Cowboy Sing Me Home

by Harris, Kim Hunt

  “I just want to tell Bonnie Hurst that I am truly, truly sorry for gossiping about her at the quilting club meeting while she was gone to the bathroom. I am sorry and I hope she can find it in her heart to come forward and write my name on a piece of paper, because I do beg her forgiveness.” She gave a little bow and put her paper on the fire.

  On the way back to her seat, another woman – presumably Bonnie Hurst – jumped up and hugged her. This prompted scattered applause and encouraged a few more to come forward.

  Good grief, Dusty thought. How much longer was this going to go on? They had a sound check at Tumbleweeds in an hour.

  She looked over at Luke, who was apparently taken in by the whole corny thing. Of course, if she didn’t know better, she might get a lump in her throat watching the two old ladies bawling and hanging on each other. She was just a little too jaded for that, she reminded herself as she swallowed.

  They played through another song, and after a few minutes it appeared that everyone who planned to come forward that night had done so. Brother Mark motioned for them to wrap up the song, then invited everyone back the next night, reminding them to think carefully and seriously about the burdens they carried on their hearts. He closed with a prayer for rain.

  Dusty packed her guitar in the case, feeling a little like she’d taken a whirlwind trip to a foreign country and was just now returning home. Except she wasn’t home, a voice inside her said. Because she didn’t have a home.

  “Thank you again for playing,” Brother Mark said as he shook Luke’s hand. He turned to Dusty. “You’re as talented as Luke said you were. Thanks again, you did a beautiful job. I hope all the nonsense didn’t offend you too much.” He smiled and squeezed her elbow.

  She sniffed. “I wasn’t offended. Skeptical, maybe, but not offended.”

  “Skeptical, yes, that’s good. I mean, all this talk of miracles and forgiveness and cosmic mumbo-jumbo –”

  “You know what? I don’t mean to be rude, but I have to get back to my trailer and get ready for tonight.”

  “Of course, of course.” Brother Mark’s head bobbed. “Thanks again for coming, and I look forward to the rest of the week.”

  Bunch of kooks, Dusty thought as she headed back to her trailer. She hung Corinne’s things carefully on a hanger before she choked down a sandwich and pulled out her performance clothes. She wasn’t sure why she was so irritable. This town was nuts, that’s all there was to it. All this Jubilee stuff was just not her thing. She wasn’t used to practical strangers coming up and talking to her about miracles and forgiveness and anything remotely personal. She didn’t want to know about Thelma Jean and Tally Jean Braxton’s pickling problems. She didn’t want to feel her throat grow tight when a grown man watched a piece of paper burn with a look on his face that said he was laying old ghosts to rest.

  She just wanted to play her music, sing her songs, and go on to the next town.

  She pulled a slinky silver snakeskin chemise top over her head, and let the cool fabric drape down to rest between her breasts. She slipped a sterling silver cuff bracelet up her arm to cup against her bicep, and brushed her hair back from her forehead. She met her reflection in the mirror resolutely, her eyes and hands steady as she neatened her makeup. This was more her style.

  She was nervous about tonight, she realized. Not about the gig. About Luke coming back here afterward. She didn’t like being nervous. It meant she might not have the upper hand.

  She would tell him she’d changed her mind. She’d warned him that she might, and it was her right, after all. If she was feeling this nervous before the fact, then things weren’t lined up in her head, and she had no business opening herself up to any kind of vulnerability until whatever those things were got back in line.

  She made up her mind on the drive to Tumbleweeds. She would tell him as soon as she saw him, and get it out of the way so they could get on with the gig.

  Her resolution flew out the proverbial window the moment she saw Luke Tanner standing on stage in snug jeans, a pressed white button-down shirt, and a black cowboy hat. She stopped so suddenly she had to grip the doorjamb for balance.

  There were plenty of bubble-headed women who had a love affair with cowboy hats. Any out-of-work loser with zero intellect could put on a cowboy hat and he would become instantly irresistible to them. Dusty had always held such girls in contempt.

  But now, seeing Luke – who was by no means a loser and too damn good looking for his own good, without props – with the brim pulled low on his brow, she got an inkling of what went through those girls’ heads. He looked dangerous and tantalizing. She felt her mouth go dry and her palms wet, and a flash of heat that could only be characterized as pure lust.

  She found herself sifting through fantasy images of popping those buttons off his shirt, pressing her hands to the warm skin of his chest, pressing her lips to his neck, and tossing off that hat to thread her fingers through his hair while he cupped her bottom with his splayed hands and drew her tightly to him.

  Behind her, someone cleared his throat.

  Dusty jumped like she’d been caught in a forbidden act. She turned to see that she’d been blocking the door for Toby, Corinne, Colt and Becca.

  “Excuse me,” she said in a voice that was a little too high and breathless. “I was just… checking to make sure everything was set up right.”

  “You were great at the Jubilee,” Becca said.

  Dusty nodded her thanks and watched the entire troop file in, disturbed by the curl of envy she felt once again when she saw the happy couples.

  She pushed her way through the gathering crowd to Rodney’s office, on the pretext of checking for messages. She lifted the tattered blinds and looked out at the crowd, trying to ignore Luke, trying to focus on scanning the crowd, getting a feel for the mood of the night. She saw people of all ages, which was good. That’s what Toby had prepared her for, and she’d planned a list of songs from every decade starting with Patsy Cline and Bob Wills and going right up through Faith Hill and Dierks Bentley.

  But her eye kept wandering back to Luke, and she realized she wasn’t watching the crowd. She was hiding.

  “Okay, Rhodes, what’s going on here?” She didn’t like this at all. Generally when she made up her mind to do something, she did it and that was that. Now she was waffling in a way she’d always thought was silly and a waste of energy, besides. One second she was sure she wanted to stay as far away from Luke Tanner as possible, the next she was lusting after him, and the next she was, let’s face it, eating her heart out for a place amongst his group of friends.

  It was silly. And she was above silliness. She told herself this as she strode across the dance floor.

  “Hey.” Toby touched her arm as she walked past their table. “Do you have time to sit and have a drink with us before you get started?”

  She backed away so he couldn’t touch her again and looked around the table. If she hadn’t seen Corinne frazzled just a few hours before, she wouldn’t have believed it had ever happened. She looked as perfect and polished as ever, holding her husband’s hand. Becca was merely too cute for words, delicate with her golden red hair and porcelain skin, snuggled up in the crook of her husband’s shoulder.

  “I don’t drink before a gig.”

  “I don’t drink, either,” Becca said. “Rodney has concocted a non-alcoholic drink, and to be honest, I have no idea what’s in it, because he won’t tell me. But it’s light as water and out of this world. And I can still get out of bed the morning after I drink it. I’ll ask him to make one for you, too.”

  “No.” Dusty frowned. She hadn’t meant to sound short. “I really don’t have time. But thanks.”

  She moved off before they could say anything else, nodded to the band and stomped around the stage to check things that had already been checked and rechecked. Her palms itched; they always itched when she was on edge.

  Luke smiled at her, and the slow sexy grin had her wanting to say something to erase it.
Not his fault she was a mess, she reminded herself before she did anything she’d have to apologize for later. So she nodded back and moved her facial muscles in a half-hearted attempt at a return smile.

  He held his guitar and ran through a quick scale. “You look mad. What did I do now?” he asked casually, already accustomed to incurring her wrath.

  And it didn’t bother him a whit.

  She was ready to shoot off something smart when she looked at Stevie. He looked nervous enough to vibrate out of his own skin. She wanted the band on their toes; she didn’t want to have to scrape them off the ceiling.

  “Okay, huddle up.” She motioned them closer so she wouldn’t have to scream. “Everything looks good to go. We’ve got twenty minutes. You guys take a break and have a drink.” She could swear she heard them gasp, even above the crowd. She pinned each of them in turn with a piercing look. “One. One drink, and get back here at twenty-five after.”

  They didn’t waste any time in taking her up on the offer, except Luke. He stood and waited for her.

  “Go on.” She made a shooing motion.

  “Come sit down and have a beer with me.”

  “I don’t drink before a gig.”

  “Then try this drink that Rodney cooked up for Becca. It’s –”

  “It’s out of this world, I know. I know all about the perfect little details of your perfect little life and your perfect little friends. And believe me, I’m very impressed.” She unrolled her guitar strap and yanked it over her shoulder. “But right now, if you don’t mind, I’d really like for you to go away and let me get warmed up.”

  She blew out a gust of air and glared at him.

  He stood blandly looking at her for a full ten seconds before he said, “I get the feeling you’d like to be alone right now. I’ll be back in fifteen minutes.”

  She refused to watch him walk away. She bent her head over her guitar and felt like an idiot.

  “I tried to get him to go away,” she muttered as she sat on her stool and ran through a few scales. “Not my fault he practically has to be clubbed over the head before he gets a hint.”

  She kept her eyes on the neck of her guitar and warmed up fingers that were already warm from playing at the Jubilee. But the group in front of the stage kept distracting her. Toby’s laughter, Corinne and Becca chatting together like a couple of preteen girls, Colt and Luke talking intensely over something she couldn’t decipher. Luke, fitting right into this group of people like he’d been born to this life.

  Which he had.

  There was too damned much noise in here to concentrate, Dusty decided. She picked up her guitar and headed out the back door. Stars studded the sky, the air was clean in her nose, and as she leaned a hip on the air conditioner under the back door light and pushed the muted noise of Tumbleweeds into the background of her mind, she was finally able to catch her breath. She propped her back against the side of the building and cradled the guitar in her lap.

  She wasn’t a liar. Not to other people, and most definitely not to herself. And ignoring something was a kind of lie. Like the way she’d been trying to ignore the fact that she was jealous of Luke and his friends.

  She could remember the day she realized her life was not what most people lived. She’d been seven, stopped at a Laundromat in Flagstaff, when she’d struck up a conversation with another girl around her own age. They’d been playing Charlie’s Angels, running up and down between the rows of machines with their fingers drawn as pretend guns, the scent of laundry detergent and fabric softener on the humid air, pushing each other in the rolling laundry baskets, until Dusty’s mother said it was time for them to leave. The girl – Dusty couldn’t remember her name but she could still see her clearly – had wanted to know if Dusty could come to her house and play, and her mother said it would be better if the girl could come to their motel room and they could swim in the motel pool.

  “You’re on vacation?” the little girl asked.

  “Honey, we’re always on vacation,” her mother answered, grinning and stroking Dusty’s hair. “We live on vacation.”

  The little girl had been very impressed by this, and ran to ask her permission to go. But when her mother found out they were just passing through, and that Dusty’s parents were playing at one of the local nightclubs, she refused, and held her daughter closely to her until Dusty and her mother left.

  Dusty was quiet in the car all the way back to the motel, and her mother’s repeated attempts to cheer her up did little to drag her mind from the horrible conclusion that not only was she different than other kids, she was not as good. That other mother had held her daughter like she was protecting her from certain danger. She was the kind of person a mother had to protect her children from.

  Her mother and father had played in the pool with her that night, acting so desperately silly in their attempts to cheer her up that she pasted on a smile and let them think she didn’t notice that she had no friends, that playing with them was just as good as playing with boys and girls her own age.

  And most of the time it had been as good, even better. They’d had great times, the three of them. Nothing would ever change that, and no matter what else, she could not fault her parents for living the life they wanted to live, and showing her a world few others got to see. Except for a very few moments, she would not have changed her life, if given the choice.

  She had always been on the outside, wherever she went. Most of the time, that was fine by her. She didn’t need to be surrounded by friends and family. She was comfortable with her own company.

  But the fact remained that when she saw Luke and his friends, and the easy way they had around each other, she was jealous. She didn’t know what that meant. She didn’t know what she was going to do about it. She did know, however, that she wasn’t going to deal with it tonight, when she had an important gig facing her. This town was paying her to perform, and she was going to deliver.

  She put the feelings and confusion on the back burner in her mind, acknowledging that they were there and had to be dealt with. But not tonight.

  Alone under the back door light, with the solid and familiar feel of the guitar in her hands, Dusty felt her mind begin to settle. Unconsciously she began to play, not more scales as she’d intended, but flamenco she’d picked up from the months she’d toured south Texas. Here, alone with her guitar, she was home. No longer the outsider, no longer the odd man out. Here, with the curve of the guitar beneath her breast, she was where she belonged.

  She let herself drift with the sure knowledge that she’d come back to the present before it was time to go on stage. She closed her eyes and let herself sink into the flowing notes, let it carry her on a floating carpet to the place where the world was right, where it was okay – good, even – to be alone. Her fingers took over for her, the knowledge of the music alive in her hands, and she was nothing more than a conduit for the magic that lived in the tone of a metal string stretched across wood.

  She became a part of the music, melded with it and felt herself expand, thin and broad and fluid as mercury, until she was the music.

  Watching her from twenty yards away, Luke had to remind himself to breathe. He’d stopped when he’d first spotted her under the light, her head tilted back, blonde hair free and flowing down her back, her face serene, and he’d been unable to start again since. It was only then that he realized he’d never seen her peaceful before. Determined, scornful, laughing, challenging, and haughty. But never peaceful.

  He thought she was unaware of his presence, but it wouldn’t have mattered if an entire stadium of people were watching. She was the only inhabitant of the world she was in right now.

  The night air was still warm, but cooler than his hot skin, and he could hear the thud of his own heart, keeping time with the music. Her fingers flew across the strings, untamed, the song a living thing that showed itself through her hands. On her lips was the slightest – and yet somehow the deepest – smile he’d ever seen.

  If sh
e had changed her mind about tonight, he didn’t know how he was going to handle it. He ached for her. In a physical, cerebral, and emotional way that lived in the center of him and spread to everything in and around him. He watched her, and that want had a taste, a smell, a feel. And a face. He wanted her with an intensity that unnerved him, threw off his balance and made him weak. He wanted to be in that world where she was now, and felt a true sense of loss that, no matter what she offered, he would never have that.

  He would have been content to watch her while eternity passed, but she lowered her head, her fingers still moving but lighter, softer, teasing notes in the night, and slowly she opened her eyes. Heavy-lidded, her gaze met his unerringly; as if she’d known all along he stood there. The mossy green of them was like a live jewel, lit from within. She continued to play, her gaze locked to his. He felt drugged, as if he’d entered a world where the air was water and the ground under his feet was gone. He wanted to stay in that world.

  So when Stevie poked his head out the door behind Dusty, Luke had to fight to keep from throwing himself at him.

  “Oh, there you are. Are you guys –”

  “We’ll be in in a minute,” Dusty said, her eyes still on Luke.

  Stevie took one look at Luke, bobbed his head and jerked inside so quickly he banged his head on the doorjamb.

  She slowly stopped playing and sat still, looking at him, he looking at her. The cocoon they’d been locked together in ripped silently at the seam, letting in the rest of the world by bits and pieces. He heard the jukebox, the crowd inside, even crickets from the field behind the club. He could breathe again, smell cigarette smoke and exhaust from the cars in the parking lot.

  “Well.” Her voice cut through all other sensations and vibrated in him. “Are we really going to do this?”

  She wasn’t talking about the gig. He knew that as certainly as he knew what lived between them was special, a once-in-a-lifetime kind of special. He’d known plenty of women, had enjoyed their company. Never had he felt this connection on a primal level. The only thing that kept him from turning tail and running, terrified by the enormity of it, was the surety that she felt it too.