Her Summer Cowboy (5 page)

“Have you ever thought about writing that down?” he asked. He’d been a bouncer for almost year in Nashville and had talked to a lot of wannabe stars. Not everyone came to Nashville to be a singer; some of them came to be hit makers.

“Been there, done that,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“Uh…you want to hear the ugly truth?” she asked, giving him that sassy look of hers.

“Hell, yeah,” he said. Plus the longer she kept talking the less chance that he’d have to tell her about his family. His own mistakes and the past that he never could change.

“I had a development deal when I was eighteen. I mean record labels were hot to sign me because of Daddy and Gramps and Mom. They thought I must have tons of talent,” she said. “I’m not going to lie, it was a heady experience. I thought I was going to be bigger than Gramps even.”

“What happened?”

She sighed and looked down at her hands again. “They wanted me to write with emotion. I have cried more times listening to country radio than you can imagine. So I understood where they were coming from. But those events were still too close in my mind. I just couldn’t do it. I tried but it was crap and they cut me loose and I decided to put my degree to use by teaching school.”

“You ran away? That doesn’t sound like you,” he said.

“I didn’t run away,” she said. “I just took a break. I was immature and needed some distance between all that death and writing about it. But thanks for the suggestion. So you were going to tell me about your mom.”

“Oh, I see. If I push you then you’re going shut down on me?”

“Yeah, I am. I told you why I didn’t want to sing, now it’s your turn,” she said, leaning over to touch his hand. “Thanks for being sweet about that.”

He didn’t want to be sweet. He wanted to find out how the last few years had changed her. Was she still the girl—he could call her that in his thoughts—who’d done that?

“You’re welcome.”

She nodded. “Go on.”

“I’m not sure where to start. I have four brothers and I’m smack in the middle. It’s easy to get lost there in the midst of all those boys but I just always liked to fight. You weren’t wrong when you said I’m ornery. I get it from my dad. Only when I was younger I couldn’t see that.”

She crossed her legs and the hem of the skirt on her dress slipped up her thighs. His fingers tingled a little as he thought of touching her again. His mind went blank and he couldn’t remember what he was talking about. Consumed with images of caressing her thighs. She had a pair of knockout legs.

“Kind of like me when I ran away. I did run. Just didn’t want to admit I was a coward since you seem like nothing has ever frightened you.”

“That’s not true. I’ve been scared a time or two,” he admitted. Like when he’d gotten the call from Alec that Lane had been injured in Fallujah. And they weren’t sure if he was dead or alive. He’d never felt so powerless as he’d sat in his truck on the side of some highway in a state that wasn’t home waiting to hear if his brother was going to make it or not.

“Yeah, but you handled it better than me,” she said. “I can just tell. You’re a solid man. The kind that doesn’t know how to back down.”

She got distracted, hummed that little tune to herself again and then nodded and jumped up to run into the bus without another word. He watched her leave wondering what the heck that was all about. But he didn’t follow her.

Not when he was thinking about her thighs and kissing her. Remembering that loss could affect him no matter how much he roamed or how far he traveled from home. Going back wasn’t going to be easy and he had to be very careful he didn’t let Emma become a liability to him.

She popped her head back out of the trailer. “Sorry about that, wanted to jot something down. You want some carrot juice? It’s good for you.”

She was good for him, he thought. She made him feel a sense of belonging that had always eluded him.

Virginia Beach, VA

“Y
ou doing okay,
pumpkin?”

She had on her stage make-up and her performance outfit; a simple red dress with spaghetti straps and a full skirt that ended mid-thigh. She wore a pair of cowboy boots. Her hair had been pulled back in a high ponytail. She looked the part. Now she had to conquer her fears and get out on the stage.

“No.”

Gramps came over to where she was sitting in his dressing room at the amphitheater. He’d cleared the room earlier so he could have some quiet before he went out on stage. Emma knew he was the star and she should leave him be but she’d needed him and as always he’d been there for her.

Wrapping his arms around her shoulders, he gave her one of his bear hugs and she knew that she’d be fine. She was still nervous, still unsure if she could get through the duet he had planned for her without breaking down. But she’d do it.

“Tonight when we sing together it’ll just be you and me,” he said. “We’ll have a spotlight on us and you won’t be able to see anyone but me. It’ll be like when we sing at home.”

She smiled at him. “Except that the band will be backing us up and your fans will be listening in.”

“Exactly. It gives me a buzz every single time I step out there. You used to get it too, remember?”

“I do remember, Gramps, but it feels like it was a long time ago.”

“For me too,” he said. He sat down on the leather couch that was provided in his dressing room, picked up his guitar. The old battered one that the roadies didn’t tune or have ready for him when he went on stage. He strummed his fingers over the strings and then looked at her.

“What’s that tune you’ve been humming?” he asked.

“Just a G chord progression,” she said, humming it then.

He picked it out and took it further. Gramps had a gift for writing melodies and always would. He wasn’t going to see much loss of income when he stopped touring, since he owned a lot of songs that were still performed by today’s artists. His latest hit was only a few years old.

“You thinking about writing again?” he asked.

“Don’t push. I’m not any good at it. I just had that snippet,” she said.

“Ah, darlin’, I wasn’t pushing. Just askin’.”

“Don’t go all south Georgia on me,” she said. “I’m not going to let you push me anymore than you already have.”

“Well is that all the thanks I get?” he said. “This is the summer vacation of a lifetime.”

She got up and went over to him, bent down and kissed the top of his head. “Thank you. I feel better now.”

He nodded. “Everyone gets nervous.”

“Even you?”

“Ah, pumpkin, especially me. And now that I’m older and wiser,” he paused to wink at her, “I had to find alternate ways to get calm before a show.”

He meant without drugs or alcohol. She knew he’d gone cold turkey after her dad died. That kind of death ripples through a family or rather it had through theirs. She swallowed as she tried to deal with those emotions. She wanted to shove them back down as she always did, but for the first time, she felt a spark of anger toward her father for leaving her that way.

But then she remembered almost a second later how much he’d struggled and knew the inner battle he’d been fighting hadn’t been one in which a daughter could help.

Gramps was watching her and she shook it off. The feelings didn’t leave but sort of lingered inside of her. She smiled at him.

“Carrot juice?” she asked.

He threw his head back and laughed. And she felt that love that came from Gramps. “Of course.”

She knew he didn’t like the juice and only drank it for her.

There was a knock on the door. “Alan? We’ve got an issue.”

“Come in.”

Hudson looked like the badass bodyguard he was tonight. Gone was the laconic cowboy who’d been sitting near the entrance to the tour buses in his place was the bouncer. He wore jeans, a tour t-shirt that stretched across his muscles, chest and arms. She was staring but didn’t care.

She’d seldom seen a man in real life with those kinds of muscles. Sure there were the fitness nuts at the gym but they didn’t look like Hudson.

He glanced over at her, raised on eyebrow in question. She wasn’t sure what he wanted to know from her but she nodded.

“What’s up?”

“There’s a Candice Riley who is demanding I let her back stage. Says she’s a close personal friend of yours,” Hudson said. “I left her in the venue security office. But she’s not on your list and you haven’t mentioned her…”

“I don’t know her,” Gramps said. “Probably just an overzealous fan.”

“Probably. Wanted to check before I booted her.”

“Thanks,” Gramps said.

Emma hadn’t really thought he’d need a bodyguard. Had been imagining after listening to the two of them talk at night before they went to sleep when Hudson switched off driving with one of the roadies and joined them. She’d come to see that the two men were friends. But she guessed that her grandfather did need protecting.

She wasn’t too worried about a woman who wanted to meet her grandfather. But she was still concerned. Hudson left to go back to his job and she found her nerves about performing had dissipated. Hudson was big and strong and he had their back.

The least she could do was help Gramps put on a show that would wow the crowd and give them what they’d come here for. Something she was realizing for the first time because she suspected it was at the heart of the reason she’d agreed to come along.

Those memories of better days and good times. That’s what old songs did.

*

Emma showered and
changed into a pair of faded jeans and a tee shirt she’d found in Gramps’ closet that had her dad’s face complete with nineties hair and some concert dates on the back of it. She went out to the living area of the bus. Gramps, two of his band members and the driver were all sitting around the table eating junk food, drinking and playing cards.

She scanned the cans—a gut instinct—and noticed that everyone had a can of soda. “Where’s the juice I made?”

“Drank it all, pumpkin,” Gramps said. “I guess you’ll have to get to work making us some more when we stop tomorrow.”

She narrowed her eyes at him but he just smiled at her. She suspected that he didn’t always drink it all but when she checked the fridge she saw it was all gone. She grabbed herself a bottle of water and then sat down next to the table without really listening to what was going on with the men. They were in Virginia Beach and tonight’s performance had been a challenge.

“I’m going out for a walk,” she said. “What time are we pulling out?”

“Two,” the driver said.

She slipped on a pair of flip-flops she’d left by the door of the bus and then stepped outside. It was warm but not hot tonight and she saw the roadies working to get all the gear loaded up. That tune that had been rattling around her brain stretched out for another couple of bars. She hummed it and then pulled out her smartphone and opened up an app she’d downloaded earlier that would record music.

You’re a solid man. The kind that doesn’t know how to back down. Wandering across the country, searching from town to town.

Those lyrics kept circling in her mind. She hummed in a few bars, watching as it translated the music on bars with the notes. She liked it and hummed a little bit more but then was stuck for a way forward. She heard the sound of a horse braying and walked toward it.

Tasha had done her bit with Hudson tonight but Emma knew she was going to have to step up and have a turn. And to be honest after performing tonight the horse didn’t scare her as much as it had before.

But the cowboy who stood silhouetted by the big parking lot security light did. It wasn’t that he was menacing in any way. It was that he made her think of things that she hadn’t in years. Think of the words to the music she’d thought she’d understood in an entirely new way.

She finally got that when she’d been eighteen she hadn’t been as ‘adult’ as she’d thought she was. Because tonight while singing one of Gramps’ songs about love she started to really feel the keen longing.

A smart woman would keep on walking. But she didn’t feel like being smart tonight. She felt a little reckless and a lot dangerous and she was tired of pretending that Hudson didn’t get to her a hundred ways from Sunday.

“Hey,” she said softly as she approached the horse trailer and Hudson.

“Hey, there. Good show tonight,” he said. “For someone who didn’t want to get up on the stage you did well.”

“Thanks. I’m was sort of freaking out up until the moment that Gramps looked at me and it was my turn to sing.”

“Alan has a way of making you feel like whatever you’re doing you are the best at it,” Hudson said.

“Is that what he did for you?” she asked. She still wasn’t entirely clear how the two men had become friends.

“Sort of. He used to come to the bar to perform and listen to acts but in between sets he came outside and we just started chatting. Seems he has some kin from Montana and we talked a bit about that,” Hudson said. “I think because I treated him like a dude and not someone famous he felt comfortable.”

She could see that. There was something about Hudson that was solid just like Gramps. He was grooming one of the horses and getting it ready to travel. She watched him, enjoying the way he moved. There was no hesitation in anything he did. He bent down to toss the brush in a beat-up leather bag.