With bated breath, I closed my eyes and permitted myself to truly enjoy one song. I allowed myself to indulge for three minutes and three minutes only, and damn, was that the most beautiful tune I’d ever heard in my entire life.
The miles were long and the nights were longer…
I heard you were happy, I heard you’d moved on…
Beau closed his song with a final run of the chorus, which detailed a story about a guy on the road who was homesick for this girl he’d never stopped loving over the years.
My heart pounded in my ears, giving off cherry-red heat under a blanket of dark hair. It was too much to take.
I released the curtain from my desperate grip and headed back to his dressing room to prep for our first interview.
Ice water veins, Coco.
It had to be all business from here on out.
I shoved my feelings back into my shattered-glass heart and forced myself into work mode. This was just the way it had to be.
Chapter Three
“Beau! Beau Mason!”
They screamed my name. All of them. All the time. I never intended on becoming a world-famous country singer. After signing a recording contract at twenty, I figured I’d spend most of my days slinging tunes in Nashville honky-tonks and state fairs. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine any of this.
“Thank you!” Hot sweat beaded across my forehead. Painted cinderblock walls closed in with each step down the long corridor. I threw a hand in the air and offered a smile as I followed security through a thick sea of backstage pass holders, groupies, and fans that moonlighted as my roadies. I was never anything but a boy with a guitar and a rustic twang of a voice that could carry a tune better than most of them. But over the years, I became something else entirely, which was exactly why it was time to hang up my guitar. “Y’all enjoy the show tonight?”
The fans screamed and wailed and tugged on my arms and shirt and reached for my shoulders. Hands all over me, fingertips grazing my body, like I was some kind of God.
“Y’all wait here. I’ll be back in a bit,” I said with a half-smile, glancing into the eyes of a middle-aged woman with mascara-streaked tears sliding down her round cheeks as she squealed “Oh, my God!” over and over again. She wore a t-shirt with my face on it, and a tarnished gold wedding band hugged her ring finger tight. Ten years of this, and I never could understand how being in my mere presence could induce such a reaction from someone who didn’t even know me.
“Beau! Can I get a comment?” A man wearing a press pass around his neck shoved a microphone in my face. His voice held a barely audible volume above the screams of the women who filled the hallway wall to wall. “You have one more show left, Beau! How does it feel?”
I ducked away, choosing not to answer him and keeping my comments to myself for the sake of my fans. The truth was, only one person was getting my final interview.
My bodyguards stepped behind me as I reached my dressing room. They knew the drill. I needed to get cleaned up. Regroup. Take a break. Have a beer. Then I’d be out to greet the fans who’d spent an extra $450 on a backstage VIP meet-and-greet pass.
Performing tended to suck the life out of me. I always gave my shows everything I had. My fans were good, hardworking folks who paid a pretty penny for a few hours of fun. I at least owed them a good time, even if it drained me practically dead.
Twisting the knob, I welcomed the gush of cool air as I stepped inside my makeshift sanctuary. I grabbed a white towel from a nearby side table and patted my face before hunching over the dressing table. Glancing up at my reflection in the mirror, I didn’t expect to see a striking woman staring back.
I spun around to see the most beautiful creature on God’s green earth seated in a chair in the corner of the room, a notebook in her lap and a recorder in her hand.
“Dakota.” I said, slowly standing up straight.
I wasn’t a man who got the butterflies easily, but damn if every ounce of me didn’t flutter like a love struck teenager at the sight of her. My lips pulled up at the corner as I shoved my hands in my pockets and leaned back against the vanity.
“Beaumont,” she said, her face expressionless, not even a hint of a smile or any indication that she was happy to be there. Dressed in head to toe black, like she was going to a funeral, I resisted the urge to comment. “Shall we get started?”
Absent was her sweet and slow Kentucky drawl. Her words came fast and were to the point, like a New Yorker without an accent.
She clicked a pen and pressed the tip into the yellow legal pad that rested over crossed legs. Dark hair spilled in waves down her shoulders, shining against the low light of the dressing room as her full cherry lips pursed into a subdued line.
“By the way, I go by Coco now,” she said, drawing in a deep breath and pulling her shoulders back tight. The stranger from my past oozed grace and elegance like nothing I’d ever seen before, breaking my heart just a little.
I’d sized her up in all of thirty seconds, and I’d come to the conclusion that Dakota Andrews had grown up to be the success I always knew she’d be. It damn near made up for missing her all those years, and it was as if I’d maybe made the right decision by letting her go. She was a vision of striking accomplishment. All I’d have done was stand in the way of the person she was meant to become had she stuck with me.
“Coco Bissett.” My eyes followed the length of her long, crossed legs, stopping on a pair of sparkling stilettos that finished off her look. She’d come a long ways from cotton sundresses and dingy old cowgirl boots. “That’s right. Had a hard time finding you on account of your new name. Congratulations.”
“For what?”
“On your marriage.”
She cleared her throat, her pretty blue eyes shifting to the ground and then back into mine. “I’m divorced.”
“Ah.” I stifled a relieved huff and ambled over to the cooler filled with ice and retrieved a couple of beers. “Congratulations either way.”
I handed her a brown bottle, but she stuck her palm up and shook her head. “I’m here for work, Beau.”
Time had really done a number on her, making her all buttoned-up and rolling her into one perfect package of controlled dignity. I’d only been around her two minutes and already I missed the old her – the Dakota Andrews of my youth. The one with the bright, sparkling eyes and the infectious laugh.
It was as if someone had stolen her sunshine and hardened her into a pretty little bundle of calcified emotion. Success always did come at a price.
My fingers worked the buttons of my shirt as I stared into the intensity of her stormy blue stare, silently willing her to smile. God, I’d missed that smile. I’d dreamed about that smile. She had a grin that could light up her whole face and lift her cheeks enough to show off the perfect Cupid’s arch of her full upper lip. I wanted to believe she was still in there, hiding somewhere and waiting for the right time to come out.