Chapter 21
Four and a half years ago, Ash had stormed out of the nearly empty pub, guitar still slung over his back, and paced the dark, puddle-ridden parking lot. Before the door could snick shut, Sloane had followed him outside.
“That’s another canceled contract,” he called over to her, as if she didn’t already know. “That’s the sixth venue so far that has booked me for two nights and canceled after the first…in case anyone’s keeping count.” He let out a bitter laugh. “And I use the term ‘venue’ lightly.” He nodded toward the blinking red sign that read THISTLE AND DRAGON. “If I’d actually sat on that stool, my knees would have been bumping the table in front of me. Not that it would have mattered since it was an empty table.” He ran a hand through his damp hair. Was it raining? Or was there just a constant mist in the air? “Why are we even doing this, Sloane? It’s not like I’m Dolly Parton or something. We’re doing fine in the United States. We must be losing money right and left trying to make me a thing over here.”
Over here, of course, was the United Kingdom. Sloane had assured him that country music was on the rise in the UK and that listeners were champing at the bit for someone new. But a two-week stint gigging off-the-beaten-path pubs had proven otherwise.
“We just need to find our angle,” Sloane assured him. “Your U.S. tour kicks off in a few months, and if we can generate some buzz over here before we head home…just get your name and your sound in people’s ears…” Her voice trailed off, and the silence made Ash stop pacing. Silence and Sloane either meant she was drumming up a brilliant idea or she already had the idea and was simply using a dramatic pause to get his attention. Either way, it worked.
“What?” he asked as she tapped her index finger against her lips as if pondering her next move. When she grinned, Ash’s pulse quickened.
Five years ago, when he was only eighteen years old, he’d sent demos to music labels in California, New York, and Nashville. No one responded. So that summer, in between his shifts on the family ranch—and sometimes sneaking out on his brothers without finishing a shift—he’d hop a bus to Lake Tahoe to busk. When he’d socked away enough cash, he started doing the same in LA, crashing on couches when he could. It took six months, but once Sloane dropped her business card in his guitar case, the rest was history. He had a freaking career.
“We go back to your busking days,” she told him, and Ash barked out a laugh.
“I played the main stage on the concert rodeo circuit last year. I played the damned national anthem at Dodger Stadium and the Oakland Coliseum this past summer. And I almost headlined at Stagecoach.”
Sloane snorted. “Your name was in the third row of artists listed.”
He winked at her. “Out of six . Third row out of six ain’t half bad.”
“ Or half good!” she countered. Then she strode toward him and gripped him by the shoulders. In her heels, they almost stood eye to eye, but Sloane’s presence was always larger than life. “Believe me,” she told him. “After this U.S. tour, you won’t be able to blow your nose without someone trying to snap a photo of it. But right now, and especially here , you’re not a headliner. And the busking? It’ll only be for a day.” She booped him on the nose, which Ash hated because it reminded him how young and green he still was, even at twenty-three. But Sloane had gotten him this far, so he had to trust whatever came next.
“One day?” he asked. “How is that going to get me any exposure?”
Sloane raised her brows. “Because that, my friend, will be the meet-cute heard ’round the world.” Then she shrugged. “Okay, not around the world but across the UK, and that is all we need.”
And that was how he met Annabeth Calder-Payne, a nineteen-year-old tennis prodigy who’d recently been splashed all over the tabloids for sneaking around with the brother of her biggest opponent. She’d been accused of everything from using the French teen to spy on his sister to sabotaging her matches. At least, that was what the beautiful blond Scot had told him after she’d slammed his guitar case shut with her foot and boldly proclaimed to the small crowd that had surprisingly been appreciating his impromptu concert, “Show’s over, folks. This cowboy’s mine for the rest of day, ay?” She shooed folks away as a very strategically positioned photographer snapped photos of the dramatic display.
“Thanks for this,” Annabeth said as she nodded down at her to-go cup of tea once they were nestled safely in the back of a café.
“I didn’t buy it,” Ash reminded her. “ You did.”
She laughed, brightly painted lips parting to reveal a slightly crooked right tooth that did nothing to lessen her radiant smile. She was gorgeous, but despite Sloane telling him nothing else about today’s events other than suggesting he just “go with it so it looks natural,” Ash was sure that their orchestrated meet-cute had nothing do with anything real happening between him and the UK’s tennis darling.
“You’re not interested in me,” Ash stated matter-of-factly.
She barked out a full-on belly laugh. “God, no!” she exclaimed, and confident as Ash Murphy was, he couldn’t hide the wince at such a blatant bruise to his ego.
“Please,” he continued drily. “Don’t hold back.”
She reached across the table and gave his hand a conspiratorial squeeze, reminding him that, Hey…we’re in this together… even if Ash had no idea what this meant.
“Look outside the café window,” she told him, and Ash leaned to his left to get a better look at the front of the café. “How about some subtlety, Babe?” she added. “Ay, you stick out like the tourist you are, don’t ya?”
He straightened and cleared his throat. “I like your accent,” he told her. “Even if you are takin’ the piss .”
She raised her brows, clearly impressed, and Ash gave himself a mental pat on the back.
“Okay. Okay. You brushed up on your colloquialisms, I can see.” She climbed onto her knees on the wooden chair and leaned across the table so her mouth was so close to his ear that he could feel the warmth of her breath, which surprisingly did nothing to him in the region below the belt. “Right now, there’s a photographer outside who thinks I’m leaning in for a kiss. You’ll be all over The Mirror, The Sun, and the Daily Mail as the guy Annabeth Calder-Payne literally picked up off the street and made a household name. You’re welcome, by the way.”
She leaned back and lowered herself into her seat again, crossing her arms as she grinned triumphantly.
“I don’t get it,” he told her. “Why would you do that for me? You don’t even know me.”
She took a sip of her tea and then shrugged. “If I’m your girl, Britain loves you. And if you’re my guy…in public, at least…then Freddie’s family might let me within three feet of him again someday.”
Ash saw the tiniest crack in her confidence with this admission. “Is Freddie on board with this?” And did people really do this? Staged relationships to hide their private lives?
Annabeth pressed her lips together and nodded. Then she sniffled, sat up ramrod straight, and squared her shoulders. “Will you do it, then? Trade me a few fake public snogs for launching another leg of your career?”
He learned early enough that when it came to his career, every relationship was some sort of transaction, which meant this was no different.
“I head out on tour soon in the United States,” he told her. “So we’ll have to make the most of the time I have while I’m here.”
She beamed. “Is that a yes, then?”
This time he leaned forward, resting his cheek against hers as he whispered, “As long as you promise me you’ll never step on my guitar case again. Took me three months of actual busking to buy that thing, and it’s lasted me five years, thanks to no one stepping on it .”
Annabeth laughed as he straightened in his chair. “I like you, Ash Murphy.”
He raised his brows. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say we were becoming friends as well as business partners.”
She kicked his boot under the table. “I would like that,” she admitted. “I don’t have many at the moment.”
Ash cleared his throat. “The boots…they’re off-limits too.”
Annabeth laughed, and then she told him all about growing up on the tennis court, trading traditional schooling for private tutors and friends for coaches. He told her about the ranch, his brothers, how he never felt like he quite fit into his small-town life, and how he’d gotten fired from six British pubs in less than two weeks.
Maybe this wasn’t just a transaction orchestrated by their respective handlers. Maybe, for the first time since his career had begun to take off, Ash Murphy had found a very unlikely friend.
***
Willow blinked and then cleared her throat. “Okay…” she began, drawing out the word. “So your managers orchestrated a public swoon fest. That still doesn’t explain a four-year marriage that turned me into a homewrecker.” She pulled the pillow out from under her ankle and swung her feet onto the floor. “You know what?” she continued. “This is actually too much. Your lives are too much. I got into this business to make music. I don’t have any sort of cultivated persona. Hell, I don’t even have a manager. I just…” She glanced at Ash who looked at her with those sad, stormy-blue eyes and at Annabeth who—under different circumstances—Willow might have really liked. But…
She sprung up from the couch, forgetting why she’d been trapped there in the first place, and yelped as she put weight on her poor injured toe and promptly fell back onto the cushion, a prisoner of her own clumsiness once again.
Annabeth rose and clapped her hands together. “Well then,” she began. “It looks like we’ve got your attention for a bit longer, so why don’t I just grab my phone and show you what Ash cannot since he got his knickers in a bit of a twist when Freddie and I got engaged and his mobile had a proper run-in with a hotel telly, ay?”
Willow pinched the bridge of her nose.
Ash sighed. “We can get out of here for a while if you want. Me and Annabeth, I mean. I can call Colt to see if he or Jenna can come look after you for a bit.”
She rolled her eyes and threw her head back against the arm of the couch. “It’s fine,” she told him. “But only Annabeth gets to talk this time. Things just sound…I don’t know…better when she says them.”
She noticed him bite back a grin as Annabeth returned with her phone in hand, sat at Willow’s feet, and then carefully pulled Willow’s legs onto her lap.
“Okay,” Willow said with a nervous laugh. “I guess we’re slumber-party close now?”
Annabeth waved her off. “I dunno what that means,” the other woman admitted. “Never had a slumber party, but I don’t waste much time with the pleasantries of getting to know someone when I already know I like them.”
The corner of Willow’s mouth twitched, but she wasn’t ready to admit aloud that she already knew she liked Annabeth too. Except how was that even possible? Annabeth and Ash were the reason her career had almost ended right when she’d gotten her first break. They were the reason for Willow’s saddest and angriest songs, which—sure—were some of her best. But the humiliation doesn’t end with forgiveness.
What would happen if and when she and Ash went public not only with the song but with their reconciliation? Even if the present was good, their painful past would be dredged up and shared again with everyone who had an opinion and was happy to share it while @ing her in the comments. Was Willow really strong enough to weather that storm again?
“Here, love.” Annabeth offered Willow her phone.
Willow hesitated for a second but then took the device from the other woman, glanced at the screen, and began to scroll through what looked like a boilerplate publicity contract.
She shrugged. “I get it. Your relationship was a publicity stunt. That doesn’t change anything that happened that morning on your tour bus.” She glanced at Ash who could only respond with a slow nod.
“Here’s the part where you’re going to probably toss me out on my bum. The only parts of the contract Ash ever looked at were the signature lines because he trusted his manager and he trusted me .”
She nodded, encouraging Willow to keep scrolling. And there it was in the last few pages…a marriage license followed by an NDA, where Ash would have been sued if he mentioned Annabeth’s…
Willow gasped. “You were pregnant? Ash is a—”
“NO!” Ash finally cried, flying up from the couch and running a hand through his hair. “Jesus, A.B., just say it because you know your lawyer will still come after me if I do.”
Annabeth nodded and blinked back tears. “I was nineteen and still at the beginning of a very successful career. I made the decision that was best for me at the time and terminated the pregnancy. My parents and Freddie’s determined we were a detriment to both my career and his sister’s, so they cut us off from each other, and my publicity team married me off to a daft American who could spin my image in another direction.” She placed a gentle hand on Willow’s knee. “I’m sorry,” she added, her voice cracking on that second word. “I didn’t know Ash had met you or that he wasn’t made aware of the full extent of the contract until…well…that day.”
Willow let the other woman’s words sink in, trying to make sense of the fact that for all of them, doing this thing that they loved—whether it was tennis or music or simply loving another person —was at the whim of a public who knew nothing about any one of them. How was any of it worth it?
Willow reached for the first aid kit that Annabeth had left sitting on the floor. Inside it she found the surgical tape and did as Annabeth suggested, taping her broken toe to the healthy one beside it. Then she tore open a packet of ibuprofen and popped both of the small pills in her mouth, swallowing them without any water yet wishing she hadn’t.
This time when she rose from the couch, she did so with care, making sure to focus her weight on the heel of her right foot rather than the ball.
“I’m sorry for what you lost,” she told Annabeth. “For what we all did. But I need to process this in my own way.” She hobbled out of the room and straight toward the front door.
“Wills…where are you going?” Ash called after her.
She stepped into her square-toed riding boot, zipping the soft leather up over her left calf. Then she sucked in a breath through gritted teeth as she did the same with the right.
Wow. How did one tiny appendage cause so much pain? Stupid, stupid bathroom doorframe. But the ibuprofen would kick in soon, right?
“To the barn!” she replied, trying to keep her voice even. “I’m fine, okay? I’ll be back soon!”
And before she let anyone—least of all herself—talk her out of it, she threw open the door and limped out, letting it slam shut behind her.