“I have to get an autograph.”
“Me first!”
“I’m going to get him to sign my cane!”
Lana frowned. Him?
“He’s not his father.”
“He’s still good.”
“Palmer Hill was a real musician. I’m not sure about this boy of his.”
Um, no.
She must have heard that wrong. She slowed and looked over her shoulder.
“Is he coming in here?” The old man in the red T-shirt poked the one wearing blue.
“I think he is. Oooh, I’m going to ask him if he really dated Taylor Swift.”
“You’re as bad as a woman. Play his father’s music at my funeral, but not that kid’s.”
Sparks ran up Lana’s spine, adrenaline shooting electricity to her wrists. It couldn’t be Taft Hill.
Not in Darling Bay.
Impossible.
She couldn’t see outside – whoever had walked in front of the window who resembled Taft Hill had already passed by.
The bell over the door jangled as it opened.
Floyd was halfway down aisle three, ignoring the other men. “Down here. I’ve got just the book for you.”
Lana ducked past the end of the aisle and peered around a stack of air filters.
There he was.
Shock colored her vision black and white.
Taft looked good that way, too.
Large as life, and about six times as handsome. The man was too good-looking – it wasn’t healthy to be so pretty.
“Taft Hill! I told you, Benny, didn’t I tell you?” One man nudged another in the ribs so hard he wheezed.
“Hi, fellas.”
“What are you doing here?”
Thank God someone was asking it.
“Strangely enough, I’m looking for a woman. Someone said she might be here. Lana Darling – have you seen her?”
Something like heartburn rose in Lana’s chest. She sucked in a breath and stumbled backward. She spun around, barreling down the aisle, away from the front. “Floyd,” she hissed. “Floyd!”
He turned. “Yeah? Heck, I think I moved ’em. Like I said, no one buys books. Maybe over on eight. Let’s go check.”
“Can I use your bathroom?”
Floyd pointed. “Down there, just turn at the fertilizer.”
Lana ran, not caring that Floyd looked surprised. She turned at the stack of bagged soil and pulled open the first door she saw. She slammed it closed, locked it, and fumbled for the light switch.
She wasn’t in a bathroom. She was in a storage closet.
Chapter Nine
Old men still listened to country music, and these old men knew who Taft was. He’d have to tell his Taylor Swift story, he could feel it.
He really didn’t want to tell it again.
“Hey there, nice to meet you.” He shook a man’s hand, then another’s. “So, Lana? Did you see her?”
They almost tripped over themselves to tell him. “She went back there!”
“Looking for a book!”
“She doesn’t use the YouTube!”
“Floyd!” The old man’s voice was a hoarse excited screech. “You got yourself Taft Hill in your store!”
Taft headed down the direction they pointed him in. Three aisles over and around a corner, he found another old man standing stock-still in front of a wall lined with paint cans.
The man looked at him in surprise and stuck out his hand. “Floyd Huppert. At your service.”
“Taft –”
“I know who you are. Big fan of your father’s.”
There was a certain breed of man who would never get on board with new country. They loved everyone up to and including Merle Haggard and no one newer. Taft always liked these men more than anyone else – it was good to have honesty directed at him. No false praise for a shoddy job.
“Thanks. Me, too.”
Floyd scratched the top of his head. “This day sure keeps getting weirder. I’ve got two country stars in my store now.”
“Lana Darling? Yeah, I’m looking for her. Someone said she might be here.”
Floyd looked at the closed door he’d been staring at. “Yeah, well. She seems to have locked herself in the closet.”
A squeak came from the other side of the door.
“Really?”
“Said she was going to the bathroom, but I hope she’s not, “cause there’s nothing in there but some old buckets. Well, I suppose that would be all right, except –”
“I’m not using a bucket!”
The door banged open. There she was, in all her glory. Lana Darling looked as fierce as she sounded – her hair was shorter now than it had been, and it was dark, almost black. She looked mad, looked like a sexy ass-kicker, as if she were about to punch a vampire. She wore a black T-shirt halfway stuck into black jeans and big black combat boots. She wore a wide black leather bracelet, and she had not a lick of make-up on her skin. Her lips were pink and her eyes shot sparks at him.
She couldn’t have been sexier.
“Lana.”
“What the hell are you doing here?”
“What do you think? Looking for you.”
He hadn’t known a woman in combat boots could sweep past regally, but somehow she pulled it off. “Well, let’s pretend you haven’t found me.”
“What were you doing in the closet?”
“I was trying to get away from you, and it was the first door I opened.”
He laughed. She was so honest. He’d liked that about her immediately – she didn’t seem to have the social-nicety filter most people came with.
Lana didn’t slow down. Over her shoulder she called, “Floyd, I’ll be back for the book later.”
“You sure? I’ve almost found it, I’m sure I have!”
She was already outside, though, on the sidewalk, moving fast.
Taft walked behind her. She was obviously hurrying, but when it came down to it, she had shorter legs, and he didn’t have to lengthen his stride too much to keep up. The morning sun shone on the crown of her head. “I’d love to buy you a cup of coffee.”
“Had one.”
“One’s never enough.” Taft almost tripped over an uneven section of sidewalk.
“It is for me.” She shot a pointed look back at him.
They’d had once. That once had kind of sucked.
“Come on. What about a drink?”
“It’s not even eleven o’clock in the morning.”
“Good point. Lunch?”
Lana spun and put her hands on her hips. “What. Do. You. Want?” Her anger was real, and it threw him.
“Hey, now.” Taft raised his palms. “I didn’t know if you’d be pleased to see me, but I sure didn’t know you’d be mad.”
“I’m not mad.”
She was. She was radiating fury.
“Okay, then. So you’ll consider letting me buy you lunch?”
Without saying another word, she turned her back and walked away again.
Taft followed her. The eyes of the men at the hardware store burned into his chambray shirt, and embarrassment crawled down his spine. He’d done something wrong, and since he didn’t think it had anything to do with the money that was most likely flooding her bank account, it had to be about the night they’d spent together.
“Lana, can you stop for a minute? Talk to me?”
“No, thanks.” They were at the Golden Spike, and she plowed through the parking lot.
“I feel like a stalker here.”
“Then stop following me.”
It would be easy to ignore her. To assume she was just playing hard to get (but why was she? He wanted music, not her body – they’d already established it didn’t work out real well that way between them) and just follow her up to the hotel area he could see from the parking lot.
But Taft had been raised to respect a woman’s wishes. Always.
So he stopped.
He needed her help, but he’d have
to figure out what he’d done wrong. Then, whatever it turned out to be, he’d apologize for it. He watched her go. Her back was straight, her head so rigidly affixed atop her body that he wondered if it hurt her neck.
Damn, though, he couldn’t help admiring the sway of the back of her jeans as she went.
Chapter Ten
Lana went into room twelve because she knew off the top of her head that she’d left it unlocked earlier. She wouldn’t have to fumble for a key, even for a moment. His footsteps had stopped, but she wouldn’t let herself relax until she knew for sure he was gone.
Once in the safety of the room, she slid down the door so she was sitting on the floor, facing into the trashed area. The ceiling was open to the sky, allowing the sunlight to stream through. A pool of light fell on the toes of her boots, and her feet felt warm, which was nice since the rest of her was so cold.
They’d had one bad night. That was all. She’d told him too much. She regretted it. But she’d assumed that he was out of her life for good, except for the very welcome money she got from “Blame Me.”
She’d been fired by her agent group (though in the tabloids, they called it a “mutual split”, which was what they always said), and while she’d hoped that they’d put together one last small tour for her, all they’d gotten her was the Bluebird gig at the very last minute.
It was a Monday night, always the worst night of the week. Rumor had it she’d only gotten the slot because a bluegrass band from Boise had broken up on the revelation the fiddler was sleeping with the bass player’s wife.
The only people in the audience were tourists. It was always easy to tell who was from Nashville and who was just visiting. The tourists watched the stage for a while, eagerly waiting to be impressed. They held up their iPads and phones, hoping for a real country star sighting. When it was just her, when they realized that no one more famous than a girl who used to be in a female band that wasn’t the Dixie Chicks was on stage, they turned around and started showing each other pictures on their phones. Tourists always spoke in normal voices, as if they were at a bar anywhere, as if whoever was on stage was just background noise, like the cover bands at their watering hole at home.
Locals, on the other hand, stayed quiet. They waited in the dark to listen. Locals were ready to be impressed, but even when they weren’t, even when the act let them down, they stayed respectful. The space’s heritage demanded that. John Prine, Clint Black and Townes Van Zandt had played right in the spot where Lana sat by herself with her guitar. Locals were reverent to the space itself if not always to the singer.
While she’d played that night, Lana just sang over the tourists’ heads. They didn’t notice, of course, too busy looking at their phones. Instead, she sang into the back, where it was dark. She let herself imagine there was an indie label scout back there somewhere – a man or woman just looking for their next big break, and that it was her. They’d see her singing and rush the stage afterwards.
Somehow she’d missed Taft Hill when he came in. It wasn’t easy to miss a man like that, all shoulders and swagger and goodwill. He was like a friendly missionary, kindly smiling, then he got that glint in his eye, the one that made a girl feel like a woman. That’s what he managed to do on stage, on screen, on a television, looking out into the audience. It was nothing compared to what he could make a woman feel like up close.
And damn, he was getting close.
Lana watched him walk toward the stage. She pretended to be tuning her guitar, but under her lashes, she saw every move he made. Why was he coming her way? There were no free tables at the front – there never were, even though those were the people least likely to listen. Tourists who thought they liked country but really only liked Garth Brooks, and nineties Garth Brooks, at that. Was he coming up to try to play with her?
Lana tightened her grip on the neck of her guitar. Her finger slipped on the E-string and fed a sour note into the mic.
He pulled out a chair and said something low to the couple who’d been looking at their phones the whole time they’d been sitting down.
That was just weird.
So she sang. She tried to keep her eyes from drifting to him, but it took physical effort. Her gaze wanted to rest on him, to travel from that shock of thick sandy hair down to those darker eyebrows, to trace his square jaw, and wander down the muscled cords in his neck. He wore a western shirt (naturally), but it was subtle, a dark blue with the pattern at yoke in a darker purple.
Up close, well, damn.
He was hot.
Even sitting still – and he was sitting so still, like a piece of chiseled rock – he was magnetic. People in the audience had stopped taking desultory, obligatory pictures of her (Who is she? Is she someone? Part of a girl group, I think? The Honeys?) and had turned their cell phones on him and those impressive broad shoulders of his.
That was fine.
All Lana had to do was sing. Luckily, that’s what she knew how to do.
The last song on her set list was “Blame Me.” For a second, the intensity of his eyes on hers made her think about playing something else.
Should she play it tonight?
A staff person in the back dropped a tray of something glass. The resulting crash made everyone in the place jump, including Lana.
Taft didn’t jump, though. He kept his gaze on her, his hands open in his lap. He leaned back in his chair as if he were sitting in his living room, and suddenly Lana wanted to play the song.
So she did.
And even though the room was still bustling, even though people were still chatting and laughing, even though the really drunk woman in the back was finally getting politely escorted to the door, Lana felt every word move through her like she’d just written the song.
* * *
Blame me, the way I do.
Blame me, for not saying yes.
* * *
Taft nodded at the end. He nodded right at her, and Lana felt something in the pit of her stomach overheat. Taft Hill.
Huh. She’d heard his music, and she liked it, but then again, she’d heard a lot of country music over the years. Maybe all of it. His was as good as anyone else’s – not as good as his father’s but better than most.
The way he looked at her, though – yeah, that made her think again.
Chapter Eleven
It wasn’t like he’d gone to the Bluebird to find anything.
It was more like he’d been trying to escape everything else.
He’d found something out that day. Something that was impossible to face just yet, so he figured he wouldn’t.
So yeah, Taft had been running away. It was funny, when he thought about it, that he’d run straight into the one place so many of his friends had gotten their start. Not him, of course. Palmer Hill’s son didn’t need the Bluebird to kick off his career – Taft had been born into the country-singing world, and he’d die in its rhinestone-decorated arms someday.
It was still a good place to get a drink, it turned out. Tourists crowded the front tables (they had reservations now, something that they’d never had in the old days), but the back of the bar was still dim and the alcohol still full proof. Watering down a drink like they did in big cities was a hanging offence in this part of the state.
Taft didn’t plan on talking to anyone except the bartender to order drinks. For the first hour, it worked. A man and woman crooned pretty harmonies on stage, but there was nothing in their vapid lyrics that required attention. Taft sipped his bourbon on the rocks and let his mind drift, thinking about everything and nothing, as long as he didn’t think about what had happened, what he’d learned. The thing that would change everything.
You’re the best thing that ever happened to me.
It was what his father had always said to him, over and over again.
Yep, not thinking was definitely in order. Taft ordered another drink.
Then she came on stage.
She didn’t look like everyone else in Nashville. Her hair wa
s long, of course, and blonde, done in those long country curls. Her eyes were light brown, almost tan, and wide set. She had high, flat cheekbones. Her mouth was pink, but not from lipstick – it looked as if she’d been biting her lips.
She had not one lick of nervousness.
She sat on the single stool, making sure her guitar was amped right. She checked the cables herself, which meant she was a real musician, not just someone with a pretty voice.
Because her voice was pretty, that was for darn sure.
“Who is this?” he asked the bartender.
“A Darling girl, I think. The little one.”
The Darling Songbirds. Lord, it had been a while since he’d heard that name. They’d been broken up for ten years now, maybe more. The eldest, Adele Darling, was still writing – they’d almost collaborated once, but then she started writing with Kenny Chesney. Taft and she had never worked on a song together. What were the other sisters’ names? Molly, that was it, she was the rounder one, so that left Lana.
Lana Darling.
He watched her sing.
Charisma.
The real deal, she had it by the truckload. When she was singing, she transformed into something different, something electric. She’d been cute when she walked out, eccentric and kind of adorable in her plain black shirt and black jeans. But when she sang, she was beautiful. Her eyes went darker brown, smokier. Her voice seemed to hold up her spine, and her whole body sang to the crowd.
The ungrateful crowd full of sons of bitches who didn’t have the courtesy to even watch her. They were too busy texting and taking selfies. They were in a historic room, with someone in front of them making damn history itself, and they couldn’t see it.
The Songbird Sisters Page 6
