“I’m glad,” Shane said, patting her back reassuringly. “Totally.”
He rubbed his cheek on hers, the dark stubble scraping against her skin. He was dressed in rumpled khakis and a faded Doc Watson T-shirt, and his feet were bare.
He pulled back a little. “But I wish you’d called to let me know you were on your way. The place is a wreck. They guys and I have been pulling all-nighters, working on stuff for the tour.”
“Who cares?” Annajane said. Wyley bumped up against her leg, nudging her hand with his muzzle until she relented and leaned down to scratch his ears.
“See? We’re both glad to see you,” Shane said.
He retrieved her overnight bag from the car, and they walked inside arm in arm. The cabin was essentially two rooms: a combined living and dining room with a small kitchen L, and a tiny bedroom with adjoining bath.
It didn’t look like it had been cleaned since the last time Annajane was there a month earlier.
Newspapers and books littered the floor and tabletops. A guitar and a Dobro were leaned up against the soot-blackened brick fireplace, and the leather sofa and matching armchair were coated in a fine layer of yellow dog hair. The coffee table in front of the sofa held an open laptop computer, a cereal box, and an empty plastic milk jug. Music wafted from a pair of enormous old stereo speakers that served as Shane’s end tables.
The tiny kitchen counter and sink held an array of dirty dishes, and the trash can overflowed with beer bottles and pizza boxes.
Annajane wrinkled her nose. “You really do need a woman’s touch.”
“That’s what I’ve been telling you,” he said. “I’m sorry you had to see the place like this, but the guys and I have been working on new material,” Shane said. “Wait til you hear.”
He swept the newspapers off the sofa and pulled her down beside him. “We’ve got almost enough material for a new album.” He tapped some keys of the lapboard and turned up the sound.
Banjos and fiddle music and a harmonica and three voices, combined in high harmony, with lyrics about pleasing and sneezing, and summer and bummer.
“Nice,” Annajane said, nodding her head to the beat. “What’s it called?”
Shane beamed. “Ragweed Rag. I mean, this is just kinda the first pass. Corey wants me to finesse the lyrics some. I’m kinda worried about the bass line. What do you think? Too clunky?”
Without waiting for a response, he started the song over again.
“It’s good,” Annajane said. “But you know I don’t know that much about bluegrass…”
“You’ll learn,” he said, squeezing her knee. “Let me play you the song we were working on last night. Okay?”
“Actually,” Annajane said, catching his hand, “there’s something important I need to talk to you about. It’s why I came down here today.”
“Sure,” Shane said, still tapping at the computer’s keyboard. “Hang on just a sec, can you? Corey just IM’ed me. He’s got an idea for the melody for the bridge for one of the new songs.” He grabbed his Dobro and started to strum, nodding and pausing.
She got up and wandered into the kitchen and began putting it to rights without giving it much thought. The space was too tiny for a dishwasher, so she ran a sink full of hot soapy water and scrubbed and rinsed and dried virtually every dish, spoon, or fork Shane owned. When the dishes were dried and put away in the one tiny cupboard, she bagged up the trash and took it outside to the garbage can, which was also overflowing with what looked like a month’s worth of bagged-up trash.
The bedroom was a disaster. A plastic laundry basket erupted with dirty clothing. The bedding was a tangled knot of threadbare sheets with a worn green sleeping bag stretched across them. And frankly, she thought, the place smelled like a swamp.
“Ugh.” She tugged at the window, finally forcing it upward. But the window had no screen, and a fine film of yellow pollen drifted inside. She sneezed but left it open. With a singular motion, she swept all the bed linens into the laundry basket, took them out to the tiny mud porch at the back of the cabin, and unceremoniously dumped everything into the washing machine.
She would not, she decided, be spending the night at the cabin tonight. She would have to find a tactful way to suggest that a night at a nice motel would be just the thing to reignite their romance.
When she’d done all she could in the way of housekeeping, Annajane rejoined him.
Shane was still noodling around on the Dobro, but now he was talking on his cell to one of his bandmates. She recognized that he was in what he liked to call his “groove,” and with a shrug, she found a weather-beaten broom and gave the entire house a thorough sweep.
“You don’t have to do that, baby,” Shane said, glancing up from his playing. He slapped the sofa cushion next to his. “Come sit down. I’ll get that later. Didn’t you say you needed to talk to me about something?”
“Okay,” Annajane said, feeling a lump in the pit of her stomach. Just tell him, she thought. Don’t be a chickenshit. Get the truth out in the open, and everything will be all right.
She sank down onto the sofa and turned to face him. “First off,” she said nervously. “I don’t want there to be any lies between us. Remember when we first started seeing each other, the promise we made to each other?”
“Right,” he said. “No lies. It’s the foundation of our relationship.”
“Okay, well, the thing is, some stuff has come up with Mason.”
“Your ex? Didn’t he just get remarried, like, yesterday?”
She took a deep breath. “He was supposed to get married on Saturday, but his little girl got sick right in the middle of the ceremony, so they had to postpone it.”
“I’m sorry,” Shane said. “Is the kid okay?”
“She had an emergency appendectomy,” Annajane said. “She’ll be fine. Mason, on the other hand, may not be getting remarried after all.”
Shane frowned. “How come?”
“It’s a long story,” Annajane said. “Celia’s all wrong for him, but he’s just figuring that out. Better now than later, I guess, huh?”
“Better now than later,” Shane said, nodding solemnly.
“Uh, well, then we went out for a long drive together last night,” Annajane continued. “And he had a flask of bourbon in his glove box, and I found an old mix tape I made him, from years ago, and I don’t know, it might have been the combination of the bourbon and Journey, but I…”
“Wait!” Shane interrupted. His eyes were aglow. He grabbed up the laptop and started typing like a fiend.
“Better late than never,” he said, humming. “It’s genius! That’s the bridge lyric, the one we’ve been trying to nail down all week!”
Now he grabbed the Dobro and started picking. “Better late than never,” he sang in a high, nasal twang. “You never promised me foreverrrrrr.”
He leaned over and kissed Annajane’s nose. “Keep talking, babe. It’s all golden. You’re my muse. Just tell me what’s on your mind, it’s like you’re opening up my creative floodgates here.”
Annajane started over. “One minute we were listening to Journey, and the next minute, Mason was kissing me, and I was kissing him back…”
“Journey? Seriously?” Shane put down the Dobro and frowned. “I’m starting to question your musical judgement.”
“I like Journey,” Annajane said. “Or I did at the time. But that’s really not the point. The point is, my ex kissed me, and I kissed him back.” She sat back and waited for the realization to hit him.
“I see,” Shane said. His face was solemn. “Did you say you’d been drinking?”
“Bourbon,” Annajane confirmed.
“Alcohol can cloud anybody’s judgment,” Shane said. “Sometimes I have a few brews with the guys and the next thing I know, I’m watching old Guns N’ Roses videos on YouTube and shooting squirrels with a BB gun.”
Annajane reached over and gently took the Dobro from her fiancé.
“I don’t think yo
u get what I’m telling you here, Shane,” she said. “I was alone out in the country with Mason. I willingly went with him. Yes, I was drinking a little bourbon, but to be perfectly honest with you—and I do want to be honest with you—I sort of knew he was going to kiss me before it happened. And I didn’t fight him off. In fact, I enjoyed it.”
“Jesus, Annajane.” His face fell, and she felt as though she’d slapped him.
“I know. I feel horrible,” she said. And she did.
Wyley looked from Shane to Annajane. The dog whined and licked Shane’s hand, and Shane scratched his ears absentmindedly.
He looked down at the floor, and then, with hopefulness, at Annajane. “So, it was an of-the-moment kind of thing, right? Not something you’d do again, right?”
“Not if I was thinking rationally,” Annajane said.
“And when you’re thinking rationally?” Shane asked, taking both her hands in his.
“I know it will never work for Mason and me. There were too many issues when we were married before that never got resolved. I’m done with all that.”
“You’re sure? Really?”
She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Her pulse was racing, and she could feel her heart hammering in her chest. Finally, fighting back tears, she nodded.
“Okay then,” Shane said. He leaned his forehead and rested it against hers. “You had me worried there for a minute, babe, showing up like that, out of the blue.” He kissed her. “It’s forgotten. Right?”
“Riiigghhht,” she said.
As if, she thought.
“I trust you totally,” he told her. “What we have together, it transcends petty jealousy. In a week, you’ll be down here, we’ll be together, and Mason whatshisname will be ancient history.”
And that’s what she wanted to believe. She would have given anything to believe it. But no matter what she did or where she went, she knew Mason would never be history. Not completely.
He stood up, stretched, and yawned. “Wow, I’ve been so busy, I totally forgot to eat today. So, what’s your plan? Wanna get some lunch or something? We’re meeting over at Rob’s house at two for rehearsal, but there’s still time for us to run up to the sandwich joint at the shopping center and grab something before I take off.”
She was staring at Shane now, who was standing there, his hand resting lightly on her shoulder, so trusting, so willing to forgive what he considered her minor transgression. She thought of the qualities that had drawn her to him the first time they’d met in Holden Beach.
Shane had no inkling it wasn’t cool to call a girl five minutes after she’d driven away from him, and that was part of his charm. He didn’t care about cool. He cared about her. The next time they met, in Roanoke, he’d gone to a supermarket and bought pink roses and had them delivered to her table in the club where he was playing. And the next time he was in North Carolina, he called, and even though he was playing in a bar halfway across the state, he drove the three hours over and back just to take her to dinner before he had to drive back and play a late-night set.
He sent her sweet, funny e-mails, links to his music and the band’s Web site. He started, but never finished, writing a song called “Annajane in the Morning.” The band was a regional success. Shane made enough money to do what he loved to do—making music, hanging with his friends, traveling around in his van with his dog, and then coming home to his little cabin.
The life was enough for him, she thought, and he was blessed that he thought so. The problem was, she saw now, it wouldn’t be enough for her. Shane wanted her, she knew. But he didn’t really need her. His life was just the right size, just as it was.
She’d been spouting off about honesty—both to Mason and Shane. But if she was being really honest with herself, she knew there was a reason she’d resisted moving in here or setting a date for their wedding.
“Annajane?” Shane was standing at the door, his Dobro in his hand. “Ready to go?”
She covertly twisted the plain ring from her left hand and looked around the room one last time.
“Shane?” He turned to her, and when he saw the somber look on her face, his beautiful, sunny smile clouded over, and then disappeared.
“It’s over, isn’t it?” he asked, leaning up against the doorjamb. “You’re never moving in here; we’re never getting married. God. I am so damned dense. That’s what you really came to tell me, wasn’t it?”
“No,” she said, walking toward him. “I mean, I thought I came here to convince myself that you’re what I want. To remind myself how lucky I am to have your love. And I know, I must be the luckiest girl in this state. But as much as I want this to work, I just don’t think it will.”
“We could make it work!” Shane exclaimed. “Once you’re living closer, away from all that drama back in Passcoe, things will be different. We’ll make them different. If you need some time and space, I get that. You can have all of it you want. Just as long as you stay in my life. Okay?” He reached out, took her hand, and kissed it.
“Your ring?” he asked, dropping her hand.
She dug it out of her pocket, put it in his palm, and gently closed his fingers over it. “I messed up my last marriage. Gave up and ran off when things got bad. It was easier to blame him, his mama, my mama, everybody but myself. But now I’ve got to stop running. I’ve got to figure out what I want from life.”
“Mason?” His mouth twisted as he said the name.
“I honestly don’t know,” she said. “He’s got a lot of his own stuff to figure out. Right now, I think I’ll just concentrate on fixing me.”
“You’re fine the way you are,” Shane said.
“No, I’m not,” Annajane said. She picked up her overnight bag and slung it over her shoulder and gave Wyley a final head scratch. “But I’m gonna be.”
24
Farnham-Capheart’s offices were on the seventh floor of a midsized office tower in midtown Atlanta. Annajane parked in the underground garage and took the elevator to the marble-floored lobby. As she passed a small sandwich shop, her growling stomach reminded her of the breakfast and lunch she’d skipped.
A trio of women, dressed in chic dark suits and heels, stepped out of the elevator as she stepped in. She looked down, ruefully, at her own attire: black slacks, a pale pink ruffled cotton blouse, and quilted black ballet flats. When she’d fled Passcoe before dawn that morning, she hadn’t stopped to think about what clothes she’d need. She brushed some dog hair from her slacks, reached in her pocketbook, and brought out a simple pair of pearl earrings and fastened them to her ears.
This would have to do for now, but she’d certainly have to step up her game, fashion-wise, once she started work at the ad agency. Back in Passcoe, she’d dressed much more casually for work, even wearing jeans on Fridays in the summer. Clearly, that wouldn’t work in Atlanta. She was in the big leagues now. And, she reflected ruefully, she was single again. Probably destined to stay that way, too.
When she arrived at the agency’s office suite, she had to wait a moment for her new boss, Joe Farnham, to meet her in the reception area.
“Annajane?” he said, looking a little flustered. “Aren’t you still working in Passcoe?”
“I came into town this morning on the spur of the moment,” she said. “Just thought I’d drop by and chat for a minute before I head back home to finish up my packing.”
“Come on back to my office,” Joe said, guiding her by the elbow. “I guess it’s just as well you’re here.”
When he was seated at his desk with his office door closed and with Annajane sitting across from him, Joe Capheart pulled a foil-wrapped roll of antacids from a desk drawer. He popped one in his mouth and silently handed one across to her.
Her stomach fluttered. News was coming, and it wasn’t gonna be good.
“I take it you haven’t talked to Davis today?” he asked, frowning.
“Uh, no,” she said. “It’s been a pretty crazy weekend at home. I left superearly this mor
ning and haven’t had a chance to talk to Davis.”
“You’re gonna want to,” Joe said. He chewed the antacid silently and stared out the window. “They’ve put me in a hell of an awkward position here. Not to mention all the other repercussions.”
“What’s going on?” Annajane said, trying not to sound alarmed.
“The long and the short of it is, Quixie has pulled their account.”
She chewed the antacid furiously for a moment, while she let the news settle in. “Since when?” she asked, when she could speak again. “That’s crazy. I talked to Mason yesterday, and he didn’t say anything like that.”
“Davis e-mailed me about fifteen minutes ago,” Joe said glumly. “I haven’t even told the rest of the partners yet. An e-mail—you believe that? After all the years the agency’s done business with them?”
“Did he give you a reason?” Annajane asked, still dumbfounded. “I mean, Joe, I was just in the office yesterday, going over the new summer promotion plans. Davis had signed off on all of it.”
“This came from out of the blue! As far as I knew, we were golden,” Joe said. “Thirty years we’ve been working on the Quixie account. I was just a junior copywriter when Glenn Bayless hired us, and Davis, the little prick—excuse my language, Annajane—was barely potty-trained. All his e-mail today said was that there were some new developments in the company’s ownership. Do you have any idea what that’s supposed to mean?”
She felt a chill go down her spine. “All I know is that Jax Snax has indicated they’re going to tender an offer to buy Quixie. Mason is totally opposed to a sale. And so is his sister. But Davis has been actively agitating for it.”
“What about Sallie?” Joe asked urgently.
“According to Mason, she’s been on the fence.”
Joe crumpled up a piece of paper and tossed it into the trash. “Sounds to me like maybe she fell off that fence.”
Annajane took a deep breath. “What does this mean for the agency?”
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