Shelby looked down at the quilt her gramma had made before she died-shades of green and blue that matched the Tennessee hills at dusk-and felt a creeping fear take hold.
"Who's us?"
Nicola dropped the straightening iron she'd just fetched from the bathroom, but she quickly leaned down to scoop it from the carpet.
Before she could answer, Shelby stood up. "It's LolliPop, isn't it? They think I'm two tantrums shy of a breakdown, don't they? They're sending me out there so I don't do something crazy and ruin my slim chance of a comeback-am I right?"
"Shelby, no. Come on, honey. It's not like that. They care about you."
Shelby snorted. "Of course they do."
Right. If they'd cared about her, they wouldn't have taken a fresh-faced sixteen-year-old, covered her up with makeup and glitter, renamed her Tara Gibson because her real name sounded too country, and poured her into the pop-princess mold that had worked so well with their other clients.
If they'd cared about her, they might have let her record the music her heart understood, rather than the heavy-bass, driving-beat crap she fronted every night on tour.
If they'd cared about her, they might have helped her, rather than look the other way as her financial world had crashed and burned in a New York courtroom.
"Here." Nicola opened her laptop and tap-tap-tapped, then turned it toward Shelby. "This is where you're going. You can't tell me there's nothing appealing here."
Shelby took the laptop, sighing, but felt her eyes widen at the sight of the Whisper Creek home page.
"Holy cowboys."
"Right?" Nicola zipped up one suitcase. "Keep clicking. There are more."
Shelby clicked. And clicked. And clicked. She saw bonfires, horses, mountains … and the hottest cowboys she'd ever seen in her life.
Not that she'd, say, ever actually met one.
"They can't be real."
"The cowboys?" Nicola raised her eyebrows. "Actually, I have it on good authority that they are."
"You asked?"
She shrugged. "How could I not? I mean, seriously! Have you ever seen anything like it?"
"No-o." Shelby clicked back to the home page, where three cowboys on horseback were framed against a mountain sunset. As she stared, for the first time in two weeks, a tiny sliver of peace stole through the tension in her shoulders.
While Nicola finished packing, Shelby clicked through the entire website, looking at the guest cabins, the main lodge, the schedules and horses and food. She had to give her assistant credit-if she'd been assigned to hide away her pop star, she'd done a damn good job of picking a place.
And then she thought of something that gave her a delicious, tiny shiver of possibility. Maybe, just maybe …
"Nic? Who did you book me as?"
Please don't say Tara. Please say Shelby.
"I just gave your first name-the real one, which nobody would have any reason to recognize." Nicola hauled one suitcase off the bed, then reached for the other. "I presented you as a VIP guest who needs a month of peace and quiet."
"A month?"
Nicola looked at her carefully, like she was weighing what to say. "The company's picking this one up, so don't think about the money. You need the time, Shelby."
"But … a month?" Shelby looked around her bedroom, not sure whether to feel panicked that she was definitely being shoved out of the way for a while … or to feel a tiny bit elated that no one would expect anything of her for an entire, blessed thirty days.
"This whole trip thing-does it have anything to do with the china?" She raised her eyebrows. Nicola had come back to the house as Shelby'd been sweeping up the shards the other night. With one hand still on the doorknob and one eye firmly on Shelby, Nicola had dialed her phone and closed the door behind her.
"No." Nic looked the other way. "Of course not."
"Nic, be serious. Are you afraid I'm having-I don't know-a nervous breakdown or something?" Shelby suddenly realized Whisper Creek sounded an awful lot like a dry-out complex, or a fancy place stars went when the pressure got to be too much and they finally broke. "Is this a rehab sort of place?"
"No. It's just a guest ranch. Promise." Nicola sighed, perching at the edge of the bed. "Listen. I know you're devastated. I know your father was everything to you. But what if it'd been one of the caterers who'd come in the other night? Or a guest who'd forgotten her purse or something? They would have seen you acting like a raving maniac, and things are precarious enough right now. We can't have the press start painting you as a fragile, heading-over-the-edge has-been, you know?"