Black Ember (21 page)

 Exhaustive research along with relentless determination was what Carl was known for. Just as what Regina was known for was discovering indie artists who were sure to become critics' darlings—and earn next to nothing.

 "You wouldn't," Regina breathed. "This girl could actually earn me some money, for a change. Besides, she's mine. I found her." Regina was determined to finally land a client who'd be a financial success as well as a critical one, someone who'd attract the big labels and land the sort of contract that would finally make her colleagues stop treating her like an intern.

 "Oh, yes, I certainly would," Carl said. "That was a very expensive wedding we cancelled, Reggie. I've got to recoup those expenses any way I can."

 "I told you I'd pay you back for every cent!"

 "Yeah, that would be kind of hard to do on your income, unfortunately," Carl said mildly, closing the laptop and putting it away. He signaled for a passing waitress—the same one who'd ignored Regina for the first half hour that she'd sat at the table—and the woman made a U-turn and headed their way.

 "Not if I sign Stiletta! She's solid, Carl. With a little cleanup, a little coaching, a little media training, I'll have her booked in Nashville by next month."

 "Now that's a funny thing," Carl said. "Seems like Meredith told me something about you swearing on your grandmother's Bible that you wouldn't even think about working while you're up here."

 "You
can't
tell her. Please, Carl."

 "It's kind of sweet," Carl said, considering her with his head tilted to the side. "Hang on a sec," he added as the waitress sidled up to him, letting her eyes rove over Carl's gym-muscled shoulders straining the seams on his pearl-buttoned western shirt. Carl was a looker, Regina had to give him that much. Too bad all that pretty was only skin-deep. "Sweetheart, I'll have a rye and soda, and something a little more ladylike for my friend here. She's on vacation, so she deserves to cut loose. Something tropical with a pink umbrella, maybe?"

 "I could do a Bahama Mama," the waitress purred, "or maybe a Sex on the Beach." She was in her sixties, but appeared to be as susceptible to the legendary Carl Cash charm as every other woman.

 "Oh, definitely a Sex on the Beach." Carl winked.

 "I don't need another drink!" Regina protested. But Carl had tossed a twenty onto the waitress's tray, and she made a beeline for the bar.

 "Anyway, as I was saying, it's kind of sweet the way Meredith trusts you. A few brochures for white water rafting, and she's ready to believe you're actually going to take time off."

 "I should never have told her where I was really going," Regina said.

 "No, probably not," Carl agreed. "You could’ve said you were going to Cozumel or Key West like a normal person. You know that it only took me about fifteen minutes of searching online to figure out what caught your eye up here, once I knew the name of the town. Buzz is building on Stiletta, but still mostly local. Nice work, Reggie. Got to say, I didn't think you had it in you to sign someone who could go mainstream."

 "This is completely unethical!" Regina could feel the familiar sensation building inside her—embarrassment mixed with a profound sense of unfairness. After all, her clients had won over a dozen industry awards, and all of them had received great reviews, but none had sold more than a few thousand copies. Meredith didn't mind. She always said Regina's client list gave the firm cachet. But Regina knew that until she brought in a big breakout, she'd be stuck with the smallest office and worst parking space in the firm—not to mention, a cash flow situation that had her counting pennies between checks.

 Stiletta was going to change all of that. "I found her. I'm going to sign her myself!"

 Carl was already shaking his head. "All's fair in love and war, Reggie. I think you were the one who said that to me, weren't you?"

 "Yes—when I found you in bed with your
assistant
."

 "You make it sound so tawdry. She was a full grown woman."

 "Oh, right, so just because she made it all the way to
grad
school before she got exploited by her boss, I should overlook the fact that we were about to get married? You know what? Never mind. There’s no way I'm going to get sucked into this all over again." It would end with her nearly having another nervous breakdown, and there was no telling where Meredith would send her next. Regina would be lucky to avoid going to Siberia—Meredith might finally make good on her threat to fire her so Regina could find a less competitive profession. Like drag racing, perhaps, or trial law.

 Competition among Nashville's talent scouts was fierce. But competitiveness had been ingrained in Regina when she was only five years old, when her parents first sent Regina to the piano teacher who'd taught her two elder sisters, both of whom were now concert pianists. Regina was the only one who didn't have the talent to perform, and she still carried the sting of failure. But those lessons hadn't gone to waste. Regina could spot talent from miles away.

 Still, her desire to win—at something, anything—had been honed by time into a fierce and untamable drive.

 Which gave her an idea. "Tell you what, Carl. If I sign Stiletta, you forgive my half of the wedding expenses."

 Carl rolled his eyes. "Come on, Reggie. I've told you a thousand times that you don't need to pay me back. I'm the one who screwed up. I'm the one who ought to pay for my mistake."

 "And if you sign Stiletta," she went on, ignoring him, "I'll convince Meredith to give you Buckeye Brown."

 Carl's eyes went wide. Regina knew that behind them, Carl’s brain was doing feverish calculations. Buckeye Brown had sold thirty-five thousand copies of his first album, enough to make him a hot young star. There was one problem with working with Buckeye, though. He had no respect for women. He'd made Meredith's life a living hell since she found him in an Alabama roadhouse, where she should’ve left him. She’d been considering offloading him for a while now, especially since he was five months late on his new album and spending a little too much time at the racetrack. A problem client, in other words, but Carl didn't need to know that.

 "Deal," he said, much too quickly. He tried to cover up his error by grabbing her hand and holding onto it a little too long. "Aw, Regina, we were good together, weren't we?"

 On stage, the bespectacled, middle-aged bar owner was adjusting the microphone, causing a burst of static that saved Regina from having to answer Carl's question. "Folks, hope you enjoyed hearing that young lady sing. Name's Stiletta. You can see her here every Thursday. Now while she's resting up those amazing vocal chords, let's give a hand to our good friend Chase Warner who's going to sing us a tune or two. It's his birthday, so let's make him feel welcome, hear?"

 Cheering erupted from the men gathered around the pool tables as they pushed a member of their group toward the stage. It didn't look like he felt much like singing, but his rowdy friends weren't about to let him sit back down. When the bar owner handed him the microphone, he mumbled something unintelligible and tried to give it back.

 The audience started chanting his name as Stiletta got up from her barstool and went back on stage. She picked up her battered old guitar and handed it to the man before she jumped gracefully down from the stage and returned to her seat. He sat on the stool the bartender had dragged into the middle of the stage and looked around, his shoulders sloped in defeat. "Oh, all right," he said, tipping his hat in the direction of the audience without actually looking at them. "Evenin'," he added softly, while he made a few adjustments to the tuning.

 "Here we go." Carl sighed, as the waitress set their drinks down in front of them. "I
hate
amateur night." He took a deep sip and Regina, who’d been considering sending hers back, did the same, wincing at the cloying sweetness of the drink. She might well need the alcohol to get through the performance by the "local favorite." For scouts with finely trained ears, unpolished performers could be sheer agony.

 The man cleared his throat and gave the body of the worn guitar an affectionate little pat. Then he strummed a couple of chords and began to sing.

 "Hold the press," Carl said after a few bars.

 Chase Warner, whoever he was, had a hell of a voice, world-weary and gritty and resonant. The notes of an unfamiliar song in a minor key poured from him effortlessly as though he'd learned it as a child and sung it in the shower a thousand times. By the first chorus, Carl had his laptop back out and had jammed the little desktop microphone into place, furiously typing notes. Regina tried to absorb and mentally catalog as much as she could about the man. Around six feet tall, solidly built but not heavy, with nice muscular forearms under an unexceptional knit shirt. Chestnut brown hair, skin lightly tanned. Reasonably good haircut, though Regina would probably recommend he grow it a couple more inches, maybe get some lowlights to make the blond ends really pop. Gorgeous dark eyes—hard to tell in this light, but Regina was guessing brown—though he didn't make nearly enough visual contact with the audience. Didn't show them he wanted to have their babies, as Meredith always said.

 Regina risked a glance at Carl. Damn—he was hanging onto every note, too. Why couldn't he have left before this guy took the stage? Stiletta was good, and with a little polish and a new wardrobe, she would be very commercial. But this guy—Chase something, wasn't that his name?—was the real deal. Like a young Randy Travis, with those soulful eyes and engaging, easy grin once he got comfortable with the song. The way his eyes crinkled when he winked at the older ladies at the front table—pure gold.

 As he moved smoothly through a key change, his voice reached down inside Regina and gave her heart a little tug... stirring something else in the process, something that hadn't been stirred in a while.

 Charisma: the man had buckets of it. He wore his old, frayed blue jeans like a second skin, and the leather bracelet on his wrist showed off his corded muscle and the faint gold hairs on his tawny skin. The longer Regina listened to him, the better he looked. Professionally speaking, of course.

 When the song ended, the rowdy group in the back exploded with cheering, yelling his name and stomping their boots. Chase set Stiletta's guitar carefully back in its stand and looked out into the audience, his eyes finding Regina’s. They lingered there, and she felt a thrill of electricity along her spine. It was as if he noticed something special in her, something he wanted to hold onto as much as she wanted this moment not to end.

 His grin went adorably crooked, and he stepped off the stage, coming toward her. He was saying something to her as he made his way through the bar tables, something she couldn't quite hear.

 She stood up, moving to meet him as though drawn by an invisible force. "I'm Regina McCary," she said, holding out her hand. "That was amazing."

 "I think I'm going to be sick," he mumbled before turning away from her and lurching across the bar to the men's room.

 "Nice going, Reggie," Carl said, behind her. "Let's double down, what do you say? I'm going to sign them
both
. If I do, I get Buckeye—and a second chance with you. If you can sign even one of them, we're settled up on the wedding and you can cook me a consolation dinner."

 "You're on," Regina said. Not because she had any intention of spending one more night with lying, smooth-talking Carl Cash-nee-Bettendorf—but because she wasn't about to let Chase Warner out of her sights, not until he'd signed on the dotted line and packed his bags for Nashville.

Black Gold

Excerpt: BLACK HEAT

Boomtown Boys #2

RUBY LASKA

If only there weren’t spiders.

The afternoon light was fading fast, which was a problem because Roan hadn’t brought a flashlight. But it was also a blessing, because in the shadowy corners of what had once been the dining room, it was too dark to see the webs that she was convinced were there - and the big, fat, hairy poisonous spiders just waiting to crawl up her legs, down her arms, into her shirt.

 Roan had been terrified of spiders for as long as she could remember. Maybe only children were more prone to phobias, because they didn’t have siblings to tease them mercilessly about their fears.

Roan didn’t have any brothers or sisters, but she once had a mother who never teased her, and never acted like it was silly to be afraid of a creature that was a million times smaller than you were. Whenever a spider found its way into their house, her mom would fetch a water glass and a piece of cardboard and gently coax the spider into the glass, then cover it with the cardboard and she and Roan would take it outside, far, far away from the house, and release it into the wild so it could go and find its spider family.

“That spider deserves to live a happy life just like we do,” her mom would say, and then she’d hold Roan’s hand and they’d walk back to the house together, picking flowers in the summer and catching snowflakes with their tongues in the winter. At least, that was the way Roan remembered it, but memories of her mother had grown hazy after all these years.