Saffron straightened beside him. A draft of cold air slunk through the bar. Pepper straightened too and looked at the door. Lindsey turned that way as well.
Two dozen people were streaming in, and they weren't in the matching wedding shirts, nor did they seem to want to sing.
Nope. They looked to be looking for someone.
Namely, him.
Will liked meeting fans well enough, but this wasn't the place. Not controlled enough, and if there were two dozen now, there would be a hundred in five minutes.
He checked Vera's strap and felt behind him for his coat.
Saffron signaled the bartender.
"Does this place have a back door?" she said to Pepper and Lindsey.
"Yes, but it'll set off the alarms," Lindsey said. "The best way out is through the kitchen."
The hordes had spotted Will and were moving through the crowd.
"Through the-where's the kitchen?" Saffron said. "That way, right?"
Danged bartender was taking his time getting over here, and the "There's Billy!" shouts were growing.
"No, it's-" Lindsey stopped with a sigh. She grabbed Will's elbow.
A jolt shot through him like he'd been knocked off his skis all over again.
Lindsey's jaw visibly clenched. "You coming?"
With a death grip on Vera's strap, he nodded.
She led him quickly along the length of the bar, turning left when he would've gone right, and soon they were trooping through the kitchen.
No indignant shouts from the cook and bus boys manning the kitchen, though. They all smiled and waved like this was normal. "Hey, Lindsey." "How long you been here, girl?" "I heard Lou let you onstage. What'd you do, threaten to tell where he's got that tattoo?"
She answered each of them with short, dry, cheeky comments, moving toward the door the whole time.
Not one of them tried to stop her to get Billy Brenton's autograph.
"Your friends?" Will asked when she dragged him out into the bleak, icy-cold late December night where a gust of wind ripped through him like a jagged knife.
"Two former clients and an ex-boyfriend."
His teeth had started chattering, but his jaw clenched, and the shiver stopped.
Lindsey looked past him in the darkness. "Your transportation?"
He nodded to his truck. Backed in near a rear door, like always, in case he needed a quick escape.
Like tonight.
"Very good then." She turned away. "Have a nice evening, Billy Brenton."
His heart lurched. He shouldn't care if she left. He didn't want to care. He was Billy freaking Brenton. He didn't need to care.
But his body-tonight, his body thought he was a dumb nineteen-year-old kid. "Hey, lawyer lady," he said.
Her shoulders bunched like he'd hit a sore spot. "Yes?"
"How does a pretty girl end up doing such ugly work?"
She did a slow one-eighty to face him, and this time, she met his gaze head-on. "There's nothing ugly in giving someone a second chance to do it right."
Wasn't just his heart lurching now. His stomach got in on the action too, twisting all tight and gnarled, fighting with those beer bubbles still in there. His skin pebbled in waves of goose bumps, both from the cold and from the company. "Instead of using your magic to set 'em up right the first time," he clarified.
"I don't do magic, and contrary to what people say, I'm not a matchmaker. I fix mistakes."
Wasn't any strings off his guitar if she was denying it, but he didn't believe her.
He knew a thing or two about people who could see things.
She tucked her arms around herself. "Thank you for crashing my sister's wedding. My nephew adores you. You probably made his whole life tonight. But you should go before this gets messy." She nodded at the building, as if that was what would be messy.
A crowd that size could get messy, no doubt.
But talking any more to Lindsey tonight-that was where the real mess was.
"Still didn't change your mind on the country music though, eh?" he said.
She lifted an eyebrow. "Perhaps a different song next time."
Last thing he expected was to be standing out in the bare-ass cold, honestly smiling at this woman, but there it was. Couldn't have stopped the grin if he wanted to. Lady didn't appreciate having her underwear sang about. "Might could think about that," he said, his smile getting bigger when her eye twitched at his might could. "Got another one. Called ‘My Truck Done Broke Down and My Skunk Runned Off and I Got Fired from Pickin' Chicken Parts.' Here. I'll play it for you."
She looked to be fighting a smile herself, but even with only the moon to light the night, he could tell that smile still wasn't spreading to any of the rest of her face.
Might've been his imagination, but he thought there was some sad lingering in there. Maybe some regret.
Proof she had a soul. Wasn't something he would've given her credit for.
"You should go," she said quietly. And this time when she turned, he swore she murmured something that sounded like, "I'm proud of you, Will."
Even if he wanted to chalk it up to his imagination, he couldn't stop the flood of pure, simple affection those five little words brought about.
With the flood came something else.
She kept walking away. She didn't know it, and Will didn't like it, but she left a part of herself behind.
He knew, because for the first time in near about two years, he wanted to write a song.
Chapter Three
BEING HOME AT Aunt Jessie's house always put Will in touch with old memories. Usually of her homemade turnip soup, playing cards with Sacha, and Hank Williams and Willie Nelson on the record player. Despite his offers to buy Aunt Jessie a nicer, newer house, she'd clung to this old place as home. Will's old room was nearly unchanged from when he'd moved out at nineteen-his Greg Maddux poster on one wall, Faith Hill and Shania Twain on the opposite, the old dresser still missing a knob and the springs on his twin bed still squeaky.
Most of the days he was lucky enough to spend here, he appreciated the cozy comfort. It was the home that a kid who'd lost his mother at six craved, and the where-I-come-from that the Billy Brenton part of him needed to stay grounded.
But today, with the Georgia winter bearing down on the dreary, nippy side, all he could remember were his last months here as a kid, before he moved to Nashville.
They hadn't been good months. About as ugly as a wet warthog and as messed up as a bumblebee in a snowstorm.
He shook his head. Too much work to do for him to waste time wallowing in the past.
Coming home seemed a smart thing after he left New York yesterday, but now he was itching to get to Nashville. Away from haunting memories and closer to-
Something.
He knew what he didn't want, but he couldn't rightly say what it was he did want.
He pulled on his boots, then pocketed his phone, wallet, and keys. There was another new tune bobbing around in his brain. He needed to write it down, smooth it out, polish it.
Not think about how long it'd been since the music talked to him.
How the new tune had snuck in while Will was standing in a cold, dark, icy parking lot in Bliss, Illinois.
"You leaving, honey?" Aunt Jessie said when Will stepped into the cozy living room. She was hunched over a card table in the center of the room messing with yarn, buttons, a map, and a brown jar of something. Whatever it was, Will didn't want to know.
Could be anything, since Sacha was there too. Sacha lived next door and was Aunt Jessie's psychic. She was also practically Will's third mother-she'd been there for all of them since Aunt Jessie took in Will and Mari Belle. Sacha wasn't blood, but she was family.
"Yeah. Hitting the road soon as Mikey gets here," Will said. He and Mikey had been best friends since second grade, growing up and writing music together. Now Mikey played drums in Will's band, and he was as good at picking up ladies' phone numbers as he was at banging buckets.
Aunt Jessie threaded another button onto a length of pink yarn. Her warm blue eyes lit in a twinkle beneath her trademark dye-and-perm job. "Mikey's momma ask for grandbabies again for Christmas?"
"Nah, this year she threatened to trade me in for them instead," Mikey himself said from the front door with an unrepentant grin. He let himself in and kissed both Aunt Jessie and Sacha in turn. "And how are my favorite ladies today?"
"Don't you be bringing that charm in here." Aunt Jessie waggled her string of buttons at him. "I'm a happily married lady."
"Don't see ol' Donnie here today though," Mikey said. Donnie had come into the family about two years ago as Aunt Jessie's fourth husband. Will could take him or leave him, but Aunt Jessie liked him, he treated her right, and even Mari Belle couldn't find much wrong with him, other than the part where Donnie was a man.
Aunt Jessie giggled. "He's in Macon. Got a lead on a winery he might invest in. But he'll be home tonight, so don't you go trying anything."
"And I've got your number," Sacha said to Mikey. She was tall and dark to Aunt Jessie's plump and light, Morticia Addams to Betty White. Sacha drew a finger along the map, tracing the creek that ran through town. "You can save your flirting for young ladies who fall for your malarkey."