SYNOPSIS:
When Cecily Buchanan walks into the
Roadhouse Bar and Grill and offers to sing for a meal, ex-Marine Jake McGarrity
can't say no. Some say Jake is too soft hearted for his own good. But letting
the waif with the cover girl face and the voice of an angel walk away would be
more than he could stand.
Cecily's sweet nature, bubbly
personality and obvious talent endear her to everyone she meets, and Jake soon
knows his heart is lost. But Cecily has secrets and won't talk about her past,
one so dark that she has nightmares and clutches a knife while she sleeps.
When those who are chasing her close
in, she faces the decision of whether to run again, or to trust her life to the
cowboy who has taught her the meaning of love.
Warning: This novel contains a dark subplot concerning previous
abuse/rape.
Chapter 1
Jake
A pickup truck pulled up in front of the bar and stopped. It looked like Luke Sowers in the
driver’s seat. The door on the other side opened, but I couldn’t see who got out. Then the truck pulled out again, the tires throwing gravel, and sped off.
What was left, standing in the parking lot, looked like a hippie. A girl, with a backpack and
something else. She shouldered the pack, picked up what I now could see was a guitar case, and headed for the door. Apparently, she was a hitchhiker and he dropped her off at my place. Thanks, Luke.
Making her way through the door, she came straight toward me instead of taking a seat at
one of the tables. The sign by the door said ‘Seat yourself,’ so I wondered what in the hell this was all about.
Stopping in front of me, she looked up into my face and asked in one of the most beautiful
voices I’d ever heard, “May I speak to the owner, or the manager?”
The voice was a surprise, like a flower blooming in the desert. Her face was a shock. For all
the grime, she was beautiful. Not pretty, but the kind of beauty you see on the covers of
magazines. Long stringy greasy hair fell past her small breasts. She was thin, too thin, with a
look in her gray eyes I hadn’t seen since coming back to the States, a combination of shell shock and hunger. The overall impression she projected was fragility. She came up to about my shoulder and I wasn’t sure she was old enough to be in a bar. What in the hell was she doing hitchhiking alone?
“I’m the owner, and the manager,” I replied. “I’m Jake McGarrity.”
“I’m Cecily,” she said. Turning, she looked around the room. The Roadhouse is a pretty
typical bar with a bandstand at the end opposite the door and an area cleared for dancing. It was six-thirty in the evening, and we had two families with kids, about half a dozen couples, and two groups of four cowboys, all eating dinner. On a Wednesday night, that was pretty good. On a weekend, we did a lot better, and lunch was usually packed.
Turning back to me, she licked her lips and then said, “You have live music in here.” It was
a statement, not a question. I nodded. The bandstand with the microphones and amplifiers made that pretty obvious.
“We have a band start at nine on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights,” I said.
“Do you ever have live music for your dinner guests?”
I gestured to one of the speakers on the wall. “We use canned music.”
“Mr. McGarrity, I don’t have a red cent to my name, and I haven’t eaten in two days,” she
said. “I’ll play for your guests in exchange for a meal.”
My God. The raw, naked hope in her face was almost too much for me. My eyes blurred a
little bit. People tell me sometimes that I’m a soft touch. I figure that charity never hurts the
giver. I was going to feed her. There was no way I was going to turn someone away after they
approached me like that.
“What kind of music do you play?” I asked.
She shrugged. “I can play anything. For dinner music,” she gestured toward the customers
sitting at the tables, “something soft and relaxing, loud enough to be noticed, but not so loud that people can’t carry on a conversation. People’s behavior is different with live music, you know.
They stay longer after they finish their meals and order more drinks.”
In addition to the beauty of her voice, her accent was cultured. This girl was raised with
money, or at least well educated. And she hadn’t been on the streets long enough for her
vocabulary to degenerate. She didn’t even speak like a normal kid.
I took a deep breath, and then she said in a rush, “Let me just play a couple of songs. Okay?
Before you decide. Please? And then, if you don’t think it’s a good idea, I’ll go.”
Go where? Go out and stand beside the highway with her thumb out? Just the thought of her
hitchhiking, getting in strangers’ cars and ending the night raped and dead in a ditch, scared the hell out of me. If I read about her in the newspaper tomorrow, I’d never be able to forgive myself.
Nodding, I said, “Let’s hear what you’ve got.” I pulled a menu out from under the bar and
pushed it across to her. “Give me your order, and you can play until your food is ready.”
Looking down the menu, she raised her head. “I don’t want you to think I’m taking
advantage. Could I get the baked flounder and a salad? Is that too much?”
“What kind of dressing on your salad?” I answered.
“Oil and vinegar, or Italian. Something like that.”
“Put your backpack over there,” I said, pointing to a corner behind the bar and off to the side
of the kitchen door.
She dropped the pack there, and as she passed me, I got a whiff of her. She and her clothes
hadn’t been washed in far too long. Taking her guitar case up to the bandstand, she pulled out a beautiful Martin D45 with an electronic pickup. She could hock the guitar for enough money to get anywhere in the country, and eat well besides. The way she handled it, I had a feeling she’d starve to death before that happened.
Plugging into an amp, she checked the tuning on the guitar, flipped on the power, and hit a
note. She turned the volume down, pulled a stool up to the edge of the bandstand and sat down.
I watched as she fitted finger picks on her right hand, and I wondered exactly what I was
about to hear. All of her movements were efficient, practiced. She had played for audiences
before, and she didn’t show a shred of nervousness.
I went and turned off the canned music and nodded to her. Most of my customers glanced
her way, and some turned and watched her. Everyone was curious. I knew all these folks, and they were good people. Unless she sounded like a tortured cat, they would be polite.
And then she started to play. I recognized the tune immediately. Segovia, played on a steelstring guitar. As she promised, the music filled the room, but it was quiet enough that it wasn’t intrusive. I listened in astonishment as she flawlessly negotiated the complex piece of classical music. When she finished, she moved right into a Frank Sinatra tune, and from there a song off an old Mason Williams album. She hadn’t been bragging when she said she could play anything.
AUTHOR
BIO:
BR Kingsolver is the author of the Telepathic Clans series (The Succubus Gift, Succubus Unleashed, Succubus Rising, and Succubus Ascendant) and Broken Dolls, a paranormal thriller as well as the contemporary romance Trust: a truly modern romance, and the upcoming I’ll Sing for My Dinner. I grew up in Santa Fe, New Mexico, among writers, artists and weird Hispanic and Native American myths and folklore.
I’ve lived all over the U.S. and earned a living doing everything from
making silver and turquoise jewelry, to construction to computers. I currently
live in Baltimore and Albuquerque.
AUTHOR MEDIA
LINKS:
Website: http://www.brkingsolver.com/
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/brkingsolver
Twitter: http://twitter.com/BRKINGSOLVER
Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/BR-Kingsolver/e/B007XDV5OW/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_2?qid=1424451303&sr=1-2
Email:
brkingsolver@yahoo.com
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