Run Rose Run(72)

“ACD and Jack have worked out a deal, and they’re going to send you on a twelve-city tour of your own. Small venues, but really good ones. So congratulations, girl, and Godspeed.”

Ethan gave a gleeful whoop before AnnieLee could even react, and then Jack said, “You’re forgetting something, Ruthanna,” as he put his hand affectionately on top of hers.

Ruthanna smiled and kept her hand where it was. “The other thing you might care to know, Ms. Keyes,” she said, “is that I’ll meet you at your final performance in Las Vegas. And you and me are going to sing a few songs together.”

AnnieLee felt her stomach drop down to her knees. “You’re kidding.”

“I most certainly am not.”

“So you’re coming out of retirement?”

“No, I’m just taking a break from it.” Ruthanna glanced over at Jack. “We thought it sounded like fun.”

Jack nodded. “That we did.”

Ethan said, “I can just imagine the two of you, harmonizing on ‘Blue Bonnet Breeze.’ There won’t be a dry eye in the house.” He grinned. “Maybe I ought to make a few bets on that in Vegas.”

“Who says you’re invited?” AnnieLee challenged him.

He put his arm around her and squeezed. “You better let me come with you this time.”

AnnieLee let her head fall against his shoulder. “I’ll think about it.”





Chapter

61


Merle Haggard had once called his career a thirty-five-year bus ride, and after barely more than a week, Ethan could sympathize with the man. Towns flew by, faces blurred together, and he couldn’t remember the last time he’d eaten something that didn’t come out of a paper bag that was handed to him at a drive-through window. Why hadn’t anyone told him that they should’ve asked for fresh fruit, or at least a few carrot sticks, in AnnieLee’s hospitality rider?

ACD wouldn’t spring for a driver—a small tour required small expenditures, after all—so piloting the Sprinter van had become yet another one of Ethan’s jobs.

“At least it means you get to come along,” AnnieLee had teased him.

He definitely didn’t mind the duty. But, unused to sitting still for hours in a row, he’d taken to drinking one kind of caffeinated beverage or another from the moment he woke up until he switched to beer at five. He also kept a bag of sunflower seeds in the door pocket because getting those little bastards out of their shells with his teeth gave him something to do besides hold the steering wheel steady.

“Whoo-ee, turn that Cash up!” AnnieLee shouted from the passenger seat.

“Are your arms broken?” he teased. “You do it. I’m driving.”

Grumbling theatrically, she turned up “Sunday Morning Coming Down,” and then she sang along with it at the top of her lungs, in a thick hillbilly accent, as they drove west along I-40.

Even when she was goofing off, her voice was wonderful, Ethan thought. And despite the boredom of driving and the exhaustion of the late nights, being on tour with AnnieLee could be a hell of a lot of fun.

Two hours later they were pulling up in front of Cain’s Ballroom in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Beneath a vintage neon sign advertising long-defunct ballroom dancing classes, they unloaded the guitars and guitar stands, amps, pedals, extension cords, DI box, cables, loopers, and tuners.

“Can you imagine how hard this’d be if we had the whole band?” AnnieLee asked as she lugged a speaker down the hall.

But Ethan knew that she missed them, and that she wished they could have come on the tour. As far as ACD was concerned, though, the musicians who had played on AnnieLee’s singles were an avoidable expense.

Once their gear was loaded in, Ethan went to meet the sound guy. He made a point of treating these men (they were always men) with special respect, since they would control how AnnieLee’s voice and guitar sounded during the show.

Cain’s sound guy, Jerry, was burly and talkative, and after AnnieLee’s sound check, he invited Ethan to the bar for a quick pint. Hank Williams and Willie Nelson had played at Cain’s, Jerry told him proudly, and Johnny Paycheck had gotten in one of his many fights there, and Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys had broadcast a radio show from its stage for eight years.

“Folks called it the Carnegie Hall of western swing,” Jerry said.

Ethan had seen the pictures of Bob Wills, Ernest Tubb, and other departed stars on the walls, and as he looked around the big room, with its high, arched rafters and polished maple floor, he imagined he could feel their benevolent spirits in the air. Those musicians would’ve liked AnnieLee—Ethan was sure of it.

When he and Jerry had finished their beers, Ethan went to find her. She was backstage eating the potato chips that her rider did stipulate (she’d admitted to him that they were her favorite food) and scrolling through emails on her phone.

“Eileen sent me a review from Memphis the other night,” she said, looking up at him from underneath tousled bangs. “The writer said I had the eyes of a saint and the voice of an angel.”

“Did they happen to mention your heart of a hellcat and tongue of a serpent?” Ethan asked as he grabbed another beer out of the mini fridge.

AnnieLee laughed and threw her sweatshirt at him. It hit the side of his face, and in that instant, he smelled her—the scent of lilacs, pine, and sunshine. He didn’t throw the sweatshirt back.