But damned if he wasn’t philosophical tonight! If he wasn’t careful, he’d end up singing “Whiskey Lullaby” and weeping onto his one-of-a-kind guitar. The Cat’s Paw regulars would never let him hear the end of that.

  He did manage to introduce himself, giving the room a wry half smile as he explained how he’d taken the night off from KJ’ing over at the Rusty Spur. “So head on over there one of these days,” he told the crowd, “grab a mic, and give me the chance to clap after you sing.”

  He warmed up the crowd with some Dwight Yoakam and Merle Haggard. Ethan wrote his own songs, but he didn’t always like to play them onstage—which, as Ruthanna had pointed out, was another big hurdle on the road to fame and fortune.

  “More like a sinkhole,” Maya had said.

  Ethan was fifteen minutes into his set, strumming a slowed-down version of “Achy Breaky Heart,” when Billy placed a beer at his feet. Ethan finished the song and sipped gratefully, and then raised the glass in a toast to the entire room. The air conditioner was battling the heat of a hundred bodies, and the stage lights made everything hotter. “Thank you, kind stranger,” he said to the crowd. “I was getting thirsty up here.”

  As he set down his drink, he shielded his eyes from the glare, trying to get a sense of who’d bought him the beer. That was when he spotted AnnieLee Keyes standing way in the back.

  She’d actually come out to hear him play. And he was pretty sure she’d coaxed Billy into delivering the brew.

  When Ethan straightened back up, he’d forgotten what he’d planned to sing next. He could feel her eyes on him now, and the hand on the neck of his guitar grew sweaty. Had he played “Good Hearted Woman” yet? What about “Smoky Mountain Rain”?

  He strummed the opening chords to “Good Hearted Woman,” but he stopped before he got to the first verse. Adrenaline pulsed in his fingertips. He couldn’t understand why she made him feel this way, and he didn’t particularly enjoy it, either.

  But if there was a silver lining to his present discomfort, it was this: his nerves couldn’t get worse. So why worry about playing covers?

  “Screw it,” he said to the room. “I’ve got a few of my own songs to sing for you tonight.”

  When he was done playing, the crowd clapped like crazy, and over the sound of their applause came a piercing wolf whistle. Ethan didn’t have to look to know who it was coming from. He waved to the room in thanks, turned off the mic, placed his guitar in its case, and then headed straight for AnnieLee Keyes.

  But by the time Ethan got to the front of the bar, she was gone.

  Chapter

  29

  AnnieLee was already halfway down the street by the time Ethan Blake stepped off the stage. She hadn’t even meant to run, but her legs had carried her like he was someone to be afraid of.

  It was ridiculous—Ethan had never been anything but a gentleman to her. He was a great guitar player, too, and he had a rich tenor voice that could hit the high lonesome notes with ease. She felt bad she hadn’t stuck around to tell him so.

  You’ll let him know the next time you see him, she told herself as she unlocked the door to her motel room. And you’ll apologize for being such a jumpy little freak.

  She tossed her sweatshirt onto the ugly chenille bedspread and went into the bathroom to turn on the shower. The water came out in a tepid, rust-colored trickle. She undressed the rest of the way and stepped into the shower, unwrapping a thin rectangle of motel soap and lathering it up into lemon-scented bubbles.

  “You spent too much time in low-down places,” she sang. “You up and forgot all your social graces.”

  Then she laughed at herself because the rhyme ripped off Garth Brooks’s thirty-year-old hit. And anyway, wouldn’t Ethan Blake forgive her for her imperfect manners when her songs were playing from every car radio and earbud in the free world?

  Oh, she thought, squeezing her eyes shut, if only. If only.

  AnnieLee was working out better lyrics and shampooing her hair when the first blow came.

  A fist she didn’t even see collided with her chest with a wet thud. The shock was greater than the pain at first. Her knees buckled and she ducked down into the tub, hiding behind the shower curtain. She couldn’t see her attacker, but she knew he couldn’t see her, either, so she slid-scrambled to the other end of the tub and rocketed out.

  She felt someone grab at her as she ran, but she was slippery with soap and he couldn’t hold on. In another four steps she’d made it into the bedroom. She meant to grab her sweatshirt and run outside half naked—

  But she couldn’t because there was someone else waiting for her.

  He’d been sitting on the bed, but he stood up as she came running into the room, long hair streaming, soap in her eyes. She let out a shriek as the man behind her grabbed her hair to hold her head back, and the one who’d been waiting stepped forward and punched her in the stomach.

  She wanted to scream but she couldn’t get enough air into her lungs. She twisted sideways, then doubled over. The man let go of her hair, and she fell on all fours, gasping.

  She stayed down, covering her head with her arms and trying to make herself as small as possible as the men rained blows down on her shivering body. Every strike made a flash of light flare behind her eyes, and her ears started ringing.

  She tried inching toward the bed because she could see her backpack peeking out from underneath the dust ruffle, and she knew the gun was in one of its pockets. She was reaching out for the strap when a boot to her ribs knocked her back toward the bathroom.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” a voice growled.

  For a moment, she didn’t move. The pain was almost overwhelming. But then she dug her fingernails into the carpet and popped her hips up like she was taking off from the starting block, and she exploded toward the door. She was halfway to it when one of the men grabbed her around the waist, and she could feel his teeth as he bit her on the back like an animal. She cried out as the other man shouted, “Shut up! Shut the hell up!”

  “It’s your own fault for running,” hissed the one who’d bit her, who still had her around the waist. “You know how this works.”

  She did indeed know, and she went limp. There was nothing more she could do. Realizing he’d broken her, the man let her go, and she fell to the floor, her cheek pressed against the carpet. The other man walked over so his boots were an inch from her face.

  “Please don’t hurt me anymore,” she whispered.

  “Hurt you?” The first man laughed. “This is just a friendly how-do-you-do,” he said. “If we really wanted to hurt you, you wouldn’t still be talking.”

  “There’s a price for breaking the rules,” the other man said.

  “No.” AnnieLee raised her head, and he cuffed it back down. She could taste blood in her mouth. “I’ll get you,” she said through clenched teeth. “Someday I will, so help me God.”

  The boot pulled back, and she squeezed her eyes shut. Pain, excruciating pain, flashed on the side of her head as his foot made contact. Then—blackness.

  Chapter

  30

  AnnieLee knocked on Ruthanna’s side door and then leaned against the railing in exhaustion. Every inch of her body ached, and the bruises she couldn’t see hurt worse than the bruises she could. Sometimes the deep ones took days to come to the surface.

  The door opened. “Dear God,” Ruthanna gasped when she saw her. “What happened?”

  AnnieLee quickly ducked past her into the kitchen, and then limped through the hall and into the closest of Ruthanna’s sitting rooms. She sank onto the velvet couch without being invited, arranging her limbs carefully to keep pressure off the sorest spots. Her head hurt, and sounds seemed muffled, as if she’d wrapped towels around her head.

  “I’m sorry,” she said to Ruthanna, who’d followed her in, looking aghast. “I just really had to sit down.”

  “Maya,” Ruthanna called without taking her eyes from AnnieLee’s face. “Can you get ice packs and Advil? And bring some water?”

  AnnieLee heard a sound of assent from somewhere deep inside the huge house.

  “What happened?” Ruthanna asked again.

  AnnieLee looked down at her lap. “Strangers,” she said. That much was true, at least—she hadn’t known their names.

  Ruthanna sank down on the cushion beside her. “What do you mean?”

  AnnieLee shivered, and Ruthanna pulled a blanket off the back of the couch and gently draped it over her shoulders. “Maybe we should go to the hospital.”

  “No, I’ll be okay.” AnnieLee tugged the blanket tighter around her neck. “I’ve had worse.” She took a deep breath, which made her ribs ache. “I got mugged,” she said. “Jumped by a bunch of kids.”

  “Kids?” Ruthanna said, frowning.

  “Yeah, big ones. Three of them.”

  “Did you call the police?”

  “No, they ran,” AnnieLee said, “and I couldn’t have said who they were or what they looked like. It was my own fault. I should’ve just given them my money instead of mouthing off the way I did.”

  Now that the story had come to her, she could see the scene playing out just as she described it. How she’d walked down an empty street with her pockets bulging with tips, whistling as if she didn’t have a care in the world. How in the darkest stretch of the sidewalk, the first kid had jumped out in front of her and said in a low, cruel voice, Gimme all your money. How she’d gone to turn around and run, but suddenly there were two other kids behind her, and they’d caught her by the arms and held her. Gimme all your money.

  “Oh, you poor thing,” Ruthanna said.

  AnnieLee said, “I was dumb and stubborn. I didn’t think they’d jump me.” She squeezed her eyes shut and quickly apologized—to God, to Ruthanna, to the universe—for lying again.

  Ruthanna got up and began pacing in circles around the couch. “This has something to do with Mikey Shumer. I know it.”

  AnnieLee watched her go, marveling at how quickly she could walk in high heels, and who wore high heels at 9 a.m. anyway? Ruthanna’s toes were probably as black-and-blue as AnnieLee’s arms.

  “No offense, Ms. Ryder,” AnnieLee said, “but that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Why would he want to beat me up if he says he wants to help me build my career?”

  “I don’t claim to know how criminals think,” Ruthanna snapped. Stopping by the fireplace, she wrapped her fingers around the end of a poker as if she might use it to strike against the very idea of Mikey Shumer. Then she turned and stared at AnnieLee. “Have you heard from him lately?”

  AnnieLee thought a moment before answering. “He left a message this morning.” She hadn’t returned any of his calls, but that hadn’t stopped him from making them, sometimes multiple times a day.

  Ruthanna started pacing again, this time with the poker in her hand. “Maybe he thought he could scare you. Show you what could happen to girls who try to go it alone,” she said.

  As ridiculous as it was, AnnieLee wished she could believe Ruthanna’s theory. It would be better to have a new enemy, wouldn’t it, instead of an old one? The demons of the past were the hardest to slay.

  Maybe that could be a line for a song, she thought, and then pressed her thumbs into her aching temples.

  Maya came into the room with water, Advil, Tylenol, aspirin, and an armful of hot and cold packs. “I didn’t know what you wanted, so I brought everything I could carry,” she said. “I’m so sorry you got hurt.” She turned to Ruthanna. “And hon, you better put that thing down before someone else gets hurt. Like you, when you trip in your heels and impale yourself.”

  Ruthanna scoffed. “I’ve been wearing heels since I was twelve years old. I don’t trip.” But she put the poker back where it belonged.

  AnnieLee couldn’t help smiling at their fond bickering. “Thank you, Maya,” she said. “You know what else I could really use? Coffee. I hear you make it pretty strong.”

  “So strong it’ll beat you in arm wrestling,” Maya said. “You sit tight. I’ll be right back.”

  A moment later she returned with a steaming mug of ink-black coffee, which she set on a marble-topped end table. “How about some breakfast, too?”

  AnnieLee’s stomach twisted at the mention of food. She was starving. She only hoped it wouldn’t hurt too much to chew. “That sounds great,” she said.

  “Why don’t you sit, Maya?” Ruthanna said. “Help her with whatever the hell these things are.” She held up a box that said CRYOMAGIC INSTACOLD. “What happened to using a good old bag of frozen peas?”

  Maya took the box as Ruthanna clicked into the kitchen on her five-inch heels. “Ruthanna likes to do everything the old-fashioned way, in case you hadn’t noticed,” she said. She broke open one of the cold packs, shook it, and then handed it to AnnieLee, who tucked it against her hip.

  “Better already,” AnnieLee said, and she meant it. She swallowed four Advil, and then she reached out and took the coffee, cradling the hot mug between her palms.

  She felt cared for—a feeling so unfamiliar that it brought the sting of tears to her eyes.

  She’d barely begun to build up her life. What if it all came crashing down?

  Chapter

  31

  I’ve got to be at work in an hour,” Ethan said as Ruthanna ushered him into the kitchen on an unseasonably muggy afternoon. “So please don’t tell me you called me here to get another possum out of the pool house.”

  Ruthanna gave a delicate snort. “I have a job that’s better suited to your talents than possum wrangling,” she said. “As I recall, that poor creature was no more scared of you than you were of it.”

  “That’s not how I remember it.”

  “Then we will just have to agree to disagree,” Ruthanna said. “In any case, I think you won’t mind this assignment.” She gave him a sly look. “In fact, I think you might like it a lot. Now sit down and shut your trap.”

  He did as he was told, of course. It still gave her a tiny thrill to order around someone twice her size.

  “I want you to look after that dark-haired little firecracker you found,” she said.

  Ethan reached into the fruit bowl for an orange. “What for?” he asked, tossing it up and catching it, again and again. “She’s got you looking after her.”

  Ruthanna paused. She knew AnnieLee wouldn’t want her telling Ethan what had happened, but there was no way around it. “She got mugged the other night.”

  Ethan dropped the orange, and it rolled under the table. “When? Where?”

  Ruthanna told him all that she knew while Ethan listened with a dark expression on his face.

  “I don’t want anything else bad happening to her,” Ruthanna finished. “And I know you don’t, either.” She nudged him with her elbow. “You’re the protective type, I can see it from a thousand miles away. You love taking off your jacket on a chilly night so you can give it to your girl.”

  “I don’t have a girl,” Ethan said.

  “Once upon a time you did.”

  “You know how that ended, Ruthanna.”

  She resisted the urge to put her hand over his. “And there’s been nobody since?” She found it hard to imagine he’d been alone so long. But then again, so had she. She wouldn’t have imagined that, either.

  Ethan said, “Nobody.”

  “You can’t stay solitary and wounded forever,” she said gently.

  “Says who?”

  Ruthanna opened a cabinet and pulled out two cut crystal glasses. “You know what? You’re about as ornery as AnnieLee Keyes is.”

  “And as you are,” Ethan pointed out.

  “Yes,” Ruthanna said, pouring them each a nice, smoky Scotch. “We’re a regular ol’ bunch of barnyard mules, I guess. Ice?”

  “I have to go to work, remember?”

  “It’ll make your job easier. You’ll feel ever so much more kindly toward those bridesmaids belting out ‘Girls Just Want to Have Fun.’”

  He caved, as she’d known he would. “Sure, ice.”

  She looked pointedly at his biceps as she set the drink in front of him. “I bet you’ve got a mean right hook.”

  “I could hold my own in a fight, supposing I got into one.” He gave the Scotch an appreciative sniff. “What makes you think AnnieLee needs protection? I mean, she had an unlucky walk home, but…”

  “I don’t know,” Ruthanna said. “Maybe I’m crazy. I’m just not sure that mugging was random.”

  “Well, you are crazy,” Ethan said. “But that might not have any bearing on the matter at hand.”

  “Very funny, cowboy. I could be wrong, and I hope I am. But does it even matter? A girl doesn’t have to be in mortal danger to be worth protecting, does she?” She pulled out her phone and clicked on a video Maya had shown her. Someone had taken it during one of AnnieLee’s performances at the Cat’s Paw and posted it online. “Here,” she said, giving Ethan the phone.

  She looked over his shoulder as he watched. The camera was shaky and the sound was terrible, but even in a tiny iPhone video, AnnieLee’s talent was outsized. Her mix of power and vulnerability commanded the stage; Ruthanna could practically sense the crowd holding its breath so as not to miss a single sweet note.

  “Take the wheel and just believe,” AnnieLee sang, “that you can change your life…”

  When it was over, Ethan handed back the phone. “So you really think she’s got what it takes,” he said.

  “I know she does. But she has to know she does, or it doesn’t mean a thing. Sustaining that kind of belief in yourself—that’s the hard part.”

  “Tell me about it,” he said.

  “That’s why AnnieLee needs us,” Ruthanna said. “So tell me, Ethan Blake. Are you in?”

  He didn’t hesitate. “I’m in,” he said.

  Chapter

  32

  AnnieLee closed her eyes, breathing in the rich scent of good, fertile soil. It was still early, but she’d been working for two hours already, tucking lettuce and cucumber starts into neat rows and hilling up soil around the potato plants. This was on top of the week she’d already spent clearing out the space for the garden itself.