Welcome to Last Chance (Last Chance #1)(12)
Author: Hope Ramsay

Clay put his fingers on the keyboard. He noodled around for a moment in the key of G before launching into a syncopated progression of major seventh chords that took him into a genre of music that was not quite pop and not quite jazz and not quite folk. It was a genre all his own.

Of course, the inability to define a category for many of his own compositions explained his entire life. He, and they, didn’t fit. And so, mostly, these songs went unsold, even though they pleased him. Sometimes he thought it might be better to reach a small audience with something true and authentic than to reach for the world.

In a minute, Dottie would tell him to stop putting the customers to sleep with this crap. But right now she was busy welcoming folks to the One-and-Only Last Chance Hurricane Jane Party. The news that Dottie was handing out lukewarm beer and free hash had traveled fast. Customers were strolling in, and it was a sad fact that those rednecks and good ol’ boys didn’t much like this style of music either.

Clay played on, irritated at Jane for being there. And feeling increasingly angry with himself for falling into old patterns of behavior that made him want to take care of her and Ray.

He clamped down on his back teeth and focused on playing, intent on making his audience listen—just this once—to one of his compositions that didn’t have a fiddle or a steel guitar part in it, that wasn’t some canned Hallmark emotion, but something that required them to think and feel. He closed his eyes, drew in a deep breath, and started to sing.

Now I mark the time like a metronome

A single heart, beating on its own

And I keep the time with a watch and chain

From the day you last said my name…

Jane found herself pulled into the song Clay played. The composition had an arresting tempo she couldn’t ignore. Jane counted the beats in her head. He was playing in seven-four time. The musical phrase was subtle and complex, yet it sounded simple. The man was a virtuoso.

Then he started to sing. And the lyrics touched something down deep inside her. They were all about time itself. About losing it, and losing love, and not fitting in. She connected with the message.

Jane watched him as he squeezed his eyes shut and seemed to travel off to some other place—a place of pain and emotion. He was carrying a torch for someone big-time. He had cried in the bathroom last night, and that could only mean he was seriously hurting about some lost love.

Hoo boy. An emotional man with a poetic streak and a broken heart was about the most seductive thing in the Universe. A girl could get screwed-up notions about rescuing him. A girl just naturally wanted to be the one to introduce him, personally, to happiness and to take care of him.

Which explained why her heart began to race and her lungs started to burn.

Fortunately, Clay ended the song before she burst into tears or did something foolish like start thinking she actually had the power to rescue him or take care of him.

Before Clay could launch into something else equally emotional, Dottie growled at him. “I declare, you know darn well, the folks who come in here want to hear country music, not jazz. Jazz is too complicated for most of ’em.” Dottie gave Jane a meaningful look. “Ain’t that right, sugar?”

Oh, crap. She was caught between the woman who had just given her free food and the man who had given her a hickey last night, fed her this morning, and blown her away a minute ago. Her entire future in this town might hinge on her response to this impossible question.

Jane pressed her lips together before she opened her mouth and said something destructive like: Wow, Clayton P., I’m starting to see you as a tortured soul with incredible talent between the sheets who is searching for abiding love. Wanna go back to the apartment above the Cut ’n Curl and see if we can get it on?

Instead, she shrugged her shoulders.

Clay’s eyebrows lowered. “Not a jazz fan, huh?” he said as a little muscle pulsed in his cheek.

Ray turned and stared at her. “Oh, April, that’s really too bad,” he said, bobbing and shaking his head.

She realized her mistake the minute Ray spoke. She had not affirmed Clay’s talent, and she had hurt him in the process. Her noncommittal shrug had been about as negative a reaction as possible, and if anyone needed some affirmation in his life, it was Clayton P. Rhodes.

Jane opened her mouth, intent on fixing the damage by telling him she had enjoyed his song, but he didn’t give her the chance. He started playing a series of chords on the piano that didn’t sound like country music or jazz.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Dottie said. “Don’t go and start singing hymns on me again. Clay, I mean it…”

In defiance, Clay began to sing “Amazing Grace” in a big voice. Jane noticed the other patrons in the bar shaking their heads and laughing into their warm beers.

“Clay, stop it. You’re being a jerk.” Dottie gave Jane a woman-to-woman look that Jane understood. Jane needed to do something to turn this situation from the negative into the positive. So she hopped down from the stool, walked over to the piano, and started singing harmony.

Clay looked up at her, surprise etched on his face. She watched a little iridescent fire spark in his eyes, and he smoothed out his playing and singing so they could hear each other and find a blend. And the blend was amazing. His husky tenor filled in all the hollow places of her soprano, and her soprano lent his voice a resonance it otherwise lacked.

As she sang, her consciousness narrowed down to his face, and the sound of his voice, and the sound of her own as she complemented him. In that instant, singing opened a link with the creative force of the Universe, like real manifesting or—Heaven help her—like making soulful, breathless love.

Her synapses lined up and conducted an amazing amount of electricity through her system. It aroused her completely while it sent up warning flares. She needed to stop now. She needed to run away quick.

But she had this awful, sinking feeling as she stared into his face, unable to look away, that it was already too late. With every second the hymn continued, Clay drew her further toward him, like a moth to a flame.

She had to remind herself that this appearance of a soulful connection between them was a sham and lie and a fake. This was a heady illusion of something deep and meaningful brought on by her current circumstances and a night of incredible sex. It was like some kind of flashing danger sign.

But she couldn’t look away. She couldn’t deny the buzz that hummed in the center of her being, in her belly and in the deep recesses of her consciousness. Hoo boy, if he asked her, she would agree to another night with him.

Clay ended the song after the second verse, which was a good thing, because she only knew the first verse and had kind of stumbled through the words on the second. In the moment after the last musical vibration and before the smattering of applause, he looked up at her and smiled sweetly.

Her heart lurched sideways in her chest. She ought to run like hell, as far and as fast as she could run. But she didn’t, because some force seemed to have nailed her feet to the floor.

“Honey,” Dottie called from behind her. “Where did you learn to sing like that?”

“In church,” Clay answered for her, never releasing her gaze. He was looking right into her, reading her, and it felt like an invasion of privacy even if his assumptions were all wrong.

“I did not.”

“That’s good, sugar, because we don’t need hymns here. You know anything other than hymns?” Dottie asked.

He leaned closer to her. “You did sing in church, I’d bet on it. In fact, I bet you can hit the high A in the Lord’s Prayer.”

She squared her shoulders and scowled at him. “I never sang in church.”

“Yeah, well, don’t sing the Lord’s Prayer here, okay? It would be bad for business,” Dottie said. “How ’bout some Dolly Parton? ‘I Will Always Love You’ is my all-time favorite song.”

Clay arched an eyebrow in question.

“I don’t know the words to that song,” Jane admitted. “Do you know ‘Whose Bed Have Your Boots Been Under?’ ”

His brows lowered, and his eyes flashed, and his stubborn streak marched right across his features. “No way I’ll let you sing that. That song is wrong for you,” he said.

The forces of the Universe released her. His true colors bled through the disguise. He was a stubborn jerk, and she could resist a jerk. In fact, she knew better than to fall for a jerk.

She put her hands on her hips. “Yeah, well, I do that song really well. I sing karaoke every Thursday at the Shrimp Shack. I get lots of applause.”

Clay’s gaze dropped to her chest and the “Get Reel” shirt and then back to her face. “I reckon when you sing karaoke you wear something more like that outfit you had on last night? I’ll bet you wiggle your backside, too.”

“I don’t usually walk around wearing hunting fatigues held up by a length of nylon cord, you know. And I put on a show. That’s part of show businesses—the show, I mean.”

“That explains it.”

“Explains what?”

“Why you get applause.”

Fury marched right through her system, scouring her of any desire she might have harbored for this guy. “You are a class-A jerk, aren’t you? I try to affirm your talent, and you sit there judging and demeaning mine.”

Someone wearing a Country Pride Chicken hat, sitting at the bar, said, “You tell ’im, sister. Anyone can plainly see you got loads of talent.”

Clay shook his head and smiled an infernally delicious grin that lit up his face. “Look, Jane, all I meant was—”

“You know, one day I’m going to make it to Nashville, and I’ll be discovered. I’m telling you, Clayton P. Rhodes, I’m going to be a star, and you’ll eat your words.”

The smile vanished from his face. “Honey, I know you believe in wishful thinking, but Nashville is a rough town.”

“And what do you know about it anyway?”

“I’ve lived there since I was seventeen. I only moved back here a few months ago. And I’ll tell you something, nobody ever just gets discovered, even people with musical talent. And even when you think you’ve got it made, it can fall apart in an instant.”

“Oh, and I don’t have real talent, is that it?” Clayton had some kind of nerve sitting there calling her talent into question. He had no capacity to acknowledge anyone’s talent—certainly not hers, and not even his own. He had a negative outlook on life, and who needed that?

She needed to hang around his negative vibe like she needed another day with Woody West. “Up yours,” Jane said. Then she turned on her heel and walked out of the bar without looking back.

Chapter 6

Clay watched Jane march out the door and knew another moment of supreme confusion. He had not meant to make her feel small. He had meant to give her some good advice. Advice she needed if she wanted to make it in Nashville.

“Well, that went well,” Dottie said from the bar. “Jeez, Clay, just because you’re having a hard time these days doesn’t mean you can snap at folks the way you been doing.”