Black Ember

by Ruby Laska

  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.

  This had once been the prettiest house in Conway, North Dakota. It had been white, with green shutters and scalloped shingles and a white railing all around the porch. From the front of the house you could see the road that led into town and her mother’s flower garden and the mailbox with the red flag that Roan was allowed to put up on days they had a letter to mail. From the side porch you could see the barn and the fields and the cattle grazing and, best of all, the bunk house where all the hands lived. When Roan grew up she planned to be a cowgirl herself, and she would take care of the cows who were sick, and the baby calves, and maybe even learn how to be a veterinarian in her spare time.

  Roan sighed, dragging a stick along the floorboards, tapping the wood and listening for a hollow echo. This whole idea had been stupid. She would have to come back with a flashlight and a better plan for figuring out where the secret hiding spot was. All she knew for sure was that it was somewhere on the first floor - and even that was subject to the vagaries of her childhood memories, which probably weren’t all that reliable.

  Roan paused to wipe her hands on her jeans. There was a thick layer of dust everywhere, even though the county had nailed plywood over the windows after the fire. How long had it been? Four…almost five years now. Roan had moved out years before, but her father - and Evil Mimi - had lived in the house until his death. The fire had destroyed the h
ome only two months after his heart attack. Everyone thought Mimi would have the place torn down and rebuilt - but instead she moved to town and left the barn and the bunkhouse to fall into ruin alongside the shell of the house that had been in the Brackens family for generations.

  Roan swore she would never return. And she never would have, if she hadn’t been desperate. Besides, she wasn’t there for herself: she was there for Angel.

  A sound outside made her freeze, her heart pounding in her chest. It was a footfall on the old porch. Then another one. Whoever was out there was moving slowly, which was smart, since it would be all too easy to put a foot through the rotting porch floor. Roan had broken a board herself that way.

  She looked toward the arched passage from the dining room to the hall leading to the kitchen. The fire had destroyed most of the second floor but, miraculously, the center of the first floor was mostly unscathed. There, on the cabbage rose wallpaper, were the outlines of the paintings that had once hung there - paintings Mimi had sold after Roan’s father’s death. There was the door to the kitchen. And there - in the direction of the footsteps - was the front door.

  Who would be out here snooping around? One of the oilmen, no doubt. Half a dozen of them had moved into the bunkhouse last summer when Mimi figured out she could charge a fortune in rent, now that the oil boom had made lodging so scarce in town. Roan didn’t know anything about the tenants, but she knew a lot about oil men, since she waited on them at the Bluebird Cafe six days a week. Most of them were okay. Some weren’t. They could put away a lot of food after a twelve hour shift, and they tipped especially well on payday, and that’s all Roan figured she needed to know.

  “Hey,” a male voice called. “I know you’re in there.”

  Roan crept to the interior wall of the dining room, stepping as lightly as she could and pressing herself against the plaster. She edged cautiously toward the hallway, praying that the back door hadn’t been nailed shut - and guessing that it had. She’d had to pry the nails out of the front door with the claw hammer that was in her backpack, and cut the padlock with the bolt cutters she’d “borrowed” from Pete. There was no way she’d be able to escape out the back without making a lot of noise.

  And she was a trespasser here.

  “I’m coming in,” the man called. The door swung open. A heavy boot crunched on the broken glass littering the front hall. A beam of sunlight momentarily blinded Roan, and all she could make out was the figure of a man standing in the doorway of the house that she’d lived in until she was eighteen years old.

  Panic made her run. She burst away from the wall like she was coming out of the blocks at that long-ago state track championship, her lungs roaring with her breath and her fists and legs pumping hard. She bolted past the man, shoving him against the wall with her shoulder and barely breaking her stride, down the steps across the snowy yard and heading for the woods, before she registered what she’d seen in the split second before she burst out the front door:

  The man had a gun, and it had been pointed at her.

  Black Heat

  ***

  Other Ruby Laska Books

  Larissa Learns To Breathe

  It’s hard to stay uptight when the island breezes blow…

  Larissa Lawson spent years fighting her way to the top of the corporate ladder. When it gives out under her, an unexpected lifeline arrives: a mysterious invitation to join the staff of the Cupid Island Resort in the Florida keys. Arriving two days before Thanksgiving, she’d just as soon work straight through the holiday as dwell on her shattered dreams. Besides, rolling up her sleeves will show her new staff that she’s all business.

  Tommy Reid is quite happy spending his days in the sun and salt air on Cupid Key. The once-nerdy grad student has been transformed into an easy-on-the-eyes cabana boy with an advanced degree in relaxation. When Larissa shows up with an agenda and an attitude, can he slow her down enough to enjoy what the island – and its number one beach bum – have to offer?

  THE CUPID ISLAND SERIES

  Fans of Bella Andre, Kristan Higgins, and Susan Mallery will love the Cupid Island romance series, stories featuring women who are ready for love, and men with a passion for island adventure. The women come from small towns and big cities, but they'll all leave with the love of a lifetime.

  * * *

  Mountain Song

  Considering how well Claudia Canfield juggles a demanding job and a four-year-old son, no one would guess she was once a spoiled, irresponsible young debutante. She left that chapter of her life behind for good. Or so she thinks--until Andy Woods makes a most unwelcome return to her life.

  When Claudia's grandmother Bea takes a nasty spill that lands her in the hospital, Claudia breaks her vow never to return to Lake Tahoe. To the place where she found first love, then lost it. The place where her son Paul was conceived, a mistake that turned out to be the only good thing to come of a hopeless love affair.

  Bad enough to be surrounded by memories of the long winter she spent skiing, spending her parents' money, and falling in love with Andy. He was supposed to be long gone by now, far from the mountains where he spent his hardscrabble youth. Instead, he earned a medical degree and came back to care for the people of his home town - including Bea.

  Bea's injuries turn out to be serious, but all she wants to talk about is Andy. About how fortuitous it is for him and Claudia to be together again. How Claudia owes him the truth: that Paul is his son.

  But Claudia is more determined than ever to keep Andy from finding out. The memory of their last night together still aches after all this time: she’d revealed her hopes for the future and he’d crushed them as easily as if they were made of spun glass.

  It’s all in the past now, and Claudia vows to keep her secret from Andy, even after the ashes of their long-past romance threaten to erupt again into flame.