“Yes,” Angel answered. “Looking just as egotistical and full of himself as ever. And he’s even sexier than he was ten years ago.”
“Me thinks me hears a note of love gone wrong. Hey, sounds like a good title for our new song. Maybe I just got the inspiration for the billboard breaker that we’ve needed all these years to take us straight to the top in Nashville.” Patty pulled on her boots and twisted her straw-colored hair up in a twist.
Susan tossed Angel’s cowboy hat across the bus. With her honey-blond hair and round face, some folks said that she could have been Miranda Lambert’s sister. “Right. Just when we’ve decided to give up touring.”
Angel caught her hat and laid it beside her. She stuck out her tongue at her friends, stood up and peeled faded jean shorts down over her hips and tossed them beside the hat. She jerked her knit tank top over her head, threw it in the direction of her shorts, and slipped on a black silk kimono-style robe.
“Hey, girls, I want to thank you again for tonight. Only real friends would play a two-bit gig like this and I appreciate it. Means a lot to me.” She sat down in front of a built-in vanity, complete with mirror and track lighting, and slapped makeup on her face, covering a fine sprinkling of freckles across her upturned nose. She outlined her big green eyes with a delicate tracing of dark pencil, then brushed mascara on her thick lashes. She flipped her dark brown hair around her face with a styling comb and sat back to look at her reflection. Not bad for a backward girl who’d been scared of her own shadow ten years ago. She wondered if anyone would recognize her. Not that Angel had planned on attending this reunion any more than the other nine that already had gone by. But then she had received the letter from the class president and decided—without exactly knowing why—that she would come to this one. Some of the alumni might doubt she’d even been in their class when they saw her onstage, but after tonight they’d go home and drag out their yearbooks to find her name and picture. And there she would be in big glasses, which she’d since replaced with contacts, and wild curly hair, which she still couldn’t tame.
Tonight, Angel was going to put away the past and forget about the pain. The self-help books she’d read and her therapist both told her to face her fear. Tonight she was doing just that. Tomorrow she was going to wake up a brand-new woman, ready to face whatever life might bring her, and she was never going to think about Clancy again.
She forced a smile at her reflection and then reached up and peeled the letter from the class president off her mirror. The committee had asked for a brief paragraph listing her accomplishments in the decade since she’d finished high school. Her short biography would be published in the alumni newsletter that would be sent out the next week. They also had asked for a contribution of some kind to the reunion. Angel had written back and offered to bring her band to play for the dance—free of charge.
“Better jerk them jeans on, darlin’.” Mindy came out of the small bathroom and looked at Angel in the mirror. “Clancy Morgan’s eyes would pop out of his head if you got to gyratin’ your hips in nothing but that cute little lacy bra and underpants. I can’t wait to see his face. Be sure you do something so that we know which one of the guys is the man who broke your heart.”
“Oh, hush,” Angel giggled as she stood up, took her freshly starched white jeans from a hanger, and shimmied into them. Then she topped it with a sequined vest, flashing red and white horizontal stripes on the right side and white stars on a ground of blue on the left.
“Lord, all I need is a couple of pasties with tassels.” Angel checked her appearance in the mirror one last time.
“Hey, we’re playing a gig for a bunch of high school alumni. We ain’t doing a show for Neddie’s Nudie Beauties. Time to go, ladies. Ten minutes until show time.” Allie, the shortest one in the band, and the one with the lightest blond hair, crossed the floor and pushed open the bus door to lead the way.
“Y’all look wonderful.” Angel was proud of her five friends. They wore identical black jeans and black denim vests with the state flag of Texas embroidered on the back.
“We clean up pretty good,” Susan agreed. “You’d never know we were plain old working women the rest of the week.”
The band members laughed and headed for the ballroom.
* * *
“Let’s give the equipment one more check before they open the doors between the banquet room and this ballroom,” Allie said. “Testing.” She blew into the first microphone, which produced an ear-splitting squeal, and she nodded toward Bonnie, who was adjusting the amplifiers. “Testing.”
“Smoke machine is…ready,” Mindy said from the side of the small knockdown stage Angel toted around in the equipment trailer behind the bus. Even its slight elevation of twelve inches gave the band an advantage, which was better than being stuck back in a corner of a room on the same level as all the dancers.
Allie turned a knob or two, double-checked the timer, then sat down at her drums and gave a warm-up roll with the sticks. “Ready to rock and roll,” she growled into the microphone beside her.
“Ready,” Susan breathed into her microphone, and drew her bow across her fiddle, creating a haunting sound that made Angel’s blood curdle, just as it did every time they played.
“Then let’s knock ’em dead.” Mindy stretched her fingers and warmed up on the keyboard with a few bars of Miranda Lambert’s “Hush, Hush.”
The double-wide doors from the banquet room swung open into the ballroom, and people began wandering in, not quite sure this was where they belonged. Clancy Morgan and several companions found a table right in front of the stage.
“Dark in here,” Angel heard a man say. “These itty-bitty candles on the tables don’t give much light.”
“You didn’t complain about that ten years ago at the prom,” his wife giggled. “Matter of fact, you wanted to blow the candles out so the ballroom would be darker.”
“Yeah, but back then you were fun to be with in the dark,” he teased.
The woman pouted.
Angel thought she recognized him—wasn’t he Jim Moore?
The alarm on Angel’s watch went off, and she pushed a hidden button with her foot. The smoke machine emitted trails of white fog across the stage and a rotating strobe picked up every flicker of candlelight from the tables. When the smoke began to clear, there were five Texas state flags facing the darkened room. Then, from somewhere behind a huge amplifier, Angel stepped out, all aglitter in red, white, and blue sequins.
“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen,” she said in a deep, throaty voice. “I’m Angel—and this is the Honky Tonk Band. There’s Allie on the drums.” She stood aside and Allie stood up, bowed, and gave the audience fifteen seconds of a percussion riff.
“Bonnie, on steel.” One of the flags turned around to reveal a blond woman, even taller than the drummer and built like an athlete. Bonnie made the guitar slung around her neck whine like a baby.
“And Patty on rhythm guitar.” Another flag turned, and Patty bowed, struck a chord and waved to the people, hoping for an enthusiastic crowd. Lord, but she hated to play to a dead bunch, and these alumni sure didn’t look as lively as the folks they’d played to last night.
“Susan, on the fiddle.” Angel waved to her left as Susan perched a fiddle on her shoulder and let them hear a tantalizing bit of a classic country tune.
“And over here is Mindy on the keyboard.” The final flag turned slowly to face the alumni of Tishomingo High School. “Hi, ya’ll,” Angel said huskily into the mike as Mindy made the keyboard do everything but sing.
“And this is Angel!” Dorothy stepped up to the microphone. “You might remember her as Angela Conrad, and she and these gorgeous band members have agreed to play for us tonight for free. Let’s make them welcome and get ready for a show. These ladies will be at the Arbuckle Ballroom in Davis next Friday night for their final gig, so we’re lucky to get ’em.
Angel says she’s tired of working all week and the weekends, too. So, give them a big hand to let them know how much we appreciate them playing for us.” She started the applause and the audience followed suit as she left the stage and grabbed a young guy’s hand, led him to the dance floor and nodded to Angel to start the party.
“Wind ’em up, girls,” Angel whispered and grabbed a mike and started off the evening with a surefire crowd pleaser. Mindy tinkled the keyboard keys and Allie kept a steady beat with the brushes on the drums. Angel strutted across the stage, sequins flashing in the strobe lights, the long diamond drops that dangled from her ears glittering in her dark-brown shoulder-length curls.
Before long, there were at least twenty couples in the middle of the floor, dancing in one way or another. Several were doing something between the twist and the jerk, and an older couple was executing a pretty fine jitterbug. Angel kept looking down at the table where Clancy Morgan sat alone while his friends tried to keep up with the beat on the dance floor. Evidently Melissa—if he had married her—couldn’t accompany him tonight. Or maybe he hadn’t married her. Now wouldn’t that be a hoot?
* * *
Angel put her left hand on her hip and struck a pose, and memories from that summer ten years ago flooded Clancy’s mind—again. What had happened to the Angela Conrad he’d known? She was supposed to marry old Billy Joe Summers and raise a shack full of snotty-nosed kids. She was supposed to work in a sewing factory, supporting Billy Joe’s life-threatening drinking habit. She wasn’t supposed to be on a stage, belting out songs by famous artists.
Patty started a strong rhythm and Angel stepped off the stage and mixed with the people in the dancing crowd, singing into a cordless mike. Then she sat down on the table right in front of Clancy, wiggled her shoulders and sang to him as she looked right in his eyes. He wanted to say something, but what could he say? Words wouldn’t turn him from a jerk into a decent guy, so he just sat there without saying a word, shaking his head in disbelief.
She looked something like the old Angela, except she wasn’t wearing glasses. She leaned toward him far enough that he could see down the front of her vest, and a red heat stirred inside him as he remembered her body against his. She kept singing while the girls provided backup, then suddenly, before he could blink, she was back up on the stage.
* * *
“Hey, Mike Griffin, pull that woman up a little closer. You sure danced closer than that when we were in high school,” Angel teased in the middle of another song, a more romantic one, while the band played the break.
She glanced at the table to her left, and saw that Clancy still had a bewildered look on his face. Angel could still list his every accomplishment. Quarterback from tenth through twelfth grade, taking the team to the state championship all three years. Debate champion, too, winning the regional trophy during his senior year.
Angel would bet dollars to donuts that if Clancy had to hop up on the stage right now and speak, he’d be as awkward as he’d been that summer night just before everyone was leaving for college. He couldn’t hide his feelings then and he obviously still hadn’t learned how. Because his long face told her he was having a hard time dealing with her putting on a show for the alumni organization. In fact, his ego appeared to be severely deflated.
“We’ll have a fifteen-minute break while we grab something to drink.” Allie pulled her microphone close to her face. “See y’all in a quarter of an hour.”
* * *
Before Clancy could make sense of his thoughts, Angel had gone out the side door surrounded by her band. He stretched out his long limbs, amazed that he’d sat still for an hour and a half while memories and her presence tormented him. He smiled and nodded at several of his old friends as he made his way to the doors leading out to the balcony, where he could see the bus parked in the lot behind the ballroom. It was black with gold metallic lettering that sparkled in the light from the streetlamps. The word “Angel” had a crooked halo slung over the capital “A” and “The Honky Tonk Band” had little gold devils with pitchforks sitting on each of the “o” letters.
He remembered the nights when she’d sung along with the radio in his new red Camaro, and he hadn’t been able to tell which was the real singer and which was Angela. Who would have ever thought she’d be running around in her own bus with a band of women who looked like candidates for the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders?
Tonight had been crazy. Clancy hadn’t even thought about Angela showing up. She was almost the one voted most likely not to succeed. Although hardly a day had gone by in the past ten years that something didn’t make him think of Angela Conrad, he’d long since learned to disassociate himself from what had happened that summer. It was as if it had happened to someone in a book, and he’d just read about it. He hadn’t really sat on the creek bank with her late into the nights and let the minnows nibble their toes. He hadn’t actually walked away that last night, knowing she was crying. No, it couldn’t have been him. It was someone else in a novel, or a movie, and he just remembered the details too well.
* * *
“Whew.” Allie dabbed her face with a tissue. “Pretty lively crowd for a bunch of has-beens.”
“Hey,” Angel giggled nervously. “I graduated from this place. I belong to that crowd.”
“Yeah, like I belong at the pearly gates of heaven.” Susan’s blue eyes twinkled. “You outgrew them years ago. Don’t let these hicks make you think you still belong to their world.”
“Thanks.” Angel pretended to slap her cheek. “I needed that.”
“Well, I can see why you were so stuck on that Clancy. He fills out them Wranglers pretty damned good.” Patty sighed. “And those big, wide shoulders about gave me the vapors.” She fluttered her long eyelashes. “Maybe you oughta give him another chance, Angel. Lord, handsome as he is, I’d give him a chance if he wasn’t already wearin’ your brand.”
“Hell,” Angel snorted. “He never wore my brand. He’s free for the taking if you’re interested. I don’t think he’s still married. If he is, his wife didn’t come with him. But rest assured, he’s about as trustworthy as those two little devils painted on the side of this bus.”
“No, thanks,” Patty said, putting on fresh lipstick. “You can keep him. Then tame him or kill him, but don’t give him to me.”
“Me neither.” Mindy gulped in the hot night air and looked up at the starlit sky to see if there might be a stray cloud with a few raindrops to spare. “Hey, look up on the balcony when you come outside, Angel. Clancy’s up there staring down here like he can’t believe his little eyeballs.”
“Yeah? That’s nothing new. He always did look down on me.” Angel was suddenly tired. Her bones ached like they never had before during a performance…and so did her stupid heart. “Another hour and a half and we’ll take this bus home and park it. Then I’ll forget about Clancy Morgan and get on with life. I was here for closure, and I’ve got it.”
“Sure, you do.” Bonnie chuckled. “You’ll forget Clancy when you’re stone-cold dead and planted six feet down. Women don’t forget first loves, and they never forget a first love who did them dirty.”
Chapter 2
Angel flipped the light switch just inside the massive doors of her office and slipped off her shoes. She padded across the thick ivory carpet and plopped down in an oversize blue velvet chair behind an antique French provincial desk. She tossed the alumni newsletter on the desk, laced her hands behind her head, and tried to calm down.
She’d gone to the reunion to give her former classmates a dose of comeuppance. She had planned to leave with a smile on her face and never think about any of them again. Several former acquaintances made a point of stopping by the stage between songs and saying hello to her, but Clancy left just after the last song without a word. But then, what could he say? He’d made his choice ten years ago, and there was no room for a change of heart.
Angel g
ot up and went to the window. Patty was the last one leaving the parking lot. The other women had already departed into the early-morning darkness. Next Friday they would be playing at a honky tonk just south of Davis, Oklahoma, and then a new band called The Gamblers would pick up the bus and have it repainted with their logo. It was high time for the Honky Tonk Band to go out with a flourish and retire. The girls enjoyed performing, but they needed their weekends these days.
Allie was married and her husband Tyler complained that he never saw her on weekends. Susan lived with her boyfriend Richie, and they wanted more quality time together. Bonnie was engaged and planning an October wedding, and Mindy was in the middle of a divorce. Besides, none of them were getting any younger. Angel sighed, looking around at her elegant office—and she had this oil business to run as well.
She thought about Tishomingo again. Main Street had changed a little in the past ten years. The courthouse was new, and the café where she and her grandmother indulged in an occasional burger had a different name these days. There was a new chiropractor’s office on the corner of Main and Broadway. Blake Shelton’s businesses were where a clothing store and a drug store used to stand. She’d looked upstream at Pennington Creek when they’d crossed the bridge over it into town, and noticed that it hadn’t changed at all. The same trees still shaded the sandbar below the dam. The memories of what had happened night after night on a blanket in the privacy of those trees were so real, she could almost smell Clancy’s aftershave.
Angel picked up the newsletter and began to read. Each page had a classmate’s name and a summary of their accomplishments in the past ten years. Apparently almost everyone had sent in the questionnaire whether they could attend the alumni banquet and the dance or not. She found her own entry and reread it.
Because of previous engagements, I’m not able to attend the banquet. However, my band and I—Angel and the Honky Tonk Band—will play for the dance free of charge if you would like. Let me know at the following address. Angela Conrad. She’d added a box number in Denison, Texas. But no one knew that she had rented the box for one month just for the return answer to her letter.
Summertime on the Ranch Page 9