Run, Rose, Run(49)

“You’re good at everything,” Ethan said gently. “You’re a shining light.”

She looked up at him with glittering eyes. “And you’re a good man,” she said.

He smiled, and then he sang a line of her song, the very first Ruthanna Ryder tune he ever knew.

They say a good man is hard to find

Damn straight they’re right—but I don’t mind



He’d heard it when he was just a kid, and its honky-tonk swing, its mix of yearning and audacity, had lifted his spirits every time he heard it. His mother had loved it, too, and she’d always turned up the volume and sung along. Ethan hadn’t had the faintest notion of learning to play the guitar back then, but he understood the lines about chasing a dream. And he’d known, deep down, what it felt like to want something more than what you had.

He still knew that feeling.

“Oh, Lord, that’s an old one,” Ruthanna said quietly.

“It’s a good one,” he said.

Ruthanna laughed. “Oh, sure,” she said. “I did all right by it, I guess.” She patted him on his big strong shoulder. “Anyway, you better go home and pack your bags. You two leave tomorrow.”





Chapter

42



The ACD offices were in a towering high-rise a few blocks north of Times Square. AnnieLee’s boots echoed through the vast marble lobby, and she felt wide-eyed and mouse tiny as she made her way to the big security desk.

After printing a sticker with her name and the word VISITOR in big black letters, the desk attendant pointed AnnieLee toward the turnstiles, which she pushed through with far more confidence than she felt.

On the fifty-third floor, she was directed to wait in a reception area, where a tinkling Zen fountain did nothing to calm her nerves. Her meeting was supposed to be at ten, but by ten thirty no one had come to fetch her.

Whoever these New Yorkers were, AnnieLee thought, they clearly felt that their time was more important than hers.

Nervousness turned to annoyance the longer she sat, and by the time an assistant appeared to escort her to the conference room, AnnieLee wasn’t sure if she wanted to play her guitar or knock someone upside the head with it.

Then, quick as whiplash, she was back to being anxious again as she stood before a roomful of executives, PR people, and marketing managers from one of the world’s biggest record labels. A large, bald man with Kix Brooks facial hair and a top-brass attitude smiled at her, but not with his eyes.

“AnnieLee Keyes,” he said. “Tony Graham. I’ve heard a lot about you.” He glanced over her shoulder. “Where’s your team?”

My team? AnnieLee thought. Ruthanna was in Nashville, Ethan was two blocks away at an Au Bon Pain, and who else was there? She stood up as tall as she could, and she still didn’t even come up to Tony Graham’s armpit.

“I’m my own team,” she said.

Tony Graham glanced back at his underlings. “Interesting,” he said.

“Is it?” AnnieLee asked, a hint of challenge in her voice. “I wrote the songs alone. It’s how I first performed them. I figure it’s how I can sell them, too.” Then she flashed him one of her own smiles, eyes and all, and set the guitar on top of that big table as if she owned it.

No doughnuts in the middle this time, she noted, as the coffee she’d drunk roiled in her stomach.

Tony gestured for her to take a seat as he introduced her to every polished and formidable person in the room. AnnieLee felt like a yokel in her old jeans and her new, emerald-green blouse. She thought she’d splurged at the Gap—sixty bucks for a single shirt!—but these people obviously spent that much on a single pair of socks.

Her hand slipped into her pocket and she thumbed the guitar pick Ethan had given her.

“I know it doesn’t look like much,” he’d said to her, “but it’s a lucky pick.”

She’d asked him how he knew, and he’d said it was because good things happened when he used it.

“Like what?”

He’d looked right at her when he answered. “Like you walking into the Cat’s Paw. That was the best thing that had happened to me in a long time.”

She was sorry now that she hadn’t asked him to come to the meeting with her. The only person who was looking at her with any sort of friendliness at all was the barely twenty-something redhead who’d brought her into the room, and whom Tony hadn’t even bothered to introduce.

Tony made a steeple of his fingers and gazed at AnnieLee. “I’m a straight talker, AnnieLee,” he said. “And I’m going to be honest with you: right now, you’re just a pretty little nobody.”

He paused a moment to let the words sink in, and AnnieLee felt her heart give a lurch.

“You’ve got a couple of things going for you, though,” he went on. “One, Ruthanna Ryder says you’re hot shit, and when a deity like that speaks, people like us listen. And two, we’ve heard your single. It’s pretty fantastic.”

“Thank you,” AnnieLee said. “I—”

“But it takes more than a good face and a great voice to sell records,” Tony interrupted. “And we’ve got a lot of girl singers here already. You’re familiar with Susannah Dell, of course. She just hit number ten on Billboard Country Airplay this week, and she’s going nowhere but up.”