Run Rose Run Read online

  She slammed the door, but she could feel him beating on the side of the cab as she tried to figure out how to put the truck into gear. She fired another shot, out the window, and that made him quit until she found the clutch and the gas.

  Then AnnieLee grabbed hold of the gearshift. Her stepdad might’ve been the world’s biggest asshole, but he’d taught her to drive stick. She knew how to double-clutch and how to listen to the revs. And maybe songs weren’t the only thing she had a natural talent for, because it didn’t take her long at all to lurch that giant rig off the shoulder and pull out onto the highway, leaving Eddie screaming behind her.

  I’m driving, she thought giddily. I’m driving!

  She yanked on the horn and shot deeper into the darkness. And then she started singing.

  Driven to insanity, driven to the edge

  Driven to the point of almost no return

  She beat out a rhythm on the steering wheel.

  Driven, driven to be smarter

  Driven to work harder

  Driven to be better every day

  That last line made her laugh out loud. Sure, she’d be better tomorrow—because tomorrow the sun would come out again, and tomorrow she had absolutely no plans to carjack an eighteen-wheeler.

  Chapter

  3

  Ruthanna couldn’t get the damn lick out of her head. A descending roll in C major, twangy as a rubber band, it was crying out for lyrics, a bass line, a song to live inside. She tapped her long nails on her desk as she scrolled through her emails.

  “Later,” she said, to herself or to the lick, she wasn’t entirely sure. “We’ll give you some attention when the boys show up to play.”

  It was nine o’clock in the morning, and already she’d fielded six pleading requests for Ruthanna Ryder, one of country music’s grandest queens, to grace some big industry event or another with her royal presence.

  She couldn’t understand it, but people just failed to get the message: she’d retired that crown. Ruthanna didn’t want to put on high heels, false eyelashes, and a sparkling Southern smile anymore. She wasn’t going to stand up on some hot, bright stage in a dress so tight it made her ribs ache. She had no desire to pour her heart out into a melody that’d bring tears to a thousand pairs of eyes, hers included. No, sir, she’d put in her time, and now she was done. She was still writing songs—she couldn’t stop that if she tried—but if the world thought it was going to ever hear them, it had another think coming. Her music was only for herself now.

  She looked up from the screen as Maya, her assistant, walked into the room with a crumpled paper bag in one hand and a stack of mail in the other.

  “The sun sure is bright on those gold records today,” Maya said.

  Ruthanna sighed at her. “Come on, Maya. You’re the one person I’m supposed to be able to count on not to harass me about my quote, unquote, career. Jack must’ve called with another ‘once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.’”

  Maya just laughed, which was her way of saying, You bet your white ass he did.

  Jack was Ruthanna’s manager—ahem, former manager. “All right, what does he want from me today?”

  “He wouldn’t tell me yet. But he said that it’s not what he wants. He’s thinking about what you really want.”

  Ruthanna gave a delicate snort. “I really want to be left alone. Why he thinks he knows something different is beyond me.” She picked up her ringing phone, silenced it, and then threw it onto the overstuffed couch across the room.

  Maya watched this minor tantrum serenely. “He says the world’s still hungry for your voice. For your songs.”

  “Well, a little hunger never hurt anyone.” She gave her assistant a sly grin. “Not that you’d know much about hunger.”

  Maya put a hand on her ample hip. “And you got room to talk,” she said.

  Ruthanna laughed. “Touché. But whose fault is it for hiring Louie from the ribs place to be my personal chef? You could’ve picked someone who knew his way around a salad.”

  “Coulda, woulda, shoulda,” Maya said. She put a stack of letters in Ruthanna’s inbox and held out the paper bag. “It’s from Jack.”

  “What is that, muffins? I told Jack I was off carbs this month,” Ruthanna said.

  Not that Jack believed anything she told him lately. The last time they’d talked she’d said that she was going to start gardening, and he’d laughed so hard he dropped the phone into his pool. When he called her back on his landline he was still wheezing with delight. “I can’t see you out there pruning roses any more than I can see you stripping off your clothes and riding down Lower Broadway on a silver steed like Lady Godiva of Nashville,” he’d said.

  Her retort—that it was past the season for pruning roses anyway—had failed to convince him.

  “No, ma’am,” Maya said, “these are definitely not muffins.”

  “You looked?”

  “He told me to. He said if I saw them, I’d be sure you opened them. Otherwise he was afraid you might chuck the bag in a bin somewhere, and that’d be…well, a lot of sparkle to throw away.”

  “Sparkle, huh?” Ruthanna said, her interest piqued.

  Maya shook her head at her, like, You just don’t know how lucky you are. But since lovely Maya had a husband who bought her flowers every Friday and just about kissed the ground she walked on, she was considerably fortunate herself. Ruthanna, divorced seven years now, only got presents from people who wanted something from her.

  She took the bag. Unrolling the top, she looked inside, and there, lying at the bottom of the bag—not even in a velvet box—was a pair of diamond chandelier earrings, each one as long as her index finger, false nail included. “Holy sugar,” Ruthanna said.

  “I know. I already googled them,” Maya said. “Price available upon request.”

  Ruthanna held them up so that they caught the light brilliantly and flung rainbows onto her desk. She owned plenty of diamonds, but these were spectacular. “They look like earrings you’d buy a trophy wife,” she said.

  “Correction,” said Maya. “They look like earrings you’d buy a woman who made you millions as she clawed her way to the top of her industry and into the hearts of a vast majority of the world’s population.”

  The office line rang, and Ruthanna put the earrings back into the bag without trying them on. She gestured to Maya to answer it.

  “Ryder residence,” Maya said, and then put on her listening face. After a while she nodded. “Yes, Jack, I’ll pass that information along.”

  “He couldn’t keep his little secret after all, could he?” Ruthanna asked when her assistant hung up.

  “He says they want to give you some big giant honor at the Country Music Awards—but you’d actually have to go,” Maya said. “And he’d like me to tell you that you really shouldn’t pass up such a perfect opportunity to wear those earrings.”

  Ruthanna laughed. Jack really was something else. “That man can buy me diamonds until hell turns into a honky-tonk,” she said. “I’m out of the business.”

  Chapter

  4

  Ethan Blake’s aging F-150 coughed and belched as he pulled through the wrought-iron gates of Ruthanna’s sprawling compound in Belle Meade. It was a good thing the security cameras didn’t record audio, because the Ford sounded downright embarrassing. It needed a new exhaust system plus half a dozen other repairs. But until he had more than a few grand in his bank account, vehicular maintenance was on the back burner.

  Ethan pulled up under the shade of a massive oak and looked at his watch. When he saw that it was 11:02, he jumped out of the cab so fast he was halfway to the door before he realized he’d forgotten his guitar. By the time he was on the stoop outside the kitchen door, it was four minutes after the hour, and he was sweating through his white T-shirt.

  He gave the knob a tug, but it was locked. Then, as the seconds ticked by, he started banging on the glass. There was no response. He fired a volley of curses into the ivy creeping up the sides of the
Greek Revival mansion that Ruthanna jokingly called the Castle, and then he went around to the front and began stabbing madly at the doorbell. Ruthanna was going to kill him.

  Maya finally opened the door. “May I help you?” she asked. She looked him up and down like he was a stranger trying to sell her a set of encyclopedias.

  “Maya,” Ethan said, exasperated. “I’m here to record.”

  “Mm-hmm,” she said. But she didn’t step aside to let him in.

  “I’m late,” he said. “I know, I’m sorry. I couldn’t get Gladys started.”

  Maya’s dark eyes widened. “I sure don’t want to hear about that!” she exclaimed.

  Ethan blushed right down to his neck. “Gladys is my truck.”

  Maya laughed at her joke, and then her face grew serious again. “Well, you know where you’re going, and I guess you’d better get yourself there quick. You-know-who’s waiting.”

  He ducked his head in thanks, nerves jangling, and hurried through the marble-floored foyer, passing the magnificent living room on his left. Ruthanna probably called it the parlor or the salon or something fancy like that, because it looked like one of those roped-off period rooms in a museum. There were leaded-glass windows; massive, glittering chandeliers; and walls hand-painted with tumbling English roses. It was ten times bigger than his entire apartment.

  He’d never gotten a tour of the mansion, since all Ruthanna cared about was that he knew where the basement recording studio was, but the house had to be nine thousand square feet at least. He’d even gotten lost in the halls once. But now he took a deep breath—he could just feel Ruthanna waiting on him, simmering with impatience—and then he practically ran down the basement stairs.

  Though it seemed as though the majority of music these days was recorded and mixed using little but a MacBook and Pro Tools, Ruthanna was old-school. She had an old tube mixing board she’d saved from some legendary Nashville studio or another, and she liked all her musicians playing together rather than overdubbing for days. She said she loved the raw, natural way the songs came out sounding when people actually played their parts at the same time.

  Opening the door to the live room, Ethan saw most of the band already assembled: Melissa, with her fiddle tucked under her arm; Elrodd, perched behind the drums; and Donna, tinkering around on the upright bass.

  “Hey,” Ethan said. He didn’t see Stan, though, which meant—thank God—that he wasn’t the last one to arrive. Relieved, Ethan was just setting down his instrument when the lead guitarist came out of the isolation booth with his Stratocaster in his hand.

  Stan gave Ethan a look that said, Uh-oh, bro.

  Ruthanna’s voice came at Ethan over the intercom. “I know you’re the new one in the room, but I did think you’d know enough not to keep your fellow musicians waiting. Didn’t they teach you about punctuality in the army, Captain Blake?”

  He turned toward her; she was in the control room with the engineer, on the other side of a gleaming pane of glass. “I’m sorry, Ruthanna. I couldn’t—”

  She cut him off with a flip of her hand. “Absolutely not interested in your excuses,” she said. “You think you’re so special that you can roll in whenever you want to? Sure, you’re real cute, you’ve got a nice voice, and on a good day you could be Vince Gill’s pale imitation, but Nashville is lousy with guitar players with tight jeans and a tight butt who can show up on time.”

  Stan gave a low whistle under his breath. He was clearly glad not to be on the receiving end of the dress-down. And though Ethan’s cheeks burned, he kept his mouth shut for once. He didn’t want to lose this job. He couldn’t lose this job. His part-time gig bartending at a karaoke dive wouldn’t even cover the rent, let alone get Gladys running the way she should.

  “I’ll never—” he began.

  “Damn right ‘never,’” Ruthanna said. “Now take your guitar out and get tuning.”

  As he did what he was told, he glanced over at Donna. “Are my jeans too tight?” he whispered.

  But she just laughed at him.

  After he’d tuned, he warmed up by playing the song Ruthanna had written yesterday, a smart-ass send-up of certain music industry types called “Snakes in the Grass.” He picked the bass line with his thumb and the melody with his other fingers, Chet Atkins–style, until he realized that Ruthanna had left the control room and was standing right next to him.

  “Mr. Blake, let me remind you that we have a bassist,” she said. “So don’t think you need to do her job.”

  He turned to meet her fierce eyes. Ruthanna was twice his age but still beautiful. She had a smile that could light up a whole concert hall and a tongue sharper than a serpent’s tooth. He just about worshipped the ground she walked on, and he couldn’t believe how lucky he was to get to play music with her. But he also couldn’t understand why she wouldn’t release any of her new songs.

  “I’m sorry, ma’am,” he said.

  She landed a light smack on his shoulder. “The word you’re looking for,” she said, “is boss.”

  Then she turned on her heel and walked over to the microphone.

  “All right, then,” she said. “Let’s play some damn music.”

  Chapter

  5

  Underneath a buzzing neon sign that read CAT’S PAW SALOON, AnnieLee smoothed her hair and took a deep breath.

  “You can do this,” she whispered. “This is what you came here for.”

  It wasn’t much of a pep talk, but AnnieLee figured she shouldn’t stand around on a city sidewalk muttering to herself like a crazy person, so short and sweet would have to do. She took another deep breath, yanked the door open, and strode inside.

  The bar was cool and softly lit by Christmas lights draped in multicolored strands along the ceiling and walls. On a stage at the back of the room stood a man in a big black cowboy hat, playing a battered guitar and singing a Willie Nelson tune in a low, mournful voice. To her right was a long wooden bar, and to her left, a woman in a DON’T MESS WITH TEXAS shirt was racking balls on a red-felted pool table. AnnieLee scanned the crowd, such as it was, and decided everyone looked reasonably friendly. The air smelled like beer and French fries.

  In other words, it was a perfect dive bar, and it would do just fine for her Nashville debut. AnnieLee walked over to the bar and climbed up onto a stool, ignoring the admiring eyes that followed her progress.

  The bartender, a middle-aged man with a handlebar mustache, slid a cardboard coaster toward her. “What can I do for ya, miss?” he asked.

  AnnieLee swallowed down her fear and smiled her klieg light smile at him. “You can put me up on that stage after that guy’s done,” she said.

  The bartender gave a snort and swiped the coaster back. He bent down behind the bar, reappearing with a knife in one hand and a giant lemon in the other. AnnieLee watched as he started cutting the lemon and pitching the slices into the garnish station, next to a tray of crimson-dyed maraschino cherries. He didn’t look at her again or say another word.

  Is that it? she wondered. Is he going to ignore me now?

  She tapped her fingers on the bar as she glanced over at the singer, now playing the opening chords to a Garth Brooks number. No one in the room seemed to be paying much attention to him. AnnieLee wondered if he felt bad about being background music, or if being up there with a guitar and a microphone was reward enough. Because if he wasn’t enjoying himself sufficiently, she’d trade places with him in a heartbeat.

  AnnieLee gave her hair a nervous flip. She knew she could shine on that stage—she just needed the chance. And Mr. Mustache here had to be the guy who’d give it to her, because her feet hurt too much to walk any more today.

  She turned back to the bartender, who was now hacking away at a bunch of limes. She cleared her throat, but he still didn’t look up.

  Her courage wavered. She had the songs, but she hadn’t prepared the sales pitch.

  Listen, she said to herself, you didn’t carjack your way to Nashville to watch someone
cut up a damn fruit salad, so you better open your big ol’ mouth and start talking.

  “I’m sure you get people coming in here wanting to sing all the time,” she said to the bartender. “But I think I’ve got something that you’d really like to see.”

  “Your titties?” The voice was a low, lewd growl, and it came from right behind her.

  AnnieLee whirled around, heart pounding and hands curled into fists. An old man with gin-blossom cheeks took a wary step backward, even as he kept leering at her.

  When she realized she didn’t know him, she unclenched her fingers. “Pig,” she said.

  “Just a peek?” he asked, his voice pleading.

  But the bartender had overheard him. “Oh, damn it, Ray, that’s it,” he yelled, snapping his towel at the old man. “You’re eighty-sixed. Go home.”

  Ray blinked drunkenly. “But Billy—”

  “Don’t make me repeat myself, you old creep,” the bartender said.

  Suddenly chagrined, Ray looked over at AnnieLee. “I beg your pardon,” he said, bowing, and then he lurched away toward the door.

  “I’m really sorry about that,” Billy said as he watched the old man leave. He filled a glass of water and set it in front of AnnieLee.

  She was rattled, but she did her best not to show it. Vulnerability was never a good look. “I was ready to defend myself,” she said.

  “I noticed.” He briskly wiped down the bar top. “What are you drinking? I’ll put it on Ray’s tab. He owes you now.”

  “I’m okay, thanks.” AnnieLee paused, steeling her nerves, and then the words came out so fast there was hardly a breath between them. “Look, I can’t tell you how I got to Nashville without incriminating myself—which is too bad, because it’s a really good story—but I can tell you why I’m here. I’m going to make it as a singer or else I’m going to die trying. My name is AnnieLee Keyes, I turned twenty-five years old last week, and I’m asking you to give me a chance to sing up there on that stage. Will you be the one to give me my first big break? I really hope so. And then when I’m famous, I’ll tell everyone that I owe it all to Billy the bartender at the Cat’s Paw Saloon.”