Honky tonk hellion, p.1
Honky Tonk Hellion, page 1
Titles by Z. A. Maxfield
My Cowboy Heart
My Heartache Cowboy
My Cowboy Homecoming
My Cowboy Promises
My Cowboy Freedom
Honky Tonk Hellion
Honky Tonk Hellion
Z. A. Maxfield
INTERMIX
NEW YORK
INTERMIX
Published by Berkley
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014
Copyright © 2018 by Z. A. Maxfield
Penguin Random House supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to continue to publish books for every reader.
INTERMIX and the “IM” design are trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
ISBN: 9780451487940
First Edition: February 2018
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Version_1
I lost my way while writing this book.Thank you, Kristine, for finding me in the wilderness and guiding me back to the road . . .
Contents
Titles by Z. A. Maxfield
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Epilogue
About the Author
Prologue
Malcolm Colton has a woman to win.
His quest—which so far consists of hiding between booths at a green energy fair in Bitterroot, Texas—is largely spur-of-the-moment. Er, rather, his quest began the exact moment he heard Andi Chandler singing live on the stage with a band. Where’d she get a band?
Now, he has to figure out a way to ditch his father.
No, wait. As fathers go, Lester Colton is of the self-ditching variety. Since he’s predisposed toward pretty girls and booze, Mal starts walking him past all the shiniest examples of both, hoping he’ll peel away.
Sure enough, by the second bar tent they pass, the old man says, “I think I see someone I know,” and disappears all on his own. After that, Mal hunkers between solar energy and wind power to get his bearings. He skulks past rows of hybrid and electric vehicles, coming out at the end of a tunnel of hemp everything, bamboo T-shirts, and jute tote bags, only to find himself . . . right next to the main stage.
Holy cow. It’s Andi, all right. The prettiest, mouthiest, Goddamndest girl ever created.
She’s still an ice pick to the eye—Mal barely feels a thing, and then he’s doomed.
The band sounds good. Tight, for a Podunk educational fair like this one.
He tells himself he’s got an interest in new talent.
He’s not stalking her or anything.
He is definitely not creeping on Andi Chandler.
He’d know Andi’s voice anywhere, though. She plays light-years better than last time he saw her, back when her kid hands still struggled with chords. Now, she sings from her heart. Plays like a virtuoso. The crowd loves her.
He backs into the shadows behind a display of sheds with mock-up solar arrays to watch her hand her guitar off to one of her bandmates . . .
Aw shoot. Last song, then.
Andi likes a ballad for the last song. That’s been part of her act since she was twelve, singing solos at church dances.
“Sexy love song to end the night,” she’d announced in her little kid voice. “Gotta give the cowboys a’ scuse to pull their girls close.”
Her laugh, her singing, her speaking voice, even her sighs rang like Pavlov’s bell in his heart. He followed the sound like a missile, not knowing how he’d feel until he saw her on the stage—bold as a comet with that red hair flying all over. It has to be fate, right? Andi is here. This has to be fate, fucking with you.
Because fate only gives you one chance with a girl like Andi . . . One.
And you blew yours.
* * *
* * *
In the front row Andi’s freakishly tall husband, Ryder, attracts a crowd all on his own as he dances with their son on his shoulders.
Andi’s son.
Kid looks healthy and happy.
Mal can’t help noticing that the short sundress and red stiletto heels make Andi seem a hundred feet tall from where he’s standing. Andi’s got a little Alison Krauss going on; a little Amy Winehouse. She can slip into the blues or jazz or country or even opera if she chooses. She’s got power like a young Tanya Tucker. And if he could only get a closer look—if he could see her eyes—he’d know if she was doing okay, and he needs that because nothing else matters to him but that.
If he could only be certain she was happy, he might be able to breathe again.
Andi’s voice rises an octave and then she lets it fall like a star. It winks out briefly, hiding in a playful darkness. The next sound slips inside him like a ghost to light up his skin . . .
“Jesus, Andi,” he groans the words.
It’s a fucking riot when the girl you love like a sister grows up all shiny and smart and talented.
She ruins you for every other girl.
But he can’t.
He just can’t be attracted to someone he knew as a kid. No way.
But Jesus Christ. Andi’s what church would be like if they held it in bars and let you watch porn on your phone.
And Mal’s whole existence is based on regret.
You are so transparently not over her.
And that’s when Andi segues into “Proud To Be an American,” a song guaranteed to get this crowd on its feet and jerk it crying to someone’s charity box. Malcolm takes the shivery, patriotic song-bullet and lives. The blood in his body resumes its usual course almost as soon as Andi leaves the stage.
He wants to talk to her, but it’s obvious she’s got her family with her. Her real family, not the one she grew up in. There’s no time for extended family and hangers-on. With regret, he watches them head for a pretzel booth.
Skulking. His mother would call what he’s doing by its name. What you’re doing is skulking.
Maybe. Still . . . not stalking.
Mal returns to the bar tent to find his dad working on G&T number three, if the glasses in front of him are anything to go by.
“Dad, do you really think—“ Watching Lester pull things from his pockets makes whatever Mal’s going to say seem unnecessary, considering the man has a bad ticker and that’s not stopping him. Nothing Mal says about the lighter in his father’s clawlike hand, or the cigar he wants, can matter much anymore.
With a sigh, he keeps his thoughts to himself.
Lester arranges his things on the space in front of him—clippers, lighter, portable ashtray. He gets his cigar out like this is Havana in 1936. He looks cadaverous.
Mal asks, “Did you start a tab?”
“You run the company now son, you’re paying my tab.”
The middle-aged bartender glances up from what he’s doing with a frown at his father’s setup. “Er, this is a tobacco-free zone—“
Mal reminds his father, “You can’t smoke that here, Dad.”
“What are they going to do? Kill me?” Lester gives a long, barking laugh and then coughs painfully before shooting Mal one of his pointed looks. He clips his disgusting smoke and roasts the tip with a precision lighter.
How ironic—the man who sent him to boarding school so he could learn manners is the same man who flouts them at every opportunity.
“Dad, come on.” He glances around, embarrassed to be at the center of a scene. “They’ll throw you out of the event.”
His dad laughs at that. “It’s cute how you think I give a shit.”
Chapter 1
Andi
“Mama!” Jonas runs down the porch steps for one last hug—his superhero pajama-cape flapping behind him and his little bare feet slapping the g round.
“Watch your feet honey.” Before he can hit the walkway, I grab him up. “Could be some broken glass.”
Who would believe? Since my husband and Doctor Declan Winters fell in love with each other, sometimes beer bottles smash in front of the doc’s house for no apparent reason.
“Can’t I go too?” Jonas pleads. My bandmates are already here, waiting patiently in the hot truck. Most of them.
I shake my head and press my sharp nose flat to Jonas’s little snub one. It’s a blessing to share breath. It’s a benediction. I learned that from horses. When someone trusts me with the air they breathe, I accept the compliment.
I answer when he pulls away. “Dunc’s won’t let you in until you’re at least eighteen.”
“No fair,” he starts to complain as I hand him to his daddy. “That’s not—“
“I know, I know.” I wave as I skip down the path. “Sorry man, I don’t make the rules. Grown-ups only.”
The doc’s place sits regally at the end of a long, flower-bedecked walkway. Tall trees form a canopy over the street. This is where I live now, in a beautiful room dolled up with antique furniture and handmade quilts. Golden sunshine dapples the ground where I walk toward Henry’s truck, making the patchy shade beneath it the only comfortable place to stand.
It’s so hot sweat evaporates from my skin before it can dampen my dress.
I wave, and my odd little family waves back from the porch. My husband, his boyfriend, our son, and the dragon, Marge.
They’re giving me this gift—this time and freedom to find my voice and my footing and a new life on my own.
Marge smiles, and I see, woman to woman, that she’s the grandmother my baby might never have had but for an accident of fate and love and true human kindness. It’s hard to leave them. I am deaf and blind to everything but my boy when I hear a sharp whistle behind me.
“C’mon, girl. Don’t dawdle.” Henry’s got an old-school twang in his voice, and he doesn’t waste words.
I clamber inside the back of the crew cab and squeeze between two of my manspreading bandmates.
“It’s only a few hours, he’ll get along fine.”
It’s as if I have to mentally close a door behind me. Some days it’s easier than others. Today it’s hard, because it’s another first. First gig in Austin, and first gig at Duncan’s.
The boys chatter while I mentally catch up to life as a working mother.
“What’s up with Jesse?” I ask after our missing bass player. Henry normally goes early with the van and the equipment. Jesse’s the one who drives the band. Nobody said why they’d switched today.
“Jess took the van,” says Henry.
Taylor says, “He’s gonna wreck it. Mark my words. He’s been screwing around, drinking and drugging, and he’s gonna wreck it.”
Taylor’s always sour when we’re on the road. It’s because he gets carsick, so he has to sit up front. But that means Henry, Chance, and Wesson have to go against being “gentlemen”—a doctrine of manhood they learned young, which will haunt them until they die—and I get squished into the middle seat in back.
Chance Smith, slide guitar, and Wesson Blood, fiddler, resented the hell out of Taylor on my behalf.
“He probably took the van so he could have some quiet,” I say.
Except for Smith and Wesson, nobody pays a lot of attention to me. To be fair, I haven’t been with them for very long. They used to be the Lanky Hanks but their manager decided they needed a makeover via a new name and what everyone calls “a girl singer.”
Smith and Wesson snicker at the “quiet” comment.
Voila, The Henry Greenwood Band—such as we are.
Truck smells like cowboy soup, which makes me feel right at home. I’m the daughter of a rancher, so I’m used to the odor of man and leather and livestock. That livestock smell has to be coming from my bandmate Chance’s day job as a ranch hand.
Still, when Wes pulls a harmonica out of his pocket and starts playing, I can’t help joining in. Me and Chance sing “Iko, Iko,” and we’re reminded again why this thing between us works. Maybe I don’t get along with everyone all the time, but if the five of us were making music nothing could stop us. Taylor’s beatboxing. Smith and Wesson harmonize like all four fucking tenors. Henry’s drumming on the steering wheel, and I use my nails to make that rrrch ch ch sound.
A cappella in that cramped old truck?
We sound amazing.
We were beautiful, on pitch, in rhythm, perfect.
Henry and Smith and Wesson felt it, but Taylor? Well. He could be spoiled, but I’m spoiled rotten—by my dad, by Ryder, and the doc. Taylor hasn’t got a patch on me.
The Henry Greenwood Band has what it takes. Totally. But you’d think the music business would be way more glamorous than this . . .
Chapter 2
Malcolm
My private cell phone rings, and I assume it’s my mom. She usually calls around this time. “Hey. S’up?”
A man’s voice says, “Remember the chick from that party?”
Not Mom’s normal greeting, obviously. Heavy background noise renders the caller’s voice unrecognizable, so I check caller ID. Blocked. This can’t be good news. When someone calls a lawyer’s private line about a girl at a party? It never is.
“I’m sorry, who is this again?” I ask.
“It’s me, idiot.” A burst of affronted laughter. “Tru. God, you douchebag.”
I’m embarrassed and relieved. Truman King—college roommate and partner in criminal mischief extraordinaire—is always “good news.” However, I can’t imagine what he’s talking about. “What girl at a party?”
“Do you get these calls a lot?”
“Um. Sort of?” He knows I don’t. “But I’ve sworn off that sort of thing for myself.”
“Does that mean you’re playing for my team? Because you have no idea how thrilled me and all the boys’d be.”
“Yeah, no.” I say, too quickly. “I only meant to imply that I don’t get irate calls about women, not that I’ve given up on them entirely.”
He laughs again. This time, it’s a good-natured dig at my obvious discomfort. I’m not uncomfortable because my best friend is gay. For the record, I’m not. I’m uncomfortable because he knows how long it’s been since I’ve dated.
I say, “Fuck off.”
“Okay. Too bad. That’s not why I’m calling anyway. I know you dig that girl from the Fourth of July, and I’m offering you a chance to help me do some good.”
That’s Tru—magnanimous and not easily distracted. And okay, yeah. I took him to Sterling Chandler’s annual Fourth of July barbecue, and he talked about Andi Chandler’s voice the whole way home.
“Which girl again?” I’m a lawyer. I make it a rule to give nothing away for free. I am only following this rule since I am particularly tender about Andi Chandler. Not because I am trying to be cagey.
“Which girl?” his voice goes up, incredulous. “There was only one girl in the world that night, man. The one who jumped up on the stage and sang? You said you knew her—why are you like this?”
“Okay. Yeah. Andi. What about her?” Due to my natural reticence and not my Andi-baggage, I’m determined to make him spell out what he wants.
“When I got home I couldn’t stop thinking about her voice, so I got in touch with the band’s manager and listened to some of their demos.”
“Andi wasn’t with the band.” Not then. That was just a one-off because . . . because Andi can’t help herself.
“She is now.”
And you’re not going to give away you knew that, are you?
Tru added, “They weren’t like, awful or anything.”
“Well, in that case, someone should call the Grammy committee and tell them we’ve all heard enough.”
Jesus. Andi . . . I’m the one who lit this fuse. All my angel on one shoulder and devil on the other conversations about Andi Chandler—the girl who was too young—start with that. I took Tru to that barbecue, even though I knew she’d be there and he’d be intrigued and if she sang . . .
She will kill me if she thinks I meddled in her life. But who knew she’d rush the stage?
