Was Will-was Billy-a better match?
The room shrunk again.
"What do you think, Billy?" Saffron said into the mic. "You got another song in you tonight?"
Noah bounced. "Yeah!" he shouted.
Saffron grinned at him, an indulgent I'm-going-to-spoil-my-new-nephew-rotten grin. Will leaned into Saffron and said something. She nodded, and he went to his own microphone, chuckling. "Noah, bud, you got some moves," Will said in that easy, warm, husky voice of his. "What's your favorite tune?"
Noah shrieked something Lindsey couldn't understand, but everyone around him cheered too. Still smiling, every bit as at ease onstage as if he'd been born there, Will looked at Saffron and her husband. "Y'all up for it?"
They nodded. There went the heads bopping again, but this time, Will started playing first.
First, and alone, his fingers picked individual sounds out of the guitar in such a way to inspire a nostalgic melancholy.
As if seeing him wasn't enough inspiration.
He was mesmerizing. Larger than life. Owning the stage, owning the room.
Just a man, she reminded herself.
Saffron joined in plucking her own guitar. Her husband did too.
And then Will sang.
"Ain't never been the kind who liked the cold, but there I was on that slope, praying for a quick way down."
Lindsey's breath caught. Her shivers got the shivers.
They'd met on a ski slope.
"Learned right quick to be careful what I wish, 'cuz soon I was tumbling into the snow, with my face all about to hit the ground."
He looked about the room, smiling, playing, living it up, as comfortable in the limelight as Lindsey was suffocated by it. The crowd loved him. Half of them sang along, and they stopped while he held a note on his guitar.
"But then a snow angel caught me."
Lindsey's hold on her wineglass slipped. She pressed into the wall and hoped it didn't give way.
Or maybe she hoped it did.
"She had an easy sassy smile that hit me like a baseball, big brown eyes that could make an ol' boy drown, and I said, ‘Baby, that ain't no way to break a man's fall.'"
The pressure spread behind Lindsey's eyes. They burned and stung like they hadn't since Mom died.
That ain't no way to break a man's fall.
It was exactly what he'd said fifteen years ago when he'd crashed into her on the bunny hill.
He remembered her.
He'd written a song about her.
And the whole town of Bliss was singing along.
He was strumming the guitar hard and fast now. Noah was spinning. Nat and CJ were dancing and singing too.
And now she's showing me her pretty smiles, funny smiles, sexy smiles, her sassy smiles,
She wears her biggest smiles, her brightest smiles, her secret smiles, her underneath-it smiles,
And she's wearing them just for me,
My snow angel shows her smiles just to me.
A horrified sputter slipped through Lindsey's lips. Will launched into the second verse, natural as could be. Noah was dancing with three of his new aunts. CJ was twirling Natalie. Dad was nodding his head. Kimmie was singing along.
While Lindsey's first love-her only love, despite her knowing better-stood onstage and sang a song about her.
No, not a song about her.
A song about her underwear.
Chapter Two
WILL TRUITT HADN'T hung out in a karaoke bar like a regular Joe in what felt like a decade.
Lot of fun, this little country joint. It was made to look like a barn, and Will wouldn't have minded doing some two-steppin'. He was mighty glad he'd accepted the invitation to come on over after the reception. Hadn't had fun like this in a while. Given how hard he worked, he'd earned a night out.
Saffron's family took up most of the room, some dancing, some taking their turns singing, some chatting. The place wasn't normally crowded on Sunday nights, Saffron told him, so he wasn't worried about not arranging security. Though after her grandmama had goosed him, Will had taken care to have his backside firmly on a seat or against the bar when he wasn't on the stage with Vera, his trusty six-string who was strapped behind him.
There was a time when the karaoke gods wouldn't let him take his own guitar onstage.
Billy Brenton wasn't a bad thing to be.
"Hey, Billy." One of the younger sisters appeared beside him at the wooden bar. She was a redhead with the same gonna-cause-trouble tilt in her grin that Saffron had when she was in his band. "My sister Pepper over there can sing ‘Goin' Creekin'' better than you can," the girl said.
"Gonna have to point her out," he said. "Can't keep all y'all straight, so I call half of you Pepper."
"What do you call the other half?"
"Salt." Named after spices, the whole dang family. Couldn't talk to Saffron without getting hungry when she started jabbering about her sisters.
"Let me know how that turns out for you," Little Red said.
They were a fun bunch. His family wasn't so big. Colorful in a good ol' down-home Southern way, but not big.
Little Red looked over at the stage and clapped her hands together. "Ooh! Look! It's-"
A chorus of boos interrupted her, started by the groom himself.
Will took a swig of beer and eyed the stage. He made out a blonde reversing direction on the stairs to the stage, but that was it.
Cheers erupted. Little Red cocked a hip. "Seriously?"
On his other side, Saffron laughed. "The pool," she said to Will. "Cinna here put her money on CJ getting booed out of karaoke quickest. But he at least made it onto the stage."
CJ stood in the middle of the dance floor, high-fiving his new missus. Little Red pranced off to join them, and the sister she'd called Pepper angled closer.
Which he appreciated greatly when he realized their grandmama was eyeing him again.
"Ain't everybody in the family got your musical talents?" Will said to Saffron.
"That wasn't my family. That was Natalie's sister."
The beer in Will's stomach tilted funny, like it found a few extra bubbles it didn't know what to do with.
"You should meet her," Saffron said, the impishness coming out in her own grin.
She was the smallest of her siblings, stature-wise, with a few freckles that didn't go away even this far into winter, but there wasn't a man on Will's crew who hadn't learned the hard way not to underestimate the size of her personality or the depth of her knowledge of practical jokes. "She set Nat and CJ up," Saffron said.
"And a few others too, I've heard," Pepper said.
"How long's it been since you had a girlfriend?" Saffron said. "Isn't that bad for your reputation, going too long without dating anyone?"
"I'd tell you to ignore her," Pepper said over the first few notes of "Friends in Low Places" coming from the speakers tucked between straw bales in the rafters, "but I suspect you're already pretty good at that."
"Hey, you should date Pepper," Saffron said.
Will eyed Pepper. It had been a while since he dated anybody.
He hadn't had much urge since his old pup, Bandit, died. His management team had mentioned before Christmas that people were speculating on his love life too. They suggested he go out and get seen with a girl to keep people remembering he was here and he was hot.
But Will had the luxury of telling them to shove it. He'd played the get-seen-with-the-actresses-to-get-some-attention game in his twenties. Now, his songs sold because they were good and people loved him, not who he dated.
But that luxury would be short-lived if he couldn't find his music again.
"One date, Billy," Saffron said. "You both need it."
Pepper's face went the same shade as Saffron's hair. She gave her sister a headshake.
"What?" Saffron said to her. "It's a brilliant plan. You'll have fun, and he'll break your streak for you."
Will tugged at Vera's strap. Time to leave this conversation.
"Please ignore her," Pepper said to him. "You've done plenty for our family already."
"But this is for him," Saffron said. "He'd be doing himself a favor too if he took you out."
"No, he wouldn't," Pepper said, some singsong shut up coming through her lips.
Saffron snickered. "Billy, you want to get married?"
"Ladies," he said, "that right there's my cue to go see a man about my next song."
"Chicken," Saffron teased.
"Yes, ma'am."
"You could do worse. No, wait. You have done worse. Much worse."
Too much truth in that to argue the point. He'd given up the idea of finding love somewhere between being nineteen and making it big. Now, he didn't know who wanted him for him, and who wanted him for Billy. He liked the ladies well enough, but he didn't date the settling-down type. Especially with his family history.
Saffron snapped a finger. "Oh, hey-here. We'll do a test. I'll drop it if you're a bad match. If not, you have to take Pepper out for dinner. Because she's had a rough time with boyfriends lately, and it would make her day. And you're already here."
His gut tilted more sideways at the way she said bad match, and a tingle of a memory made his shoulder twitch. "Leaving in the morning," Will said. "Have to get to New York for New Year's Eve."