Chapter Four
Wade
I WOKE UP GRINNING, which had not happened in recent memory, and I lay there for a minute trying to decide whether this was a personality change or a medical event.
The ceiling fan turned above me. Sunlight came through the curtains in bright slats.
Outside the cabin window, Marisol’s kitchen radio was playing Loretta Lynn, and a horse in the stable yard was having a loud disagreement with the farrier.
Between the two of them, the morning had a soundtrack, and it was better than anything on Nashville radio.
Thursday. Day four. And I, Wade Bishop, professional musician, competent adult, and man who had not grinned in his sleep since approximately never, was lying in bed thinking about a woman’s laugh instead of the two shows I had to play in the next forty-eight hours.
In my defense, it was a very good laugh.
Last night’s show had gone better than I’d expected.
Layla’s solo acoustic set had started shaky and ended with the entire Saloon holding its breath, not because they were worried but because they were listening.
Her voice had found its footing three bars in and built from there.
By the second song the guests had stopped talking.
The bartender had stopped pouring. Sixty strangers were hearing what I’d heard on Tuesday in an empty room.
I’d stood in the wings with my hands in my pockets to keep from doing anything stupid, like walking out on stage and kissing her in front of everyone.
The harmonies during the main set had locked in tighter than anything we’d played all week.
Every entry, every blend, her alto dropping under my voice and holding there.
Milo had given me a look after the third song that communicated, with the eloquent specificity of a man who’d known me since we were broke and playing bars for beer money, that I was in deep and he was enjoying it.
I swung my legs off the bed, pulled on jeans and a shirt and boots, and grabbed my hat.
The morning was already hot. I could feel it through the cabin walls, the heavy press of a Texas June.
The light coming through the curtains had that hard, clean quality that flattened shadows, and I felt clear and awake and stupidly happy, which was not a condition I had much recent experience with.
I headed for the Lodge.
The dining hall was loud with guests and the good chaos that happened when Marisol decided to flex.
This morning’s spread was migas with roasted peppers, black bean hash, thick slabs of buttered toast, and a pitcher of fresh-squeezed orange juice.
I filled a plate, poured coffee, and scanned the room.
Layla was at a table near the windows with Lucinda and one of the trail ride families.
She had a pale yellow blouse on and her scarf was holding a temporary truce with her hair, and she was showing a girl of maybe twelve the back of her camera screen.
The girl leaned in, eyes wide. Layla pointed at the screen, said a few words I couldn’t hear, and the girl laughed and reached for the camera.
Layla let her hold it. She adjusted the girl’s grip, guided her hands, showed her where to look.
The mother beside them had gone soft around the eyes.
“You’re blocking the toast,” Boyd said, behind me.
I moved while my bandmate loaded his plate with the same deliberate purpose he brought to setting up his kit, and we sat down with Russ, who was already eating and reading the Saddlehorn Gazette on his phone.
“Good show last night,” Russ said.
“It was.”
“She was good.”
“She was.”
Russ nodded once, slowly, delivering his entire review in a single head movement.
Boyd ate a mouthful of the hash and gave me the nod, which was the same nod he gave to good sound checks, bad weather, and the information that the building was on fire.
It covered a lot of ground, that nod. I drank my coffee and saw Layla hand the camera back to the girl, who raised it toward the window and took a shot of the meadow with the careful concentration of someone who’d just been trusted with a real responsibility.
Milo arrived at the table with a plate stacked high enough to constitute an engineering concern and sat down across from me. “Morning. I slept beautifully. Nobody asked, but I wanted to share.”
“Noted,” Russ said, without looking up.
“Thank you, Russ. Your warmth sustains me.” Milo took a bite and surveyed the room. He spotted Layla at the window table and his eyes tracked from her back to me with the swift accuracy of a man connecting dots. He opened his mouth.
“Don’t,” I said.
“I was going to compliment the migas.”
“You were not.”
“I was also going to compliment the migas.” He grinned and ate his breakfast, and I ate mine, and for five minutes the morning was simple and good.
After the meal I found Layla outside. She was heading toward the stables and slowed when she saw me coming across the yard.
The smile she gave me was different from Monday’s careful professionalism or Tuesday’s cautious openness.
This was happiness personified and my pulse kicked up at the gorgeous sight.
“Morning,” I said.
“Morning.” She fell into step beside me. “I was going to photograph the cattle penning demonstration. Want to come see guests try to herd cows?”
“I want very much to see guests try to herd cows.”
“Fair warning, last week a woman from Connecticut tried to herd a bull and the bull won. I got six photos and Lucinda used every one of them.” She grinned sideways at me. “The content practically shoots itself on penning day.”
We took the path toward the lower pasture where Jake had set up the penning lanes.
The sun was high and white and the air was still.
I could hear the cattle before I saw them, the low bass notes of animals who had mixed feelings about being rearranged, and the sharp whistle of Jake directing from the fence.
Layla raised her camera and started working, and I leaned on the fence rail, content to be an audience of one for the best show on the property.
A guest in brand-new boots and a hat that still had the price sticker on it attempted to cut a calf from the group.
The calf was unimpressed. It feinted left, juked right, and shot between the man’s legs with the casual athleticism of an animal that had been outsmarting humans since birth.
The guest sat down hard in the dirt and his hat fell off and Layla got the whole sequence in a burst of frames.
She was laughing behind her camera, and the sound of it carried across the pasture and made me want to stand here for the rest of the day.
She shot as she sang, with an instinct she didn’t fully trust and a talent she couldn’t see.
Her body moved with the action, tracking a guest’s run along the fence, pivoting to catch another calf’s escape at the corner, dropping low for an angle that put the wide blue sky behind the whole scene.
The confidence that showed up behind her lens was showing up in her guitar playing now too, and I liked both versions equally and for very different reasons.
She lowered the camera and caught my eye. “You’re supposed to be looking at the cows.”
“The cows are fine. The photographer’s more interesting.”
Her blush started at her collarbones, which I was learning was where it always started. She turned the camera on me and snapped a shot before I could adjust my hat.
“Now we’re even,” she said.
We headed back to the Lodge together, and her fingers found mine on the path, threading through easily.
The physical ease of it caught me off guard.
I’d held plenty of hands. I’d posed for photos with women on my arm at industry events, walked red carpets, the whole routine.
None of it had felt like this, a quiet statement made in daylight, witnessed by nobody important except the two of us.
A white BMW convertible was parked at the Lodge entrance.
I didn’t recognize the car. I recognized the license plate holder, a Nashville custom shop that did exactly one type of client, and my grip tightened on Layla’s fingers before I let go.
“Whose car is that?” Layla asked.
I didn’t answer, because the Lodge door opened and Crystal Harmon walked out onto the porch in a red sundress and four-inch heels and a smile that could sell real estate on the surface of the sun.
“Wade!” She spread her arms as if she’d been waiting for me specifically, which she had, because Crystal never did anything without an audience and I’d just become hers. “Oh my God, it’s been forever.”
It had been four months. She looked exactly the way she always looked: blonde, thin, spray-tanned to a shade no Texas sun had ever produced, the lash extensions fanning out like awnings over her contoured cheekbones.
The veneers caught the light when she smiled.
Her breasts sat high and motionless in a way that defied both gravity and the laws of casual sundress-wearing.
Her sundress was the kind of red that demanded attention, which was the only kind of red Crystal owned.
She had two platinum singles, a tour bus with her name on it, and a verified following in the millions.
Six months I’d spent with this woman, and she could name my streaming numbers and my label’s marketing strategy but had never once asked me what songs I listened to when nobody was around.
“Crystal.” I stopped at the bottom of the porch steps. Layla had gone still beside me. She knew exactly who Crystal Harmon was — anyone who’d followed my career for five minutes did — and the color was leaving her face. “What are you doing here?”