he’d wished they could’ve laid there together forever.
Neil was waiting for Gentry in his formal living room. He’d made himself at home on the sofa, smoking a cigarette. Asshole. Gentry didn’t even so much as own an ashtray, but Neil had created one out of a glass candle holder that Cheyanne had left behind. When Gentry walked in, Neil acknowledged him with a flicker of his eyebrows.
Gentry wracked his brain for something to say by way of a greeting, but the only words that sprang to mind were fuck you, and rather than waste those right up front, he decided to save that particular sentiment for later.
“Been waiting long?” Gentry said, dropping into the chair across from Neil.
“Long enough that I nearly opened this bottle without you.” He nodded to an expensive bottle of tequila on the coffee table. Funny that, because Neil, of all people, knew Gentry didn’t drink. But that didn’t stop Neil from producing two tall shot glasses.
“I found these in your kitchen.”
He’d been snooping. Lovely.
Neil poured two generous shots, then handed one to Gentry and clinked the two together. “Cheers.”
Gentry waited for Neil to tip his shot back before emptying his into the nearest potted plant. Neil snorted his dismay.
“What I’m sorry for is that your plans for Natalie’s wedding got messed up. I’m sorry that happened so publicly, and I’m sorry for the loss of money you’ve probably suffered.”
“Suffered is a strong word.”
“What I’m not sorry about is helping her have the wedding she wanted. I have no regrets for the role I played. She and Toby were gonna elope with or without my help, so I helped them do it in style.”
Another snort of disgust. Neil poured himself another shot, tipped it back, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. From his worn brown leather briefcase, he pulled out a stack of magazines, which he tossed on the table between them. “Any truth to these?”
Gossip rags. A whole slew of them, and all with a cover story about Gentry going on a bender in Nashville with a mystery woman on the night he was supposed to be performing at his producer’s daughter’s wedding. Though Gentry was in the photos, the real star was Skye. Dang it all, he’d loved that little red dress. He wished he’d taken a picture of her, but these would do. Despite the harmful, invasive intent with which the shots had been taken, and they were low-quality and grainy in a way that blurred her face, they were enough to get Gentry’s blood pumping again.
Gentry fought a smile at the sight of her and at the rush of memories the images filled him with. All right, lover boy. Let’s focus on getting Neil off your ass and off your property. After that, you can get back to daydreaming about her all you want.
Gentry fixed a bored look on his face and shrugged. “There’s some truth, I guess.”
Neil tapped his fingers on his knee. “Let me get this straight,” he said, over-enunciating each word. “You indulged my
daughter’s selfishness, broke any last shreds of trust I once had in you, and then you hooked up with some random groupie for the rest of the night and got yourself in the tabloids? Real smooth.”
The word groupie made Gentry feel like Pavlov’s dog. Goddamn, she’d been a hot little number in that VIP suite, on her knees between his legs.
Neil snapped him out of his thoughts. “Is she here?”
Only in his dreams. “No.”
“Do you have plans to see her again?”
None of his goddamn business. “I’m a busy man, so let’s get to it. What are you here to get from me? A pound of flesh? Groveling? You’re not going to get it, so stop wasting both our time.”
Neil stared daggers at him for a long, pregnant minute, then dropped another bomb. “The ACMs are the Friday after next. I know you, which means I know you were planning to ditch it, what with your last album not managing to garner a single nomination. But it’s your lucky day because Kyle Crawley just had an emergency appendectomy so they needed another male vocalist to take his place in the line-up, so I secured his spot for you.”
“You’re kidding.” The ACMs were the Academy of Country Music Awards, one of two big industry showcase nights. There had been years upon years of Gentry being the ACM’s Golden Boy, earning Entertainer of the Year, Best Male Vocalist, and more. Two years in a row, in fact, he’d even emceed the event. But Neil was right; he’d planned on begging out this year. The sting from the awards snub and not being selected to perform during the show for the first time in his twelve-year career had been too much, and this new album’s deadline was coming at him faster than a runaway stagecoach. The perfect excuse to stay home and lick his wounds. But he’d be a fool not to take the opportunity, even if it dug him further into a debt of gratitude with Neil. He gritted his teeth and said, “Thank you.”
On a fierce scowl, Neil gave the stack of magazines a shove with his boot heel. “You can thank me by performing the shit out of your set with one of the songs on your new album. Please tell me you’ve got at least one ready, since you fancy yourself a big shot singer-songwriter now.”
Neil had always known exactly where to hit him below the belt to bring about maximum pain. Time to pull out those two little words he’d been saving for the just the right time. “Fuck you, Neil.”
“I’ll take that as a yes. And please tell me this song is about sexing up a woman or partying or something that lets us put a spin on this idiotic bender you went on.”
Gentry ran through the list of songs he’d written since meeting Skye. Every single one of them fit that profile. “Yeah, I’ve got the perfect one. Called ‘Riding in the Dark.’ It starts out about a sexy horse ride in the moonlight, then gets dirty, with suggestive lyrics about riding her in the dark.”
“That’s perfect. And you’re going to sing it to her. That’s the hook. You get up there on that stage, you look right at the camera, and you burn down America’s TVs with that corny smolder you do.”
“You want me to invite her as my date?” Because, damn, that would be cool. Or, at least, it would have been had Gentry been up for a single award. But still, having Skye on his arm for the awards show weekend in Las Vegas would be like getting a second ticket into heaven.
Neil threw his hands up. “God, no! Don’t you get it? These piece-of-shit magazines are going crazy wondering about who she is. If you have her there, then they’ll know. And then there’ll be no more speculating.” He backhanded the cover of one of the magazines, right over the image of Gentry’s face. “You know how this game is played. You don’t reveal your secrets; you give them a few crumbs so they’ll have even more to talk about. It’s time to make yourself relevant again.”
Neil might be an asshole, but he was a damn smart one.
“I can do that. No problem.”
“Good.” Neil stood and hitched his pants up. “I’ll send a driver to get you on Sunday morning. My secretary will be in contact with the details. And don’t think this grants you an extension on the songs for the new album. You’ve got one month before we go into the studio to record it. May I remind you that this is the last album on your contract? This is it for you. Your last chance. It’d better be dynamite or you’re finished. I have no interest in sticking around for your fall into music oblivion, so don’t fuck this up, son.”
Gentry didn’t bother to show him the door or even rise and say good-bye.
Hours after Neil had shown himself out, Gentry sat in the same chair, staring at nothing, and contemplated that ultimatum. He’d really dug himself a hole this time. Neil Blevins was a force of nature in country music. When he said a performer’s career was finished, he didn’t just mean with his own record label. He meant in the business as a whole. He meant that if Gentry didn’t put out the best album of his career, that career was over.
How was he supposed to work creatively while under that kind of pressure? He wasn’t a robot. He was making art, not widgets. But was he really any good at making art? That remained to be seen. All those fears of being an imposter, of being discovered as a fraud instead of a real artist worth his salt, came rushing back at him.
“Hello, old friend,” he said, his typical greetings to the feelings that were as familiar to him as breathing.
He had five great songs written already, but five songs did not an album make. He looked around his empty house, a mirror for his suddenly empty imagination.
Disgusted with himself, with the hole he was in, and with life in general, he grabbed his guitar again and headed back out to the barn. Because he sure as hell wasn’t going to find any peace in that big empty house.
He fed the horses treats and groomed them, then he sat on a wooden bench and sang them some of his greatest hits. Not exactly the best use of his time, given what he had to accomplish in the next month, but at least it got him to stop panicking. The more he relaxed, the more the horses did, too, until he felt confident about saddling Beaver up for a late-night ride. With any luck, it would provide him with a fraction of inspiration that he’d had when he’d taken that midnight ride with Skye. What he wouldn’t give to be with her again, out on that trail, drinking in her vivacity.
He pulled out his phone and stared at her contact information. He could call her up. He could text her to let her know he was thinking about her. But that didn’t feel right, to call her because his creative well had dried up; it felt like using her in all the wrong ways. She might be his muse, but she had a life of her own. He’d already imposed himself into too much of it. It didn’t matter how good she was for him because they’d both agreed that he wasn’t good for her. And he didn’t have time for women anymore, anyhow. He had a multimillion-dollar business to run.
With his guitar strung on his back and a notepad and pen at the ready, he and Beaver took off over the countryside, following the same path they had earlier that day. Out in the open country on his horse, Gentry didn’t feel like an imposter or Neil Blevin’s marionette. And he wasn’t a no-good man whom respectable women like Skye should avoid. He was just Gentry, the Tulsa boy with a penchant for trouble and an ear for music.
It was time to take himself back to that humble beginning again, back to his cowboy roots. Because when all the chips were down, that’s who he was. A solitary cowboy, through and through. Skye, with all her vivacity and sexiness, would have to just stay put in his dreams from thereon out. He couldn’t afford to give her any more time than that.
Chapter Ten
Skye stood in the resort’s employee parking lot and looked at the Spring Kickoff Barbecue in the distance, cringing. Time to pay her debt to Granny June with another matchmaking fiasco, this time to June’s friend Meryl’s grandson.
Stalling, she fished her phone from her purse and dialed Remedy’s number. She picked up on the third ring.
“Hey there. I can’t talk. I am literally herding cats over here!”
Nothing like a little wedding drama to take Skye’s mind off her problems. “Where are you? I’m on my way.”
<
br /> “The amphitheater.” After a pause, she shouted away from the phone, “Litzy, for the love of God, go buy some catnip at the feed store!”
Skye hitched a ride with one of the guys in the maintenance department and arrived on scene at the amphitheater that had been carved out of a hill behind the resort’s main building. Usually, it was a shady and peaceful place where the resort employees liked to eat their lunches, except on weekends, when it was usually booked for weddings.
Sure enough, the amphitheater was in the throes of chaos. Skye counted at least seven cats—and one wedding planner who looked like she’d gone off the deep end, waving her arms and talking to the cats, trying to herd them toward a row of open pet carriers on the stage. And watching it all happen from various perches around the amphitheater were more than twenty cream-colored homing pigeons.
“Hey, Remedy. Oh my gosh, your pigeons are here. No wonder the cats are going crazy.”
Remedy barely looked up. She had a gray-and-white long-haired cat cornered in the second row. “Hey yourself. Look, I got this one cornered. Grab me one of those carriers, would you? But don’t make any sudden moves.”
Skye crept with even, quiet steps to the carriers and brought the nearest one to Remedy. “Are all these cats part of the wedding?” Skye had heard of crazier things at weddings, but not by much.
“Yep. The ring bearers.”
Skye had never owned cats, but even she knew that they weren’t the best at following commands. “You’re kidding.”
“I wish. The couple runs a cat-training company and so they insisted that their perfectly trained felines would be up to the job during the wedding. One of these things is supposed to have the ring pillow strapped to its back. The bride and groom got the cats out of their carriers for the photography session this morning, but then my pigeons showed up and now the cats think they just died and went to heaven. The bride was freaking out about it, so I sent her back to the bridal suite for some champagne and told her I’d take care of it.”
One Wild Night Page 12
