Authors: Sonya Clark
Tags: #romance, #small town romance, #contemporary romance, #country singer romance
Good Time Bad Boy
Good Time Bad Boy
Table of Contents
Description
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W
ade Sheppard was the king of country for nearly ten years. Now he can’t get Nashville on the phone, much less another record deal. When yet another drunken night onstage gets him fired from a casino gig, Wade is pulled off the road by his manager and sent home. Being back in the small town where he was born and raised, his every screw-up fodder for gossip, isn’t helping any. His family knows him too well, and the pretty, sharp-tongued waitress who catches his eye doesn’t want to know him at all.
Daisy McNeil has more baggage than most her age but she’s finally pulling her life together. College classes will be her ticket out of poverty and instability. She doesn’t mind waiting tables for the time being, but she could do without the rowdy rednecks who sometimes get handsy. When one of them crosses the line, she snaps and gives him and his stupid ten gallon hat the telling off he deserves, but causing a scene gets her fired.
Wade didn’t mean to cost Daisy her job. Chastened, he decides he doesn’t want his train wreck of a life to crash into anybody else. He offers the bar owner a summer of free shows if Daisy can have her job back. Now they’re spending nights together trading barbs and fighting a growing attraction. With a sexy smile and a powerful voice that can make any song his, Wade’s determined to show Daisy that he’s more than just a good time bad boy.
G
ood Time Bad Boy may be set in Tennessee, but it’s dedicated to my three favorite Texans:
George Strait, for years of great country music.
Amy Lee Burgess, a transplant to Texas via Connecticut and New Orleans, and a fantastic author and beta reader and friend.
Deborah Battles, ninth-generation Texan, country music fan, avid reader, and amazing mother and grandmother.
This book couldn’t have been written without George, Amy, and Mom – thank you!
W
ade Sheppard looked out from under the brim of his black Stetson at the bored crowd of weekend gamblers, mostly retirees. The video poker and slot machines at the bar beeped and clanged. The sounds clashed against the vamping of the rhythm guitarist at his right, warming up for the performance. This was his third weekend at the Goodnight Loving Showbar in the Wagon Wheel Hotel and Casino in Tunica, Mississippi. If he could get through the next three nights without showing up late, screwing up the lyrics, forgetting chords, and drinking onstage, he’d only have one more weekend to go of this place. Playing casinos made for an easy gig, but he was ready for a break.
He took a bracing deep breath and stepped up to the microphone. “Good evening, everybody. Welcome to the Goodnight Loving Showbar. We sure hope you’re having a good time here at the Wagon Wheel.”
A feminine voice exclaimed with delight, followed by excited clapping. Wade sought out the source of the outburst. He still had a few fans who hadn’t forgotten him. Maybe one of them was out in the audience. The sound of a slot machine discharging a hoard of quarters disabused him of the notion. Deflated and feeling ridiculous, he went back to his rote introduction.
“My name is Wade Sheppard and these guys behind me are the Goodnight Loving house band. We’re here to play some songs for you tonight.”
The drummer let loose with a flourish of notes.
Wade angled his body sideways and made eye contact with the pedal steel player, who served as the band leader. They exchanged a nod.
“We’re going to start out the night with one of my first hits.”
The band launched into the opening notes of
Dancing Under The Bleachers
. The light, airy song was the title track of his first album. It was a record full of young love and harmless bravado. That was all he’d had to write about back then, the only kinds of songs he could sell as a singer. Now he felt like a fraud singing it, but it was a damn sight easier to get through the songs from his first two albums than anything from the third one.
The audience gave him a smattering of polite applause at the end of the number. Well, some of them. Several ladies were grouped around the slots, working the one-armed bandits with obscene glee, hoping to repeat the jackpot of earlier. An older man and his much younger date were deep in flirtatious conversation at a table next to the far wall. One couple somewhere between his age and his parents sat front and center. The woman was smiling and had nodded along to the first song, sometimes mouthing the words. Wade pegged her as one of those fans who still remembered him, and thanked George Jones, George Strait, and the Baby Elvis that he had somebody in the audience to sing to. If he had one person, just one, he could make it through a show.
For the next fifteen minutes, maybe twenty, he went through songs from all six of his albums. All, that is, except that third one. Wade avoided playing those as much as possible, though since it was his biggest seller it was hard to do. People expected to hear those songs. This nice lady bobbing her head and tapping her hand on the table in time with the music expected to hear those songs. The casino manager who signed his check expected those songs to be played. Double platinum, Grammy for country album of the year, CMA and ACM Entertainer of the Year, numerous other awards and accolades –
Empty Rooms
was the album that enabled his manager to still book him in casino gigs and state fairs, dates in bars and rodeos, and one time even as cruise ship entertainment, though God knew he never wanted to do that again.
It might slice open a piece of his soul every time he performed those songs, but there was no way out of it. Wade didn’t know how to do anything but write songs, play guitar, and sing. Without music, he didn’t know who he was.
For as long as he could, he focused on that one fan in the room. He smiled for her, looked her right in the eyes as he sang. And he hoped to God that when it was time to open up the floor for requests that she asked for a George Strait song. Maybe some Garth Brooks or Vince Gill.
Shit, he’d even play that God awful Big And Rich song he hated, if it would keep him from having to sing
Empty Rooms
.
“We’re about to take a short break but before we go, we thought we’d take a request from the audience. Is there something anybody would like to hear?” Wade paused for a moment and looked out over the mostly disinterested audience. “Don’t be shy, now. If you want to hear a song, let us know.”
The woman fluttered her hands nervously, then raised one like a school kid in class. “I’d love to hear
Empty Rooms
, if it’s not too much trouble.”
Wade had a trick he’d been using for years at this very moment, every time he had to sing that song. He let the room go out of focus for a moment and made sure to keep his emotions off his face. He pasted on a smile he didn’t feel and nodded. “Sure thing, ma’am.”
Pouring his heart out into a song had made him a star, but no one had taught him how to handle reaching back into that well of pain every time he had to sing it. That wasn’t something anybody had ever talked about in meetings with record company people, during studio sessions or concert rehearsals. You were expected to be a professional, suck it up and deal. Wade could do that. He could get through the song. It was afterward that he had a problem with.
The band was silent as he played the opening notes on his guitar.
A blue crib and a white rocking chair
A shelf full of board books
A pile of stuffed animals
Our sweetest dream shattered in a million pieces
We gave him a name and a place to rest
And we tried to say goodbye
But we couldn’t figure out how to live again.
That wasn’t true anymore. She had finally figured it out, and had a new husband to show for it. A toddler, too, and now a brand new baby according to the birth announcement he’d seen that morning.
All these things fill our house
Each one a sacred memory
But nothing can bring the love back
To these cold empty rooms.
Wade didn’t begrudge his ex-wife her happiness. No, not at all. He was glad to know that she’d built the life for herself she’d always wanted.
Pictures on a beach
Of you in white lace
Your smile brighter than the sun
An old pair of boots
My shirt you liked to wear
Mardi Gras beads from that trip to New Orleans.
He’d never met the new husband, but he’d seen pictures of them via mutual friends on social media. The guarded look was gone from her eyes and Wade imagined she never spent nights home alone while he was on the road. Never cried on her own because he put everything into a song instead of sharing it with her.
All these things fill our house
Each one a sacred memory
But nothing can bring the love back
To these cold empty rooms.
All the awards and the accolades hadn’t been enough to fill that space, either.
We talked about painting the walls
We bought a new couch and chairs
We packed up the baby clothes and gave them away
The days crawled by and the pain lingered on
We drifted further apart
And we didn’t even care enough to fight about it.
All these things fill our house
Each one a sacred memory
But nothing can bring the love back
To these cold empty rooms.
That woman in the audience knew every word. She mouthed the lyrics and nodded in time. Did she know the story behind the song? It hadn’t exactly been a secret that the title song and indeed the whole album was all about losing their baby and then the marriage ending. Sometimes he wondered what the hell kind of business he’d gotten himself into, where sharing the most private, awful moments of your life got you a Grammy and a CMA Entertainer of the Year trophy.
Coffee cups and a flower vase
Dried petals on the counter
And old magazine
You left your wedding ring and a letter by the bed
You took your clothes and left me with a house full of things
But with your love gone and our dreams in pieces
I’m just a ghost haunting a bunch of cold empty rooms.
Wade blinked against the glare of the footlights. Somewhere deep inside the bleeding had started. He’d be feeling it soon. He couldn’t sing that damned song and not feel it. It was a window to the worst of his past and every time he went through it, he cut himself on the jagged shards. It didn’t hurt that she’d moved on. What he couldn’t handle was the knowledge that he hadn’t been able to do the same.
“We’ll be right back after a short break,” he mumbled into the microphone.
When he took the stage again twenty minutes later, he brought with him a red plastic cup full of whiskey and soda. The night went straight downhill from there.
D
aisy McNeil pushed her shopping cart through the aisles at a leisurely pace. Mid-morning on a Sunday was the best time to shop for groceries in the small town of Brittain, Tennessee. She made the effort every week to get up early enough to make it to Walmart before the churches started letting out. She ticked off items on her list without much thought, most of her concentration on the conversation she’d had with her college advisor a few days earlier at the end of the semester.
At twenty-six, she was older than most of the students she went to school with. There were others like her, people who either got a late start or went back to finish a degree. Even some who worked full time as she did. Daisy didn’t carry a full course load, though. She never had. Money wouldn’t allow for that. She took advantage of whatever grants she could get but the idea of loans scared the hell out of her. With every semester she moved one step closer to graduation, but that was no guarantee of a good job that would let her pay back student loans. So she did the best she could with her job at the Rocky Top Bar and Grill and the occasional side job of tutoring for cash. She still had rent to pay, and groceries damn sure weren’t getting any cheaper.