The Songbird Sisters

by Rachael Herron

  “Pink.”

  The right side of Lana’s mouth quirked upward. Taft relaxed incrementally.

  She was here.

  So was he.

  And she wasn’t on a date. Not that it should matter as much as it did – he was here on business, too, after all. Three songs were all he needed.

  Three songs and another kiss. Or more.

  Rein it in, Hill.

  Okay, three songs would do. He would just think of her like the wild rabbits he and his pa used to see in the hills behind their huge house. A creature with a lot of quiet twitches could move fast and unexpectedly, in any direction. If you sat still long enough, though, they’d quiet down. Once he’d seen a jackrabbit fall sideways in his sleep, stretching out his legs and exposing his belly like a dog did in front of a fireplace.

  Maybe he could be still enough not to spook Lana.

  Jake leaned forward. “What are you here for, then? Just a vacation?”

  “I saw Taft not long ago in Nashville. I told him how great Darling Bay is.” Lana’s face was serious again. “I just didn’t think he was listening.”

  “I always listen to you.”

  “Always? We’ve only spoken on one occasion, right?”

  One night’s long conversation, then a lot of back and forth about song rights, communicated through Sully. “But when you speak, I listen.” It was true. In his mind, Taft could play back almost everything she’d said that evening, and had, many times. “Yeah. A little vacation, a little work. I’m going to try to talk this woman into writing some more songs with me.”

  Another woman would have sat up straighter. This was Lana, though, and there was nothing normal about her. She slouched farther down in her chair. “Oh, no.”

  Jake slapped the table top. “Best idea I’ve heard in a long time!” He caught Lana’s look. “Besides the idea of helping you fix up the hotel, which is, of course, an even better idea. That’s okay, though, because I’m a big fan of both of yours.” He gave a wide, nervous grin.

  Taft continued. “She’ll say no, but I’m pretty determined to get her help. I think she’s the best songwriter in Nashville. When a man says that, he means the nation, because they don’t get better than the writers in Nashville.”

  “I thought you sang, too,” said Jake to Lana.

  Lana snapped, “I do. I did.”

  Oh, she was fiery. Taft didn’t want to get in the way of her blaze. He needed those songs, though.

  He had time. “So,” he said, addressing Lana. “What needs doing in this hotel of yours?”

  She sat straighter and sighed. “What doesn’t need doing? The more I learn, the more I freak out.” Interesting. She was more comfortable talking about the hotel than writing songs. That was fine. He could do that. Now he knew she slouched, going to ground like a frightened cat when she was threatened, and straightened when she was more relaxed. He filed away the information.

  “She’s not over her head,” said Jake. “She might have been had she decided to go ahead with her plan of doing everything herself.”

  Taft couldn’t help it – he laughed.

  Lana shot him the scowl he was starting to get used to, but there was something behind it. She might be on the verge of laughing at herself, too. “I don’t like asking for help.”

  Jake shook his head. “Hiring help and asking for it are two different things. Smart people hire the right people. Less smart people get their friends to help. They end up with sagging roofs and bad interior paint jobs.”

  Taft had an idea. “Well, if you’re hiring him, Lana, can I be a friend and help out? I promise not to make the roof sag. I’m actually good with a paintbrush.”

  Lana stared at him.

  It did sound kind of ridiculous when Taft said it out loud. But how many projects had he done with his dad? Between albums, his pa loved nothing more than hammering and sawing. Taft had gotten that from him. His mother hadn’t liked it much, and complained about the sawdust they tracked into her nice house at the end of the day. That hadn’t stopped them. They’d built the cabin in the Smokies themselves, just the two of them. They’d gotten help with the wiring because they weren’t stupid, and the plumbing because they’d been clueless. They’d done the rest themselves.

  “No,” she said. “No way in hell.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Taft Hill was offering charity now? Was that what this was? Worst case, it was pity, and that would be just unbearable.

  “No, no, no. Also, no,” she said again, in case he hadn’t heard her over the guffaws of the four guys playing darts in the corner.

  Jilly had been right. He did want more songs.

  More of her heart. More of her pain.

  It was pretty ballsy of him to ask. Of course, she hadn’t exactly told him that it had broken her heart that she’d let him rewrite her most agonizing song and buy it from her. That was entirely, one hundred per cent on her. It had been up to her to tell him no, to take the song off the table the second she’d realized it was the wrong thing to do. Nothing had required her to sign the paperwork when it had finally come through official channels. No one had forced her to do it.

  Lana had known she shouldn’t sell it. Not that song. Any other song, maybe. She knew she’d been overreacting, but it had honestly felt like handing him her newborn and walking away when she had dotted the “i” in Darling on the papers. She could hope that he would take care of it, but the song had been heard by less than a couple of hundred people by the time she had sold it to him. It was new, still green. Then he’d added his slick sound engineering and his well-known Taft Hill swaggering voice to it. Now it was played all the time on country stations. She’d heard it at least three times a day as she’d driven cross-country. She hadn’t even been actually searching out country stations – they were just so popular in the Midwest that it was hard to flip the dial and not land on one. And in doing so, land on her song. No, his song.

  It had ceased being hers the minute he’d changed the words, even a little bit.

  She gave Taft her sweetest smile, the one she used onstage and when asking for more barbecue sauce at Peg Leg Porker BBQ. “Thanks, but we’ve got it. It was hard enough for me to ask Jake and his brothers for help.”

  “But –”

  Jake nodded. “She’s only getting part of the brotherly act, since Aidan’s busy on a job out of town, and Liam’s on a backpacking trip in South America with his new bride.”

  Lana turned her attention brightly to Jake. “It’s usually the three of you on a project?”

  “Nah, Liam’s useless with anything that isn’t a computer, but usually Aidan is project lead. I mean –” He looked down and then up again. “I, uh, he told me not to tell you that. Whoops. I’m good at my job, I swear! I’m just the youngest, so they don’t ride me too hard.”

  Lana tilted her head. “Huh. The opposite is true in my family.”

  Taft set his beer on the table with a clunk. “So you’re a man short is what you’re saying.”

  The wine in Lana’s mouth turned sour. “No charity. I flat out refuse.”

  “No charity.” He winked at her. Winked! The nerve.

  Taft turned to face Jake. “I happen to be available. Hire me.”

  Jake boggled. “Come again?”

  “I can do it all. I might need some guidance sometimes, but my father and I worked for years together on all sorts of building projects. I can pour concrete and tear down walls. I know how to install both tile and wood flooring. I’m great at roofs, from top to gutter. I haven’t worked too much with plumbing, but I can learn. There you go. That’s my résumé. My best reference is my pa and he’s dead, but I can get others if you need ’em.”

  Lana sat in stunned silence. Her mouth opened to say something – anything – to discourage this crazy idea. Nothing came to her, so she closed it again and just stared.

  Jake held his hands open in front of him, like he was holding an invisible beach ball. “You’re a country star.”


  “I am. And I’m a builder.”

  “You must have to be … doing country-star things.”

  “Thing about country singers, and Lana, back me up here –”

  She would do no such thing. Her mouth flapped open then closed again.

  “– we have a lot of down time between albums. At most, I bring out an album once a year. I tour for seven months at a time. The rest of the year I’ve got nothing to do but write songs.”

  Lana finally found her voice. “Are you straight out of your goddamned mind?”

  Jake said, “I love it.”

  Taft took a satisfied sip of his beer. “Great.”

  “No!”

  Jake ignored her. “But … payment.”

  “How about fifteen bucks an hour?” Taft offered.

  “Oh, come on.” Lana set down her wineglass before she snapped the stem.

  “I pay the new guys on my crew twenty an hour. I can’t pay you that little.”

  “Twenty’s fine.”

  Lana turned to Jake. “You can’t be serious. What about your liability? Your insurance can’t cover him on a site. What if something happens to his picking hand? You can’t afford that.”

  Taft smoothly said, “I’ve got my own. Covered wherever I am.”

  Damn it. “Think about what a field day the press will have with it. You know someone will find out and they’ll run to the tabloids.” She held up her fingers in air quotes. “Taft Hill Goes Broke, Stoops to Manual Labor.”

  Taft held up his finger punctuation. “Taft Hill Works with Darling Songbird to Bring Historic Golden Spike Hotel Back to Life.”

  Double triple damn. She focused on Jake again. He was tapping on his phone. “But the press. For your business. Won’t that make you look desperate? Or something?”

  “You kidding? It’ll be the best press we’ve gotten since we started doing On the Market.” He pointed at his screen. “Oh, it’s a reality show we’ve been doing, me and my brothers. We sell houses, fix ’em up and go on dates with the buyers. We’d do more episodes except both my brothers got caught on the love hook a little quick. We have an actual agent now. I’m texting him. The top of his head is going to pop right off. Liam is going to think I finally did something right.” With a ping, the text was sent. Jake stuck his phone back in his pocket. “Lana. Come on. This is the first project Aidan’s ever let me manage and it’s only because he’s too busy to do it. It’s not like he chose to let me run this. If I screw up, I’ll never hear the end of it. You’re the youngest, too. You feel me, right?” His eyes were sweet. Pleading.

  Taft pressed his hands together at his heart. “Come on, Birdie. What do you say?”

  What was the point in continuing to argue? She’d lost. It was obvious. “It’s none of my business who you hire, Jake.”

  Jake gave a short whoop, pointing a finger gun at Taft. “You’re hired! I just need your social security card and two forms of ID.” He appeared to think about his words for a moment. “Okay, I’m pretty sure I know who you are. Just your card.”

  Taft reached across the table. He shook Jake’s hand.

  Lana crossed her arms over her chest. Men. She made sure she kept her face in solid disapproval, but secretly, deep in her body somewhere between her heart and her brain, a tiny flower of happiness bloomed.

  Taft lit something inside her.

  He obviously wanted to be around her, too.

  Of course, that was about the songs he wanted her to write with him, which weren’t going to happen, obviously. Lana pushed her hands through her short hair. Suddenly, desperately, she wondered how she looked.

  Oh, no.

  She was not going to play this game.

  “So!” She clapped once. “It’s settled. Anything else, Jake?”

  “Nope. I’ve got to finish a job with my crew tomorrow. Then it’s the weekend, but we can be here on Monday.” He turned to glance at the clock over the bar. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a date waiting for me.”

  “Nice,” said Taft approvingly. “Someone special?”

  “Nah. I’m not my brothers.” With a grin, Jake was gone.

  It was good to remember. Siblings weren’t all the same. Lana wasn’t her sisters. While Adele and Molly might have been capable of falling for anyone who crossed their paths, Lana wasn’t like that.

  She wasn’t like them.

  Lana stood. “Okay, then. I guess that’s that.”

  Taft held out a hand. “Wait. About those songs I mentioned.”

  “Nope.”

  “Can we talk about it?”

  “Hell, no.” Something sharp lodged itself at the top of her lungs. “I mean, no, thank you.”

  His hand dropped to the table. “I have to say I’m disappointed.”

  “Do you always get your way?”

  He looked surprised. “No.”

  “Really?”

  “I get my way as often as anyone else.”

  “You’re Taft Hill.” She almost winced as the words left her mouth. Did she really have to point that out to him?

  “And you’re Lana Darling. I know you.”

  “You know nothing about me.”

  “Fair enough. But I know “Blame Me.’”

  It smacked her right in the chest. “I’ve got to go. I guess I’ll see you on Monday if not before. Small town, right?”

  Adele passed their table carrying a tray of empty bottles and glasses. “Wait, Taft, you’re staying?”

  “I am. Working with Jake Ballard to help your sister here fix up the hotel.”

  Adele’s eyes widened as she looked between the two of them and then back again. “You’re kidding.”

  This Lana couldn’t take. No way. “I’ll let you fill her in. I’m going to bed.”

  “It’s not even seven o’clock, Lana. What about dinner?”

  “I’m still on East Coast time,” she lied. Without saying an extra goodbye to Taft, she ducked through the bar and out the back door into the arbor.

  There she stopped, spent.

  She felt as if she’d been running for days. Years, maybe. She’d made it all the way home, and she couldn’t take the last few steps to bed.

  The arbor was unoccupied. Lana sank onto a picnic bench. The fog had rolled in hard and fast, and it hung now, draped through the garden, as gauzy as a veil. The white lights twinkled overhead, twined in the still-bare grapes. The night-blooming jasmine had just gasped out its thick, sweet fragrance.

  It was heaven, or as close to it as she expected to find on this earth.

  Lana blinked, hard.

  She was soon going to be armpit-deep in a new project, one that had nothing to do with music. This was what she’d wanted. This was what she’d chosen. Her old life – her dream life – had abandoned her, and she’d thought she would pick herself up consciously, if not totally gracefully.

  She’d figure out a way to make peace with Adele because she had to.

  That, she’d thought, would be the hardest part – Molly and she were fine. Totally okay. But Adele – she’d never managed to forgive Adele. The real problem was that Adele didn’t know what she was in trouble for.

  Lana had never actually told her.

  That was supposed to be her challenge, that was supposed to be the most difficult step of being back in Darling Bay.

  Then Taft Hill had arrived.

  Lana groaned and covered her face. She took a moment to think what Taft Hill meant.

  He meant Nashville. He meant stories of people she’d worked with for years. Just by being near her, he’d symbolize everything she’d thought she’d be able to put behind her.

  He meant failure.

  “Taft fucking Hill,” she muttered, her fingers heavy on her eyelids.

  A boot scraped the gravel in front of her.

  “You called?”

  Chapter Eighteen

  It was kind of best-case scenario, actually.

  Taft had gone out the bar’s back door hoping he’d be able to take a quick peek at
the work site. Maybe Lana would be looking at the roof or walls or something.

  But there she was, under the romantic lights, her face in her hands.

  Moaning his name.

  Couldn’t be better, that was a damn fact.

  Except Lana had leaped to standing as soon as he’d spoken. “What are you doing sneaking up on me like that?”

  He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “I came right on out the door. The one you can see from where you’re sitting. I don’t call that sneaking. It is hard to see what’s going on around you, though, when your face is covered and you’re saying men’s names.”

  She thumped back to sitting again. “I wasn’t – I was just –”

  “My name, in particular.” He sat next to her, leaning his elbows on the table behind them. “There could be worse things for a man to hear than a beautiful woman groaning his name.”

  Lana glared at him. “I’m not doing this. Not right now.”

  “Look, Lana. I’m honestly not trying to be a pain in your ass.”

  “You’re failing, then.”

  “The honest-to-God truth is that I need three more songs for my next album, and I can’t write a single damn word.”

  She bit her bottom lip briefly. “You took that song and made it yours. Good for you. I’m glad for you that it’s been such a hit. But I can’t help you with the writing.”

  “I bet you’re glad for your bank account, too.” He injected as much cheer into his voice as he could, but it wasn’t enough, clearly. She got a look in her face like someone had just lit a firecracker under her seat.

  “Is that what this is? You think now I’ve got money from a song you sang that I’ll feel beholden to you?”

  Oh, God. It was the exact opposite of what he’d meant. “Lana, I owe you. My career was flatlining. My last three albums were so alike I can’t even tell them apart. You were my lucky charm. You brought me back. That’s why these next songs are so important.”

  Lana shot a look at the bar’s door. “Look. Don’t tell anyone I wrote “Blame Me.’”

  Taft dug his boot heel into the dirt. “Why not?”

  “Because I say so.”

  And that just about confirmed it for him. It was her. It was autobiographical, he’d known it.