“If that was a pickup line, it’d never work.”
“It does when you realize it’s Lucy Fillmore talking to you. She’d worked with Frankie Ritz.”
“Isn’t that the singer who got thrown in jail for taking a hit out on her husband? Calvin something?”
She laughed. “Yes, but she hadn’t done that yet. Frankie was on the verge of breaking.” Her smile froze. “I wonder if Lucy set her up with Calvin.” She tossed back the rest of her glass and poured herself another.
I topped mine off too. I wasn’t driven to drink, but this was nice. I’d had a nap, and there was no fucking way I’d be able to sleep after waking up to her. “So Lucy sought you out?”
“Yeah, I’d built a nice following. A small audience who liked my music and came to watch me play. Then Lucy signed me, and we peddled songs to record labels. Her name opened a lot of doors. I was making a small name for myself.” Her smile grew wide. “I actually played the Opry. It was so surreal.”
“I imagine it was.” I struggled to draw a breath. The Grand Ole Opry. She’d done it, just like she’d said. I cleared my throat past the lump that had formed.
“I was even getting pitched by brands.” She grinned. “I could’ve been an influencer.” She touched the back of her hand to her chin and lifted her gaze to the ceiling. “A cosmetic company wanted me to be the face of their eye cream.” She took a sip. “But they wanted me to quit with Copper Summit. So I said thanks but no, thanks. I knowmy following trends younger, but I wasn’t selling alcohol to the eye-cream crowd.”
“June Bee is ride or die for her family.”
“Yes.” She swirled her glass again and watched the contents. “It makes a difference when you’ve actually had family die in front of you. A lot of execs didn’t understand that. It cost me some progress.”
“You’d have ten houses by now instead?”
She rolled her eyes. “I have five places to live.”
“Is that all?”
“They’re not all houses. I don’t like to stay in hotels. I don’t like to feel like...”
“I know, June Bug. You never have to explain it to me.” She craved roots. She didn’t want to feel transient again—cramped and uncomfortable. Not knowing when the next shower would be. Others might think she was a diva for wanting a sprawling hotel suite, but it was the traumatized kid inside of her.
She nodded. “Tate always gives me a hard time about renting. He says it’s a waste of money.”
“Did you ever find out how your birth parents lost their home?” I’d thought of June’s birth parents a lot over the years. I’d only had two kids, and my parents had been a support system. Wren still was. June’s bio parents had been homeless with four little girls and no other family.
“No. They kept all that from us, and Mama never found out why.” She swallowed the rest of her drink but didn’t refill her glass. “I like this.”
I didn’t have to ask her what she meant. “I do too.”
“It’s nice to be us as we are now and not as we were then.”
“Closure.”
She considered me. “Yes. Closure,” she said finally.
The atmosphere grew heavier. No. That would not do. “How’s the songwriting coming?”
The light in her eye returned. “Really good. I have the bones of five songs, but I really don’t think it’ll take much to finish them. I can hear them clearly.”
“What gave you your muse back?”
She pulled her lower lip between her teeth. A shot of lust went straight for my dick. I had ideas for that mouth.
She feathered her hand over her hair and glanced around the kitchen. Two spots of pink dotted her cheeks. “Oh, you know, I think I was just tired of writing about heartbreak.”
I tapped my finger against my glass. She’d called me out. I would return the favor. “I know when you’re evading a question.”
“I needed time off.”
“You’ve had time off and you said you couldn’t write.”
