Driven to insanity, driven to the edge
Driven to the point of almost no return
She beat out a rhythm on the steering wheel.
Driven, driven to be smarter
Driven to work harder
Driven to be better every day
That last line made her laugh out loud. Sure, she’d be better tomorrow—because tomorrow the sun would come out again, and tomorrow she had absolutely no plans to carjack an eighteen-wheeler.
Chapter
3
Ruthanna couldn’t get the damn lick out of her head. A descending roll in C major, twangy as a rubber band, it was crying out for lyrics, a bass line, a song to live inside. She tapped her long nails on her desk as she scrolled through her emails.
“Later,” she said, to herself or to the lick, she wasn’t entirely sure. “We’ll give you some attention when the boys show up to play.”
It was nine o’clock in the morning, and already she’d fielded six pleading requests for Ruthanna Ryder, one of country music’s grandest queens, to grace some big industry event or another with her royal presence.
She couldn’t understand it, but people just failed to get the message: she’d retired that crown. Ruthanna didn’t want to put on high heels, false eyelashes, and a sparkling Southern smile anymore. She wasn’t going to stand up on some hot, bright stage in a dress so tight it made her ribs ache. She had no desire to pour her heart out into a melody that’d bring tears to a thousand pairs of eyes, hers included. No, sir, she’d put in her time, and now she was done. She was still writing songs—she couldn’t stop that if she tried—but if the world thought it was going to ever hear them, it had another think coming. Her music was only for herself now.
She looked up from the screen as Maya, her assistant, walked into the room with a crumpled paper bag in one hand and a stack of mail in the other.
“The sun sure is bright on those gold records today,” Maya said.
Ruthanna sighed at her. “Come on, Maya. You’re the one person I’m supposed to be able to count on not to harass me about my quote, unquote, career. Jack must’ve called with another ‘once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.’”
Maya just laughed, which was her way of saying, You bet your white ass he did.
Jack was Ruthanna’s manager—ahem, former manager. “All right, what does he want from me today?”
“He wouldn’t tell me yet. But he said that it’s not what he wants. He’s thinking about what you really want.”
Ruthanna gave a delicate snort. “I really want to be left alone. Why he thinks he knows something different is beyond me.” She picked up her ringing phone, silenced it, and then threw it onto the overstuffed couch across the room.
Maya watched this minor tantrum serenely. “He says the world’s still hungry for your voice. For your songs.”
“Well, a little hunger never hurt anyone.” She gave her assistant a sly grin. “Not that you’d know much about hunger.”
Maya put a hand on her ample hip. “And you got room to talk,” she said.
Ruthanna laughed. “Touché. But whose fault is it for hiring Louie from the ribs place to be my personal chef? You could’ve picked someone who knew his way around a salad.”
“Coulda, woulda, shoulda,” Maya said. She put a stack of letters in Ruthanna’s inbox and held out the paper bag. “It’s from Jack.”
“What is that, muffins? I told Jack I was off carbs this month,” Ruthanna said.
Not that Jack believed anything she told him lately. The last time they’d talked she’d said that she was going to start gardening, and he’d laughed so hard he dropped the phone into his pool. When he called her back on his landline he was still wheezing with delight. “I can’t see you out there pruning roses any more than I can see you stripping off your clothes and riding down Lower Broadway on a silver steed like Lady Godiva of Nashville,” he’d said.
Her retort—that it was past the season for pruning roses anyway—had failed to convince him.
“No, ma’am,” Maya said, “these are definitely not muffins.”
“You looked?”
“He told me to. He said if I saw them, I’d be sure you opened them. Otherwise he was afraid you might chuck the bag in a bin somewhere, and that’d be…well, a lot of sparkle to throw away.”
“Sparkle, huh?” Ruthanna said, her interest piqued.
Maya shook her head at her, like, You just don’t know how lucky you are. But since lovely Maya had a husband who bought her flowers every Friday and just about kissed the ground she walked on, she was considerably fortunate herself. Ruthanna, divorced seven years now, only got presents from people who wanted something from her.