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“I want to help. I really do. I’m glad that I can put my music to good use here, but I’m pretty sure the entire town would just as soon spit on me, K
evin.”
She heard him sigh heavily into the receiver. “They might. But they have no room to be picky. They need your help and they know it. If they treat you badly after you help them raise the money, shame on them.”
“I’ll be certain to feel superior as they hurl insults and rocks in my direction.”
“I thought southern people were supposed to be warm and welcoming.”
“Only to your face.”
“Ivy, I guarantee you the two weeks will fly by, your image will be repaired, and we can take your brilliant new songs into the studio when you get back to record your fourth and greatest album yet.”
Well, that was a lot of smoke to blow up her ass. Today, she needed that reassurance. “When is the fund-raiser committee meeting again?”
“Monday morning. That gives you all weekend to relax, work on some songs, and screw on your smiley face for the duration of your stay.”
Ivy faked her best, brightest smile as she eyed the cabin that would be her home for the next two weeks. Hopefully her mama bought wine.
Lots and lots of wine.
Chapter 2
“I knew you were gonna break my hear-r-rt.” Ivy sat at the kitchen table and sang her new lyrics to the empty cabin. She had to hear it out loud before she could really decide if she liked it. So far, she didn’t.
“You were . . .” She paused. “You were the worst song I’ve ever written in my li-i-i-ife.”
She ripped the page from her notebook and tossed it with the others. A small pyramid of crappiness was forming in the corner. “Well,” she sang, “not the worst, but almost as bad as the last one.”
That was her fifteenth do-over since she’d started working on her new album. She was second-guessing every word. Questioning every turn of phrase. Did this song sound like one she’d already written? Yes. A million times yes. There was only so much a girl could get out of man-hating, heartbreak, and electric guitars.
Frustrated, she got up from her chair and walked over to the wide-open back door. The patio was screened in, which kept out the bugs and, today, a group of ducks that had gathered on the wooden steps to take advantage of her free performance.
“Hope you enjoyed it, guys. That song was an exclusive, never to be performed again.”
Ivy stepped out onto the porch and the birds scuttled off to the lake. They protested loudly at the sudden end to the concert, quacking and honking as they waddled into the water and skimmed out of sight. She watched until they had all disappeared, then flopped down into an old rocking chair and looked out across the still green water of Willow Lake.
Maybe the fresh air and sunshine would help her think. People always lectured her about the benefits of clean air and sunshine when she was in California, which made her indelicately snort with amusement. For one thing, there was no such thing as clean air in the megalopolis of Los Angeles. And for another, she burned faster than gasoline with her fair skin. Loitering outside too much would earn her nothing more than emphysema and melanoma.
But here, in the tiny town of Rosewood, she could sit in the shade and enjoy clean air scented with honeysuckle and freshly mowed hayfields. That was the outdoors she could get behind.
This was peaceful, but nothing was going the way she had planned. Her manager had sent her here to write some new songs and clean up her reputation. Hopefully the reputation part went better, because right now, everything she wrote sucked.
Perhaps it was Kevin’s challenge to her. He wanted a more mature sound. No man-bashing. No angry female power rants. The problem was, she couldn’t think of anything else. She had struggled in college to write songs with heart. Her professors had pushed her to dig deep and draw on her emotions. While she’d grown up fairly poor, she’d had a good childhood and was still in love with her high school sweetheart. She hadn’t had much angst to draw on. At least until she caught Blake with that Auburn cheerleader.
From then on out, she’d been very in touch with her emotions, primarily the heated and hostile ones. She’d launched a great career based on them. But she’d trained her creativity to work a certain way. Now, every time she put her pencil to the page bitterness spewed across it like she’d shaken a bottle of Coke. This wasn’t even high-quality bitterness.
If she could go back to Kevin with an album of her best woman-done-wrong songs ever, he’d probably be happy. This, however, was not her best work.
Looking across Willow Lake, it occurred to her there might be another issue. On the far side, beyond the rolling green hills and the weeping willow trees the lake was named after, stood a tall white antebellum mansion. It damn near glowed against the bright blue backdrop of the sky. The house stood two stories high with towering columns, wraparound porches, and stark black window shutters. It was a classic plantation home straight out of a Civil War novel.
As a child, she’d fantasized about owning a house just like that. Or at the very least, getting the opportunity to see if this one was as beautiful on the inside as it was on the outside. When she was older, she got the latter wish. The first time she stepped inside, her jaw dropped open like a striped bass’s. The polished carved wood, the marble floors, the grand piano in the music room . . . It had a music room! It had exceeded her every expectation.
Now, however, it was like a dark cloud looming on the horizon. It taunted her. She couldn’t enjoy her beautiful lake view because of that blazing white eyesore. Why had her father chosen this cabin? Surely there had to be others that had a better view than this. She wanted to demand her money back from the Realtor.
The Chamberlain mansion. Of all places.
How was she supposed to write something emotionally poignant with that house blinking like a neon sign out her window? Blake Chamberlain had crushed her heart like a bug beneath his cleats. He’d begged for her trust and then tossed it away at the first opportunity. He’d deserved every bit of pain and embarrassment that her song put him through. If it had shortened the line of cheerleaders outside his dorm room just a little bit, it was worth it.
