Not that this particular ficus whisperer didn’t have thorns. And she was also insanely hot. But it was just that she bothered to notice when someone’s hands were shaking and for some reason this made all the difference in the world.
Rebecca hadn’t been a burner or a whisperer. She in fact occupied her own category on the planet, which was the way she’d always wanted it.
He glanced over at Britt again. Just in time to see Truck accidentally-on-purpose brush his hand across her ass.
She jerked and stepped backward, her smile frozen.
J. T.’s hand gripped his beer so hard it was a wonder it didn’t shatter.
Hazards of the trade when you were a waitress. Probably wasn’t her first ass grab. She could probably cope. She’d probably be the first person to tell him she could cope.
Didn’t stop him from kind of wanting to break the arm of an ass grabber, however.
Neither his agent nor his publicist would thank him for that.
Truck chose that moment to look at him.
For whatever reason, meathead was declaring territory. J. T. didn’t know if it was about Britt or the Misty Cat or the whole of Hellcat Canyon or because he was miserable about life and wanted to take it out on someone in any way he could, but it was both tiresome and timely.
Because J. T. was really in the mood to take someone on.
And then the girl on the stage, without preamble, began plucking out a song.
Her guitar was an old Martin acoustic, and each note rang with depth and richness you could feel right in your rib cage.Beautiful instrument. Expensive, too. The Misty Cat really did have amazing acoustics. The whole room seemed tosoak up and amplify that song until you felt surrounded by it.
And a few chords in, J. T. was shocked to realize he recognized it.
It was an old Linda Ronstadt song. “Long Long Time.” A song that was popular long before that girl on stage or Britt had been born. Before even he was born.
He hadn’t heard it in... God, must be at least a decade. It was a straight-ahead, brutally poignant, unpretentious ode to unrequited love. Just beautiful.
And Glory Greenleaf was good.
Possibly even amazing.
She sang most of the song through her hair, and when she looked up, her eyes were closed.
Every guy in the place—maybe ten of them—was frozen, listening. And even on this Tuesday night in the middle of nowhere, with all these disparate people, misfits, travelers, drunks, lunkheads, famous and anonymous, it was the kind of song that could burrow into a person and find that sore place of heartbreak, recent or remembered, and really make it hurt bad all over again.
J. T. was not unaffected.
He reflexively did what every person who’d had an ache stirred would do: searched out comfort.
Which is how his gaze collided with Britt’s at that precise moment.
He knew a surge of triumph. She looked away again, swiftly, self-consciously.
But she had to keep moving, because that was her job.
The room was held in such thrall that a minute, restless motion in his peripheral vision made J. T. turn around.
It was the sheriff.
Whose eyes were fixed on the stage. But something raw and fierce, very like pain, so vivid that J. T. actually held his breath, flashed across the guy’s face.
A moment later he slipped out the door and was gone.
A few seconds after that, Glory Greenleaf abruptly stopped singing. Almost as though she’d forgotten the words.
