That Night in Nashville (Ticket to True Love) Read online

  “Did you have a job out here?”

  “Yes. With Hilton.”

  He hadn't quite gotten the whole Hilton job sorted out yet. So he’d needed to come out and speak to the manager face to face. When he’d hit the edge of town it had simply been too tempting to make the turn and head this way. Instead, Adam forced himself to go to the meeting first. After that he was supposed to drive home.

  But—though he could go back and forth in one day—it wasn't a short trip from Knoxville to Nashville. So he’d very easily talked himself into showing up here.

  “Are you working tonight?” Her next question came out in rapid-fire words.

  Adam shook his head, his breathing rough and heart rate speeding up again. Would she do his work for him and ask him to dinner?

  But she didn't, not right away. Instead, she lowered herself back down into the crook of his arm, snuggling close in a gesture that felt all too familiar, and was far too easy to settle into, despite the years apart.

  Surely, she had dated in the interim. Maybe she’d even done something as crazy as gotten married and then divorced. He had dated and had one serious, ongoing relationship. It wasn’t until his mother started to pressure him to marry Janet that he truly understood that Janet was absolutely not the right woman for him.

  His mother had not been fond of Hailey. Her subsequent love of Janet had been all he'd needed to realize that he and Janet didn’t have a relationship worth keeping.

  That had been two years ago. In the meantime, there had been about twenty, maybe thirty, first dates. There had been very few second dates. It must have been his thoughts rolling roughshod over his own past that made the words tumble out of his mouth. “Are you seeing anyone?”

  His head turned involuntarily, because he wanted to see her face before she answered. It would probably be the truest answer he would get.

  What he got was one raised eyebrow. “Adam Zucker, I would not be naked in bed with you if I was seeing someone else.”

  He had to wonder why he insisted on keeping talking. It was only going to hurt him if she said anything, but he asked anyway. “You could be seeing someone and maybe it's not serious. Maybe you just broke up and you’re rebounding. Maybe there's someone you're pursuing, but it hasn't happened yet.” He paused, mentally poising the knife at his own heart in case she wanted to push it in. “Any of those?”

  Hailey barked out a laugh. “Adam, I don't have time to pursue anyone. And therefore I didn't have time to date anyone and recently break up.”

  Her answer settled in his chest like a heavy rock. It should have made him feel better that she didn't belong to someone. That he wasn’t just a rebound fuck. The deep-seated jealousy shouldn't have taken hold, but it did.

  This was pure Hailey—too busy for a relationship. She’d even been too busy for the one she’d had with him years ago. Lord knew, she’d walked out the door as fast as she could. The smart thing for him to do would be to climb out of bed, kiss her softly, tell her thank you, and just leave. He'd already tangled himself up far too much with a woman who'd proven she wouldn't wait for him. Not even for a little while. He should have told her he was leaving.

  He didn’t do any of those things. The words that came out of his mouth were, “Would it be okay if I took you out to dinner?”

  16

  Hailey bit into the piece of fried chicken and let the heat suffuse through her mouth. It almost hurt—the perfect level of spice tempered under a layer of syrup. She should not be eating this, but Adam had wanted to do something purely Nashville. Of course, that meant she took him out for hot chicken and waffles.

  “You’re a spice pansy,” she told Adam who sat beside her, crunching into his own much, much milder piece of chicken. Making fun of him was a prerequisite given their past.

  They’d slid back into a relationship—whatever it was—as easily as they’d slid into the booth. The touch of his arm against hers, the rub of his suit pants against her nice jeans, all triggered the sweetly rolling feelings inside her. Feelings that she shouldn’t be having. She'd been trying to combat all her feelings by asking questions. Safe questions.

  “How's your friend Jerry?” “How are your sisters doing?” “Did Rachel ever get to nursing school like she wanted?”

  But Adam was having none of that. Instead, he cut into his waffle swirling the piece into the syrup. Before taking a bite, he turned and asked, “Are we a thing again?”

  She’d just taken a bite of her own chicken. The heat filling her sinuses now hit the pain level and she shrugged. “I don't know what we are Adam.”

  Why was he ruining good food with conversation like this?

  “I don't know if I could define it if I tried.” She ate the next bite of waffle as nonchalantly as a woman could when she’d just been asked to define an undefinable relationship.

  But Adam still wasn’t satisfied. He paused mid-bite and stared at her as though he knew she had more to say. She had no idea what any of it meant, or what it would mean for their future—a future she was certain they didn't have.

  He owned a business now. More than ever, he was stuck here in Tennessee. She had a tour coming up. Despite her truncated dates, she was still going to be gone more than she was home. She had an album to rehash and release. With any luck, there would be radio interviews and more.

  “It's easy,” she told him, wondering if he would interpret that “easy” was all they were. “We already know each other. We know what each other likes—”

  He interrupted her, his words a deep rumble of syrup and whiskey that pulled at her insides a little more. “Yeah, we do.”

  “Do we keep seeing each other like this?” she asked. This sucked. What if he said no? But she ignored the knot in her chest and waited.

  He finally took the bite, chewed, then shrugged.

  “You mean, where I come into your room or your dressing room and we act like maniacs?” He smiled as he said it, something she hadn't quite expected. He wanted a physical relationship and probably not much more.

  The bite of chicken went down like a knot, but she tried to keep a neutral expression as his head tilted a little to the side. She must be taking longer to answer than he planned. Quickly, she shoved another bite of chicken into her mouth, this time enjoying the pain of the heat as it radiated outward.

  She shouldn't be disappointed. After all, what had she really expected? They'd screwed in her dressing room tent. It was entirely possible people had been walking by on the other side of the thin plastic walls. It was possible they’d heard everything. When he had showed up at her apartment, she’d pulled him into the bedroom and practically ripped his clothing off before he could say a word.

  The first time she could blame on him, but the second? That was all on her. So, of course, he wanted a physical relationship and she found herself nodding along.

  Having sex with Adam sure didn't hurt. And when had she ever met anyone who could touch her the way that he did?

  He grinned a sly smile she immediately recognized—one that said he'd gotten what he wanted. “Do we need to set some ground rules?”

  The question almost made her choke.

  Jesus. She had once loved this man so much that she thought she would spend the rest of her life with him. Even in high school, he cheered her on and wanted the best for her. When he could have been jealous of her successes, he never was. When it took work on both of their parts, he happily did more than his share. He’d had his own dreams, too. Adam played a little guitar and used to joke about being her backup. But mostly, he'd been interested in producing music—more pop than country. But still, Nashville and L.A. would have been equally good to him.

  Instead, he'd been too devoted to a family that Hailey had always seen as taking far more than it gave. In spite of all of that, and all the time apart, she had to admit now that she'd always believed if they ever came back around, they would be the real deal. They would have everything. Instead, here she was introducing him to chicken and waffles and setti
ng up ground rules for how they screwed.

  But Adam was already talking, and she figured she’d better listen.

  “—no one else. Just us. If you want to be with someone else, we have to break up. I don’t share well. I’ll afford you the same.” He tacked on the last part, reminding her that it wasn't going to be all about what she wanted and when she wanted him. “I'm clean. I've been tested. You?”

  She nodded around another bite of chicken that should have tasted far better than this conversation. “Yes. And I'm on birth control. What else do you want?”

  She watched his eyes widen at her sharp tone and she quickly wished she’d reined in her irritation. It was time to flatten her expression—past time—and act like a big girl.

  Getting back together with Adam, even just physically, was easy. She knew who he was, and what to expect. Now, he was simply laying out the rules to make things clear. He wasn’t at fault.

  Besides, Adam did know how to put a smile on her face. So, she faked a grin and said, “We don't need condoms.” Then she agreed to not sleep with anyone else. She said it as though it was a concession of some sort rather than something that would happen whether or not she was sleeping with Adam. “How often are you likely to be in town?”

  This arrangement was a good thing. So why did her heart kick so hard?

  17

  Hailey spent that night alone.

  Eventually they’d managed to get off the sticky topic of how much sex they could be having, and the conversation had at last become easy. The knot in Hailey’s chest had loosened, and she talked without censoring her words or faltering.

  Though it did seem they had some implicit agreement that they would not talk about what they had just done. Setting the ground rules had apparently been enough and they’d moved on to safer topics. But as the meal wore on, Hailey began waffling about whether to ask him to stay overnight with her.

  Ultimately, she was sure that she wanted him to stay, but she wasn't sure if she wanted to deal with the consequences. He must have seen her discomfort because he paid the check at the end of the meal and said, “I need to hit the road and get back to Knoxville tonight.”

  He’d dropped her at her apartment door with just a quick kiss. Turning, he headed back to his car and back to his other life, seemingly without any regrets.

  She'd rolled around in bed that night unsure how she felt about all the big things they’d decided. She’d mused about the fact that these weren't supposed to be big changes yet, somehow, they were.

  She didn't hear from Adam the next day. Or the next, or the next.

  Originally, she’d been scheduled to leave on the first leg of the tour, but instead she was home. Adam knew this. She’d told him—hadn’t she? Well, she wasn’t about to message him her schedule when he’d made it clear they weren’t like that. So Brenda sent Wilder out on the road for a week and left Hailey behind with her guitar, still asking her to bleed for two more songs.

  Hailey was getting close on the second song—the one about the path not taken. She was considering just calling it “Unexpected.” The song certainly was taking her by surprise. She’d thought she would sing about what had happened between them. Instead, the music came out gloriously upbeat, only to get to the last verse and realize the family was all the concoction of a woman who had given it away in favor of her own career.

  Hailey was working hard not to make it a regretful tune. She didn't regret any of her decisions to get where she was, and she knew tons of women who didn't either. It was just about wondering what the other road might have held. In her song, the only regrets were for chances not taken.

  “Oh shit! Yes!” She’d jumped up off the couch the moment she’d thought of it. She’d knocked her beer over and hadn’t cared because the carpet in her apartment was cheap anyway. “Yes!”

  What if could be huge. And she wasn’t going to let anyone know it was a what-if song until the last verse. Yes! Yes, yes, yes!

  She and Brenda worked hard on finding the fine line on beat and tempo in tone. And Hailey was still walking the fine line of writing other wistful, wishful songs about Adam while waiting for him to show back up in her bed. But he didn’t, and she was on the road before she knew it.

  When she got her first text from him five days later, she almost laughed out loud.

  —I’m in Nashville tomorrow. You around?

  —Nope, she replied quickly. —You just missed me. I'm on the tour bus.

  Two hours out of town, she thought. His loss.

  His next text came back quickly, as though once he had decided to talk to her he was simply waiting for her replies.

  —Where to?

  —Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey.

  She could almost hear him laughing in the return beep that signaled his message had arrived. —They do country music up there?

  —They do country music everywhere, Honey.

  “Who are you talking to?”

  Hailey’s head snapped up as though she’d been caught at something, and she hoped it didn’t show on her cheeks. Her drummer, Carrie, had one arm propped on the back of the seat in front of her and was looking down at Hailey.

  “What?” She’d been so focused on the phone conversation, that she almost hadn't even processed that someone was speaking to her.

  “I don't know,” Carrie drew the words out with a sly smile. “But you were looking at your phone and grinning wildly.”

  Luckily that was all Carrie had to say about that. With a knowing tilt of her head, she walked further back down the bus and left Hailey sitting there. She had spread out on the couch behind the fold out table, in full view of anyone up and moving around.

  She’d thought traveling with an all-female band was going to be amazing. On the one hand, it was. On the other hand, she was realizing she would be able to keep zero secrets. Carrie, at least, was going to have it all figured out if Hailey didn’t work hard at keeping her thoughts in check.

  Her phone chimed again.

  —Country Music was born in Pennsylvania?

  —Oh please. She tapped it out with her thumbs. Every place that's not a big city thinks they invented country music. And they think they own it. All their news stations call their local area the “Heartland.”

  She was rewarded for her quote marks with a large laughing-until-it-cried face.

  —Well then. Have fun in the heartland.

  She was grinning as the phone immediately chimed again and one more line came through.

  —Knock’em dead, Baby.

  She wanted to smile. She wanted to send back a heart, and she wanted to steel herself against everything a stupid text had made her feel. Because she wasn't supposed to be feeling anything.

  18

  Well, crap, Adam thought, setting his phone down on his desk.

  He thought he'd been playing it cool. He hadn't reached out and neither had she. It seemed they were both okay with this “just physical” arrangement they'd set up.

  In the final tally, Adam was starting to wonder if he wasn't.

  Though he hadn't reached out to her, he’d had to constantly remind himself that he didn't have any reason to be in Nashville. And that he shouldn't invent one. He’d thought about her every single day. If he was being honest, he spent more moments thinking about Hailey than he had thinking about the business he'd worked so hard to build.

  If he was being very honest, this wasn't anything new.

  He'd always thought about her. He thought about her when she was with him, and he thought about her for the eight years they hadn't spoken.

  He’d lived so much of his life around her, he’d believed she was just an embedded part of his history. But now that he’d seen her again, it was getting harder to make that excuse.

  He had a year and a half of Community College under his belt, because of Hailey. He'd wanted to wait until she graduated before transferring to whatever college they picked together. He could have gone off on his own when he’d graduated, and his life woul
d certainly have been different if he had.

  It would have been much harder to come back home and take a factory job, if his mother's diagnosis had come in while he'd been way. But he hadn't been far away—he’d had to be within arm's reach of Hailey. He’d stayed close to Carroll Hollow for her. But even after she was long gone, he’d still thought about her.

  Now that she was back in his life, he found himself making decisions based on Hailey once more.

  He'd sent Jerry on the last trip to Nashville, just so he wouldn't doubt his own motives. He'd actively refrained from texting her, just so he wouldn't look too eager. And now, when he was going to be in Nashville, she was gone for several weeks. Adam wasn't going to see her, and it was his own damn fault.

  He turned his gaze back to the Hilton job. The contract had been signed. Sub rentals for the equipment had been found, though Jerry was still trying to talk him into buying several million dollars worth of heavy equipment.

  Adam had been crunching the numbers for days. Like his arrangement with Hailey, it looked good on paper. Like his arrangement with Hailey, he told himself he could live with the consequences.

  Unlike his arrangement with Hailey, he was beginning to feel that he should throw himself in headfirst. Only with Hailey, he wasn't supposed to want that as much as he did.

  19

  “Pit stop!” the bus driver called out, making Hailey's head pop up.

  They now were three shows into an eleven-show section of the tour. Then she would go home, and Wilder would pick up the next dates while she continued to rework her album according to Brenda’s specifications.

  “Where are we?” she asked.

  “Middle of nowhere,” the driver called back. But Hailey saw a sign for a small town and a few white farmhouses in the distance. They had passed a handful of barns with Pennsylvania Dutch signs over the doorways. “Looks like it's called True Springs.”