The Songbird Sisters

by Rachael Herron

  Lots of people – maybe most – would call that a success.

  But she’d wanted one thing: to sing her songs in front of people who appreciated them enough to pay her enough to make her way in the world.

  She’d never quite made it.

  She’d really, really thought she would. Deep in her bones, she’d always known she would. Now she’d quit.

  With her toe, Lana pushed the swing. It gave a creak as loud as the one coming from her soul.

  She was never going to make it.

  That was just a fact.

  She was just going to have to get used to it.

  The female singer stopped, and a smattering of applause rose through the night.

  A man started singing.

  From the first notes, she knew.

  “Blame Me.”

  Her best song, the one she’d never claim as her own in this town.

  Moving as quietly as she could, she ran down the path to the side of the building. The path continued down to the street, but from here she could see in through the window placed high above the rear of the bar. How many hours had she and her sisters sat outside, peering in at the cowboys dancing below?

  There he was on stage. Her song came from Taft Hill’s throat.

  His perfect, long, corded, sexy-as-hell throat.

  The crowd in the room that she’d heard chattering at low volume all through the last singer’s song was completely silent. Totally still. They stood at attention, all faces turned toward Taft. He was below Lana’s gaze, and she could only see the side of him – from his cowboy hat to that gorgeous stubbled jaw, down the planes of his body and over his red guitar, to his good-looking jeans-clad ass all the way down to his right cowboy boot. Even though she couldn’t see his face, she could see the expression of each audience member.

  Some people wiped at tears. It wasn’t limited to the women. An old man wearing a blue handkerchief around his throat unknotted it and dabbed at his eyes. Others moved their lips to the chorus. They actually swayed a little, back and forth, in that unconscious way crowds sometimes did.

  For a moment, Lana willed him with all the force of her mind to turn his head, to look at her over his shoulder. Over here. See me.

  He didn’t. She remained alone.

  It wasn’t so much that it hurt.

  It was just kind of … empty. Her chest was hollow, and her feet were cold. She pressed her thumb against her tattoo.

  Two teenagers whooped as they ran past the saloon, and a patrol car idled in front of the café while the officer inside gossiped with one of the Homeless Petes. Darling Bay was just as it had always been.

  And so was Lana.

  Chapter Twenty

  Monday morning, Taft appeared where he’d been told to, at the base of the rose garden. Standing slightly uphill was the U-shaped hotel. Rooms stood to the left, to the right, and in front of him – twelve in total. Every square foot represented a reason for him to stay in town. It felt good, reporting for duty.

  He hadn’t seen Lana all weekend. The disappointment had been sharp.

  Jake Ballard greeted Taft with a hug, a California thing that never failed to surprise him. Not that men didn’t hug in Tennessee, they did. But that was brother to brother or good friend to another. Other men did the friendly guy handshake, the lean-in-tap-the-shoulder thing. An almost-hug.

  Jake came at him like a running back, as if they were the oldest and best of friends.

  “What’s up, bro? Sounded great last night, just great.” He grinned. “I brought a girl with me and told her you were on my work crew.”

  Taft raised his eyebrows in appreciation. “Good move.”

  “It was, it turns out.” Jake rubbed his eyes. “How about you? Have you met any of our fair Darling Bay girls yet?”

  Before he could say that yes he had – only he’d met her in Nashville – footsteps came up the path.

  “Good morning!” Lana led a small parade along the side of the hotel, followed by two men and a woman. She could have been surrounded by a thousand people, though, and Taft wouldn’t have been able to see anyone but her. A woman had never looked so sexy in overalls in the history of the western world. She wore another of her ubiquitous black shirts, nice and tight. Even the shapeless jeans material of the overalls couldn’t hide the curve of her hip, and the T-shirt left her small biceps on display. As she spoke to the woman, she pointed up the hill. Taft could see her breast’s curve where the overalls opened. He was probably the one who should be paying Jake for the honor of being on this crew.

  Lana finally looked at him. “Hey.” Her voice was soft, her eyes guarded. Good Lord, had he been so wrong about the kiss in the arbor? He’d really thought she’d been there with him. Until she’d bolted, that was.

  Then she smiled, and at the exact same time, the fog burned through behind her, dropping a shaft of sunlight onto the top of her head. Taft realized that no, she didn’t appear to be mad, and yes, he probably could rebuild the whole hotel by himself. By midnight. If she wanted him to.

  “Taft, this is Sturgeon and Bass.” She pointed to two young guys who looked alike enough to be twins, both wearing Giants baseball caps.

  “Those aren’t our real names,” said Sturgeon.

  “We fish,” said Bass.

  “Are you brothers?”

  “Nah,” they both said at the same time. “We get that a lot.”

  “And this is Socal,” Lana continued, gesturing to a woman with short brown hair.

  “They call you that because you’re from southern California?”

  The woman – as tall and angular as a slide rule – said, “Where I was conceived, actually. They call me that because it’s my real name.”

  Hippie Californians.

  Socal went on, “Nice to meet you. I admire you as a musician very much. I’m sorry, though, I’m not going to trust you on a job site with me until you prove your worth as a builder.”

  “Annndd,” Jake broke in. “We should tell you that Socal came without a filter. She’ll always tell you exactly what she thinks.”

  “I appreciate that.”

  Socal said, “I also think that as a performer, you’re probably well trained in pleasing people by appearing, chameleon-like, to be able to charm anyone. I will also distrust that until I get to know you more.” She gave a bright smile.

  “All right, then!” Taft had no idea what else to say.

  Lana, at least, looked as awkward as he felt. “Okay. Jake and I talked on Sunday afternoon. We’re going to start with the roof and work our way down. Since all the rooms are connected, it should be pretty smooth sailing.”

  Jake snorted, and his crew outright laughed. Taft kept his mouth still, but he knew that nothing – ever – went smoothly in construction.

  “What?”

  Jake said, “What I meant was that was the easiest way to do it. I don’t think any of this is going be as easy as we want it to be.”

  “It never is,” said Sturgeon. Or maybe it was Bass.

  Lana nodded. “Well, fingers crossed. Jake, can you put the crew to work? Then you and I can walk through the next steps?” She looked at Taft as she said it, and there was just something so damn sexy about the way she said the word crew.

  He was on her crew.

  How many crews had Taft had working for him over the years? Every tour, every album … Crews worked for him, which got pretty boring after a while, if he was honest with himself. Taft was handled and managed every step of the way. He didn’t even have to spend three hours in hair and make-up like the women of country did. He put on the clothes, he played his songs, he went to either the hotel or the bus to sleep afterwards.

  Now he was on the crew.

  And he wanted to sleep with the boss.

  Taft and Socal were assigned to roof removal, while the Indistinguishable Fish Men were tasked with hauling everything out of the hotel rooms that could be moved. He supposed it would be a dick move to ask to be reassigned to grunt labor at sea level
, since the only reason he wanted to be down and not up was so he’d have more of a chance to interact with Lana.

  Hell, though, it was a beautiful day. He was working outside. Just like a normal man. As he waited for Socal to climb the ladder so he could follow, he said, “This is great. Can’t wait to do this. I haven’t ripped off a roof in …” he paused to make it sound like he had to count through years even though he knew exactly how long it had been. “Six years.” Two years before Palmer had died. They’d redone the old barn together.

  “You better not fall off. If you do, better not blame me.” Her feet disappeared. Taft hurried to catch up.

  Once on the roof, he said, “What if you push me? Then can I blame you?”

  She gave that bright smile again. “Maybe you’ll find out!”

  “Your tone is ominous.”

  “Let’s call it cautious.”

  They worked for three hours and took a lunch break. Molly Darling – whom he’d spoken to briefly at the café over the weekend – brought up bagged lunches. They ate on the shallow steps leading to room five.

  “How’s he doing?” Jake asked Socal.

  Socal narrowed her eyes at him. “Hasn’t screwed up too bad yet.”

  “Hey, thanks,” said Taft, meaning it. It was a better compliment than the last Rolling Stone article, and that interviewer had loved him.

  Lana didn’t seem to hear it, though. Her head was turned, and he could see the back of her ear, curled like a perfect seashell. She was talking to one of the fish guys about what he’d done over the weekend.

  He didn’t spend each moment wishing you were walking into sight.

  Lunch was over quickly. As the afternoon wore on, the task got boring. His eyes actually drifted shut at one point, which didn’t make a hell of a lot of sense since every muscle in his body burned with overuse. He hadn’t done this much crouching and bending since his last CrossFit challenge. Yeah, he worked out, but this wasn’t a workout as much as it was endurance training. He stripped off his shirt by two and accepted the sunscreen Socal pulled out of her tool belt. His borrowed tool belt was an obviously old one, probably discarded because of an upgrade by Jake, and it didn’t fit him right. His own belt – still resting in the master closet at home – fit his waist, bent at the right places. Like leather shoes, a man grew into his tool belt. Taft stopped working to send an email to Sully to have someone FedEx it out. He should have thought of that earlier, over the weekend.

  “Don’t text while you’re up here!” Socal’s voice was a shriek.

  “You worry too much.” It was the sixth time she’d corrected him since lunch. First, she thought he was being too careless prying up the shingles at the edge. She’d said he wasn’t being careful enough to remove the roof jacks. True, he had lifted too big a course of shingles all the way up, and the piece had slid off whole. It could have been really dangerous. He’d felt as stupid as hell.

  Her yelling at him constantly wasn’t making him work any safer, though. “I’m fine. I can handle standing and looking at my phone at the same time.”

  Then, with an ominous creak followed by a thunk that travelled up his body, he dropped down, both his legs going through the roof. He was stuck. Right up to his waist. Hanging like a baby in one of those snuggly things.

  From somewhere below him, Lana’s voice floated up. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  It wasn’t funny. There was nothing funny about it. Everyone else was howling, including Taft himself, but Lana wasn’t laughing. No way.

  Taft was fine. It had taken the firefighters from Truck One less than five minutes to free him. The only damaged parts of him were a bloody hand from where he’d scraped it on a roof jack and a scratch that ran right down his side.

  Because he hadn’t been wearing a shirt up there.

  No, he’d just been up there sweating in the sun, wiping his forehead with the back of his wrist. Once he’d lifted a water bottle high up and squirted a long stream of water into his mouth from a foot away or more.

  It had been so intensely sexy – his body was taking so much pleasure in the primal urge to drink – that Lana had had to look away. Not that she would have ever admitted she was watching in the first place.

  Now that he was safely on the ground, she pretended she’d barely known he was up there. She certainly didn’t act as if her whole body had turned to jelly as soon as she’d heard him fall. “What happened?”

  He mopped at the back of his neck with his T-shirt. “I’m sorry. That won’t happen again.”

  “He was looking at his phone,” said Socal.

  “Seriously?” Jake looked pissed, his eyebrows drawn together.

  “That’s not why I fell through.”

  This was Lana’s site. These people were her responsibility. “Why the hell were you looking at your phone?”

  “I needed my tool belt. I was asking my manager to send it out, overnight.”

  There was a pause.

  Jake nodded. “Well, that’s okay, then. Don’t do it again.”

  “I won’t. I’m sorry.” Taft said this to Lana, but she turned away. Her hands were still shaking – they had been since she’d heard him fall through.

  For the rest of the afternoon, Lana helped the fish boys load the last of the movable storage units with the salvageable pieces of furniture, of which there had been dishearteningly few. The entire dumpster was full, and they’d taken to storing next week’s trash behind room twelve. She was going to be able to fill maybe two completed rooms with original stuff. The rest she’d have to buy. Today had been the first day, and she already knew her money wasn’t going to last nearly as long as she’d hoped it would. Luckily, “Blame Me” was still playing out of the open windows of every car that drove down Main, so hopefully her bank account would get another good cash infusion soon.

  “That’s everything?” She waited to close the door of room two until everyone had nodded. Yes, it was Darling Bay, but Jake had asked for a room that had a working, lockable door in which to store their tools every night.

  “That’s it!” Jake raised his arms above his head. “Time for a beer. First day on the job, so I’m buying. Who’s coming?”

  “Me! Me!” The fish boys jiggled up and down like antsy six-year-olds instead of the just-twenty-one they actually were. They’d proved to be hard workers who didn’t seem to have a single problem with being told what to do all day.

  “Yep.” Socal attached her hard hat to her belt with a carabiner. “Hell, yep.”

  Taft was last to answer. “Sounds good.” He looked at her.

  Oh, Lana was last to answer. “Um …”

  “Come have a drink with us.” Taft tugged on his now filthy T-shirt and jammed his wide hands through his hair.

  If she went to drink with that man, she’d end up back in bed with him.

  While it sounded like an incredible idea, one any sane single woman would run with, she wouldn’t. She couldn’t.

  Everyone was already trooping down the hill to the saloon. No one but Taft was left to hear her decline. “No, thank you. Not tonight.” She didn’t offer an excuse. Let that be enough.

  “You want to write a song later? I’d shower first.” He tucked a thumb in a belt loop. Lana’s knees went warm and wobbly.

  “No, thank you. Not tonight.”

  He smiled that 400-watt grin at her. “You have a good night, then, okay?” He touched the brim of his ball cap like it was a cowboy hat.

  She watched him walk away, the back of his T-shirt broad and somehow as dirty as the front.

  What if he’d gone all the way through instead of landing on the attic floor? What if he’d broken a leg? Or worse, his neck.

  Or worst of all, what if he’d died?

  Lana sat on the same step he’d been on while the firefighters had been checking him out.

  She’d give herself a month.

  One month of working with him. She wouldn’t do anything else with him.
Not one thing. Nothing in town, nothing at the bar. She wouldn’t let her sisters talk her into doing a small concert with them (it would be just like Adele to set up something like that). If she saw him at the café, she’d head to the bagel shop.

  She knew herself too well. She’d already had (strange, weird, odd) sex with the man once. Just seeing him did something to her. It made her feel like she was riding on top of a speeding freight train, trying to slow it down by pulling on useless reins.

  One month.

  Then she’d reassess.

  Thank God she had a vibrator. Her Hitachi Magic Wand with its plug-in power would be her saving grace.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Taft unlocked the front door and ushered Jake inside. “It’s unassuming from the front, right?”

  Jake looked at him suspiciously. “Yeah, I know what view this row of houses has – holy crap. You lucky bastard.” Jake stopped dead in the middle of the living room. Taft grinned.

  “Packs a punch, doesn’t it?”

  “You lucky son of a bitch.”

  “I know.” It was luck, Taft knew that. A pure dumb streak of it, from being born to the right family.

  Jake walked to the glass window that ran from ceiling to floor. “Dude, I live on a boat, and my view isn’t this good.”

  The sun was just dropping into the ocean, the fog still a thin grey strip on the horizon. With no clouds in the sky, the blue was going directly to orange, and soon the light would be gone. To the south was a view of the far end of town and the dunes that led to the water. Directly in front, twenty yards from the edge of the house, the cliff dropped to the water. “There’s a staircase there.” Taft pointed. “Goes right down.”

  “I know.” Jake nodded. “Great make-out spot down there. I might have convinced a girl or two that it’s our local nude beach.”

  “And it’s not?”

  “Well, sometimes it is.”

  To the north, ice plant and low scrub covered the sand like a nubby green carpet. The bluffs stretched around the curve of the coast. The water was dark blue and getting darker as the sky moved into a deep orange.