COPYRIGHT 2015 WINTER RENSHAW
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or, if an actual place, are used fictitiously and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
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Editing by The Passionate Proofreader
For my mom, for being the best personal cheerleader in the whole wide world.
Winter
Never Kiss a Stranger
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Country music god Beau Mason has just announced his retirement from the business at age 30, and I’ve just scored the interview of a lifetime. My network is flying me to Kentucky for his final interview, and at his request, I’ll be spending a few days with him at his ranch.
I should be thrilled. But I’m not.
Beau and I have a history, and I haven’t seen him since he broke my heart at the tender age of 18. I don’t think I can do this. I don’t think I can see him again.
But I don’t have a choice. My career – my promotion – my dignity. Everything rests on this one interview with the man who turns me into liquid desire and corded steel resentment all at the same time.
It’s just a few days, right? What’s the worst that could happen?
YouTube link
Budapest by George Ezra
Faithfully (Journey Cover) by Matt the Electrician
Laundry Room by The Avett Brothers
Bella Donna by The Avett Brothers
Home by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes
Hold On by Alabama Shakes
Each Coming Night by Iron and Wine
Fire Meet Gasoline by Sia
Trapeze Swinger by Iron and Wine
Tree by the River by Iron and Wine
Down in the Valley by The Head and the Heart
Who You Love by Katy Perry and John Mayer
ONE – COCO
TWO – COCO
THREE – BEAU
FOUR – COCO
FIVE – COCO
SIX – BEAU
SEVEN – COCO
EIGHT – COCO
NINE – BEAU
TEN – BEAU
ELEVEN – COCO
TWELVE – COCO
THIRTEEN – BEAU
FOURTEEN – COCO
FIFTEEN – BEAU
SIXTEEN – COCO
SEVENTEEN – BEAU
EIGHTEEN – COCO
NINETEEN – BEAU
TWENTY – COCO
TWENTY-ONE – BEAU
TWENTY-TWO – COCO
TWENTY-THREE – COCO
TWENTY-FOUR – BEAU
TWENTY-FIVE – COCO
TWENTY-SIX – COCO
TWENTY-SEVEN – BEAU
TWENTY-EIGHT – COCO
TWENTY-NINE – BEAU
THIRTY – COCO
THIRTY-ONE – BEAU
THIRTY-TWO – BEAU
THIRTY-THREE – COCO
THIRTY-FOUR – BEAU
EPILOGUE – DAKOTA
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
THANK YOU
PREVIEW – DARK PARADISE (Out by Summer 2015)
I wasn’t her, and I hadn’t been her since the day I left Kentucky.
“Name please?” the airline agent asked over the phone as I booked my flight home. I’d have asked my intern to book it for me, but my producer had her knee-deep in research on some upcoming fluff piece on fitness in the workplace.
“Coco – sorry, Dakota,” I said, running my fingers over the plastic raised imprint of my name as it was printed on my credit card. “Last name is Bissett.”
“Please read off the numbers on the front of your card, ma’am,” she said.
I rattled them off one by one, speaking slowly as if it could possibly prolong the inevitable. I didn’t want to go home. I fought long and hard with Harrison about it, but any fight with him was a losing battle.
I scribbled my confirmation number along with the flight details on thick cardstock with my monogram across the top; a “B” in the middle that stood for Bissett flanked by a “C” on the left for Coco and an “E” on the right for Elizabeth.
“You’re doing the right thing, Coco.” Harrison christened me with the nickname “Coco” when I landed my first news-anchoring job. At the time, it was nothing more than a nickname, but over the years it had morphed into a brand. Coco Bissett was officially a household name.
Harrison slipped his hands over my shoulders and rubbed the knots out as if he were still my doting husband. We’d been divorced for two years now, but the lines between us remained hazy and blurred.
“As your producer and your biggest fan, I can assure you this is going to take you to unimaginable heights. This interview will secure your chair on the weekday show,” he said, his words flavored with ambition.
“I know,” I breathed. No one ever aspired to be a weekend anchor. The big stories and the interviews worth watching happened on the weekdays.
“They’re so close to making their decision.” Harrison released my shoulders from his grip and pinched his fingers together. The network had been quietly discussing my promotion for months, but Harrison insisted I needed to prove myself a little more before they were willing to replace America’s sweetheart, Susannah Jethro, with a fresh face like myself. “Do you know how many people were scrambling to land Beau Mason’s final interview? And he handpicked you. You of all people. I don’t understand your reluctance, Coco. I really don’t.”
Perhaps it was because I neglected to tell him that Beau and I had a history. One that spanned years. A past defined by young love, dashed hopes, and scar-tissue pain. We were forever tied by an invisible thread and marked by an unrequited kind of love that refused to fade away no matter how many years had passed.
Beau Mason’s name was a permanent tattoo across my heart, and I hated the hell out of that fact.
“Oh, forgot to tell you that I won’t be joining you on this trip,” he added. “I’ve got nothing but meetings all next week, and since you dragged your feet on doing this interview, I can’t reschedule any of them.”
I released the breath I’d been harboring. Harrison usually accompanied me on all my work trips, but I’d been trying to figure out how to explain why I didn’t want him to come this time.
“I think I’ll survive,” I assured him. Only a small part of me knew I was really trying to convince myself.
In every dark night and every lonely moment, my heart ached for Beau and what might have been. My thoughts scattered in every direction all day long, but in the still, quiet moments, they always went to him and that burning August night and the months that followed when everything changed.
“Just so we’re clear,” Harrison said, “it’s four full days on Beau’s ranch, just the two of you. That was his requirement. You’ll get your quotes and material. And I’ll work on setting up a time for the crew to go out and film some stills and get some shots of the farm before you do your final sit-down interview.”
“Two interviews?”
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p; “Yes.” Harrison’s brows scrunched as he studied my uneasiness, as if he couldn’t understand it. “His final show is at Madison Square Garden in two weeks. He’ll fly into town and do a sit-down with you the night before. We’ll use clips and footage from his farm as segments in your special.”
My hand trembled slightly as I gripped my coffee mug and brought it to my lips. I’d interviewed hundreds of people over the span of my career. None of them had that kind of effect of me. The hot liquid scalded my mouth, though I barely felt it, and the second it reached my stomach, it wanted to turn around and come right back up.
“I’d like to review your questions before you leave. Make sure you’re asking the right ones. His fans want to know why he’s walking away from all this. There’s got to be a reason. Until now, he’s never given one. It’ll be your job to extract that reason from him and share it with the rest of America.” He hovered over me, speaking fast. Of all the interviews he’d booked for me, I’d never seen him so doubtful of my journalistic prowess until now. “Promise me you’re not going to back out of this.”
“You got your way, Harrison. I’m doing the interview. We don’t need to keep talking about it.” My words were bitter as I pulled my chair back up to my desk to turn my attention to my emails.
“You’re going to thank me someday.” He backed away, letting his hands fall to the sides of his tailored navy suit. Harrison always dressed for the job he wanted, and, in his case, he wanted to be a network executive so bad he could taste it.
The early afternoon sun passing through my office window set his sapphire eyes ablaze, and he wore the newly minted flints of salt and pepper on his temples well. It wasn’t fair how well men like him aged. He was a walking, talking, Ralph Lauren billboard complete with an old money pedigree and two Ivy League degrees adorning his office walls.
“See you at home,” I called after him, eyes still focused on my computer screen. I felt him watch me for a second before he left my office.
I shut my office door before pulling my phone out and calling my sister.
“Addison,” I breathed desperately into the phone the second she answered.
“What’s up?”
“I can’t do this.”
“Can’t do what?”
“Go back to Darlington.”
“Why would you be going back to Darlington?” I couldn’t see Addison, but I could sure as hell picture the scrunch-nosed face she was probably making. She hated going home just as much as I did.
“I have to interview him,” I said, attempting to swallow the balled lump of fear that had lodged itself in my throat the moment I booked my airline tickets. “Beau.”
Addison was quiet. Too quiet. “You said his name. I’m just shocked. You never say his name. You haven’t said his name in…”
“Ten years. You see why I can’t do this?”
“Coco.” Addison’s voice firmed up, and I could sense a speech coming on. “You remember what you told me a few years ago? After Kyle and I broke up? You told me I could do hard things. And you told me you would always have my back. Now it’s my turn to tell you. You can do hard things.”
I drew in a deep breath, summoning the inner strength that had gotten me through the greater part of my almost twenty-nine years. The mere mention of Beau had a tendency to dissolve it like rain on chalk.
My entire life had been hard. Hardness was nothing new. It had shaped and molded me into the woman I was destined to become. It tugged and gnawed and gnashed its teeth, nipping at my feet as I scaled mountains few people had the audacity to climb.
“You’ve interviewed plenty of famous people,” Addison said. “He’s just one more.”
It wasn’t that. His fame didn’t rattle me or intimidate me or make me place him on a pedestal of any sort. He was Beaumont Mason. My high school sweetheart. My first love. He’d been inside me in every sense of the word. My heart was permanently branded by the promises we’d made to each other when we were too young to know any better.
“You wouldn’t understand.” I shouldered my phone and gathered paperwork from my desk, organizing it into neat little stacks and darting pens back into the pen cup. Cluttered desks hindered my thought process.
“Try me,” Addison said.
I opened my mouth to speak, but the words got stuck. She didn’t know everything. She was a couple years younger than me – too young to remember how things with Beau and me went down in the end. And there were things she didn’t know. Things I’d sheltered her from. Things I neglected to mention to her because I couldn’t stomach the chance that she might look at me with anything other than pride. I never cared whether or not my mother was proud, but having a little sister who thought the world of me was something worth protecting. “I have to get back to work. I’m flying out tomorrow, so I guess I’ll get a hold of you when I get back.”
“I’m a phone call away if you need me.” Addison seemed to linger a bit, and I supposed she wasn’t used to me needing her. It had been the other way around our whole lives.
My fingers twitched as I ended the call.
Pull yourself together, Coco. Now.
I’d imagined running into him again a million times, each scenario different from the one before. I already knew what I wanted to say to him. How I wanted to be perceived. The way I wanted him to feel about me. But they all had one thing in common – they were just fantasies I’d dreamed up.
This was real. This was really happening. And there was no way to stop it.
“Right this way, Ms. Bissett,” a stocky older man with tufts of white hair sticking out from his Stetson hat led me down a dark corridor. A faded, black Beau Mason ‘Young and Reckless 2012 Tour’ t-shirt hugged his bulbous belly, and he waddled a bit as he walked. He stopped short at the third door on the left. “Here it is.”
His hand dove deep into the front pocket of his tight jeans as he fished out some keys. He proceeded to try several before finding a match.
“They never mark these things right,” he said with a cordial laugh, though I could hardly hear him above the blood-rushed thumping of my heart in my ears.
Echoes of discordant warm-up music from the stage trailed down from the dressing rooms, and various sound and stage crew members rushed up and down the hall with arms full of wires and cords and clipboards and headphones.
“You’re welcome to wait in here during the show.” He turned and offered me a kind smile, lifting the apples of his rosy cheeks in the process. His name was Mickey, and he had been Beau’s tour manager for the last decade. My heart tightened at the realization that Mickey probably knew Beau better than I ever did. “Or I can get you a backstage pass if you want to watch the show from stage right?”
“Oh, um,” I said, tugging on my bottom lip before forcing a polite, professional smile on my face. I could sit in his dressing room and go over my list of questions and give myself the silent pep talk I so desperately needed. Or I could go and see him before he had a chance to see me. I gripped the chain strap of my quilted Chanel handbag and lifted my chin up, overriding the anxious tone of my voice with faux, camera-worthy excitement. “Maybe I’ll watch a couple songs and then come back here and prep for the first part of my interview?”
Mickey dug deep into a back pocket and whipped out a VIP backstage pass and handed it to me. “You sure don’t look like you’re from Darlington.”
“Pardon me?” My fingers reached for the pearl necklace that circled my neck, grazing the round, smooth beads slowly.
“Beau said you were an old friend of his from back home,” he said, giving me a friendly once over. “You’re fancier than I expected.”
I wanted to ask if Beau spoke of me much or what kinds of things he’d told Mickey about me, but I swallowed my curiosity and instead pretended like I didn’t care. I didn’t want him going back to Beau and telling him I cared.
“I live in New York now.” I offered a humble smile, running my hand over the length of a cocoa-colored wave that draped my left shoulder.
“I haven’t lived in Darlington for ten years.”
“I see that.” Mickey’s eyes dropped to my bag before he turned to leave. “Just follow the signs to stage right. Ask around if you get lost. Plenty of people here can help you.”
The door slammed behind him, leaving me alone amongst all of Beau’s personal effects. A garment rack chock full of pressed blue jeans and button downs in every imaginable shade. A stage mirror surrounded by round lights illuminating an empty makeup chair. A red cooler full of beer and bottled water swimming in ice. A pair of boots rested underneath a counter, and lined up by the sink was a myriad of various toiletries, one of which happened to be a bottle of Yves Saint Laurent cologne. The very same kind he wore in high school.
My eyes stayed glued to the door as I walked backward toward the cologne, unable to resist the urge to give it one innocent sniff. I uncapped the bottle and quickly brought it just under my nose, inhaling a generous lungful of ginger, bergamot, and musky woods. Pure unbridled nostalgia. Closing my eyes, I was transported to that last summer we shared under the stars ten years back.
“I’m never going to love anyone the way I love you,” Beau had said as I curled up into his arms. We’d found a secluded spot just outside Darlington with a winding drive that led up the side of a small mountain. Houses would be built there eventually, but at the time, it was nothing but a cul-de-sac on top of a hill surrounded by a thicket of yet-to-be-demolished evergreens. We’d slow danced all night in front of the headlights of his blue Ford truck, whispering promises and leaving everything else unspoken. “And never is a promise. You know that, Dakota? Where we come from, never is a promise.”
Time had a way of standing still when I was young, but all the endless summers in the world couldn’t prolong the inevitable. Walking away from a full ride scholarship to Kentucky wasn’t an option for me, and Beau had just been offered a recording contract by some boutique record label in Nashville.
Never is a Promise Page 1
