A few yards away was the little hollow where she’d hidden her backpack as she wandered the city, looking for a place to sing her songs and a place to wash her face.

  I’m back where I started, she marveled. But now everything’s different.

  Chapter

  55

  Turn the offer down,” Ruthanna said.

  AnnieLee’s mouth fell open. “What? What are you talking about?”

  “You’re not an opening act, AnnieLee. You’re a star,” Ruthanna said.

  AnnieLee, who’d been idly pinching the flowering tops off the basil in Ruthanna’s kitchen garden, stood up and put her hands on her hips. “I appreciate your belief in me,” she said, “but I’m not a star yet. I don’t even have an album out. I’ve got to work my way up.”

  “And you want to do that by playing second fiddle to a man?” Ruthanna challenged. “By warming up the crowd for a guy who can’t write a song half as good as yours?”

  “But he’s huge,” AnnieLee said.

  “He’s overrated,” Ruthanna replied.

  AnnieLee had assumed Ruthanna would be thrilled for her, and now she hardly knew what to say. She knew Kip Hart was no Hank Williams. No Willie Nelson or Brad Paisley or Kenny Chesney, either. But he commanded a big audience, and he was willing to share it with her. She had the chance to play for a crowd of thousands! Shouldn’t she be jumping for joy?

  “Sweetie,” Ruthanna said, “when you were little, just learning how to sing along with the radio, women musicians sang about a third of the songs played on country stations. Now they’re barely above ten percent. Things haven’t gotten better since Tomato-gate—they’re getting worse.”

  “I don’t see what that has to do with me and Kip Hart,” AnnieLee said.

  “Kip Hart thinks he’s better than you,” Ruthanna said. “If he doesn’t talk down to you, he’ll try to get into your pants. Or maybe both.”

  “I dare him to try,” AnnieLee said. “And I don’t have to think he’s a great guy, Ruthanna. I just need to sing some songs on that stage before he does.”

  Ruthanna folded her arms across her chest. “I don’t like it,” she said.

  “But ACD loves it,” AnnieLee said. “Aren’t they kind of my bosses now?”

  Ruthanna took off her sunglasses so she could look AnnieLee in the eye. “Don’t ever let anyone else be your boss.”

  “That’s a heck of a lot easier said than done,” AnnieLee said. “Especially when there’s lawyers and money involved.”

  AnnieLee heard Maya calling from the kitchen, and Ruthanna turned to go inside. “I know it is,” she said. “Look, hon. I just want what’s best for you. Maybe this is it, but maybe it isn’t. There’s more than one way up the ladder. You go on home and think on it a little more, okay?”

  AnnieLee said she would as she gathered up her keys and bag. But she knew the decision had already been made for her, by her management and label. Okay, it wasn’t perfect—but what ever was? It was her next big shot. Even if she could hold out for the ideal opportunity, she very well might be waiting forever. She wanted the opportunity that was in front of her right now.

  Opening for Kip is a good thing, she thought as she drove home. A great thing. Ruthanna can’t tell me otherwise.

  When AnnieLee got back to her little rental cottage, Ethan was sitting on her front steps. She felt her heart give a lurch. She wanted to fling herself into his arms and celebrate her news. Too bad she was still mad at him, and he was probably still furious with her.

  She stopped a few feet away and looked at him warily. “Did Ruthanna send you? Because if you’re here to try to talk me out of opening for Kip Hart, it’s not going to work.”

  “Why would I do that?” Ethan asked. “I came to say congratulations. It’s great, AnnieLee, and you deserve it.” He stood up and brushed off his jeans. “And I brought you something.”

  He walked over to his truck, and when he came back he was carrying a guitar. It was small and dark, and its polished wood softly gleamed. Mother-of-pearl inlay circled the sound hole and decorated the fretboard. “For you,” he said, holding it out.

  “Really?” She took it from him. It felt warm and smooth—almost alive. “It’s beautiful,” she said. “Is this really for me? I’ve never seen one like it. Where’d you get it?”

  “I made it.”

  She stared at him. “You’re kidding.”

  “Nope.”

  “No one’s made me anything since my mom sewed me dresses in elementary school.” She ran her fingers along the inlay, marveling at its detail. “Not that I even appreciated those dang things. I wanted clothes from the store like everybody else. But this—this is incredible.”

  She sank to the steps and cradled the guitar in her lap, strumming G, then C, then D. The instrument had a silky, golden sound.

  “I can’t believe it,” she whispered. She felt like crying.

  Ethan stood watching her, and his foot began to tap as she played the opening bars to “Lost and Found,” the song they’d worked on together in New York.

  “It’s probably not a stage guitar, since you’ve got Ruthanna’s Taylor,” he said. “It’s more for songwriting, alone, late at night, when only the moon knows what you’re up to.”

  She blinked, pushing back grateful tears, and then beamed up at him. “I love it. Thank you, Ethan Blake. And…I’m sorry.”

  He hunched his shoulders. “Me, too.”

  And then he sat down next to her and started to sing along.

  Lost and found, unchained, unbound

  No more second guessing, I know who I am

  Now I’m on solid ground

  Chapter

  56

  They didn’t speak of their fight again, and Ethan resumed his duties as if quitting had never even occurred to him. Early in the mornings, he drove to Ruthanna’s, where he and the band played the songs she couldn’t keep from writing, retirement be damned. Depending on when they finished their studio session, he’d bring AnnieLee lunch or dinner at her cottage, where she was working on her own music day and night. ACD kept sending her songs written by professional songwriters, ones with track records of charting hits, but AnnieLee was certain that her material was better. She was a songwriter first, she said, and a performer second. “I wouldn’t be me if I sang someone else’s songs.”

  Busy as she was, she got a kick out of pretending that it was ridiculous of Ethan to bring her takeout every day. “Oh, it’s the meals-on-wheels guy again,” she’d say, laughing.

  But Ethan had seen AnnieLee in her kitchen, and as far as he could tell, she barely knew a colander from a cantaloupe. Left to her own devices, she’d probably survive on canned beans, Pringles, and the occasional multivitamin at best.

  Her gig as an opening act was less than a month away, and Ethan knew she was feeling a tremendous amount of pressure. No matter what Ruthanna believed about the relative talents of AnnieLee Keyes and Kip Hart, the fact remained that he was a mega-selling country hotshot, and she was still the new kid on the block. She had a lot to prove, and she knew it.

  Gladys coughed as Ethan pulled up and parked in front of AnnieLee’s house. Tonight he was bringing fried chicken from Arnold’s Country Kitchen as a treat for them both. He knocked on her bright-red door, waited, and then knocked again. It took a few more minutes before AnnieLee appeared and said, “God, that smells good. I knew I forgot something today.”

  “Not even breakfast?” Ethan asked, stepping into her living room, the entire floor of which was covered in notebooks, pencil stubs, paper scraps, and guitar picks.

  “Nope,” she said. “Totally slipped my mind. But I’ve got this killer lick, and now all I need is, like, the riff, the melody, three verses, a chorus, and the bridge. We can figure that out tonight, right? Plus a title? Something like ‘You Never Saw Me Coming.’ Or ‘It’s a Long Way to the Top.’ No, never mind: those stink.” She had a pencil tucked behind each ear and two holding her hair up in a messy bun. She was bouncing on her toes and talking a mile a minute. She probably had more coffee running through her veins than blood.

  “I think AC/DC beat you to that second title anyway,” Ethan said. He set the take-out bags on the pinewood table he’d helped her assemble. “How about you take a break and have some dinner, and then you can play me what you’re working on?”

  She nodded. “Okay, okay, I can do that.”

  Ethan went into the kitchen to fetch plates, napkins, and utensils. As he grabbed two beers from the refrigerator, he noticed that AnnieLee had taped a photo of Kip Hart to the door. He recognized her handwriting scrawled across the bottom in Sharpie: “Don’t embarrass yourself—or me. Love, KP.”

  He was chuckling when he walked back to her. “I like your motivational poster,” he said.

  “What?” she said. “Oh. That. Yeah, I made it at three o’clock this morning.”

  “You should be sleeping at three o’clock in the morning,” he chided.

  “Couldn’t,” she said. “Too much coffee.” AnnieLee took the pencils out of her bun, and her hair fell in a shining dark cloud around her shoulders. “You know, I’ve been reading about Kip Hart. He’s got a couple of ex-wives and two dozen former writing partners, but no one seems to have anything bad to say about him.”

  “Maybe he’s a nicer guy than Ruthanna thinks he is.” Ethan had his doubts, but he’d be happy to be proven wrong.

  “I hope so,” AnnieLee said. “Lord knows I’ve known more than enough mean ones.”

  Ethan didn’t press her for any more information. He wouldn’t get it, and anyway, it wasn’t as if AnnieLee was the only one who had secrets. He had to remind himself of that sometimes.

  She dug through a take-out bag to pull out the coleslaw. “I wish you guys were coming with me.”

  Kip Hart’s management had made it clear that the singer was playing a stripped-down tour, in smaller venues, and that he wanted a solo opening act. Donna, Melissa, and Stan had been disappointed, but neither Elrodd nor Ethan had much wanted to be up on that stage. Let Kip Hart take a vacation back to his humbler roots; they could stay in Nashville and play in Ruthanna’s basement—and at the Cat’s Paw, if and when they felt like it.

  “How many songs you got now?” Ethan asked.

  “Eight that are rock-solid,” AnnieLee said. “Two more that are so-so. I’m getting there.” And then, with a half-mad gleam in her eye: “Unless I scrap everything and start all over again.”

  “Don’t you dare,” Ethan said. “And no more caffeine for you tonight, okay?”

  AnnieLee nodded, slathering butter on a biscuit and grumbling about bossy know-it-alls.

  When they were done eating, she walked over to the battered spinet piano that the previous renters had left behind. “Check this out,” she said, and played a handful of high, tinkling notes that reminded Ethan of the opening bars to Patsy Cline’s “Crazy.”

  She stopped and turned around. “See? Isn’t that nice? I don’t know what to do with it yet, but one of these days we’ll have to get back down to the studio. We can put Stan on keyboards.”

  Ethan wanted to sing with AnnieLee again almost as much as he wanted to pull her into his arms. But neither of those things seemed likely to happen any time soon.

  “I like it,” he said, “but seeing as how you won’t have a piano with Kip Hart, let’s work on that other lick you were talking about.”

  They parked themselves on her couch and worked through songs until 2 a.m., when Ethan stood up and announced that he was going to the bathroom and then straight home. When he came back into the living room less than five minutes later, he found AnnieLee asleep against the couch’s armrest, surrounded by lyrics, crumpled papers, and crumbs from Arnold’s Country Kitchen biscuits.

  He stopped and looked at her for a while. He’d never seen her so still, so peaceful. The chorus of his song came to him in the silence.

  Lost and found, I’m safe and sound

  No more drifting aimlessly, I’ve settled down

  Then he carefully picked her up and carried her into her bedroom, where he took off her boots and covered her with a blanket. Without opening her eyes, she burrowed into her pillow, breathing slowly and calmly, as if she didn’t have a care in the world.

  He wished that could be true for her. But he knew that it wasn’t.

  He bent down to kiss her smooth, untroubled forehead, and then he quietly let himself out, making sure the door was locked behind him.

  Chapter

  57

  On the day of the Kip Hart show, AnnieLee woke before dawn. A light, misty rain was falling. She poured herself a glass of orange juice and paced her cottage as she drank it, feeling nerved up and jangly, like an animal about to be freed from its cage. Though Ethan had come to visit every day for the past month, she’d been working so hard that she’d barely left her living room.

  Even if everything else goes wrong tonight, she told herself, at least you’ll be out of the damn house.

  She was making her fiftieth circuit of the room when she heard the doorbell chime. She opened the door. Ethan Blake stood on her stoop, his car keys dangling from one hand and a tray with two giant take-out coffees in the other.

  “The way Gladys runs, it’s about three hours away without traffic,” he said.

  “Ruthanna loaned me a car, remember?” AnnieLee said. “I’m good.”

  Ethan scuffed his toe against the doormat that said WELCOME Y’ALL. “You ever been to Knoxville before? The coliseum’s in a weird part of town, and parking might be confusing.”

  “If you’re suggesting that I’m liable to get lost, Ethan Blake, let me remind you that I’ve been on this earth for two and a half decades and I’m not an idiot.”

  “Believe me, I know you’re not an idiot, AnnieLee,” he said. “I guess I just thought you might like a little company.”

  She softened then, telling him that she appreciated the offer, but she needed to do everything herself today. What she didn’t say was that it’d be impossible to call up all the fearlessness and shamelessness she needed if Ethan came with her. Having just herself to rely on was what she was used to. And it was the only way tonight would work.

  He looked disappointed. “At least take the coffee,” he said. “Don’t drink it on an empty stomach, though. This is Maya-strength brew.”

  “Aye, aye, Captain,” she said, grinning.

  He didn’t smile back. Instead he reached out and gently brushed her bangs from her eyes. “Good luck tonight,” he said. “I’ll be thinking about you.”

  Impulsively she leaned forward and kissed him on his freshly shaven cheek. “Thank you,” she said. And then she ducked back inside, closing the door behind her and hoping she wasn’t crazy to turn him away.

  Five hours later, she was standing in the wings at the Knoxville Civic Coliseum, listening to Kip Hart and his band run through their sound check as roadies and technicians finished assembling the stage for the night’s big show. Two videographers kept their cameras pointed at Kip as he played “Runaway River,” and then his party number, “Chasin’ Tailgate.”

  AnnieLee couldn’t help tapping her feet to that one, and she sang the chorus as she hurried back to her dressing room to get ready for her performance.

  You and me in a parking lot

  Let me pull you close, let me show you what I got

  She laughed as she ran a brush through her hair. What a stupid song! And yet…it was catchy; she couldn’t deny it. It almost made her want to dance.

  She was sitting in front of the mirror, putting on a touch of mascara, when the door opened. In the reflection she saw Kip Hart himself enter the room, without so much as a knock or an invitation.

  “Hey there,” he said. “Sorry, but I figured since the door was unlocked…”

  “Oh, oh, sure,” AnnieLee said, stammering just a bit, thinking, Ain’t you learned to lock doors by now, girl? And I can’t believe it. Kip Hart is in my dressing room.

  In person, the singer was more handsome than she’d expected. He was tall and long-limbed, his clothes were carefully rugged, and he carried himself like a man used to being admired. As he strode over to the couch and straddled its cushioned arm, she couldn’t help but notice his hand-stitched boots. They’d set him back a solid four figures—she was sure of it.

  “Do you know what happened when the country singer sang his song backward?” Kip Hart asked her. He pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and tapped one into his palm. “He got his dog back, his truck back, and his wife back.”

  AnnieLee laughed, though she’d heard Billy tell that joke about five hundred times. That, plus the one about how it takes two country singers to change a lightbulb: one to do the work, and one to sing a song about the good times he had with the old lightbulb.

  “So you’re the famous AnnieLee Keyes,” Kip Hart said, gazing at her.

  “Oh, I sure wouldn’t say that,” she said.

  “Well, everyone seems to think you’re hot shit.”

  AnnieLee turned back to the mirror and swiped mascara onto the lashes of her left eye. “Have you heard me before? What do you think?”

  She knew it was bold to ask him such a thing. But it was also pretty audacious to barge into a girl’s dressing room half an hour before she was supposed to go onstage.

  “Tonight’ll be the first time I have the privilege.” He put the cigarette in his mouth and lit it, winking at her.

  “There’s a No Smoking sign,” AnnieLee blurted.

  Kip laughed. “That sign’s not for me, pretty girl,” he said. “It’s for all the bastards who aren’t famous.”

  “Oh,” AnnieLee said. She put a slick of gloss on her lips and then wiped it off again. She didn’t like being called pretty girl, but at least he hadn’t called her little.