Nashville Boxed Set #1-3

by Bethany Michaels

  “So I forced you into this? Is that what you’re saying? I forced you on stage and forced you to sign a record contract? Michelle, you told me you wanted this from the time you could talk. I did everything in my power to get it for you. If that was wrong — -- ”

  “It wasn’t wrong.” I put my hand on Daddy’s “It is what I wanted. And you’ve been amazing. Involved, supportive, always in my corner. I’m lucky to have you behind me.” I swallowed, my throat getting thick with the emotions I had kept tamped down for years. “I just wish you’d been my dad a little more and my manager a little less. It was a pretty lonely way to grown up sometimes.”

  “I know.”

  “And I am grateful. I know you gave up a lot to help me. You gave up most of your dreams to make sure I could follow mine. Mom never understood that and I always felt like I was the reason you two divorced.”

  “Oh, Michelle. Don’t think that. There were problems in the marriage before any of this ever happened with your career. Going on the road with you and being away from your mom so much just solidified what we already knew. It wasn’t working. And had nothing to do with you, sweetie. I hope you don’t ever think that it did.”

  No matter what Daddy said, I had been carrying around a lot of guilt. It had become this thing driving all my actions, the reason I had to think of my career first rather than my personal connections to other people. It was the reason I had never stopped to consider whether this life was the one I wanted. I did it in large part because I didn’t want Daddy’s sacrifice to be for nothing. Maybe if I could somehow make him proud, it would make up for him giving up Mom. It was the rationale of a 12 year-old, but the adult me had never gone back to reevaluate how accurate that rationale was. I’d just plodded on and tried not to disappoint anyone.

  Talk show hosts and radio therapists always talk about moments of revelation-the instant all the blurry lines pop into sharp contrast and you see the road ahead clearly. I had always thought that was a bunch of bunk. But at that instant, a lot of things clicked into place for me and I knew exactly what I needed to do.

  “Daddy I love you, and I truly appreciate everything you’ve done for me…but you’re fired.”

  I steeled myself for an argument, but after staring at me for a moment, he broke into a grin. Before I could even explain that it was time he started living some of his own dreams, he was hugging me.

  “Thank you,” he said, and I realized that maybe he’d felt a little trapped, too.

  All of a sudden, the fact that I was going to be moving forward alone hit me. My eyes flew open.

  “You’ll be fine,” Daddy said. “You don’t need me anymore — -- as your manager, I mean. You know what you want and you know how to get it.” He pulled back. “There are some things I want, too.”

  “This wouldn’t have anything to do with Rayna, would it?”

  He smiled a little sheepishly, looking like a man 20 years younger in love for the first time. “It might be. Would that be okay with you, sweetie?”

  “You don’t have to ask my permission, Daddy. Rayna’s great.” I squeezed his hand. “And it’s about damn time you told her.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Of all the cars in his garage, Shay was the saddest to see the Charger go. It was the first big ticket item he’d bought with his royalty money. Seeing it hauled off on the back of a trailer, sold to a retired dentist in Florida, was a little like kissing his dream of being someone in world goodbye. When he’d bought the car, in cash, he was on top of the world. His album was a hit and he saw the ladder of success as an express elevator that had opened up right in front of him. All he had to do was step on and enjoy the ride. Too bad he hadn’t known then that the dang things tended to break down and it’s a long, lonely fall when they do.

  Shay shoved those dark thoughts out of his mind. It was just a car. What mattered was that he had the cash to get out of town, now. He had scraped enough together between selling the cars in his garage and the check Michelle’s father had sent for his half of the tour to pay off the rest of his debts. His mom had been thrilled when Shay had told her he was leaving Nashville for a while, but when he told her he wasn’t coming home, she didn’t understand.

  The fact was, he needed to get out of the city, but he wasn’t ready to give up and sign on at the plant back in Hayleeville just yet, either. Shay had a friend in Asheville who’d been wanting Shay to come and write with him for quite a while. It was someone Shay had met when he first moved to Nashville and had hung out with from time to time. Shay wasn’t sure if he was cut out to be a songwriter or not, but he had to try.

  Shay had written a handful of songs when he was just starting out and then hid them away because he was sure that they were not good enough to show anyone else. But as he was packing his house, preparing to move back to Oklahoma, he came across the lyric sheets stuffed in an old suitcase. He looked at them and realized they weren’t as bad as he remembered. They were rough, no doubt, but there was a spark of something to work with.

  Music was in his blood and his soul. Performing was his first passion, but maybe there was room for another one. He’d called his friend and just like that he decided to point his truck east out of Nashville instead of west.

  He’d miss Nashville for sure. Shay had fallen in love with the city the moment he’d set eyes on the Cumberland River, the lights of downtown reflected in its flowing waters. He loved that wherever you went there was music. Bars, restaurants, clubs, grocery stores, diners and even sidewalks. Every night of the week in dozens of venues there were people who had come from all over to hear music, to play it, to write it and to live it. For the first time, Shay lived in a city that ran on hope and the belief that dreams do come true, instead of a town where the best you could hope for was a steady paycheck at a job that would kill you in spirit if not in body.

  But there was nothing left for him here now. No contract, no career to speak of and no one special that would miss him when he was gone.

  Like a fool, he’d waited for weeks for Michelle to call. He’d picked up the phone himself a dozen times a day, just wanting to hear her voice. He missed performing with her and talking with her and holding her at night. He missed the way the sunlight caught her hair. He missed the way she laughed, the way she moved against him, the way she kissed him, as if having him was more important than her next breath.

  What an idiot. Hung up on a woman who had used him to get a record contract. Shay grabbed a couple of boxes off the kitchen counter and added them to the stack that needed to go out to his truck. Michelle was probably in the studio right now, with Robert looking on, all of them laughing about what they’d put over on him.

  It was better this way. Better to know now how she really was. What if he’d allowed himself to really fall in love with her? Her betrayal would have hurt even more. The only thing that had niggled at him at first was the sincerity in her clear blue eyes that night everything went sideways. He really, really wanted to believe that she knew nothing about the scheme Robert had cooked up. But her silence in the meantime had spoken louder than any words that might have passed her perfect lips. Whatever hope Shay had harbored had evaporated as the days went by with no word, no contact from Michelle. He had been used and dismissed without a thought.

  There was no use in delaying—it was time to hit the road. Shay looked around the empty house one last time. He picked up a stack of boxes and a wrinkled newspaper clipping floated to the floor. Shay set the boxes down and bent to pick it up.

  His gut clenched as if he’d just taken a Mike Tyson blow to the bread basket. It was the photo of Shay and Michelle sharing their first kiss on stage. The housekeeper must have left it for him because God knows Shay hadn’t kept anything around that remotely reminded him of how stupid he’d been to think Michelle had really cared about him.

  He couldn’t bear to look at it, but he couldn’t bear to look away. It was like a train wreck, the horror and the fear and excitement all wrapped into one. Shay studied the
lines of her face, the way her body leaned into his, the tilt of her chin. He ran his thumb over her profile, remembering the texture of her skin and the smell of her hair. Swallowing hard, Shay started to ball up the picture to throw it in the garbage can on his way out, then stopped and left the clipping on the kitchen counter instead.

  He made it all the way to the front door before he went back to grab the clipping and stuck it in his jacket pocket. If nothing else, it would serve as a reminder to be more careful who he trusted with his heart. He was a big man, and had considered himself a tough one, but his heart had turned out to be no more durable than that fancy china in one of the ritzy boutiques downtown.

  He stowed some things in the passenger side of his old truck’s cab and then went around behind the house to grab a lawn chair he’d left on the back deck. When he returned, Michelle was leaning against his truck waiting for him. She might as well have gotten behind the wheel and driven right over him. He ignored her, setting the lawn chair in the bed, needing that extra few seconds to make his heart stop hemorrhaging before he had to talk to her.

  “Going somewhere?” she asked.

  She was dressed in jeans and cowboy boots with a heavy barn coat on top. Her hair was tucked up inside of a stocking cap and she looked for all the word like she’d just driven on off the ranch. Her eyes were wide and blue, her cheeks rosy from the cold air. But he couldn’t think of how sexy-sweet she looked right now. He had to get the hell out of there.

  “Yep,” he said and opened the driver’s side door.

  “Were you going to say goodbye?”

  He ground his jaw, all attempts at pretending she didn’t matter flying off in the December wind. “I don’t know, Michelle. Did you say goodbye before you stabbed me in the back?”

  “I’m sorry,” she said after a moment.

  He slammed the door closed. “For what? Lying to me? Using me to get your precious contract? Fucking me? What?” He shoved a hand through his hair, concentrating on lowering his voice. “I don’t want to hear it.”

  “That’s not what happened, Shay.” Michelle bit her lip. “Well it sort of was but, I swear I didn’t realize what Robert was up to until it was too late to stop it. There was a lot of pressure — -- you don’t understand.”

  “Because you think I’m a stupid Okie redneck and I wouldn’t understand complicated concepts or three syllable words, right Michelle? Well, there are a few words I do understand, things like integrity and honesty and…friendship.”

  “I felt like I was between a rock and a hard place I didn’t know which way to turn.”

  “After everything we’ve been through together, you didn’t know which way to turn.” He put his hand on the handle of his truck, determined to drive away and leave her standing there not wanting to hear one more lie come out of her mouth. “That’s a lousy excuse.”

  Her face changed from hopeful to miserable in the space of a heartbeat.

  “You’re right.”

  She paused.

  “I know how Robert is. I should have known he was cooking up something. He never intended to give you a shot at the contract, that’s true. Daddy knew. I think…I just didn’t want to think about it, didn’t want it to be true. Once things started happening between you and I, I blocked all that out and made myself oblivious to what was happening around us. And I ended up hurting the one person in all this who didn’t deserve it.” She swallowed hard and looked up at his, her clear eyes bright. “I ended up hurting you.”

  “You did,” Shay admitted softly. “I trusted you and I thought…well, I was wrong.” He cleared his throat. “It doesn’t matter now.”

  “You’re not leaving the business are you? Shay , you can’t. You have way too much talent to walk away now.”

  It was the first time she’d told him she thought he had talent. “I’m not walking away, just taking a step back. I’m going to be doing some writing.” He was almost embarrassed to say it out loud. She would think a stupid redneck like him couldn’t put two words together. But he knew different. “I’ve been working on some stuff…it isn’t bad.” His words came out a little defensive, as if he was daring her to argue.

  “I have no doubts you’ll be great at it,” she said. “The way you took my tired old lyrics and made them into something special—that was beautiful.”

  He eyed her, wondering what her angle was. Why was she here now, being so nice to him? What did she want?

  “I’m not doing those duet tracks on your album,” he said tightly. “I told your manager that.”

  She gave him a sort of half grin. “There is no album.”

  “Robert screwed you, too?” He wanted to feel good about that, like justice had been served. But he didn’t.

  “No. I left Belle Records.”

  He was completely floored. “Why? With the tour and the single, all the buzz, that album would have charted, easy.”

  “It wasn’t what I wanted.” She tucked her hands into her coat pockets and frowned. “I know you think my life has been one easy ride with everything falling into place like magic. You were right. After you left, I realized that I was letting the momentum Daddy, Rayna, Robert and all the rest of them had created for me just carry me along.”

  She tucked a wisp of hair that had escaped her hat behind her ear. It appeared to be shorter and a darker, richer color than Shay remembered.

  “It was easy,” she said. “I never had to make any choices, never had to worry about taking a wrong step. Someone else made all the decisions for me, from what I wore, to what I sang to when I went out on tour. My income was invested for me, my home was purchased for me, even the food in my fridge just appeared without any effort or input from me.”

  She gave him a wry smile. “You were right. I was a princess. Pampered, totally oblivious to what was happening around me and content to stay that way.”

  “So you left the label?”

  “And fired Daddy as my manager.”

  “Holy shit.” He leaned against his truck.

  She nodded. “It took a lot of wheeling and dealing to make it happen. Honestly, if you hadn’t been so great on tour and made it so successful, it would have been a lot cheaper to buy out my contract. But I met with my financial guy and made it work. The poor man almost had a coronary when I told him what I wanted to do.”

  “So now what? You ride off into the sunset? Start some sort of foundation? Dedicate yourself to charity work?” He didn’t want to respect her. He wanted to keep her in that neat little niche that allowed him to write her off, to let her go.

  “I started my own label.” She looked up at him, playing with the ring on her right hand. “I was hoping I could convince you to be the first artist I signed.”

  Shay shook his head. “You don’t have to do that. What’s done is done. I don’t need you to give me a contract out of pity. I’m good.”

  “You’re talented, Shay. I want you on my label because you’re good. You have a creative instinct and a way of connecting with your audience that I could never match in a million years. And I’ve heard snatches of the songs you’d play on the bus. You’re going to be a great singer-songwriter.”

  Images of his playing guitar, picking out his own melodies when he thought she was asleep, nude and sated, tangled in his sheets, looking like an angel came rushing back to him. Something broke inside—the hard shell of anger and hurt he’d been building layer by layer since the night at Fontanel.

  “Is that all?”

  “No.” She took a step towards him, touched his jacket sleeve. “I miss you, Shay. I mean, I know you probably hate me right now, and I don’t blame you. Maybe you always will. But I—there was something real between us. I guess I came here wanting to see if there’s a chance, someday, that you might be able to forgive me.”

  She swallowed, her voice small and barely audible over the wind that whipped around them. She focused on a point over his left shoulder. “Maybe we could give this another shot.”

  His heart gave one last p
ainful squeeze then let go and opened right back up again. This woman had a power over him that scared the hell out of him, but he just couldn’t walk away.

  He tipped her chin up with a fingertip so she would meet his eyes. “I love you, Michelle. Have for a while.”

  She broke into a grin and he saw unshed tears gathering in her eyes.

  “But I need to do this on my own. I need to go to Asheville for a while. Figure out what direction I want to go. Stand on my own two feet and make sure this time things stick.”

  She nodded. “I understand.”

  “But that doesn’t mean I won’t be thinking about this every second I’m away from you.” He pulled her against his chest and she fit just as perfectly as he remembered. He kissed her eyelids, her cheeks, the little mole next to her mouth. Her lips. God, her lips. As soft and sweet as ever. She sank into him, her arms going around his neck, clinging to him as if she’d never let him go.

  He didn’t know how long they stood there, kissing in his driveway. Long enough that his thoughts turned to the logistics of making love in the front seat of his truck in broad daylight. But he knew if they went down that road now, he’d never make it to Asheville at all. He’d done the reckless impulsive thing all his life. Now it was time to grow up and think further ahead than the next ten minutes.

  So he pulled away, the taste of her on his lips and in his heart, and just held her.

  She sighed. “I’ll miss you.”

  “I’ll call you.” He grinned. “Or we can Skype. That could be fun.”

  “Uh huh. I’ll text that friend at Victoria’s Secret.”

  “You’re trying to kill me, aren’t you?”

  She pulled back so she could look into his eyes again, her expression suddenly serious. “I’m trying to tell you I love you, Shay. And I’ll wait for you. Take your time. Figure out what you want to do. I’ll be here when you come back.”

  Shay swallowed around the lump in his throat and hugged her tight against him so she could see how her words affected him. “I’ll think about you every second.”