She shifted her weight from foot to foot, gazing up at the little apartment above his workshop. “So this is home, huh?”
Ethan smoothed his hair back and put aside the guitar. “For now,” he said.
“I thought I paid you better,” she mused.
“Please,” he said. “You pay me plenty. I don’t want anything more than this.”
She turned her cool green eyes back to him. “But desire, Ethan, is where it all begins. If you don’t want more, you don’t get more.”
He looked away. He wanted plenty of things, when it came down to it. But a bigger apartment wasn’t one of them.
Then Ruthanna’s face softened. “It looks like a nice place,” she said. “Anyway, I had to come over because I broke the peg on my mandolin.” She pulled a vintage instrument with a Florentine cutaway out of her handbag. “I thought you could fix it.”
Ethan took the mandolin from her and knew instantly that this wasn’t at all why she’d come. The instrument was student quality. She had a dozen better ones. This meant that she’d come because she’d spoken to AnnieLee, and the repair was only the excuse.
“Can you fix it?”
“Sure,” he said. “Of course.” He set it gently on his worktable.
Ruthanna folded her arms across her chest and looked at him. “So,” she said, “you quit, huh?”
Ethan didn’t bother defending himself by pointing out that AnnieLee had basically dared him to quit. “I don’t think I should be her…whatever I was…anymore. It turns out we don’t get along.”
“Sounds like a lovers’ quarrel, if you ask me,” Ruthanna said, looking at him sideways.
Ethan snorted. “Hardly.”
“It was nice of you to drop her bags off after she had to Lyft home,” Ruthanna said.
Lyft, Ethan thought. Is that what she said she did?
And though Ruthanna was being sarcastic, he wouldn’t take the bait. “Well, I’m nice. Too nice,” he said. “Girls don’t like the nice ones.”
Ruthanna gave a great, braying laugh, and then she pointed a long pink nail at him. “Number one, that’s a load of BS about girls. Number two, you’re not that nice. And number three, I’ve got a job for you that’ll help you prove exactly how not nice you are.” She stepped closer and jabbed the nail into his chest. “You’re going to talk to Mikey Shumer and find out what he knows about that black truck.”
Ethan exhaled slowly. So this visit wasn’t really about his argument with AnnieLee after all.
He knew Mikey Shumer—or knew of him, anyway. Mikey took talented, unknown singers and shaped them into hitmakers, skimming as much as he could from every check along the way. He drove a Mercedes-Benz SL65 AMG that cost upwards of two hundred grand, and he owned a fleet of vintage Mustangs and a penthouse condo in the Gulch. Meanwhile, his newest artists struggled to make rent, and he’d run at least two other managers out of town with threats and harassment. Ethan had encountered Mikey only once, but he knew him instantly for the kind of man who’d buy you drinks at a bar and then have you beaten to a pulp in the parking lot if it suited him.
In other words, this wasn’t going to be a job Ethan would enjoy.
Ruthanna waited with uncharacteristic patience for him to say something.
Ethan picked up the rag and the guitar and started polishing again. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll go see him tomorrow.”
“Thank you,” Ruthanna said. “I knew I could count on you. Just…be careful.”
“If he’s scaring AnnieLee, he’s the one who’s going to need to be careful.” Angry as Ethan was at her, he didn’t want anyone messing with her.
“See? I knew you were the protective type,” she said.
“You know just about everything, don’t you?” he said.
Ruthanna flashed him a brilliant smile. “I’ve been around the block once or twice.” She turned to go. “And I meant what I said about that song you were singing. I think it’s got real potential.”
Chapter
53
Sir, you can’t go back there,” the secretary called, but Ethan was already striding down the office hallway, looking for Mikey Shumer. He was almost to his door when two of the biggest men he’d seen since the army materialized out of nowhere to block his path.
He pulled up short, sighing. He should’ve known this wouldn’t be easy.
Ethan took a step backward, holding his hands up in a gesture of peace. “I’m here to see Mikey Shumer.”